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Aaron Alexander from Align Podcast came to visit us and he is an interesting character. He's an interesting guy. He's very nice guy, a mobility and movement like wizard. But he's also, you know, he's also out. He lives his brand. He's a little different. He walks around without shoes on. He stretches everywhere. He climbs everything. I took this motherfucker to this suite to watch Pink Floyd or Roger Waters. And the first thing he did was kick his shoes off and start doing yoga inside the suite. So I think only because it was a Pink Floyd concert did this fly and was okay. Otherwise, thank God it wasn't shark season for the San Jose sharks. And I didn't bring him to a shark game because I'm pretty sure everybody would have been who the fuck is this guy doing his strategy? So we totally let him do his thing, enjoy it, own the suite like he or like he owned the suite and did his yoga all in there. We had a great podcast with him. It went all over the place. We talked about some controversial subjects. We went deep into society and consciousness and the mind and then into fitness, of course. Yeah, he likes to go real deep in the paint. Yeah, this episode is going to be interesting. Actually, I can't wait to listen to it because I remember recording it and I hope it comes out okay. Yeah, bear with us. So his podcast is Align Podcast. His website is aligntherapy.com and you can find him on Instagram at along Align Podcast, excuse me. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Aaron Alexander. We're told that you have ADHD or whatever. So I was like totally hyperactive throughout school. Yeah, because your generation is when that really turned up. Oh yeah. Did they try to put you on medication or anything? No, no, they didn't really. I don't think I was really like you can. I was just like, okay, whatever, move on with life. Okay, I'm hyperactive. That's fine. But I think that we tend to do that in general. We try to put ourselves into different boxes and you see that with insurance companies and such. We need to give everyone a title of where they fall as opposed to just having more of a fluid spectrum. And so yeah, I take having energy as a gift. I'm like, yeah, let's do that. Were you a good student? Not really. I mean, I got bees. I think that's good. I think that's good. I've progressively digressed throughout school and I think it was a product of like, probably discovering psychedelics and like other aspects of. Oh, you discovered that early. Oh man. How are you? Probably 15 or so. Oh, shit. Yeah. That's early. That's early. Yeah, I was scared of shit like that at 15. Don't you? Oh, I forget. You guys didn't have this, right? So we, did you guys have dare come around to school and stuff like that? Absolutely. Okay, so you did. So I mean, that's, I have, as a kid, you know, psychedelics, LSD, those things. I mean, I have images of, I still have memories of watching the video that the cop would bring into the classroom of like people jumping off buildings because they took LSD and like trying to stop the train. Oh yeah, I was scared to death of anything like that. That's crazy to me. So how did that happen at 15 years old? You got to tell me. You know, I think it's just your product and your environment. And so the environment that I happened to fall into was one of people that were kind of curious about pushing boundaries, whatever that was. So we got into like vandalism and we got into all sorts of just anything that could get us to like, oh, you were a little punk. I was a punk. In jail, did you get arrested? Well, this is a random story. I don't know if I know you guys well enough for this, but I'm going to tell you anyway. We're going now, bro. This happens. There was actually about four years ago that I was only because you mentioned, so it's an interesting way to go. But four years ago, I was at this house and it was my brother's friend. I was in this rock climbing trip. I was heading to Canada. I was staying at this house for two days. And during that time frame, they were growing some weed, medicinal pot, whatever, like totally legit. On that property of 700 acres, there was Mexican mafia cartel growing like something like 7,000 plants. And it was on the fringes of the thing. And so I'm like, I got my climbing rope and I'm in my little hammock bivvy thing in the front yard, like ready to go on the climbing trip, you know, like leaving today. Oh shit. All of a sudden I wake up at like seven in the morning, I hear Sharers department. And I'm like, Oh, I'm dreaming. No big deal. And I look around and there's just like this full on line of stormtroopers wrapping around the house, helicopter, coming, coming. Wow. You're 15. How old are you right here? No, no, this was four years ago. Yeah. Oh God, I think you're still 15. No, no, this is, this is. Shit, my, shit, my pants right now. Swallow all the drugs. So I got the exceptional experience. I think it's, I'm just nothing but grateful for the whole thing. I got the exceptional experience of being put essentially treated like, like Mexican cartel for a week. Hold on a second. So they actually took you in. Oh, they were assholes. They were not cool. Really? So they handcuffed you, brought you in, questioned the fuck out of you. The whole thing. And you said for a week? It could have been longer. It could have been up to three months if I couldn't get like phone a friend kind of thing. Eventually I could phone a friend. Hold on a second. You were, were you locked up for a week? I was locked up. Holy shit. That's crazy. That is insane. Now, hold on a second. Now, how crazy is that that they actually can do that and lock you up and yep, and they can hold you in a cell and unless a judge tells them to let you go. Actually, even now people don't realize this. I think if it wasn't the Patriot Act, it was NDAA now allows them to do that indefinitely. So if they, if they label you, yeah. So if they label you a terrorist or whatever, if they say, oh this person, which is up to their discretion, right, they can literally lock you up forever and never tell anybody. Isn't that crazy? That's like the man in the iron mask. Yeah. The whole premise. Yeah. The feeling of, of it's essentially if, if they, the man, whatever, we went to a Pink Floyd concert last night. Darryl Walsh now. You're welcome, bro. How do you like that? Show up. You think you can go to dinner? Like, no, fuck you, bro. I'm gonna take you Pink Floyd right now. Tell me, that's like one of the best, that's top five concerts of all the concerts I've seen. I mean, what a fucking show dude. I was so positive we were going to a karaoke thing and you guys like, yeah, I eat the chocolate thing, whatever. And I'm like, I don't know, dude. Like we're just going to karaoke. Total peer pressure. I don't realize. The hell are we going? No, it was literally Pink Floyd. It was literally Pink Floyd. Yeah, that was, I didn't realize and I literally didn't realize that we were going to a Pink Floyd concert until we were at the Pink Floyd concert. That's great. Actually, it was perfect because so we have the box, right, the box seats or whatever. Adam's got a hook up there and we're up there and stuff. And, you know, Aaron is doing his mobility stuff on the floor, which at another concert would have been really, would have probably freaked people out. Like they would be like, hey, what the fuck, man? What are you doing on the floor? But as Pink Floyd said, nobody said shit in the box. Everybody was like, oh yeah, that's what I do sometimes at Pink Floyd. I was super confident people were thinking I was having a bad trip. They're just like, let him go. Do you want some water, man? I'm like, no, I had five milligrams of a weed. You were literally just doing your mobility stuff, but it totally worked. It totally worked there barefoot and everything. Okay, so you're locked up. Locked up. Yeah. Okay. How long? How long? Seven days, max security in C-Pond. It was like 40 other inmates. The guy beside me. What was that like? It wasn't that bad, dude. It feels like it feels like adult summer camp. The dudes were cool with you in there? Dudes were super cool. It was like weird. I had, I didn't, as soon as I locked in. You didn't think right? Awesome. Were you locked up with the same group? No, not the same group of people that I was with. No, no, no. It was, they bailed themselves out those assholes. They didn't really know me that well. I was just random, like climbing. So the drug cartel, the drug lord comes and sees, he's like, by proximity, he is mine. He's mine. He's with me. Yeah, he's with me. He's one. We don't know who that one is. I wasn't, I wasn't with drug lords. I was with upstanding borderline, upstanding citizens. They just didn't give a shit about me. That was the only problem. So you're in there for a week and it wasn't that bad. Like the people were cool. It was totally, it was totally chilled. The thing, so the reason that was bad was two reasons. One, the feeling that, oh, I'm not allowed to leave here. That's a real bummer, you know? And so that's, and then the other one was that for granted, don't we? Our freedom. Well, it's two different worlds. It's two different cultures. The, you know, the culture, not that I'm any expert, because I spent a week in freaking jail. I'm glad you prefaced with that, that's smart. His book on jail will be out. The longest seven days. Oh God. Hard times. All seven days. Squeeze them cheeks. No, I was just in full, I was in full observation, observation mode the whole time, but the fear was if they, you know, the Pink Floyd, the man, they can like get you via the documents or whatever. They don't give a shit about you. You know, it's not about justice. It's not, it's like, this is a financial system. You're entering into our business, right? And so by entering, being on the wrong end of that business, it's a really, really scary, uncomfortable feeling. Right. Cause they make, they don't make it fucking easy. That's for sure. And getting out that it's not a rehabilitation center. It's, it's just a business. Right. It's collecting people. Well, it's not designed to work. It's designed to lock people away. Yeah. So if, if you, I mean, it's a, it's an old puritan model. In fact, this was a model that was brought to the U S where it was penance. It was punishment. So when you went to your, and we still have that belief where you go to jail and we punish the hell out of you. And I understand that there's a certain element of that, but if, if you're looking objectively, a big part of jail should be, cause at some point they're going to get out, right? At some point they're going to be out hanging out with us again. And so we have to consider maybe we should spend time making that more successful, potential more successful for them. Otherwise you get this revolving door, which is exactly what happens. Yeah. I mean, all, all of us are here because we have options to be here. If at any point, you know, shit got real and it was like, Oh, my pump doesn't exist anymore. Personal training, education. I came from a different background. You do something else, whatever that, whatever would manifest, you know? And so it's like, we need to look at the environment. It's not about bad apples. It's about bad barrels, you know? And so looking at like, who the hell is making these barrels? I mean, a lot of the policies that we have don't make a lot of sense until you consider what they're really designed for. So like you got thrown into a prison cell for seven days because you maybe were dealing with marijuana and, or if you were, you'd be in there probably for 30 or 40 years. And you think to yourself, you know, it's a, you know, okay, I know all the pot advocates are like, I never killed anybody and all that stuff. And this is true. It's never done any of that stuff, but he would get less time if you were caught molesting a child or causing a violent, you know, doing something violent. Like you get less time for that than you would getting caught with a bunch of illegal plants. And it just doesn't, it just sounds insane. It sounds absolutely crazy until you understand the reason why they lock you up for such a long time and why these policies were put in place to begin with. And at one point, you know, there was a counterculture that was considered a major threat to the system, a major threat to the government. And they, like any, like they're designed to do, they assess a threat and they figure out the best ways to neutralize that threat. And one of the most effective things they did was make the substances that that counterculture used highly illegal so they can now lock people in jail and not infringe on their freedom of speech. And so you've still got the system in place. It's now it's like this big machine that's almost impossible to reverse. And you were, you got a great experience of it. Yeah. First hand. Yeah. First hand. So that's why it's called marijuana instead of cannabis. That's true. They wanted to make it sound. It's the bad scary dirty Mexicans that have shifted in here. That's actually, so did you, was it this experience that made you realize that? Or did you kind of already go into it knowing that and feeling this way already knowing that I disagree with the way our, our, our, uh, correctional facilities. Yes. Yes. Um, I, I'm after that and during that knew it viscerally, you know, and so I got the whole