 think that it can be a very valuable practice so long as you're aware of the differences between where you know what is superstition and what is science and if your goal is to improve yourself your mind and your body there is a lot of tools within yoga that can be useful but there is also quite a bit of nonsense that's you know wrapped in there and around it and you have to learn to be able to decipher between what is useful and what is not. Hey tribe of churnimen and women so today I have a very special podcast for you with Salmeh Thornton who's a very cool yoga instructor who's focusing on the scientific part and as she says the know-who stuff and I felt like she's the perfect person to talk about that subject because we're both like open books and we both don't we're both not afraid to talk about what we think is important or if we see bullshit we're not afraid to say it's bullshit so the conversation turned out to be really great and also we actually dive in not only to the subjects of yoga but also mental health which I think is an important aspect to discuss in today's world with you know the lockdown and everything and Salmeh was kind enough to be open about her own experience of depression of how she overcome it and so it's not just like us yoga experts tell you about how depression works but it's instead just an open conversation about the reality and personal experience of what that is which I think is is very special so yeah I hope you'll enjoy this conversation also there's something to note we do mention the name Matt a lot that's Matt Thornton whom I consider to be one of my mentors and friend and he is the husband of Salmeh Thornton so he's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt well-known also for bringing in critical thinking into martial arts he is the founder of the Straight Blast Gym International Brazilian jiu-jitsu martial arts organization which I am a part of and Salmeh as well so just so you know that we are referencing to him quite a few times video and the very last thing I'll say before you go ahead there is unfortunately my microphone was skipping a bit so I'm really sorry about that the next videos I started to record an additional microphone so I will solve this problem this one I did my best to fix it but sometimes you'll lose hearing me so sorry about that just feel free to skip the parts where I talk if it's too bad but Salmeh said a lot of great things so I'm sure that'll be beneficial already so if you're interested stay tuned and if you want to listen to the other version you're gonna find that link to the podcast version in the comments below so enjoy Matt has been trying to get me to break the mold for years but I think for some reason both due to the respect to my teachers and also I think a sort of fear that it wouldn't be well embraced by the yoga community of people interested in yoga he was always wanting me to try and approach it as the rubu free yoga and I was trying to sort of go around upsetting too many people by you know calling it the practical practice and trying to apply you know science to it and I don't teach any of the aspect of it and those parts of it that some people might be considered rubu if they have scientific backing for example for meditation or breathwork or so on I don't really consider it because it actually works you just have to sort of frame it differently but I really noticed a lot of people lately getting very excited about my classes because of the lack of the and so I think it's a good sort of time for that to kind of come out there I kind of started to notice I've been disconnected so much probably ever since I dropped my practice but I did notice that tendency of more people I think leaning towards the science of that like I did a while how I did like look up online instructor courses which I'm sure we'll talk about earlier but one close person of mine that went through one of the biggest like famous ones and it's just so bad on so many levels and a whole month packed of terrible crap and I was curious like is there some kind of scientific one and I did see like there's like one I see the minority but I was so happy to see that there is no instructor courses already popping up which I think shows people kind of maturing into it but I think it's still slow but I know what about you how do you think I think part of it is generational so I think that as kind of a new generation of people that have already sort of separated themselves from religion and really are excited about science I think as they're coming up they're kind of creating their own pathways and so a lot of the people that I've seen that have been doing you know slightly untraditional versions of yoga have been younger people so I think that has a big effect of it the generational sort of shift I think also as there's been a corruption popping up in some different sort of strains of yoga that has also sort of revealed that that hierarchy isn't necessarily some sort of ascension to enlightenment that you're not a better person the higher up you are in the hierarchy and yeah so I kind of I feel like it it's shifting that's not to say that the practice of the spiritual aspect of yoga isn't meaningful it's just that we can discuss it and talk about it and have evidence for it in a different way where it's not just about becoming enlightened like I think about it or in the fact of neuro pathways and sort of training what I call train tracks in your brain to deepen routes that are better for your brain and better for your mood better for your life overall right that makes absolutely I hope son shy about some of the subjects I'm exploring in the new channel but actually just recently I will be a while until I release that video but I talked to the camera about my journey of kind of looking at the whole subject of enlightenment so so it's interesting you're you're touching that subject I guess it's so also connected with yoga but stress much the whole idea like from what I invested in it is just a brain state which I read a book which looks at that for a scientific perspective that it's when the flow state is there it's just one certain part of the brain which which turns off and that's what you feel like you're unseparated from everything and I didn't experience to kind of realize that yes I am a part of a bigger whole but I think that's it and that some people put so much stress on that especially when they some people were like so hyped about the whole enlightenment thing and they felt like that's like the cure of everything and like as soon as you become enlightened you become perfect and as you said like often the top people at the heart would be concerned enlightened or they would claim to be enlightened and your eyes are wide enough open often that there's a lot of subtle bad stuff like they're they're abusive or or arrogant and in a subtle way but but you can kind of get it not everyone but I think that's pretty common and and and that shows that so much if he's enlightened and that was one of my thoughts and actually in my turn it was like if he's enlightened like why would I want to be enlightened he's a douchebag you know like there's nothing to it so so I kind of got I also mean more to what you said that there are parts that practice but it's not like a cure for anything so it's you take the good things but you don't expect to solve all your problems yes actually when Liam so Matt's younger son from his first marriage when he graduated high school he actually did this pretty awesome and I was kind of blown away especially for his age range and I think most of the parents that were there was like his graduation senior project type thing it was very funny to watch because what he was expressing went over the heads of so many people that were there and what he was trying to talk about was the flow state and he was trying to express how you know neurologically when we look at the brain what we refer to as a flow state is very similar to what the brain looks like when it's in sort of an enlightened state or has non-duality is very sort of relaxed and present and he was saying that reality in reality you don't need to do yoga or meditation to reach that state you can really be doing anything that you love that absorbs all of your attention that puts you into that state and doing more of those things can help reinforce that state in your brain and I I always kind of think of back to that because it was enlightening to see him as such a young person standing in front of a room full of grown-ups expressing a topic like this and then the response of questions that he got from adults were super comical because people immediately then again shifted to like enlightenment or religion or and they had just you know they couldn't imagine that he'd come to this conclusion through logical you know arguments there had to be some sort of like holy power inspiration to have revealed this to him in some way so I guess it's worth mentioning it's just a guess from me but that it's worth mentioning it's Portland I guess it happened in Portland rights and I imagine more people there are spiritual and mystical and whatnot so that's pretty great I really like that that you did that and yeah so but yeah so actually so how's like the conversation did happen actually before I even asked my first question but that means it's a good conversation one of the questions I first question is what brought you to the spiritual sorry was it like gradual or did you start from the scientific so I have always been what I call or what you'd refer to as a skeptic and it's kind of funny because up until I met Matt I sort of thought that was a bad trait because I would doubt like things that I was told and you know people would try and tell me something you know beautiful or inspiring or somehow enlightening and my I would immediately kind of find all the flaws in the argument and start questioning it and then you know it didn't make sense to me religion was a very sort of clear picture there where some people in my family they were very concerned and couldn't understand why I didn't believe in God and to me it was just like didn't matter I believed in nature I believe in the good of people like I believe in I wouldn't say a higher power but I think there is a lot more depth to the world and we don't need religion in order to experience that in order to have good values and morals so I think part of it is just in my nature and I came to yoga sort of by accident I wanted to be a dancer that was my dream like I from since I can remember I wanted to be a dancer and when I was 10 I lived in a commune in the UK and we lived in like this really big old mansion and there was a number of you know different families that were there and one of the guys there he actually used to be Sting's yoga teacher and so every Wednesday night at six o'clock he would teach a stanga yoga in the old library and I started going and I kind of quickly became the best student but part of that was just because I was 10 and so my body was you know sepal and flexible and I can do all sorts of stuff and everybody was like looking at me like wish I could do that but they were older and they were set in their ways and so I started when I was 10 due to stanga yoga and I did it there for a couple years and then we moved to Iceland when I was about 12 and I on and off went to classes there and I had a pretty nice teacher but I got bored I didn't understand why I was repeating the same poses over and over again so I'd go to the class I do all the poses I didn't understand the connection between the practice and that sort of expectation of becoming enlightened or becoming a better person or any of those things I didn't see any connection between them and like I said I just got bored of repeating the same poses over and over again and not really understanding why I was doing it or to be honest with you really how because when you are practicing in a class environment or you're in a continual flow or movement there isn't very much time to teach posture and alignment or how the body works or so on and when I was 20 I just moved here it was our fequisa that got me to I anger yoga we were in Mexico and she was I think just had just finished her teacher training or something it was like early in her I anger career and