 For me, the emphasis has got to be on experience because experience is the language of the body. If you want to speak to somebody's body, you have to give them an experience that's relevant to them. It's one thing to have knowledge and a cognitive information flow. That's one thing and that's helpful, but experience is what really speaks to the body. But we've got to put that experience in context. And for me, we live in the age of the hockey stick. And this is a big picture context view. This is the graph that we see so much of now in the modern world. This is the graph, the shape of the graph of the population explosion, of climate change, of habitat destruction, of freshwater depletion, of species extinctions. All of these things follow this same curve, this same graph. And now we're living today right here at the start of the blade of the hockey stick. And what I'm curious about is what kind of effect that has on people. Because we're facing radical uncertainty in the future, in the near future, in the present even. And that plays out in our psychology of course, but also in our bodies. Whoops, that's not where I want to be. Can you help me? Let's go to play. And of course the news, this has been a horrible summer, right? The news has been uniformly dark. A lot of you will have seen this article in New York Magazine. And just incredibly scary stuff. A lot more people are using the word apocalypse in casual conversation now. It's all over the culture. And what we're looking at right now is a planetary emergency. So I think what we need to do with our professions and our activity, our behaviors, is somehow make what we're doing relevant to this situation. And that includes exercise, that includes movement classes. Oh, the other part of the bad news this summer was Paul Ehrlich's report that came out talking about biological annihilation. I mean, this is the extent of what we're having to deal with right now. This is part of that context. Naomi Klein, if you follow her, you will know she takes a real big picture view here. And she says, if the life support system is threatened, all the other problems fit inside that problem. And again, she's asking us to make ourselves relevant. So what about the state of the animal? What about the condition of our bodies? We've gone from this to this in the blink of an eye. And people are not doing well. These kind of things, these are the icons of the modern age. And we all know about diabetes and obesity. This chair, this is a real consumer product. You can buy that chair online. So the body now has become the canary in the coal mine of the modern world. And unfortunately, we are failing to heed the message. What do we do? Well, we double down on the canary. We come up with all kinds of health and fitness programs to try and fix the canary and make the canary more robust, more resilient. But really, we've got to be looking at the bigger picture. We've got to be looking at the coal mine. It all gets down to mismatch. Our bodies from this ancient time, wild outdoor environments, we are wild animals trying to live in this modern world. So the challenge of mismatch, that's something we deal with every day. Same idea. Evolutionary discordance hypothesis. How can we get our ancient aboriginal bodies to function in the modern world? And this, again, this is where our exercise or movement classes come in. How can we address this? Sebastian Younger, I'll let you read this. I don't need to read it for you. So Sebastian Younger just nails it. And he's not an evolutionary biologist. But he understands mismatching. He understands the problem of the modern world. So what do we need to do to solve this problem of mismatch? Well, we need to reconnect with the world, especially reconnect with our bodies, reconnect with habitat, and reconnect with our tribe. Because all of these connections have been broken by the modern world. So we, as trainers and coaches and therapists, we can try and re-establish these connections. Another way to look at this, I came up with this master list because I read Aldo Leopold. You may know him as a famous environmentalist. And his famous phrase was to save all the cogs and wheels. The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the cogs and wheels. Now, obviously, we've lost a lot of the cogs and wheels. The cogs and wheels being species and habitat. And we've lost a lot of that. So we can't save all the cogs and wheels. The best that we can do right now is to save some of the remaining cogs and wheels. Now, the first cogs and wheels here, this is the domain of conservation biology. And corridors, habitat, that has to be preserved. Practical skills and local knowledge, you have to know what's on the ground in your neighborhood. Health, medicine, and physicality, that's where we come in with our movement classes. Preserve physicality as a gift to the next generation. You can even think of physicality now as kind of an endangered quality of modern humans. And ideas and stories, we can talk more about that later. So these movement classes that I teach fall into this context. When I do a workshop or a training, it's not just the movement classes. We do, typically I have the martial art backgrounds we bow in. And we do 90 minutes or two hours worth of activity. We'll do a solid movement class, a solid meditation. And then we'll do a TED talk, depending on the teachers who are there. Maybe have a guest presenter, that kind of thing. And then we'll do a meal together. And this is very holistic because it's not just go into the gym and get sweaty and then go home. No, this is a complete experience and it hangs together really