 So basically every major yoga lineage was founded by abusing motherfuckers, every single fuck can one. Like sexual abuse, financial scandals, physical abuse, you know, ayanga beating on people, pyjabi joys touching women up. It's not subtle. It's on video. You can see it. This is an opinion. And these are the founders of modern post-yoga. Hey, tribe of dream men and women. So today is another special podcast with a guest that was really happy to have a conversation with, that's Mark Walsh, who we know each other actually for quite some years back from the day when I was very much into Aikido. He has a great background in Aikido, a martial art as well. But what's special about Mark is not only that he has a lot, a lot of experience in various body practices such as yoga and other types of movement practice, meditation, martial arts. He also has his own unique approach, which I think he calls bodymate, which is about looking how the body, you know, you don't intellectualize too much. You're looking into not intellectualizing stuff too much. But you're rather, okay, but you're rather looking at using the body to really develop certain qualities in your life. But I'm not an expert of that field, so I don't want to sink too much. If you're interested in that, just check, you know, everything Mark does. And on top of that, the last thing I'll just say about him, he's also organizing the biggest in the world apparently, an online global event where he has lots and lots of various spiritual meditation, yoga teachers and et cetera, et cetera, called the embodiment conference, I believe. So yeah, he has a lot of experience, but actually, you know, without saying all the achievements that he has, the greatest thing about him that I find is that he does not worry about saying whatever he believes is true. And that's very evident in conversation, that's exactly what I needed. So to be more precise, we were speaking a lot about the dark side of the yoga culture, the abuse culture and the victim culture, which is so much out there that I personally noticed in yoga that I used to see what I used to do it. But the thing is, I don't feel that enough people are talking about that. And that's the reason I really wanted to bring up that subject. And sometimes people give me a hard time because they're saying, oh, Roku, you don't appreciate or you don't recognize the good side of yoga. The thing is, no, I do appreciate there are good things in yoga, but I believe and I see that not enough people are talking about the shit that happens in yoga. I think, you know, people are either afraid to risk their profession as a yoga instructor, because if they go talk and reveal the dark sides of yoga, you know, they might lose their students. It's a financial risk, or, you know, they may lose their reputation. And there are just too many people are too invested to talk about the dark things. And personally, I don't mind speaking about that, but it's hard to find a person who's as outspoken as, you know, I guess I'm trying to be, but Mark is another level higher than that. He does not hold anything back, and he has the experience. He has the knowledge, the relationships. He has everything to be able to speak about that and have weight behind his words. So enough flattering. I think I've said enough. Hopefully you have become interested and just check out the podcast and I hope you will be able to see some of the things and hear some of the things which are there, which are important to recognize, but too often they are not spoken about, but not in this podcast. So enjoy. One thing I like to ask at the beginning is non-humble version of a quick introduction of yourself of cool facts that people would be like, oh my God, he's so awesome. I want to hear everything he has to say. So could you lay out a few cool facts about yourself? So I run the embodiment conference, which brings together a thousand different teachers of body-mind arts around the world. And it will be the largest online event in human history. And that's happening in October. And we have 100,000 already booked and it's going to be much bigger than that. I wrote a book called embodiment. It's solved pretty well. I have a podcast called embodiment that does pretty well. My own background is 24 years of martial arts, yoga, meditation, dance, different practices that could be called that umbrella term, body-mind arts, and doing that around the world. So yeah, is that enough bullshit about me or do you need more? I'm sure you could go on, but it's already lovely. It's nice to see you again, Matt, as well. It's nice to see you here. Actually, one more thing, so that people would be included. One of the subjects I want to talk about most in this case is yoga or the whole subject. So what's your relationship with yoga and your work in terms of the body? Yeah, sure. I'm having a breakfast movie here. So you might see me chewing at times. I did yoga since I was a kid, really. My mum did yoga, so I kind of grew up with it. At first, it was something really uncool that people left over from the 60s did. And then I was doing martial arts as a young guy, particularly a young guy involved in criminal activities and had a lot of yang, a lot of fire. Martial arts appealed to me more. But the style of yoga that I picked had a lot of stretching in it. Kanetsuka sensei, who was the head of our organization, was big on Makuhou, which is like Japanese yoga. So it's always part of my Kido practice as well. I might be 30 minutes a day every day of stretching. I was just part of the Kido practice. But also, I was on my own a lot when I was traveling the world, and I couldn't always get to my Kido dojos. And there wasn't online training or anything like that then. So I would just do a lot of smoothing exercises and stretches and different things. And then at a later point, I started doing yoga more seriously. I did a lot of yoga in what's called scarvelli style, which is a very sort of soft fluid style of yoga, which is popular in Brighton where I live. And also found that yoga traveled pretty well. I could put it in my CK. So I was traveling around teaching embodiment around the world. And yoga A, it was easy to find. And B, if I couldn't find the studio, it was easy just to do it in a hotel room. You know, you didn't even need a mat really. So I started doing more yoga. At a certain point, I started questioning, like, what the hell am I doing this for? Like, there's all these claims within yoga. And I started thinking, I'm not sure if I believe some of these. And it just didn't seem to be very efficient at doing what it said it was doing. So I basically kind of got very critical of yoga for a few years, like, you know, got thrown out of yoga forums. And this is back in the day when the yoga world hadn't looked at its abuse history, which is massive, hadn't looked at its lack of consent culture, hadn't looked at its lack of trauma awareness, and wasn't really looking at it itself rationally. It was in this pre-rational frame. And I came in and was like, this is bullshit. What the fuck, you know? And just broke my mind, because that's the kind of guy I am. I did a test the other day, a psychology test, and I'm in the bottom 1% for a trait called agreeableness, which basically means that it's a personality trait. And you'd be quite high, I would say, on this, but the lower the trait, the more likely you are to say things that upset people, because they're true, basically. So the primary commitment is to truth rather than relationship. And yeah, and I basically was just up saying people left right and said, and eventually I got tired of just like badmouthing yoga, and decided to sort of reinvent almost yoga. And I came up with this embodied yoga principles work, which is very different from anything that's out now. Everybody thinks they're different, but this is really genuinely quite different. Like we reinvented the whole way of doing it and why you do it. And the asana, I'd say only a third, not even maybe a quarter of the asana, a traditional yoga asana. And we just realized there was a better way of getting yoga off the mat and into your life. That's been my obsession. So I'm not an expert pretzel person. I'm not super athletic. I can just about do a handstand and five pull-ups. But