so she I went to that class and she told me to externally rotate my arms and downward dog and nobody ever said anything like that to me before and so I was like wow that made a really big difference like it felt very different and so I immediately when I came back to the US back to Portland signed up at Julie Lawrence yoga studio and so Julie Lawrence sits on the board of committee for I anger yoga and she's a great teacher and I have a lot of fondness for her but at the same time I'm kind of flaky and I don't I don't like being told how or what I can do especially if I see a lot of sort of flaws in that argument but I practiced there for a long time with a guy called Ed who I loved and he was kind of like a if you imagine Clint Eastwood teaching yoga that's what he was like and I liked it because he would push me and I like to push my boundaries and so and that's where I really started to learn the how of yoga and but I still would run into it in classrooms where people would start to talk about things like you know find your inner light and allow that to shine on your heart and become one with the universe and it would just frustrate me I'd be sitting there and I'd be frustrated because I'd be practicing my breathing I'd be doing you know all these different things to try and relax and let go and then somebody would say something that made no sense to me logically and then I was relaying they're like why why and so then as I I went through my teacher training there but then I sort of followed that up with anatomy so I went to a teacher training with a PT as well where I learned the anatomy and that's kind of where it took off for me was the understanding the structure of the human body like I was familiar with it in my own body how my own body moves but not everybody else has the same body as me and so you know learning the anatomy of the body how it works learning more about meditation about brain states I struggled a lot with anxiety and panic attacks when I was younger and so yoga breathing basically was a huge tool that alleviated that for me so I saw all of these like beautiful useful aspects but they're all sort of clouded by this make-believe sort of nonsense that just like it doesn't seem useful for me to use that kind of instruction for people because I think really it's just derailing them like it allows people to sort of go off the actual path into some sort of frilly little imaginative practice and I think that's where people go wrong as far as seeking enlightenment as soon as you stop practicing for the actual benefit of your body and brain and it's more for like a feel-good I want to be so-and-so person and so I'm going to represent myself this way I think that's where you know the shift off of the right righteous path kind of happens so there's a few different things you mentioned that I brought up was that what first weeks me as well is that yoga kind of almost inherent in the work the Westerners that whole mentality of actually a phrase I was familiar with when I was down the spiritual path for me like yoga and the spirituality was kind of one and that was like hot to me as a good thing like you never question you never doubt that's a teaching in India but the Westerners took it in and but also to shows how much nonsense can go as you mentioned the conversation the whole hierarchy that if you're higher up that's a fallacy that a lot of people think and have that if somebody is higher up the chain the terrible thing with yoga especially there's actually a very good book I don't know I write in my native tongue so I don't know the name is exactly the same like yoga the next and reality and again you kind of cutting out a little bit right so book by journalists I think it's called something along the lines of yoga missing and he went through the whole journey of looking at science which is not abundant or wasn't abundant at the day but still he found some articles and a lot of the teachings in the regular books regular yoga books were based on nothing like like one of the ones I keep remembering and that still frustrates me up to this day like when you do a triangle it's written in the book like one of the big books of yoga but that it's somehow it springs down your fat like what the heck like where does that come from like it sounds like a cool idea and I guess you're putting some pressure there and somebody came up with the idea oh that means it shrinks down your fat and it's like and it's written in the book and it goes from hands to hands from instructor to instructor that means it's true and the last thing I just want to put in here what the author actually brought up as a question because yoga is such a huge practice these days it's it's so much it's everywhere but that's up with people's help and in that book there were a lot of examples but despite the fact that it can mess up somebody's health there's no big organization which would check and see the instructor is doing a good job the instructor would just go to India to some old-school Indian guy his yoga and it's a bunch of bull crap but he would be teaching us as the truth and nobody would check him there's no which is responsible for checking the yoga it's almost like a medical thing it should be almost like a medical thing so I kind of went out there so I think like one thing to bear in mind is that there's different strains of yoga and as you're talking about the triangle if anything pops into mind the triangle actually used to be taught with both feet facing forward and it was a doctor that because the anger was friends with that kind of notice that and he was like that doesn't actually work because when the foot's facing forward the femur in the hip gets stuck and you wind up having to round over to get over but as soon as you turn the foot out now the pelvis can sort of tilt over and that's so funny to me because I remember thinking about it and I'm like wow that would have been horrible trying to do a triangle that way because they would have gone back for your hips and like you'd be all like oh and get into it but so as I was saying there's a lot of different types of yoga and we were talking a little bit about the angers and you seem to have some question about that the part that I like about the anger yoga is accessibility for anyone so because they use the props and because they do more static poses with longer holds the props allow people that maybe have inhibited range of motion or you know bad balance or all these different things to access the practice from where they can and taking that time to really teach people how the pose works in the body I think is essential so as far as teaching yoga I anger yoga is what I would use for my own practice I tend to practice in flow and the anger system my frustration with the anger system actually came down to that policing of the instructors and so they have a very rigorous sort of testing system but there's also a lot of inhibitions on what you can and can't do but you can't teach yoga therapeutics or you know basically you're not allowed to try and use your yoga to help somebody until you reach a certain level and you've been certified to do that and so if you were to do that before you're certified then you can sort of lose your certification lose your what's the word for it like granted like permission or something yes and having done more than one style of yoga I don't find them to be mutually exclusive and so when I hear people say look well this is the right way and that's the wrong way it's like well you know depends on the situation and they can actually work very well together so as far as somebody watching or paying attention to the instructors I think that very much depends on the style of yoga and that supervision can be you know similarly to like American capitalism versus socialism you know supervision is sometimes you know a good thing but because it tries to maintain a certain standard but it can also be sort of suffocating to any growth or inspiration or advances within that sort of within the practice basically and so but yeah and I will agree with you that a lot of like there's nothing that really says that I can't start my own teacher training and I have at times but it was just for my own you know for our own school and for students that wanted to go a little bit more into depth on it but there's lots of people I don't have you heard of straw layoga so straw layoga that's she's a young girl that lives in New York actually also lived in some sort of commune I think when she was younger but she basically came up with her own yoga style straw layoga and it really took off and her practice there or like her philosophy there was we all can sort of feel what's good or not good for our bodies and so telling people how to do things really rigidly can actually you know force them into hurting themselves more and then the way she puts up her classes she puts them up for the desired result so she like you know yoga for relaxation yoga for strength yoga for you know she has a few different like platforms I guess for them and but that was totally that's her own doing she kind of broke away from all the traditions as she put that up and I think I find that to be pretty admirable but now that's huge and she has her own teacher trainings and you know studios all over the world and so there's nothing that really says that we can't just make our own but the way that I look at the traditional yoga or and a way that I can have respect for the you know my senior teachers and the older versions of yoga versus today's you know ability to use science to discriminate is if you think about it the knowledge that they built up there at the time there wasn't science they didn't know what the inside of the human body look like they didn't know how the skeleton was or where the muscles were or any of these things so the structure of the practice comes up through hours and hours and hours and hours of doing yoga and observing the results and so that is something to be noted as admirable in a way because you think about 2,000 years ago when they didn't have science they still came pretty close on a lot of things you know there's a lot of woo-hoo and like nonsense in there as well but there's a lot of things that they did suss out just from doing the practice and being present in their own bodies but now we have science now we have the ability to sort of scrutinize and figure out you know what actually holds up under the you know lens of looking at it through the scientific sort of discovery and what it's time to just let go of and that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that you have to sort of break away the whole connection to me it's like you can you can see things in the light that they're they sort of evolved in if that makes sense I one of my mindsets that I keep repeating to myself is the phrase that the right path is the one which works and I like a lot of times people fail at that level because I mentioned to you through the conversation that a close person to me that went through kind of spread around the world yoga instructor courses like a month yoga alliance well if we're talking if we are naming names it's the so so it's all over Europe but I think it's all across the globe to you but there's just so many bad things there and part of it too one of the subjects wanted to make sure we touch as well as there were moments where somebody would be trying to do the post and they would have the part where the instructor comes and starts to push that person to kind of you know force the I think it's such a terrible bad thing it's such a bad practice as well like bodies individual we don't know what injuries that person had and it's it's just there's no one shoe fits all approach but that's kind of what they do but because they're so famous and so big whenever somebody gets that get the permission from them to teach that kind of gives that false confidence for the person that that means because it's it's so famous because it's well known that means it's good and they don't question whether it really works and even to a degree where somebody gets hurt or get an injury and still they're like oh well it's it's their problem you know this is not the system then but I think the other way around to working and going for that way I think that