I think many people regard you as The Godfather of natural movement. You had previously said that looking fit and being fit are two different things; they are, and they’re not contradictory. You could be fit and look fit; you could also look fit without really being fit. So you have to understand, or to look at Fitness in a different way than the conventional way, which is mostly looking at, uh, the sort of face of the body, the way the body is shaped, which is legitimate. It’s good to have a good-looking body; it’s a legit expectation. But the way I look at it is, what is it that your body—a body—can do in the real world, in real life, not what it can do in the gym, and then what it looks like as an outcome, as if that outcome was the only thing that really matters, which is again, it’s it’s alleged to want a good-looking body, but at the same time, it’s limiting. What we have a body for originally is to be able to move in nature, in in ways that are adaptable to the to the environment—environment—that sometimes, that’s often changing and sometimes unpredictable. To be able to operate our body in effective ways in the real world.

So an example of that would be firefighters. They need a body that’s functional so that they can save lives. Clearly, the size of the muscles does not matter; the shape of their body does not matter. Are they going to be able to climb up the stairs or the ladder fast? Available to be able to sprint, to lift or carry or drag a body to save a life, to to jump over an obstacle? Those are real-life movements, and those are natural movements—that all the movements they do are natural movements: the skills—jumping, running, lifting, carrying, etc.

So for someone who heard that earlier and was thinking, okay, I understand that for a firefighter, yes, I get it, that’s their job, yes, right, they have to be able to go upstairs, rescue someone, put them over their back, carry them away to safety—what has that got to do with me in my life? Right, right. Yeah, how do you make that relevant for everyone rather than someone whose job depends on it? True. Uh, it is a mindset; it’s you—you want to have the mindset of, hey, I, my desire is to be capable, physically capable in the real world if the need arises. And it starts with some of the simplest movements. What is it to be capable in the real world? Well, can you, for instance, from a standing position, sit down without using your arms? It’s a very simple natural movement—get up, get down. And maybe you try to do that, and you find yourself clumsy, losing balance, feeling stiff, um, and not able to just do that. That’s that’s the simplest level of practical practicality of movement, real-world movement.

Now what happens in more challenging situations? Maybe you do need to run fast one day; you need to jump over an obstacle; you need to do that for yourself to get out of harm, maybe to help someone—a neighbor, a child, your own child, your parent. There are situations of life that are unexpected; they are, and it’s a good idea to prepare yourself physically to be able to, again, operate your body in the most effective way in those situations. And even though such situations may never happen in your life, at least the knowing, the awareness that you could respond properly, effectively, that your body is prepared for these movements, it gives you self-confidence. Self-confidence is very important in life, right? Yeah, if you if you believe—if you know—Well, yeah, if that was to happen, I would be helpless; that’s not really a good feeling to feel that way. It’s good to feel that you’re capable and to know that you’re capable. So how do you know you are? Well, you test yourself. Yeah. Self-confidence is key. Yes. And I think self-confidence in many ways sits behind everything you have been teaching, yeah, and currently teach, whether it’s natural movements or your new projects, the breath-hold work, meditation. I think self-confidence is key, key because for both of those practices you’re not really learning by reading; you’re learning by doing. And so you have what I consider to be the most powerful form of evidence, which is experiential evidence. Yes. Yeah. And I think many of us—and I’ve been guilty of this before as well, so I’m I’m speaking from experience—that nothing nothing builds that inner reliance, that inner confidence better than actually being able to do something and know that you can do it. You mentioned as a as a parent, right? Yes, this is a huge thing for me. You know, my kids are 12 and 10 at the moment, and although I give an example, this isn’t—I don’t think directly connected to your work, but I’m sure you can make a connection. Maybe three years ago or so, I did a swim-run event for the first time. Okay. And I have never ever swum in open water before—no, never swim lengths in a local council pool. Right. I’d never been into the sea. Right. It’s not something my mum and dad took me to do as as a child. You know, they’re Indian immigrants coming to the UK; you know, going to the beach, going to the sea was not part of what they wanted to experience or show their kids. But I’ve always been someone who’s willing to throw myself in at the deep end—like, I’ll try anything. And Vivo Barefoots were running the swim-run events; I really like the guys. I went down; I’d put a wetsuit on for the very first time that morning—ever. I was thinking, wow, this is pretty tight; I don’t know this is what it should be. Everything feels a bit early; everything everything was alien. Right. But here’s the thing: swim-run is a bit of swimming, better running, better swimming, better running, better swimming, better running. It’s an event that originated in Sweden, and the first swim was only 250 meters long—easy distance—normally—normally easy distance—normally. Right. I went in; after about 50 meters, had a panic attack. I was scared; I I couldn’t see the bottom, couldn’t feel the bottom. I was like, oh man, I’m in the ocean; I wasn’t that far from shore, and the whole process—um—it was really scary. Somehow I managed to complete it. I thought if I ever get to dry land again, I’m not getting back in this water. Right. But the reality is, I did get back in. I thought I’ll do the next run and then I’ll see, but my inner desire to not be defeated—man, I did go; I did the 500-meter swim; I did the one-kilometer swim; I did all those things, but it was a struggle. When I completed the event, I felt amazing. Right. Why am I telling you that story? The reason I feel that that story is relevant to what you just said about self-confidence is that I didn’t like that feeling of being helpless in the ocean. I thought, I’m a dad; if I’m ever on holiday, my kids are in the ocean; I can’t do anything because I can’t even manage myself, let alone manage the children. And I’m a—people would regard me as a fit, strong guy. Right. I could go to the gym and work on the mirror muscles, right, and I could look good, but in that moment I was powerless. So what did I do? A few weeks later on holiday, I got some open-water swimming lessons, and now I’m a competent open-water swimmer. I’ve taken my son on a swim-run; we were in Cannes, France—big waves, windy gale conditions—I’m swimming with him, no problem. So why this is relevant to your work, I feel, is that I wouldn’t let it defeat me; it—I felt incapable as a father, and by conquering that fear, by now mastering it—yes, like I’m not going to swim the English Channel, anything like that—but I feel now that if I’m on holiday this summer with my kids, yes, and something happens, exactly, I have no problem; I will go in, yes, and I can save them, yes. And I think many of us don’t have that inner confidence. I believe you have a—what I call it—it’s it’s innately, intuitively, you have uh, what I call physical uh morality; it’s like—um—it’s a part of a a sense of duty that you have to have a baseline of physical capability that applies to the real world, just in case, just in case. You do not want to find yourself helpless, not only to yourself but also to others, and those others being priority—your wife and children, the the most loved individuals to you, the people you love the most. You want to be able to uh protect them, to help them, to rescue them if you have to. And you know that in order to be able to do that, there’s some level of preparation that needs to take place. And you’re not going to be ready for open waters um by just going to the gym. The context is completely different; the change of context is what caused your near panic attack on the first lap. You know how to swim; the distance is nothing; reasonably your reason um assesses that as no problem, but there’s a part of you unconsciously that is unfamiliar with that open-water context; it’s wild, it’s new, and therefore it’s intimidating and it’s scary, and that takes away some of your strength, some of your confidence, and it weakens you, and at the same time it challenges you. And because you have a healthy response to that deep in your psyche, and that’s part of our evolutionary memory—like, that’s when I need to be strong; I must overcome this; a must show strength; a must go to the other side, and only I must go to the other side, but then I must do that again. And you are in the moment where you needed to prove yourself to yourself—to yourself, not to anyone else—to yourself. And here’s the thing, relating to the firemen or the person listening or watching who thinks, yeah, but I’m not a fireman; I don’t need to be able to swim in open water for my job, yeah, but I don’t need to—I don’t live near open water, right, so it’s not relevant in my day-to-day life. But I think what it has given me, and I think that’s what your work gives people, is something that you can’t you can’t quite measure; you can’t go, oh, I can lift um you know 20 kilos now; I can now lift 25 kilos, or if I do this, I’m going to earn this much. This immeasurable inner feeling of reliance I think is what is missing hugely in society; it’s not quantifiable. Yeah. You know, there’s that era or the era of a trend of self-quantification; you want to measure everything; you’ve got variables on your body trackers; um, you go to the gym; you have a program; you have data; you have this and that and evidence-based protocols, this and that. That’s that’s fine; can be useful; it has a place. There is all the immeasurable part of ourselves that is completely left behind in in that approach. And um, what can you quantify? Like speaking about that specific experience of you throwing yourself in that water and so well, then you feel the the cold and it’s dark where you don’t know what’s the bottom, and there are a lot of unknown there, and so now you’re facing your legit legitimate fears, apprehensions—like, what is what is this? How do how do I manage this? Your resiliency, your psychological resiliency to overcome that and to anyways go through it—how do you quantify that? Is is it even worthy of trying to quantify that? It’s completely irrelevant; it’s it’s pure experience; we don’t need data; we don’t need evidence; we don’t need any tracker; we don’t need any quantification of what’s happening in your heart, in your brain, in your body, and all of that—forget about that because the most important is how you perform, not just physically but mentally—how you overcome; that’s what I said, the core of the experience; that’s the beauty of it; that’s the the goal in it. And you don’t want to quantify that; you just want to experience that. It’s a very pure—leave it that way.

