 Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Tony Riddle, the natural life stylist. He has a holistic approach to well-being, health, fitness, sleep and so forth. So he's all about trying to get people to relearn and these deep connections we have with nature, ourselves and each other. And he's got this fantastic method for doing that. And he runs a bunch of courses, retreats and all these things. And we spoke about rewilding yourself. What is rewilding? How do you start on that journey? And we talk about how we can live more naturally, try and connect with nature for our own really well-being and good mental health. So, Beth at Running, which I love and I do, and Why on Earth? He's decided to run from land's end to John a Great. Beth at 30 miles a day for 30 days. So brilliant conversation and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool. Great. I'm alive. I'm Tony. Hey. Thank you very much for coming in. We made it. Yeah, we made it this far. We finally made it. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm great, man. Yeah, thanks for inviting me on the show. It's awesome. Pleasure, pleasure. So what is your story? What is my story? Big question. My story is to where I am now. Yeah, how did you end up doing what you do? Well, it's come through multiple ways really, but I feel that I'm a natural lifestyle coach now. So I'm known as a natural life stylist. It essentially means I'm looking to the natural world and natural beings of the world to find ways of living that are more in sync with our human biology. So that's understanding what our biological norms are rather than our social norms. And where I go back to or where I feel it started is probably in my childhood and understanding that as a child growing up in a village that was quite gray, a bit like walking up here. You know, it's very gray around here. It's not much green. So we had that, but then we were had... And this is in the UK? This is in the UK. It's in a village called Langley. Okay. And it was rough. It was like, you know, when people say about the parts of London being rough, it was like that. It was like, you know, people were very surprised about it. I'm like, well, not really. It's like that small village kind of mentality was going on there. People were bored, I guess. Lots of drugs, lots of crime. And then we had this local area. I think we called it the gravel pits. And it's where there's an opportunity to explore our physicality of kids, especially as boys. It was like an opportunity to... We had to shimmy across a train bridge to get into nature. And then you find... Into city trains. It's like a babab underneath us. You know, it's completely nuts to observe now, but no different to what I guess Park Hall kids are doing today. We were doing it. Then once we could get there, we were accessing nature and we could take our shoes off and just go and climb trees and swim in streams and just do crazy stuff as kids. And that was complete polarity, of course. That was kind of punctuated in amongst the great existence of this village. And a school that I went to was then eventually closed down. It was that bad. It was like... It's now an academy. And so the headmaster from the in-betweeners... You know, the guy... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was my actual English teacher. I risked... Yeah, yeah. So he used to sit with his Walkman headphones on, with his feet up on the desk. I gave him an idea of what my education was like. And so in amongst that, I then had probably just poor diet. I guess my parents weren't very knowledgeable about our own food, so it was whatever we could have in the house, which is generally processed of some nature. They did their best. They did what they knew they could do at the time, right? And that's changed over time. Now, they're really fully on board. They get it. But at that time, they were very young. I don't think they actually knew what they were doing, to be honest with you. But there we are. None of us did. Hi, Mum, Dad. Yeah, so that diet included with this concrete existence. I was a kid that needed to explore the physicality. I needed to be outside, so the school environment was the worst one for me. Realms of ADHD, tapping, fidgeting, looking out the window, hyper-focusing on many different things, rather than the subject. Partly because the subject I probably found boring. Whereas if you've quizzed me on anything that I'm really, really interested in, I have a depth of knowledge. And it's because I'm absorbent to it, and I really love it, and I really enjoy it. So I can just suck information in. Most people say, how do you remember all this stuff? And it's, of course, because I love it. But in school, the average person only retains, I think it's like 5% of their education anyway. So that might as well say, okay, we're going to basically just give you 15 years worth of something, and you're only going to retain five years of it. What a waste of life. So for me, I remembered all the stuff that I found nourishing. Again, that was being out in nature. Then I kind of went from there to hanging out with, rather than the kids that want to go to the gravel pits, I then found it wasn't really cool to do that anymore. It's much cooler to go joyriding and smoke weed. So that became the new norm. And then weed turned into something else and something else. So we were going to raves, doing ecstasy, taking LSD and stuff like that. It was very young age, but it was just because it was part of wanting to connect to something, I guess, and the more I understand it, that's what it's about. It's about connection to something that's bigger. And so to escape that, I joined the army. So this is a wage? So I joined the army quite young. I was 17 and a half, I think, when I joined the army. I tried to get in the REF, so I went to the careers kind of centre, which is in one building, to see the REF and I sat down, like, no, you're too young, you have to come back. So I just went right next door and just signed up to the army. And they were recruiting. And I went, so people outside trying to get you in. So it was an idiot thing for me. And I kind of gravitated towards it because of, again, I think the physicality. But also I knew that my father wanted desperately. I think he really wanted to join the army. I know his dad did. And so on. So it's kind of a thing that, not that he encouraged it, but there was, I guess there was something in the back of my mind. Oh, it made my dad proud if I joined the army. You know, people pleasing rather than just doing it just for self. And then in that environment, again, great. It was great. Well, I got to explore physicality and got to be out. But then we were held in a, it's a holding unit. So there's perbite barracks. There was deep, deep, deep cut barracks, black-down barracks. And that's where you heard about the, they were like murders that had gone on. Pickered to kill themselves and whatever. Um, it was in that space. It was one of those spaces where you were kind of lost in time in a way because it was a holding unit. You're waiting for a posting. And I think I must have spent probably six months to a year there. Wow. Doing nothing. Doing nothing. You were pretty much doing nothing. Yeah, you're going on parade. Yeah. And you're, you're fapping around basically with a trade that you might have learned. But at the same time, kids were kind of, kids, I'm not calling kids because we were kids. We were young. But we were pseudo-rights-of-passage thinking we were men. You know, not real men. We're just pseudo-rights-of-passage being in the army. So we're still hiding under our beds, like when they come round to inspect our divas over the top. You know, because we're not human to be in our rooms. It's crazy. Yeah. You know? And then, and then because of that full-on boredom, I just thought, right, do you know what, we used to basically just bunk off and we'd go into the town. And so we'd give the gardener gate a nod because everyone was at it anyway. They'd be doing the same thing and often blasted into the town. And I was in my new car and I bought, I said, do you remember the Ford Fiesta? It was like an XR2. Oh, yeah, yeah. Really just souped up. Souped up, yeah, of course. Came in there, filled the chargers and nice alloy wheels, spent all my money on it. And went into the town a car full of squaddies and then was driving back up the hill to get back because we had to be back knowing we had to be back from the next parade. And if we didn't hit that there, no, we were what, an hour and a half AWOL. It's not like the end of the world. But it became the end of my world because as I was going up the hill, parcel force van took the back end of my car out, flipped my car over. Oh, man. And I had to go to hospital. And so I went straight from the hospital having had my hand sewn out. And I was going through a whole finger just kind of it was hanging. Went through the sunroof of the cars. I was sliding up and up on the roof. I nearly hit a woman with a child in a push chair in a pram, I think. And so it didn't go well for me really. It wasn't my fault. It just appeared that we were joyriding. Kind of playing around. And so it didn't go well for me. Anyway, that's the car when then get back to the barracks post hospital. And I was thrown in jail immediately. So suddenly for being AWOL, there was no compassion. It wasn't like, oh, you've crashed your car. All your money you've spent, they probably saved up going to this point now through the army. And you're only out for an hour and a half. No, no, no. You know, you're going to go to jail. So that was fair enough. But the problem that came with that is suddenly, I guess the brainwashing that was up until that moment had gone. It was kind of, I'd lost the love for something within it. So it died. I guess the army died. And so as soon as I got the opportunity, I was out. So I did three and a half years in there. And then unfortunately I drifted back into what was the same cycle of behavior led me in there in the first place. So in came the drugs and the behavior. Until a cousin of mine basically said, look, you know, you're in amazing shape. Because one thing that saved me was, I guess it's that physical self again, which was building the facade of strength because inside I was just again, just a crumbling mess like everyone else. So I was just, I'd go to the gym a lot. I'd train a lot and was in great shape. So he said, you know, why don't you look at person training? And I thought, really? He'd pass the train. He'd say, yeah, yeah, you'll get a great number. If you come into London, I mean, I could set you up for a gig. It would be amazing for you. Why don't you do it? I toyed with it. And they said that they sent me a load of courses that I could be doing, intensive things. You know, you can go and sign up this, get your level one, level two, level three, and then look at this and look at that and then maybe get an, almost like an apprenticeship somewhere. Let's do it. So I signed up for it. I said, yeah, yeah, let's do it. Amazing. So you were in mid-20s at the time? Early 20s at this point. Yeah, yeah. And so I went straight into, I was really fortunate. I found a person training position in a town called Beckinsfield. Yeah, lovely, lovely. Yeah, you know Beckinsfield? Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of the, it's an interesting space because you can still get on the Marlboro in town. A half an hour, 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. And so people would move out that way. And you know, you had that connection to nature again. Amazing property. Just beautiful space really. So quite affluent clients, I'd find myself suddenly weird. I was like, okay, this is cool. But it was very different. I, I'd kind of gravitate towards bodybuilding, for the physicality, the strength to look, the t-shirt muscles. So yeah, yeah. But suddenly the person that owned this space, Linda Mosley, her name was. She was training on Premiership Footballers, but in course stability. And I was like, what's course stability? And what's foam roller? And what's the Swiss ball? And what's this Pilates stuff? And suddenly there was no resistance machines or anything. It was just purely just a studio space. And you had to really understand and refine your craft as a coach to be able to navigate the space and the client and coach them in what they wanted, which wasn't bodybuilding culture. It was suddenly about, not even, it was aesthetics, I guess, because it's all driven by that. But it was really to understand how to move better. So I guess that was the first seed of my understanding of movement. And then from there, she kind of just said that you, I mean, you're excelling at this. And she was really quite ahead of our time. So then from there, my cousin had said, you know, Pilates is this thing, it's growing, I've got the studio space, and it's in, it's in Swiss Cottage and it's in the, it's in the O2 Center. Oh yeah, yeah. So I've got an idea. Maybe you come in and we train you up and you come in every weekend, you do a bit with us and over time, you understand if that's the stuff you're into. And I was like, yeah, you know, this stuff's amazing because I could understand, I could get it now, what the clients were wanting. I could understand the impact it was having of minimizing pain and understanding efficiency within their movement, I guess. And so within, within that education, that process, I suddenly found out it was one of those things I, again, I was being absorbent. I really just made sense to me and I could just keep absorbing this information and become very skilled at it. And then within a year, I think I was working full-time in there. In between that phase, sorry, I found a gig in, it's a trading company called Mamrahaden and they were number one night spirits right opposite the park. Nice. Yeah, it was a great gig. Nice. So two, were you training them then? Big office, three directors. Right. And I'm just there for the three directors. So I'm in a gym that's probably about the size of this room. And I'm just there just hanging around, just waiting. And it gave me an opportunity again to, you know, study my craft, I guess, to really understand it. And they occasionally drop in telling Tony we want to train, man. But they really looked after, you know, they take you out to lunch, take you out to dinners, and very good money. And I was like, this is incredible, this London life. So it wasn't too long before. Plug into the right thing. Yeah, and then suddenly, the city meant something different. You know, I didn't really, you know, I stay different to what it is now, I think still there was still an ability to thrive then. I think people are in kind of almost in a survival box right now today. But so I found that through that process, then I understood London a bit more. And it gave me a bit of free time to really understand Pilates. And I grew it. I remember taking this video back to my parents, like a reformer Cadillac series. But Pilates, we really knew, you know, it's hardly anyone was teaching at that point. It's not where it is today. Yeah, yeah. So it was a video of this guy coming in with a leotard and doing like this pirouette and then a plie at the end of it. Like, what's happened to my son? And my dad's like, you're not bloody teaching that. I was like, well, actually I am, but not minus the leotard and the plie. So we, what we did, we kind of made Pilates cool. We were, you know, these cool guys. They look really great. Yeah, it just changed. Most of our clients, it was what I would just coaching St. John was, St. John's was housewives at the time. That was it really. That was the bulk of our client base. No men at the time? No, very real. Nicky Clark. I had Nicky Clark as one client. It was just very, just very different. Just very different. Jonathan Ross used to come in as well. Right. So it's just, this is a different environment. A bit of melsey was in there and cool. Yes. It's in cool clients. Back in the dirt, you know, it's quite a cool space. And then one of the clients said, look, you're great at this. I think why don't you have a look at getting your own space? I was like, well, I said, I know just the place. Go and have a look at it. And it was in a health practice near the Heath Golders Hill Health Center. So it was right opposite Golders Hill Park. Beautiful space, old building. A doctor is his practice and he has dentists in there, osteopath, physio, chiropractor, acupuncturist and myself in there. And physios. And so I looked at the space and I was like, yeah, I reckon I could do this here. I just, I need a couple of reformers, a Cadillac. I'm going to coach one-to-ones and just shared sessions. That's it. So I go back and I say to my guys, oh, that's what I'm going to do. And it's like, you could just see it wasn't, it just wasn't what he had in mind. So we basically just, it blew through whatever we'd created, I guess. I looked at him like an older brother and then suddenly it was like, you could see the sibling rivalry coming in. Oh, right. Suddenly that relationship blew up. Oh, shame. So that was that. And as I was talking earlier, I was married to Katie, who we were just talking about. Katie was then my first wife and that was around about the time we had the studio. And then we lived just near the suburb. We were on the edge of the suburb. Yeah, yeah. This is North London. North London. For those that don't know. North London. So yeah, we, you know, if things are okay, I guess what I feel that happened is we moved a bit closer to kind of her social tribe, I think. And some of that social tribe meant I felt myself slipping into the same behaviors as I had left behind. Right, right. So there was a lot of drugs and drink came in again, unfortunately. And it became quite, along with that toxicity, became a toxic relationship around it. So that kind of fell apart for me. So that was, that broke her up. Then our flat went in the process. You know, it was a nightmare. And then I decided, right, I'm done in this area. I need to basically, we need to, I need to do something different. Yeah, yeah. And so it just turned out that my cousin's studio, that when we fell out, that was now up for grabs. Oh, great. He'd basically sold the client base to somebody else and she decided she wanted kids. So suddenly that, as I've decided right, I'm going to close the door of this, the doors open to another space. Perfect. And it meant that I could have, you know, classes of six with other practitioners, Pilates practitioners and myself and grew a business there for a few years. And then we met a guy called Nicholas Romanoff who developed the pose methods. So we all understand that pose methods. So we all understand Barefoot running now, what we've been discussing. And shoes like Vivo Barefoot and these companies that there's a specific posture or shape that everyone should be, Nicholas's model is there's a specific posture that means that you can harness kind of the external internal influences of running. So that if you have the appropriate posture, it means you get the appropriate action of running. And then you minimize the risk of injury and you increase efficiency. And when you look at that model and what the shape is, it coincides with what actually exists in nature. How these people are running, which we are running species. So if we understand with sapiens, we're just an urbanite domesticated version of a sapien. They're not aliens, we're the same species. We know that's kind of at the roots of it. And when we look at Dan Lieberman's work and study that, we can say that the physiology of the sapien today, even the urbanite species, is down to its ability through its evolutionary process of running that enabled us. So even the way that our abs are shaped, pelvis, neck, ribcage, respiratory system, it's all driven towards being a running ape, let's say. So Nicholas's model would align with that. And then it enabled you to understand kinetics, which is the study of forces and kinematics, which are the shapes that you make due to the forces. And so Nicholas's model came in and then suddenly it was like, ah, okay. What I'm teaching in this studio isn't overlapping into the way we should move naturally. What it's doing is it's symptom relief for the fact we're not moving naturally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you understand? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we're filling up studios of Pilates. We're filling up gyms. We're filling up yoga classes. We're filling up osteopaths practices, physios, podiatrists, simply because we're not moving correctly, which is the pose. Interesting, yeah. So you have the pose method of running, but then you can apply the pose method to squatting. You can apply it to crawling. You can apply it to climbing. And any of these things, because it's about really understanding how the shape should be made, why we make those shapes. And if you basically look at children before they've been cultured into sitting, they're very efficient and they don't have injuries and they don't have a posture. They have amazing efficiency. And so through Nicholas's work, I decided that was it. The gym had to go, the studio had to go, Pilates studio. And I pulled out my lease early. It was just... Oh wow, serious. Yeah, it was bad for me. It wasn't great. It was probably a stupid move at the time, but it was about, it was almost like I can't do it. I feel like a fraud anyway because I'm teaching these clients movement. I know I can resolve it in another way. I can't do it through Pilates. So therefore I can't keep teaching Pilates. What I started to do is try and put a bit of pose into Pilates and then the practitioners were in there were just upset. You know, you can see them looking at me and I can see there was... There was... There's music in the Pilates camp. And so that one, that one being Bow Well, there were three of us. Lee, my cousin, Matt, who was a strength conditioning coach, Kettle Bowl coach, X Marine, and myself decided we'd go into business together because that's what you do with your friends and family. There's no joke. Despite everyone saying the last thing you want to do is go into business with your friends and family. So we decided that's what we're doing and we'd set up a gym and we called it gloves because we were into a bit of boxing. We found a boxing coach