knowing of how you know this from your source of knowledge versus from some permission somebody gave you especially in such a tricky realm like yoga which is not an established universal practice which is supervised by good institution which would really back it up by science so I think it's yeah I'm 100% approach where you look at what works instead of oh let's unless younger system whatever gives me permission then it's good I think kind of people miss the point about that moment yeah and you know I like I said this is kind of unrelated but when I was in college I had a very strong affinity for architecture and it's just you know kind of how my brain works it's a I have a very sort of pattern seeking brain it's useful for to get to and yoga as well because of structures like I can sort of visualize underlying structures and that really my sort of understanding and architecture and math and lines and angles and stuff like that really transferred well into anatomy and even when I was like younger before I did architecture in college I loved drawing and what I would draw was an naked women and so that also gave me sort of a lot of I put a lot of attention on looking at the human body and how it works and and so for me that underlying structure of how the body works is something that I probably use more like like for me yoga it's a practice that I can use for meditation and I use it from my own body but it's more kind of I look at it as a set of poses and those poses aren't just within yoga like you'll see them in Pilates you'll see them in all sorts of other things like just lunges or PT work or you know it's it's that isn't that isn't like unique to yoga and unique yoga doesn't own those exclusive right yeah and so for me like understanding how the human body works that really enables me to also help students so when I first did my teacher training and I remember teaching my first ever yoga class and I remember being so surprised because I was teaching at SPG and most of the people that came to my class were you know fairly fit individuals and I remember being so confused and shocked at how they would have an inability to do something that to me came fairly easy and a good example of that is like being able to have your hands straight up like some people they they can't go much further than this or they're in their downward dog and there's just no way for them to straighten their back and I remember some dude that was in my class I had no idea who he was I don't think I've ever seen him again he stood up because I was you know trying to work around like helping somebody deal with their downward dog and he says if he bends his knees then he'll be able to straighten his back and I've never heard that before even going through teacher training and I remember I remember looking at it and realizing oh yeah that makes perfect sense and that was kind of like a trigger or push for me to like go deeper like it go beyond practicing yoga practicing these different poses you know within my own body and feeling it with in my own body in order to teach it I had to find a way that I could make it accessible comfortable worthwhile way for my students to do it and so understanding the structure the science of how our body and mind works that's what also then allows me to see where other people are getting not so much in the mental part but we're so in the body like what's holding them back what's tight why can't they do it and figuring out a way to sort of increase increase their available range of motion in a safe way you mentioned that you bump into some frustrations when you were learning yoga and I resonate with your hundred percent especially the later in my career I went where I was talking about but I wanted to ask you especially after you finished the instructor's course and you started going deeper and looking at the scientific road what were there some myths on the actually on both sides but primarily I was I was about to ask about the physical side where you were like holy crap are they really teaching this like people really believe that this is good did you bump into some of those yeah there's lots of them you know there's a lot of different things and I remember one of them that I really found to be interesting and I still hear people say it and like to be honest with you I don't want to claim to have ultimate knowledge on this one of them is for example about twisting and how when you twist it squeezes all of the blood flow out of your organs and then when you undo the twist it re like fresh blood I'm thinking that was like wouldn't that be kind of dangerous like organs are supposed to be emptied out of blood and so I my best friends from childhood she's actually a surgeon now so she's a doctor and I remember asking her about it me like doesn't make any sense to me and she's like well it doesn't make any sense because your body's sort of blood pumping system your blood pressure like it's a lot more advanced than that so you're not gonna be able to just shut off blood flow to your organs and squeeze it all out and then have it pop back up like your body knows that it needs to continue to sort of funnel oxygen into those organs anyway and then similar stuff like you were saying about it taking fat off of very specific parts of the body and it's like well actually your metabolism doesn't work that way you can't I mean there's hey you're not supposed to be in here and get rid of this monkey yes like once you learn like a few scientific facts about how the body and brain work then when somebody tells you something that's contra contradictory to that and immediately kind of sets off some red flags but yeah like I said before I look at some of that nonsense through the lens of they didn't really know any better at the time and nobody's questioned it up until now and one of the things that held me back from being more vocal about it was I didn't want to offend anybody for one but I didn't also didn't think that I had the authority to like this is a bunch of nonsense so but it's it's coming around as I see people you know wanting to learn how to take care of their bodies and that's what I am interested in teaching I want people to be comfortable and capable kind of sets me on this reflection that book relates to my journey through the martial art thing but also there was this moment that happened here when I was reading actually a yoga book and I guess it's pretty famous with the usually I don't like reading the first few pages of introducing how the book came about or whatever but then I read that one and the guy was telling his story that he would he wanted to learn back and then that's not like that long ago maybe 20 years max 30 which yoga is already all over for the place but he wanted to be like a yoga teacher told him if you if there's nothing out there and you really want to get to know that that means it's your mission to deliver that and I really like that that idea and you kind of got a similar situation to what you mentioned with my martial arts journey when even today I'm like but you know that's like that's not much there was a moment I was I had that Aikido thing especially when I started to step out of Aikido I was like who am I to question all of that but then kind of similar to what you said then when you get there's nobody really around you who's talking about that kind of reminds you like well I guess I have to do that like like even if somebody's not happy about maybe there's better people but they're not so I might as well do something about that too so yeah I think it's I don't know I just think that there's so much available knowledge now actually my so one of my my best friend that I told you about that's a surgeon when I was about well we were in college and I was having a lot of issues with social anxiety and so I would start like a school somewhere and I would make it through the first term and get really good grades and then usually on the second term I'd start to have a hard time just showing up wanting to be around all the people and so I went to college I think I went to like six different colleges and I tried like everything and I never actually graduated with one thing but doesn't mean that I didn't acquire any knowledge or any skills during that time and I remember that her mom told her she would always talk to her mom and her mom would give her advice and then she would come tell me what the advice was and she very much sort of took me under her wing when we were about 12 and sort of helped guide me through the reality of life where I had grown up with you know hippie parents where things were sometimes a little bit different than you know maybe they were for other people but her mom told her that everything counts so even if you're just getting small pieces of information from all over the place eventually that's going to add up to a bigger picture and so that's kind of I think what happened with me as far as my seeking you know certification and higher levels of teacher training I realized like there wasn't going to be that much more for me going up this one ladder like I felt like I'd already taken what was going to be super useful for me from that ladder but there's lots of other pieces of information that can support it and you know so I just think that oh my god the child he didn't beat the lock this time okay yeah so I feel like I am much better off and a much better teacher having actually stepped away from that sort of ladder climbing and instead sought out information that I felt I needed to know to understand how things work and why I should be doing them this way and you know that gives me so much more knowledge and understanding to pass on as well I feel like I went on a rampant and went away from the question though I don't know you're actually I think this is what I'm thinking about I think it's great that we can talk about that and like especially quick side story but like the new channel that I'm developing and still searching for the best ways to communicate and make it valuable but one of the insights I had is that we were starting to not necessarily starting we're lacking sometimes authenticity like sometimes we like to present the good side of things and good in our lives and it and so on and everybody has the doubts difficulties on the challenge but we'll speak about that and then it seems like everyone when there are moments where we can actually reflect on record and share our own processes that we never know and maybe there's some that in regards to that subject that I keep kept thinking about is no but I'm not very good with the name so a lot of times I'll hear something or learn something but I don't know from who or so on you might have just maybe heard about that idea but I really like this one and I started playing it initially to martial arts but I realized kind of question martial arts but I realized it's everywhere but they're social scientists they're way off but they they're super confident that you know that happens and the best example that I like to give terribly but they're full of confidence and even the judges tell them you're actually really bad and they're like no you don't understand I'm actually very good all these cases and they were fascinating me that and they started asking is that there and the answer they found it's kind of simple but in likening to that the less the person knows what makes the thing good or bad or how it works the more confident he will be because he doesn't know how to relate himself in the in the whole picture but there's the opposite in to which they call the value of despair is initially we don't know anything so we're at the top of our we don't know anything because we think we know so much but the more we know you know it starts to drop and we're like oh I don't know anything there's so much I don't know and then you get and that's the funny part and kind of I was on that left side with yoga where I didn't I only knew but I was taught by my instructors and I was I never was super confident but partner was like well yeah you know I'm good enough I can teach and then later when I learned more I was like oh my god I'm terrible and then but I would see I would see so many people who are even worse than I was searching for solutions they were completely oblivious but they're super confident