When many of us think of movement these days or Fitness, my feeling is that it’s all getting a bit mechanical and a bit protocol-driven. Yeah. And I think we’re missing the humanness, the innate humanness of movement. I wonder where this comes from. I think it comes from uh Sports, from specialization; um, it comes from the expectation of results, and therefore if you have a protocol, you aim at specific results; there are limited results um but they’re quantifiable; there’s a path; everything is like, you know, you follow a route; it’s simple; you don’t have to think too much; just follow the program, and then you can say, hey, I’ve added 50 pounds; I’ve added uh that amount of time and and this and that um and that idea of it has to be the most effective program to get that aspect of my fitness you know higher than what it was um whereas what’s the original human nature you’re talking about is, let’s remember all of us universally when we’re kids—where we did—we need a program—so a fitness program—um—to—did we need to go to the gym and exercise on machines so we could stand up and walk? No. All the uh essential, most fundamental movement patterns, movement abilities, movement skills that we developed, the strength that goes with it that’s necessary, the the coordination, the proprioception, interception—or it’s extremely sophisticated when we look at the science of it—and yet we didn’t need even to know how to speak to be able to speak the language of movement, to learn movement, to explore movement, to play with it, to and to become adaptable. That’s the program; it’s very intuitive. Then we can always become more technical and systematic in specific outcomes, specific aspects of progress that we want, but we want to give ourselves also back that freedom of, I have a body; I want to explore it; it’s—and no, instead of that, sit on that machine and that machine—it’s an exercise machine—is very serious; it’s going to dictate the exact movement pattern that you can do in that machine; your legs can move that way, not that way; your arms can move that way, not that way; you’re going to isolate your body in different body parts; you’re going to work them out isolately; they’re going to be strong individually, but do they know how to work together, and then do they know how to adapt to a variation in the environment where you move? No. It’s only if you practice natural movement that this is going to happen, as long as you place yourself in that environment where it’s mechanical, the machines shape and dictate and therefore restrict your movement, and it’s like work. Yeah, it’s it’s like work. Now you count 10. Why 10? Oh, no, just convention. Do 10, 10 on the left, 10 on the right, or 10 with my legs and 10 with my arms. Today I’ll doing upper body; tomorrow I’m doing lower body. It’s okay; it’s it’s one approach of you know looking at the body, looking at Fitness; um, my my approach is very simple: how should the tiger train to become and stay fit? What’s the program for them? Should we bring them into a gym and say, hey, you’re going to do this for your strength; you’ll acquire power; then you’ll do that for your cardio; add a bit of stretching, and now you’re good to go; we’ll plunk you back in the jungle somewhere so he can hunt animals and and and you know it doesn’t make any sense. Um, but we get that it sounds ridiculous when you say that about—I know a tiger—yes, but many of us don’t see that we as humans are animals as well, and we’re living in a kind of zoo, yes, whereby yes, we do a form of whatever that is, and uh, but anyone with a cat or a dog will know—you know, they’ll stretch their entire body, but since they’re little little ones—little cubs—like baby animals or just like human animals—like the cutest thing on earth—adorable. And what is it that they all want to do universally, whether it’s the baby, the the human baby, the the little tiger uh the little baby pet, whatever whichever whatever species he is—they want to play; they want to move; they try to experiment all kind of things; they roll and they fall and they fail, and that’s why they’re so cute, and then the they repeat a lot; they explore one thing; they’re like, oh, oh, that was fun; that’s new; oh, I repeat a lot and fail and do it again, and and that’s how they learn to master their body, to make it become effective. And when you look at it, it’s a a program; it’s a it’s a drive; it’s a universal drive, and they’re going to have natural movements. What is their natural movement? It’s a it’s a whole scope of natural movements that are specific to their species. So obviously the natural movement of the dolphin is not the natural movement of the eagle, not the natural movement of the giraffe, and the natural movement of the human being—then we don’t need to do back rolls or crab crawls or whatever kangaroo—why? Because we are not these animals; it can be fun to pretend that sometimes that we’re—oh, I’m a wolf; I’m a—all right, I’m a frog—fine. But human beings are very versatile in the way they move; a few few species on Earth can do all the things that humans can do. We can run; we can jump; we can balance; we can move on all fours; we can um climb things; we can lift and carry things; we can throw and catch things; we can um fight; we can go go in the water, swim; we can hold our breath and dive. It’s incredible. And I ask a dolphin to climb up a tree; it’s going to be alien to them. So we have an incredible potential for a wide variety of movement abilities. And remember you’re saying, hey, when I was a kid, I wanted to do all these movements, and what limited you? Society, school, parenting, fear, you know, and the list goes on. Are you the only one? That’s pretty much all of us in our civilized societies. I was lucky that normally I was permitted to do these movements, but I was encouraged to do these movements when I was a kid. I lived—the house was right next to uh uh like a little Fontainebleau, you know, like boulders, hills, woods, and my parents were like, no, no, you’re not watching TV—or in fact, not much to watch on TV back then in the 70s—um—but like, as you go outside and you go play, and they would let me go miles away from home as as long as I was back on time for dinner, yeah, and as long as I’d already done my homework after school, and then I could go play, and I would go climb those boulders and run and up and downhill, moving on all fours. So I’m very lucky that way, but uh that idea of natural movement was—it’s part of you. And if you never got to experience fully that potential for natural movement in your body, if you were limited, if it wasn’t part of your physical education, if the only physical education that you ever received was, okay, learn the to throw the ball that way, and these are the rules of such game, and do by sub scrolls and this like, you know, that’s—it’s extremely incomplete.

