Ido Portal: The Science & Practice of Movement
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neurology, gy and open ology at stanford school of medicine. Today my guest is edo portel.

Edo portola is somebody who truly defies formal definition. He is, however, credited by many to be the world expert in all things movement. Movement is one of the more fascinating and important aspects of our nervous system.

In fact, IT was the great nobel l prize winner sherrington. That said, movement is the final common path. What he was referring to is the fact that so much of our nervous system is dedicated to movement, and in particular, that the human nervous system can generate the greatest variety of forms of movement.

We can run, we can jump, we can crawl. We can move at different speeds. Far more variation in movement and different types and speeds of movement than any other animal in the animal kingdom perform.

My interest in bringing into port toll on to this podcast stemmed from a discussion about just that, about sharing ton and the enormous range of movements that humans can engage in. Edo is both a practitioner and an intellectual. We all know what a practitioner is, is somebody who walks the walk, who actually performs the thing that they're knowledgeable about.

And indeed, ido has studied copper A A number of other martial arts dance. You natica various forms of sport. He's train top athletes like conomo rigger. And he has many, many other credits to his name as a practitioner and teacher. However, he is also a true intellectual of movement. I define an intellectual as somebody who can both think about and talk about a subject at multiple levels of granularity that is with exquisite detail and with exquisite, simple icy, depending on the your audience and depending on the topic at hand. And as you're soon here for my discussion with the do, he is both a practitioner and a true intellectual of all things movement today, through our discussion, you will learn how the nervous system generates movement, and the different forms of movement, the different speeds of movement.

You are also going to get an incredible insight through eos, mind and eyes of how movement can serve us in the various context of life, not just in sport, not just in exercise, but in every aspect of our lives, from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night. How we engage with others, how engage with ourselves, indeed, how movement even informs relationships of different kinds. I found our discussion to be one of the most enlightening and interesting discussions that i've ever had, not just about movement, but about the nervous system.

I can assure you that by the end of this episode, you will not only learn a tremendous amount about movement through the eyes and mind of the one and only edper toll, but you also will learn a tremendous amount of neuroscience about how the cells and circuits and hormones and neurotransmitter ors of your body assist in creating the various forms of movement that you can generate, that you're trying to learn and generate, and that perhaps you should think about trying to learn and generate, and video, learn some protocols and tools for how to do that. In science, we have a phrase, actually, it's a title that's reserved for only the realist of individuals. We say that somebody is an end of one, meaning a sample size of one.

And as you'll soon learn, edper tol is truly an end of one. Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is in all in one of vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink. I've been taking athletic Greens since two thousand and twelve, so i'm delighted that their sponsor in the podcast, the reason I started taking athletic Greens on the reason I still take athletic Greens once or twice a day, is that IT helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs to makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, IT has probiotics, which are vital for microbial health.

I've done a couple of episodes now on the so called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With that, let the Greens I get, the vitals I need, the minerals I need and the profile's to support my microbial. If you'd like to try athletic Greens, you can go to athletic Greens dot com slash huberman in and claim a special offer.

You'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin d 3k two ton of data now showing that vitamin three is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health。 Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin d three and k two is also important because IT regulates things like cardiovascular function, cause um in the body and so on. Again, go to athletic Greens that comes so huberman to claim the special offer of the five travel packs and the year supply of vitamin 3k two。 Today's episode is also brought to us by element.

Element is an electoral light drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolier ts are an element, and those are sodium, magnesium and patasse. Um but IT has no sugar.

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Our mood is off, hormonal systems go off, our ability to get in the physical action, to engage in endurance and strength and all sorts of other things is diminished. So with element, you can make sure that you're staying on top of your hydration and that you're getting the proper ratio of electoral. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element that element dot com slash huberman and you'll get a free element sample pack with your purchase.

They're all delicious. So again, if you want to try element, you can go to element element dot com slash. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja, recessions and nsd r non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I start doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP, turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations. And they had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try.

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If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slashed huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with edo por toll idol.

Thank you for coming here today. I've been looking for a to sitting down with you to talk for a very long time. I was first exposed to your work from my post store of podcast, I believe, of had a group of people walking down hAndrails, literally, the hAndrails along stair whales.

And as I I want to say, former a scape water wants to escape water. Oh, escape water. The escape water. Uh, hAndrails have a particular meaning. But I was really struck by, first of all, ah the incredible range of skill that people had and yet they're willingness to do this.

Why do I think of hAndrails or walking on handles or escape and handles as a potential hazard? And yet some of the incredible proficiency that some of the people they're including yourself, had. So like many people, I was drawn to your practice in your work initially through A A wide, wide wow, you know they're doing some incredible stuff on natural objects, much of skateboards or park core folks to.

But over the years, we've been in communication and i've come to realize that you're a true intellectual of the topic of movement. I to find an intellectual is somebody who can understand a topic at multiple levels of granularity detailed general specific connections. And that a so to start off, could you share with us your conception of the idea of movement? You know, obviously, movement involves translations through space. But when you talk about a movement practice, what are you really thinking about? What what are we talking about when we talk about a movement practice?

It's a big question. I I somehow left the definition, the very tight definition of IT out for myself because I felt IT was starting to constrict me and be around me and I let the practice itself really define IT. Um but I think um part of our sense of everything is actually a sense of movement and then the stillness in the background of death.

So for me this is the entity that I refer to as movement and using that perspective, a for self evolution, development, of course, the physical side, but also movement of emotions, movement of thoughts and and any other movement streams. Um and by switching these layers and examining IT from different places, you get a Better and Better sense of IT. I think the visuals, nowaday and media are what defines for people in the beginning things.

And then little by little, with experience, they can dive deeper, which is good. There is some aspect, sexy aspect, and or not so sexy aspect. And then you pull on IT and you start to examine and dive deeply.

Then you receive the gift of feed. Finding out more. I heard you say .

once that we are not just a brain with a body, but we are a body with a brain, which I absolutely love, because as a student and a researcher of the nervous system, I never think about the brain as its own isolated thing.

I think about the nervous system in the fact that the brain and the spinal corner connected to the body, and the body is connected as to the brain in every direction, is everything truly is connected at the physical level of physiological level. Could you just share remote how you think about this body brain relationship in terms of, know, you mentioned, movement of emotions, movement of the body, that you can't really separate the two. And for the typical person who is listening this, they might not immediately understand what what that means.

