 Hi, I'm James Swannick. Great to have you here. We're talking to Dean Pullman from Austin, Texas, who is an expert in yoga for men and who's a pretty cool entrepreneur. I interviewed him, I interviewed him, I think, 2015 for the James Swannick show back in the day. And so we're now doing another interview five years apart. And we've seen each other at various trade and events over the years, including the Bulletproof Conference in Pasadena, California, where I was promoting my swanese blue light blocking glasses, which I'm rocking now. Dean, how are you? Great to have you here. Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks. Thanks again for having me. It's been a long time. So I'm excited to catch up and see what you've been doing. I know you've been going through a lot of... Seems like you're living a totally different lifestyle than you were a few years ago. So I'm sure you'll tell me a little bit about it. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about you. I know I said you live in Austin, Texas, but just give us a little bit about your background and your interests and what you're doing. Yeah, sure. So I was a collegiate athlete in college and I came out and got a job that I didn't really like. And I kind of ended up having to... And then that job kind of fell apart. And I was... At the time, I had kind of a Facebook page and I had a website. And I had no other really big job prospects. And I was like, well, what do I do with this? I can go with this yoga thing or I can go and try and find another job that I don't like. And that's the story of how I started what I do. And my whole thing is yoga for men and kind of yoga for athletes and a more untraditional, more fitness-focused approach to yoga because that's what really helped me when I was in college, when I was playing lacrosse. And that's what kind of helped me understand a whole bunch of these aspects of fitness that I wasn't targeting with my other workouts and helped me get stronger in new ways and also unlocked a lot of non-physical benefits as well. So getting into understanding how breathing can help your stress and your well-being. And so it just took me on this kind of this different life path than I had envisioned for myself. And I slowly built up a brand. I've been adding videos to YouTube and writing blogs and making Facebook posts for almost eight years now. And from there, we slowly built into other things, books and DVDs and yoga mats and membership websites. And yeah. And here I am now and living, I think a pretty great life doing what I enjoy doing and having enough time to take care of myself and my family with the free time. So that's a very long, vague and introduction to myself. But yeah. I'm curious. You said that you think you live a pretty great life. What's a pretty great life to you? What are the ingredients to that for you? It's different for everyone, but what are the ingredients of a great life for you? Yeah. For me, I think it's important that you have the work balance thing. But I think the term work balance has so many connotations to it in the sense that I work from nine to five and then from five o'clock on, I'm not working. But for me, that means I work when I feel like working and I can take off and I don't have to work and I don't have to grind when I don't feel that. So that's a big part of it. Another part, I really enjoy what I do when I really get into the part of work that I enjoy doing in terms of making workouts and making programs and trying to tell and explain to somebody why this could help them with their fitness. That gets me into the idea of flow. That gets me into this space where I'm completely immersed in what I'm doing, that I'm not worrying about other things. I enjoy helping people, helping people through teaching what I know. And I enjoy working out, so I get to work out a lot. And a lot of my job is just showing people how I work out. And I have a really good sense of purpose. So definitely the work-life balance, having a sense of purpose, having a place of belonging, having mental wellness, having physical wellness through getting out of good sleep, managing your stress, working out regularly. And then taking the time to work on kind of that sense of purpose and kind of grounding yourself and your situation and your life and journaling and just taking time to sit down and think about, this is where I am? Is this really what I want to be doing? Do I need to make a change? And having the kind of job that I have with this really allows me to explore all of that and to kind of make sure that I'm doing what I need to do to take care of myself while also putting out content that's helping tens of thousands of people. So I think that's kind of an unrehearsed explanation of what I meant by I'm kind of in a good place. Yeah, it's a good reminder for me actually. It's a good reminder for me in terms of writing down what's the vision? Am I going in the direction I want to go in? It's funny, isn't it? Because we've all got 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We've all got the same amount of time, yet we convince ourselves often that we don't have the time for certain things. And when you said journaling and what's my vision, am I going the right way? Even for me, I keep putting that off. I keep procrastinating often. I mean, when I do it, it's amazing. It's so good. Exactly. And I know I should do it. And even though I know I should do it, and even though I've preached that other people should do it, I don't damn do it, at least enough. And so I'm curious what your thoughts are around that because here's the thing. I had someone on the podcast recently and their advice was very similar to advice that I've heard or I've conveyed a hundred thousand times around eating organic food and getting sunlight and things like that. I suspect that we human beings, we can't already know what to do. The issue in most cases, in some cases, in many cases not, but in many cases, we already know that we should be eating organic food, eating clean water and getting sunlight and writing in a gratitude journal and having good relationships and doing what we love. We get that. Why do you feel that even though we know that, we still don't do that often? Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if we could take our own advice? And like we actually did. I mean, a couple things. So the I should be doing this. Whenever you say like, I should be doing this, there's like some sort of, you're not totally behind it, right? You're saying I should be doing this because there's some sort of pressure that makes you want to do that, but you're not really convinced on the idea as a whole. I think another part is, you want to look at how our habits formed. Like let's read Atomic Habits. Let's look at Charles Duhigg's book on habit, Power of Habit. And you think about just what you really need to do to get into those habits that you actually want to do. And then you think, oh no, I'm different from other people. I don't need to follow the steps because I have a website or I have a social media following with X thousands people and I write blogs for this. So I don't need to follow those steps. When in reality, you're wired no differently than other people. So it helps for us to also follow those kinds of steps into building habits. But what I actually gave it two days ago, someone asked me like, I forgot exactly what the question was. I think it was something along the lines of how do you motivate yourself to do more working out? And the way that I phrased it, I said, I want you to ask yourself, what are those things that you do that you finish? And then at the end of that, you're like, that's great. Why don't I do this more often? And then do that more often, make it, you know, make those things the things that you want to do more often. I think another thing that's important is to instead of looking at those things as extra, I think those things should be more the primary things. So and I'm guilty of this too. I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was, you know, I just had I just had a son about three months ago. So my whole, you know, my whole wellness routine is like, yeah, thank you. Thank you. So my whole wellness routine is like, you know, totally gone. So a couple of weeks ago, I'm like, all right, you know what? I'm kind of understanding what this life is now. And I know what my responsibilities are and how much free time I have. So I want to start getting really back into working out. And, you know, this is what really makes me happy. This is what makes me feel fulfilled. When I work out, I feel great immediately afterwards. When I'm working on consistently, I feel fulfilled personally, just, you know, kind of on an overall basis. But it took me so long to sit down and just write out, what do you want your workout plan to be like? What do you really want to focus on? So I think if you can shift the, you know, the mindset of this is something that's just extra, that's going to help me feel better and spend a day doing that instead of a day doing, you know, the day to day things that you need to do for work. If you can shift the mindset and make that into a more non-negotiable priority, and you can understand it as more important than, you know, those other things that you're doing, then I think that's something that can be really helpful. Another thing is just keeping a journal or keeping some sort of self-tracking tool. So keeping, I like the idea of a workout log is really helpful for me, just, you know, these little notebooks, I have like 10 of these just sitting around and I either journal in them or write my workouts in them. And not only are they something that helps me kind of look back and track patterns and analyze what I'm doing, but it also is a physical representation of all the hard work that you've put into these things that are important to you. So if you can have, you know, things like that, I've used star charts before, you know, like the kindergarten charts that show if you showed up to class or not. I've actually used those to help reinforce habits and it actually works really well. My wife and I did it a couple of years ago for, I think, 2018 New Year's. But there are things like that that can be really powerful that you might look at and say, oh, I'm too good for that. And in reality, they're really helpful. So those are just a few of my thoughts on that. Yeah, nice. Yes. Obviously, you specialize in yoga for men. Tell us a little bit about that and why yoga is so important for men and women. And why you focused it on men. And then after that, I have a physical ailment, some lower back issues, which I'm going to describe to you and see whether you can prescribe some kind of exercises for me to overcome that. But first of all, tell us a little bit about your yoga for men business. Yeah. So the reason why I focus on yoga for men is because when I got started, I felt like the instructors and I felt like the classes were not geared toward my body, toward my male body. Men and women have differences in their anatomy. This isn't a political statement. This is just an anatomical science