Yeah, you mentioned the word versatility. You know, humans are versatile. If we look back and how we’ve evolved, that versatility would have been key to our survival—completely. That’s what makes us unique. And then I contrast that with you talking about that fixed, isolating machine in the gym. Versatility is a word that evokes or—guys are different movements and different planes, yet the isolation machine is very much one plane; it’s it’s the opposite of versatile, isn’t it? It’s very very specific. And again, you know, it may have a role for someone at some time for a particular yes, sports and performance. If there’s a place for everything, but you want you want us all to have that natural movement base because I believe it’s the base; I believe it’s the foundation. So you add on the specialization on top once you have the base, but don’t specialize early and forget the base, yes, because when you look at pretty much all sports, what are they based on? Natural movements. How do you play tennis? How do you play soccer? While you have to run; uh, rock climbing—well, they made climbing on a specific type of surface a specialty, and within that specialty in climbing you have bouldering; you have different types of competitions; running—in the same—you take running only, so you forget about all the other natural movement abilities; you forget about climbing; you forget about moving on all fours; you forget about balancing; you forget about jumping; you forget about lifting; you forget about it all; you just focus on running. And then in that specialty itself, then you split that into more specialties—so marathon, half-marathon, sprint, ultra-marathon uh trail running, yeah, cross—you name it, and you can specialize within that specialty, and you do the same with lifting, and you do the same with jumping, and you do the same with everything, and then you have the the—suppose—can be individual sports where you perform as an individual, and then you have team sports um but where you play basketball—what are you doing? You’re running, and you’re throwing, and you’re catching—all natural movements—and then you make it a game, but none of the sports would exist without the fact that we have natural body with natural abilities to move. So that’s the foundation; it’s always there. We were querying where does this come from? Where, you know, where has the drive or where has the impetus been for us—for many of us—to get so far removed from that natural human movement? You mentioned sport could be one of those reasons, but I think that’s another reason. Um, I think if I refer to my own life, I remember being in my secondary school changing room; I was at an all-boy school, and a Rambo—getting ready for football or PE or something—and feeling really self-conscious; I was a skinny Indian kid—that you could see my ribs. The same here, yeah, except not Indian, but yeah, so it’s the same feeling inside; it’s the same—yeah, there’s something there where you think, wow, I don’t like this, and I wonder if it was at the same time where Men’s Health was starting to come out and be in prominence; I can’t say it was 100%, but I do remember around the time of 16, 17, me reading Men’s Health religiously, and I remember one day coming back from school thinking, right, I’m sick of being this skinny kid, yeah, and I became obsessed with doing press-ups and sit-ups pretty much every day. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you build up packs—I don’t know—but I’m gonna guess around 14, 14, 15, something like that, right? But here’s the funny thing is that, you know, from the outside you could probably look good, you know, you’ve got a good physique, but then in my 20s I was crippled with backache. Right. So I looked—on the outside—that I had a really good physique, but functionally I couldn’t do much. Right. I couldn’t lift chairs around the house, sofas; I couldn’t move beds, you know, because my back would go, and all these sort of things, and there’s a long story there, but I guess the point I’m trying to get to is magazines like Men’s Health with images of ripped men for many years will have driven many boys, teenagers, adolescents to go, that is what I need my body to look like, and many people are trying to get those bodies, so they’re getting gym bodies that look good but aren’t functional. And I guess if we expand that even further, here—one—I guess women—some women would say this is what women have had to put up with for decades, you know, these images of what a woman should look like, being self-conscious about your physical uh yeah. So so I guess the point I’m trying to make, which I feel speaks to your work, is that I think many of us have gone for physique first, function second, yes, instead of function first, physique second. Completely, completely. Because um I I went through the same stage uh being a um that transition—that teenage time is so intense, and you are going to start seeking inner strength, self-confidence, yeah, that you need to feel that uh you yeah you have some strength of your own, and mental strength, physical strength, um and looking good—that we’re looking stronger—is going to make you feel more confident. There’s a level of it, you know, often we look at doing push-ups and or working out in a gym as something entirely physical; in truth, the drive is completely psychological; it’s all within; it’s all about the perception of ourselves that we find satisfying and reinsuring, because we’re like, okay, now I’m big enough; I look good; I look good enough to a certain standard, and now I feel that uh it gives me an advantage; it gives me a stability; it’s all psychological. Yeah, it’s the psyche that drives that behavior and that expectation—the expectation of that physical, cosmetic outcome. And by the way, it’s it’s—I like to say it is legitimate; everyone wants to look good; a woman wants to look good; a man wants to look good. Yeah. Not everyone is confident that they can look like that or that they can put the work—does it work—to look like that, and it’s true also, and you pointed that out; it’s very true. It’s alleged expectation to want to look good, but if you make that your priority and only expectation, when something is going to be missing—when actually when you train for physical competency that applies to the real world, that’s moving—that’s natural movement—you will have the the improvement of your body; you will also have more energy, well-being, and because you will become really aware through experience, through verification—oh, I could jump like this; I could run that fast; I could run that long; I could do all these movements—gives you that sense of confidence that stems not from the reflection of your body in the mirror; that stems from the experience, the real-life experience of I can do these movements, so I’m capable, so I’m self-confident. It’s it’s regrounded. These magazine images of what the perfect male or the perfect female looks like are incredibly problematic, yes, because it keeps feeding, you know, that you know—how can we get more—oh, we need a better-looking six-pack now, you know—like many things that can be taken to extremes. And one of the things I’ve really enjoyed experiencing about my own body over the past few years is when I was getting into open-water swimming and doing a lot of swimming, and just to be clear, I’m no expert swimmer; I’m just competent; I’m not particularly fast; I wouldn’t say I’m particularly good at it, but I can get around a pool or an ocean. Right. Yes, I’m competent, and that alone is enough; that alone is enough; you don’t need to be a gold medalist; you don’t need to be ranking anywhere; there’s no uh it’s it’s a simple validation; it’s that simple. The validation is I’m capable of doing that. Yeah, I—very hard for myself—yes, and then the fun thing is is that your body starts to change in response to what you do. Now I know that makes sense; it’s obvious when we think about it, but you know, I have not for many years have I been to the gym, but um you know, when I used to go to the gym, you know, I remember at Uni in my early 20s, you know, we’d go—it’s not my friend—we’d go and work out and do stuff together, and I’ve done that too with my brothers, yeah, and again, they weren’t particularly functional; it was who can bench press the most, and all this stuff, and again, there’s something necessarily wrong with that, but no, your physique has a certain look, yes, because those are the inputs. When I was swimming a lot, your physique starts to change; your muscular starts to change; you know, a lean physique, but in a different way. And then when you start something—you do a lot of running—your physique starts to change, and it’s—I don’t know—I really like that, to to realize that my body, the way I look physically, is a consequence of the movements I choose to do. And I always remember this moment—everyone in Germany, in France, yeah, foots of Mont Blanc—is we went in the summer holidays, maybe five, six years ago, and it was hot, and I think one day, for whatever reason, we went to the pool. Now this is really really interesting, and I think this speaks to natural movements; we went to the pool in the summer, hot day, so of course men and women are all in their sort of swimming costumes—and I don’t—costume—image—swimming costume—I just like—yeah, what would you call it? I don’t know; it’s just the idea of a costume; when I hear the word costume, I imagine something really fancy. You know, it’s interesting that isn’t it? Because I know I never analyzed what a funny term it is—a costume to go swimming—but that’s what we call it in England. Um, but what was striking was that the physique of everyone, and what was striking to me was how fit everyone looked—fit—these weren’t gym-honed bodies. Right. You know, you know what a gym-honed body looks like; you see it in magazines; we know what people are after. So some people had a bit of a belly or a bit of this, a bit of that, but it was—you could tell they were strong, functional mountain people. Right. You know, mountain guides or to be ski instructors, or they’d have a restaurant up in whatever, but these are guys who have to be able to get up hills; have they got to carry stuff up? Have to be able to navigate difficult situations at the mountains, and their physiques were strong and powerful, but they weren’t gym-honed physiques. Yes. Yes. Because depending on the type of physical activity that you do, your your body adapts and transforms; if there’s the plasticity of the body accordingly, and so there are body types, and sometimes uh I don’t know—I would I would see someone say, you do Triathlon—how do you know—just you know—like in the in the summer you can better see bodies, what they look like. And so if you go to the gym, there is a way that you alter your body, that you modify your body um that is specific um and and you can see typically uh the—but it is stiffness—stiffness typically—I think you said once in an article I read that you’ve you’ve met guys who can bench huge amounts, yes, but they can’t—what—bend over to pick up a pen or something like—I can’t remember what it was—you said there’s that or uh or they would be out of breath uh running you know one mile, one kilometer or something, because you adapt specifically to whichever challenge you repeat consistently.

To make sure you’re taking action after watching this video, I’ve created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don’t, and that’s why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take that really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below. So yeah, you’ve witnessed uh athletes—so people who were physically active, but in a way—and only they were moving more naturally; they were also moving more outside, and which means also in environments that are that force the mind to be alert and to operate the body in adaptable ways. And why is this important? Because well, again, the difference between repeating exactly the same movement over and over in a very specific way to work out um very specific muscles—well—and then you have—you’re outside, and you have to move a different way a little—when you do trail running, it has nothing to do with running on a treadmill, because up and down and going to the left, going to the right, you change angle, so all the joints are moving in a completely different way, so they become adapted, and they evolve, and then you are outside, and then there’s the sun, there’s the rain, there’s the freshness of the air; there is your your eyes, your vision is looking at a horizon, at a change in in luminosity; there’s there’s a lot of things you’re exposed to—the forces of nature; you’re not isolated indoors surrounded by machines, being very strict about the specific movement patterns that you do; there’s more freedom; there is more uh variety; there’s no variability; you become more adaptable; you become more flexible; you become more alert. And you want to look at the the whole picture that way. And I like that idea of being uh versatile more than uh overly specialized. And I do acknowledge um the value of specialization, you know, including in sports—to become really good at something, you must specialize to some extent; I I know what it is; I’ve done it; I’ve practiced multiple specialized sports at different times of my life, yeah, but I never forget one thing—my baseline is to be adept, you know, capable, good enough; I have my own baseline at everything—real world; I want to be able to run fast enough; I want to be able to run long enough; I want to be able to climb this kind of surface and that kind of surface; I want to be able to hold my breath; I want to be able to swim; I want to be able to handle the cold; I want to be able to handle the heat; I want to be able to handle not having food and to keep going; I want to be able to lift and to carry; I want to be—I want to maintain that capability because I value it; it’s part of who I am, yeah, and I don’t settle for less; I’m not telling myself—well, this point, you know, I’m 51—why care? Why is this relevant to me? It’s relevant to me because it is a part of me. Yeah. I cannot see myself not being able to do these things uh and not practicing those movements at all. I enjoyed them when I was a kid; I enjoyed them when I was a teenager, and showing them when I was a young adult; I enjoy them today, and I’ll keep enjoying them for as long as I can. Yeah, natural movement is fun, right? A lot of people yes will say, I find the gym boring; it’s not for me. Now I also like—you want to acknowledge that many people love the gym. Right. Many people love going; they get camaraderie there; they enjoy their workouts that they’re doing, yes, and none of us—I don’t think—are criticizing that; with satisfaction is the more important and community.

It and then, similarly to a martial approach, then you can learn techniques to become more efficient at those techniques. But first, have some fun; just explore, move, feel free, feel ex, you know, amazing because you're given permission to move in ways that you probably forgot and you haven't done in so long. And maybe you were prevented as a kid to do that.

So what you said, joy, enjoyment—um, so important because you're very much more likely to stick to a practice of something that you enjoy doing. Yeah, that's something that feels like a chore. And when you look at it for most people, going to the gym feels like a chore; they have to force themselves to do it. It feels like a punishment for supposedly being lazy or whatever judgment they have about themselves or their body. We want to inspire them to be like, "Look, you got it; you got a natural body; it has already amazing abilities; you just need to reawaken that potential," and then we'll support you; we'll teach you, you know, great techniques so you can really become great at those movements.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, it is thinking about how we make enjoyable movements more accessible to more people. You can't really go far wrong with natural movement because you don't need to get anything; you don't need to buy anything necessarily; you don't need to travel to a specific location that is designed for movement, right? The more you start to analyze these things, the more kind of crazy they start to sound a little bit.

There. Yes, you. We have to drive somewhere in order to move our bodies. Like if you if you go back a thousand years and look, I I get it. Society has changed the way we have structured civilized society; the way we've set it up means that actually we do need to help people now get back to moving more. So so I do understand that, but it is a little bit crazy. But a lot of us who are listening to you right now, anyone could jump at home—little jumps, big jumps, deep squat, short jumps—um, when you say all fours, do you mean literally crawling around your living room on your hands and knees?

Yes, and you can just do like a one, two, three, four forward; one, two, three, four, you know, backwards if you don't have a lot of space. And when the the weather is nice enough, in the garden, at a local park, maybe if uh, you know, you're not too concerned about what you think people may think of you, you have to you have to also uh give yourself permission. So if someone is thinking, anyone that, "Okay, great. I need to move more. I keep hearing wrong and talk to guests keep talking about we need to move more for physical health and mental health and emotional health. Okay, I get it. You're saying in my living room, go on all fours, yeah, back and forth. Yeah, what about persons thinking, yeah, but what's that going to do for me?"