called Kenny Weldon. He was like the boxing's world equivalent to Nicholas's pose running. Yeah. And so he had a system of throwing 10 fundamental punches, moving in four directions, being able to defend 10 fundamental punches before you could get in and spar. Very different to what's culture doing. And just the vocabulary of 365 Golden Glove winners. Just amazing coach. Brilliant brain. He would analyze anyone. He could say Muhammad Ali. What do you think of Muhammad Ali? Well, it was good. It wasn't as good as people make out because he could only ever move to his left. And they're like, wow. Okay. So he was compromised moving to his right. So when he came up against anyone, they could pin him, basically. Stop him moving to his left. And then he was awkward going to his, going to the right so they could just keep playing around with them. If they knew the ring craft. Yeah. Yeah. So that was his model. We thought, yes, it's great. Let's go and train with him. So we flew off to the States and we trained with this guy and spent two weeks in a camp with him, studied everything we possibly could on his online model. And then we brought it back and we opened up the doors to this space. Great. It's exclusive, beautiful building, back to brick, like a film set. Nice. North London again? North London, just in West Hampstead. So on the West Hampstead tube line, it was originally the London, Scotland Railway building. So the tubes would literally blast past the windows. And they were the original platform doors. So the doors would be like, every time a tube train went past. Sounds awesome. Sounds awesome. When you're only in there for an hour, it's like, yeah, this is great. You're just coming into a one-to-one or a class. But when you're in there for 12 hours, it's like, oh, no. We had it here. 12.02 is delayed again. Yeah. So we basically, we created an amazing space, an amazing philosophy, but it was too exclusive. No one really knew we were there. And it was great. And then one of the guys was like, look, I've got this amazing deals come through. I'm bailing. So he bailed. And then the other guy was all, I'm not happy because he's bailed. And something within me, which I can relate to my dad out of business when I was younger, that he stayed in too long. It destroyed him, I think. And it kind of destroyed us in a way, financially. And there was a bit in me that basically had that. It was almost like an inherited family line of something around business. And I decided, right, I'm staying in it. And I stayed in it too long, really. But in that process of staying in there too long, we'd kind of cultured in a natural movement system. So rather than to be about boxing, it was understanding that boxers traditionally were trained in other disciplines, like running and climbing. And so we started to bring that in. And then we found natural movement as in a culture of natural movement into that space. So then people understand animal flow and stuff like that today. We were teaching locomotive patterns for a period of time. They understood gymnastic strength. We were teaching gymnastic rings. We did a little bit of lifting. We had our lifting protocol. But again, applying Nicholas's principles to it so it enabled us to have very efficient ways of coaching. It was just quite unique. Brilliant, brilliant. It's got really popular. Ido Portal, the Israeli guy, he does a lot with the MMA guys and... Oh, Conor McGregor, right? Conor McGregor, yeah. Yeah, well, it was interesting because it was that kind of a time like closed doors that all blew up. So we were like, you know, it's one of those decisions. I was like, oh, no, what have I done? Look, this stuff's taking off now. I was ahead of the movement and then I put the brakes on it. So I, yeah, I lost the basic... That was the point when... So I basically took everything on and I found myself doing 16-hour days and within that coaching philosophy of movement, I got involved with a company called Wild Fitness and it was a woman called Tara Wood who set that up. And she had a retreat space in Wattamu in Kenya, transforming wild humans into zoo humans. Wow. Brilliant, right? So apart from the fact that a lot of the movement stuff was still like me teaching Pilates in the zoo, she was still teaching zoo exercises, but in nature, but it's still nature. Yeah. So then this guy, Erwan Lakour, suddenly comes on the scene, he has a system called MoveNet. And he then basically rocked up, he did a seminar, I think, with Wild Fitness and suddenly it was like, ah, there's a real natural movement system here. So he was a parkour guy that then almost took parkour back into nature, filmed this incredible, shot this incredible film with him in Corsica demonstrating real human physicality, what we can do. So then it was, ah, okay, there's these natural movement patterns. There's like 13 natural movement way that we can move. We can walk, run, sprint, jump, balance, climb, defends, throw, catch, carry, and if you apply Nicholas's model, what I started to do is get Nicholas's model and you can apply it to all of that. So they don't develop like this fundamentals of human movement course. And so I was going then with another coach, Ben Meder, who's an amazing movement coach. We would then go off and present this as a model to personal trainers and coaches alike. And they, and they, it was amazing, it was an amazing system. Awesome. But then I could, I was applying a lot of wild fitness's philosophy as in physical, physical, social, spiritual needs element. We're a suffering animal basically. And so I'm presenting the system as if I, you know, that I know it, you know, I know the whole thing and I'm in my gym and I'm standing there in the boxing ring, the room's full of personal trainers and I'm like, yeah, and this is how we should sleep and eat and this is exactly how we should be and these amazing wild beings. And I'm standing there in a disused train building with tubes blasting past, artificial light, terrible air quality, EMF waves all around me. I've probably just been eating a paleo diet but on domesticated farmed animals that have got like antibiotics in them. My sleep's been terrible because I haven't been understood it. And I'm preaching to these people and the train, one of the tube trains blasts pie and it's like one of those just moments in a movie where it's like and I was like, fuck, I'm a fraud, you know. My god, man, I can't do this, you know. So I arrived home to Catarina and we had Lola Emilia at that stage and I was like, you know, I think I've got to close the gym. She's like, really? I said, yeah, I think I'm done. I think that's it. It's time to close it. And so then it was a matter of just salvaging whatever we could and we couldn't salvage much. I had to go bankrupt and we lost everything. And I was in one of those terrible positions, you know, you face every young family, everything you dreamed of making and you have this whole philosophy in this belief system. But it made me really come to terms with understanding that, ah, okay, if you really get into the adversity, what can come out of that? And I realized then that none of that was happening to me. It was just happening for me. And I could look at my peers around me and think, oh, they're on this amazing path. Look at them there. Everything's working out for them. But it just, I just had to work a bit harder and through that gain more experience in that process. And the experience, of course, led me to understand that the more nature I basically uploaded to my physical, social, spiritual needs, the healthier and better I felt. And I needed to feel better because in amongst that, I hit rock bottom. You know, you get into depression and you get into breakdown symptoms that, you know, you just, you have to dig really deep. Yeah, yeah. And so through that, I understood breath work and I understood meditation. And then I found... Had you done that before? No, no. Only breath work, what, in Pilates? Because, you know, tension, pelvic floor and pull your belly button in. Whereas that's just making you more tense, right? And we all need to relax a bit. So it was more about understanding the systems of breathing that would help me nourish my soul, I guess. And then meditation and then positive affirmations and just sunny. I was like, wow, what's happened to you, man? You're turning into a hippie. And I'd gone from just working on the physical self, but only really the aesthetics of the physical self. When I started to really dig into it, it was like my whole social culture had to change. My Petri dish that I was cultured into had to change. And I found a new tribe and they were more into spiritual work, which meant dabbling in things like plant medicine and doing ceremonies that were just about activation and just seeing the world very differently. And it did enable me to see myself differently. And that, again, all this is just happening for us. And the quicker you can kind of understand, get to grasp with that, the better life can be. And then it just means that it's all one thing. There is no positive decision, negative decision. It's all one thing. And the quicker you get to that, you really start to live in a bit more divinity rather than, oh, this is why is this happening? Oh, this is great. Why is this happening? This is great. And I think there's a coach called John Oakley. He's a meditation coach. And I think he basically calls it the cycle of inevitability, I think it is, where we go into like dictator mode. Yes, it's this and I'm this and I'm this. And then inevitably we get knocked down into victim. Yeah, well, in my word, I mean, you find people go into these like positive and negative thinking spirals. Even so far as you go on the train, someone comes into the office to like maybe a few minutes late because the train was delayed and they've read something negative in the paper. And then they're so down. It affects their day, their week, their month, their year. It's crazy. So we did quite a bit of work with sports psychologists. And when you realize you're going into this, you just need to just use a trigger or pull yourself out. So for me, I've worked a lot on my moods always good. And the game is the game and there's ups and there's downs. And it's all one thing. You just play. Yeah, you just go through. And it's interesting because in the hardest moments is when you learn most about yourself. You know, and this country, it's funny. It's a bit embarrassing to fail here. But you look to America and it's different. I mean, a lot of I've got some family in America and they're like, I was thinking about doing my own business and they're like, like, fuck it. What's the worst that can happen? Exactly. And you're like, I'm just getting off the job. Or, you know, once you get the right mindset, it's, you know. Yeah, I think what comes with that as well, because of the fear of failure, means that we actually hold on too long, which is kind of what happened with me, the team space. Because really it should be, do you know what? This isn't working. Let's change something or change completely. And I think that's part of it. I think it's that ego space of it is that, oh, what are people going to think? I'm a