thing of like, it's amazing how you feel when, when you, so I got like literally, I mean, it was, it was tremendous. I got like the stripes, the orange and white stripes. I think I'm going to actually, I don't remember what maybe it was black and white anyways. Well, I know the cartoons is black and white. Yeah. Yeah. They put the, the rapist people, the people that like, that you wanted to keep separate because they'll get beat up. They put them, I think in orange, orange getups. And it was like, they actually, they actually labeled them. No, seriously. If you want to beat someone on a target. No. So that apparently like the rules and whatever, this is what I've gathered from my seven day experience. But I believe the rules are essentially like, if you do rape somebody and you're in jail, you're probably going to get beat up. And so they're like, we just got to keep them out. Like it's not good, which that's interesting. There's some degree of, you know, isn't that funny though? Well, it's interesting to me as a morality. It's very interesting in certain situations. They create their own kind of rules and moralities and in prison, like almost anything is okay, except for that kind of stuff. You do that kind of stuff. Yeah, they're gonna kill you. Exactly. Very, very interesting. So have you guys had any run-ins with the law? You know what's funny? The one time I first of all, you know, every time I've gotten pulled over, I've gotten a ticket. And I've gotten pulled over as a kid quite a bit. I just think they don't like my face. I don't know really what's going on, but I've had a ton of tickets and all that stuff. But one time, me and my friend were walking home from this like, you know, it was called like, it was like one of those like little market marts or whatever, like Jiffy Mart or whatever. And we were walking home from there and a freaking police car drives up on the lawn in front of us. And another one comes behind us and they pull guns on us and make us get down on the floor and they handcuff us. And I'm like, I don't know, 15, and I have no idea what's going on. I'm totally freaking out. I'm on a busy road and I'm literally locked up, hands behind my back, you know, police officers kind of holding me down on my knees. And who drives by the busy street right at that moment? My mom drives right by and I see her looking right out the window at me. Of course. Oh, it was horrible. Anyway, we were mistaken for a couple guys who had broken in and done some real bad stuff into some home a little earlier than I thought that was us. And then it was cleared and all, but that man, that was my only experience of ever being, you know, in trouble with the law. Yeah. I had a time where I've had a couple times, but the most memorable for me was when I was, what, 16, 17 years old. And long story short, my grandmother had bought me a car and she bought me a car because I was grounded from the family car that to get to and from school or work. And I used to work at four o'clock in the morning milking cows before school. And my parents took the car away from me and I actually still had to. So I rode my bike like seven miles at four o'clock in the morning. I told my grandmother this and she was like, that's it. We're buying you a car like it'll be your car. Right. So of course, it, you know, 16 years old, 16 year old boy gets that opportunity. He's like, fuck yeah, for sure. Right. Right. So she takes, she takes me, gets the car and my mom, my mom and my dad are like, they're not having it. They're like no way. You can't have the car. And it's brand new. It's my, my grandma like let me go pick like the car I wanted. Like it was like the car I wanted in high school. It was like a huge big deal. And I, if my backstory is like, I was a poor kid growing up like food stamp poor. And so that was a big deal. Right. For me and my mom and dad were like, no way. Either you live, you either live here and you can't have the car or you don't live here and you can keep your car. And so I was like, okay, that's a simple, that's an easy yeah. 100% no brainer. Right. It's a no brainer at that age. So they didn't know what to do because I seriously was like, I'm out cool, you know, and they, they called the cops and my, and my stepdad stood in front of the door and wouldn't let me out. And this cop come, this cop will actually five cops roll up for me, which is crazy. So I live in this little cul-de-sac and five cop cars pull up. And you know, we, I live in a small town where like everybody knows everybody and like all of a sudden there's five cop cars in front of my, in front of my high schools, like right across the street from there. And so they come in, cops all roll up. And at this point I'm crying and stuff. And he starts to like just fucking lay into me, like just right, tell me, well, we deal with punks just like you all the time. He's trying to scare you straight. Oh, exactly. He's trying. And I, and I, and I'm like, he's just, just nailing me for like literally like two minutes, like nonstop. And I'm just in there crying, right. And I finally look up at him and I go, you don't even know me. And then he goes, stand your ass up boy. And he turns me around, handcuffs me, puts me in the back of the cop car. I sit in the back of the cop car for an hour in my neighborhood where all my neighbors are outside, like staring at the cop car and stuff like that. And I'm like crying and shit, like a mess, right. And then he, then he, then he takes me down to the station and again in the backseat of the car, and he gives me like this fucking one hour lecture while I'm handcuffed. And if you have ever been the back of a fucking cop car, there's, I have 12, a size 12 foot, like it's like literally for, you could have like the tiniest feet and you can't fit their smash back there. It's not comfortable at all to be back there. And I sat back there for an hour and got lectured by him. And then of course they, they couldn't do anything to me. I didn't do anything wrong. But they went through that whole process. And for me, it was like, I mean, I remember, I can barely remember, have memories of what happened in high school very much, but that's like a vivid memory in my head because of that. Did it work? Oh, God, no. God, no. No, no, it didn't work. It didn't work at all. I was, I mean, I was a good kid. So like, that's why, why I was so frustrated. So I was like, you know, I didn't, I was like in church three times a week. I didn't, I hadn't had sex. I was a virgin. I didn't do any drugs. I didn't do anything. Like I was Anna was a 30 student. Like, I was a good kid, you know, so I was, do you think it did more damage than good? Oh, for sure. I definitely had a lot of animosity for, but I, you know, I had more animosity for my parents than I did for cops. So it wasn't like I had this thing. It wasn't, I have, to this day, I have tons of cop friends and I'm definitely not somebody who's like, I have a problem with cops. So, but that was my most memorable experience with a run-in with the police. And I've had other little things like stupid stuff, like kids playing capture the flag on the golf course and, you know, like, you like, we got busted like that, like that stupid stuff, nothing serious. But that moment when that cop did that whole process for me, and handcuffed me, I mean, that thing is just like, so many people saw that it was so embarrassing for me. And then the fact that my parents would actually let that happen to me, like, I was, they wanted it to happen. I wanted it to scare you. Oh, yeah. I was, and it did not work for them because I was like, I had a calendar on how many days left till I was 18 and my ass was out, you know. How many times you've been in jail, Justin? Once. No, sorry. I didn't know that. Yeah, I know. You didn't even know. Yeah. Yeah. No, but yes, one of those things, like, I don't talk about a lot. But, yeah, I was like in my mid-20s, something like that. I was hanging out with my friend. And I mean, this is typical, like, douchebaggery, like, bar, fight stuff. So, I was walking outside of this club and this guy's girlfriend was kind of chatting it up with me and whatnot. And the boyfriend didn't like that at all and decided to swing and throw a swing at me. And so, you know, one thing led to another. We got in a fight, this and that. And then after my friend got in a fight with his friends and it turned into this huge, like, crazy, like, scuffle outside. And so, you know, the fight's over or whatever. And we're like, oh, shit, we gotta get out of here. And we jump into the first, like, taxi we could. And the guy kind of saw stuff and he's like jamming it out of there. And he's like trying to get us out of there. Because, you know, he wants a good tip. Yeah. He was like, oh, he's like, you guys better hook me up. Let's get you out of here. I was like, I love you. You know, let's go. And we're like hoping, like, we leave the scene. And so, the cop, of course, like, you know, the girl's like, oh, they went that way. Like yelling at us. And so, the cop pulls over the taxi cab. And so, I'm just kind of like looking down at the ground, you know, like, oh, shit. I'm sleeping. Here it is. And it's like some lady, you know, and she's like shining her light inside. And like, I mean, I was trying to play all smooth, like, hey, how are you doing, officer? And I was like, really charming it up with her. It's kind of what I do when I'm in trouble. I suck up to you real quick, you know. And so she gets us outside and my friend just fucking gave it away for us. Like, even the taxi cab, like, he's like, oh, I just, I picked him up around the corner. You're trying to help me, guys? Yeah. Yeah, he was, he was coming up with our alibi. I was like, oh, god, this guy's awesome. But your friend cracked. No, he was like stonewalling it. And then like, all they had to do was shine the light on his hands. And he had blood all over his hands. I had blood on my shirt. And I was like, Oh, fuck. It's the style. It's the new style. Yeah. So we got handcuffed and, you know, and then we got, we had to stay in this drunk cell until they decided whether or not we got like, they press charges, thankfully they didn't press charges. So and then they stole my shoelaces and I was pissed. They take your shoelaces. Fuck those guys. Anyways, it's, it's not that hardcore story. I was listening to a podcast recently and they're talking about the implicit bias of police slash anybody towards different ethnicities. And they had like a, they did like a test where they took people and they would set up different categories. So it would be like, you know, peanut butter goes well with jelly, you know, or paper goes well with pen, but paper wouldn't go so well with brick. And there's kind of this like resistance or time that it would take for you to make that connection. They did that with black people versus like bad or versus crime or versus violence or rape or whatever. And they did that with white people. And it was, they could show that there was, there was a degree of, there was like, it took longer to make the connection with white people that something bad happens. And it was quite quick with black. So, you know, what's interesting about that. So I read that study. And so that can be a, that can be a conclusion of the results of that study, but there's also the possible potential conclusion that a police officer, especially today feels lots of almost like, once you say that, like black people crime, police officers today may feel like, oh shit, politically, you know, I got to be careful what I say. And that actually slows down the process and can cause what may look like a bias. It's one of those, this is one of the most difficult things to study. And I don't think, because bias definitely exists among all humans. All of us have biases, impossibly be completely objective. It's absolutely impossible. And you wonder, you know, your human nature is naturally to try and pick up patterns and to make decisions before your conscious mind makes a decision. This is just the nature of your, of your brain. And so really, the only way to, to check this is to have something objective recording it. And I think body cameras are the only things that will ever take care of any potential bias in that situation. I don't think you could ever train anybody to be perfectly objective. I think it's impossible. And that's, I think part of the problem. So you put cameras on everybody. They already have already proven this that people just act differently. They act differently when they know. If you put eyes on your computer, it makes you work more efficiently. Like, like you're being, like you're being watched. There's an old more as well, I believe there's something I saw. There's this interesting study where they have this happens with children too. They'll take children and they'll leave them alone in a room with like some treats or something or the, and they'll tell them, okay, if you do this puzzle correctly, you get to have those treats and then they'll leave the room and then the kid will inevitably cheat to get the treats, right? Who did we just talk to who did this to their son? Was it Ben? No, that was different. That's a Joe. The marshmallow and then the two. Yeah, that's different. That's a different one. Yeah, that's, you'll get more later. Yeah, you know, no, that was Joe. Oh yeah, Joe. So then what they'll do is they'll tell the kid in this chair is, you