and then you get and that's kind of the irony you get a lot who would be the right to teach but they are kind of holding on actually aspects of professions but then back because they know how much they don't know although they array better than the majority of the teachers and then you have the majority of the teachers who are terrible but they're super confident and they go on and they teach and they have followers and it's like yeah it's like there's a common thing that we use when we train our instructors that we go take them through the PEMD and PCP and all these different things and one of the things that we say to them is like fake it till you make it which means like you might feel super nervous and anxious and like you have no idea what it is that you're doing but you just fake it till you make it and that strategy for people often works like I will say you know I feel you on that sense where I know how much it is that I don't know and so I don't want to present myself as an authority on something because what if I'm wrong like I don't want to lead somebody else down the wrong path but I will say as far as the teaching part goes because I had so many issues with anxiety and being in a room with other people when I first started teaching and I would sort of apply that fake it till you make it it opens up a whole new sort of world for me where I became almost like these two different people so it was me that was kind of nervous and anxious and scared of everybody and everything and and then there was the teaching me who was like the super confident person that was capable of bossing everybody around and no big deal and it was funny for me to watch because at that time I couldn't like I couldn't combine them but over a longer period of time I've learned how to combine them and Matt used to tell me because I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and a little bit and I am emotional and I don't like I really don't want to engage in sort of small talk superficial conversations and I don't necessarily like to pretend like I'm something I'm not either and so Matt used to tell me that I had to sort of learn how to get better boundaries or I had to learn how to keep the vulnerable part of myself sort of more sheltered within me so that I wouldn't get hurt so much and I remember thinking about it and my response to him was I don't want to do that because if I do that then I'm not going to make authentic connections with other people that are like me that want to have authentic connections and so I came to the conclusion that I'd rather be hurt by a few assholes than you know limit myself and who I can reach and who I can talk to and I realize it sometimes like I sometimes it concerns me when I'm teaching because I wear my flaws sort of on my you know as a badge of honor where I'm happy to sort of express my own mistakes or where I fumble and what I don't know and I realize that to some people that might make it seem like I lack the authority to be teaching and that's okay that's their their perception of it but for me I would rather present myself this way because I want my students and so on to love the practice the way that I love the practice I want them to be sincere you know seeking sincere understanding and knowledge and I kind of despise the lack of humanity that is involved with constantly pretending to be something that you're not it's like I don't know that that to me just very much shows off like a closed closed mind but I remember I told Matt that I was like I don't want to do that because then I'm not gonna make those connections he said well then you're gonna be like Carl okay but and I think for one reason that's why me and Carl got along so well was that we were both you know flawed semi-broken individuals but we were open like we were open to the world around us and I think that's really important and I don't think you can be open to the world around you if you're not willing to let people see your weak spots perspectives to what you're saying and when I look at my journey five months or so I was invited in with this kind of a spiritual event and I didn't know that it's gonna be that spiritual that the person that invited me was was more rational so I expect more rationality I came in I realized oh my god this is what I into for a while and I'm just like difficulties but I was like I took it as you know what I have to be here this is like a chance if I can deal with it and kind of accept it as it is without being completely just uphold and so I went through the whole thing was I into this stuff and but the other problems like okay just embrace it stay here survive but part of me was a perspective and what made me a bit frustrated was I was looking at the instructor a lady but doesn't really matter she was the same applies to you guys and but she was talking in that yoga voice actually I remember that once you can listen to Buddhist podcast because of that you know Buddhist voice and and she was talking that voice which I kind of adopted for a while I dropped it soon enough thank goodness I was relating to that because it's you take it over from other yoga instructors who you know they move in slow motion and not everyone but there's definitely enough them this gentle voice and it's not that person and when I was applying some of that myself that wasn't really my thought like like I don't know there's a specific way priests talk and and apparently I was told recently that that's their talk but then again so there's that culture I guess but but it tries to present itself as and kind of sense but that yoga instructor but there's so many bad things that come from that and first of all having been that I know that I was still flawed back then as much as I am right now but but then people my students couldn't see it and they would perceive me as way better than them and I realized that's such a bad favor that I would be doing to my students because then they would expect unrealistic things from themselves because they would be thinking oh I should be more like our yoga instructor but that's not the point I don't want to make so eventually I dropped that act myself but I have a person who and actually a quick one note when I went through my own yoga journey as an instructor I did have my doubts as well I realized that I don't know because I thought about dropping yoga when I was still very much like either I'm very good and I teach and I'm very confident or if I'm not then I just don't do it but I was in people kept encouraging me because they liked my yoga and they kept coming back and sometimes I was like coming to my yoga I I don't think I'm that good but they chose me instead of like a bunch of other instructors in the city and I was like well I guess I guess it's okay I guess my yoga is not that bad if people are coming and I kind of continue I mentioned to you I saw some instructors who were terrible but they don't know I mean don't know what they don't know and that's why they're confident and I thought well because I'll better continue because I know that I don't I know that I don't know and I'm working on it so I'll rather have students coming to me and being with the officially fly versus going to some people who don't know that I thought that's kind of high game game a bit of confidence by thinking that I'll better be fly and accept it and and I'll be more valuable in that sense than somebody who's really bad but they don't even know it so I know it they just hide it yeah could be could be as well of course I think good part that makes that part a little dangerous is I mean there's all different types of people that become attracted to the practice but sometimes the people that come seek it out you know you'll find people that seek it out because of physical injuries but those that seek it out because of emotional struggles they're there looking for something that's gonna help them and the idea of enlightenment where you can do this practice and it's somehow going to like change you into this super content in a person and it's gonna make all of your anxieties and depression and whatever suffering is going on go away that was I think I mean that was partially something that I was looking for I was looking for relief from just like the mental loop that I was going through endlessly and the emotions that came along with it and so that's where actually see something that really disturbs me so you'll have people that will go into it and then they sort of claim that they are there like they're enlightened they've you know overcome all of their inner demons and then you have sincere people that are actually looking for relief trying to mimic that behavior and it's isn't what is gonna help them that being said that doesn't mean that there aren't tools that within the practice that would be useful for those people and when it comes to enlightenment like you said it's a brain we think of it as a brain state and nobody if they have a life is really ever in the same brain state all the time and if we think about a enlightenment being a continual state of being in that sort of flow state where you serene and happy and everything fine you know you obviously haven't had to pay rent or mortgage or try and feed your kids or try and get them to do their homework when they don't want to like there's so many things in life that are stressful that can you know cause people to suffer and there is valuable tools there but the way that we know that they're valuable is because they've been backed up by science like we know that the way that the neural pathways work in the brain that the more you travel that neural pathway the stronger it becomes and so you know and I say that as it relates to my own process there like after my mom died it was like I had gone through a good portion of my life sort of being the strong sturdy one being the one that was not gonna break like I'm gonna keep going I'm gonna get to a better place I'm gonna you know and so after she died and I moved here and was with Matt I remember on my 21st birthday it was like floodgates just broke and all of the emotions that I had been like stuffing down there and trying to keep compact and controlled so it wouldn't you know throw me off just came flooding out and I cried for days and then you know that was actually when Matt sort of introduced me to pot and even though I don't know if you want to put this out there or not but I have a lot of affection for Mary Jane just because it allowed me to shift brain states and I was pretty straight edge when we met and the reason for that was the fact that my parents were kind of hippies and so I was like no that doesn't really seem like the best way to go but it allowed me to go from a mental state of being in fight-or-flight where something would happen and all of a sudden I would just have this super emotional reaction and then he would have me smoke some pot and everything would calm down like the crazy electrical signals and the rapid thinking and rapid breathing would calm down and that would give me the opportunity to look at what just happened like what is going on because that wasn't a part of myself that I never really known before I had kept it also locked up and what I realized was you know so often when I had those sort of reactions of fight-or-flight and getting like wanting to either run away or just fight like they're very primal reactions and they they are very similar to anger like it makes you feel angry and act angry and oftentimes I try and figure out what made me so angry and the irony of it was that usually it wasn't anger what happened was something scared me like something made me feel vulnerable or unsafe and that's when that reaction came in and so that was kind of the part that allowed me to start looking at the root of things that were you know troublesome that had hurt me in the past and allowed me to start changing those neural pathways and Mary Jane was very helpful but also the yoga breathing or so learning to slow down the exhale to slow down the heart rate calm the nervous system and the meditative aspect of sort of staying with that because you want to break that sort of brain body loop reaction because they feed into each other and you know as I was doing that I also started reading a lot of stuff like Sam Harris on free will