what I know about is yoga and psychology and yoga off the mat in a practical, western way. A bit of a long intro, but I hope that sets the scene. Oh, it's great. There's a couple of keywords that I enjoyed, such as abuse in yoga. That's where my rate picks up, because those are some of the subjects I want to bring to the table. And actually, before I do that, your personal experience, because you're very public and you connect with so many people across the globe or in this world. Would you say it's a subject which is covered enough, or is it out there, the whole kind of downside to yoga? Or you feel like it's still kind of kept silent or somewhere in between? In recent years, particularly in America and then spreading to Western Europe, less studies to Europe, there's been a definite raising of awareness around high level abuse cases. So basically every major yoga lineage was founded by abusing motherfuckers. Like absolutely true. Every single fucking one. Like sexual abuse, financial scandals, physical abuse, Iyenga beating on people, Bajabi Joyce touching women up. It's not subtle. It's on video. You can see it. This is an opinion. You can look on video and steal the stuff. And these are the founders of modern posture yoga. Like most lineages come from, if not directly, then through vinyasa, come out of a stand or whatever. And that was a real shock. And at first, there was a lot of denial. And people like Matthew Remsky in the States really put it forward. And kind of people really started questioning this. And you can't understand the Indian traditions around learning generally comes from a guru tradition of somebody knows better than you about your body and about your spiritual practice. Now we grew up in this with Aikido, right? This is the same in Japan. This is the same in almost all of the Asian traditions and it's fucked up. It doesn't lead to good outcomes for students or for teachers even. So the basic frame is not, I'm an educator and I work with consent. The frame is once you're in my dojo or shala or whatever, you're under, you know, I do what I want. And if you don't want to be adjusted, bad luck. You know, I remember there was a time in this consent culture just coming in to yoga. Like the kink scene was way ahead of the yoga scene on consent culture. If you want to see some experts in consent, go to the kink scene. Those guys really know what they're doing. But, you know, I remember I was in a studio in London, a major studio, one of the biggest studios. And I'm lying on my back. I mean, it's about a castle. No, it's lying on my back with my legs crossed, my knees together. And the teacher came to and I have like a little bit of a belly and I have big thighs and at least medium sized testicles. So these things are all in a little package, you know. And the teacher comes up to me, she goes to press down on my legs. I'm lying on my back, my legs, and I'm like, no, thanks. I'm good. Because I know that's going to compress my testicles. They're already pretty uncomfortable. I'm thinking, I don't need this. You know, there's squash through my belly and my legs. And I'm like, I don't need a teacher. And she says, I know what I'm doing. I said, stop, don't do it. And she said, again, I know what I'm doing and went to touch my knees and started pressing. And I said, get the fuck off me. And, you know, my next move would have been to punch the bitch in the face. Like, excuse the harsh language, but that is abuse. If somebody's attacking me, if there's no other word for it, I know this is not just uncomfortable. This could be damaging. And I'm just giving this one example. I've seen worse examples. People putting people into hard core back bends that could call spinal injuries and all sorts of things, you know. And, you know, I went out of that class and I was shaking and I kind of, you know, had a basic trauma response. And, you know, I'm pretty good with that stuff. And I, you know, I went to reception. I said, look, this happened. This wasn't okay. And they were like, oh, can you fill out form? And I was just like, really? And they were making all these excuses. Like, well, the teacher's very experienced and they, you know, maybe spiritually that was good for you to be, you know, I'm like, fuck you. You know, like that was abuse. And it was a very minor instance. And some people's is much longer. And to be honest, if I look at the Aikido world, it's no different. And, you know, it's not just yoga. It's all the Asian traditions. And this is being questioned, I think now as trauma-informed is coming in, almost to the point that it's going too far. You know, it's becoming this very sort of far left, politicized. Everybody's super sensitive. Like, you know, I had one complaint from a yogi because there was mirrors in a room. I did a workshop. And it was like, really? You're scared of your own reflection, literally. Maybe you need some, you know, therapy, not some yoga. So I think there is a line where we say, come on. You need adult robustness, they call it in the literature. There needs to be adult robustness and adult responsibility as well, rather than you made me feel this, you made this. So it can become a victim narrative and there can be attempts to claim power through victimhood as well as abuse. You know, it's just a different power game. So that's what I see. And when it comes to knowledge, you've essentially got three mindsets at work, which are modern, pre-modern and post-modern. And they're all colliding in the weirdest way in yoga. You know, pre-modern is, this is the way it always is. This is the tradition that's 5,000 years old. No, it's fucking not. Okay. Anyway, but that doesn't say, we've always done it this way. This is just a tradition. That's one sort of epistemological root, right? Truth, because the Quran says so. Truth, because Ayanga says so. Second one is the modernist tradition, which we're raised in, which is the foundation of our society, which is, okay, you want to convince me of a crime? What's the proof? You want to give me a medicine? What's the evidence? Right, this is our scientific basis of a whole rational society. The Renaissance started that. They call it orange medium inspired dynamics, if you know that system. But the Renaissance literally just hit yoga. So for example, my friend Arianna Rabinovich did a book on yoga myths saying, do you twist detoxify the spine? You know, like looking at these bullshit that's told in yoga. And you know, she just goes through it one by one and takes them apart scientifically. And it's like, why has that book just been written? You know, like, why has science just met yoga in any serious way? Like, this is since the Renaissance we've had science. And I hear about yogic science from India and I'm, you know, very suspicious. It doesn't look like science to me at all. And now you've got this post-modern tradition, which is, well, everybody's right and it's just a matter of opinion. And everybody's terribly sensitive and offended. And like these three, it's like post-modern hippies doing fascist practice in a consumer culture modernist way. It's like a perfect storm of three types of bullshit. You know, because the bullshit of the modernist world is the consumerism, the body beautiful, the body as object, right? So I say, listen, when I go to yoga students, there's three kinds of wankers. There's the fascist wankers. I know I sound like one, but I'm not. There's the body beautiful wankers who are like, hey, I want to look, it's body as consumer object of desire. And usually that's under a very thin spiritual veneer or even a feminist veneer. And then we've got the post-modern wankers. So you've got three ways to, three just horrible cultural trends. That are combining in yoga. And then you've just got a lot of ordinary yogis who are decent people who are just, they're not big on Instagram and they're not big on the mythology in the mythology. But they're just normal people who are trying to get by, but this is the world that they're in. And so you'll hear, even within yoga, you hear a lot of complaint about the yoga world. It seems like you had some already emotions about the whole thing, but in terms of your personal frustration, what would you say frustrates you the most about the yoga world and the