know, magic fairy princess so-and-so and she watches everything you do and blah, blah, blah. So then the child believes they're being watched by even a fictional character and they don't cheat anymore. It's just very interesting. So I think you put, I think when we give people the power at their discretion, the only legal power that exists in modern societies to literally incite violence, maybe kill you or lock you up in a cage, there for sure should be some type of recording device there, checking that always because even if it's a half of a half of a percent, that's still way too much, you know what I'm saying? So I think that's a problem that I think the, I don't think it'll be perfect, but I think we could totally make a huge difference with a simple put this camera on, turn it on when you're interacting with someone and that's it. How do you set that up for yourself from a place of like overeating or being self-destructive or whatever it may be? So You talk with us all the time. Yeah, we do. Levels of awareness. It's all really is levels of awareness and it's really interesting because when we do things that hurt us, whether it's physically or mentally or spiritually, there are many times that we know we're hurting ourselves. In other words, if questioned afterwards, hey, do you think that that's, you know, that's really good for you to think those thoughts about yourself or, you know, when you eat all that food, do you feel that that's good for your body and good for your mind or when you do those drugs and you're abusing those substances? Do you think that and most people will say, well, no, absolutely not. It's they're not. And what happens when they use the substance is there's a there's a subconscious but also a slightly willful unawareness almost placing yourself out of awareness to do what you're going to do. And you'll find this with binge eating where people eat fast, almost to like get this in before I realize what I'm doing. And it's it's this very interesting conundrum and really the only way to fix this become more aware. You can think all the it's good for me. It's not good for me. And, you know, but it's always going to be a struggle until you become so fully aware of what you're doing that the decisions you make become much better. And part of that awareness is just connecting the dots because some people, they don't they don't know they don't really know that sometimes their body is speaking to them. They've learned they've gone numb to that like and I remember with being the same way too. I mean, even being a trainer, even with the knowledge I had when I first came in the industry, even I was still not fueling my body properly. I was eating everything. I was always the kid I had the the insecurities to be big. I wanted to skinny my whole life. So I wanted to build muscle. So I was I was driven to eat anything and everything. And as I exercise and move so much that I didn't see myself get fat. So I didn't worry about it. But you don't realize like all the other signs your other systems of your body. And when you feel it properly, the difference. And so most people just don't connect that. And so once you help them in that direction to first make that connection of like, watch what happens when we eat these types of foods and pay attention to your sleep, your energy, your stool, your hair, your skin, you know, all these things, your your clarity, like you start paying attention to different signals. And when you help people make that connection, it becomes much easier to be aware of what you're doing to yourself. And a big one, a huge one is mood. People have the hardest time connecting what they've eaten to how they feel mood wise, very, very difficult connection. And in fact, when you point it out, I don't know about you guys, but when I've worked with clients, like I know when I bring up the fact that they're you know, they're feeling if they're feeling kind of irritable or fatigued or kind of depressed or angry, you know, number one, it's hard to even get them to acknowledge that. But once they do, then as a trainer, I'll be like, well, you know, for breakfast, you had this, you know, whatever donut and that can actually, and it's like, they don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear the food park is number one of a trainer. Oh, everything you think is food. And number two, nobody wants to connect how they feel to what they're eating. It's almost too abstract for them to even see that. I don't know if you've ever run into that with clients. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you know, I feel quite strongly that I can see a connection between people's level of, you could call it like kinesthetic awareness or kinesthetic intelligence, you know, how deeply connected they are with their physical body, their physical tissue, their organs, their, their posture, all these things, those directly spill into your, you know, the other meta levels of self-awareness. And so that's what yogis and martial artists and monks and everything have been preaching for thousands and thousands of years. You know, now we're kind of, we're in this cultural kind of like V in the road where we're kind of veering away from our bodies, right? And a product of that, I strongly believe is we're also veering away from that sensitivity to what our bodies actually need. And now we're being sold. It's becoming more of a financial thing where we're being sold on the who, but who advertises the best. And we're kind of believing this as opposed to believing ourselves, we're reaching out to doctors or kairos or pharmaceuticals or whatever it may be as opposed to going in and really, you know, introspecting. It's kind of like a lost art. Do you think, uh, memories are stored in the body? I have a theory. Yeah. In the fashion. I figured. So my sense is, I think that every time you have a certain sensation, you, you kind of release this, this cocktail of various hormones, right? Your endocrine system has a translation for happiness or for sad or for fear, you know, and those specific moments when you had that, I was raped or I was beat up or I beat up or whatever it may be. I think that you get a certain surge of specific, specific, hormonal kind of like language. And if you don't move yourself correctly, both emotionally and physically, which I think they're the same thing, that's why I'm like a weirdo always like kind of wringing myself out and wiggling. I'm just trying to get this shit out of here. Right. You know, and so I think that if you don't wiggle that stuff out, think of like rinsing a rag, right? If you have gunk in that rag, you need to get it wet and you need to rinse it, right? Most of us being just sitting and our rags end up kind of becoming like crusty sponges. Now you're, you're also, you're also a licensed massage therapist. And a Rolfer and a Rolfer Rolfer. Excuse me. I made that one up. And I have worked with some pretty exceptional body work specialists, one in particular. And one thing she always said, now she was very, very, very kind of, you know, what people would say, woo, right? Which I find most massage therapists tend to be a little more in that, in that category. If you were to put people in a box, which I typically don't, but if you meet her, if the average person met her, that's what they would think. But she always said that memories and feelings are stored in the body. And she would talk about how she would work on someone in a particular area and she could feel anger in there. And sure enough, the person will get pissed off on the table or emotion and they would cry. Like she said a lot of times the hips store emotion. And when she works on people's hips, that's when people will become moved by tears and stuff like that. So, you know, I figured you would say something like that, but here's what's interesting from the science standpoint is that this is actually a little bit of a debate. So it's not as cut and dry as people think. Cause if you, a lot of people who are science oriented will say, no, memories all stored in the brain, the body is dumb. It doesn't have a way of storing memories or feelings. Well, what's interesting is there are examples of certain animals and there's, I believe there's a certain type of worm where you could eliminate its head and most of its body and it'll grow back and have the memories of the old worm. So it'll remember which way to go through the maze or whatever. How the fuck do they test that? I just want to know how they test that. So what they'll do is they'll, they'll get a worm and they'll teach it a particular, like, so worms have to learn certain things. So if it's going around a maze, for example, it takes a while to learn where to go. And then every time you put it in the maze, it just takes that, that direction because it remembers it. Then what they'll do is they'll remove the head of this worm, it'll grow back and it'll remember. And so there's some evidence there. There's also tons of anecdote from organ transplants where people will get an organ and very, very, very strangely will have sometimes memories or feelings that were new to them that applied very much to the person who they took that, you know, who donated that organ to them. And we do know, we don't know very much about the brain at all in terms of how it really works. I personally believe memories are also stored in the body. And I do think that there's, of course, a brain component to it, but there's also a component that has to do with the actual, like, body itself, the bone, the muscle, and the tissue. And I find that very fascinating, which is why I asked you that. So do you find when you work with your, with clients and patients that, that a lot of them come with to you for like, hey, my back hurts, but then you end up finding that you're working out some much deeper shit. Almost always. Really? Yeah. It's very, very, there's like Ida Rolf. She had a quote. It's just where you think it is. It ain't, you know, it's very simple, which was kind of her style of things, but she's like legendary. So she can be simple like that. And that's something that I see with people super consistently. I mean, you can see very sometimes people having organ issues and that will manifest as back pain, you know, or you could be, you know, there's, there's dermatomes and myotomes and all these trigger points, like the body is pretty complicated and also makes just tons of sense at the same time. You know, depending on which, which kind of wormhole you get down with it, you know, but the, uh, another point that I wanted, I was, I was coming to my head as you were talking about that the worms was have you guys heard of the, the mice that they had them smell some type of really strong like odor. I don't remember it was right before shocking them, right? It was some chemical and I was like, right. And so then they shock them and they did that with the mice for, you know, several weeks or months. And then what they found was that the, the offspring of those mice, when you expose that same smell, they had the same kind of like cultural memory. So right now, I think that we're not just living the experiences. This is like, woo, woo, woo. But you know, I don't, I don't believe that we're living just the experiences of just what's happened inside this skin bag. I think that we're living the experience of our history, of our culture, of our community. Just to, to pass that information on, you know, either through genetics or, yeah. Evolutionarily speaking, it absolutely is. And, uh, I mean, think about, we've got lots of evidence of this now, right? Um, but that does give a little bit of credence to the whole collective consciousness, collective memory type of thing. Um, and it's, it is interesting when you witness, um, they'll see this in monkeys where, you know, this island over here, we'll have this little discovery and this island over here, we'll start using a tool in the same way. And they didn't even contact, you know, having any contact with each other or how religion popped up and art popped up in different parts of the world, right around the same time, which is also very interesting. So kind of fascinating stuff. Now, is this the kind of stuff that got you into fitness in the first place? Or did you start off very much like a lot of us do, which is very, you know, you know, do your squats, do your lunges, lose fat, build muscle. Yeah. Way worse than that. So I mentioned to you last night that I had like some degree of like daddy issues growing up. My dad, you know, started getting into drugs and he went to jail too, actually, oddly enough, Appleton fall, fall far from the tree apparently. And, uh, you know, so I was like 15, 16, when things kind of started getting a little bit funny. And, uh, during that timeframe, my story with it is I started packing on heaps of muscle as a means of protection, you know, and so I was really into bodybuilding. I was like shaving my body and like getting it like ready. I was like, you know, doing the spray tan, like getting all jacked up for bodybuilding competitions. And, uh, at the time, I thought that this was just, this is just rad. This is just like what it means to be a man. I think that now not, there's anything wrong with bodybuilding or whatever. I think whatever your sport is, it's great. Enjoy your reasoning for my reasoning for it. That's the thing. And so I believe my reasoning for it was just a means of, of protection. You know, so if you have some type of like seed that you're insecure about, you know, you could either resolve that insecurity or you just build the walls up. So you just felt safer. I think so. Being bigger. Oh yeah. Did you abuse your body during this period? Were you using lots of supplements, anabolic steroids, anything? Narly. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was, I mean, like protein farts, creatine farts for days. Wow. Yeah. What's the biggest you were? Well, you're a tall dude. You're what, how tall are you? I'm just shy of six, five. Six, five. So you're a big dude. Yeah. Okay. So you were, how big were you? Is it 16 years old? My biggest was when I was probably like 17 and I was like 230, which is, I mean, that's a big, that's a big 17 year old. But it's like, yeah, it's a big, it's a big boy and I had a beard and I wore a leather jacket, not like a Fonsi leather jacket, but it was just like, it was something that made me like, I bought beer for my friends. Like everyone thought that I was at least 26. It wasn't until I was 26. We're going to need a picture for the show notes for this. Yeah. It wasn't until I was 26 that people finally started guessing my age. Like I was 26 for like a decade. And then finally I was 26. They're like, what are you about 26? I'll be, yes. I've been the age I am now, looks wise forever. People all the way out, 38, like, no, 25. I appreciate that. So were you like, were you a dick too? Were you like this big like bully that used to get in fights and shit? No, I was. So you were a nice dude. You just wanted to look like. I was just crying on the inside, man. You know, I was just trying to, trying to be, I still do with this stuff a little bit, not crying on the inside stuff so much, but feeling outside. You know, like I'm always been curious about people that feel like they're inside a group or of, you know, whatever it may be. I've always kind of skirted edges of groups. You know, it's not, it's not, I'm, I've, yeah, I haven't really felt so strongly like, this is my team. You know, so I actually really envy this a little bit. You know, I've been kind of more lone wolf with a lot of things. Both are valuable. If you travel, for example, you travel by yourself, you get to meet a lot more people because people are like, oh, hey, what's up? You're by yourself. What's going on? If you have a team with you, people don't give a shit because they're like, oh, they're, they're, they're, they'll figure it out. Justin's very intimidating when we go places too. So there's value purpose. I've just fallen more on that, that edge of the spectrum, like skirting the teams as opposed to being on the team. Now you, do you find a movement seems to be therapy for you? Totally. Has it, did you discover that early on? I think it's all, it's just been, yeah, you know, so I studied, like I mentioned, I went to, went to school for psychology and then I went to massage school and, you know, it's like this mind body. I was- Those are both, those are both arts that are designed to learn other people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really curious about that. Maybe that's a part of like the skirting and it's always been kind of like watching, you know, what's, you know, but yeah, I mean, I think it's just, it's just been a natural, a natural evolution where it started off being really curious about psychology as like what's going on in the brain, kind of like you mentioned. And then starting to look a little bit more broader spectrum and seeing like, you can't have an emotion without having a physical reaction to it, right? If you like method act and you take on anger, you have to take it on in your feet to really feel anger. You know, you got to take it on in your pelvic floor and your diaphragm. Then, okay, now you're acting. As long as you're acting with your brain, it's bullshit. No one's going to trust it, you know? And so what I've, you know, what I've kind of been gathering is, okay, so if those emotions are all tied up in my posturing, then maybe I can start tapping in to the emotions or the psychology through working with my connective tissue and working with the organization of my joints. So just putting yourself in different, you know, so there's studies now that completely support that. In fact, there's some interesting studies on people who get Botox. They'll get Botox and it'll prevent like you know, frown lines or whatever. So they don't frown as much and they find that their depression actually drops. So they don't feel as depressed because they don't frown as much, but at the same time, on the other end, they don't feel the other extreme of the, you know what I'm saying? You can't get as happy because it's like, but you know what's, you know, what's really fascinating about that is they lose their capacity for empathy. That's it. That's the one. Right. So that's why it's important to feel sad sometimes. So by you stretching and practicing, I'm going through all these different ranges of motion with your face, what you are actually doing is you're furthering your potential adaptation to feel someone else. If you're stuck in one specific pattern, am I just, you know, I'm like cowboy hat guy or you know, I'm like, I have this identity that I stick with, right? Then your ability to feel deeply with someone that's a yoga instructor or someone that's a Mexican immigrant or someone that's a whatever is going to be less because you don't have that range of motion in your, in your face and your body. Yeah. We're, we're so much more connected than we, than we like to admit. Are you familiar with blind sight? Tell me. So blind sight is when they'll, somebody will, will have a stroke or damage to the part of the brain that gives you sight. So they're effectively blind. Like their eyes are fine. They're, they're totally healthy. There's nothing wrong with their eyes, but the part of the brain that processes sight is gone. So they're completely blind. They don't see anything at all. But what they'll do is if they place pictures of faces in front of these people, they will make micro adjustments to their own faces to mimic what they see in front of them. What? And so if there's a picture of a person, Where'd you see that? That is, it's a very, Trippy. These are, it's very, very interesting science. It's totally repeatable. It's, it's a, it's something that they talk about. It's called blind sight. You can look it up. But if there's a face in front of mine with a slight smile, my face will slightly smile a little bit. And I, and they'll say, you know, Yeah, do you see anything or whatever? No, no, no. But it goes to show that there's other parts of the brain that are perceiving sight other than the one that we're used to, which is what we consider sight. And of course they use human faces because of all the things that we see, uh, the brain is, uh, most evolved and most finely tuned to read and see faces. Yeah. Facial recognition is huge. It's, it's huge. And it's, and here's another thing that's Trippy. If you are always around similar looking people, like if I'm, you know, uh, Icelandic and I, and I'm only around Icelandic people all the time, I can see other people of other ethnicities and it will be much harder for me to tell one from the other. And so that's where you get the term, like they all look the same when talking about, you know, uh, different races, whatever. And this is because it's so picking up these intricate things are also learned. And there's so, uh, there's so much, um, that goes into it that it's, you literally have to study faces, understand them. The brain learns it. And then you make these, you know, like, Oh, I know that that's so-and-so's brother, but I know that that person is, you know, this person, not them versus, you know, if you see someone from another race, I can't tell them apart. Very, very interesting stuff when it comes to recognition. Very, very cool stuff. So I've got another freaky one for you. Yeah. There was, there was, uh, uh, another study where they had people exposed, they were just watching, watching TV and they would kind of like subliminally show randomly these images, like really graphic images, right? So it was either like pornography or it was like a murder scene or something like that. And it would just kind of be like, blah, blah, blah, watching the lake, blah, blah. And then I was like, did murder, you know, and then like, oh, blah, blah, blah, they would go back. And what they found with that is obviously every time that image would come up, they've, you know, it's the only EEG like that's like, oh, good, right? But what they found was actually, you know, milliseconds or nanoseconds before the image was, was put on the screen, people would have that sensation. Yeah. So I don't know what the heck that means. It's predictive. But once again, it's just kind of just like, there's more going on in this thing than we- Actually, they can predict the decision you're going to make based on your brain, by readings of your brain, before you're consciously aware of the decision, before you react to the decision you're going to make. So what is happening first, that brings up the whole like crazy debate of whether or not we actually have free will, or if it's complete illusion and we're just moving through this machine and every, you know, we have this perception of free will, but it doesn't have to smoke a lot of weed. Damn. Well, that's, we went deep. That's what the shamans did, I think, you know, like, what about the discovery of the, I'm probably saying it's around like the Shakuruna plant. So in order for Ayahuasca to actually have like the psychedelic effects, it needs to be mixed with this one specific plant. It's an MAOI inhibitor. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So there's this one specific, there might be others out there, but from what we know, there's this one specific plant that will allow for that psychedelic experience for your body just breaking the Ayahuasca down. And, you know, the discovery of that is fascinating. That they even knew that. Where the hell does that come from? Yeah. You must have read The Cosmic Serpent. Is that what you read about? I did read that. Yeah. Great book by, God, what's his name? Jeremy Narby, I think is his name. I don't remember. We'll make sure to put that in the show notes, Doug, so that people want to take a look at that. Yeah. No, he talks about how the Ayahuasca plant, it contains dimethyl tryptamine, but when you ingest it, your body degrades it and destroys it. So you get no effects. The only way for it to work is if you were to take an MAOI inhibitor, which inhibits the enzyme that breaks it down, and now you get the dimethyl tryptamine to the brain, but the odds of someone combining these two plants and the odds of them brewing it in the particular way that's required to produce this substance, remember, this is the Amazon. Like, it is the most variety of plants that exist on Earth, as in this place, and there's a preparation that goes into, like, how the hell did they even discover this and figure this out? And when this anthropologist who wrote that book went and asked them that, like, how did you guys know to, and they're like, oh, the plants tell us. Yeah. Like, the plants tell us to put each other to put these. And there was another plant that, and he used this example in the book that is used for snake venom. And when you use this plant on the snake venom, it's like an antidote. And again, he asked them, how did you know? And they said, well, the plant tells us. And he says, what do you mean? Like, explain that. And he says, look at the leaf. And then sure enough, you look at the leaf of the plant. It looks like a snake with fangs. Very, very cool book. Very, very interesting stuff. Oysters looking like a pussy. Yeah. Wow. And it's got zinc and it makes you horny. It makes you horny. No, no, no, no, no. That's exactly what I'm saying. I've already gotten to it. Yeah, I'm supposed to be like, easy. I can raise testosterone or all these things. Justin loves cucumbers and bananas. And it looks like a pussy. Don't get me started. Absolutely. So, Aaron, what made you start a podcast? You've been on air for, what, two years? Over two years. What made you start a podcast? Man, I... Because you were already deep in your career of what you're doing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I had the body work, Rolf, whatever you'd call it, business, movement business. And that was between, I did that in Colorado, I did that in Hawaii, did that in Oregon, kind of like, moving around the world, bringing this business. And a part of that movement around the world was just gathering information and kind of like, whenever you're meeting with a practitioner, a personal trainer, a doctor, whatever it is, what you're doing is you're taking the blanket or the funnel that they've taken from everything they've got around the world, their experience, and bring it to a vectored point, right? And so, the way that I started feeling with working with clients was that we were having these really, you know, what I perceived to be great conversations, you know, really helpful conversations. And I found myself saying the same shit over and over and over again. And so, to me, it was kind of like, it was like, necessary part of the evolution to be able to project these conversations out. And then I had friends that were