based statement. Men are less flexible in the hips. They tend to use their upper bodies more. And women are more flexible in the hips, and they use their lower body in their core more. So there are common mistakes that men will make that woman will not make as much. And there are just differences in anatomy and differences in flexibility that make it so that men and women really do practice differently, or they move differently, and they tend to have different starting points. So I'm not saying that there are no women who are flexible, but I am saying that men are less flexible and it's way more difficult for a guy to get started with yoga than it is for women, especially if he's kind of in a place like me where you spent your entire life doing strength training and doing conditioning for sports, doing sprints, doing bench press, doing weights, and you go into a yoga studio for the first time and you stretch. I've never done this before. I like the description of watching a flock of geese fly by while you're just lazily stretching before you get started. And yoga is not like that. Yoga is much more focused. So that was kind of why I decided I wanted to focus on men, was because I didn't feel that the yoga industry was doing a good job of addressing men. And as that style emerged, I kind of moved away from a more traditional flow approach to yoga and made it more about holding the postures themselves, less about moving from one movement to another as quickly as possible or in one breath, more about holding the postures for long enough that my inflexible male body could stretch and actually work into the postures. And while I was there, I was also interested in the proper technique. So instead of talking about giving maybe some life advice about what to do about a work situation or how to let go of stress, I decided to talk about, hey, your knee should be in this position if you're wondering and you should feel this in your shoulder and your neck should be lifted or your head should be raised away from your shoulders. So instead of feeling it with more of a life guidance or a spiritual guidance dialogue, I focused more on the proper technique to make sure that you're doing the postures effectively as possible, that you're targeting the right areas, that you're modifying if you need to, and that you're doing the posture in a way that works for you. So that's kind of the style that emerged. And I'm not saying that there are plenty of men who like the traditional approach to yoga, but my experience has been most men who are new to yoga might not be as interested in that spiritual side in their workout. I'm not saying that men aren't spiritual, I'm saying that men might want to separate doing isometric strengthening and mobility work from their spiritual practice. And we actually have a lot of women that enjoy that approach too. So that's kind of that. So let's dig in here to an issue that I have noticed that I've been having in just the context. I'm a 45 year old man who has been lifting weights mostly for 10 years, maybe 12 years. So going to the gym, bench press, back, vanity muscles, some biceps, triceps, shoulders, sometimes, but not often, legs. I've gone through phases before where I've incorporated two sessions a week of legs into it, very little core, focusing on core work. Over time, I've done lots of F 45, kind of like circuit training stuff. I've done some yoga stuff, run several half marathons. I'm active, like I'm moving and sweating at least five, six times a week and have done for 12 years. So being sedentary is not my issue. Having said that, I have noticed the last year, well, the last year I've experienced considerable lower back pain. And you notice now that you and I both standing, we're doing this interview as we're standing, I'm standing. My lower back pain will tend to happen mostly after I wake up in the morning and I'll come and I'll stand at my desk and all of a sudden just the simple act of standing will cause me lower back pain. Likewise, whenever I drive a car for anything longer than 20 minutes, I have lower back pain, like just crippling back pain. So I seem to be doing everything right in the sense that I'm moving, I'm lifting, I'm running, I'm doing some stretching, I'm active, but I still get this lower back pain. Knowing what you know, is there anything there from based on what I shared that could be a possible cause of that and what could be a possible solution? Oh, yeah, for sure. So back pain is a function of four things. It's related to spinal mobility, to core strength, to hip mobility and hip strength. So those four things are the most important when it comes to your overall back health. The other big factor in that is how often are you moving throughout the day. So are you sitting for four, six, eight hours? Or are you getting up and moving every 30 minutes? So what I found is that generally, if you can start working on your core strength, working on your hip mobility, working on stretching and strengthening the muscles that connect to your spine for 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes, three times per week, then that back pain can go away in as little as two or three weeks, or it can start to, you'll notice significant improvements in two to three weeks. And if you're doing the right exercises, if you're doing hip mobility, if you're doing core strengthening, and you're really, really taking time and effort to focus on the proper technique and the proper muscle engagement, then you can notice an immediate improvement. You can do a, you know, you could do a 40 