or waking up and became really interested in the sort of chemical reactions and how the brain works and gone on this long rampant I don't really remember where I started but there's lots of people that would be like me in that aspect you know when they come into the practice they're looking for relief from actual suffering and so telling them that they're gonna become enlightened if they follow these here steps and they'll become enlightened and it's all gonna be gone away it's very sort of it's diluting as opposed to giving them the actual logical scientific reason for why they should do this and how it's gonna help them and yes it's a practice of you know discipline and patience because you don't change ingrained habits overnight like you have to actually train your brain to react differently when that stimulus hits and so I think you know seeing people that feel like they're so you know holier than now and that they're enlightened it literally gives me like orcs I feel I find it to be disgusting and the reason why is because in those cases for those people it's about their own like pedestal it isn't about helping the person in front of them that's suffering yeah very much so and I did kind of again what you're describing I did go to certain I became an a kid instructor when I was living in a spiritual school and it was a bit contemporary there wasn't like completely that traditional spiritual thing but but the dark side of spirituality definitely instructor and since I idolized him I took on a bunch of his characteristics or ways of expressing yourself I thought that's the way to go because it seems to be working for him but if I replicate most of it then it will work for me as well what was very interesting for me to learn and then she down the road and I know no meditation school after about a year or two that were in that community where the same problems started to happen up here in my school which any kind of spoke about recognize I see the same problems are there and there it's different cultures different people I see the same problems that I slowly the paper I started to realize that were those problems were created in that school a lot because of the leadership how that person was I was trying to copy him to a degree in body whatever he was doing I brought in the same problem so it was a pattern and part of that pattern was that I was the sensei gurus in the Japanese way and I was I was presenting because that's what my kid instructor did he would much never speak about his mistakes or I started to realize that slowly and one of the first things I started doing I realized I don't want and I started talking about my problems issues because beforehand I thought it's a bad practice if I will talk about my problem that will make me a bad leader and so on and initially kind of hurt my community because my students they were as funny as it is to remember now because they still on me as that guy and suddenly to hear about my problems and they're like oh my god he's a human being what the hell he he liked us and the thing is I never a lot about that is that true or not they never specifically said that I could seal the seal that vibe that they felt betrayed but I never lied about them about anything I never told them I don't have any problems but but then the good side of it was then so I lost a lot of my students which is painful but and you know they went through their pain process with themselves but then I started getting new students which saw me that way from day one and years later actually realized that was so much more powerful me as a shit he has his problems would mix it but also I was owning parts of my life you know I was demonstrating higher than usual discipline or motivation or you know I was able to be their leader they became the community but but it was also the whole vibe and the whole culture in between us was much more about being honest and recognized I was well about anyone and I feel that was so much healthier that was so much more empowering than that first that first stage where I was the ideal it never did it that way I never felt they were beneath me but that kind of created that sense in them and and I think that was disembarking that was not healthy for them yeah there is a the flip side to that fake it till you make it saying is another one that we got when we went to our business group things which was familiarity breeds contempt and so the idea being that you shouldn't really make friends with your students because then as they realize that you know you're a human being and you're not really way better than them in any sort of way they're no longer going to respect your authority or think that they need your information or you know and so it's actually kind of funny because my one of my best friend Stephanie she was one of my first ever students as Eagler Eddie's wife and I waited such a long time to allow myself to become friends with her because I was afraid of you know losing one of my best students like she would work really hard and I admired it I could see how hard she was working and she was consistent but more than anything she's sincere like she's very sincere and I like that about her but I held back for a long time because of that and that's not to say that there isn't a value in keeping some sort of separation because I've also had scenarios where sometimes students start to sort of encroach upon your space if they get too comfortable around you but that was one of those things where it's something that was told to people but I don't I don't think like it's not true like it's it's like Dr. Seuss would say those that mind don't matter and those that matter don't mind so it's like if that is going to be an issue for someone that's not probably a person that I'm gonna have much to offer to or that I really want to spend a lot of time with and on a similar issue I realize you know I guess we're married into fame because Matt is well known and has all these followers and when you look at us through like the lens of social media I've so often gotten feedback from people you know that think that we're perfect and we have this perfect life and everything's just dances on roses and so on and which is obviously not true like everybody has their own issues that are going on and like I for one come from a family that has a lot of issues with both addiction as well as mood disorders and so I wanted to live my life as cleanly as possible and I strive for stability like that's that is my goal is to have calm and stability and I decided that I wanted to be open about this and the reason why was because mostly I didn't want to pretend to be somebody that I'm not but also because there's so much stigma around those things that people are always embarrassed and like they try to keep those parts of themselves hidden but the reality of it is to me there's a lot more respect that goes into watching somebody that struggles and manages to overcome those issues as opposed to somebody that just pretends like there is none and I noticed really quickly after I started to be a little bit more open about those things people started sending me messages of you know gratitude for putting that stuff out there because they too had these issues and they you know didn't have anybody to talk to it about or you know and they feel alone and they feel flawed and they feel you know incapable and you know feeling like you have no faith in yourself is you know not a very it's not a very good way to go about it and so and especially as it relates to depression and like I took my mom died from depression she committed suicide and I came pretty close once myself and that was a good scare and enough to make me like change my direction completely and then you know as many SPG people know Carl and I spoke to Carl on the phone multiple times before you know he died and like he would say things like he wanted to he wanted to die but he didn't want to you didn't want to do that to me after my mom but like I realized that that wasn't it wasn't about me but it was about him trying to find reasons for why he needed to keep fighting and I don't know how many times I told him that he needed to go find help and get medication and there's so much stigma around the medication because and especially in these days where you know they talk about the millennials all being like everybody's on antidepressants or anti-anxiety or this and that and I'm sure there are some people out there that you know could change parts of their life in order to find more stability and joy but there is also lots of people that no matter how hard they try you know it's it's just not there and I say that having resisted using medication because I watched my mom do it go on and off of them and mix it with all sorts of stuff and it didn't really seem to work for her and so I really wanted to do it on my own like I wanted to willpower through those struggles and you know it wasn't until Annika was like one where I was waking up every morning and I just wanted to die I didn't want to be there I didn't want to wake up I didn't want to be in life that I finally went and got help and she put me on medication and I still have the same counselor and that it was very sort of strange because if you I think of it like I'm looking forward and everything is just dark and miserable and then it's like as the medication starts to work the darkness sort of just gets pulled away and the light sort of reveals itself to you and I've been on the medication and then after about you know certain amount of time I'd feel like I was stable again and I wanted to you know go back to trying to do it on my own and so I've slowly weaned myself off of the medication and I'd be fine for a while until for some reason like I would start to go down slowly and when it first starts to go down like you don't even notice it don't like it it's like I'd never notice the going downhill until it gets to the point where I'm waking up in the morning and I don't I don't want to be alive and so I've gone on and off of medication about I want to say three or four times and I've always done it in a smart way like I've never stopped just randomly taking my medication but at a certain point I had to come to terms with the fact that this wasn't about willpower it wasn't a character flaw in me that I couldn't do it by myself because that's what it you know that's what it feels like when you have beautiful children and a nice house and a husband that loves you like you have everything why do you feel so miserable and then for one you realize how fortunate you are and then you're embarrassed by how like ungrateful you feel in those moments and at a certain point I had to come to the you know I came to the conclusion that it's better if I just stay on the medicine because that allows me to be the person that I want to be for my kids because I don't want them you know constantly being sort of nervous or anxious about how their mom is going to wake up that day I want them to have stability and I try to be the example that I want them to follow anyway the reason why I'm going on about this is because Carl wouldn't get medication there is a few things that I think come into play there one of them is he didn't he couldn't stand pretentious people and so for him to go to a doctor and I don't know exactly how the system is over in the UK but I got the feeling like he felt like they were condescending towards him like he didn't feel like he was there with somebody that would listen to him and really wanted to help him and he didn't want to get medication he tried a few different ones I think but after his death I became so profoundly angry at this sort of judgment and I wrote this big piece but then I didn't want to put it out there because of his wife Ella I didn't want to I don't want to sort of infringe upon her grief and space and memory of him but it became like this just grudge that I held towards the world towards people making or deciding that they somehow know how other people should or shouldn't go about their life and I remember being that person myself as well when I was younger when I you know when you go through like your young adult life and you see everything pretty black and white like this is the right way and this is the bad way and there's no gray zone in between