 I'm really excited to be here with my friend, Mark Walsh. He is the founder of the embodiment conference. A lot of you have probably heard of it. It had half a million participants. You know, like a thousand teachers, Mark. Is that right? Something like that. Yes, it's still a little bad. It's over a year ago now, but it's still a little bit epic. It's still, you've had a replay of it recently. People can, you know, join, you know, buy it now. It's fantastic. Of course, thank you for having me do a session in there too. And Mark, you're doing also the certificate of embodiment coaching for any of you listening who are coaches and want to really learn the pro embodiment skills for helping your clients and yourself. And Mark, you have a podcast called The Embodiment Podcast. Embodiment everything, man. Embodiment work. Embodiment underpan. It's coming next. So we wanted to, I wanted to get together with you because we want to talk about self-care because that's been something that has, you've, it's been a big lesson for you in the past year. I mean, you have been, you've been going full on for at least a year after, especially after the conference, essentially your audience completely just blew up and you had all these people who were looking to learn from you. You've created all these courses, these recent depth courses and short ones as well. And anyway, you, you basically had managed a lot in the past year. Yeah. I mean, my life changed radically. You know, I started getting recognized in the street and when I went to yoga and stuff. And also it became accidentally became the sort of CEO of a tech company doing online learning, which had always, always done a bit of, I mean, I've, you know, my bread and butter's always been training coaches to work with the body. You know, that's why I'm putting books on and you know, do courses on. And all of a sudden I was a manager as well. And it took me a while to go, oh, hang on, this isn't really my life process. And I was running a tech company. I had to learn about marketing. And, you know, I was always into your stuff and I had another people, well, not many people, just a few people who do, you know, really ethically aligned marketing. And I've been teaching that a bit to my students, you know, as well, but I had to really up my game in learning about online business. And, you know, we share some friends now and people who are big in that world and into that, I had to learn a lot. But also just personally, you know, there's a difference in, I've always, I mean, I got sober 15 years ago. And at that point I decided I wanted to live, not die. And I decided I want to make something of my life. I wanted to, you know, leave something behind and I wanted to give a contribution, lots of ways to say it. And I'd always done martial arts, you know, when I was drinking and I kind of had that combination. And I, but I'd always found like the embodiment world. This is the idea of the body being more than a brain to actually the body being part of who we are. Love that stuff, sending to business, always work hard. Particularly, I think this is under said actually when you'll love something that sometimes actually a recipe for disaster. You know, I sometimes joke, the muse does not care about you. Like, you know, being inspired, you're running a lot. You know, that's spiritual energy. You're running a lot through the veins. And then I'd always done that for years. And, you know, I meditate, I do yoga, I dance. I mean, my schedule is full of embodiment stuff as well as being a manager. Like my day is kind of like eight, nine hours a day, like a normal manager in three hours a day. Yeah, today, meditation, went to the gym, got a system that I'm a martial arts class fan for after this. That's a normal day for me. And I found I was almost enabling myself with these practices. So it's like, imagine like an athlete, he sprays the ankle on the pitch and they're playing on a baseball or football or whatever. And then, you know, the coach kind of sprays on the mindfulness to just get back on pitch, you know. And that was me. And I almost was self-abusing because I had this life purpose and I knew all these practices. And naturally, I'm kind of a young guy, you know, and I was getting older. I think that was a part of it. You know, I hit 40 for the two now. I know I look younger, thanks for saying. And I kind of realized like something more fundamental needed to shift. And that's where I've been at recently. And yeah, it's profound difference in shifting from using wisdom and practices to cope to really kind of like pulling the rug out from the kind of self-abuse system. Wow. Yeah. Dude, so much to talk about here. A couple of things I wanted to kind of highlight and have you go into a bit. One, just first of all, I know you say this on your podcast as a tagline. The body is not just a taxi for the brain, right? I just want you to just pause for a second. And for those who are listening who aren't studying embodiment every day like you are, what is that really? Because I mean, that is the sort of how most of us have grown up is the body. You know, you really add value. Unless you're an athlete or a musician, you add value to the world with the brain. And so you just have to like make sure the brain stays alive. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that phrase I should credit Francis Bride for another embodiment teacher, that phrase. And, you know, a friend of mine who's a lecturer at a university, I grew up with him as a school kid, but now he's a lecturer. He said, you know, my body just gets me from one lecture to another. Right, yeah. And that's, you know, he's at university and this is our model for learning. I thought it was pretty profound. But, you know, he has profound back problems and he has certain emotional problems. He has certain other problems, not just health problems, but like in terms of his leadership or whatever, he doesn't have a starting place for that. Because you can't think your way out of most problems. You know, like reading books and things doesn't solve the problem. And you must see this with your students. Like you teach them marketing, they read the right books, but do they implement that? Right, right. And it's like, why aren't people implementing it? We all know like health, let's just take health, right? We all know we should do some exercise and get a good night's sleep. Maybe medicine and maybe not eat too many McDonald's or whatever, you know, but we don't do it. And why not? Because we have habits that learning is embodied. And even when it looks like our contribution is coming to my head, that's only a part of it. Like any creative person is the whole being that's involved. You know, any leader, it's their emotional intelligence, almost certainly more than their cognitive intelligence is inspiring people. And also just a basic point, if you like, as an embodiment teacher, I study self-regulation. You just did a free event on self-regulation. But, you know, there's a wider world. There's a cultural embodiment. And you're in a certain milieu and then you have a certain heritage, like we, you know, we come from different group stores that have a certain trauma inheritance perhaps as well. That affects how we react to kind of authoritarian policies and things happening in the world. Co-regulation has just been an absolute shot through the last two years. You know, I'm just seeing people who are drained and tired in my workshops, exhausted. Yeah, everybody has a road rage all the time now. You know, the equivalent of road rage, there needs to be a name for it, like COVID rage or something. You know, like people are just irreversible because they're not getting the co-regulation. And we're in a world of technology. I just got my, I got asked to speak at an event from a major technology company. I won't say which one, but, you know, the founder runs the dual rates. And I said, sure, I'll speak to it, but I'm going to say technology is great and exciting when it comes to our wellbeing and how, you know, we can dissociate spending so much time on technology. And actually maybe people are motivated for us to do that. And they're, you know, they want us to be attention to be sharp and online. And, you know, they don't invite me pretty quick because they weren't ready to really hear that. But it's, there is a wider context of this embodiment in the world. And while I often return my students to their personal practices, we should also look at communities. You know, I like to hang out with other embodiment people. All right? We spent the day yesterday hiking with another embodiment teacher, nature. You know, where we are matters, like you're in California, right? I'm just talking about being in Portugal or Madera or I am now, which is a Portuguese island. You know, I'm more the person I want to be in Madera than when I'm in Moscow. I love Moscow, I've worked there a lot, but it's an intense place. And it's a very brutalized place in many ways. You know, I was often in Moscow staying in the apartment. I could see the KGB building from where I was staying. So I put something else now, but it's still the same. And, you know, they hit the place we are where that bit of physical environment, the cultural environment, the historical environment makes a huge difference to our body. There's all layers of embodiment and none of these can be removed from, hey, maybe get up and do some meditation, right? Yeah. Yeah. Take a picture. So when you're, this kind of corner you've turned about self-care and, you know, how you used to use it as like an occasional tool or like a tool to get more done. I mean, now, how are you seeing it now? You know, I just started noticing it was easier for me to get to bed on time. And I'm enjoying weightlifting at the moment. I mix my practices up and it's something that I don't as well as my own. There's no thing as easy as to eat better food. And these things will support each other, of course. If you sleep better, you have more willpower. If you eat