Maybe it's something that has to be experience, but when we think about the body and the brain and the the whole thing working as one cohesive whole, what what does that mean to you? Or put simply, when you do a movement practice, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the movement of your limbs? I have to imagine that's true. But are you also focusing on how that makes you feel or how your feelings make you move?

okay. Um okay. So some thoughts. And I was trying not to answer any of your questions during this interview, but I will definitely give give some thoughts, and then we can play with IT.

I think these definitions, and in general, the limitation of words, ends up creating some kind of a corruptive process. The words corrupt us and corrupt our understanding. So I think the brain body is cartesian state of mind and thinking.

A brought a lot of good, but also brought a lot of problems. And movement for me, is the entity that ties everything together, is the magic, is the vote animal. When the coin spins, and you see both sides appear at the same time is a beautiful analogy from a friend of minor doctor as most all man.

And so the mind and body are one of those pairs, and I call IT the movement body mind system. So it's when it's integrated, it's in motion. There is also a student that appears there.

Of course, without IT, there can be no motion. But maybe that is a very good way to start to think of things. There is no really pure mental processes, cognitive processes.

There is no pure physical processes. Everything touches everything. There is a holness. And that holness is in motion. And yeah, the movement practice takes these bits and examine them. And here is a pragmatic a thing, the scientist, the cerebral thinking about movement. This is important, the emotional side coLoring, feeling, the colors and the textures of motion.

A lot of people who are involved with the movement practice never end up feeling motions, really focusing on how IT makes you feel, or how IT feels itself, and then the actual movement, the action, so as action, emotion and thought. And those are three streams of movement, and they interact together into this kind of braided experience and whole experience. And I try to bring all these aspects into my my practice in the way that I live my life.

I think most people who embark on a movement practice will first want to know which movements to do right. Squats, planks, uh pushups um puro wets right? Pick your movement IT could be any movement.

Are there any sort of just basic entry points that you believe everybody should walk through as they embrace a movement practice the first time and maybe even in every time they do a movement in practice? Mean, earlier today I had the great privilege of being guided through A A long series of movement practices. And yet the first places we did involved at first, anyway, stillness, not movement. So if, if you would, could you inform us, you know, how people should think about approaching a movement practice? What is the first layer of any good movement practice?

So you touch the word movements, and it's important to, for me to separate IT from the word movement with a capital. Em movements are the containers, and movement eases the content, and the content cannot be Carried in any way without containers. So the first entry point is to choose containers, and then the second thing to make sure is to put specific content into those containers and then enjoy them.

I tell people that it's like a cup of water and you're being handed that cup of watering nowaday. Very often people will start to chew on the cup instead of drinking the water, making IT yours, discard the cup. And then maybe later you want to have bone broth or soup.

So you use a different container, a ball. So a movement practice to start can start from anywhere. It's a rizzon.

It's it's an open system. IT has no center, is disallowed and IT can be approach form anywhere. And that its magic.

And that's the benefit of IT. Some people find the body a good entry point. Some people don't even enter from the body, and sometimes you can enter from other perspectives.

And then inside the body, for example, where should we enter if we decided to take the body approach? The spine can be a nice decision, but some will choose just the any one of those points are valid. And then playfulness can be an entry point, an attribute or, and this is so open.

So I don't want to limit people and limit their minds in the way that they encourage with the practice, but I also want to encourage the self inquiry. Am I doing movement practice? Or am I doing a movement practice?

So could you help me distinguish the two a little bit further? I think I understand the difference between I and sort of the now versus the verbs. And in some ways, here we are dealing with the chAllenge of, you know, the barriers that language present to something that's physical, right? Indeed, there may not be a activist sum. There is no perfect verbal language for movement. There are certain movements that defy, which I could say, somebody jumped at a particular trajectory, at a particular speed, and move this limit, that limb, but by fraction invenit, something is most definitely lost um so if someone wanted to, let's say, get in Better touch with their body in quotes in order to explore the infinite space that is movement um how might they begin to approach that is IT does he begin with an awareness with practice or both?

IT begins with education, and that's probably the most stable point of entry and awareness to do something as a concept that IT is a concept that there is a validity or because sometimes people look for that to looking at this entity, this open entity, and that part of the reason why answering questions is not something I can do or even attempt to do.

I believe in the power of the non complete process, like making this this table, but leaving something and done, not perfecting the product. why? Because IT offers some kind of a dynamic nature of evolution that naturally and revels from IT, almost like sometimes I do IT. I count reps and i'll only come to nine because IT tends to leave people in the count and IT keeps going instead of giving them the ten .

everyone wants to end on ten. yeah.

Which is because of the design system. So all kinds of things like that is also important with the movement ideas to discuss, to examine, to look, to taste, to try, but then also not to try to capture. Because if you like the invisible loop of offset, if you look at IT too closely is gone. But if you look away, IT functions and exists just like us, very powerfully and obviously gives us the experiences that we have.

So when people enter movement practice, IT is about education, bringing some awareness to the fact that they are living in a body, that they are living in motion, that their mind is a type of movement, that their life is a type of movement, bringing attention to the movement of the emotions as well, bringing just attention to the fact that things are in motion, the, the, the kite to pana ray, all in flux, nothing stops besides something that is the background of IT and and allows you to express, and this is the beauty of things. And this for me, is the movement practice is is this examination, and bringing this awareness into things as we sit now here, i'm also aware of my body. I'm also aware of the way that things make me feel, the way that your face is communicating to me. And i'm not just in some limited um and very verbal overly verbal state because he misses a lot of the beautiful flags.

I'm going to inject some um or project some ideas and um perhaps you would tell me if their ridiculous, potentially useful or useful um as I understand, what we're talking about now and what we've discuss earlier is that movement can and should be incorporated into one's entire life if you even heard you say that even before getting out of bed in the morning, one can experience movement and IT doesn't necessary have to be of the intimate kind with somebody else is IT can be paying attention to the rythm of one's breath or how you get out of the bed or actually an anticipation of you arriving here today.

I noticed that as I was going up and down the stairs in this in this house, that I was injecting a little bit of playfulness in the way that I might have many, many decades ago, but haven't for a very long time. And I asked myself whether not that's what e do is referring to when he's talks about threats, this body awareness throughout the day as opposed to, but of course not exclusive from just saying I have forty five minutes, i'm going to do movement practice before I shower and have some dinner, right? I have to imagine both are helpful.