so I remember looking at other people and especially like my mom and thinking you just need to pick yourself up by bootstraps and keep going you know fight harder and but now when I look at it and I look at the taboo that you know is built up around those types of struggles for one the person that's there in the middle of it they know about their flaws they're very aware of their flaws and they're most of the time either self-medicating to try and escape that state and or they feel horrible about themselves for not being able to be better people and then you have the society around them sort of you know expressing the fact that if you seek out the help and you take medication or so and then that means that you're throwing your towel in the ring that you've admitted defeat and that is something that I just I feel very strongly about changing that perception and so that's part of why I also decided to be very open about you know my own struggles because I know that there's other people out there like that and I know that they feel that way like they have to hide it and so that's one of the things I think that really made me want to shatter the image of the perfect couple that people had of us because like everybody were all human like even the queen of England is human yeah well yeah I think on one level already that applies to what we spoke about before like yoga instructors or spiritual part of it let's say in that subject for us lucky to be able to see that but also to have been in that well how long enough to see that it's bull crap because initially I guess you know we all like you mentioned usually I think suffering and are in deep trouble that's those are the people who are leaning to spirituality and they're looking they want that show them oh look he looks he's perfect or they think that he's perfect and that gives them hope that there is that perfection but it's all fake and then people develop expectations especially like at the moment depression I think it's great to talk about that and obviously I'm right no means qualified to talk about that but there is one thing which I personally tend to lean on and to believe in it's something similar to what you said that there is the I guess it's just a makeup thing where I live the middle how do you call them English your Eastern European countries yeah Eastern Europe I think we're a lot about that much or guys are the power and it's changing slowly but all that older stuff is still around and one of them is that you know depression is for weak people and then people who have never been in it it's easy to speak about that and to as you say to judge oh I would be in depression I would do this and that I do you can never know what that is and it's that's already one reason why I think it's great we're talking about that and you're open to that that means that all that also leads to the whole subject of showing yourself with your flaws and with your benefits obviously I'm not suggesting to anyone you know for a pity party and and just go on Facebook and just complain about your life that's that's not a solution either that's too much but but to be able to recognize and be open about both of your sides I think it's so crucial the society these days so much information and we lean towards showing only the good side of our life and then we start to develop that perception that oh as we spoke before today everybody's perfect everyone is having a great time and I'm suffering which is so far from reality when when you're honest with other individuals you learn that as you said like even the best people you know have their troubles and so healthy to realize that and to have that knowledge and and the thing that that helps us embrace ourselves more and embrace the the dark and the light side of our lives and helps us go through it way more than some ideal image yeah and I think like the way that if you relate that into yoga and enlightenment and so on in one aspect you're sort of presenting the ideal like if you practice eventually you're going to become enlightened and this is all going to go away and that of course is it can be appealing to people but it doesn't tell you necessarily how I mean it does you could look at the yoga sutras and you know go through those steps and those are all you know they're valuable the yamas and the niyamas as just general good behavior traits like don't lie and don't steal and practice discipline and all these different things so those are all good but I feel like there there is tools available to help people deal with it doesn't mean it's going to fix the problem like because the problem is dynamic and it's big and like you said people don't realize how bad it is because people look at it as you know people being sort of that they're being lazy like they're not working hard enough they're not trying hard enough and I'm sure that there is people out there that are just taking the pills to mask the symptoms and they're not doing the work associated with sort of alleviating those issues which is very similar to somebody that's saying all the enlightened words like they've read them and then they're re spouting them but that doesn't mean that they've necessarily gone through the steps required to have that to really have a true authentic experience that way and so I find that to be annoying because I know that there's real tools within the practice like I said about the breathing that's been immensely helpful for me but it's not enough like I can't just count on that and so I feel like yeah the enlightenment or like the superstitious parts of yoga they get in the way of the actual useful practice that can have impacts on your life and how you feel and how you feel the stress and all sorts of stuff so with the whole mental health subject it's especially because of COVID for me it's like it's easy to be good when everything is good and yeah sometimes I have almost a difficult time to relate with people when that that information idea started people saying that when we will become isolated that some people have real big challenges with it especially with the mental health level because I I'm having a blast you know I enjoyed being walked up away and then I read my books and everything but I do recognize that it is for a lot of people it's not a challenge for me and so in regards to what what do you think about maintaining a healthy mindset looking after your mental health there's a number of things I mean I think I so I try to be pretty strict with myself you know without suffocating myself but like I try to maintain a regular sleep schedule that helps me because otherwise everything kind of gets wacky and I practice yoga I'm very mindful of my breathing I'm kind of always you know paying attention to my breathing and I turn my my attention inward that way and sort of scan my body and soul for lack of a better word but the biggest part is probably work and there's an old saying that goes something like before enlightenment chop wouldn't carry water post-enlightenment chop wouldn't carry water and that's something that's always sort of stuck with me it's like yes you're gonna have I've had lots of experiences of non-duality I've had experiences of enlightenment but they're fleeting they don't last endlessly and I find that if I'm like physically or mentally lazy all of my issues get worse like I start to dwell on the suffering and think about the suffering and then that sort of feeds back into like the brain-body connection and so I tend to you know just keep myself busy that's basically what I do so I like to have also the projects going on and you know my three kids homeschool A&M keeps me busy I have a bunch of fish which is a hobby that takes up a lot of time and I didn't really realize before I started my election garden but I've also you know there's been people that pop up in my mind because I realized that you know they might not have a family that they're isolated with like they might not have that and so being sort of isolated at home by themselves like maybe they live in a tiny apartment or who knows what and those people concern me like that and that's where I find myself trying to reach out to make sure that they're okay and let them know that you know you might be trapped inside of a little box right now but the world is still out there and there's still people that care about you but and I know not everybody likes this answer because not everybody likes to work the way that I do but find something to do you just need to have something to do and that goes back to what I was saying about Liam's senior project like do more of what you love so what makes you happy what makes you feel content and do it lots of it and that will I think that will help get people through the same time what about now is it better yes okay maybe it's my microphone anyway so when I was in Portland I was going for my divorce or separation initial stages and obviously wasn't easy and what I realized is first I was kind of living in isolation I think back because I was training so much especially in the mornings and then I would get back wasted I would have no around and sorry I spent most of my time at the house but also I was down moon and no family around friends around I wasn't complaining about that part but that was those were just the circumstances and you said I think what I discovered what worked best for me was also just to really be very specific about what I need to do and just kind of grind it out just to do those things like one by one figure out exactly what you need to do and just and it was like as simple as okay now I go make breakfast now I go to the room that we watched the TV show and I recognize that that kind of helped go through that helped me keep my mind sane and focused on things which were constructive versus me being in that space of thinking about the whole drama and they write that kind of just eventually helped me go through that period so so now that you said it I recognize the power of it at least in my experience and as I mentioned I'm not necessarily struggling with the quarantine now myself but I think actually probably that the fact that I'm very clear idea of what I want to do each day I make a list of to do things like the necessary things and then what else I want to do keep time I think that definitely interesting so much about me just the guest but I think yeah I think you're right yeah actually I I remember when I first made friends with Leah you know Leah Taylor black belt she's in Montana yes yeah so we first made friends a long time ago and that was actually when I was you know in one of my lower states like shortly before I first tried medication and she'd also gone through a bit of a heartache and she was so we would hang out but we'd hang out in these like quiet hangouts where we'd be in you know go do something together but we wouldn't necessarily be talking a lot or doing very much it was more like we were just company for each other but I remember she told me at that time because we talked about those things that what kept her going was routines but she just kept a routine and did the same thing over and over and over and over again until you know that heartache was in the past it was way back there and you know time always keeps passing like time doesn't stop and you know realizing that each moment is fleeting which means that your feelings are also bleeding and so and that's one thing that you know I always I wish I could go back for example and tell my mom and that's something that I tried to like convince Carla as well is that right now in this moment you might feel a certain way and the circumstances are perhaps not ideal but it isn't always going to be that way like things always change if there's one thing that's for certain it's things always change time passes and so if people can learn to sort of hold out through those hard times to get to the other side of it where you know there's something else that comes up and inspires joy and inspires happiness and and I think like like I said I think trying to emulate what works so being open about for example your flaws but also being open about all of the work that you put into overcoming those flaws because it doesn't just kind of happen on its own like you have to actually question yourself you have to question the reasons