or 30 minute yoga session and afterwards you're like, Oh, wow, this feels a lot better. So my recommendation would be to start working on that hip mobility, working on core strength, working on your spinal mobility and kind of doing those movements that your body needs that you're probably not getting from, you know, from weight training or from running. I also believe that, you know, just living in a sedentary world, it's not enough for us to go out and exercise and then not do any sort of mobility to counter, you know, what we, what we, what we're not doing. So we need to do mobility work on really on a daily basis to counter, you know, the relative inactivity of our lifestyles. So things like twisting, things like sustained back bends, doing hip openers like lunges, doing specific hip stretches for your hip flexors, your glutes, your hamstrings. And a lot of people think that it's just stretching. You know, I've had so many people come to me and say, I stretch my hamstrings all the time, but they still hurt and my back still hurts and like stop stretching your hamstrings then because back pain isn't just about stretching. It's also about building strength. And personally, I've actually found better results from building strength with mobility than just doing, you know, passive stretching on its own. So, and that's what I try to focus on with Manful Yoga is combining that strength and flexibility into a more functional, more useful kind of aspect of fitness. Yeah. Thank you so much for that suggestion. In actual fact, I'm actually doing the very thing that you suggested, which is great. I'm on the right track. So what I ended up doing, what I suspect I was doing wrong to try to combat the problem for a couple of months was simply stretching. Stretching hamstrings. I actually hired a guy and I said, all I want you to do is just stretch me. Let's stretch the hamstring. Let's stretch the glutes. Let's stretch, stretch, stretch. And I did that and it felt good in the moment that I was doing it. I mean, it was challenging to be stretched like that quite frankly. But you know, in the hour or two afterwards, I was like, Oh, that actually feels good. Mentally, I feel really good on that. But I noticed that the pain didn't really go away. But then since we switched to doing core strength exercises and building strength and doing lunges, carrying dumbbells and building up strength. And in particular, I think focusing on the glutes of my glutes, I've noticed the pain has subsided dramatically. I'm going to knock on wood because I don't want to come back. But really, my glutes weren't firing at all. I would grab my ass and go, I've got a pathetic little man ass, which has got no strength to it. But then just after two weeks of actually focusing on the glutes and actually just even just like stretching them or even focusing on my mind that my glutes are there and kind of like tensing them or what's the word I'm looking for? Just kind of like building that muscle engagement, that muscle lactation, gauging them. Thank you. Yeah, engaging them. All of a sudden, my pain has started to subside. In conjunction with, I've started swimming for about 30 minutes, four or five times a week in a 25 meter pool. And I'm just doing freestyle and some whatever. And I don't know how that's helped. But mentally, whether it's a placebo effect or whatever, like just leaning out, putting my arms out and kicking my legs, I'm sure it's working my core, it's stretching my muscles, not to mention the power of the breath. Like 30 minutes of like coming up and breathing and going back down and holding your breath and breathing has been quite a meditative experience also. There's a lot of core there. I'm actually glad you brought up the muscle activation thing. The other point I was going to say is there's a disconnect between the muscles that you're supposed to be using and the workouts that you're doing that supposedly target those muscles. So if you do deadlift and you do squat, but you have terrible glute activation and you have terrible core activation, then those exercises are just contributing to muscular imbalances that are going to cause pain and going to make your back hurt. So another thing that I really focus on is just like you were doing exercises in a way, doing yoga postures in a way that helps you build that muscle activation and then doing it in a way that carries over into your movement throughout the day. So when you're walking up steps and when you're doing your other non-yoga workouts, you're like, oh, I can feel my glutes engaging and I can feel my abs working as I'm going through this. So that is another huge factor. So even if you're working out and you're targeting all these muscle groups, you think most people just don't have those muscles firing. And it's because of that sedentary lifestyle. You know, every time you sit down, you're just training your glutes to disengage. You're training your core to turn off. And when you stand up, that doesn't go away. Your body remembers that. And it's like, oh, how do we engage your glutes? I don't know. Just use your quads. And that's kind of like what your body is doing. So that is a huge, huge part of it. I'm sure you don't want to know this, but I'm engaging my glute muscles as we're doing this interview right now. I'm actually just doing little pulses just to remind my body that my glutes are there. I could see it in your face. It's the glute engagement face. I love that. Just tell us where our listeners and viewers can actually read up more about you and what you do in the yoga for