It's a departure from what um most people deem normal because, again, we're taught from a young age that, "Hey, don't do that; you're gonna get dirty. Don't do that; yeah, you could uh, you know, hurt yourself. Or don't do that because it's inappropriate." It's inappropriate because it's not the right place; it's not the right time; it's never the right place, and it's never the right time. We're denying that freedom of movement that's innating you, that you want to express because you're just a kid; that's what you want to do and have fun with it. We're telling you from early on, either verbally and directly, we make you understand it's a no, or just by looking at you or making you feel that it's a no; behave, sit, limit your physical expression. That's where it starts. And then, once you have been limited that way and that you have consciously or unconsciously accepted that this is no, it's a no, that's it. I I can't do that. I know I cannot vault over a table; I cannot crawl underneath the table; I cannot jump off the roof and climb the tree outside; I can't do any of that otherwise there will be consequences. Then one day, they—some adults and whatever in school—and they look at you, be like, "Hmm, you need some exercise, huh? Yeah, oh yeah, now you need to be strong." All of a sudden, now that physical education becomes important. Oh, now you have to do, and what all you have to do with push-ups, you have to do the running, you have to, you know, "Oh my God, I don't feel in shape," and, "Oh well, yeah, you've been denied that uh that freedom of yours of moving naturally or since, you know, almost day one." And I'll let you do some, you know, until age three, four, five, and then start to be like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," and then they're like, "Okay, now we're gonna instruct you in what is proper movement." All right, so this is the proper way to do a biceps curls; this is the proper way to make your abdominal uh stronger, etc., etc. It's like uh, really, it's like it's the wrong way around. I know it's like a it's the same with food and all like you you take away all the Native Foods, all the original food that aren't really nutritious, you know, and once you fit people with uh if they're malnourished, overfed but malnourished, and then you're telling them, "Oh, okay, now you need to add that supplement." So it's the same idea; you take away all the the richness, the wealth of movement, all that Potential from the kids, and then you give them a little supplement—"All, we're gonna do this um this abdominal exercises, and now you're gonna do the stretches, and we'll add a bit of cardio on the side," and then that's it; that's enough. But it's important that you—it's like another chore; it's like, "What is this? What kind of circus is this?" It's it's funny like abs are something that a lot of people want, right? A lot of people want abs, but what you realize is then you will know this, but I've experienced in my own life—um, like I've been working with this uh I really dislike calling Helen a running coach because I think it is such a limiting label for what she does, and the impact she's had in my life has been absolutely phenomenal—mindful, but as she helps me to unlock more of how my body is designed to move, your abs just start showing; you can start to feel your abs because your body's working in the way it's designed. So we have never done a single ab exercise, but just by properly, you know, proper rotation with your torso as you're running, proper muscle sequencing as you move naturally, whole body moves, whole body movement movements, and and the abs in the middle, they have to connect; they have to connect. But this whole idea—what I remember reading in Men's Health is a 14, 15-year-old—and now with my understanding of the human body and biomechanics, thinking I will have completely messed up my body's Movement by being in this sort of crunch position, trying to actively tense yes my abs so that I could look in the mirror and they could show because like people want abs—like, "What do you mean you have abs? Your abs or," you know, it's crazy, right? There what you want is to make them visible. So when you feel good about your body and it makes you feel good in your psyche, that's it. But it's condition because it is conditioning. And the more we're having this conversation, everyone, the more I think I think that's a real I think it's a mental health component here. I also think something that's been coming up for me over the last five, ten minutes is this idea that whenever we detach or separate the outcome of what we want from the actual natural process that would lead to it, we cause problems. So like with abs, right, we don't do the natural movements that would mean we end up having strong, functional abs; we want to leapfrog that and do the ab movements to the minimum to do this to get a specific uh, but then also—um, I had a patient once who had really bad body dysmorphia, right? Now I want to be really clear; I'm not an expert in body dysmorphia; it's on the rise in men; it's on the rise in women. What was remarkable about this guy—lovely guy, absolutely lovely guy, bodybuilder, completely ripped, big pecs, big arms, big ABS—it's not enough; it's not enough. He thinks he's skinny; he thinks he's skinny. There you go. He would look in the mirror and say, "All I see is a skinny guy," and I'm I was I remember thinking, "Wow, you have bigger muscles than maybe anyone I've seen recently," yet what you see is someone who doesn't have big enough muscles; you consider yourself skinny. And again, I'm not here to say I know the exact etiology of body dysmorphia in every situation, but relating to this point, whenever you separate that end goal, which would have been a natural byproduct of certain natural evolutionary movements or practices, whatever, you just try and get the outcome without going through the process, I think we run into problems. Yeah, and I suspect, hey, you did not find satisfaction and joy in the very practice of working out. Yeah, that's the problem; it doesn't matter how much he works out; doesn't matter how much weight he puts on; it's never enough. So it's a different deficiency issue. So enjoyment is key because enjoyment means you expect instant gratification—like, "What do you mean?" Like, "No, no, no; I'm not supposed to expect instant gratification." Like, "I know I have to work hard, and then I have to wait and be patient." Yeah, I understand that; this is also very important. To delay gratification means to understand just because you do one practice session doesn't mean that's it; you're done, and you've achieved already everything. But instant gratification means you find a real measure of satisfaction as you are doing what it is that you are doing. And for natural movement, it's very satisfying that way, and one of the reasons is because you must be mindful. Why? Well, because you cannot close your eyes, listen to music, watch your show as you work out and exercise because you're doing it, but you—it's like chore; it's more work, and I I gotta do it, and I gotta commit to it; I'm a committed person, but I'm watching a show; I'm looking at my phone while I'm running or something, whatever, because I'm here, but I'm not here; I just I want to do several things. The thing I'm doing in itself is not satisfactory enough for me to completely be in the here now. In natural movement, let's say you jump from here to there. Now if you don't open your eyes, if you don't focus, if you're not mindful because you may operate your body, but the body does not operate itself. What drives the movement is not the muscles; it's not the nerves; it's intention. And that intention to jump from here to there and to land in a way that is soft, that is stable, that is safe, you'd better be present because you must be present because you cannot have a luxury of just looking around and thinking around, thinking about something else, being absorbing something, and you must be absorbed in the very movement; you must be in the here now. And that here now, that it's priceless; it's that's really something that's rare and missing in today's society.