well. By the end of the hour and a half or two hours, you feel really complete. You feel really integrated. It's a wonderful thing. Now, when it comes to crafting or creating a movement class or movement experience, I always get back to this. I started in the martial arts when I was roughly 20 years old. So it's been over 40 years now. And for me, it was the most powerful educational environment ever. And I've been to a lot of different educational environments. This is the one that worked best. And the reason it works so well is because of embodied cognition. It's a way to bring the mind and body together in a very simple, disciplined fashion. So Sensei tells you, stand here. Sensei says, bow. Sensei says, right leg back. Sensei says, punch. This is a great way to integrate the mind and body together. And I haven't researched to back this up, but if you talk to parents with you, and the story we hear over and over again is, you know, I had my little kid and he had tension problems, problems focusing, problems in school. I took him to the martial arts class. And after six months, he knew how to focus. And that's because of this. Do this one thing. Do this next thing. Do this next thing. Very simple, very sequence, learning how to manage your own body. And that's why martial arts works really well. Most martial art dojos or training halls have a posted list of the rules. And this is actually really important. When you're crafting a movement experience, you want to have a certain amount of discipline. And this unfortunately gets diluted in the modern marketplace. If you've ever hired a marketing professional to work with your program, one of the first things they tell you is make it as easy as possible. Have you ever heard of this? Make it as easy as possible. Make it easy to sign up, easy to pay, easy to come, easy to go. And over time, the experience gets really dilute. People feel like they can come late, they can leave early, they can behave how they want. And after a while, the experience becomes so watered down that it's almost worthless. So there has to be a certain level of discipline and order. And the martial arts are really good for this. Now the other thing you'll want to do as a teacher or a coach is find the right tone, the right spirit for your class and to find the right balance between gravity and levity. Some people drift to one extreme or the other. So we have some people who get really involved in play-based fitness and they're really interested in just as much freedom as possible. And then at the extreme, the class becomes silly and it doesn't work very well. And it's not safe either. At the other end, you have excessive discipline. Too much rigor, too much discipline, and the class becomes no fun. So this is something that over the years of training and teaching people, you'll find the sweet spot. Talking. When you teach a movement class, I think it's important to talk less. I had a sense one time who was riding me all the time. You see, you're talking too much. Show the movement, model the movement, and then say please try. Give people the chance to experience it without a lot of cognitive noise. And this is what you see in Aikido studios all the time. If you haven't trained in Aikido, check a class out. It's really exciting because the sense gets up there, models the movement, here's how it works, and then please try. Then it becomes experiential from there. Another theme that is getting a lot of traction in the exercise world, the movement world, is this idea of functional training. These days everybody claims to be a functional trainer. And sometimes it's just a label, right? But this is the source. This is the place to go to if you really want to understand this. Gary Gray is a physical therapist who, some people call him the father of function. He's the guy who really sussed this out. What he did, he was really interested in diagnosing injuries in a clinical setting, and he set up this compass rose star pattern on the floor in his clinic. And he looked at people's stability in the different planes of motion. So how is your stability in the sagittal plane? How is your stability in the frontal plane? How is your stability in the transverse plane? And that was a very disciplined way of looking at human movement, and it also gives us a place to begin when we create new games and new moves. So check out Gary Gray. Multi-joint, multi-plane, the definition of a functional movement is multi-joint, multi-plane. So if you do a functional exercise, that's not a functional exercise because it's single-joint, single-plane, you really don't move that way in the real world. That's not an athletic move. And the same thing, by the way, for kettlebell swing. It's a multi-joint move, but it's single-plane. So what I advocate for, and what Gary Gray advocates for, multi-joint, multi-plane, a figure is ideal for that, arcs and curves, that kind of thing where you get the hips talking to the shoulders. That's function. Work movements, not muscles. Vern Gambetta is an athletic coach, and when I first heard this phrase from him, I was really excited because, yeah, that's how a dancer would think. Work movements, not muscles. That's how a martial artist would think. Bruce Lee, Baryshnikov, both of these guys really interested in quality movement. They knew something about anatomy, of course, but they weren't interested in working a particular muscle. They were working an arc or an extension or a flexion, whatever it happened to be, work movements, not muscles. This makes sense. And to be honest, I think that our exercise culture has really been derailed by bodybuilding with the focus