But in terms of moving through the day and having bodily awareness, clearly there an infinite number of ways one could do that. If you could, you just share a few you mention. I mean, one could pay attention to their breath cop attention of posture.

And this notion of play is a very attractive, as we say in science. It's a sticky concept, a concept kind of draws one in. Maybe if you would, could you share with us just some ideas to get people thinking about them, maybe even incorporating movement practice into their day, and maybe even touch on the the potential role of play or .

playfulness? Okay, 也都 是。 那 those are some good directions。 I think one thing is this, what you call wordlessly ss, I I have been recommending to people non verbal experiences and the awareness of the body, which is not really the awareness of the body, as you know, not purely or not fully.

The awareness of motion is a very good way to start to to bring awareness to that layer, and that layer will start to get clarified more and more and more than more. You practice and then IT will enable for most people safe haven away from many states and difficulties and will. Unlock a lot of potential, a attributes and strength and freshness and a lot of beautiful things.

Really, one of the really perspectives about who we are comes from person who influenced my thinking a lot. Moshe fell and Chris, the late mushrooms eland cries, and he talks about the body as the core, three elements, the core nervous system, two is the mechanical system of muscle skeleton sea, and the third is the environment, which is a unique way to look at IT. And he talks about how the nervous system is both get receiving information from the outside and from the inside.

And in the first years of life, you work a lot on differentiating those. what? What is me and what is not to me? And I think movement.

When you feel movement, you feel the movement of the outside. That is, of course, arriving to you and receiving this and also your own internal movement. And the same can be said for stealing. So bringing the attention into those layers, it's a tRicky thing.

It's one of those elusive things to look at, but it's definitely a huge benefit to start to train IT, start to practice IT, to fill not our thoughts, not necessarily our body, but to start to recognize the dynamic nature, the flux, the motion and IT occurs in all these layers. So you can, you can, you will need to find IT in multiple locations before you start to more and more make IT your own, make IT really yours. And how, for example, simple, pragmatic things.

I used to do this, spend some time in home kong, would need to get my practice. But I am really turned off from commercial games. And there is not a lot of nature accessible there. So I would just strap on my bag and I would walk the streets of hong kong, which are very crowded, and then I would try to avoid touching anyone.

And IT would be like two hour of of, just like movie involved, fully involved, fooling in my body and experiencing beautiful things and enjoying and developing myself as well in all kinds of scenarios up and down, in the in the escalators and off. So this is an example of a way to to practice. And then the way that we're sitting, like these chairs, for example, our chairs are not very dynamic, but there is rocking chairs, right? And this is something I recommend for a lot of kids, like in schools. I used to rock on the chair, which is very common in my skeared .

board underneath my chair, and roll IT back and forth. And the teacher would tell me to stop slowly, a little by little, trying to get the most subtle movement I could, without them telling me they're going to take that away.

which try, which is probably horrible, horrible advice and instruction, just like sit up straight and chew with your mouth closed because they remove a lot of the self education and a lot of the self development and the practical and discoveries that are necessary and even will damage focus and thinking processes in in some ways. Um so I for example, I would make the chairs even more mobile and I would support more motion and then I would be able to bring attention there, but I would also be able to bring attention away from IT into other things. And IT keeps refreshing me so I don't become stale. The water doesn't stand this is the beauty of a movement so you can focus for long periods of time and do incredible things with the mind, with focus, with our attention um and it's we skin in the game so i'm not talking is some meditator and is described being the act of being very focused but then I put a stick on the edge of his fingers and I tell him baLance IT he everyone can do IT for ten seconds and I tell him OK now hold the ten minutes and you see that the skill has he has no skin in the game IT wasn't developed in various scenario but so there is a delusion that start to develop um and and that's that's how movement keeps me very honest and humble in the way that I have you humidity and and in a way that protects me and and and keeps me yeah keeps me fresh. I I love the example of .

moving through the crowded street with a backpack because of the way in which is completely adaptive to the situation. You happen to be in the highlights, the fact that one doesn't need a gym or um any specific scenario um although we will certainly touch on ideal learning circumstances for movement and some of uh the work that you're doing.

Of course, the less of your own personal practice and understanding and knowledge you've done, the more toys you need, the more you've really worked on yourself. The more high tech you are, the more low tech are your tools, the more high tech you are. And this is the most advanced technology by far on this planet.

With all the advancement, IT doesn't even start to scratch. And you know, IT from the way that we understand the eyes all the way to with all do respect to the boston robotics, five year old motion movements, or animal motion, was very under developed, still relatively to us systems. So important to to remind ourselves.

a lot can be done with the body and gravity floor.

a piece of floor, a piece of wall, a corner of a room, is a beautiful scenario which you can become discover in and play in. And but we are not so developed, so we don't see those options. And this is something that I try to stimulate, and that's why I made IT a point to avoid any of the big my sponsorship and and and high tech tools.

And I one point brought a stick into, you know, big conventions. And and or I sometimes use a shirt with holes in IT that just like I use shirt as a point to make when i'm addressing a crowd, to keep things where where it's important and it's important. We are important and our experience is important.

And we we have to be very careful these these habits and these directions, they come from many times good intention, but they are the the devil. Many times they turn into the devil, just like our technology in owes. And what is happening with people with depression, with meaning, meaninglessness, also with the body in various perspectives.

Or even, I would also IT into high performance sports and their Price, because for me, this is not the movement practice IT. You raises the person in the center of IT, and then came places like skate boarding or break dancing, or somebody with a disability becomes the best in the world, turns IT into the biggest advantage. But he would never be accepted into gymnasts s class and I love that and and that that change to place change in the center. It's important you touch on .

mention of a few sports maybe as Charles poli quin or maybe is another trainer that um I heard once say that you know for kids one of the worst things they can do is over specialized in a particular sport. Um the idea being that IT leads to improvements in performance in a very narrow domain.

But they raised the idea that IT could perhaps also constrains the development of the nervous system, such that certain emotional states and intellectual abilities will forever be shut off because of the intense plasticity that occurs early in life. The more I learned from you, the more I am thinking that that statement really should be extended to all of life. And I loved to remind people, because I started off as a development on the ball, is that development doesn't start an end.

You don't have childhood and adult od. Our life is one long developmental art from birth until death, however long that might be. So if one is going to be anti specialist, maybe even we call that a generalist, what does that look like? What are the different domains of movement practice? And as I asked, as I realized I I am serious danger of franco onate movement into a list of words like strength and speed and explosive us and supplements a word that i've heard you use before.