hypocrisy or whatever it is? Well, I think those three groups, those three mindsets all frustrate me equally in different ways. So the most primitive is just like, stop pushing your weird religion on me with your weird authority structure that always leads to abuse, always leads to abuse. That's the frustration. The second frustration is you're whoring your ass in a bikini on Instagram and using that to gather validation and money while pretending that spiritual, I'm sorry, darling, but stop, stop kidding yourself and me. And people are kidding themselves. It's really hard to write. And the third frustration is this kind of postmodern, far left, this kind of view of radical Marxist yoga, like communism worked out really well. And just being hypercritical of anyone who's a white male, being hypercritical of anyone, any kind of authority, right? Like there's authority in terms of like knowledge base, like you know more Lithuanian than I do. That's just how it is. Like you'll hire up a competence hierarchy than I am. You can't get rid of competence hierarchies, but that doesn't mean you're a better human being than me. Right? Like you have, so I need to acknowledge competence hierarchies while we're not confusing them with moral hierarchies. And that's the mistake the postmodernists make. They say it's all equal, it's all good. And it's just a sea of wank at that point. Well, power games around victimhood. Sorry, sorry. Can you repeat that last part? The power games around victimhood. So it's a form of power taking to be a victim in that world. And there's a competition for who's the biggest victim. It's the woke culture, which is, you know, all of them have good intentions. So, you know, I'm slightly grumpy maybe today, but the good intention of the tradition is like, hey, we have lineage, we have tradition, good things get preserved, that can be a good thing. Structure, you know, hierarchy can be useful. The good thing of the modernist world is well, let's test it, let's see. And you know what, it's fine if people just want to do this for fitness. There's nothing wrong with fitness. You want to get a fit body, great, good for you. And the good intention of the postmodern world is like, hey, there is actually a real discrimination and sexism and racism. And let's look at that and let's see what's going on there. You know, and let's check that that isn't happening. And how can we support people who are genuinely victims of abuse, you know? So they're almost just taken too far. And the internet has a way of magnifying that because most yogis, when you meet them, they're all right. You know what I mean? They're nice people and, you know, they just want to chill out and they just want to do a bit of yoga. There can be these weird spiritual fantasies that come with it, which I think are, you know, like we've seen in the martial arts in our martial arts journey, right? Like, the viewers might not know, I went for a similar but not as public or as an extreme journey as Rokas with Aikido disillusionment and realizing that it wasn't, you know, all it claimed to be. And we've seen that Aikido is full of good people but then the group thing comes in and the sort of hypnosis type stuff comes in and you don't want to question the authority of a teacher because he's a nice guy and he's been helping out for years. And do you know what I mean? It's not that there's not necessarily bad people. So, I mean, you've studied this in publicly in a lot of depth and I think it's the absolute parallel with Aikido for yoga. Where would you say you're seeing yoga heading on to? Like, what would you say is the best outcome that yoga should evolve into? Like, what would you get rid of and what would you kind of emphasize in order to have yoga a decent, good balance practice? Yeah, I mean, I can't predict the future. So, everything I'm going to say is just looking at trends. I mean, we're seeing hyponieshing now because internet taught yoga, that's just a marketing factor. So, it's like, for example, I saw a children's Dutch-speaking yoga class the other day. Great, 100 kids all sounding like they've got a throat infection, speaking Dutch and doing yoga, that's great. Now, my friend, the most friend's student was running it. So, hyponieshing, we'll see. So, it will be like yoga for Latina single mothers who like chess, you know, like really, like we're seeing the metal yoga and the rocket and the geek yoga and this kind of stuff. So, we'll see hyponieshing. I think people will increasingly go, what do you mean by yoga? It's yoga, right? So, is it fitness, which is fine? Is it a sort of Buddhist ancient, you know, lineage of mindfulness practice to get enlightened, which is okay, you know? Or is it, you know, I have a very particular niche. I'm looking for life skills, insight, psychological insight and life skills for off the mat. That's what I teach. I'm being really clear, that's what I teach. And say, listen, when I want to do fitness, I go to the gym, I lift weights, I jump up and down on boxes, I do pull ups, great. When I'm doing yoga, I'm not doing that because you maximise, you optimise your training for a goal. Yeah? So, being really clear on the goal and the niche we could say business-wise, but also in terms of goal orientation, I think that will increasingly become apparent. And as I say, I do see a positive trend of consent awareness, trauma culture. You know, it's being a bit overshot, particularly in North America, but it is a positive trend and I do see that. You know, I don't, there's one person who talks about post-linear yoga. I mean, I don't think we're quite there. Yeah. But there is definitely a suspicion of the gurus with the funny names who are, you know, make you dressing all in white and this kind of thing. That has been a really strongly challenged. And I think we're not quite done with that yet, but it's a good thing. It's kind of something I wanted to actually ask, but you also brought it up yourself. I was curious. So there's kind of those two extremes, I guess I'd say. Like there's yoga, which is only athletic and it's kind of the downside, which I see as well. It's, like as you said, go to fitness gym and do fitness if you want to. It's bad fitness. It's not even a good way to get fit. Right, exactly. Then on the other side, on the other edge, you have that whole spirituality and mysticism and enlightenment, whatever people take that to be. I was curious, so where do you take your yoga and how much of the psychological aspect of personal development aspect do you blend with it? Can I answer this question using the spiritual yoga voice? Fake voice is fake. It's a fake veneer, whether it's voices or names or clothing, it's all fake. So what I realized was there wasn't much of a western but deep approach to yoga. So there was a rest and fitness, and there was an eastern but deep. So I said, okay, what does that look like? So we use a model, it's almost archetypal. So let's take a pose, warrior pose, right? We have a whole lot of other poses that aren't familiar, but be easy if I use a familiar one. So we use that as an inquiry as to how warrior-like you are and as a coaching process as to where you need that in your life. We then move it into sitting, standing, walking, and talking. Okay, so I'll break that down. So the first thing you do in the warrior pose is like, is this familiar? First time I did warrior pose, I was like, hell yeah, this is my bag, right? Because it has a quality to it that's emotional. So in traditional yoga language, you can talk about the coaches. We're working with the emotional psychological coacher. Yeah? So rather than the transcendent or just the physical. So in terms of like layers of being in a tantric moment, there is a precedent for in traditional yoga. It's just not normally done that much. We also use it as inquiry. So while people are in the warrior too, we'll say, where do you need this in your life? Yeah? And people will come up with all sorts of insights and cool stuff. They'll be like, oh my God, I'm too much like this. So oh my God, I underused this and I'm too nice to my kids and we're linked to life. We give them a chance to verbally debrief it with each other briefly. Brief is important. That lets them name it and articulate it into the verbal and into