on muscle rather than movement. The other language thing here is to talk about movement, not exercise. Exercise is a modern invention. Exercise is something that didn't exist in a paleo context. So I'm going to run you through a few of the samples that we have and things that we'll do later today when we actually go outside. I think that's a 240. So I start people with simple swings, simple arm swings. Get some bounce in your body. People come, they've been on the computer all day. They've been in the car all day. Get some swing, get some bounce in your body. Standing backstroke, same idea, turning on the upper back, turning on the breathing. Animal magnetism. This isn't really a strength thing. This is a rapport thing. So you'll set up with your partner, you'll contact at the wrist, designate one person as the coach, the other person as the athlete, and the coach goes to movement. Whatever kind of movement makes sense to that person. And then the athlete's job is to maintain the contact and be magnetized to that person. It's not sweaty, it's not pumpy, but it really gets you sensitized to the movement of another human body. And that's really important. Work in the rapport, building up that trust with another person. Judo hackle. So we hackle one another, we test stability, we do these playful moves where we try to destabilize one another to test that proprioception. But this one puts that together with a stabilizing thing, and so we're on one foot, we're heckling one another, but we're spotting one another as well. So this is a bumpy move, but it's also super fun. Sidewalk dilemma. We'll also do this one later today. This is sort of entry-level martial arts stuff. And it's practical. The idea of a sidewalk dilemma, you're walking down the sidewalk and here comes a stranger, you don't know who that person is and you can't choreograph this movement, but you have to get around them, they have to get around you, so you go left or right and try and make a smooth pass. And we do it, you know, if you live in the city, you do it 100 times a day. But it's also a great way to develop body awareness. It's a great way to develop rapport with other people and to relax in a dynamic situation. So I start people out, I say, just make a pass. You could be front to front, back to front, front to back, it doesn't matter. Go left, go right, make up your mind and make a smooth pass. And then pick up the pace, go a little bit faster, make eye contact, go a little bit faster this time. And then you add the quote or strike. So now one person is coming in, very clean, straight ahead here, everything's the same, you make a nice clean pass. And if you went to the Shaolin Temple, they would make you do this for 10,000 hours and then you would be a master. But we just do it for 10 minutes. Rope adept. So this is another proprioception thing. It's a game that we do where we use the rope, it's like tug of war, except you can let slack go through your hand. So now your goal is to destabilize your partner. Most of our games are non-competitive, this one's totally competitive. The idea here is to destabilize your partner either with a pull or a let go. So you allow the rope to slide, and they're on one foot and you're on one foot and it looks like this and somebody has to fall down and then you start all over again. It's super fun, you rotate through, everybody trains with everybody else and you have a great time. And it's good training because it smartens up your legs, your hips, your knees, your ankles. Forward rolls. Now this is something from the Aikido world and the Judo world and so on. And this is a tricky thing to teach. The idea here is to be able to roll and to maintain this shape here. And the way you do this, for some people it comes right away, other people it takes months. Take a hula hoop, have them hold the hula hoop and say imagine you're holding the hula hoop, tilting the hula hoop and maintaining that arc all the way through. I'm going to try and do this without disrupting my mic. Same idea, right? And you can test this with one another, that's what I've got there on the right, where one person makes the shape, partner comes up, tests the integrity of the ring and then you take that ring and you get down low, tilt it and go. That's how you teach a forward roll and it's really valuable and it's really pretty empowering because once you know how to roll you can have a ton of fun. Hoop pass, so we do a lot with medicine ball and a lot with the hula hoop and this one is really pumpy and super fun. So you've got the hoop master in the middle with the hoop and you start with the pair throwing the medicine ball back and forth and it's all really easy because the hoop masters just stand and they're doing nothing. The hoop master increases the challenge by moving the hoop around and so now people have to run like crazy to get the ball through the hoop and it's super fun and super pumpy. If you want to get people sweaty this is a good way to do it. The other variant on this is a slam dunk through the hula hoop so the hoop master will just turn the thing horizontal hold it up to whatever height works best and off you go. Slam dunk with the medicine ball really pumpy, super fun. Orbits, here's another one that's pretty pumpy and super fun. The coach is in the middle. The athlete circles around the coach which is super easy right. If the coach just stands here no problem just round circle any kid could do that right but now the coach starts to move the coach is just drifting around a little bit so now the athlete is running around the coach and the coach is heckling along the way maybe pushes little touches