And yet I think for most people, because we think in words often um some of those categories can be useful. So let's say I was going to embark on a movement practice. Her child was going to embark on a movement practice, and I don't raal the day or for a dedicated period of time.

What are the sorts of categories of movement that I might want to think about? Ballistic movement? Smooth movement? Maybe you could just enrich us with some of the, some of the landscape around there.

Okay, first, I dressed the first part that you mentioned, and i've learned from you about certain changes in the way that things develop later in life versus earlier in life. And you're right, this is something that trust public will also mention that I learned from back in the day as well from him and which can seem dark a bit and and kind of hopeless but then you you should go beyond that.

One thing does seem to to to appear for me when I look around as this the concept of unique postures um and I think this is true for postures of thought, emotional postures and movement postures truly, earlier in life we are creating these unique postures and they get into these draws or like a language letters later in life the process moves more towards integration of this unique postures into all different organizations. The beauty of IT is that you can use very few posters to create many possibilities, just like a living. Its search for a language that contain one sybel only verses two, which he discovered.

And this is something that is often seen, like you take someone who moves in a certain way and you teach him all these new sports or techniques. But essentially, if you look deeply and your sensitive, you seat the same posture that he will have to work with till the end of his life, the same thinking posters and these, this is really problematic where we are, we are not reading the mind beyond, they said, how would I say a careful thing of thinking? And we are actually letting off the content.

We, we, we get more and more focused on the the way, the the way of thinking versus the thinking itself, or or habitual ways and forms of thinking, associated thinking and set up. And emotionally the same, we are constructing these emotional postures, and then we have to go through the rest of our lives working with that. So this is the dark side.

But of course, there are always possibilities. And both, I think, invading this early system to some extent, even if it's five percent or seven percent or whatever, percent. And also on the freed yourself of going beyond all posters, period, working with the postures you have, but towards the posture, less way of doing things.

So this is something interesting. H to work when you, when people work with movements, but finally are able to go into movement. And this magic starts to happen, and then the techniques fall apart and something appears in any to face change.

It's a, it's a transformation. It's not that it's it's a binary moment. There is a jump there for sure. It's very rare to see both in thinking and emotionally and in otherways.

We have many names for IT, and some talk about enlightenment, and some talk about all kinds of processes related to IT. And I think most of them are shadows of the sun, but it's not the sun itself, really. And then talking about ways of thinking about movement.

This is where I use something I I called my slice and dice because of the problem of using words and definitions and categories. I tried to create a lot of them, and I write them on on the paper, and then I crumble them, throw them into the bin, and I keep doing IT all my life. The writing them down.

And the geeks on IT is very important, also very important to let you go. I tell people, what you forgot is not the same for forgetting, is not the same as never knowing IT. The crumbling and throwing away is a form of forgetting, but IT leaves some kind of a home mail pathetic trace behind.

So let's take some slice and dice and and try to look at IT. Here is a physical one, contraction relaxation. That's a spectrum. And pretty much everything falls on this spectrum also in terms of analyzing a person or yourself, you can tell me if you feel closer to this side or closer to that side.

And then IT allows you to examine your practices, how many of the practices are moving you towards baLance and how many it's your addiction of just doing what you're good at versus what you need. And here is another example, physical culture. So we have the dense realm working with internal concepts and expressing them abstract concept expression.

Second perspective, the martial concern, but not in the sense of just fighting, but also partnering, working with another person, a dynamic entity that is communicating with you. Third one is I called the elements working with the environment. The next one is a cromac.

One is the internal practice, and of course they are all gray zones, and and another one is object manipulator, which you can think of. IT also is the environment, but it's more small objects, heavy objects, many objects, few objects. And then you can look at this way of thinking, and you can, I have many of my practices in this direction, but not, and you can draw for yourself.

So that's another perspective. And this way I I use dozens of perspectives. And with the years, IT gives people a sense of where they want to go, how they want to do IT, and what they need to address versus what they like to address is that is IT helpful.

Very helpful. Those different beans are very helpful. I really appreciate that. You mention that people will often practice what they are. Good add is opposed to what they need in gym culture. We referred to this as the guy that always skips like day person, right? Bag up body, skin, legs.

Or you'll see people that have this enormous the torsos and their bench pressing all day, but they clearly need to pull on an object every once in a while to create some baLance. But they don't do IT because they for whatever reason, they have an obsession with moving greater and greater poundage or something like that um which in certain sports like power lifting weathered s aren't the the goal and it's simply to push more or weight off once. Just you could imagine that there's something many facial there.

However, I think that it's really important in intellectual endeavors and in movement endeavors to understand correctly to bring oneself to a place of real chAllenge on a regular basis. In fact, earlier today, I was in a state of constant chAllen because I was all new to me. And as much as I told myself, beginner's mind, beginner's mind, beginner's mind IT.

It's hard. I confessed to not want to do well, to perform well, right? And I think I think that's a natural .

and healthy thing. Only natural IT is necessary. But I want you to keep IT on that side and to bring something to baLance IT.

If there is not this chAllenge, the process will not work. IT adds to be this scale, and you're talking about scales of paying pleasure. And this is another scale.

And this discomfort, again, is necessary and should be recognized as i'm in the right place. When IT becomes too high and i'm unable to resolve to make any progress, I went overboard. But when it's not present, I don't do nothing here, nothing that i'm truly interested in.

I'm just gratifying myself. One curry is in essence, it's not about searching for the discomfort, but it's a marker. And I think. The question should be, who am I serving? Because people do not serve themselves.

In essence, they serve part parts of IT some some kind of a fraction of themselves and this separation of oneself for oneself and this is also a result of the practice, a good practice. Um I think maybe the biggest gift I received from the practice is am I am I can say, although IT will take maybe a certain context, i'm not my friend. At times I am, but many times I am not my friend. And by creating the separation, I can assume certain stability in the face of everything, all the way up to our own mortality and death, which is, and maybe beyond, who knows?

Yeah, he was a striking moment for me earlier today when I was really chAllenged with one of the practices we were doing and you said this is exactly the what I experiences this morning, Andrew, that's what you said. I couldn't imagine that you were having chAllenges doing the what I was attempting to do.