the social domain, which is normally missing from Eastern practices. They're normally body and spirit, but not really social or emotional. Yeah, the Asian cultures don't do that so much. Then we move it practically into say a micro pose. So for example, how do you sit like right now? Or I guess if you were to sit more warrior like, what would that be like? So your eyes are great. You're like really focused on your eyes, but you might like sit forward slightly. Yeah, I would. I would make my posture and then kind of tighten up my spine. That's it. The spine goes up. You can extend through the hands. You can angle slightly. So once you know the pose, you can take it into sitting, interviewing on a day on a business meeting, whatever. Yeah. And you could also, we could also give you a way to walk that way. Right. There's a war. Is that New York Monday morning walk, as opposed to Hawaii Sunday afternoon walk. And we could take it into the verbal. So how would you tell me something in that way? So we take that quality, that if you were energy, I don't like the word, and move it into the actual domains of life rather than keep it simply as a stretch, which is fine. You can use it as a stretch, but we're using it a very different way. So we're totally uninterested in fitness in the class. And we're not, it's all about bringing life in, not trying to, so there's the yoga holiday model, which is you get away from life and you have this holiday in this nice well and it feels really nice. And it could literally be a holiday or an hour long holiday in your class. We're not trying to relax people. We upset people. Most people cry in our classes, at least at some point. So like the body of yoga, which is spread all over the world, it's disruptive. It's not there to make you feel nice. It's there to show you yourself and teach you life skills. That's a very different thing in its aim and its intention. So that's not for everyone. And you know, what we find is like 10% of the, these love it and they go, wow, this is really good. 90% of like, yeah, I'd rather get high. I'd rather, you know, get a buzz by doing a stanga or whatever and that's fine. You know, different things. Does that give you a sense of it? Yeah. And I really like that direction. Just some questions that come up. I'm curious about what you describe sounds kind of like a great way for a trained the trainer or private coaching sessions or like a workshop. Does that model also apply to like regular weekly classes? Yeah, we probably do what we call EYP light. And you know, listeners can look up videos. There's lots of free videos to see. And we must have all sorts of novel poses like no pose that for practicing boundaries that you just won't see in normal yoga. Not uncoincidentally, I would say that one. Yeah. So we EYP light would be you just sprinkle a bit in. So you're doing your class, you're doing your warrior pose and you just say, hey, just seem familiar to anyone. Okay. Anyone need a bit more of this in their life? The hands go up. You know, we do a regular yoga class. My friend Viddy Daster does one and it's like, people get it. You know, you don't have to stop and debrief and do what we do in a workshop. You know, just it's like a perspective or a layer you can add into an ass in the class and a workshop is more like, right, justice. You know, with the breaks and talking and wrestling. Again, you keep answering kind of the question. Yeah, I guess a good intuitive mind, but I'm still just to dive a bit deeper in the first part of the conversation you mentioned developing your own style in your own direction. So I presume you're you were talking about this kind of method. Yeah. Yeah. So I got together with a bunch of senior yoga teachers and said, okay, let's do something different with a different aim. And we took a few years to work it out and we tested different poses and we had to make sure they were like cross-culturally apparent by doing, you know, they'd workshop in Lithuania, for example. You know, did workshops in different places and say, oh, do Russians use self-care in the same way? And, you know, they have a self-care pose that makes everyone cry in Russia. And, you know, we looked at this cross-culture. I looked at it with teachers. We make sure they were safe physically. And boy, did I get some stick, you know, like British people do not like innovators, you know, like a lot of people are like, who the hell do you think you are with only 20 years of experience and massive embodiment experiences? You know, it was like, people really didn't like it, you know, that I was innovating. But then people saw it and they were like, you know what, this makes sense, this works, you know. The biggest issue we have with it is it's too emotionally impactful. So it works almost too well. It just really is quite full-on as an experience to do it if you go full into it. But as I said, you can do light versions. But, yeah, now there's teachers teaching all over the world and they're doing it in different ways. Like, you know, one of my students does it like women's empowerment, another one does it with business people, another one does it with climbers, you know, another one does it with sex trafficked women in the Spanish islands, you know, she does it for their healing and trauma. So there's loads of applications that are really varied because it's a principles-based system rather than a dogma-based system. Yeah, right. While we still have time, I want to dive a bit back to the dark side of yoga, but kind of a connection point. I'll say a few more words about that in a moment. But kind of to make a bridge between your personal experience and the dark side of yoga, when you're doing these workshops, you mentioned some resistance, but there's one more thing, like a quick story, a friend of mine was going a breathing workshop, like with some top expert in the world, I can't remember who it is, but well known. And he mentioned, and he's a BJJ guy, so he's a Jiu-Jitsu, but so Yoga's world is not really familiar to him, but he noticed that the yogis who are in that breathing workshop, and he was kind of surprised by commenting about it. He was like, they seemed like they were resisting towards the whole approach to the like a scientific approach, like and he was saying specifically, like seems like there was some ego involved in it, and he was surprised. But to me, when I heard about it, I was like, it reminds me of yoga. And you know, that kind of a quick point again, there's a book, I can't remember which book, but the author was exploring the dark side of yoga. He called yoga instructors kind of pirate ships with white flags. You know, they're, they're okay. Oh, wow. I particularly see this in yoga men, low integrity, spineless motherfuckers who are trying to shag your girl from when you're not looking. Like that's the pirate ship with the white flag. That's what I see in the yoga world. And that's not all yoga men, but that's definitely in the tradition. I mean, it's men who have failed at being men by the normal standards. So they're looking for a way to be better than other men, right? So it's like, I can't be more macho. I can't be more dominant or more rich or more, you know, there's sort of traditional cultural values which they don't ascribe to, but they are there. And then, you know, okay, well, what am I going to do? Okay. Well, I can still be spiritually superior if I use a funny voice and dress specially and call myself a special name. So I think everyone's looking for that edge to be superior whether they admit it or not. And this is no, everyone's going to say, well, my God, Mark, you're a monster. You know, not everybody thinks like you, you have to realize you're a fucking monster. You know, like really, when you look at footage of concentration camps or gulags or atrocities that have been committed, that's you, okay? That's who you are. You're part of that humanity on both sides of it. So to acknowledge that we do have urge for power, dark sides, think about what yoga is. As a yoga teacher, you spend 90 minutes telling people exactly what to do, how to sit, how to stand. Rockers, you're breathing wrong. Stop smiling, put your head on the straight. Like what could be more dictatorial than that? What could be more of a