you come up with for why things are so and so or why it should be so and so because and there's a famous saying I forget I'm terrible with names who said it but it's like I forget how it goes when it's something like don't fool yourself and remember you are the easiest person to fool my friend actually has a tattooed on her back but we don't realize how incredibly easy it is for us to think that we know something that we don't really know and to convince ourselves of you know reasons or circumstances or excuses for different types of behavior based off of the storylines that we tell ourselves in our head and the reality is is that as like pattern seeking animals when we have an effect we want to find what the cause was there's always like okay this is this way and this must be the reason but we're really good at filling in the blanks so people are really good at coming up with stories to explain why something is that way and a good example of it you know for example when I was first dealing with that sort of PTSD symptoms and so on I would often come up with stories for why I was so angry and it wasn't until afterwards where I had sort of really been able to relax and reflect that I realized that I wasn't angry and so the story that was I was telling myself about why I had a good reason to be so angry was just like this lie that I was telling myself to justify my emotions when the reality of it was that it was something that happened prior or and oftentimes they were like tiny little things like you know Matt not answering me in a specific way or something or walking away too quickly or a lot of times I'd get anxiety if he was leaving just because I was afraid of being left behind somehow but so realizing that you what you think might be true isn't necessarily true and that you need to question your own thought process and question the things that you think are true that's where you're gonna find the actual answers but if you are not willing to question yourself you're not willing to be wrong you're never really gonna you know get any deeper yeah there's a lot it was kind of universal about just personal development and human growth but the first step is to know that you do not know it's to recognize that you don't know stuff like you don't know everything and even what you think you know might be wrong and that's like the very first step that before you make that step you're screwed like you know until you recognize that part you can't move on anywhere you're just kind of building up superficial our first step you know that you do not know the next one is you try to figure out what you don't know try to understand you know then I think when you there too it's like an endless journey it's never anything during that I do see people questioning and actually when I think back to instructors he as much as a gathering personal journey I think that happened it's initially I was questioning and breaking rules and he discovered some really awesome stuff which were the things I really enjoyed but I think with time you know he became the guy who started worshipping him and he got comfortable there and he started slowing down on the questioning process and that part was still good but then a lot of people was difficult to write it's like kind of similar to what you described and then you start to think like oh that means the whole thing is good it's a lot of crap at the same time and then you get a bit of good and you get a lot of bad you have to be always well at least I'm talking you say the last sentence one more time yeah yeah so I said I think that's where I agree with you that we have it's a never-ending process like it's not like a thing that I do have to do it shouldn't be a paranoia like we shouldn't be always just without reaching a certain level of paranoia you're you always have to keep questioning back to that when I was younger I used to think that skepticism was a bad thing yeah and part of it was because you know people would tell me things and then I wouldn't really be able to give them the sort of response that they wanted because I didn't necessarily buy whatever they were saying it wasn't until I met Matt and when we met because he was you know not Thornton and he was kind of you know he was there to teach and everybody around me idolized him and so my I spent our first evening our first conversation basically trying to figure out what was wrong with him I was like must have like girlfriends in every town I'm sure you're some sort of player and this and that's something right yeah and so you know that first conversation was me mostly just being very skeptical of his intentions towards me and one of the reasons why was because I had never really met anyone that I could connect with that way where I could speak to them and when they spoke back everything they said made sense to me or that they understood what I was trying to say but at that moment I remember I apologized to him for being so skeptical and he was like that's not a bad trait and I remember being kind of like huh I thought it was bad because it was like I was being a bad person doubting everything all the time but now I realized sort of you know looking back how much more I have managed to learn being skeptical of things and really wanting to understand how and why things work as opposed to just taking things at face value and to some degree there I think there's a level of and I don't mean this in any sort of derogatory way but there is a level of simplicity that goes into that where people tend to take things at face value I think it's probably easier than tearing everything apart so that you can put it back together yourself and so I think there is sort of a level of comfort that comes with that just being told what to do and so because of that I also think that it's very sort of important to reveal the aspects of the practice for yoga but of all sorts of things all sorts of hierarchies and sort of social structures where you shouldn't just take things at face value because people are very very willing to spout all sorts of nonsense that they have no idea whether it's true or not as if it was true and so if you take that at face value you now have earned untrue knowledge that you think is true and so it goes on and on and like I remember in teacher training for yoga as well I would find myself so often frustrated at the questions that people would ask because so often people ask questions based off of like kind of they want to show what they know as opposed to really looking for an answer and so they're sort of looking for reinforcement for their own woo-woo and I remember that driving me crazy for one because I couldn't like stand the questions but then oftentimes I also couldn't stand the answers that they got back because it was like this you know self-perpetuating cycle of this mutual delusion that people are in so Actually a lot of times when I was a yoga instructor I think eventually I started to just used to like initially like there's I would in the past I would feel like that that was almost partly like a challenge like a test as well as you said like those people were asking that question to kind of build themselves up wasn't really an honest question they weren't so much interested in the answer but I also felt like because there were eyes on me from other people I felt I still need to give a smart answer to show to prove myself but later on I started to to perceive what's really happening and why are you asking this question again and sometimes you know they would get caught off guard and funny enough there were some people who would ask him a question they were that kind of question I think he would ask was there a question there oh my god and they would suddenly realize that they didn't really ask anything it was just like a statement said in the question mark way it's funny when people get caught but yeah but there's a yeah no worries I'm enjoying this there's obviously a lot of online stuff happening which is a challenge because Jiu Jitsu so hands-on nobody is more favorable to thrive isn't as much usually hands-on but what do you think about the whole approach of people going online search out curriculums or online teachers it's it's I suppose there's good and bad stuff there you were talking about injuries earlier before we started this conversation and so when it comes to yoga and online resources there is so much that you can look at and there is so many people that are trying to make a name for themselves sort of within that field and you'll see a lot of it on you know Instagram or YouTube and so on where you'll have people that are good practitioners they have like they have good attributes for yoga and I've been trying so they can do very challenging poses and so those are everywhere and it's easy to come across the people and they will give you sort of like these sequences do this this this and this and then they give you some you know beautiful performance and everybody's like I want to be able to do that I want to be like that person but that's not necessarily anything you're gonna learn you can physically challenge yourself that way you can try and imitate those things but you can also hurt yourself from pushing too hard for something that your body is not ready to do that being said there is also a lot of very good instructors out there one of my very favorite teachers her name is Kerry O'Werco and her and one of the reasons why I like her is because she was a dancer before she became a yoga instructor but also she kind of likes to break the mold and so she her sort of slogan is permission to play meaning we don't have to take it so seriously all the time and I think part of that is from her sort of ascent up the Iyengar ladder she's high you know high level Iyengar teacher so she sort of gets away with saying things that would be very frowned upon anybody else saying because they'd be sort of talking out of line but I would definitely recommend looking her up and then Matt's been trying to convince me to do stuff online for years and I just never felt I've never been super comfortable necessarily this way in front of the camera and there's also just so much material out there and I'm not I'm very strong in my body and I'm flexible and capable I'm like I have a healthy machine that is gonna has taken me many fun places in life but there are lots of stuff that I can't do like physically just don't really know how like I've been working on my handstand for years and I still can't really do a handstand in the middle of the room but so I think that if people are looking for a practice that they need to find a teacher that's there to teach and not to show off so to like if you are looking for teacher that's explaining why and how you're doing things not just telling you what to do because that's where later on the freedom is gonna come from your freedom for your own practice for your own exploration it's like it's the understanding the knowledge of how and why we're doing it because then that becomes like a foundation of understanding and that you can like build on to until you have a much higher platform of understanding of how your body works and how you want it to work and how to get there and you were talking about people getting hurt and that's actually been coming up quite a bit I think within yoga people recently where that's sort of online sort of show off what's the word the Instagram influencers yeah influencers because there's so many of them out there and so the level of competition is quite high and so there's more and more people that are pushing their bodies past what they're anatomically evolved to be able to do and so that's just a you know it's a recipe for disaster that's a recipe for having to have back surgery one day because you herniated your discs or you know your hips break from just endless stress injury from trying to force them into a position that like your bones don't want to go into so I've seen stuff like lots of stuff like that I think I read that same book as you with science of yoga and one of them was there's like somebody had sat in the warrior pose or heroes pose for I forget how many hours it was but they completely cut off all blood flow to their legs and I remember reading that me like why like why would you sit for hours and hours and hours