And of course you were what I believe what you were referring to is that you had put yourself at that edge earlier the day in which you were making failures. You you were fAiling to execute the way that you were attempting to execute movement. I should just to inject some neuroscience and neuroplasticity there. I can't help myself, is what I do. After all, there are beautiful data in animals and human showing that in the seconds and minutes after a failed attempt at a motor execution of something, the forebrain is in a heightened state of focus.

And when you hear, IT suddenly makes perfect sense, of course, why would the nervous system change unless IT got A Q to change? And the q almost always comes in the form of frustration that the, well, as we said earlier, that the na signal is the one that perhaps you to extract more learning from the subsequent trials. And yet, for a lot of people, they feel that uh that failure to execute or even to approximate execution and they feel and experience that are negative signal and they leaned out of the practice, they start to depart either mentally or physically or both.

And if there's anything I think that um we can offer is this understanding that that edge some people call IT or that failures aren't just necessary. They are part of the learning process. They are the entry gate to neuroplasticity .

as contextualized or reconnect tui zing. That sensation is something I work a lot with and I just reminded to people, and I also reminded to myself, and if IT wasn't difficult and we didn't need to redo IT again and again, we wouldn't be again on this correct scale, which is dynamic and moving, just like rolling downhill. So the reason there is definitely a necessity to succeed to origin the certain aspects that you want to achieve.

But then there is also the letting go of IT and and the the ambition ing of IT and the and within that tension, the plus and the minus comes movement and that that's how that the again, if I stretch IT too far away, or if I increase one of them too much, then I would have some issues. But you will, with practice, learn to recognize the optimal point of progression. Of course, IT IT takes many years and a lot of play and exposure to get a sense of IT regardless of the layer in which IT is applied.

So i'm sure in your field and in in your pursuit, you are already aware of IT and applying IT in your life talking about focus, talking about ways of thinking, creativity as a true, but then it's enough that I I pulled into another perspective and you will see that people are specialists and and then they don't have really the the real essence of the of the concept. It's not theirs. It's applied specifically, the one who changes all the time gets the general component because what appears when everything changes, that is the new entity.

Everything changes, something stays. That's what we wanted. Get this concept, this understanding.

I heard the statement before, we are just a meat vehicle, right? We're just a sc cells and IT. And I I truly despise that statement because, first of all, IT IT deprives us of all meaning of our lives, and we can go down the road of philosophy as to whether not there's meaning or not.

But more importantly, IT divorces us from the idea that the body and brain are interconnected and have at least equal value at any one moment that they are informing each other. Emotions and form movement. Movement informs emotions.

One thing that i've heard you say before really love to hear you embellish on is this is important principle that human beings are truly unique in terms of the enormous range of movements that we can perform, and yet we are excEllent, may be superior to all other species at certain types of movement when that comes to mind is walking, stride, striding. So um maybe we could just explore that that idea uh because obviously a cheater is very fast. The given seems to have a lot of proficiency at Robin and swimming from branches.

Um but human beings perform an enormous or can potentially perform an enormous array of movements. Do you think all human beings are potentially able to explore all the different types of movement? And if so, how does one approach that? So basically what i'm doing is i'm tabling a concept which is not range of motion, right for the for the gym ATS discarded with range of motion. I'm talking about the variety of .

movements first is not important to what I think if it's possible or not possible or if it's even possible for you or not possible for you. What is important is what you truly want to do, what you truly are after. And it's important for me because many times this way of thinking about things, he's already limited.

I like like to say a man doesn't go to the ocean to empty IT with a spoon. A lot of the types of the dressing up of the concept nowaday is trying to fit an elephant into a and the hole in the middle like, for example, the concept of practice and then our lives as if we have a life um we have some kind of a stream of behaviors. We have the recent argument of free wheel at such a there is a multiplicity, definitely a man is a legion that the the real meaning of of that phrase.

One day you wake up like this, I I say, Andrew, lets meet tomorrow at seven years, but I don't know who's gonna wake up tomorrow and then you send me a text message i'm feeling off right at six fifty five and go back to sleep. So examining that and seeing that, I think freeze you up eventually and and start to orient you in a Better direction. So what do you want to do and what but orientation of also what you need to do, what you sense and and what you are developing as A A evolutionary direction for you.

This is the important bit, is IT possible for everyone to engage in certain specific physical movement. For example, in the avian countries, the squad is not very approach able. It's a, it's very difficult.

They are more built for dragging heavy things. And also in this climate, I guess IT IT makes less sense to squat and cause you gonna freeze there. So this is you, then you see the squat in warm climates.

And it's like so open and accessible. They're very good dead lifters, usually not good to quarters. And the away from the ground.

yeah, the shallow .

heap socket, which allows one activity, but then the stability of the deep people, of a darky texture of of of the heap, the female ads, the key and girls, the shapes such. So we are all unique. And that certain elements which, like, for example, my squad chAllenges, like for most people, there is something there.

but you remind people with .

the squats chAllenges the squad, was my attempt to to bring a new, fresh state of mind into the worlds squad. Not as a strength element, not, but it's a fundamental resting position, really actually should be one of the most abundant ones will replace IT with a seating, which is not really doesn't work well. If you're in a natural environment, it's not very comfortable actually to sit for long periods of time, rocks and different terrain.

So you end up lying down, standing and squat a lot. Also, when you're moving low and dynamic, like even collecting berries, the squad is much more dynamic, can open and then elimination is happening there. There is like it's such a fundamental thing and we totally eliminated IT.

We eliminated many other things, overhead movements behind the back, all kinds of back realm. What I call the back realm is totally absent in in people's awareness. So that was my attempt to bring you back into people.

And I recommend, I recommended to, in order to to really get the transformation going to accumulate thirty minutes a day in the squad position and loaded. Just resting down? Not correct.

Not eric. Many people make this mistake. They didn't read. Do the whole thing is just resting down there. And of course, you have to be mind full of dosages.

Some people will get hurt if they try to do IT too quickly, so they might need to build up process towards IT. And also, i'm not talking about thirty minutes straight about accumulation throughout the day. And this does a lot of good for digestive problems, for lower backpack, for heat pains, for knees and generally for aging.

Because it's basically folding your body in the most basic way. Are you folding your body? If you're not folding your body, you will lose the fall, the ability of your body.

And this is probably the the, the easiest and the most abundant way to fold the body. So but this is an example of something that can be very useful with many, many people. But there will always be unique individuals which need something else and the their their benefits in examining things and also their benefits in getting hurt.