power trip to a largely unsuccessful person who's never managed a company, maybe never looked after kids, maybe never been in charge of people in some way and all of a sudden, this 25-year-old is now dictating how to, everyone had to breathe. And now imagine they realize they can go on Instagram and they can have 1,000 people or 10,000 or 100,000 people looking at them saying they look amazing and they're spiritual. Like power corrupts. Who would not be seduced by that? So any yoga teacher that says they're in no way dictatorial and they don't understand that urge for power is a liar. And I think it gets pushed down. Like there's certain emotions that aren't allowed in the yoga world, like anger. So what you see is this like nice spiritual everything's love and light and then just underneath that they want to fucking kill you. Because just under the sun or sex gets pushed down and it leads to all these sex scandals and sleazy guys and whatever you know. So anything that's repressed is coming out sideways rather than saying you know what I'm a guy and Parmi wants to be in control of the world and Parmi's kind of horny and Parmi's kind of a control freak. Personally I think Aikido is worse for arrogance though spiritual arrogance is very interesting because it's not evidence-based. So you're a mixed martial artist if you say you're good at jiu-jitsu someone could be like well let's see let's put it to the test let's the brutal confrontation with reality. You know let's see how good you are at jiu-jitsu you know whereas in Aikido you don't really have that and in yoga you definitely don't have that. Like how would I prove to you that I'm more enlightened than you I'm more spiritual than you like maybe because I'm more vegan than you or some shit right. I have a you know I can do a better back bend so I'm more spiritual than you right. People are looking for these external justifications and the the correlation with the physical flexibility with the spiritual attainment is the big mistake obviously. You know else Chinese gymnasts would be the most spiritual people right like eight-year-old Chinese gymnasts would be the most enlightened. So that's clearly a mistake yet it's still in the overworld somehow this is an advanced posture and that's seductive and we're human beings and we're prone to the corruption of power. It's like you put someone in there's a revolution and then the revolutionaries take over they become the next dictators. You know this is just human nature so I'd say the lack of confrontation with reality the lack of feedback from morality that say MMA would have combined with this very vague sense of what does it mean to be spiritual what how do I know who's more spiritual me or you I mean that's a really fun game you want to play the game it's a really good game here's how the game works I say I'm more spiritual than you for a reason and you say no no no I'm more spiritual for this person. Sounds like an interesting thing. I meditate this morning so I'm more spiritual than you your turn oh crap I'm not spiritual I guess no but I see a point 100% yeah it's a really fun game to play and if people refuse to play the game that's just part of the game that's called the humility move or the I'm so spiritual I won't play the game move so you can actually completely non-consensually play this with yogis at yoga festivals and they hate it so nobody knows what spirituality is right like Ken Wilber gives nine definitions so how do you compare it? right so all you're left with is the externals like I wear white and I'm vegan and I'm really flexible and the bullshit that's all you're left with so it's no wonder that power corrupts because everyone's very insecure as well because no one knows exactly what defines excellence so maybe it's sense that there is like I see in jiu-jitsu world I don't see that insecurity yeah so it's the ego it's this inflated structure with this very insecure core in aikido and yoga 100% one thing I'm reflecting about what you're saying is you mentioned that kind of recognizing the monster side of it and I almost start to not not taking that as an abusive side and kind of giving yourself and off the hook for saying oh actually I'm a monster so I'm gonna go too far but that doesn't mean that it's actually I'm a monster so therefore I'm gonna be careful yeah that's the cool right there's there's one of the directions which I'm inspired about which is similar is again looking aikido is a great example for that because it's all about peace but and I think it would apply to yoga but in regards to martial arts if you're saying that you're a peacemaker but you don't know war you don't know how to you know kill a person or say then you're not a piece you're not a peacemaker you're just kind of being a nice guy because you don't want to get punched in the face only if you're capable of destroying someone and you choose not to then you're you know then you're kind and then you're a good person so I think would you say that applies to yoga as well kind of admitting that inside we're all a bit dicks but then I'm just I'm fine with that we have the potential to be selfish violent abusive control for you know all that the line of good and evil runs down the human heart right so to not acknowledge you have that in you will lead to unpleasantness because it will come out in weird ways and to acknowledge that it gives you a chance to go you know what I can be really greedy so you know what I have to be careful that I'm not trying to rip off my students because it just sneaks in a little bit you know the the key thing and this is the key the heart of western civilization which is amazing and I know why people keep abusing it is the commitment to truth so it's like and this is what you've had in your martial arts journey that's so admirable and it's just you know what what matters most to me is the truth even if that is an ego to me upsets my relationships my dojo my students if I have to leave my wife you know whatever it is but that commitment to truth that's so admirable in your martial arts journey that people have followed and now continues in your more kind of psychological kind of other work you know that is the heart of western civilization and that is not the case in many for many people in many places because most people are committed to what is easy what is convenient what maintains their social relationships you know it takes more than courage I mean you have to be a little bit crazy to go you know what I could say what I know isn't true and I can easily lie and yes that scrapes one percent of my soul but you know what my friends are still going to love me and I'm still going to be you know welcome at work and this ability to speak truth and I found this in the yoga world before it was acceptable I didn't do it very skillfully and you know that is absolutely the heart I think of a very small group of people who are willing to bash their own ego and upset people and you know always look at what a person's willing to deal with is it something like weightlifting or jiu-jitsu where there's feedback or running a business like the market doesn't give a shit about your ego like the market's just like will buy your product if it's any good if it's not we won't bad luck you know so is someone willing to keep putting themselves out there in that way even though it's brutal and you lose your friends you know and it's like then you get a new lot of friends right and they're better friends because they're more in line with your actual values and what you actually think is true but then you evolve and you lose those friends right it's like damn so it's I'm not even recommending it to anyone well I think for us it's almost evident but to make sure that the audience is included I'll pose it as a question so the yoga role that you mentioned that soft spoken voice and the way you care yourself and the words you say and the words you don't say all of that it's almost imposed it's almost like suggested to do that would you say that that's part of the problem of why people deny the the real side of themselves so any art has a culture like he has a culture MMA has a culture when learning an art you accidentally learn the culture you can't help it it's like a kid growing up and Lithuania starts