Yeah, it's is appreciating the now. So in that mindfulness, it's a demand of the practice of natural movement of movement; you are really pulled into the here now, and so and it's just enjoyable—like, "Oh, I'm gonna have to jump," and it's real; it's not just a jump for plyometrics; it's not just a jump—count, count one to ten, to ten reps, then do another series of ten reps because that's a program, and that's for fitness, and physiological adaptation is going to be triggered; that's all good, and that's all true, but you forget about that; you forget about the repetitions; you every single repetition is just one moment that you try to achieve efficiency, yeah, and you're in the moment, and it's satisfactory—like, deeply. So that is the instant gratification I'm talking about; if you don't have that in whatever practice you do, then it's a chore; when it's work, yeah, it's deeply satisfying; that's the key, and and fun, even when it's hard, even when it's hard. That's a purpose; you've got a jump; you gotta make that jump right now. There's videos on YouTube if you're doing some crazy stuff, which is phenomenal, and I watch it and I think, "I want to learn that; I want to be able to do that," but it's simple stuff that, you know, you're a parent, and you are going for a walk with your kids in the woods, and there's been a gale the day before, so there's a tree that's blown or something, and you have to take a different route or you have to make a little jump, yeah, to get by; these things happen. Yeah, that's real life, but we we've been conditioned to think everything's safe; everything's gonna be tarmac for us; there's going to be a walkway, but as soon as you got to Nature, you realize sometimes unpredictable things happen. Yeah, you have to be able to respond and adapt. The other thing, everyone, is you—we're talking about making that jump. To me, I don't have any evidence to back this statement up, but I have often wondered if you're in the gym, and let's take this out of the gym; this is not an anti-gym podcast or anything like that, right? If you're if you are doing some form—let's but you know let's use the gym, so I think it's a good example. I have trained in the gym sometimes and enjoy the variety, and that's different; it's me too, right? There's there's many great gyms, and um, but the point I'm trying to make is if you are, let's say you're having a 40-minute gym workout, yeah, and Yeah, you sort of want to do it—uh, you're like, "Oh man, I need to do this because I said it to myself I was gonna do it," but to distract yourself, you uh, as you say, you put in the earphones so that you can get through the tedium of that workout that you are meant to do. Yes, I've often wondered about—surely the impacts of that on our body, mind, and soul will be limited compared to being fully present; it must be like—yeah, as humans, we talk about journalism versus specialism; we are generalists, right? And we want that all those inputs—the eyes, the ears, the body—when we're making this movement, yes, but I think many of us can't stand movements so much that we we numb the whole process, yes, and um, at the same time, you could also say, "Hey, I'm lifting that uh that bar, and it's heavy; I'm doing heavy squats or something, or I'm doing something else," and then I'm listening to that music, and that's the music; it uplifts me; I'm like, now it's like it makes the workout amplified; I'm really enjoying it; it looks; it feels like I'm in a movie or, you know, I'm—it it can uplift—it can magnify a workout too, so it's not the music, then it's the intention; it's the because the music isn't necessarily or the podcast that they're listening is not necessarily the problem; it's are you doing it to numb and distract yourself so that you just put up with it or are you doing it to enliven and energize the process? Could you be more raw and minimalist in your approach? Like would you feel comfortable—um, in fact, for instance, doing the same kind of movement, the same kind of effort, but you don't have your fancy shoes; you don't have your music; you don't have the mirrors; you don't have people looking at you, maybe in you outside, and maybe it's drizzling or raining or windy, and the surface is uneven, and the object you're gonna lift is complete natural; you have no idea how much weight that is; yeah, you can't possibly measure it, and you're not in the optimum position or stance to lift it, and yet it's the equivalent of being with your children and instead of going around in a park and everything is is just a loop; no, you're getting on, maybe off a track in the woods, and now you have to step over, step under; have to pay attention, and there's a whole variety, and then you—it's live; it's real. So it may be not always that either/or proposition, but the idea is like, can you have adversibility? Can you be comfortable when you're out of a context that you're normally familiar with and that makes you feel safe, and all of a sudden it's it's completely different, yeah, and therefore challenging. It's like, "Can you get out of the swimming pool? No more chlorine; you can't see the bottom; there's maybe some waves, some wind, some current; temperature is probably colder, etc., etc.," and now it's a completely different swimming experience. Yeah, it's the idea of exposing oneself to a greater variety of context so you can enrich your experience thanks to it and your ability, who you are. Yeah, eventually, I'm trying to think about practicalities, and you're talking about the swimming pool to make it really granular and specific. I guess if someone listening likes to swim, well, at the end of the swimming pool, instead of taking the stairs out, you could just practice pushing yourself up. Yes, I know it's it's a simple thing, right? When it came to my heads, think that's kind of natural movement; you're in a body of water, and you are using your arm or you have to coordinate everything in order to move your mass up; it is completely a natural movement, and climbing up the ladder would be a natural movement too; standing, walking, or natural movement; sitting down, even on a chair, is a natural movement—um, carrying bags of groceries; those are natural movements; there are all those are natural movement is everywhere in our life since day one and every day. Nobody is sitting on their couch all day and having no movement to do to be able to make a living or to take care of themselves, feed themselves, etc. The scope of the movements that the natural movements that we perform on a day-to-day basis has been absurdly limited, absurdly shrunk to a strict minimum of what what do you do? Okay, so you you sleep in on a bed all night; you're lying down; then you stand up, and we could go to the shower; you stand; you shower; when you're gonna sit, have maybe a breakfast, then you're gonna walk a few steps to go to your car or to your home office; you're gonna sit again or you're gonna commute; sit while you commute in whichever way; go to an office; sit more; and you walk a few steps to go to the coffee machine or something, right? And then you're done with your work, so you commute back; you're probably going to sit back in some kind of either a train, Metro; then they're gonna be back home; filtered; sit more; and then occupy themselves, even maybe doing some more work, watching a show, going on social media, hopefully, you know, having a relationship with someone, with a family, and you know, having some interaction, and then it's time to go back to bed. So when you look at—if you were to film every single movement as a Continuum and accelerate it and make, let's say, 14, 16 hours of wake life into one minute or two minutes—it goes super fast, and then all you see is mostly seating and a few like moments where—stand up, sit back down, walk a few steps. How do you walk with shoes on, on flat, stable, linear, predictable surfaces? Where's the challenge? Where's the variety? Where's the variability? Where's the intensity? What's your body—body doing? Not much. And yet you may feel exhausted in your body; you know what it's not because you do too much with your bodies because you don't do enough with your body, so it doesn't have any more energy because it does not have to deploy anything; it's it doesn't have to adapt to anything, and that is going to have an impact on your brain; it's going to depress you because the reason why we have a brain, and neurologist will we'll confirm that, explain that actually is that we have a brain for movement; we don't have a brain to talk about abstract things, even though that's one of the wonderful things the brain can do is high-level cognition, abstract considerations and interpretations, and but originally the reason why we have a brain is that we can move in adaptable ways through complex, changing, sometimes unpredictable environments. This is something that, you know, MIT—like, they have in the robotics; they have a big challenge having robots doing that, even though they're like really making fast progress in that direction; that's really scary. But the ability to do that means an amazing computer, which is the brain, because what is it that you do when you move in nature, not in our conventional, predictable, safe environments, indoors environment? It's fortune-telling almost; it's like you have to predict where you're going, how you're gonna get there, and adapt on the way because you have visual input; you have sensor input—"Oh, I need to modify my position like this and like that"—you can't think about that; your thinking is too slow to handle that—"Oh, I'm going to extend my leg forward; will place my foot there"—it's too slow; you do not need to think to move well; however, you must be present, and you must be aware, and you must be alert and responsive. Yeah, by sensation, and all your brain is going to compute all of that in at an extremely fast uh speed, and that's how you move well; that's why we have a brain. So there are those uh little organisms—I believe the name is C squirt—they're floating, and they have a tiny, tiny brain—oh, two neurons—brain, and they're floating in the ocean, and then they find a place on a rock where we decide to stick and stay, and then they become from somehow an animal creature; they become vegetal the moment they do not need to move anymore; they dissolve that brain because it's unnecessary; they do not need that brain because they don't have the necessity for movement. So that's the the original reason why we developed the brain was for us to be able to move inefficiently and hopefully effectively and safely um through complex and more men. So when you don't do it—back to the original point—when we don't do it, we may be occupied with very reasonable uh sensitive matters, work responsibilities; everything we have to manage a lot of things in our life; we all do, but the physical expression is extremely limited, and therefore the very reason, the Primal, original reason why the brain was evolutionarily built and developed is absent pretty much from our life; it's depressing because we do not have a stimulation that our brain needs to perform optimally. So natural, adaptable movement makes you smarter because it it maintains the activity of a brain in the way it's originally supposed to to do and be. Yeah, it's mental health; keeps coming up for me because yes, sorry. Since you're UPS, if you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press subscribe, hit the notification Bell, and now back to the conversation. You know, let's take the um I guess a stereotypical view of someone who might be struggling with depression. Okay, they're not typically going to be standing upright with an open chest and an open demeanor; that they're actually going to be a lot of the time sort of punched over, over chest inwards a little bit, you know, rounded back, yeah, because our posture says so much about our state of mind and our inner worlds, and yes, there's a lot of research saying that walking or running or physical activity per se is possibly one of the best antidepressants that exists; it is for sure, but I don't think it's just because of oh, it's the movement and your heart rate going up; of course, movement is three-dimensional, right? So trying to just reduce it down to what is it in movement; it's everything. But walking and running, these are natural human movements that we have done for thousands of years, and if you are not doing them, your brain is not being fully stimulated and expressed 100%, so it's no surprise that certain parts of that brain are working sub-optimally, and we feel depressed, and we feel anxious. Yes, there are other inputs as well, but movement is that fundamental; the fundamentals, yes. And the irony is when you are feeling depressed, you don't have the motivation to move. Yes, that's the irony. Yes, and you're like, "Oh well, I need to be fit first so that I can move." No, you need to move first, and then you'll become fit. Yeah, you know, but yes, completely on point uh regarding the mental health because it's true again—um, there's a lot of conditioning of the way we perceive, you know, the world, ourselves, and what we're supposed to do and for what reasons—you know, "Get a bit in the Sun for vitamin D; uh, get movement; do some movement for endorphins or whatever that is, you know, for your heart, for your blood pressure, etc." There's much more than that—how you stimulate your brain, yeah—um, what it does to the brain—um, and not just releasing particular hormones and neurotransmitters; it's uh it's going to affect the structure of your brain, and then and that science that explains that—if you don't read about science, you may not know about that, but if you simply observe what happens when you move and also depending on the way you move, how you move and what context—the whole context—and we typically don't look at the whole context; exercising in a gym, exercising in the forest, in the woods; it's not the same animal; it's the same body, but it's not going to be the same movement; it's not obviously not all the same context, and therefore the outcome—physically, we're talking about, "Hey, if I do that kind of movement, my body changes that way; if I do that kind of movement, my body changes that way"—it's different to adaptation; same will happen to your psyche, to to your to your mindset, to how you feel, to your energy levels, to because a lot of adaptations. So it depends on what context you expose yourself to; it's very important to have a I would say selectivity and maybe wisdom about that because you may not realize that or you do; you go inside the gym, and the air is still, and it's maybe polluted; there's a lot of indoors pollution that people don't even I'm not even aware of. So you're not breathing fresh air; okay, you're not looking in a horizon; you're looking at walls, and then you're looking at yourself, and then you're not looking at trees; you know, looking at the sky and not looking at the ground and all the variety of it; you're not the you know all that stimulation—um, through olfaction, for all your senses, the differences of light, differences of terrain; all of that is going to stimulate—stimulate you not just physically, mentally, emotionally; every part of you in ways that are natural, in ways that are Universal, in ways that are original, in ways that are very healthy.

I could talk about natural movement with you for hours, but one of the reasons I invited you onto the show was because you have this new course—breath-hold work meditation—which has been transformative for me. Wow. I have done many courses; I've done a lot of studying around breath work; I've done many breath work courses; your course was like nothing else I'd ever done, and the insights I gained from it were like nothing else as well, and fantastic. The reason I invite you onto the show is because I I want to talk about this course; I think it's brilliant; I think more people should do it; I think there's so much learning to have, but we need to sort of go step by step so that people understand what it is. Yes, so from my perspective, I did a four-week online course with you twice a week, right?