better, you have more energy, whatever. It's holistic, yeah. It's a virtuous circle, so that's part of it. And it's partly the place I'm in. It's partly that I see that I'm returning more to my life purpose of training teachers and sort of scaling down some of the tech stuff in the company. And, you know, like I spoke to my coach a few months back and he's like, well, how much money do you need? And I went, well, you know, if I'm on 100K a year, that's just plenty, you know, to be in Portugal, like that's just a lot of money. Like beyond that, I mean, what am I going to do by a Ferrari, crash it, kill myself to like get a new drug habit, I don't know, you know? Like what do I need, you know? Like I've got a slightly expensive Ukrainian wire for it to do a door actually. It's, I don't have any expenses. So it's, I kind of realized like, what is this for? And I always thought myself as quite an alternative person, quite counterculture. You know, I thought I'd seen through that as being a living martial arts student. I've worked in wall zones, I've done a lot of voluntary kids and slums and this kind of cool stuff. And I thought like, hey, I'm not impacted by mainstream values, but they hook you. And whether it's, you know, a little bit of fame, a little bit of power, a little bit of money, maybe the embodiment conference, I had to unhook myself from it. Interesting, I've been thinking, how did I, because you can't separate life purpose from embodiment, from well, but you don't know the environment, all these things. I've been thinking how I did it recently because I want to help my students with it, right? Because what I know this is when I coach people, like one thing I'm really good at and my whole company is actually all coaches, a bunch of us, is helping people establish practices. Because that's what leads to change, it's Texas, not one of us. And we're pretty good at that. And we've got all these tricks, like on our coaching courses, we'll have alarms, reminders, peer groups, and we sort of spread the work out. We usually come and have it, stuff. And, you know, it's really intelligently done. It works pretty well. But what I realized is the more fundamental shift in terms of like really getting, it's hard not to be cheesy with this stuff. Like, I'm not gonna say I deserve it because I don't like that word. Like, one of my students looks like you're right to be. I quite like that. But I don't even think right is the right word. It's like really groping, really on an embodied level, getting like, I want to be well and I'm not willing to brutalize myself in my case at overwork or someone else that might be drugs, alcohol or whatever. Like, I had one level of that when I got sober, like, hey, I want to live, you know? And I was going from I want to live and survive, which I've been surviving and using my practices every day to help me with that. But, you know, I actually want to be well and even if I'm going to work like, you know, 12-hour days today, that's not sustainable. I don't feel good. And it's the bottom in person, I'm quite tuned in to that. But I don't think it was like one big breakthrough. I think it was just years of practices, like metamedications, you know, wishing myself well, tuning into myself till it became too obvious not to be well. It's a bit like hitting myself in the face, it's just so silly, you know? And the other thing I think was just good relationships, like good wives, good therapists, good colleagues, good friends, you know, hanging out with people like you and other people we share and someone that just goes, yeah, like, it's like we're all a bit stupid when it comes to self-loving. I think our sort of friends and partners and, you know, whoever have to kind of love us, like fully until we can do that to ourselves, you know, and they sort of show us how it's done, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, oh, wow. Yeah, it's true. And, you know, kind of what you said earlier about leadership being more about the emotional intelligence, just the same thing here. It's like the people around us, they rub off on us, not necessarily what they say, but well, it's like you said, the co-regulation and it's the sort of the energy kind of all influences us. And I still remember, you know, on the leadership thing, the people I remember as teachers fondly or, you know, same thing, you know, on the other side, not fondly, it was all the emotional stuff. You know, it wasn't that they were brilliant. I mean, a few of them were, but it was like the ones I remember in the heart, you know, and the ones I remember for life are the ones that, you know, yeah, that gave me another way of being with myself, essentially. Yeah, another way of being with yourself and you know, often coaches will ask me like, hey, Mark, what's the one technique I should learn? You know, they're busy, they're kind of learning techniques. You know, we've got, we've got just a quick play. We've got an event coming up, like top three techniques, right? And let me ruin the