doing podcasts or whatever and like, Aaron, you podcast, I'm like, okay, I'll listen. And so, you did it too because you wanted to help others. Yeah. And I think it's being connected, if I'm really honest, you know, I think it's a similar thing of like the skirting, the tribes kind of thing. Oh, okay. You know, so now, I'd mentioned yesterday, I've done like over 150 interviews of people. And the interviews are usually like this, you know, we're really, we're not, it's not bullshit, you know, like we're really sitting with each other. It's not like I'm looking at, you know, and you get to have these experiences with people that there's not a lot of mediums that give you that access to people. We've said so many times on the podcast throughout, because we've been on air now for two and a half years. And each one of us have independently said, and we've said it on air, that this is therapy. Very, very interesting. It's so cathartic to get on a microphone and to, this is a selfish part of me. Part of the reason why I do this, because it's for me. It's, you know, I definitely want to help people, but it's also for me. It's very strange we talk about this all the time. We'd be lying to not admit that. I mean, for sure it is. It's been, I mean, we've also shared too. And God, the two and a half, three years, there's been more personal growth from each of us individually than probably the previous 30 before that, because of the people that you're getting to communicate with and just their minds are amazing. And it's amazing to sit in, sit like this. And this is what one of the things too, that we just kind of, we naturally went this direction, you know, we were trying to figure out, we had no desire really to podcast, no one had any experience that direction. And we're like, okay, well, how do we do this? And how do we do it well to where people actually want to tune in and listen? And I think the whole conversation, and we tried at the very beginning, like, preparing for interviews and having these questions that were all formulaic, and that, you know, we wanted to make sure we get out. And they just, they sucked. I really thought they were really weak. And once we kind of, once we got rid of that and just said, you know what, when we, when we meet somebody, we're just going to meet them just like we would if we were talking to them in our living room and getting to know them and the questions that I would ask in the order that I had asked them and like it's normal dialogue, it turned everything. And then after that, the connection that you start to really make with all those people, it's on a different level. And man, the amount of information we've had to absorb over the last couple of years. Yeah. Oh, I can't, yeah. My your own personal education, just bring all these bright minds in and being able to talk to them. And they get to a level where it's more of a conversation, which is easily digestible that way. Like I just, I tend to really respond better to that instead of even just being in a seminar kind of situation. Like it's so, so good to get all those like little details and get the rapport back and forth. So you can really pick their brain to a level where you can't do it when you're in a class setting. So have you found that you've grown, since you started your podcasting, that you've grown faster as a result of it? Like, like grown faster in which way? Just grown faster. You're talking about my dick, right? He always does. Not again. No grown just, and anyway, personally, you know, uh, really? Oh man, huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you guys, what's just to be clever, what's the second thing that comes to mind of the most impactful thing of having these conversations? The second most? The second most important thing just comes with like, whatever the first thing is, let that go. Go to the next thing. What's the next thing that comes to your mind? Um, it's okay. Uh, I, it hones my conversational skills. Yeah. Because you're doing it, you're sitting down, we're talking, we're supposed to. And you know what I found? That's interesting. That's, that is the second thing that pops up in my mind. When I go to part, I was, I've always had no problem talking to people, but now like my charisma level is through the roof. Like I can go to a party and just talk to people so much better. I don't know, except like we're practicing all the time. Do you know what I'm saying? I would shoot it out there easier. I would say it's increased my integrity. Uh, I think, I think, uh, being forced to listen to yourself on a radio and putting yourself out there all the time really makes me check my own words and my message and my life and who I am and who I, how I present myself. Um, so yeah, I think that's been for sure. Yeah. I think it's the way that like it's exposed the way that I think, like I can understand how I think about things and, and, uh, that's what you think you know, you know, your process, but, uh, when you're kind of in this situation, you start to learn even more about the way that you operate. And it's kind of, it trips me out because, you know, I, I, out of the group on the heart, like it's hardest for me to express what's inside my head, you know, like I'm just not a big conversational list. So this was like a big leap for me in a growth period for me. And, uh, I've, I've definitely, that would have been the first thing I would have said was like, Oh God, you know, like I just learned so much about how to express myself, but really it's also about the way I think, like I'm understanding myself on a diff, on a, like a new level. So that's pretty cool. Go ahead. You looked into neurolinguistic programming at all, Justin. Whoa, no, but I will. There's a good book in LP. Yeah. That's a big Tony Robbins thing too, right? Yeah. So that's, that's the origination of Tony Robbins. Now he's got his own, whatever he calls it, but just noticing language. You guys are buddies with Mike Bledsoe as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's, he's a good buddy of mine. And he, he turned me on to this. Oh darn, I don't remember what it's called. So we'll just stick with the NLP, but some other kind of like version of NLP, but just the power of our words, you know, and so when we say things like, I'm not a good conversationalist, to me, that's a very, you know, you're reaffirming that like, okay, cool. So let's just play small and keep myself in this box. I'm not a good conversationalist. And it's just something to tinker with. And in general is to kind of be aware of how we classify ourselves. And you know, we, the simple, simple, and you can take the chelivus and you know, whatever, but the simple little thing of like, I'm working on my conversational skills. To me, I feel that like in my body, that feels, when I say I'm not a thing versus I'm working on a thing. So like, it's true. But I've already, like, I've thought to myself, like, I'm getting better every time. Like that's how I perceive it more as like, I want to recognize problematic or like weaknesses. And then I want to like, like, for me, it's accountability more than anything is to express that like, hey, you know, this is challenging for me or, but yeah, like you said, like words, as far as like the way that I would describe that, yeah, I could change that and not, not put myself back in that box. It's the box. Get out of the box. So instead of saying like, I, I stuck at painting. Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm working on my painting. I'm working on it. It always puts you, because now, what if you go on the other, what if you go on the other end and you're just like, yeah, I'm a fucking badass artist? Like, what if you just go delusional? So I think it's, you're not that good. Damn it. My method doesn't work. But I think, but I think there is something to, you know, so the secret is partly bullshit. Partly there's some good information there. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say, can you guys hear me roll my eyes? Hear me now. Hear me now. Hear me now. Hear me now. I don't have any connection with like the universe and whatever. Maybe so, maybe not. I'm indifferent on it, right? But I think that the value of preparing yourself mentally for the, you know, the human being that you want to become, you know, what that does, if you reaffirm those statements, you write it down on the wall, you change your language. When you're in that situation where the boss man or the podcast man or whoever man that could, or woman that could potentially like give you the keys to the castle, you've been preparing yourself for the last five years, three years, 10 years to, from an NLP perspective or from like your own consciousness perspective to be like, I'm the man, I'm showing up for this. Whereas if you're always in that place of like, I'm not the man, but it would be cool. You will never be trusted. No one's ever going to give you the keys. Well, people need to also understand when you, when you're talking about this, this is a very important part because I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. Uh, all joking aside, but there's a piece of it that I didn't really understand until much later. And that is that that's the programming part. That's the part that you need to practice it like anything else. Like in other words, if I'm, um, you know, if I'm super, it's the first level of becoming a real Jedi. That's what that is. That's the first level that you, the next level is you don't get to do none of that bullshit because you're 100% comfortable with who you are, where you're at in your life and you're 100% honest with yourself. That's why it's said like the integrity that the show makes you elevate, it's just on another level because of that, because you're constantly having to reach, recheck yourself on, on your own words, you know, like, is that, is that really what I believe? And how does that make me feel when I hear that? How weird is it to hear yourself on a podcast and then, you know, or whatever you're here, you're listening to yourself talk and you're making this passionate point or whatever. And you hear it and you're like, geez, I sound like a fucking idiot or, or do I can't believe that come from. Like now I know why people think maybe this, when I say that, because it does sound like that. Like, how weird is that? Has ever happened to you? Were you listening to yourself? I think the first, literally the whole entire first year of episodes online, I really don't want anyone to listen to. I have, I mean, you guys have like seen like the lineup of people that have my show, like everyone's fucking brilliant, you know, and I'm just like the first year there was this feeling of, of me, I can witness in listening to myself this feeling of wanting to assert myself and let the world know that I'm really smart. And so what that ends up doing is creating more of like a dis or like an ingenuine version of myself, you know, and I'm like packing facts and packing like points and just talking way too much. That was the biggest thing. Now it's like, ask the right questions and implement with ideas when it will help the conversation. Period. Did you ever, did you ever stress awareness? Did you ever stress out about thinking like, Oh man, 2000 people heard me say that the other day or all these people are here and what, you know, you ever stress out over that? That bothered me a lot in the beginning. Yeah, not really. Honestly, that wasn't such a, such a huge thing. Yeah, I have a big mouth. So sometimes I say things and like, wow, yeah, I can't believe I said that. Yeah. No, it's, to me, it's not even so much that, that, you know, you know, 2000 or more than 2000 people were listening. It's, it's, it's more that anybody was listening, that that image was captured and it's still there. Whether it was a million or whether it was whatever, it was just like, Oh man, maybe if it was, you know, a million people listening, that might have been worse. But yeah, it was just the fact that, and then at the same time, not beating myself up and really being able to lean into, lean into the, you know, the, the problems that you have, you know, and saying like, Oh cool, this is all just options or moments for me to pivot a little bit. And if I never had that feedback, the real issue is people that don't have the feedback. Right. So if you're not making mistakes, then you don't know how to course correct. Right. So if you're a person that's staying within that box, like we were talking about before, then you may never, you might feel okay for a while. I think eventually you'd probably be depressed, but you never had, you never bumped into walls to change your direction. You know, when you, when did you make the switch from lifting weights like a bodybuilder and into more of what you know now or understand now about exercise? Cause I remember distinctly how that happened for me. And we've talked about this many times on our, on our show. Uh, at some point, I imagine there was probably something that happened where you're like, but surfing and massage school were both kind of, you know, so I was living in Hawaii and I was going to massage school. And so if you're getting, you know, I think it was like 700 hours or so of just thinking about touching the body and being touched and, you know, not in a creepy way, but you're just spending a lot of time just laying and people digging into your hips