Yes, and on the outside, it's about breath holds, yes, but I don't really think it is about breath holds, even though breath holds is the mechanism; it's what you experience; I think it's about so much more than that, but the breath holders, the practice to get you to learn all kinds of insights about yourself. But Top Line was that on day one, when you on the course asked everyone to take an in-breath and then to see how long they could hold it for, yes, I could do one minute; four weeks later, and I didn't do that much practice, it was something like four minutes, 24 minutes, 30 something like that, so over four times the breath-hold time in four weeks—now remember, which was incredible and still is incredible, and I know all the students who who go through your course double, triple, quadruple, yes, and more, there in just four weeks.

Yes, right. Yeah, so let's sort of unpick what's going on here. Now, long-term listeners to this podcast, everyone would have heard me talk about nasal breathing before; I've had James Nestor, Patrick McKeon, wonderful uh Brian McKenzie; you know, we we've spoken about nasal breathing; great Messengers; why it's so important; of course, let's recap some of that if you want, but what is it about your course that's unique? It's a meditation. So the same way I was saying, regardless of um the physical program, the physical discipline that you choose, ultimately what you're seeking is a an experience of yourself. So when we hold our breath, it's not just about, "Okay, how long can you hold your breath?" It's what's happening to you when you do; what's the experience that you are having in your mind? What happens to your mind, and what do you make to happen to your minds? And so it's knowing oneself. Typically, in meditation, you will be obviously in a quite quite Place, quite time, maybe alone, maybe with other people; you may close your eyes or keep your eyes open; it's stress-free, and you will use slow breathing as a way to quiet your mind, to calm down or down-regulate your nervous system, to access more clarity, to pace your mind, clear up your mind, observe your mind; that's what meditation is about—know thyself. When you do that, holding your breath, and everyone knows universally was the response to not breathing; it's alarming; that's the least we can say. And if you keep holding your breath, it's more of an alarming; it's unsettling; it becomes uncomfortable and unpleasant, and then you want to breathe really, really quickly, so you are under stress; you create a stress. How can you possibly meditate when you trigger that kind of stress?

Well, precisely. Precisely. So not only there is a stress that normally when you meditate you avoid stress, here you trigger one; you trigger stress; it's self-induced; you do that to yourself; it's not external; you just by simply pausing the breath, but not just for a few seconds; you have to prolong that a little more; you create that stress, and then you need to manage your response to it. And not only the fact that you are not breathing is triggering that stress, but you then cannot use breathing to down-regulate; you cannot use breathing to soothe yourself and to tranquilize your mind. So how do you tranquilize your mind? Yeah, how do you meditate? How can you find Sanatana, clarity, patience, all of those beautiful qualities of of the mind that is stable, of the mind that is clear, of the mind that that feels safe, which is the point. You make things a little more difficult, but actually it's an advantage.

Yeah, it it really was absolutely incredible. I remember seeing the testimonials before I managed to sign up for a course, and I would see people were doubling their breath or time tripling, and I was thinking, "Not me; I'm going to struggle with that; like I I never felt like I could hold my breath for long," okay, and I knew a lot of the physiology; I do; I understand the physiology of the breath very well; we've covered it on the show; you know, we've said many times before that—V or now I will reframe that, having done your course—one of the drives to breathe as carbon dioxide Rising yes in our blood. Now many breath work practitioners will probably say that's the drive to breathe, but it's just part of the picture, which is what I'd learned on your course, which was that you cannot go in—well, actually it was in under four weeks from one minute so close to four and a half minutes—if it was just physiology, my physiology will not adapt that quickly, or let's put it another way: highly unlikely to adapt that quickly. And for anyone who's not following what I mean by that is simply me being able to tolerate higher and higher levels of carbon dioxide before I feel I have to breathe; that adaptation wouldn't happen that quickly.

No, and actually, by the way, it can happen even quicker because there was the online uh program, online course that you took, and it was designed to be two sessions per week, yeah, over four weeks. All right, I've done retreats, five days; same results within four days already, and then on the five days, on the fifth day, then attempting a new maximum Bradford, double, triple—uh, so yeah, physiological adaptations in five days; no, there's no there's no way they take place that fast. And this is the uniqueness and the magic in the course, which is why for me it's been so transformative and why I I've not come across anything like it anywhere, and everything that I've done and I've studied and written about is because what happens is, first of all, it's very, very different from Wim Hof, okay? And I think it's important to make that clear because I was at an event in LA years ago, and Wim Hof was speaking, and he said to this room that, "You know, in within 20 minutes, I'm gonna have you all holding your breath for three minutes." Yeah, I didn't believe it was going to happen, but it did, but that was all done because of hyperventilation. Yes, so I think a lot of people don't fully understand that when you do uh the the hyperventilation method, you do all these big in-breaths and out breaths; you're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide. Yes, so as we're—I was explaining to my kids last night when you were with this over dinner—it's like if carbon dioxide is one of the uh Rising is one of the drives to breathe, and you artificially lower carbon dioxide by breathing out in a fast fashion, yes, like you do with his technique, well, it's relatively easy then to hold your breath for

Hold my breath longer, except that there is a moment where the accumulation of CO2 is still going to happen. You still, at some point, going to become very uncomfortable with it, and then you do not have an advantage anymore. Um, and then what do you do? How do you keep, how do you tolerate, how do you keep going? And you can't just tell yourself, well, I just need to relax, everything is going to be all right.

That's another way it works, yeah. And then you start to, and just you start to be overwhelmed, so you haven't really learned to hold your breath. It's, it would be the equivalent—I'm going to use an image—imagine you're going to say, hey, I'm going to train for cold exposure, so you're gonna dive or you're gonna soak in really cold water, freezing water, for you know, resiliency, physiological adaptations, except you put in an eight-millimeter wetsuit beforehand, and you're like, wow, it's amazing, I can stay 30 minutes, no problem. And then, but at some point, I'm gonna really freeze your ass anyway, it's gonna catch up with you, the cold is still gonna get in, and you're gonna start to, and and then that's when the real work starts anyways. So how about you just take off the wetsuit? How about you just remove the hyperventilation and you just get to that point, trying to mind, trying the mind to master itself, to tranquilize by its own supply, not just by manipulating the physiology.

And this is why I said before, it's not about the breath-hold really; it's certainly not about the breath-hold time, yes, because I think this relates to a lot of things we've been talking about throughout this conversation, right, about outcome versus process, or how do you stay present in the moment completely? You cannot be anything but present in a breath-hold, 100%. If you've got a busy mind, if you've got a lot of stuff going on, hey, that's all great, but hold your breath, suddenly you're in the moment, yes, because it's that primal, the urge to breathe, yeah. It's what we do day in, day out, without even thinking about it. But I think this is a key point. Let's say you hyperventilate beforehand and you get to three minutes, or you get to three minutes with your method—two completely different versions of three minutes—but the point really isn't how long did you do, but certainly not for me, the point is at that moment when you have that strong urge to breathe, whether you've pre-loaded with hyperventilation or not, all that's doing is delaying the time to when that moment comes. The learning happens not by seeing three minutes on the clock; the learning happens to him, oh, now I'm uncomfortable, what do I do? Yes, do I shy away? I go, oh, I'm out, yes. And you know what? Completely a few days ago, I did that. I wasn't feeling it; I just, I couldn't go there, and that's okay. I don't consider that failure; I consider that an education for me to go, oh, interesting, why was it today you wouldn't go there, right? Yes. The learning is, is in that uncomfortable place; that's where the learning is. That's where you learn, oh, I still can control my mind; I can quieten down my mind. It's, it's so profound because comfort is actually the goal, um, but you're going to understand the path to comfort by going through that discomfort. There's no way around; master of a discomfort, ill master of a comfort; there's no way around it. So you may delay discomfort, but there's a point where you have to face that discomfort. And I like to use a kind of alchemical metaphor, like the lead in you, and you have to turn it into gold, and nobody else can do it; it's you. You have to alter your mind, but you, who is you, the mind that you are, has to be intentional about the response it's going to create.

So it's beyond CO2 tolerance; it's tolerance; it's learning to handle a perception of threat, because that's what it is. We all know why do we need to breathe? One, because otherwise we die so quickly after we stop ventilation. That's the biomechanical part of breathing, ventilation—breathe in, breathe out, gas exchange, oxygen in, CO2 out, all good. Now pause this, and then there's right away we sense internally this needs to be regulated; it's not normal; it's unfamiliar; it's uncomfortable. And if we keep do, if we keep doing that, it's not going to go very well. We feel threatened inside; that is the real urge to breathe, CO2 being only one of a cues, that trigger that threat. What's the response to the perception, the threat is present, that it is conscious or unconscious? What is a threat? Is the perception that there is a detrimental outcome to a situation, to a context, that if we don't regulate that, or if we don't make it create a distance from it, if we don't make it stop, is going to be a detriment to us. And as long as that threat is around us or present that we feel it, there's no way we can be at ease; there's no way we can relax; we're on alert, and we need to regulate, why? Because we're alive; we're all of us are a unit of life, a biological unit, and we're alive, and we want to stay alive, yeah. So now there's a threat that's happening internally; it's not a lion; it's not uh, something; it's, it's right inside; it's a biochemical change inside of the body. We want to regulate that; we are not going to find our comfort and our sense of safety until we have regulated that. How do we regulate that? We need to breathe again, simplest route, or another route, yeah. It's not a lion; it's not a predator.