surprise, because people say, what are they? What are they? And there's going to be a couple of like my main stage, censoring I use a lot. So I think no one'd be surprised by that. The second one's another tool I use a lot that we like a lot. And the third one's kind of a trick, you know, playing a darts to be tricks. And the third one I'm going to say is you. There's no technique. And coaches will always say, what's the one technique, the one tool? And I'm like, well, it almost doesn't matter what you're doing, it's your embodiment. That's what people pick up on. That the impact of that is what people remember. As you say, whether they inspire you, whether they're kind, whether they model for you something that you can grow into, like I think some of my teachers did, you know, 20, 30 years ago. And like, they keep asking me for technique. And I'm like, no, no, I can teach it really good for you technique, but who's doing them? Yeah, is it like the difference between, I don't know, the Dalai Lama teaching you centering and Gogle teaching you centering, you know, Himla teaching you centering, right? Like, it's not the same. But who's the person doing the centering with the embodiment of that person? It doesn't really matter what we say, you know, the tids and dogs are impacting emotionally. You know, when you talk to a dog, it doesn't matter what we say about that. So that's also going on for people. And all the books in the world don't talk us into that. So, yeah, that's why we work with practices and embodiment. I'm kind of celebrating, it was just like another level that kind of went, went down recently. I had a good break over Christmas. I went to a spa hotel with my wife, and it was nice because all the like fancy spas because it was last minute, it was supposed to be in Brazil and then they changed the rules. I was like, okay, I think that's a great little firetop. And it was kind of like a simple, like the sports center there was like a community sports and it wasn't like a fancy gym. It was nice enough. And we just had a really simple nice time. And I'm like, okay, it kind of reset. Like, I don't need anything fancy. Just spent time with my wife in a hotel, it was chill. And then I had a little kind of retreat here in Madeira. Again, not in a fancy Airbnb, just in a sort of chill place. Went to a gym, kind of normal gym. It's just something about ordinariness and something that just clicked into place. And yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. Long made life. Yeah. Well, and you know, earlier you also said, it's interesting. I mean, you added in the idea of purpose into all this because usually when we talk about well-being, people just think, okay, it's like meditation, going to a spa or you know, things like self-regulation tools. But how does purpose fit into this? Well, imagine the form, you know, every day, a perfect, well-fledged gym, did a meditation, had other apps, but everything perfect. But every day they went to a job that may destroy the soul. Made them, it wasn't a lie that they're valued in any way. It's too many people actually. I would say a large percentage of the people are like this. Yeah. But what would even make that worth it? For me, it's bizarre. You know, I know if I have to close this story, I went to the careers fair at the end of university, which is like they have a big hall and all these companies that have little stalls and they're like, hey, come and join our graduate program. And I walked around and it was just, it was like Global Core and Nestle and Shell or whatever. And I cried. And I don't cry very often. I cry like once a year. You know, I'm a proper guy, not a Californian one. So it's like, you know, like I walked out of there because I just went, I don't even do it. And I spent seven years living out of a bag trying to find my life purpose. And it's not always one thing, it's not always easy. But I think we can go, if that feels too grand for people listening, like meaningful work, right? Like authentic marketing, like you teach, right? Is it authentic? Is it meaningful? Is it you? I think we kind of know, like I'm maybe more changing that as in what I'm a teacher about. I don't tolerate it very much. I'm not very tolerant as a person. And I really don't tolerate doing work that doesn't satisfy me. You know, I don't feel that. I don't feel meaningful. I don't feel like what I'm here for. And when I'm on, it's like you strike the right chord, you know, on a note. And that is an embodied feeling. So the embodiment really helps us find that and notice when it's there, it's like a radar. And for me, that totally underpins help. Now, the slightly complicated thing here is it's generally very good for health, but as I said before, if your life purpose is almost trans-personal, and like I'm going to speak in poetic languages, I don't really think it's, like the muses don't care if you live or die. They only care that Chopin's sonata gets, you know, the Moonlight sonata gets written, right? Like they only care that