failure. I'm this, I'm that. Right, I've got to try and make this work, you know. And in the process, it's showing you and demonstrating in the very early signs that it's not really working. I mean, for most people, it stops and ding anything for stop. Most people don't even try. But then I think the path is so strong. So it's almost like the path is strong anyway. As I say, it's almost feels like it's one thing. So despite how long you stay in there, whether you come out early, come out long, you can continue. You can pick yourself up. It's only in hindsight that it's too long. It's just the ashes, man. Just build yourself up again. You know, we can do that. So that's kind of where I went with the studio space. And then it was obvious, as I say, to fix myself was to start living. So the living it came then, not just absorbing the information and becoming information rich. It was about experiencing it. And the way that I could do that was out. I'm feeling great. I'm going to look at maybe saying some retreats up and really exploring this and offering something to other beings. So then we found that we did the first retreat, I think on the Isle of Wight. Nice. And in like safari style accommodation. And so we had biological darkness. You can actually, you know, we had a guy come there. So biological darkness is what? Like no street lamps? Yeah. So basically you can return back to what would be firelight, starlight, moonlight. Because we have this perception of, hunter-gatherers sleeping in complete blackout. Well, they're not really are they? Because they have to have a fire, right? So the fire is always on. The stars are on really bright where they are. And there's the moon cycle, right? So they have, but it's under a certain lux of light. So they've, you know, the measure, lux of light is like the measurement of light. And so you have different spectrums of light with a blue, green, red spectrums. And so firelight is kind of this amber tone. So it's not exposing us to blue and green spectrums that signal to the brain that it's daylight, right? And when you get above, say, 60 lux, it's when you get to 60 lux, that's when we start to think, ah, daylight. And it's a problem because the average light bulb's like 600 to 2000 lux. It's a major issue, right? Yeah. And so that's obviously that would disrupt sleep. So we had this lawyer on board Joe. I coached Joe still today. Great guy, never understood nature. And it was like, yeah, but I'm a city boy. And, you know, I love the city and I love Vegas and I love all this stuff, okay? Why you on retreat Joe? No, it's Joe comes. And the next thing is out. He's running with me. He's on the cliff tops running. Love this. This is great. And, you know, just sea breeze and stuff. And then we'd get back and everyone, we put them into groups of five, I think. It was like four Safari tents. So it's like 20 people there. And his thing was I never sleep. I can never sleep. I love such a sleep problem. I don't know what it is. You know, okay, you love the city. And you love Vegas. You love my life. And it was obvious what we had to do with Joe. Didn't take a sleep scientist to figure that out. But the next thing you'd find him was just sleeping under trees. Well, you know, really, really did a number on him. Nature kicked his ass, man. Crazy. So it's obvious, you know. Yeah. So the thing was you go for a week or whatever and then you run. Stay for a week. So we'd go through physical social spiritual needs. Firstly, you're in a community because there's, say, 20, like, people there. And you put them into accommodation where they're all staying together and they're all cooking together. They're all stove. They were all had an independent fire they could work with. But it would come together. We'd have two hours of movement in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and two hours in the evening or early evening. Amazing food, movement, play, rest, lots of sleep. The rest and sleep is kind of the most important for most people because we live in this H-I-I-T, high-intensity interval training world, which most people just don't simply understand how wide they are. And only really when you get them into nature and into an area like that, can they down-regulate. And then you have them. Then it's easier to answer, right, these are the systems you can use in the city to keep you down-regulate. Because otherwise, what's the point? You go on retreat. Okay, see you. Go home now. And then, as you get in that bit, close to the house, all the high-intensity stuff starts coming back up again. They're up-regulating. So for me, it was always like, as the retreats progressed, it's like, I need to be able to give people systems that they can work with in their home. And that's kind of where it went. And then I started to move more towards rewilding people, rewilding humans. Which is, again, going into the natural world and natural beings and just seeing ways of living that you know are simply in line or more in sync with our human biology, our biological norms. Then it was like, okay, so we have an urbanite species and they're having wild species. I'm not going to call anyone a zoo human, I think it's a massive insult. And yet, we do have to understand natural beings because we don't, if that's running out, our time is running out there. Can you think about it? You know, I think what's the stat since in the last 50 years, a half a lifetime, since 1970s, we've wiped out 60% of all wildlife, right? But we're not talking about human wildlife here. We're talking about wildlife. What about human wildlife? And the problem for me is that once you start wiping that out, we don't have any natural beings to study and look at what the actual biological norms of society are. Yeah, yeah. We have Peter Kahn's model, which is kind of this environmental generational amnesia. And that simply means that when you're born, this all becomes the new norm. Next generation, that's their new norm. You know, so think of what's happening here. If that's 60% of wildlife, that's for my kids, is their new norm. They don't know any different. You can talk about it, but it doesn't mean anything. Right? So, you know, I read that koalas might be on their way out, right? I mean, that's a terrifying thing. I love koalas. But do you know what I mean? So my kids might never see a koala when they grow up. You know, it's just, it's just, and that becomes, again, it's just normalized behavior. So if we don't have the benchmark of natural beings, then we have an issue. So that's where rewilding came in for me. It was kind of like, well, we need to look at natural beings to understand how we sleep naturally. Because we can read, you know, we can read amazing books. So we were talking about Matthew Walker's sleep. Yeah. Why we sleep? Why we sleep? Yeah. And I'm Sean Stevenson, sleep smarter. And they're edging towards, they're just, it's laboratory studies. We're talking about laboratory beings, but we're not talking about natural beings. So we have this, we've led to believe we need eight hours sleep. We need eight hours sleep. What are you going to get? Sleep debt, sleep deprivation. You're going to suffer from obesity, diabetes, inflammation, yeah, all this stuff. Okay. So let's go to nature. Right. So then Siegel, one of the great, great, someone's actually, someone went, okay, let's have a look at nature. Let's have a look at three tribes. So they look at three independent tribes, Namibia, Tanzania, and Bolivia, right? Three independent geographic locations. Right, yeah. And not one of them is asleep for eight hours. They do 5.7 to 7.1 hours sleep. Right. And they're one chunk or? No. And they're in amazing shape. Right. They don't have, definitely don't have obesity. That's not an issue. And there's other lifestyle factors, but there's other sleep lifestyle factors that come in. So that's the first part. They then studied, I think they studied them over, for 1,165 days, they study 94 of these members of these tribes, our collective. And so again, that's the first thing that comes out. The other one is that it's around the temperature, when the temperature goes down, that's when the melatonin comes up, not just lighting. So we have this study around understanding lighting, but there's melatonin's effect which comes in with temperature and it comes in with lighting. Then when they thought, okay, let's study, they studied 200, I think for 220 hours, they studied the hadza tribe, the hadza tribe. And they studied 33 members of that tribe over 220 hours. Over 220 hours, 33 members of the hadza. How many, how long do you think they're all asleep together? Together. Yeah. Sleeping at the same time. They're all sleeping at the same time. Every member is asleep at the same time. How long? Very low. You've got 220 hours to work with it. Oh man, I must be low, like I don't know, 20. It's about 18 minutes. 18 minutes. Yeah. So do you understand? So it's this whole, we're led to believe that you have to be asleep right now. So that would mean they're all going to sleep for eight hours, but they don't. So they have a fire going and they can't afford for their fire to go out. They need a fire. So I need a fire going in the morning. So they keep the fire always going. So they wake. Well, so they're all... They sleep. They wake. They sleep. They wake. They sleep. They wake. And what are the sleep cycles? They're called sleep wake cycles, aren't they? Yeah. No one's, no one's in dead sleep in their non-rem state for eight hours, right? It doesn't exist. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, and it's really important to know and why is it important to know? My entrepreneur client, right? Jet setting all over. I mean, I've been, I've been privileged and pretty awesome lifestyle. I was flown around by private jet. And again, it doesn't matter where these people are, on the monetary ladder of success, if their fundamental needs aren't met, they're unhappy. And yeah, again, mental health, physical health, right? Almost like, you know, for me, ancestral health is modern day wealth, right? This is where we're going with it, is that I could find that, ah, okay, sleep. Let's not stress these guys out and say, you have to be asleep for eight hours because it's impossible. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, right? At some of the summer nights, I can't, I have to get something off. I have to get an article out or something like that. I'm writing a book and I'm in a creative flow. I can't be creative right now. I've got to get my head out of sleep. What I have to do is, I have to recreate the environment. And this is where my work comes in now. So I'm, I work with urbanites, right? To find ways of living that are more instinct with human biology, right? Yeah. As the natural life stylist, right? So I then say, what does sleep look like in nature again? He looks like this. So they don't have the ability to create sunrise at sunset. That's the first thing. Boom. So out goes the lighting. Now I can't, you can't work in the dark, right? So what do we do? Okay. You can put lighting in now that circadian lighting that basically sinks so you get biological darkness. It takes out the blue and green spectrum so you're less with amber tones. Boom. That's the first thing. Pollutants inside your building are often two and a half times more potent than they are outside. So it's an important thing to clean the air up, especially if you're spending 5.7 to 7.1 hours in the same room. Yeah. Yeah. Breathing in out the same air. The other thing is the temperature, of course, get the temperature down. And then the fabrics and things that are in there make them natural, you know, try and go back to natural fibers and things that think about what is it I am inhaling. And then bring green in, bring things that are more natural into the environment. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. So I work, I work with that with people to the sleep habitat and changing the habits within the habitat. You know, so if you have to work, okay, I might be, I have to be on a screen. I'm writing at the moment. Some of it has to be on a screen. So therefore I wear amber glasses. So I wear glasses, then block the blue and green spectrums of light out. Right. And people said to me, oh, why do you wear glasses? You don't need glasses because I look like I'm wearing, I'm just, there's normal glasses. Yeah. And if I go out in the evening, I wear them because I'm getting on surrounded by blue life. Do you only wear them in the evening? Yes. If anyway, so basically what, so within the tribes as well, what they discovered in the 1,165 days of the 94 members of the three geographic locations of tribes is that they go to sleep, they go to sleep three hours after sunset. So it's not like ding ding, oh, the sun's gone out, everything's dark. This is just, this isn't conscious. No, let's just say it just happens. People start going to sleep, you know? But it's, in a way, it's because the whole thing is prime, just circadian rhythm. So you have melatonin that starts off, starts to peak, and then it maxes out, it meets, reaches its peak at 10 p.m. So by 10 p.m., your main, what's lamented as being a sleep hormone is at its peak. Of course, old elves are at their lowest, right? So that's what happens at that time. So it's no wonder that three hours after, they're all saying good night. But also what's happening there, because we underestimate the powers of melatonin. Melatonin is not just a sleep hormone. It has anti-cancer properties. They're showing night shift workers have, I think, 35 to 50% higher rates of prostate and breast cancer. Whereas blind people have 50% less rates. That's an NHS study, 50% less rates of prostate breast cancer. And then they did another study where they show three groups. So you have three groups. One is a simulated night shift group with lights like we have on now. This is just what I call it, lights. This is just normal lighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Downlighting. They didn't give us nice lights here, same. So they've got one group working in that, and they've got another group that are working in like a Matthew Walker kind of sleep study. They're in a dark room. And then they have a third group that are in the same simulated night shift worker, blue light, light experience, but they're wearing amber glasses. And they do their melatonin urine test in the morning. And this group that's night shift with lighting has low to zero melatonin. The group which has the dark room has peaked melatonin. And the group that wore the amber glass in has the same levels of melatonin as the darkness group. So I need to get glasses. Yeah. So it's basically just a simple thing that you can be doing. I mean, people call it a hack, but it's not. It's just basically understanding that's the way it works in nature. They're surrounded by firelight. They have stars and they have moonlight. So just recreate that. That's a really, that's a game changer. And in terms of digestion, it will support that. So people start tucking into food later at night because melatonin's role again is a regulatory system for your digestion. So ghrelin, which is a hormone that says, right, I need to eat. That will peak if there's no melatonin. And leptin will lower. And leptin's like the satiate one that tells you, right, I've had enough. You won't have to, leptin goes down. So you deregulate those both systems. And they're the drivers of your digestive system. Interesting. And that's melatonin, right? So people are on their phones, on their iPads, blue light, feeling hungry, eating before they go to sleep and having a good sleep. And just wreaking havoc on a cellular level. So if you look at it, right, there's obesity. There's diabetes there because the melatonin sites in the pancreas are as well. So there's a three systems of digestion there. The pancreas and ghrelin says insulin, ghrelin and leptin, right? There's three. Then you have anti-cancer properties so they show melatonin studies what can happen if the melatonin is low. You need melatonin for the process of apoptosis which is transforming unhealthy cells into healthy cells. So that's again that cancer pathway. So that's, so it's quite a biggie. It's not just a sleep hormone. And so if we, and you have to understand in terms of that generational amnesia, when did the light bulb come in? What, 1879? I think it is, right? But this is a norm for us. So we don't see it as any difference. You've got people in, you know, clients, I know clients that when we did it, when we had our first daughter, we were breastfeeding in a brightly lit room, right? Yeah. You know, I'm wondering why the child doesn't sleep and the mother's not going to melatonin coming through the breast milk anyway. So it's like- You just don't learn any of this stuff. No, we don't. Because I remember, I mean, on the sleep stuff, you know, as I'm a parent, I've got two kids, but you're geared up to like, they've got to sleep through the night. They've got to sleep through the night. You know, like this eight hours, no, actually no, and the kid's more like 12 hours or whatever it is. But, and then you rush them out your room really quick because you don't want to like get your sleep interrupted. And then it's just all, you just all get carried away in this whole thing. Lost, I think. Completely lost. Yeah, yeah. It's just, you're just geared up to, I need to get them out of my room. I need to get my sleep. They need to sleep through the night. Then you get rushed to like drop their naps. You know, all of this stuff. It just, you just, that's how you get taught. Yeah. But again, we're taught stuff that we go to, we have 15 years of education as the studies show that you retain 5% of it. Whereas imagine if you walked into an environment, let's call it an environment, let's call it a school, let's call it an environment that was all about growth promotion. Not growth, as in wealth, health growth, you know, that kind of the opposite model. And that it's supported physical, social, spiritual needs. And you add in education in it. These are the food groups you need to eat. This is the way you need to move. This is the sleep you need to get, at least the physical, fundamental physical needs met. And then because it's meant to be an amazing social experience when you put people together like that anyway. So social needs should be met. But are they really, you know, in a school environment? Yeah. And then there should be a spiritual kind of rite of passage through that process too, you know. I think we'd see a very different world today. Probably. How have you found it from, from growing up in like a small village? So that's how you painted it anyway. Yeah, yeah. So to now plugging into London, where it sounds like you kind of ended up meeting a similar group with the like alcohol, drugs and... Yeah, yeah, well I did find it like... I did that. I did that until it kind of all imploded. And then it was just... Meeting Katarina, my wife now, was a very different experience for me. So I met her in the process of me having the Pilates studio in the health club. And that was a transformative process. Up until that point I had a massive ego in my shoulders. I was a huge ego, I got this Pilates studio and you know, I had these amazing clients and I got taken out everywhere. And you know, I was living a great life. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And so Katarina kind of just was just very different, just very different. There was something very different. A little grounding in it. Much more grounded. I always, everyone would say I was... Don't you think Katarina wanted to go into all this amazing spiritual work? And I think a kid of me, she was like... To do what? She's like, she's already super connected. And really connected. So she did a lot of work when she was younger. Studied yoga, was really into yoga. I mean, not just on the map, but the whole experience of yoga as in a lifestyle. And just she was really big on that transformative process for me. You know, and I think just also understood that you have to experience this. So there were moments in there with the business. She's like, I'm not going to advise you. This is your experience. You have to go through it. And you have to experience it. Which is amazing, right? So rather than in my ear... We could be losing everything. It's like, if we lose it, we lose it. It's just the way it is. And we're together and that's amazing. So through that process, that was incredible. And then we moved to my parents... We actually only lived with my parents. I was like, I don't know my mum would... Oh, meh. Which we did until we could build ourselves up again. We found a place in Windsor and we lived in Windsor for a bit on a beautiful green, amazing... It was amazing because it was still... It was like going back in time. The kids could open up. We could have the front door and back doors open. Nice. I could be asleep and suddenly there's random kids in the bedroom. You're like, hello? Yeah, we're from the house down the road. Okay, hi. Just sleeping. But it was really interesting. It was like going back in time. And so we had this beautiful willow tree and all the kids would be hanging around on it. Just lovely to hear the kids playing. But just from a social norm front, we were becoming more and more socially extreme to them. Right. Just because the way we were choosing to live. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have furniture in our house. We ground live so we don't sit. I saw that on your Instagram. So that's to start with as well. But if you look at other cultures around the world, that would be their social norm. It's just that it's not our social norm in the village we're living in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the food groups. And the kids you could see there was an element of them starting to... I felt that they felt that they were maybe feeling alienated. And I think it's the worst thing. And what do we do? Do we align ourselves with a way of living that I would see is compromising our kids just so they didn't feel alienated? Or do we have to move and change things? So we did that. We moved and changed. We moved to Ibiza. And we lived in Ibiza for a period of time, which meant we lived in the north of the islands. We lived like hippies. We were living on a farm, loads of land. Amazing. And yeah, the kids rocked round naked all day. So it was just a very different experience for everyone all around. It gave me an opportunity to also, I think, tap into, as I said, just understanding what those needs are. And I was transitioning between Ibiza and London at that stage. So I'd have to come into London. To still doing your... Training and... Still coaching, running retreats. Yeah. And yet I was having to use all the tools that I knew to deal with the flying, the radiation, the flying, I guess, the separation from family. And then also trying to get a five-day coaching week into three days. So everything was ramped up. And then I'd get back to Ibiza and Ibiza was like, so chill. Relax. And I felt that the two energies were at such polarities. But again, it was a necessary transition for us to work through as a family because we would never have moved into London. Back to London had it not been for that process. Right. Can you find that relaxing kind of space in London, do you think? Absolutely. Which is what I get now. My thing with science mainly now is I have a movement practice with them, of course. It's a big... I have chats on them. I call it chats on the map. So I coach people through movement. But in that process, I'm coaching them on multiple layers around their sleep and around their rest and things like breath work. So I find breath work is probably one of the most easy entrances for me to get someone to access meditation because for a lot of people, especially the guys that come in, you know, on meditation. And then you're like, okay, we're just going to do some Wim Hof breath work. And I'm like, well, Wim Hof, yeah. I thought it was the us man. He's a dude, right? And then you're like, okay, let's do some breath work. And then you get them going through breath work. Oh, this feels amazing. Right, okay. Let's just sit there a bit longer to coach you through some just... I'm just going to coach you through some stuff now. And then they're meditating. Amazing. You know? So it's just a nice entry. I just... It removes kind of the stigma of what is this spiritual woo-woo kind of behaviour for a lot of people. So they get like the active coaching exercise or this stuff, meditation, breathing, like around it. Yeah. And then we do it by going through ice baths and stuff like that as well. I have a freezer set up there. I'm just in the process with one of the guys that I coach. He's the developer and we're doing a co-working, kind of conscious co-working. I'm not going to say wellness because I just think it's overused now. I'm just going to call it... It's like a lifestyle building. So I use tri-yoga as an example. Yeah. Tri-yoga in Camden. If you walk through the doors of tri-yoga, you take your shoes off, you put your shoes in. Immediately, it's like... It's a building of zen. But it's strange because it's just the... It's like the behind... It's behind the buildings with car park and just an industrial area. Yet you feel zen when you walk in the door. The minute you take your shoes off, the game changes. I take my shoes off in the office. And so I love that what they've done there. So for me, it was like, okay, I want to create a building that... Rather than call it... Let's not call it wellness. Let's just have a wellness building so that you go into it. And automatically, you feel like those boxes, what I'm talking about, those physical, social, spiritual boxes, are being ticked. So it's not a building that you would go and dread getting into. It's a building that actually you wake up and you go, I can't wait to get there. I want to go in there. And so that's... Then looking at the air that we breathe, the lighting, the movement. Amazing. The food, the water. Just try again, ticking multiple boxes and then bringing speakers in that are on social change and things like that. So it brings that community kind of hub with it. And then most of the practice are yin. So I don't have any high intensity there. It's nearly all yin practice. Nice. And so there's a co-working space. It's co-working. So co-working, hot desking, then renting desks and spaces and office rooms. And I'm putting a podcast room in. Amazing. We're putting a podcast room. And I should say, I was actually James' idea. And so then on top of that, so then I'm having a natural movement area and then a one-to-one area and then a large studio space which will then, again, I can have like sound healing, yin yoga, breath work, meditation. Amazing. So I can rent an office and then my whole team will be able to benefit from all of these different things that you're going to do. That's the idea. Amazing. Yeah. So then you're supporting your whole team. And if you think about it, you know, it's huge losses that are involved through, I mean, mental health's a big one now, right? For me, I understand mental health's just, for me, it's, I shouldn't say simple because it's not simple, but we are almost making things too complex for ourselves in not understanding how it works in nature again. So again, if you get those needs met, you minimise, you build mental fortitude in that process, you know. Yeah. And you get people tools again to how to understand, to live more in divinity rather than in the dictator mode or the victim mode that I was mentioning, John Oakley's work. You know, it's kind of a, yes, it's just understanding how to be, I guess, be more human. Yeah, yeah. Again, by uploading nature, that's how we can exist in that space. And then, of course, we've reached something more beautiful, which is we're suddenly the voice and the behaviour of change. So then going on that, the model of that Peter Kahn is the next generations, are they're inheriting the positive change rather than what's happening at the moment is where we seem to be have a bit of bandwidth for negativity around change, right? I love that. I love that. When are you going to be open? Well, we were hoping to be open already, but something came up. It always does. Well, it's positive. Positive came up. We originally were going to do ground floor and first floor, and then the basement came up, which it meant it offered us an extra, I think, 3000 square feet. Perfect. It's a big space now. And it has a little bit of outdoor space. So in terms of where it is, in Great Portland streets, it's amazing. So we grow like living gardens and things inside rather than walls, but actually have garden spaces that you go into. Yeah, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to see it. I think probably we're open. I imagine we're going to open towards the end of the year. Yeah. Nice. And then moving on to Beth at Running. Oh, yeah. Let's do that. Because I know you're running from John of Greats to Land's End. I don't have a way on going to Land's End. Oh, sorry. I'm going to the job. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah. How did you get into how did you get into Beth at Running and why in Earth are you? I first connected to it through Nicholas Poe's method through understanding there's a specific posture. And that's right. Okay, that's the specific posture and we look at people in nature. Nicholas would still use running shoes, but almost like the old school Nikes or New Balance. Remember those? Yeah. They weren't minimal, but they were. Because they still had narrow toe box, but minimum in terms of the amount of rubber they weren't the conventional compromising running shoe of today. And so we soon got to understand that. Well, if we're looking at the natural posture of running, we've got to look at the natural feet of running. So then we bought like a rewilding feet processing to it. It's kind of about the around the time we got involved with Vivo Barefoot. Okay. And so and then with Vivo Barefoot, I then just started wearing Vivo's. It was just an obvious decision for me. And that was more of a lifestyle decision than anything else. Because for me, I always look at nature again and you understand your nature. They're not running all day, right? But we have to look at what's preserving their posture in the first place. And we know that they're not wearing compromising footwear. So do you know what I mean? And then taking that off and then going barefoot running. So it was more Vivo's that allow me to preserve my feet. So I have a series of exercises that I coach people with that help widen the feet and expose the feet again to their amazing ability. So there's like 26 bones, 33 joints, over 100 muscles, 10 in the ligaments and up to 200,000 receptors in your feet. That's the equivalent of what you have in your hands. Wow. And we lock them away. And so through that intelligent process, you can understand that's where I get the information from my environment to make those shapes to begin with. So there's that and then there's the... The tribes aren't sitting cultures. They ground lives and there's 100 different respositions that you can choose on the ground. Philip Beach's work is studying like this. He has a system he calls it erector size which is how you get up from the ground, right? Right, right. And so there's a series of ground living postures. And if you really get it, then you understand that, okay, the macro skill is standing. The macro skill is walking. The macro skill is running. The macro skill is jumping, balancing, climbing. They're all macro states. What are the micro elements of that for people living in nature? Okay, they have ground living practices that help nourish the posture of standing. What we do is we have a chair that compromises and deconditions our standing posture. Or we have standing desks. But the problem is, because our standing posture has been compromised and deconditioned by the sitting culture, we're not standing properly. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me, it was like that's where the barefoot running came in. So then it was a matter of, right, I had this amazing physicality. I was this amazing ability to run. I'm efficient. I'm injury free. Now what? You know? And I've kind of toyed with this thing that I wanted to do Land's Engine on a Grotes probably four years ago. Have you done any ultras before? No, but I've done some heavy runs. And I was in the military as well. And I can go out and just... If I just... I'm like Forrest Gump. If I decide to go running, I just go out 30 miles, 40 miles, whatever it is. It's not really a biggie. Other than just, like, I need to get my fluid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it kind of got to that stage where I think I've hit 40 and then now I've been... Now in that space until now I've done a lot of work. And in that time, I think now it's like, I'm ready to do something. And I think being able to run for Land's Engine on a Grotes, doing it barefoot, creates a story, right? And the first story is I was born the longest baby on record in Reading Hospital at that time. I'm not sure now. I was nine pounds, 11 ounces. I was like four weeks late. Obviously wasn't happy coming out into the world at that stage. And my feet were compromised because I basically... I'd adapted to the womb and my feet had curled up. So I had a deformity in my feet that was then plaster cast and they moulded my feet. And then I had to have a pair of boots with a metal butt. I mean the real life Forrest Gump, right? And they just surprised my feet open. So I had that going on probably the first year of life, right? So I think hidden away there somewhere was like some emotional trauma driven towards that. Probably what's guided me on the path where I am today, right? Yeah. And so there's that. So there's that. That's the story of it. And then I thought, you know, I was listening to Greta Thunberg and she at the EU Parliament and she said, the bigger the platform, the bigger the responsibility. So it's like, okay, what can I do with this stuff? And so let's create a platform for sustainability and environmental experts. So I'm running 30 miles a day for 30 consecutive days. And each day I'm interviewing a sustainability expert. Awesome. And I've got like Vivo coming on board. They're supplying on some of the interviews because it doesn't sometimes doesn't come inside where they are in the UK at that moment. They're going to have a, they're wagon it's called and it's basically a eco-style wagon. Nice. That opens up to become a stage and a platform for me to interview those people. They're also sponsoring me, which is incredible. Also they're a shoe brand and I'm running a bit of foot, but again, it's not about running in their shoes, it's about living in their shoes. Right. So it kind of aligns itself with that. That's what I really like. Yeah, yeah. And it's not pushed ramming anything down anyone's neck. It's just, this is, this is good for the human and it's good for the environment. Yeah. Which is what we're talking about there for we're early. I love it. And I, and I notice also you're going to be doing humiliate 30 minutes of deep squats. Yes, I already, I probably do, I probably do more on that. It was more like, you know, it's just, I'd recommend people go out and like Ido Porto's model. So he has this whole thing 30, 30, 30 squat challenge, do 30 minutes of squatting a day for 30 days. It's great. I love it. I developed like a squat tutorial and that's at the very end of it because I think what I've seen most people coming in and just attempting 30 minutes of squats per day is that they don't necessarily have the appropriate foot position, foot behavior. And let's call it foot behavior to begin with because they've been wearing compromised footwear, which means the foundation is poor, which means the ankle is poor, mobility is poor, knee stability is poor and the hip mobility is poor and so is the posture. So my whole tutorial is about rewilding feet, getting the appropriate ankle ranges, knee, hip, and then rewilding posture and then you go into the squat. Fine, right. But I will be, yeah, I'll be squatting. I mean, I have like a pre-run squat. To get your like hips. In run squats, I want in-flight squat, in run squats. So I pause every now and then I do a squat and then I get back off and then I run again. Right, right. And it's just a reset. So I've got posture reset. So things are a bit wobbly. It's like, okay, let's do a squat. It will help reset how the ankle, the knee and the hip behave. Really important because their locomotive systems have been running. And then it's much easier for me to then hold the posture above what should be the locomotive stage from below. And then I rest in a squat at the end. I always get back to reset. At the end of each day, you'll... Yeah, and you know, that's the ultimate thing for then opening up the calf and allowing things to just settle again. Yeah. And then I'll be working with breath. So I nasal breathe when I run, which enables me to be parasympathetic, right? You can be much more relaxed. And then it's aerobic rather than anaerobic. So for those that are listening, my nine-year-old daughter, as she put out there on Instagram the other day, was that noses are for breathing and mouths are for eating. Great. Okay. There you go. Like that. I love that. I love that. Are you going to run on concrete or... Everything. Everything. Yeah, so this is what comes in because most people go, yeah, we're not designed to run on concrete. Well, actually, I teach clients to run on concrete before I teach them to run on anything else. Concrete is a linear flat surface. It's hard. So if I asked you right now to jump up and down this on a hard surface, what would give you or the hard surface? Me. You, right? So you have to become, what, more compliant, soft? And that's what your tendon actions are for. So your tendons suddenly come into a role of being elastic. That's what they are. They offer elasticity to us in locomotions, especially in running, right? And then if I asked you to jump up and down on a rubberized surface, what would give you or the rubberized of the rubber, right? So that makes you more stiff, right? So the rubber gives you more stiff. If I jump up on a stiff surface, I become more rubberized, right? Simple. So if you run in a pair of running shoes that are really rubberized with like two inches of rubber beneath them, which they do, and an air bubble, because we need air. What it does, it basically sacrifices that internal system again. So what happens is the floor becomes hard to concrete because it is. The rubber of the shoe becomes compliant and then you become stiff above. So you've got these two stiff subjects and the rubberized bit between, which makes even more stiffness in the ankle and rigidity in the foot, unfortunately, which is where all the runner's knee injuries come in, like the ITB. So I think the American College of Sports Medicine have aligned it with 70% of runners are suffering from injury, right? So for me, that's an incredible stat because in amongst it all, we're a running species, right? As Dan Liebman's proved, right? We're a running species. Yeah, yeah. And so that would, you could almost suggest that 30% of it, 30% of us would be here today on that stat. I was, I was one of those 70%. There you go, man. Until I threw my shoes away. I haven't, that was six years ago and I haven't been injured running since. Well, I have to say, you're one of the lucky ones, right? Because we, my coaching, my, where, where it came from was I was through Pose method. We only ever saw people running shoes, right? And they'd come in and we'd teach them how to run with this specific posture. Then Born to Run came out. So around about the time Dan Liebman's Nature magazine, then we had Born to Run with Chris McDougal. So we went to his first book launch, right? So a cousin of mine healed his plantivacitis. Oh, right. Yeah, so we kind of went to that. And then what we were hit with was a whole new plague of injuries because shod heel striking runners took their shoes off and went running without any shoes but hadn't corrected the posture. And so it meant they were still landing on the ground but they were just loading the outside of their foot because the further forward your foot goes without a footwear, the more it supernates. It's like a primate reflex the foot will actually rotate. So when you wear rubberised foot it allows you to land on the heel because it dumbs down the forces and doesn't, you don't get the sensation of the transient impact through the sensory information of the foot to your brain to tell you it's not good to be landing there. So what you do is you then choose the outside of your foot. And so the foot then goes from the oversupernated foot into an overpronated foot. And so all we ever saw were Achilles problems and calf problems because the most common play is calf problems with barefoot runners. They go, oh, I tried it once but my calves and my Achilles blew up so I decided to go back to wearing running shoes. And you're like, yeah, but you didn't try barefoot running. You tried compromise running with no shoes on. True barefoot running would be to take the posture back. So that's where the two things are in line and two things come together. Are you right? Because I, yeah, at the time when I did it, which is around probably that time, I guess, there weren't so many people teaching you how to do it properly. Really. FIVO had some good stuff on their website. Yeah, FIVO. Yeah, that's certainly. Yeah. I was fit. I was going to be a lot of me on there. I was probably actually trained by you. Well, that my cousin Leo imagined. But yeah. And also, yeah, my calves did hurt. It took me a while. I just I just dart down my running, like the distance and the time. I just I just started slowly from, I wasn't. Yeah, but you transitioned that work. I transitioned. It took me a while to transition, like the best part of a year. Well, we used to have it differently, but I used to run running workshops and we'd be like, right, okay, we're in a weekend. You're done. And then it was just a matter of just going out and then just working with the new posture and the mileage. So you'd basically hop someone upon a treadmill, you record them and don't record them from the front or back. You only really get a true nature of it when you see them from the side. Because the sheer weight of your human head is like five kilos, right? So the further forward the head is through typing and swiping and out, poor posture, the further forward the foot has to land. So we get like the head forward, the hips shooting back and the foot landing forward. It's like a K shape. And so when you record that, it suddenly gives you this, before you were up there, you were subconsciously incompetent. You see the video, you're now consciously incompetent. And then we give you the drills and the homework to get you to the appropriate posture and the appropriate landing. You're now consciously competent. And then you keep going away with it and then you become subconsciously incompetent. Subconsciously competent. And then the idea is that we show you a video at the end of it and that uploads immediately into that subconscious competency model. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, brilliant. I love that. Are you finding that a lot of people have gone into that or is it still a little bit of a... Or in the barefoot, can you? Yeah. What? Like in two barefoot, yeah. It's had it set. I mean, they're calling it the second barefoot revolution. Aren't they? Because I went down to the... It's really changed. But again, it's not for me. It's not about the running. I just think, like, if we take... The biggest thing to take away is that, look, you have to look at your everyday habits within your habitat. So what's the habitat of the foot? It's the shoe, ultimately. Because we wear shoes, right? Yeah. Unless you're going to run lands and just don't cross barefoot. But let's say, for instance, you spend 24 hours in a day. If you leave the sleep studies in the laboratory, you need 8 hours sleep, right? So then you have 16 hours left. And if you spend 16 hours in a compromising pair of footwear, you know, all right, let's call it 15 because you might spend an hour in the gym. That hour in the gym in your barefoot technology isn't going to cut it. It has to be the lifestyle wear. And so that's what I'm liking. That's what I see shifting and changing. And with Vivo in particular, I'm an ambassador for them and we do a lot of work with the kids wear. And again, I wanted to get involved with the kids wear because that's they don't need rewilding. They don't need, they don't need to come to me for running technique because it's all innately wild and innately connected. And so if I don't mess with it, they should be empowered beings, right? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. And so the footwear for kids, I think it's probably that's where I see it. And again, that's where the full revolution. That's an evolution. Sorry, it's not a revolution. Revolution is a wheel that turns and we get back to another starting point and we keep the evolution is, okay, let's get them to a point where they just keep growing. Most kids footwear is bad, though. I've got my kids into Vivo's only because I was into it, but most people, you know, you go to school, they prescribe the footwear. Of course. And they start degrading. Yeah, well, I think Gala, because I went to, have you seen Shoe Spiracy yet? No. Might be worth putting in the show notes, but Shoe Spiracy in there because it's an amazing film for them. I think there's a Shoe Spiracy. Shoe Spiracy. I think there's like a four minute video there. So Gala had, who was, Gala had an asher of Vivo Barefoot decided to put this documentary together because it's basically looking at the shoe industry and then again, applying this natural filter to it and there's people like Chris McDougal talking on there. I think they've got Dan Liebman on there. Awesome. And it's, I think what they're showing is the shoe lasts as in the shoe loss of what they, the mold that you make a shoe round. They actually start off wider as a child and then over time, they make them more and more narrow, you know? Weird. Because of aesthetic. And it's like even Vivo, I think Vivo went, went down a path. They started off, I mean, they went really wide when I was wearing them originally and people were like, what have you worn them? They didn't look great, let's think, yeah. I need like a nutter. And I was like, oh, it's great, but I can't wear anything else. It's an integrity again. It just felt like, oh, I know too much to be able to go back now. Can't go back. And so with that, with their footwear, I think they, aesthetics again, it started to look like their shoes. Not huge difference, but they certainly were a bit more narrow. I think again, it was design aesthetics. Yeah, because the problem with the Vivo is, is I wore them quite early and they didn't look great. No. And so I wore them out and my mates were like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? And I was like, well, you know, I feel great, but you don't look great. So, and I think they obviously got that feedback because over time, they have, they do look better. Yeah. Whether it's, they've made it now more narrow or, I think it's the, I think it's the look, what they do is they're very clever in the way that the upper, they put a line on there, which appears then that it drifts in, but the cup, the sole, so they tell me is the same. But they're now releasing wider. So it's almost like, because the culture of the community that are in within Vivo, if you've been with them for a period of time and you do the footwork exercises, the feet will widen. I started off, I think with a 43, I'm now going up to, I'm approaching a 46 in footwear. Oh, wow. I used to work out. The problem in the city, I work in the city of London, is that genuinely, generally you have to wear smart shoes. Yeah. There's one or two I found that do like barefoot shoes, but they're narrow, they screw your feet up. But Vivo do, they do a Lisbon. I've, which I've, which I've, I've got. I've had a chat, I've, because I've had a chat with, I've had a chat with Galaad about it, and I'm fully on board it. A lot of my guys are like, yeah, but Tony, do you know what? He's just don't do it for me. And I, and I get it. One of them said, it'd be nice even just to have like a brogue design or something on the, it doesn't, it's just a design quality, isn't it? Rather than just having this black wide shoe. So I guess that will change. You know, a lot of my clients like, they're wearing Marcells now. So they're in Marcells, which like Italian cut. Oh, okay. They're almost zero. They're all, they're some of them. Yeah, some of them are zero drop. Yeah. Maybe have a little, tiny little heel on some of them. Right. But they're super wide in the toe box. I mean, they're way up there in terms of what you want to pay for them. But I think you can find them on, I mean, there's multiple sites. Yeah, I'll have a look. You have to have a look around. Have a proper look. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, even the city's got a little bit less smart now. But still, if you're going to a meeting. I still felt, I felt like I was going to the beach when I walked down here earlier. Because, you know, you're in a t-shirt. Exactly. You've got your sandals on. It's still, still. You're, you know, you're the outlier if you're around here. Yeah. I mean, I have some vivas on now at a bank. I probably wouldn't wear them. You know, I do have those lispens that. I wonder what is it? Do you think that's the personal thing? Or do you think it's how it's received? Well, it's interesting. Because when you, when you start in a game, you want to fit in. Right. Like you need to be like part of the group before you can get along. This is the alienation, social extreme. You want to fit, you need to like, yeah, but you need to fit in before you get along. But then suddenly, when you're, when you're in the game, you don't want to be like everyone else. You want to be the outlier, right? You want to be noticed. You want to be different. So I do have the confidence to rock up in these to a meeting. But it's a balance. Like you live in society. And, you know, if you're going into into an environment where you know they're all wearing a suit and a tie, I'm not going to rock up in shorts and flip-flops. It's a bit, it's a bit of a balance. Yeah, it is a balance. Of course it is. Yeah, yeah. That's what life is, right? Yeah. But hopefully Viva and all these other companies will start to like. Again, it's, you know, it's nice that there's more and more brands getting behind there because, again, if you break those hours up, let's say eight to 10 hours if you're in the city, then it's that that needs addressing. It's not worry about having the casual wear, right? Or the gym wear. That's the thing. It's, you know, during the day, it's like the main. It has to be that, that wear. Even some of the socks you've got now, though, they say tie. You know, it constricts your feet. Then you're in these shoes. There was someone that produced the document, a piece. I think it was an osteopath and he had, he was demonstrating basically the behavior of the human foot through aging. And so you start off with this, you know, soft, really compliant foot. And then it starts to get more and more rigid, I think, through puberty. And so if we're wearing socks, even socks haven't have the ability to pull the toes in. So the toes start to become more and more narrow. You know? Yeah. And when you buy some of the, you get the finger, um, it, I don't know what they're called now. Yeah, toe socks. Yeah. Like five fingers. Tabio, I'm wearing Tabio at the moment. They're quite nice and they've got like a, there's a little bit of grip underneath. Oh, okay. Yeah. They're quite nice. There's a few around. Yeah, yeah. They're great, man. It keeps the feet in shape as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get the experience of what the toes feel like within the shoe, separate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Really nice. Awesome. Yeah, man. Thanks for coming in. Are we done? How can people find you? Right. You can find me. Um, this is, this always feels like the sale of this part, isn't it? Right. I'm selling it. If you want to look at some good. Tonyriddle.com. There's one space. That's my website. Awesome. Or at the natural life stylist on Instagram. Perfect. I know you're going to have, when you do your run, you're going to have like videos of what you're doing. Yeah. So we've got people that want to come film it. I just did a doc, a little, I've just done a couple of films with We Move, We Move magazines. They shot like a one minute reel of running and then a four minute one of us, lifestyle stuff. And I've just done another little documentary of someone else. So I'm going to have people that will be joining me along the route. Great. I'll be doing Insta lives every day. Yeah. And then putting YouTube stuff out, stuff out with the interviews I'll be covering. Amazing. So we're worth checking out though. You've got some great people on board. Zach Bush is, I don't know if you've heard of Zach Bush. I don't know. Bush is doing amazing work. Rich Roller, I've went over and did a podcast with in LA. He's, looks like he's going to be in Europe. So if he's joining me. Amazing. Yeah. There's some, there's some. So you can have some people running with you. That are going to run with me. Yeah. And a happy pair are coming over from Ireland. So I've just called them today and said, look, you know, I hope you get any training. Something's expecting you to do 30 miles with me. And don't bring your trainers. Well, they're actually into it now. They've, they start, they've got that. I got them in V those. They started wearing V those. And then Zach Bush went over there. Zach Bush started to talk beyond just the sensory impact of the fee. He started to then discuss microbiome and how we're absorbing microbiome the whole time. That's what we failed to understand. That's why you need to get into nature more because you need a natural microbiome rather than what would be a city microbiome the whole time. Imagine you just went from one linear box to another linear box, your sensory deprived, but your microbiome deprived. So it's about getting out into natural spaces. So they're walking around a lot more barefoot now. And I think they might do a fair bit of it. Barefoot wearing. Oh, Ron got a strategy as well. Doctor in the house. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did a podcast with him last Monday. Nice. On Mondays of my podcast. I love it. And got him out barefoot running. So he's now already at that point where he said, you know, it feels better actually not wearing anything. And he was completely barefoot. He was on tarmac, concrete, everything that we've been talking about. Because to me, that's the beginner level. And he actually appreciated immediately that, okay, now we're in nature, nature's undulating roots, hard stones, rocks, chippings, that that would be more compromising for the foot. And that's the natural terrain. Yeah. You know, so you'd have to go through rewilding processes to go on the hard flat surface to learn your craft. And then you could take that into nature. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, man. Cool. Well, if you come, well, maybe I'll come join you. Yeah, come join me, man. Come join me in there. Yeah, we get the mics out again. It'd be great. Yeah, yeah. Do a little lapel mics or something. Yeah, man, we do that. Awesome. Thanks for coming in. Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure. Hey, folks. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.