That really speaks to the stresses that many of us face these days. We're not out hunter-gatherers anymore, out in tribes, most of us at least. It's not a predator; it's our perception of the world around us; it's creating stress; it's yes, our perception of our workload, our email inbox, is how we view the world; it's how we approach conflict; it's how we deal with people queue jumping or cutting us up in the road, whatever it might be. We generate a lot of internal stress, and there's a real freedom when you realize that actually a lot of that is self-generated, yes. The situation, the external situation is happening, but most of the time, if not all of the time, my response to it will determine what happens in my body. So what's incredible about the breath-hold work, meditation, is that it is self-generated internal stress; you, you are creating internal stress for yourself; that's a guarantee by holding your breath, guaranteed; that's the point, quick and effective. But then, by learning how to manage it and dissolve it and dilute it, yes, you learned it. Actually, I don't have to be stressed here. You said this can be enjoyable. Some of the deepest, yes, and most enjoyable meditations I have ever done are with your breath-hold work practice, because like this morning before, you know, we did, you know what did I do? Five three-minute sessions, three-minute breath-holds with you; it was wonderful. And after I'd warmed up, it was a feeling of bliss, like in the middle of the breath-hold, not at the end, in the middle of the breath-holds, I can remember just feeling bliss; my body felt good; my mind felt good; I felt a real still; I felt a real connection to the world around me; it was, it's such a beautiful place.

It is, and I think everyone would like to live in that place, or at least experience that place, yes. And some people will say they can get there through meditation, yes, and absolutely. It's interesting you call it breath-hold work meditation, yeah. Most people, Irwin, I don't think would put the concept of holding one's breath and meditation together. I do, yes, precisely because you create that stress, which, by the way, you create that stress, and you are in charge of, you know, you are free to make it what you want, what you need to experience. It's not like a breath-hold has to be a maximum breath-hold all the time; in fact, most of the time it's not even that. A breath-hold practice, breathal work practice, is very gentle, very progressive; it has to be enjoyable; it has to have a measure of stress so that you have to overcome; you have to practice the very response that you, that you choose. It's like this is an antidote for everything, of course, you're going to become impatient; well, perfect opportunity to practice patience. Of course, you're gonna doubt that you can; well, perfect opportunity that you create to practice self-confidence. Of course, all kinds of potential negative thoughts are going to arise; well, perfect opportunity to clarify your mind, to make it to feel positive, confident, and patient, etc., etc. So it's a practice of the mind; the mind practices itself; it does not just observe itself; it's just to practice, practice itself, so that that bliss that you've experienced, that's really where the goal is; that's the it. And it's not always like that, yeah, but when you do find that place, it is really beautiful; that is really what we expect from the concept of meditation, a place where we become free of concern. [Music] Time is suspended, timeless; there's no worry, yeah. To not be worried, to not be concerned—how priceless is this? And what is it, what is a worry, what is a concern, what is an apprehension, what is it? We're always running our mind like really fast and about so many things, and we have to organize so much and anticipate so much in our minds and be so busy in our minds; it's because we need to regulate our whole world, our whole life. We have responsibilities; we have duties; we have concerns; we have problems; we all do, but we're doing that all day, and it looks like there's no switch off. So we create a moment where we turn our intention inwardly; that's the idb behind any form of meditation, and there are plenty of forms of meditation; they all have their own benefits. We do not pay attention to the world around us anymore; it's an interaction with self; we gift ourselves, ourselves through that moment to begin with, and then we start observing. Now, observing in the breathal work meditation, the mind observing itself is just like in any other meditation; that's the fundamental, but that's not enough, why? Because the response to the perception of threat is inherently, by design, by default, it's all negative; it's panicky; it's emotional; it's agitated, physically, emotionally, and mentally, in everyone, and rather quickly, typically. So beyond the observation, it's easy to quickly observe, okay, this is what's happening to my mind now; what do I want to, what do I want my mind to experience? That is the question, and that is then the intention, and the choice is to establish, despite all the physiological triggers that trigger our neurology to have that emotional response that turn into negative thinking, agitated thinking, agitated body, to intentionally, deliberately down-regulate all of that, tranquilize all of that, which means to find a sense of safety, to reverse-engineer that process, to find a sense of safety, because when we feel safe, because we trust the experience, then we can relax, and that's when you are in that space within that you experience that this safe, day, trust, trust. This is what life is about, really, you know, yes. That's what the nervous system is about; this is where many of the modern illnesses lie is when our nervous system is out of sync, when it doesn't feel safe, when we feel under threat, and as you say, we need to regulate; we will regulate in some way; we will take sugar, caffeine, booze, coping mechanisms, coping mechanisms, whatever it might be; all it's trying to do is regulate your nervous system, yes, because upregulation, that's not a skill, except sometimes you're tired, and you want to be alive; you're in a social environment; I gotta be present; I got to be funny or something or interesting, how to be there; it can be just like that, okay, you want to upregulate yourself, but in most cases, being agitated, starting with the mind, it's mostly the mind, most of the time it's in the mind. If and when the person looks like they are composed and tranquil, you have no idea what's running in their mind, and that can be a lot, and that can be overwhelming for a lot of people, and they are like, where is the switch off? Where's the switch off? So, Val, agitation of the mind, that is not a skill because everybody somehow has it. There's also a lot of social, cultural pressure that pushes us to always be like that, to be able to find tranquility, and not just to find it, like where is it, where is it, just to establish it, to, yeah, make it happen now; that is the skill, that tranquilization, that down-regulation, that is a skill that needs to be practiced. It's arguably the most important skill in the 21st century that any of us need, arguably anyone who lives in civilized culture. I even hate that word, civilized culture; it's, it's in some ways derogatory to people who live more natural ways that actually are more in sync with our biology, right? But let's say, yes, I see, do you know what I mean? But these, let's say these modern, developed, um, urban type lives that many of us lead, I think you can make a pretty good case there, mastering the skill of down-regulation is one of the most important skills to learn, and we can do that in a whole host of different ways.

Having been a student on your course and experience the benefits for myself, I want other people to experience it because I think there's something really powerful if you can down-regulate when your body is screaming for you to breathe and get in your oxygen. I think you can down-regulate anywhere, yes, exactly, in that primal moment where your body thinks something really bad is going to happen, I need to breathe, and that's what I think if I was to summarize what I think the gold in that core says, there's many bits of gold, but for me it's that, that knowledge that if I can control my mind there, I can control it anywhere. If the mind that you are can control itself, like manage, yeah, intentionally fashion the experience that he wants to be in that moment when, yeah, it, that can apply anywhere. And what I've also found is that when I meditate, when I'm not doing the breath-hold work meditation, because I also enjoy non-breath-hold related meditations, I have found that since I did your course, I'm able to access deeper meditative states much quicker, yeah, because it's all on a continuum, right? It is not separate, yes, skill sets; it's, if you can do it at that extreme end completely, you can quite easily do it in a non-extreme event, absolutely. And by the way, in breath-hold work, there is breath work, breath work, breath or work; I teach both, yeah. And by the way, you remember in the course we only start to more substantially hold our breath in the second week, not even like the first week, the first two sessions were mostly uh, explaining breathing, the physiology of breathing, uh, you know, some uh, very um, it was nasal breathing; it was slowing the breath down; it was really gentle, yes. And and I think this is something that is worth making clear is that this is not a method, a tecnica course, to be matcha, that hey, you know, I can hold my breath for four, I could do four and a half, I could do three; you're kind of missing the point. I get that's the way in for many people, wow, what's the means doing then? You prepare your conscious mind; you prepare your, your work with your limbic brain; you work with like deeper aspects of your recognition; you work with your nervous system; and then, whoa, all of a sudden you become somehow, I like to use that word, timeless, yeah, detached from time and patient and tranquil in trust, and that magic happens.