Ulysses, you know, write Dubliners or whatever. They're like Ulysses that's written by James Joyce. Like they only care that, you know, the ninth symphony is finished. They don't care about you. And again, I'm speaking about it correctly here, but so we've got to be a little, because the energy of purpose, a little, this is a little mystical mystical, but it's trans-personal. The energy of purpose is not your energy. And again, this is a metaphor. So I feel like I'm running, like you're going to Mexico soon, right? Bring one of these, because what happened was there was a power surge when I was in Mexico and it burnt out my laptop because I didn't have an adapter, right? Because it was just a normal plug I was using. Like, I feel like life purpose is like that. So it'd be like a power surge and you can try your wiring. Like I can stay up all night designing one of my embodiment courses. In some ways, they have to have the discipline is saying no to life. This is huge. Yeah, I mean, I mean, every creative person has experienced that. It's like, I mean, this is why a lot of people go, why I create, I mean, on the flip side, I can say I create when the inspiration strikes. Yeah. And to me, I'm like, well, okay, if the inspiration strikes at three, which is what a lot of people look, inspiration strikes at 3 a.m. or if you're sleeping, right in the middle of sleep, you're supposed to get up, you know, do the thing. And then what the rest of your day's schedule is. Yeah, I mean, embodiment terms, there's always a balance between regulation and expression of flow and discipline. That's good. Like I have a house of colleagues near here, right? Who are my new friends in Madeira, they're a house of artists. There's a lot of fucking flow in their household. Nothing starts on time. There's always arguments. They're really amazing creative people like political people. But there's not much discipline. You know, equally when I'm in the gym, I'm around a lot of guys who are super disciplined. They're eating their chicken and, you know, broccoli and boiled rice, the brown rice every day. You know, they're in there religiously. I see them the same time every day. And it's like, I don't think they dance much. You know, like, they don't have much flow. They don't have much freedom. Like, I'm not sure if they could just say fuck it. I'm eating a Snickers today, you know? And then that balance between flow and freedom there, that's personal, cultural, political and practice-based. So you recombinate that it was mostly the result of those four things. So if you're a, you know, a conservative in the Midwest who does martial arts, who's, you know, personally inclined towards more discipline and personality, you're gonna be very one-sided compared to, you know, California and who personally happens to be more liberally inclined towards personality factors, whose trauma means that they can't be disciplined, you know, post-trauma means they have to be disciplined, who, you know, just do what I mean, whose practice is by rhythms and not a Stange Yoga. And I spoke to a German guy last week who's been a lot of a Stange Yoga. She's like, why am I not developing my flow in pre-feminine size? And I'm doing the exact same form every morning. And I'm like, well, I'm not saying the Stange Yoga is bad, but people like me are probably quite good, they're all over the place, you know? But for this person, she's just smart, let me show you, she's really good at it. She was like, oh, okay. So I'm a German business woman and I'm doing a really yang formal practice every morning. Ah, she was smart enough to get it. So this is why with embodiment, just some students with different forms, this is the art of pranking people with embodiment. We can't just be like, right, everyone should do a Stange or everyone should do our rhythms or everyone should do whatever, then work all the way. Yeah, it's really good. And so just to circle back to how we started the conversation. I mean, you essentially the past year have been giving into the muse, I mean, in just the embodiment cause essentially was what you were giving yourself over to, right? Well, it was a mixture of quite a potent cocktail of the muse, but while simultaneously, I was seduced by the temptations of the Christ that I was seduced by, I'm gonna get on the switch into Christian language now. It was seduced by the temptations of money and power and you know, like this is parables in the Bible of seeing the world put before you and yeah, you can be a big deal and you can recognize a few times in the street all of a sudden the ego goes through the roof. But I'm like, oh my God, I had a two out of a hundred. Let us say a hundred is the queen or like, I don't know, like Europe's where sort of footballer comes from this island or I don't know who would be there, Shaquille O'Neal or someone, right? Like that would be like a hundred on the scale. And if I went to a two, it almost got me. And I would say famous and most toxic. Money as you know, can be better