She's not often discuss, especially not in these parts. So i'm one of the only ones as a teacher's that says I injured many of my students, and if I did not do that, I would be totally useless for them as well. The totally safe system is has nothing to offer.

Practically nothing is totally safe. And we can of course, we don't approach IT with a bolsa or merissa think, but we are aware that sometimes we have to go beyond the boundaries. And hopefully those would be the small injuries that will help us avoid the big injuries. But if you try to avoid the small injuries, maybe you'll get those big injuries in there.

So examining which types and forms of movement, the location of the the body, speed of execution, the type of organization of the body, which is the whole thing to we can discuss um all of this is up for the graphs and h something that we have to create individual relationship with, hopefully with good guidance, where we can get the right scenario, a facilitator of good scenario for our learning, which is what I try to do. And less of a technical state of mind do this A B C or uh yeah like chunking what I really dislike from from long times, like many people, they tell me, have you met this guy is an amazing teacher because he chunk the process into this business and not even in the correct places to change. And IT IT doesn't offer IT looks us this this state of mind.

I I talk about the chemistry model I call IT. My chemistry model y, an atom and molecule, and then a compound is contextualized versus just chunking. So there is an actual evolution, like I call IT, also sketch learning.

I'm not going to try to draw you if I know anything about art and and drawing. I'm going to start by capturing something very rough. And I need to practice that first, that dynamic entity, before I go into the rendering and the shading eeta. So the same way to learn things. So big picture to small details. And unlike many of my teachers in, I ran to, and I say, with the greatest respect, because I don't know who taught me more, my good teachers or my worst teachers, but some of them just teach from the small details into a big picture that never arrives.

Given that humans can generate such a broad array of types of movement, run, jump, duck, square, lead, all these types of movements, do you think there is value in observing the movements of other animal species? I know I certainly enjoy watching other animals move.

Um I think the most one of the most spectacular animal facts that I was shared with me is when I was a graduate student, someone down the hall was working on the little peddles of the communion and that which can walk up walls and IT was a great mysteries, whether not the resume, but turns out they can do in a vacuum. So it's not section. Now there was some sticky substance and IT turned out, and I feel compelled to share this with you.

So I went to do IT. I have a feeling, will lead us to to an insight of some sort that those little tiny peddles are so thin and so close together that the the community actually sticks to the wall by water, called vender all forces, meaning it's a very weak molecular force, but strong enough to stick to the wall because they are actually exchanging molecules with the surface they're on. So obviously, we can to do that.

And yet I spent hours because they were last next door watching videos of these little communities walk. And the articulation of the feet is incredible, because they're literally rolling those little peddles along in a way that IT defines anything else i've ever seen. I told myself this was useful.

A because I thought I was interesting, but b because never really thought about how I articulate my foot. I've thought about being a heel striker or a toe striker when I run. And no one can tell me which one i'm supposed to be. Maybe you can you can tell me. But the point is where I suppose the question is, do you think there's value observing the extremes of animal kingdom m movement as a way to inform the place place in the exploration space of our own human movement practice?

I think so. I think it's first, it's inspiring. It's IT opens up. But I would take IT away from the romantic point of view, and I would offer another way to examine all these movements existing us in ways, in certain ways, like the worker grow with key on the spine, the spinal engine, and to see how this old ways of moving, even all the way up to exoskeleton, and like primary, very ancient h or even single cell things, are still within us to a certain extent.

And then, of course, this gets developed like the, the, the Darwinian state of mind got stuck for many years on the survival of the feast. But actually, I believe, I always believe the nice. I saw some information about IT lately, that mutation is the heart of the model, not survival of the feet.

Yeah, people often hear the word mutation, and they think all mutations are bad. There are maladaptive mutations, and then there are adaptive mutations, for sure.

And in these places, that will change in the heart of IT, what he wants to do change. So IT does not want to become Better. There is an inherent change in IT.

And then, of course, that become Better at X, Y, Z. Fittest is the secondary perspective that arrives in relation to certain things, but there is still a stronger, more ancient driving force into the process. So for me, this is cool to see these animals take IT all the way to this extreme, but it's also still reflecting within us.

So I love to do like, for example, introduce with people's spinal waves, and by bringing these waves into the body, sometimes you get the weird experiences like emotional releases, and sometimes is in. In other times, IT can become an incredible tool to help an athlete which specialized and reach the top of the and then you defraying his system a little bit and offer him some freshness and in some segmental movement. And first you fuck up.

That's usually the case. Technically, he's off his coordination, so but later the growth will arrive. It's a form of playfulness, is a form of examining things regardless of their success or failure, at more understanding the change is important.

And then after that, we can also look at the more competitive state of mind and the more success and failure orientation. But there is no game without change. So this is the primary one.

And that's why I say, okay, you wanna succeed in the tasks like we did earlier, but you stayed within the game to sustain the game. The infinite versus final IT game, right perspective. To sustain the game means to continue to change, continue to transform and then to win.

The game sometimes mean game over. So yeah, within that tension, I think it's beautiful to play and to exist. And to be you mention .

something that for me is an incredibly important concept for a couple of reasons. And you mention these spinal waves, right? I have to assume that taking the the torso for us you know movement morons that are i'll just prefer doing course terms instead. The asic spines I mean will stay away from the technical and the atomy and the torso in creating movement either I decide Julian or arching and um extension of the spine.

The venture side to location was spiring do IT is have .

you ever had the experience that of yourself for other people engaging those types of movements and experiencing particular categories of emotions? And I have a particular reason for asking this. No right, wrong answer, of course. But i'm just curious whether or not movement of the call, the core of the body, things close to midline as supposed to far away from the middle like the digits far is there any um do you have any evidence that that can evoke a certain category of emotional states?

evidence? I have none, but I have experience and I have some thoughts about IT either role known to create role fing or structural integration said the issues are in the tissues uh, and around the spine. The spine is us.

As you know, you can take an ARM of a lime, but there is we there, there is been attempts, but there is no brain alone, this cerebral thing alone that the spine and the maybe more parts of insistence inside the tors are important. So that's why I like to start from that core entity. And then these little fluctuations they create ah they unblocked things that they start to move things.

And you can avoid, funny enough, mobilizing those areas by doing big frame motions and competitive motions and techniques all your life. So even someone most August, for example, they look extremely mobile. But then when you're actually going into the small what what I call the small frame, I borrow this from chinese Marshal's small frame, big frame.