For someone who's interested or, and they're thinking about maybe doing your online course, right, yeah, but they want to give it a go first themselves, right? Is there a simple practice that anyone listening to this podcast can actually experiment with themselves? Yes, actually, on the breathholework.com, on the breath of work website, we have a free initiation, um, it's a video, and that, that's one exercise, because you know there's a variety of exercises; there are diverse ways to hold your breath, um, it can be on full lungs; it can be with after an exhale; it can be um, push to a certain degree; it can be a short recovery; can be longer recovery; it can be your whole, you know, there are diverse ways, you know, to structure the time that you spend holding your breath, uh, so that free initiation is one simple exercise, 10 minutes, and during this 10 minutes, um, you will breathe, you will breathe slowly, you know, hold your breath; it's, it's, I'll let people just go there and discover the exercise. It's great to do, by the way, before you go to bed. I've heard a lot of people fall asleep like that; was incredible; I realized after doing that exercise, I fell asleep like a baby; I slept like a baby, a whole night. What's interesting about that for me is that when I spoke to James Nestor and Patrick McKeon, one of the things that was coming up was how, and I know you talk about this as well online on your course, that many of us are breathing too fast, too fast; we take too many breaths, um, yes, we're breathing more through the mouth; you know, we should be breathing predominantly through the nose, and we should be breathing in a lot, a lot slower than we do. And we did this on the course, but what I found that I know you found with most of your students is, without trying to actively slow down our breathing, by doing the practice, by doing the breath-hold work, your breathing rate naturally comes down, yes. So we're talking about our respiratory rate; it's, yeah, we're talking about how many breath cycles we take per minute at rest, so, um, there's a simple way to calculate that; one breath cycle is one inhale, one exhale; you start a timer; you inhale; you exhale; one breath cycle; and without trying to change anything, we were trying to consciously change the way you naturally, spontaneously breathe; if you count how many breath cycles you take in one minute, at the end of that course, we've had breath-holding practice, all the students notice, except those who already had a naturally low respiratory rate, but all those, and that could include young individuals, fit that do, you know, they run; they're physically active, and they have like 17 breath cycles per minute, 14, and then or down to eight, yeah, or less; what should you have? So James Nestor uh, talks about that, yes, it does, and he says it's like 5.5, I remember. All right, that would mean, you know, uh, five full breath cycles, and then either you have an extra inhale, an extra exhale at the end of it. I think that's a good number, but I would say anywhere below 10 is going to be good, because it also depends on when you measure it; is it in the morning, right after you wake up, or is it at the end of the day? Depends on the state of your nervous system, on your metabolic rate; there are plenty of variables that can impact that, but um, you know, you lack sleep; you're stressed out, yeah; heart rate goes up because when you're stressed, heart rate goes up; you breathe faster, um, and you were below 10. Well, personally, um, at the altitude where I live, um, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the US, it's uh, 2,200 meters altitude, 7,000 plus feet elevation, in the morning my respiratory rate is around three, can be five, around three, and that's uh, just relaxing, sitting like this and just breathing, breathing slowly, yeah. It's a, it's a, you know, I've seen a lot; I do a lot; I explore a lot; I talk to a lot of people; I, I, I love trying new things, but I gotta say it really is something quite unique, original, and special, um, it's a very, very good course that has taught me so much about myself. I think that's a key thing that I like to highlight for people is that you learn so much about yourself; you learn about when you don't want to go there; you learn very much doing what, doing nothing, doing nothing; she's just lying your breath and just wait, just wait, and sometimes it's not very long, and you feel a bit of discomfort, and then where do you go, yes, you know. And the other thing I love about the daily practice element of it, and I think we should all have a daily practice of some sort, whether it's this or something else, like yes, it doesn't matter to me, like, but a daily practice, because what this daily practice does for me is that on one day, let's say if I'm holding my breath no problem for, let's say, two and a half minutes, let's say it's feeling easy, and then the next morning, one and a half minutes feels really hard, yes. I've done it enough times now to, to realize, oh, your mind is busy; you're completely, you're worried about this happening later, or your workload, or you have a podcast guest arriving shortly, or you, you start to learn how much your mental state affects your physiology, yes, exactly, which is incredible, yes. If it was all CO2 tolerance, then what would you have a lower tolerance that day, and the next day you have a completely different CO2 tolerance, yeah. So it's not just about that; it's about tolerance, and what's going to determine your tolerance? Well, it's the state of your number system; is it uh, feeling really relaxed on that day, free of concern? But then another day, things come up, and then you, you have a night that's not that restorative, and you're agitated, and there's so much at the back of your mind; you have concerns, and concerns are what it is; if there's something I need to regulate in my life, otherwise I don't feel safe; that's what it is; that's simple; it's that simple; it's so binary; that hence, sympathetic, parasympathetic nervous system; that's it, in a nutshell; either you agitate or you tranquilize; you calm down, or arousal mode or relaxation mode; why? What determines? Well, either there's a threat or something to do, including even something you enjoy to do, so you need to agitate yourself to whatever, go dance or go work out or go just work or relaxation downtime, so you feel safe that you can allow yourself to take that time, yeah, down, free of concern, tranquilize, restore your energies, and that feels good, and that's healing, and that's very important, and you, it's a almost, I would say it's uh, it's self-care and self-love to take the time, ideally sometime every day, just do that, just put your hands on your, on your chest and feel yourself, feel how your body feels, feels how inside of you your emotional self, your mental self, give yourself some support, give yourself some attention, and then maybe also give yourself some practice, so you, you practice because you know we've had practice; I would love to be patient; I would love to be to have a more quiet mind; I would like, would love to think less; I would love to think more positively; I would love to have less anxiety; I will, everybody does because it feels good; it's goodness; we feel golden when we feel that way, but if we wait for the world, for our circumstances to be perfect around us, it's never going to happen; there always will be some problems to take care of, some concerns to be had, so there's a point where we have to decide that, hey, you know what, I'm closing the doors, closing the windows, and one with, with myself, and I'm going to just give myself some attention because I need to regulate, not just the outside world, not just to clean things and to organize things, and just, I need to reorganize inside; I need to clear it up, yeah; I need to balance it out; I need to pacify it; it's practice; it's practice; and then it becomes second nature, if to practice, yeah, with enough consistency, it becomes not just something you do; it becomes, it becomes who you are, because some real structural changes happen neurologically in your brain, in your nervous system. And when we talk about the nervous systems and emotions, it's completely physical, isn't it? And so it goes through the body; you get to know yourself so well with this practice, and just completing the circle from the start of this conversation, that inner confidence you have in yourself, on the other side of this, money can't buy that; no, no, you can't read that in a textbook or in a blog or in an article; you can read about this is why breath work is good for me; this is why meditation is good for me, but you do the practice; you go to that slight zone of discomfort; you learn how to calm everything and come out the other side and realize, wow, my mind is ultimately dictating most, if not all, of how I feel, and I actually have more power over that mind than I previously thought, yes; that's priceless, yes. You recondition yourself; you shaping that is called the inner self, what you're going to experience, because that's what we are in the end; we are in charge of intentionally impacting that experience that we are; that's the meta-skill; that's a supreme skill; otherwise, we are, you know, subject to all kinds of influences, and we have little power over again the experience that we're having; that's the experience we choose to be. You could say, with philosophical, psychological, that's also spiritual; in fact, it's all of that, and in the end it's all simple, if you ask me what's the secret to uh, holding your breath a long time; is there a breathing technique; is there like a mind technique? What is the mind technique? I want to tell you what the mind technique is; in his trust, make us trust; will give you all the relaxation, the patience that you want; if you trust, you can relax; when you trust, some people call it faith; when you trust, that's the supreme feeling; that's where the peace comes from; that's where the patience come from; that's where the clarity comes from; and that trust again. [Music] When you go through the world, there are plenty of things that are going to unsettle you, are going to startle you, are going to make you alert and maybe anxious and everything. When you are within, it's an interaction with yourself; anything that happens, anything that you will experience is on you, and you thought any visual that comes to you and you subject, you think about any emotion, any feeling, they don't come out of the blue; will come from you, you as a nervous system, not just having another system; you as a nervous system generate that; you as a mind, you as a brain, you as a soul generate that; why? Well, you're telling yourself a story; you're interpreting the world; you're interpreting yourself; and you're making sense of that experience that you are now. If you're going to experience that trust, it's because you establish it; you want it; you desire that experience; are you invited? You establish it, and you delve in it, as in an inner space, and then you dwell in it, and then you magnify it, and that requires impeccable intention and prolonged also impeccable attention, and it's very pure that way, and it's either that or like, oh my God, there's no way I can do this; I have to wait longer; I don't feel good; I said no, okay, well, which way, what experience of yourself do you want to be, yeah? Is that simple choice, and it's on you, yeah; it's, it's on you. I think that's where the difficulty comes, but that's also where the gold comes, yes. We can confront the limitations inside our mind; we can sit next to them, turn their lead into gold, and who wouldn't want that? Everyone.

It's been such a joy, um, likewise, talking to you on the show; it's been great hanging out with you; you're someone I've, I've been watching from afar for many years; I know you've inspired previous guests on the show; Tony Riddle, the foot collector, said great work, great messengers, and you've, you've done a great job at bringing the message of natural movement to so many people and inspiring many others to keep uh, sharing that message, which is wonderful. And I really feel now, I don't know if I'd call it a reinvention or an iteration, like I know you're still passionate about natural movement, but I feel that this fits very much alongside it, but is again something very fresh and exciting that people can engage with if they choose this, so I thank you for, thank you, thank you. Well, you know, I, I, I'm a human being; I, uh, I like all human beings that we are; we face uh, challenges in, in this life, which we do our best to make the sense of this experience that we're going through, and we all need tools and practices, and you know there are ways to optimize that experience, to, to, to make it better; that's what we want; it's the good life, good experience. And so, through natural movement, when I realized, okay, this is missing from society; where's the freedom to just do the things that we all want to do when we're kids? And and then, or even, it was never just physical, and that's why in my book I say, when I move naturally, I'm moving the words; when I move the way I'm designed to move, it's um, it's a physical experience or expression of my spirit, and it's a spiritual experience of my body. And and then, with that breathal work practice, it becomes even more this inner journey, inner exploration, inner practice, but it's still through the body because the body never goes away; everything that we experience is through the body, so, um, what I believe I've found through my experience, through my quest, from my personal research, I am eager to share for others to benefit as well; that's what I'm teaching; what I'm teaching. Well, we appreciate that, everyone. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, thank you.

If you enjoyed that conversation, I think you are really going to enjoy this one about the crucial importance of strength training. The reality is, is we are not over-fat; we are under-muscle; healthier your muscle mass is, the greater your survivability across nearly all disease states—cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, obesity. If the people listening execute on the following advice that I'm going to give, they will change the trajectory, uh, the way in which they age.

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EVERYTHING You Know About Exercise & Losing Weight IS WRONG... | Erwan Le Corre

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