men. Just give us those URLs and then we'll continue on with a couple more questions. But I just want to make sure that our listeners can find you effectively. Yeah, sure. So my website is manfulyoga.com. We've got a lot of resources on there. I have a free seven-day intro. If you want to go to manfulyoga.com slash intro. And then we actually set up a COVID page because we know it's like a weird time right now. So we set up a COVID page with 20 workouts from five programs at manfulyoga.com slash free. So you want to kind of learn about my workout approach and get started. That's a cool place to do it. I'm wearing my Swanee's blue light blocking glasses. I'm curious as to when and how you might wear blue light blocking glasses and how you incorporate those into either your work or your sleep routine. Yeah, so I actually have my blue white blocking glasses by my TV. So if I'm watching TV later and I feel like I'm really tired and this light is just too much right now, then I will wear the glasses if I'm watching TV. If I am, I'm rarely on the computer after dark. So it's still not dark yet. This doesn't count. So I'm really on the computer after dark. So I don't have to, you know, I don't really worry about it that much. So, and I'll use, you know, if I do start to feel that strain, I have flux turned on. So I'm using that on all of my screens. I have, you know, I actually did the, if you go into your phone, you can go into the handicap settings and just make it black and white. So your phone is like a, you know, you just don't want to look at it, which makes it difficult if you're trying to do social media. So I had to turn it off. But yeah, for me, I wear my blue light blockers at night. If I'm watching TV, or if I really have to be on the computer, then then I'll wear them for that. Yeah, great. And what some effect does that have on you when you do wear your blue light blockers? I just noticed that my eyes feel a lot less strained. And I'm able to, you know, at that point, if I'm looking at a screen and my eyes are saying, no, no, no, it's kind of, you know, that's my body's way of saying, hey, you're tired, dude, you know, stop looking at the light. So me using the glasses in those situations is a way for me to kind of more listen to my body and allow it to relax more. So I find that I am able to relax and get to sleep sooner and definitely get improved sleep if more so just falling to sleep. I think that's the biggest effect. If I'm watching TV, if I'm doing something at night that is in the light and wearing those glasses, then it's helpful. Yeah, nice one. And if you're listening to this and you're curious about the Swanis blue light blocking glasses and you haven't already got a pair, then you can go to swanis.com slash James and use the code James at checkout for the friends and family discount. And if you're listening or watching to this in the US, you can always text the word swanis to the number 44222. If you're listening to this outside of the US, don't bother doing that. It won't work. But if you are in the US, you can text the word swanis to the number 44222 and I'll send you a link. Dean, you have a four month old son? Is that right? Three month old, four month old? He's three and yeah, three and some change right now. So as a father then, how has that disrupted your exercise and health regimen? And what advice would you give yourself and then give to someone else who has distractions, whether it's a child or family member or something else? How do you overcome that? Yeah, so I think I was prepared for having less free time. What I was not prepared for was just the completely unstructured schedule of having a child. It's not like you can say, oh, I'm going to work from eight to four and then I'll baby watch from four to eight. That's just not how it works. It's kind of like it's just on demand whenever. So some things that I've done to make sure that I can continue to work out. Number one, kind of my wife and I just had a conversation and I told her, hey, I know that working's out important to you. I'll watch Declan when you need to work out. Just let me know and I'll make sure that I'll be available so that I can watch him for you. And kind of the same thing with her. I tell her, hey, I really want to work out today. Do you need me to do anything like right now or can I do something in the next 20 minutes before I work out? And she is a pretty understanding and she knows that I'm working out. She won't get me unless it's really important. So part of that was just having a conversation with the family and making sure that we're on the same page there and helping us support each other's goals of being fit. Another part of that is I make all of my workouts as accessible as possible, which means I have all of my workout equipment at my home. It's in my office. I have all the weights I need. I have the bands. I have the foam rollers. I have the kettlebells. I have all the stuff that I need right here. And that has been a huge because I'm able to get in a workout in the time that it would take me to go to a gym and get back. So having all that equipment here and then also writing out your workout beforehand or knowing kind of what you're going to do so that you don't have to spend energy or time on coming up with the workout. I think that's really important. And then as far as the workout logistics themselves, the goal is consistency and the goal is just getting in the necessary reps and exercises to stimulate growth. It's not about killing myself with every workout. It's not about listening to the Rocky soundtrack