here and there and then if you really want to get ambitious with this the coach is actually running around the field and taking up a lot of space. Then if you want to get even more fun you can have two or more planets orbit in the sun if you will so now the sun is moving around and you've got two planets going around in both directions super fun. Partner resist, this is a whole world of possibility because as you know you can build strength through inanimate objects you need resistance but the resistance can come from another human body so if I'm working with a partner I can just choose a movement and my partner can provide the resistance by slowing me down and this one is it's easy to see here with the rope because the movement is just this diagonal nice functional movement here using the core and the hips to drive and power the movement so if your partner is doing the complimentary move to you you slow your partner down and now it's your turn you go and your partner is slowing you down you can go fast or slow talk to each other so you modulate the right amount of resistance this is a really unique thing because it's a cooperative contest it's not zero sum it's not win or lose you're providing the right amount of resistance it's really fun and there's a million possibilities more than just this so this time instead of using a rope your partner resists at the shoulder magnetized at the shoulder and I'm going to go that way my partner is slowing me down I'm trying to push and my partner is slowing me down then we go around a corner and now I become the person who's doing the slowing down he's coming at me and I'm slowing that person down and so on so big burn on the legs super fun key I so the word key I harmonize spirit key is the life energy I referring to harmony so I key doh harmonizing spirit the way of doing that and this is a super fun thing to add to your your movement class because it challenges people and it integrates the whole body into one really powerful move now the problem is people are shy you know as Americans we don't grow up we don't do this very often and you go to the dojo and you learn to do it and that's a place where you can do it but I encourage my people to let loose with the key I and it can say any syllable they want so you can say I you can say whatever it is encouraging people to let go and to drive from the heart drive from here that's what it is now again people are going to be shy people are going to be reluctant but if you can get people to do it it's worth it it's very exciting put this practical I mean it feeds a sense of empowerment sense of confidence and you might even need it someday so it's all part of the long body trying to integrate the body into habitat doing these kind of sessions outdoors is ideal do it indoors if you have to you can adapt use whatever terrain you've got use whatever toys and tools you've got be as flexible as you need to be and leave people laughing sweating and inspired by your work and they'll want to come back and do it again so questions go to the mic over there I'm at Central Washington in Leavenworth Washington right now and I do these gigs a couple times a year where we do a three day training and that sort of thing so I've got some trainers that I'm working with and people are learning to deliver this kind of content question here comes a question is it on? it's been crucified for this but have you noticed a difference in training like generation Xers and millennials in terms of the whole discipline piece and freedom versus the levity versus the gravity me personally I couldn't speak to that I don't really know how it breaks down generationally but I'm sure these things tend to come and go in the culture sometimes you know I'm a child of the 60's and back then it was all about freedom and artistry and creativity and personal expression and then the cycle of the pendulum goes the other way so I don't know I don't know what people's appetites really are and it depends now the other thing to know is that this kind of training that I do for people is not really suited for elite athletes if you want to be a common elite athlete you've got to train specifically for the sport that you're involved in this is a different animal and it's different methods for different applications a quick question do you have any strategies for helping people get more comfortable going upside down and using their hands on the floor I have such a hard time getting people to like I have a cup what a background and for me it's so natural but it's really difficult especially in different populations of kids and I don't know if you have any strategies for that so you're talking about on your hands and all the way up not necessarily even just like local motion stuff like just using their hands on the floor in any capacity I have run into this a bazillion times really I mean some communities like this community people are much more willing in a lot of communities I have a hard time integrating that in a way that people aren't really resistant from in the beginning I haven't run into that very much most of my people are already paleo friendly they're happy to put their hands on the ground but it brings to mind this idea that so many people that come to us are physically uneducated and really uncomfortable in their bodies I mean it's epidemic can't answer your question exactly anybody else okay well 240 we're going to meet out on the grass and the idea would be to go outside Cain Hall turn left and go up to the first there's sort of a parkway area yeah in the quad we'll go there and come ready for move we'll have some fun okay thank you thank you