and digging, you know, it's like, there's a certain type of somatic sensory awareness, you know, something that happens that it's just, it's hard to explain without just being rubbed for 400 hours. You know, and then combining that with martial arts. I really got, I got into jiu-jitsu and then surfing and then Muay Thai and me being, you know, having more grace on a surfboard or like doing a guillotine with somebody became more valuable than bicep curls. So then you got more into the movement, mobility and function side of it all and didn't really care so much about the aesthetic or was it still a motivation for you? I broke myself, dude. I was like, I dislocated both my shoulders. I've dislocated both my shoulders more times than I can count. I haven't done it for- And hockey? That was the first one. When you were playing hockey? Yeah, I played center and I was like, I went, there was a guy that was smaller than me. And so I went and I was just like, this is convenient. I'll just pick his leg up and kind of hip into him and just I'll kick the puck back to my, my defensemen, no big deal. And so I did that like a big strong man and then all of a sudden my shoulders like completely drops out. And what happened there is my shoulder was, I was so built because I was insecure about my pecs. I want a bigger pecs like just like a lot of guys maybe in that situation. And so I built up the glamour muscles so much that I got so short in the front that it and then disengage in the back that I was kind of the head of my humerus is kind of sitting on the precipice of that, that glenohumeral fossa, right? So it's just sitting on the edge there waiting for- And just enough force and it comes right out. Yeah. And then once that happens, not only do you loosen up the tendons and ligaments around that, the joint caps all about, but you're also dealing with the tidal wave of the previous patterns that you've been wrapped up in, right? So you can't just say, okay, cool, we'll go in there and do some rotator cuff exercise. You'll be good to go. That's bullshit, right? You need to look at where's the origination of this all the way down into your feet, right? So if you can organize from your feet to your knee to your pelvis up through your, you know, your axial skeleton in relation to your shoulder girdle in your hands and your head, okay, now we have a closed circuit. But until you have open flappers in your body, right? You have great pecs or abs or whatever, but you have, you know, your foot's pronated and your knees dumped and your glutes are disengaged. It doesn't matter yet, right? You're stepping in the road maybe, but until we're thinking close the circuit, it's you, we haven't gotten started yet. Now how do you communicate that to clients who are like, I just want to lose 20 pounds? I mean, that's the reality, right? I mean, that's the reality, you know, because, I mean, I used to get stuck in that same exact situation. I, you know, explaining, I would explain things like what you're talking about to clients, but I had, I found myself having to be very careful with how I sold it to them because you are, I had to sell it to them. I had to sell them what I'm going to do with them because it was different than what they thought. Like they're thinking, beat me up. I want to sweat, run me. I need to lose weight. And I'm trying to do correctional movement with them, myofascial release, you know, tension positions and stuff like that. And so I had to like sell it to them and be very careful with how I worded it because early on, I just blew people out of the water. I got to give them everything. And I thought I had to educate the fuck out of them and they just wouldn't, it would just, none of it would sink in. And so I found myself going really slow. Did you find, have you found yourself going in that? For sure. And then I said, like, screw that. You know, now it's more, and sometimes I'll still do that for sure, but I think there's also a certain degree of like, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink kind of thing. It's like, maybe those aren't your clients. Like maybe you're not ready for it. They're not ready for you. Yeah. You're in a different end of the spectrum. It's not a better end. It's not a worse end. It's just a different end. Right. And so if someone comes into your door, this is relation to, you know, relationships, this is businesses, just because you're going to make, you know, like, oh, I really need that $15 an hour or whatever. It's like, maybe you, you know, beating yourself up and hating your life about this stupid job that you have or what, you know, whatever the analogy is, maybe that's the universe or yourself, your nervous system telling you, you're doing the wrong thing. You know, so I think that if we do close windows, sometimes other windows open up. Yeah. I, you know, I've thought that many times I thought to myself like, well, maybe these aren't the clients I should be working with. And then the thought, you know, comes through my mind that, well, if I'm really just looking for growth-minded people, because that's what it is, right? If they're growth-minded, then I can sit down and explain these things. And it's, it's no problem. But the growth-minded people are the ones that need my help the least is what would go through my head. Like this is a growth-minded individual. They're going to do a lot better off. And this person over here, who I have to really navigate how I communicate to them, because without me, you know, using my ability to communicate and take them through these things, it's never going to happen. And so that was always a tug of war with me. Well, this was my, this was, you know, our, I think we could say all of our assessment of our experience with Paul Check. Paul Check's a good example of this. I think he's, we all agree he's probably one of the most brilliant men that we've ever met in our lives. Just as his understanding of the human body is on a whole another level than many, many other PhDs that we've met in his field. He's just a brilliant, brilliant man. But the way he communicates his message, it's only received by those that are open-minded enough to receive that message. And let me tell you, it's, you've got to have, you've got to have, you will have had to have made a major trek before you can get to even that point. And so you have to ask yourself, and when you look at it either one as a business or two, you know, can I be helping more people is, you know, how do I, how do I convey this message that I know I want to lead these people? But if I genuinely ask myself, like, at least I know this for me, if I asked myself, would the 22 year old version listen to me now? And he probably wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and really we have to be, we also have to define open-mindedness because it doesn't necessarily mean better. It's just different. And here's what I mean by that. Like people listening were like, well, I hear, you know, we'll use Paul check, an example. I heard Paul check and he sounds, you know, who, who, and it's not because I'm not open-minded. It's because the dude makes no sense. Here's, here's where the open-mindedness comes into play. When you hear, I'll give a great example. When I first had an acupuncturist rent space for my facility, I had zero belief of acupuncture. I had no, like, to me it was like, it's doesn't work. It's whatever. And I was very much in the Western medicine side of things. However, I respected it enough to know that people liked it and that it worked for a lot of people. It was non-surgical, non-medicinal. And if some people thought it worked for them, then it did. And that was all fine. So I was open-minded, open-minded enough to do that. And when the person came in and then I had this acupuncturist work with me, explained to me, because I used to sit down and literally have these discussions with this acupuncturist, these debates where she would talk about, you know, the energy, the chi flowing through the body and there's blockages and chi and I'm just opening up chi and I'm literally preventing my eyes from rolling while she's talking to me. Cause I'm like, I don't want to hear about your magical, yeah, I don't want to hear about your mystical, magical spirit stuff. Like if you can't explain to me what's happened to the body, then whatever. But then I started to open my mind a little bit. What I mean by that was I didn't start believing in chi. That, that didn't matter, right? Whether I believed in chi or not. What I started to do is started to use my language to understand a potential truth. And acupuncture has been around for thousands of years. It's been used for long periods of time. And many, many, many, many, many people say it works. And there's studies that demonstrate that for certain things, for sure it's proven to work, which is why insurance will now even cover acupuncture. So I tried to be open-minded enough to explain how it worked through my understanding of the body. So I just changed the language a little bit. And so I started thinking, Hey, look, referred pain is a real thing. You know, people will feel a heart attack in their arms sometime, or they'll feel organ pain in another part of their body. And it definitely correlates to that organ. In fact, you can go to the doctor. And if you feel pain over here, one of the first things I'll do is check this organ over there. So maybe it has more to do with the nervous system. And you're changing the signaling so that it disrupts the pain signal or so that it changes the information that you're receiving from the nervous system to make you feel happy or not anxious or whatever. This is how analgesic work, the topical analgesics. When you put, you know, menthol or eucalyptus oil on your head because you have a headache, for example, it doesn't take away the headache because it cures the headache. It is literally disrupting the signal. You're picking up this cold sensation on your head. Your brain gets confused with the signal. And this is, by the way, I'm explaining it through Western, uh, you know, Western, you know, medicine, uh, explanation. And so your brain stops perceiving the pain. So you just don't perceive the pain anymore or you perceive it differently. So when I was open, when I opened my mind enough to hear what they're saying, look at some of the evidence in terms of people who actually say the same thing and then try to explain it with my language. I found that I learned quite a bit, absolutely quite a bit. And so those are the people I think that do best. But like Adam was saying, oh, they don't nap. They don't typically need our help. It's the other people that need our help. Like, how do we get to them? I want to, I want to retract my previous statement of that, that I say, you know, screw them or whatever. I don't know what I said, but, um, what I found actually is there's a really small percentage of people that I haven't been able to get to, you know, the people that, that aren't interested in doing the things that, like the, you know, the remedies or whatever, like the exercises or what, like everything that I'm saying to them, if it doesn't make sense to you immediately, it's, it's my bad. I'm not saying it correctly to be able to communicate to you. You know, so I would look at those people and there is sometimes where people, oftentimes if they just have like, you know, buco dollars or whatever, and they're just like, I just fixed me. And it was like, they don't, they don't really care about the session. That might be a moment or if like the, it's like a kid and the parents are paying to have them there. They're just not invested. That's those, when I said, when I said screw that noise, that's what I mean. The people that don't really care to be there, I'm like, well, there's, this is stupid, right? But I think that even like, you know, with the acupuncturist, whatever, how many times has she explained Chi and is opposed to doing research on how we can start creating more creative analogies to how to communicate to you or someone else, she just keeps saying Chi. I think that's the fault of the acupuncturist. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a good point. And which is why I think communication skills for any health practitioner are as important as your knowledge of your craft. I don't care if you're a Western medicine doctor, a surgeon, a chiropractor, massage therapist, personal trainer, if you're in a field where you're trying to teach someone practices to help their body or trying to treat someone, if you, the only way it's going to really work is if there's buy-in. If that person doesn't buy in and do it, unless you plan on living with that individual forever and forcing them to do what you're showing them, which might have some benefit, but doesn't have the full benefit still, then you need to get buy in. And I 100% will tell you that as a trainer, I was far more effective than trainers who are 10 times better than I was, like trainers who were just knowledgeable and knew what to do when, at the right times, but they just didn't get buy-in because they weren't able to communicate very well. And so I'd ask them what I need to do with my clients and then I'd come over and I'd communicate it and I'd get buy-in. And I feel like that's a lot of ego, right? I feel like that's ego getting in the way because you, sometimes these people that I think have these really great messages are so concerned about themselves and their messages and the people that are actually receiving the message and being able to convey that, right? Yeah. Like you have to know this the way I know it or you have to believe in Chiefers. Or even more, like insecurities. Like I have an insecurity of being how smart I am. So I care about the words that I'm saying that they're so fucking, makes me sound so smart so that the people that are listening go like, wow, they're so impressed, but then they can't even freaking digest that and figure out what that means. I think that was something that we all kind of had in common when we were first coming up was understanding that the people in front of you, they just like yourself. This has been a journey for all of us, right? It's been a long one too. I mean, we've been in the fitness industry for almost 20 years now. So that's a long time to be doing what we're doing. And it's been a growth process for me. So for me to not think that there's going to be a major growth process for my clients that didn't have a desire to learn about kinesiology. They didn't have a desire to learn. They don't care. They just want to lose weight or be healthier. Or their doctors told them, you're going to die if you don't fix this. So that's kind of what we get. And I think that was a lot about Mind Pump when we first started that was we agreed that we were going to try and not speak to just one niche group like that is ready for this like top notch information like that is just like cutting edge everything. It's like dude, there's so many people out there that just there's the basics they're missing because nobody's communicating it well. And there's so much white noise out there with the advertising and marketing and all the supplement companies and all the bullshit out there. Well, meanwhile, trying to still, you know, gather all that awesome knowledge and information at a really high level. But now we're trying to communicate that same message and repurpose it and rebrand it in a way where you know, they can digest it better and they can understand with us. And I think that you know, that that part of our evolution has you know, has been critical for us to be able to kind of get to that level where okay, you guys understand this concept and then now how can we present this and put it into a program where even now, like your average gym person that just is going in but is clueless, you know, because all they all they're getting right now is stuff from like men's fitness and health and all this kind of stuff. So, you know, there's nothing there's no sort of like a bridge between that and like, you know, these these professionals that have been in these various fields for, you know, all these years and then they're doing great work, but it's like they're not going to get exposed to those people, you know, how do we bring them in? Yeah, there's a there's a Chinese proverb, I think, and then this isn't exactly how it goes. But the idea of it paraphrasing is trust those that ask questions and run from those that have answers, you know, and so or maybe have all the answers, you know, and so I think that upon entering the reason that anyone would pay, you know, any of you guys or me or whatever, any amount to achieve their goals is probably because we've achieved them in some sense or we're on the path, you know, our ladders on the right building and we're going up and are like, come on, this is the where you put your ladder, you know, and so I think that people that are raving about how, you know, like this is this is the only thing and this is right and it's very dogmatic. Oftentimes, I think those are the people that are insecure, like you guys are saying, you know, but if you're the person is like, you know what, this shit is just working. If you want in, come on over. If not, it's totally fine. There's nothing like watching that true transformation. I don't mean physical transformation either because I seen that so many times where people lose weight and, you know, look different and look better or whatever. It's actually pretty easy, but I'm talking about the real transformation where they start to think and act differently. And, you know, I've had clients that I've trained for years before that happened. I mean, I remember I was a gentleman I trained for three years had really, really bad food relationship issues and wanted to lose weight the entire time. And, you know, I was again very supportive and educational and, you know, I knew that it was going to take a long process. So I was very, very patient and I'll never forget like within like after like three years of training without prompt, without like, this is the diet is what you're going to do. Dude lost 35 pounds. Then I trained him another six years after that and never, he never gained it back. And it was just like, it just finally, all the switches went off and he just did it on his own. And it's like, I love, absolutely love seeing that. And I haven't trained him now for a while. And I talked to him all the time. And this is like, this is what he does now. Like he, it's not a problem anymore. I think of people as being different supplements or medicine, right? So every person that you're around, if you're feeling a certain way, then, you know, maybe I need vitamin Mary, maybe I need vitamin sal, maybe I need, you know, it's not always going to go with your state to be with that person, you know, but you can Alan Watts philosopher, dead philosopher guy said that the best therapy is just being around therapeutic people, right? You don't need to study, you know, cerebro, whatever, like you just, by being a therapeutic person, right? And you're being grounded and you're drinking good water and you have a good outlook on the world or whatever, just being around that person, that's therapy. You know, it doesn't always need to be like this panacea cure thing. Like it's recognizing like, who do I want to surround myself with? Who do you like to surround yourself with? You guys. Oh, cool. Yeah. You know, people, people like you, you know, so, so the people that I surround myself with mainly since moving to Santa Monica specifically are entrepreneurial type folks, people that think that they can change the world and they have the plan for it. People that are, they have to move. I shouldn't say they have to. It would be hard for me to it be attracted to a woman with, if she doesn't move well, right? And so I see that not just in a sense of like, you know, not give her hips don't swivel the right way. Yeah. It's not, it's no, so it's not, it's not just the same way. Yeah. No, seriously, I think that's, we're picking up on these subconscious cues from each other all the time. Oh, dude, I've said a million times on this show that my biggest turn on is watching a female mechanically squat like, like, really well is like a huge turn on. In order to do that real, real pretty, you know, she can move really, really well. Like that to me is like a major turn on. But did you know that they actually, this is for reals again, you can control yourself. You can look this up, but they can actually predict, they can actually predict how easily a woman can achieve orgasm by how her hips swivel and move while she walks. And I believe the more the movement, the more orgasmic she is. There's this, there's a very strong correlation. Well, that makes mechanical sense, of course. So you, so you hang out with entrepreneurs, people who are also into ladies at move will pretty much mover related people. So I hang out this place called the green in Santa Monica. I might be familiar with, which is just like all the freaks come and it's, it's old, it's old muscle beats. Do you fit in? I fit right in. So I spent a lot of time there and people are, you know, picking people up over each other's heads and people are doing flips and turns. And then there's these rings that people travel across. And you're like, yeah. And it's slack lines and just like all this is fucking rad. It's rad. It's a really, really. Is it just a public public gym? It's Santa Monica Beach, right? Santa Monica Beach. Yeah, you've seen it. I know you've seen it. Yeah. You know, go on to Venice Beach. Go to, go to, uh, no, that's different. That's all. That's muscle beats. Yeah. And then muscle beats is, is, is okay. It's a little, I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, old muscle beats. That's where it's at. That's where Brennan Abendezio lives. Oh, okay. Yeah. He's got his places right down there. And you always see him doing stuff. Have you seen him do stuff on the bars? So you just go out there and chill a lot with those people? Yeah. I mean, you can see my, my Instagram, that's like pretty much 90% of the photos are just on old muscle beach. This is, this is what's happening. I got to troll you. Isn't that funny that we stop, people stop playing as they become adults? That's what you're doing basically. Yeah. It's really no different. And here's, here's what's funny. When you're, when you're an adult, people are like, man, you're so, you're so disciplined. You're exercising all the time. When you're a kid, you're just fucking playing. Oh yeah. You know what I'm saying? So now like we stop doing that. Yeah. That sucks. That's the highest, in my opinion, one of the highest indications, maybe the highest indication of creativity. You know, I, once again, maybe you guys agree, maybe not, but I feel like I can, I can already tell the way someone's going to communicate. I can already tell the way that they're going to think to a certain degree by watching them walk, right? And you know, so if a person kind of has this hunchy, dumpy, kind of, you know, collapsed type posture and movement pattern, I bet you that's going to tell a lot about their personality. So were you able to predict us pretty well? Because you saw us walk and now that you're listening to us and we're all hanging out, were you like, definitely, we're all looking for reeds. I think you guys fit. Yeah. I think so. So I must have like a sexy walk or something. It's very, very stiff. It's a very stiff walk. But you know that. I mean, you can, so look at like, look at like a traditional, like new agey hippie person and they got patch pants and dreadlocks or whatever. And, you know, they're super fluid, super open, do lots of yoga, right? But they're never show up on time, right? You know, and so that never show up on time component is instability in their feet and their knees and their shoulder girdle, right? So if you find someone, they'll have to say, okay, now let's go to an Olympic lifter, right? And he's, you know, he's whatever, he's Russian, very like, very linear with the program and very stacked organized everything on time. But Olympic lifting is the only thing that matters. Kettlebells is the only thing that matters, right? So that's a very non fluid, has a lot of integrity with where they're at, but they're not fluid. They're not willing to bridge outside of that. Interesting. And then everything in between. What else? Yeah, go in the middle. Yeah, I tell, this is cool. Yeah. You're like a palm reader. You know what, you know, it's funny. So you are already in Santa Monica. You can be a fucking, you can be rich doing it. You open up a shop and you tell people, I'll tell you seven walk down and back to like, you know, 20 yards, I'm a body reader and I'll tell you your future or whatever. And basically you're just telling them about themselves, which is what you hit on people. Your body's a wonder. I feel like you're tense and they're like, Oh my God, how did you know? Yeah, you have good orgasmic ability. I'm in the process of doing a cause so part of like my entrepreneur friends that kind of are like telling me what I'm supposed to do with my, you know, my business and all that stuff. One of the things that I'm going to do actually is come up with exactly that, you know, so being able to read your body type, how that relates to your personality and come up with like three or four different kind of archetypes that we fit into. See, that's like so viral. If you did that and you posted a meme on Facebook, everybody, everybody loves that. Like what your feet tell you about your personality. What kind of finger tips? I'm aggressive and yellow. What's your favorite color tells you about yourself? You know what I'm saying? But you're saying you think that there's an actual legit, like this is a science. Should be studied. Some of it. It is a science and it is. So I definitely, I don't know if I necessarily, and this is great because we can disagree, right? And have good discussion. I don't necessarily fully agree with what you're saying, but I definitely agree with some of what you're saying because for sure, you can see pretty outward expressions of things like depression, anger, joy, happiness, contentment through pride, for example, like through body positioning. We've all seen that. Do a lot by posture. Yeah. You see that like that 13, 14 year old kid with the freaking, you know, the emo haircut and it's covering their face and they're wearing dark clothes. Obviously there's some angst going on there, right? And then there's this universal like you win a race or you win money or you did something amazing. I feel like all the in between is what's going to be so difficult. That's what I'm saying. I don't know if you could go that far and be like, well, I can tell that you had bad breakfast this