The big frame is this big changes of our total body in space poster red. And then the small frame is barely moving, but mobilizing the little bits that comprise the same pretty much poster. So these are very beneficial.

And IT has totally disappeared from our physical culture when you introduce IT back. And the small frame offers the big frame, but the big frame doesn't offer the small frame because, of course, the small detail come together into the big picture. So if I want to place my body in a specific position and I have all these beats moving well, I can construct IT in whatever way I want.

But if I just work on the big one more most, chances are I just mobilized certain areas while other areas are totally held or blocked. And then i'm specialized one more time. Take me out of this realm and i'll have difficulties what will sit there in the stagnation, emotion, material thoughts, traumas.

That's why people get these charges. Um um the body, the memory is not what we think IT is. That's how I believe this is stored in a lot everywhere.

And and i've had those experiences. A lot of people have the opposite. When a certain emotion is evoked, they start to undulate this fine.

So this can be worked from this direction, from this direction. And I believe by applying such a practice, uh, IT is wise. IT is you.

You basically turn over the land and you you are allowing things to to shift and to move and to adapt. So I highly recommended. And we teach IT in a very elaborate and gradual way.

And and and this is needed really because people when they just go into like some general recommendation, they usually just get stuck into a new pattern. Ah that's final wave. Okay, that's IT.

So i've been using again this slice, and I like teaching dozens of systems of moving the torso. One until a person is freed to really move the torso. Like the languages created, the, the, the small enough units are created in your understanding from all these systems. And then you improvise. You reach the higher level .

of the practice. I love the answer. I let me IT um tell you a bit of why I asked. So there's a principle in in ural in neuroscience by especially in neuro evolution, they called evo devo.

Sometimes evolution and development help those link if you look at so we have motor neurons, as you know, but for the audience that live in our spinal core, that caused transmission and contraction of the muscles, allows to move lives. And then we have modern neurons up here called up our modern ons that control the motor lower one. So when something is reflexive learned, we we're not thinking about IT.

So as we we mainly use the lower modern irons. We know this because you can do an experiment to rather barberry experiment. But it's been done many times called creating a decelea ate cat.

You actually remove the neo cortex, and these cats will walk on a td mill is called fictive emotion, no problem at all. There are human beings who don't have a neocortex or much of their neocortex is missing. They generate perfectly find moving .

pattern has been downloaded.

that's right. And it's truly downloaded IT into into the spine and the connection between the spine and now the modern unions that control the spinal waves, as you call them, or of a particular category, they have a molecular signature of physiological signature. They were identified by, he's dead now, but and IT, a biologist at columbia, a university, tom jerel, and many of a scientific offspring. Here's what's is interesting in fish, or an animals that really only have the opportunity to undulate and flap their little. You finds the motor .

neons that .

control insulation in those animals are identical molecule to the modern unions that control the spinal ungilded tion in humans. What's been added in human evolution are extra rose, literally, categories of molecular distinct neurons, so that as you move from the center of the body outward, unlike a fish which can move its fans, but can't, actually, artic IT doesn't have digits.

We have special moderns to move these little bits, these bits, these bits. And I can do a spinal wave, but, but I can do that modern, like the the belly thing that comes from seeing the movie E T. When I was a kid, and puffing out my stomach, and then realized that I could wait IT, but only in one direction OK not up anyway.

Um the yug is out there. Can chocolate at that? But um the .

yogis actually do IT to the side.

Oh, do you yeah, I don't know if I can do that anyway. My spinal wave is weak. But um i'll work on IT. But what I find so interesting about these layers of, I don't want to say, sophistication, but these with evolution came the addition of morn pools of opportunity, these modern on pools, as they called their opportunity to engage in new, more elaborate types of movement. But with each new pool became the opportunity to create combinations of new movement.

And so the reason I asked you why spinal waves create one category of movement is that if you touch your fish on one side of its body, IT moves to the opposite side. IT never moves toward IT. But earlier we were doing a practice somewhat similar of testing this similar and sometimes I or someone will move toward a touch.

We don't deviate to the opposite side. So I have this um untested, at least formally tested hypothesis that movements of small digits and imports of our distance, as they called far from the midline body parts evoke different sensations, may be even far more subtle les sensations than movements of the core of our body and in the the stuff closer to the spine. Again, it's just a theory but um i'm grateful for your answer because IT lands at least in the general vector direction of of my of my idea here.

the central orientation is mostly gone from our culture. We don't even walk basically these days. If you look at traditional culture, the amount of walking you do on a rest day on it's you so we we started to create technologies to bring everything into the periphery, controlling IT with the fingertips that we have. Incredible neurological development relating to this, but our central patterns, swimming, running, jumping, throwing, throwing is not pushing away. That's an example, right?

life. Some people, when you give them a ball through, you can .

tell if they, that is often said here in the U. S. And is, of course, unfair. But IT IT IT relates to experience, right? That is, less less may be promoted or offered for female. So you get this this periphery al pattern, instead of a central generated pattern that progresses, is towards the extremities.

And one thing I wanted to to ask you with, I know in an area that is not often mentioned, is that some of these ancient patterns and systems, our primary in many ways, hence those newer developments inside of us are constrained by using the connections running through these ancient systems hence um we are much more limited by the gene pool. We are hit hikers on a piece of DNA like to say and and that simple is like is driving something so primary that even when you are in kind of the driver seat in your eyes, you're actually not or you're being totally constrained by that. And I wanted to hear about this .

yeah recently we had a guests on the podcast in area. Jarvis is a professor at a rocket fella who was offered a position to dance with the albania dance company, so accomplish dancer and comes from a musical family, chose to become a neuroscientists instead, and studied speech and language. But he said something incredible, several incredible things that really looking forward, getting your reflections on.

First of all all, he said that when you look at the species in the kingdom of animals, including us that have elaborate language and true song, they all also have the capacity to dance. All of IT turns out humping birds actually have a dance and a song capacity that perhaps, and this is the going idea now in neuroscience and evolution of the brain, that singing actually came before finally articulated speech and language. That voice involved first to sing, to communicate, I mean, to announce, uh, uh, you know, you know, but then song may may have come first, where you have song, you have dance and the capacity to dance, which, of course, is movement to the body.

And where you have song and dance, you always find that those species can generate elaborate language. Now, the simple version of this is okay. Sophisticated brains tend to create clusters of sophisticated capabilities.