to speak your weird ass beautiful language you just can't help it you're just in that soup right it's like I love Lithuania well it's a great language fuck is it weird and like you just can't help it you just learn it so it's the same with the culture you start going to Aikido you're getting cultureated nobody tells you but you just learn this is how we do things around here and maybe certain emotions are man you probably don't want to express that because you won't you know you come in one day yoga so I'm so pissed off your friends just distanced it's body language and it's subtle it's you know a little nudged by nudge you're getting nudged into a culture and through that conditioning process and if that culture gives you a set of benefits like you get to feel spiritually superior right like that's quite a payoff psychologically or you get to distance yourself you say oh you know what I'm poor and I'm unsuccessful with women and you know what I'm not you know I'm not really physically very well but you know what at least I'm better than everyone because sometimes really like you know what I mean like what a payoff who wouldn't be like like what it's like you trade reality for that illusion right and you see this with the keyboard warriors you see this with the you know so many times people trade an actual benefit for an illusionary one so I think it's that and that it's almost unavoidable and if it wasn't the spiritual breathy voice it would be something else like the macho culture's also where impressing but it represses fear not anger right like if you're in a martial arts dojo and you're not allowed to be afraid because everyone's macho you're impressing something so you're putting on a persona you're getting further away from your emotional reality so I think we've got two I'm sort of thinking out loud here about this two realities that people distance from one is inner and emotional and one is external like reality but here's the thing reality always kicks you in the ass and this is what we saw with COVID right people have built their fantasy worlds but it's like okay how's your reality here like like reality bites you on the ass sooner or later and that bite on the ass might be cancer it might be a wife leaving you it might be having no money and not paying your rent like reality always wins so it's like it's like when do you want your ass kicked now or later you know and really that's the only choice I think we have with reality and in the postmodernism well who's reality and what reality and this is my own truth shut the fuck up like if you're starving you want bread not postmodernism you know this is what martial arts know they're like you don't argue about the relativity of a kick to the face it's just reality yeah well because that dark side of the world is all over the place what would you say is the cure for that like what would you recommend for let's say someone is waking up to the truth and and they're trying to recover your vision yeah right exactly and so what would you say like do this do that or whatever don't be an asshole like me that's not necessary you could be nice like rockers okay so I think what you did is very wise we just cross training because because every art has its own culture and its own bullshit by cross training you'll see through the bullshit it's like traveling you know you're in Lithuania you live there it's great right but then you can live abroad and you're like oh maybe that weird Lithuanian thing we do isn't so cool because in Ireland they don't do that right like you learned this is the journey away from home that's the first journey and then there's the journey back to home like which you've literally done in your case right and you come back home and you go okay now I'm going to recommit to being at home in yoga or whatever it is but with these fresh eyes the other one I would say is do something that has that brutal confrontation with reality because it just changes your world view and get some therapy like the big thing that's missing from the eastern traditions is therapy so therapy and mindfulness are mutually they're not they can be combined but they're not the same thing and no matter how much mindfulness you do you won't see your shadow you wait because it's unconscious by definition and mindfulness is about consciousness you know you could argue if you meditate for long enough eventually the shadow comes up and that's kind of true but the therapy is a western tradition trauma therapy is a western tradition the east is mindfulness so it's not no one has the whole picture I'm not belittling the east it's a great tradition they've given us through you know Ikea and yoga and all these things but the west's given us trauma therapy and union psychotherapy and all the rest of it do some therapy that's the other side and the third thing I'd say is who do you surround yourself with like I know if I go let's say me and you go to a yoga club right or me and you go to check out a new you're in visiting London and I say hey come on let's fucking go check this out you know this is a good class let's go do this we go on a bro a romantic date to a class together afterwards we're gonna tell the truth to each other we're gonna say you know what Mark I think this guy's for sure you know what Mark I know you look good there but it's not really the real deal so I think having people around you who tell you things you don't like and are rude enough to do that is really important like everyone around you is state and I've seen this a lot with guru types like I interview for the embodiment conference I'm in touch with nearly 1000 teachers boy do some of them have some ego boy do they have ego they all think they're bigger than they are and there's some great teachers some really cool ones that I count as friends I'm very lucky and there's a good percentage that really I want to email like a couple of them have said you know I should be a headliner because I'm so famous I'm like I've barely heard of you who the hell do you see as well like what like get over yourself dude like and they're clearly surrounded by only their students who are kissing their ass do you know what I mean like I'm lucky I have a wife who kind of like I come back from training and I'm all inflating and I'm like yeah I've been the king of the embodiment facilitator course for a week and she's like do the washing up and shut up you know it's like I've got a sister who doesn't care what mindfulness is and always things like Keto is called taekwondo you know like that's that is healthy shit so if your family is great for this you know and this is what you have when you return home so the journey is separation and return so you've had this literally the separation it's hero's journey where you separate from like you know but also left home you left your dojo right and the the return is actually the hard bit and the return is when you get disillusioned a second time because you get disillusioned with the solution to the disillusion and some of the stuff you've learned just doesn't really fly back home and you have to deal with your family again it's way more intense than dealing with people kicking you in the head in dojos in Ireland you know like like I don't need to tell you this right like what's been your experience of that return because that to me is a really tricky bit like people deny Western culture and become pseudo-Indian and then do they return back to Western culture right assuming they you know they are from the West so what's what's been your experience to the return if I can turn into around on you because that's that's interesting yeah yeah sure I'd have to actually think about it it's not that something I think about a lot it just kind of happened to me through the process I think part of me feels a bit resentful towards some of the stuff like I would have I mentioned that in one of my videos like it went accidentally a few months ago into like a spiritual seminar like you know you scream and you hit the floor with the top oh yeah yeah yeah yeah kastantins yeah like all that stuff for like a few hours and I didn't realize I'm what I'm going to and then I'm like oh crap I recognize it from like the first moment I see the teacher and I see the people like this all being here