every time and working out like I'm Rocky training to fight Drago. It's just doing the exercises that are on your checklist and then getting through them and doing them to the best of your ability. But not feeling like you have to kill yourself with every workout. And that makes it a lot more manageable in terms of consistency and showing up and doing it regularly. Yeah, wonderful. I've actually haven't lifted a what haven't done a chest exercise or a bicep curl now in almost a month, which is the longest I've gone in 12 years without actually lifting something. And that has coincided with me feeling pretty terrific, quite frankly. So I'm not going to stop forever, but I have noticed that in those four weeks since I started stretching and doing core and swimming, my bodies, it kind of feels like, oh, it's kind of like, oh, thank you. Thanks for the relaxation work. So I'm kind of suspecting that maybe my body was ready for an extended break. I don't know if that's just a story I'm creating in my mind, whether there's any validity to that. But I think your body goes through phases. I think it goes through phases, like sometimes you really want to strengthen and sometimes you really want to work on mobility. And sometimes you just don't want to do anything. And I think it's okay to go with it. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a little I've had a lot of resistance about going with the it, which is stopping doing the chest and upper body shoulder muscles, because now you lose a little bit of size. And then all of a sudden you put your shirts on, which is going to fit nicely and aesthetically. And for vanity purposes, you go, Oh, good, I look strong. And, you know, I'm a strong man. And then all of a sudden you see it kind of, and the biceps don't pop as much out of the shirt. And you're like, Oh, she's just I'm shrinking, shrinking away here. But what I've lost maybe in us in aesthetics, at least in my own ego and vanity, I've made up for in terms of I have noticed that my energy levels have increased. And I always used to think that if I if I just, you know, lifted heavy in the gym, that would be great to create energy, which it did. But since I stopped doing that and just been swimming and stretching and doing core, I've noticed I've got more energy, physical energy at the end of the day. The example of that is, I have a two level home. And there's a set of stairs that come up and then go up again. So it's like, you know, it's like a zigzag up upstairs. When I was lifting weights, towards the end of the day, I would just kind of like walk walk up the stairs, not necessarily slowly or labor, I just walk up. But since I've stopped doing the the upper body stuff and started swimming and stretching and working on core, I'm surprised at how often I run up the stairs now. And that I've noticed that it's not a placebo thing like I've actually noticed I'm now like at times I'm like, you know, like skipping three, three stairs at a time and running up the stairs and that didn't happen when I was lifting weights. So anyway, interesting. Yeah, you've got that extra energy. It sounds like I don't know to me, it sounds like you've got you know, you're working up so long that you your body is just trying to recover trying to recover trying to recover. And if you actually let it like you take that time off, then you're like your body just recovers and you're just yeah, you feel that extra energy and you feel feel so much better. That was kind of what happened with me. And when I was doing yoga, because I'd been lifting and training for so long. And I was doing yoga and you know, I'm like, wow, I'm not sore all the time. And eventually I started to like really lose a lot of muscle mass. And I looked in the mirror one day and I was like, what am I doing? And then I started like lifting again. But for a while, I'm like, I feel really good. I still look toned. I think I still look pretty good. So, you know, I kept it up. And, and then I then I got to a point I looked in the mirror one day and I was like, Oh, wow. Yeah, we got it. We got to get the weights going again. Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying the break that I'm giving myself at the moment. And like I said, I'll put I'll bring it back in. But I, I don't actually think I'm going to go back to the way I was doing. And I think now I'm going to probably going to just incorporate pushing weights and lifting weights more as a, you know, as part of an overall, you know, a routine that involves swimming and stretching versus just going to the gym and lifting weights. And I think I'm confident that'll work considerably better for me. But like anything in the bracket, I'm going to measure it. I'll keep testing it. Maybe I'm just going through a phase and you know, wake up in a week and I'm like, not ready to hit the gym and lift weights again. And I go back and I love it and my body's got no pain and everything's awesome. And I throw away this who knows like, yeah, but there just there's no blanket statement for everyone. And certainly people got men and women go through different phases as well. I'm just this time listening to my body versus overriding my body with what I think is best. So yes. Dean, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate that. Just give us that website one more time. Sure, manflowyoga.com, manfllwyoga.com. Awesome. Dean, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your words of expertise and your guidance. And great to see you again. And hopefully I'll see you sooner rather than later. Yeah, you too, James.