handled. You know, being a boss, a certain amount of power, this kind of thing. With a mixture of sort of temptations, you know, fashion word, worldly wins, the Buddhists would say. And also sort of pseudo life purpose, you know, that was in there, dressed up as that. And I thought I was going into my life purpose actually deviating away from it, I would say. Yeah, yeah, and so this year's focus is kind of bring the purpose forefront as connected to your wellness. And because you know that what you're doing in terms of your wellness is affecting your audience and your clients and your team. It's huge. Like I want to be a nice boss. I want to be like a decent husband. I want to be, you know, there's my niece and not the exhausted uncle. And I also just, you know, people have to miss this one. And even without any of that service and being a good boss or whatever, you know, doing a better embodiment session of course, but even without any of that, I want to be well. Yeah. And that's enough. I don't need it just because I don't want to be well to do something. Yeah. It's enough. It's enough to say I want to be well. That's awesome. This is a good way. I want to end the conversation on that. So before we hang up, I just want to give you a chance to share about the certification program that's coming up and really anything else that's major that's coming up. Yeah, people interested in embodiment. Just Google it, stuff will come up, you know, free podcast, the embodiment podcast. I'll put the link below for sure. Well, we do some marketing stuff. But yeah, like YouTube, it's free stuff. But for years now, I've trained trainers. I've trained for years, trained trainers. You know, I'm getting back to what I love. I'm getting back to what it's kind of cost us for me. And we're running a certification embodiment coaching. Again, we do a free event as a lead-up to that, which is pretty soon actually. So hopefully people will hear this before that. People go to embodimentunlimited.com, company name embodimentunlimited.com. There's a bunch of free stuff there. There's a bunch of things people can see like different events. And yeah, as a service, people are interested. They can get a taste of the free stuff and see if they want it. And our style is not for everyone. It tends to be very practical and lots of rude jokes and lots of sensitive humor. And, you know, most of all, just that sort of, you know, effective fragmentism is a big part of what we do. People like that style that they should check it out. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, well, and the people you gather are really awesome. So, yeah. Oh, it's a great group. I mean, Chris, you know, I train with a lot from Mexico or, you know, Steve, you know, well, I think now. And then, you know, Christina, there's a whole bunch of trainers. I mean, we have really high standards and we're all pretty different in our style. I try and not make it a total personality because I don't serve anyone. If people see this with different teachers that have shared principles for very different styles, different cultures, et cetera, I think, you know, the multicultural aspects of what we do is quite unique. And, you know, most companies will have, like, a bunch of Americans of, you know, different colors. And we'll have, like, a Hungarian and a Mexican and a German and, you know, really, really much abroad. I love them, you know what I mean? I love the cultural stuff and the sense of that. Yeah. It's always a pleasure talking with you. And it's nice to see you looking well. Like, can you feel like you're someone who, like, has nailed this in, like, as well? It looks like, tell me if I'm wrong, but you, like, you don't look like you're chasing the dollar too hard. You don't look like you're pushing down anything. You just kind of chill doing what you do. You're making a good living. You see every time I see you, you seem healthy, happy. Like, what's your secret, man? Tell everyone how you think. Well, I think you're giving words to the kinds of stuff that I maybe luckily stumbled into. You know, like, you're giving words to it and you're training people to do this kind of stuff. And I think, you know, maybe I've passed life or whatever. There's tons of embodiment work in the past life. Follow me here. You always say, heart-connected to what you care about. I don't see you striving harder than is wise. But equally, I don't see you kind of, you know, you consistently show up in your business. You're not lazy, right? You're different in a way. You're gentle. Yeah, yeah. It's like you're striking a balance. But that is, but that, yeah, that's right. The balance is what we're all going for. That's a flow and discipline. I really like how you put that. So, Mark, thank you. I mean, if you look at a little bit of crack. No, I'm just making it up. I'm making it up. George is the only one not on drugs in California. He's probably going to tell for me. So, yeah, George, a pleasure, man. Wishing you all the best. Yeah, thank you so much, Mark.