now and I kind of said okay you know what I'll just go through it I'll blend in and I'll just I'll just slip through it and I'll show that I can do it even stuff you're a helpful guy yeah yeah but then at the same time the part of me was like I hate this I don't want to do this anymore and then somebody or somebody told me you know you should reinvent like you know or do something like you know I'm like I can't see myself being like you don't know I just can't maybe it's gonna pass but but otherwise I don't know it's again it's sorry my dog I'm hearing a noise that was that that's my dog it's a dog okay that's like a child dying okay they're okay so yeah I mean I might start like you know don't you one day again you know I have to get back into it but um that might be a return that I consider and the other thing I noticed is I had to go through a stage of hating yoga and now I can be in like a tantric esoteric Indian style yoga class I can quite enjoy it like because I enjoy it for what it is and when the teacher says open your third eye chakra or something I I know that it's a bad instruction and it's unscientific or whatever and I can still enjoy it now so there can be part of the return can be you know I might not be going back to Aikido if it might be something else but there can be this like reintegration process of going okay it's not total bullshit there psychologically we have to push something away to get something new and then the reintegration can happen so yeah I mean culturally that's the same thing where we have to get away from our culture by traveling or pretending to be an Indian yogi or something you know and changing a name and whatever and then there's that reintegration process and I I think as a society that's the bit that's needed is not the escaping to Bali or Thailand in this fantasy world great it's a temporary thing you know it's good to get away but then can you actually come home and that's the reality that's hitting recovered as well it's like it's like you really want to be stuck on a tropical island with no medical facilities now great you'd rather be at home where you can actually take care of your family and you know it's there's a a cool you know I've had students of mine say you know what I'm just going to stay in Sweden this year you know wherever they are you know and even if the travel restrictions are lifted because they've realized that there's a reality there there's a gravity a smell of bread a amusing metaphor so yeah yeah there's one more thing that came up to me about reflecting about the journey which actually is interesting and I didn't think that much about it before you asked me but I was recording a bunch of videos because I was like super inspired about sharing some of my stories and I was talking about Aikido kind of the philosophy of Aikido and how I think it fails at delivering it but then by the end of it by the end of me reflecting what Aikido is without any relationship to my experience just like what's the essence of Aikido I actually felt inspired about it part of me was like yeah yeah yeah yeah oh this sounds good and and you know I thought I imagined myself like what if I would you know go down the path and whatever how much hard work it would take but I would try to really embody that and deliver it in an efficient kind of existing way like reality this way that actually felt inspiring so I I definitely think I'm still on the journey to fully come back home yeah from now Aikido 2.0 by Rocker here's the thing and Aikido an Aikido school which focuses on personal growth which is what it's good at reconnects the art to reality and there's lists and this is just a training tool you know we're not really looking this is realistic and you know what this is you know you could make it more realistic in some ways but as you say I've seen your journey that another valid move it's just to say hey this is more like a kind of yoga and you know no one really attacks like this but this is you know risk grabs are just an easy way to play and we use a way to develop which is like the reality based getting the reality based nature of it I know it's an interesting question for me like how connected to that reality feedback do you need to be for it to keep its roots is it does it have to be cage fighting or can it be somewhere down like you could also look at this from the other angle what if you started an MMA school where the primary focus was personal growth right now that would mean you would spend less time doing certain things so your fighters wouldn't be winning fights that much against equally skilled people right because there's there's a there's a trade-off in what you're doing so I think you can come at it from either of those two directions because I would love to and I definitely see jiu-jitsu schools that have some sense of character development for example you know I went to an MMA school that had zero sense of that at all zero if anything it was the opposite and I went to a jiu-jitsu school had like a pretty good sense of it but sort of vague it in the background and good hearted and yeah this helps you grow as a person but not really focusing on that because let's choke each other out you know let's bar because it's a competition next week you know so I wonder what it would be like to go from that direction is as well I think both of those things are possible you could have both in the same school right you could have a building that had you know what I imagine would be I think it's for different people at different times in their life as well it's like there's a yoga class a meditation class an aikido class jiu-jitsu class and an MMA class all in the same place and like the young men I'd be like go to MMA just go punch someone in the face you're young go to MMA and then if someone got too fantasy based in the aikido class you could say ah come to jiu-jitsu with me on Tuesday see how like see how your ego does and equally someone's done jiu-jitsu maybe they've done it for 20 years they're getting old they're not competing so much you know what you might want to come to aikido you could you know just start doing the tai chi class and the aikido class a little bit you know what I mean I feel like if there was a community where all those things were held and everybody knew the ecosystem this is more reality based but less personal growth this is in the middle this is you know if there was an eco and this is really my dream you know when I made my first million this will be what I'd be building purpose built in the center of London just put it out there if there's any millionaires listening like that would be an amazing place where all levels could operate all ages all physical abilities because not everyone can do MMA just physically right and and personality wise some people just don't want to get hit in the face do you know what I mean but they should at least know what that's like if they're going to do 20 years like you're like I know I people have done 20 years like you know never been punching the face oh it's like yeah you know I didn't for me it was like 13 but still it was like really but equally could you do like you know you could do 20 years that you did so and never meditate and I'm like you're doing an Asian martial art come on you know I'm conscious that we have little time left but I wanted to make sure I expected so much time left because time's running out I'm old I'm 40 I'm going to die soon ask me a good question yeah I know no pressure right I have a feeling probably we'll be able to pick up the other subjects and in the future but I want to bring this one to you you spoke about Aikido and kind of showing a different side of it or blending it in with other practices I know that you're already doing that or at least what I know using the embodiment side from Aikido so can you say a few words on how's that working out and what's your take on delivering Aikido to other people well I haven't trained Aikido much at all lately when I do Aikido now I'm just popping so I like the people I really like the club that I train at and I use it as a practice of creativity so I'm mostly in a playful Takamusi Aiki kind of playful I'm very improvisational my sensei sort of rolls his eyes and just looks the other way when I'm