morning and your wife is not having enough. But the fact that you can see polarized ends of the spectrum, that's the case with anything. Yeah, that helps already. So you just see, so okay, the fact that we see polarized ends of the spectrum mean that there is a midsection. It's just not as obvious to see. It's very, very similar. But if you start watching it and you start paying attention, all of a sudden it brings you in a little bit of the depth of the spectrum that you can see because you're paying attention, right? If you put language to it, you put awareness to it, all of a sudden maybe you might see people that kind of get closer to that middle. If you're always just completely unaware and that's hooey and nonsense, you're probably a pretty insensitive. Now that sounds like a really cool thing you could do at a bar. You know what I mean? Always, yeah, of course. Like you want to talk to a girl, you go up to her and you're like, hey, why are you feeling like this right now? She's like, holy shit, how did you know? Your dad loves you. What is it? Oh, no. What's a good poker player? That's all it is. A good poker player is reading people's minds. Dude, why don't you play poker? What the fuck? I used to play poker. Were you good? Of course. I think I was fine. I don't know. I used to be really into it when it was younger days. It wasn't like it was a professional thing. Like strip poker. Yeah, I play a lot of strip poker. I have a feeling you don't mind losing. Why did your mind go there? Because bodies. You can read the body in. I know what you're carrying. You lose on purpose, don't you? Oops, I'm naked. When I'm winning, I get to take my clothes off. I do the internship. I do the opposite. So what's really interesting to you right now in the sphere of fitness and wellness that we all work in? I think that the power of play and getting to that point of improvisation with your movement is probably the most fascinating thing for me. And again, the connection between how that affects your emotions, your personality, all that stuff. But even just getting outside of the box of I need to do these specific movement patterns because that's what men's health or fitness or whatever told me to do. And getting to the point of like, I'm really feeling today like a run up the hill with a backpack and then a swim in the cold water and then do some squat stuff and work on my lunge mobility. And then I'm going to go to a dance class and then maybe I'll do martial arts stuff tomorrow morning. Or just you have enough sensitivity in your body to know as opposed to doing a yoga class, you just start to kind of become yoga in the sense that yoga means yoke or union or integration. So if you can continually be thinking about how do I stack up my parts just as I'm sitting here right now, then I think that that creates more momentum than anything else that I've found. So this sounds to me like you're trying to explain or you're explaining what the true definition of what intuitive exercise really is, like that level of awareness where you know what to do. So what we talk about on the show all the time. A little bit, yeah, definitely. I mean, do you follow any type of programming or are you more like I'm going to go in? It feels like parkour would be kind of a good fit, you know, from a lot of what you're describing. But just the creative movement process. But I could see parkour also being sometimes not right for your body, right? It could also be a thing. So I mean, do you do that? Do you check in and say I want to do this because this is what I need right now or do you have a structure? Sometimes I have structure. It depends on what I want, you know, if I want like a front lever on rings then I'm going to have to freaking practice front levers are going to suck, right? You know, so there are certain things, but you can get to the point. I think if you can become fascinated enough with your just the feeling of challenging yourself or the feeling of having a body moving, you know, which is why I think things like ayahuasca or, you know, psychoactive stuff is kind of cool in a sense for depending upon the person because sometimes it changes your perspective on what it means to move. Just the fact that we freaking have bodies is unbelievable, right? We could all be quadriplegic right now, you know? And the fact that you have all this wacky movement in your body, it's like explore that thing, you asshole. Come on, man. Touch it. Take it for a ride. Lock yourself in the room. It is crazy when you think about that, you know? I remember the moment where I realized how much I had lost in a short period of time when I couldn't get down and do a pistol squat. Now, my first like five to 10 years as a trainer, I was heavily into mobility and I did all kinds of crazy stuff. And we used to goof around and balance a medicine ball on a bozu ball and do a pistol squat and do just crazy, fun, challenging stuff like all the trainers did in the gym. And I remember kind of transitioning out of that, getting into heavier lifting and then kind of going down to bodybuilding row the road for a while. And then I remember one night, you know, Katrina had mentioned seeing somebody do like some pistol squat thing. And I was like, oh my God, I used to balance them, but I'd do this, that. And I jumped out of bed real quick to like show off. And like it just, I was, the connection wasn't there. And I was like, whoa. Like just because I hadn't, it had been long enough now that I hadn't done that, that I had lost that connection to that range of motion. And I was like, it was this huge like wake up for me like, whoa. And this is what happens to all these people is we get in this daily grind of sitting in your car, driving to work, sit at your desk, you know, maybe get up and go for a walk for a little bit at best. And then you go back in your car, drive back home, sit at your house, have dinner, sit down at your couch, watch TV, and like you do that for years and years and years. And it's like, you just totally shut down like half your body. Like you're not even, you're not even 50 yet. And you've already shut down half of your body. Like, holy fuck. You've turned into the chair. We had this discussion yesterday where, you know, especially in Western societies, most people over the age of 25 can't sit in a squat. Most like I could go outside and randomly pick 50 people. And I bet you maybe one will be able to sit in a squat. And that is a fundamental human movement that we're designed to do. Like that's how we pooped. And that's how we had children. We sat in a squat. And that's how we rested. That's how we got stuff on the ground, you know? That's why it's uncomfortable to get on your knees and do shit or bend over and while your low back hurts. Because the way we used to do it, where we're designed to do it, is to sit in a squat. Yeah. And then the issue with that idea is it puts a lot of people, you know, maybe listening or watching or whatever in a place of like, okay, for me to be normal, I need to squat. So I'm going to start squatting in these horrible, horrible ways, you know? And adding a bunch of load to it. Right. Now I'm going to load it up and I'm going to put it up on Instagram and I'm going to be awesome. You're a hero. It's not sustainable, you know? So if you can get down to these functional, foundational patterns, right? If you can get into those foundational movements, from there you can build, right? But just like any time you're building a house, you need to have that frame to support it on, right? But just going up and doing the handstand or doing the deep squat, doesn't really mean anything, right? It only means something when you achieve union, integration, yoke, yoga, right? I'm not saying, I'm only saying yoga in the sense of like, the literal meaning of the word. I'm not saying yoga classes. No, it would be like taking a child who doesn't know how to walk and then like throwing them on a track, like, run, you know? Right. Like, it's not going to happen. Right. The baby needs to learn how to like drag himself and then crawl and then wobble and hold on to things and it's the whole process. So yeah, if you're listening right now and you can't sit and you can't sit in a squat, don't go try sitting in a squat and don't try going, you know, doing all these heavy squat movements. Like, first learn how to drag yourself across the floor, like practice one leg at a time and, you know, practice, you know, slightly lower depth than you're comfortable with and practice that. But it takes a long time. Get a coach, get a coach. Get someone that's going through the path, get someone that's made the mistakes, get someone that's blown out their knee and their back and all that, you know? And they're like, this is really a lot. They're going to know all the details. You know, this is really what you don't want to do. That's a good point. You know, so someone that has that rough road, like Joe Campbell said something like, you know, you need to go into the fire to pull out the treasure. You know, again, that's paraphrase, not exactly that. But someone that's experienced some fire and now they're doing all right, those are the ones that I give the most credit. Yeah. Right? Someone that's just always, everything's just always been already. They might not know how to explain it. You know, sometimes when I do interviews with like serious high level athletes, they don't really have anything to say. Oh, yeah. They're boring as hell. It's like, well, I just kind of like, you know, do it my whole life. And I'm awesome. Well, you know, it's crazy, though. Do you know that with, you know, if you actually do train a lot of athletes, you know that it's, they're some of the most dysfunctional. They're just so genetically gifted that they've learned to use their body, unleverage, you know, despite it, you know, and still optimize their compensating. Yeah. They're actually, they can, they can compensate better than any, that's why they're so good at what they do. Have you ever seen, like you want to talk about dysfunction? And you, I'll tell you what, pause this podcast and Google pro basketball players feet. Just look at the feet of pro basketball players. They are the most messed up looking feet, dysfunctional looking feet you've ever seen in your life. Now, this isn't because they play basketball. It wasn't the basketball that caused this. It's because these are giant human beings who were probably giant children many of which probably couldn't afford to get specially made shoes and they've got these, their feet grew in these tight spaces because all these, these are massive men, right? And so they've got these very dysfunctional feet yet they run and jump and do all these incredible movements what looks like amazing, right? Incredible compensators. Horrible dysfunction. Which why most of them end up having hip surgery, knee surgery, you know, I mean, they always are pretty much messed up, guaranteed to be messed up. It's wild to see that. And when you think about it with sports too, you do this, I mean, God, to be elite, you had to have practiced hundreds and probably thousands of hours to get good at your craft. And it's a repetitive motion that is not normally equal, you know? So you're going to end up definitely building some imbalances and you're going to be really good at those imbalances. So most of them do, they have just a really hard time communicating because they don't fully understand and they think that they're in really good shape. They don't realize how. You ever train a pitcher? You know who's been pitching fires? Oh yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Oh, I mean, they did some archaeologists discovered this like Roman burial ground for soldiers. I think somewhere in England. Rough the long bow. Yeah, and these were the, what they found were long bowmen, you know? And these were specialized, you know, artillerymen if you will, who use these extremely heavy and tight bows to shoot these long arrows. It's like the size of their whole body. It was devastating military technology at the time because it shot at such large distances, but it required something like 150 pounds to pull this bow all the way back. So these men were trained as children and the reason why they knew that they were long bowmen was their spines were twisted and formed. They had a very thick, you know, right arm bow. Overly developed, yeah. Overly their scapula was shaped a different way because their bodies literally turned into this movement and that's how they knew and that's what happened. The same thing came up since the introduction of a porn tube. You view pornography in relation to that, not as a joke. I'm like, what? I needed the hand gesture. Well, I was like, I'm pretty sure we know all these studies. I didn't do the hand gesture. I don't remember that one. I should have done the hand gesture. 10,000 years ago. They'll be quicker next time. 10,000 years ago, they'll be like, this looks like a 16-year-old boy. Oh my God. He was in his room. How do you know? Look at the size of the digits on his right hand. Huge. That's incredible density of those bones there. Yeah, he lost all his hair. Excellent. Well, hey man, thanks for coming down and talking to us. Yeah, dude, what a good time for sure. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maths anabolic, maths performance, and maths aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.