until there's no blood flow in your legs like you really think that you're gonna seek enlightenment by like do like it made no sense to me and so there's so many there's just so many silly things like that that really you know you can look at it from the lens of an athlete you can look at it through the lens of some sort of spiritual guru or you can look at it through the lens of science which is kind of what I choose to do and I think for that people have to understand that they shouldn't aspire to be something that they're not they should just be who they are and every day work on improving themselves a little bit and that's gonna happen slowly like you have to actually consistently put the work in to make the changes that you want to see and trying to push it like forcing it is not going to help you get there you have to you have to be patient you have to get to know your body you have to be kind to yourself in a way that reminds me that I was somehow I'm stuck with that word frustration but I guess when I think about yoga that was frustrating about one thing when I was learning who were co-teaching and rotating and some of them were flexible I guess they talented and they would say and I was like I was actually the there was a group of people women men and I was only like 19 20 but I was I abused my body flexible at all lots of injuries which yoga but there was there was me and there was another school that he was coming down to yoga but I was not flexible at all but then the talented or hyper flexible yoga instructors they would show which like is the basic one and then if you want you can do this and if you're capable and they would show like second version eventually they would they would do something that they are working on and I was like some super hyper thing and what I recognize was that well this is kind of the way it's done but they would be like it wouldn't be highly looked upon was like well this is this but look at that you know now I'm going to show you the real thing you don't need to do it but look at me and then eventually everybody yoga instructor did like their version but although including myself and that older guy although we're laughing our stares off because we wouldn't be able to but there was that sense of pressure almost like I couldn't do the I would feel guilty of doing the first version because the culture was more set around the highest super flexible and I was initially I got eventually I got frustrated with that because I realized like that's I thought that's not the way a yoga instructor should teach and and even myself and I would teach and I would show something more flexible some of the things I would be able to do which other can't I would see my students trying to replicate that sometimes I would tell them don't do it unless you really can but they would still try and eventually just do the basics myself because that's what most people need it and yes I think that whole culture showing off it's important to see through that not get hyped about all the super level rubberman stuff and think that that's what yoga is about it's also very contrary to the concept of the spiritual practice of yoga like as you know you're that's not supposed to be about showing off I think that sometimes because I'm guilty of doing that we're showing multiple levels of things but generally for me anyway that comes from having a really mixed student base in the same class so I'd have you know somewhere from you know an older person who has bad balance and you know arthritis and struggles with a lot of stuff but then in the same class I'd have you know a high-level athlete that you know can do all sorts of stuff and so then you get kind of stuck having to try and do stuff that works for everyone and so then I would show like a gradual progression of how something can work but I always at the same time preface it with you're not supposed to like don't try and go there you have to meet your body where it's at and there's no shame in that you have to do the work like you have to you know stretch or you know be in a position that is challenging for you and learn to sort of relax in that position before you can push further because if you push too hard too fast the result is people kind of lock up and they actually wind up creating more tension than they're getting rid of and so Pisa sent me this article the other day that was written about yoga and it kind of bugged me but I think because I took it more personally than I probably should have but the article was about how you know yoga is causing so many injuries because everybody's stretching all the time and you know it's not necessarily better for you to have more available range of motion which is true stability is actually more tied to injuries than stiffness and part of the reason why is because you need joint stability to protect your joints so you know if I can you know make my shoulders super flexible you know if there's not the equal measure of strength that comes into play there then you're setting yourself up for injuries and like you were talking about weighted exercises there's a there's some guidelines I would have for that as well that you don't want to put a lot of pressure onto a person for one you know you can throw off their balance you can hurt them also not everybody likes to be touched and there is like the way that I would approach physical adjustments is more with a sense of direction than with a lot of force it's like you want to maybe feel this moving this way while this moves that way and sort of give what's the word for it give not pressure but yeah I mean like a very gentle type of a pressure just to have the person understand what it is that they want to feel in their body but you know that's very different I think from forcing somebody into it and when we're talking about injuries especially if you talk about now you go to the problems with being strong and being having your muscles be tighter and if you then apply force on to it and the muscle doesn't want to stretch you're gonna break it like you'll tear it or hurt it and so we have to like realize and that article was talking about how yoga is all about stretching and increasing the range of motion and really what we should be doing is going for mobility and so it was really just kind of a play on words and the reason it made me frustrated was because that's not how I teach yoga that's not how I experience yoga I don't look at it as like a bunch of stretching because lunges are hard like a lot of these things are physically challenging and they don't really have anything to do with stretching they have more to do with strength and Keesa and I have discussed this together before and she came up with a phrase that she said strength through full range of motion and which is like it does you know good to be able to you know do the splits if then you get back up or to be able to like stretch your arms super far back if if there's any pressure that gets put on it you collapse and hurt yourself like you have to be able to physically maintain those range of range of motion that flexibility with strength like they have to work together and yeah so that kind of at that point it goes a further away from like trying to do the yoga poses that makes sense and more into almost like physical therapy type you know exercises where it's like you're you're wanting to push your boundaries but you want you want to push them in a way that's gonna yield positive lasting lifelong results that makes sense yeah absolutely we covered a lot I mean my summary would be this that I think if we're talking about yoga and we're talking about woo-woo and versus science basically I think that it can be a very valuable practice so long as you're aware of the differences between where you know what is superstition and what is science and if your goal is to improve yourself your mind and your body there was a lot of tools within yoga that can be useful but there is also quite a bit of nonsense that's you know wrapped in there and around it and you have to learn to be able to decipher between what is useful and what is not and not all teachers have that intention in a way and I would also say that personally I feel like the woo-woo gets in the way of what is actually quite profoundly useful within there so that's a really good summary of the yoga part sorry I'll repeat maybe Mike Mike so I said that's a very good part if you like adding a summary well the reason I brought that into the conversation is because yoga is a it's meant to be a practice of both the physical body but also of the mind and I do look at it as both of those practices like they don't I don't separate the two of them for myself and I think that there's a lot of people out there that are looking for relief from mental suffering that get get useless information that's going to delay them from actually being able to achieve that relief because rather than realizing the simple steps of like how to retrain neuro pathways in your brain or how to control the reaction of your nervous system through breathing they wind up sort of thinking about the concepts of how to become enlightened and they're not really actually training your brain as a muscle like you're not so it's like I people get derailed from what's worthwhile in that practice if they're talking about if you're talking about the mental issues and the summary of why I also brought that up is that that perception of people presenting themselves as being perfect which is I think you know damaging to the society as a whole because then all the imperfect people are too ashamed to open up and be present and express themselves and seek the assistance that they need and so I think it's it's about high time on multiple levels that we show sort of we do we take the curtains back and show the reality of what's going on out there and the very very last question for this record people who yeah there's lots of ways yeah so they can find me on Facebook I can give out my email so I have primate yoga practical practice my I have to admit my website is I have not done anything with it in very many years because I've been teaching my kids so it's pretty outdated but I do have one but it's probably easiest just to find me on Facebook I have a page there primate yoga practical practice you can send me messages there or Salome Thornton as well and I personally really love helping people like I love questions I love solving problems I love giving people tools to try and improve what they're trying to improve any chance we'll see something yeah there's a few of them online so if you well mostly we've been posting them at the SPG websites but I think Matt is gonna put them up on to the SPG University as well but I'm open to ideas if you have any other ones I've gotten used to teaching on the camera now without students so it's it's not as intimidating anymore although I will kind of funny to make jokes because I crack jokes and but there's nobody there well I am you know probably that I'm excited I was already excited when I was important to film some yoga project for you that you know you would compile and I was I was supposed to be in Portland two weeks ago and that was one of my intentions to bring that up but I assume that this will pass as anything else the code yeah if you have like people because I know that you have a big online presence and so on if you're running into questions from people on specific things when you want to pass them along I'd be more than happy see what knowledge is hiding in my brain those topics I'll either go look it up or just run your own with that one so I can I lost you for a moment there was lag and you can yes so if you're running into questions or anybody's looking for information on that front I'm more than happy to try and sort of dive into any question and see how I can help answer it by finding out little pieces of knowledge that I've stored back there somewhere and if I don't know the other then I will either usually look it up or I just say I don't know I don't know the answer so I think that's for one a valuable thing to be able to say that you don't know but I also have realized over the years that there are a lot of things that I do know that other people don't know and being able to share that I think you know it's valuable to me