playing around with it and occasionally I'll throw in a jiu-jitsu choke or a karate kick or something else in there just just for fun but really it's for me it's a practice of joy and play and I think other than sex there's very few things I do that are as much fun as how I do Aikido now when I do make it to the dojo which is not convenient and various other reasons I don't go so much but it's a lot of fun in terms of combining it you bring it I'd say bringing in the life skills so as I've done with yoga you could easily do it Aikido and in fact the embodied yoga principles I basically worked out first in Aikido and then I went nobody does Aikido let's do it in yoga instead yeah so the principles of learning basic skills like the centering you know the centering is a big one that's just a life skill and then bringing it into the verbal domain the verbal Aikido there's people who do this like Quintin Cook in the UK does this there's various people that do this Strozzie does a little bit of this in America which is Strozzie Hecler so you can bring in well yeah he reads poetry in the middle of an Aikido class now the first time I was in his class and that happened I was like what's going on California you know but it's great what he does it's really good it's really good and he brings in leadership work so you can definitely use Aikido as a sort of leadership dojo a personal growth dojo often what happens is the techniques degrade though you know because it's just especially if you're training just two classes a week like that's not very much like most people are hobbyists and you know in the UK America they seem to train a bit more France sometimes a bit more but if you're training two nights a week which if you're married and you've got kids in a business like I have whatever it's pretty tricky to train much more than that maybe three right three is like your words complaining you know four you're getting a divorce so you know this is generally generally you there's a minimum about there's a practice there that you can you know minimize you can I can do my meditation the morning before she wakes up so it's no no conflict but it's um yeah like how much can you be I'm thinking out loud here the technical excellence and the personal growth excellence does that require like in my fantasy dojo you know does that require a commitment of a bit more than most people have and I think it's different for professionals like you know an embodiment professional like me I mean I'm doing 10 15 hours a week practice because it's my job right like like today I did a breath work session in the morning you know I'll be doing a yoga class tonight I'll be doing a system of class tomorrow system is quite a nice mix actually of sort of fantasy and reality play in terms of the that line you know it's got some crazy fantasy stuff in it but most actual doting clubs of system or on that line and they're a little bit closer than like you know I think you know and it's got the creativity which I really enjoy so yeah I don't know there's my ramblings on that I hope some of that was useful I'm just saying I actually like yoga like I'm a natural critic just because that's I'm cantankerous you know disagreeable asshole but I actually really like yoga and it's it's if someone said to me I'm doing a yoga class I would smile I wouldn't think oh my god they're being abused and I don't know if it's a cult my first reaction with life my sister said hey Mark I got a bit stressed so I thought I'd do yoga I was a bit weird but I heard about it on the TV and now I'm doing a yoga class at my local sports center I would be happy you know so I think a bit of a danger when we start to see these hidden dark sides is to forget the yoga and I you know like I'm happy if anyone's doing that shit you know like that's because their life will probably be better than if they don't even if there's traps on the path so I think that's sort of I kind of want to end there rather than just be like the guy who's like on the internet badmouthing everyone I think it's also good to be a little positive sometimes right actually that's that's what I that's the last question I wanted to ask unless like it's are we like no no no we're good we've got five so thanks so I'll just wrap up with the question so the yoga that's that's what I noticed as well like I made the video why yoga sucks and I said it somewhere in the middle of it like actually there's yoga is good but and then a lot of people didn't hear that part they're like they thought I'm are you gonna get hate you're kicking that puppy you have to understand that someone yoga saved their life is turned their life around it gave them whole path they got a divorce it got them fair it stopped them from killing themselves and then you come along kicking their puppy with your fucking clickbait title rockers it doesn't matter that you said in the middle of the video I get it man I get it I get it like that you're just gonna get that shit but that shows the fundamentalism if people it's like if you want to know if someone's fundamentalist about their religion critique it right it's the same with yoga so if someone says hey you're a Christian do you really think the virgin Mary was a virgin come on you know hey you're a Muslim do you really think this really and if they're like you know what yeah I get you know fair enough okay great we'll have a conversation about it they've got their faith I've got mine but if they like immediately get defensive of any criticism walk away because there's no you can't have a conversation with fundamentalists there's no conversation because there's no listening because they're already right so why bother you found this you know I see like patiently replying to all these assholes you know you know and you'd be like well actually and here's my logical point of you I'd be like rocker shut the fuck up they're not listening they can't listen you're wasting your time I only dialogue with people who are capable of dialoguing don't cast your fucking pearls to swine so you know that's why I would say when you see those comments it's thank you for your feedback delete thank you for your feedback block thank you for your feedback delete and the people that challenge you in a logical way and can have a conversation they're the ones you to put your time into right yeah sure well great practice but there's a lot of shit to work right gotta be careful with all practices great great and last last thing to make sure people would know where to find you and maybe your book or the conference and everything if they're a yogi they should check out embodied yoga principles just google that on youtube on the website you can see that we have an online training the moment if they're just interested in embodiment they can look up the embodiment conference the embodiment conference we do lots of free events there's lots of free stuff on the website as well if they're coaches or trainers facilitators they should look up the embodied the facilitator course and if they can read if they can read at all they should get embodiment moving beyond mindfulness so i don't know how many of your audience fit in those categories and you can add me on facebook if you do that kind of shit and instagram there's a good picture me and a bikini doing yoga poses on instagram so that's hot might well should look it up maybe you know what first funny that instagram picture of me in my wife's bikini on bar in bali when we were on holiday not doing a good holiday got more likes than all my other instagram pictures even me pretending to be an instagram girl got more hit got more likes my wife says okay because this is a pleasure man if you ever want to chat again i'm always i like talking with you man i felt today i just ran here a minute but then if you want to chat again it's a pleasure i think we we did some good brainstorming as well and it wasn't all clear thoughts from the past but i always enjoy when there's a sense of you know looking at something at the moment so it was right an edge right a bit of like what is that thank you thank you thank you no no no so i'm going to go with you thank you thank you thank you thank you second yeah thank you very much till next time pleasure man thank you take care love to let you in yeah