But the other possibility, and it's the one that jarvis proposes, and I think it's in line with what you're perhaps raising here, is the idea that movement of the body and range and sophistication of movement of the body through all these different systems may have actually promoted or even driven the evolution of the things that we think of, as you know, speech and language in the ability to have multiple uh, words for the same concept, to have elaborate articulation of a speech. I find this incredibly attractive as an idea because certainly from as a higher key of needs, we needed to move first to survive into, made into, flee, into attack. IT makes perfect sense, me, that the layers would be built up fundamentally from the body to the mind and not the other way around.

So that's one piece. And then the other piece, which i'll just share for any reflections you might have, that I just bloomed me away, was jarvis told me that when we read if, and this has been done experimentally, if, one records the emg, the low level muscular activity in the larrance, inferring we are actually repeating the words that we read, but so suddenly, so that we don't actually speak them out unless there's some sort of a neurologic deficit, which some people have, some people member, why they read. But what that tells me is that that language is movement, and movement is language.

So again, we have this convergence, but at a very basic level, i'd love your reflections on those are all his ideas. I wanna i'm just repeating what he said and not nearly as precisely as he did. But how do you think of movement as either the foundation of language or as its own language that perhaps even vise words?

Wow, those are beautiful perspectives, and I definitely feel feel the same. There's a lot to say about singing and dancing, as well as also as a form of ancient programs of transmission. Sometimes there is this in information practices, the, the, the months, and the people don't realize that they are centric practices.

They contain a form of vibrating and breathing. All tie together into a very elaborate way to promote the certain effect. And how would you do something like this in ancient times? This is in genius.

We even until today, we need a full book to describe something, what and work as well. So it's like a very ancient form of transmission. The more accurate we became with the language, the more dead IT became.

Because he is, he is less of a movement entity. IT is less of a dynamic entity from its nature. And that's why you, Q, M, he must, as it's corrupting IT corrupts us.

Um so definitely definitely the the the conducing force or the primary enforce for me is movement. That is every time we we talk about movement, basically even now we are spilling IT into a container to call IT what IT is. But IT is beyond that.

So then IT is applied into dancing, to singing, into language. There is no other language that I see as a primary mode. And this is a nature of space, time, things moving.

So I think, I think everything moves into the direction of understanding that more and more and the maybe it's not so popular to call IT movement. People have some connotations, and it's okay. You can throw away these.

Put another word, we probably need to do that also, like regularly, like I start to see the end of this word for me, things get corrupted again, overused, abused. And then we need the, we need a new, a new word. And and that's even that word is only needed for communication and for specific processes of education exchange.

It's important to stay within the experiences. It's important to continue to promote scenario in which the experience is primary, more open experience, let's say, and not try to hold down and and define overly accurately or if it's done, throwing IT away and starting again. So there is no winning concept.

You got to the winning concept. You got nothing. You you were able to grab IT.

You were able to, this very science, right? Like we got him, we got IT, and then he turns out to be nothing. And late, more and more time passes.

I feel science is becoming more humble than things are being disgusting in the, in this way. And because really what the science do report, the sun came up certain amount of billions of times. And then tomorrow I will come up with statistics.

Yes, it's good prediction ah.

but we we can go beyond. There is something inside of us that can go beyond and hard to communicate. I can offer IT right now here, but I I have the experience, and thankfully, I have a practice and a way to sense IT, to feel IT and to reexamining IT. And then we can talk about IT and have something from that. And .

Edward Wilson, the great socio biologist, yeah, he founded the field of sociobiology wealth, had this beautiful word, and indeed named the book. Actually, the word was Better than the book, sari Wilson, but the book was a little bit meandering from my taste. But then again, he's the harvard professor, not me.

Well, the stanford is pretty, pretty dar good. The this word is consciences, this idea of a leaving together of divergent forms of knowledge to create a truly valuable concept, which I love. I love IT because, of course, some formally trained as a scientist that I look at things mainly through the lens of neurosciences.

But experiences real, and observation is real. And even in the field of medicine, you have, you know, a double placement controlled clinical trials. And then you have, hey, studies and of one right, not often discuss, right? I in H.

M, the most famous example in neuroscience of a patient that had no hippo campus informed us more about the process of memory, and indeed the function of the hyper campus, then thousands of independent experiments that followed. So you can have one. You need all these different forms of exploration, which is, no, I think, I think we share the belief, if I may, the convergent forms of knowledge.

Eventually, this process of conciliation can eject a new concept. And yet the chAllenge, again, is that if we don't have a language for IT, IT becomes hard to transmit. One of the things that I find incredibly, i'll use this word against sticky, is this notion of movement culture. I don't know who coined that phrase, or i've seen IT in the circles and accounts around your instagram account and others. I don't know if that's a phrase that you coin, but this idea of engaging in movement practice with others, whether not it's dance or other movement practices um because it's so dynamic is the unpredictably of IT um even to like today two practitioners at vastly different levels of knowledge and experience in movement practice is there's information I like to think, to be gained from both so so one thing that .

I heard .

you say before, which really resonate with me is this idea that people have, maybe particularly the U S. Of this concept of or I have my yoga friends or my the people I dancers are distinct from, my family friends are distinct from. But you point IT out gathering around movement is an asell tradition, and that perhaps we be Better off not thinking about people we exercise with their train with. But that friendship and connection made through movement is perhaps the most valuable formal connection.

I think it's a product of those practices that are may be not so aware or not, a movement oriented in the open sense. And then you get this sensation with people. But alone, we do nothing so much so that we never alone, also on the inside.

And we would manufacture and and produce entities inside. So we're constantly in a dynamic exchange, cultural exchange. And practically, I learned this lesson in cup wheel is a cultural manifestation.

Things happen within this context. We rub against reality. We wrap against each other, and their movement occurs. And their insight is to be gained, and development happens. And then comes other thoughts, a collective knowledge versus self knowledge.

We are transmitting knowledge if, if we go on top of some mountain, twenty people, twenty Normal individuals, and we spent twenty years just fighting four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon, and we do IT for twenty years, but were isolated from any other source of knowledge, we would still not reach anything that a very Young fighter these days has. We will be unable to develop those techniques, those insights. That's where collective knowledge comes in and transmission jumps us forward.

But what is the problem with that, staying within just those technical constraints and never making IT yours? That's the the part of self knowledge, the digesting of this collective information, until IT becomes digest and becomes part of yourselves and then you are IT versus you are doing IT. And this is a clear separation that you can see sports on a very high level and on not so high level, even though, I would be honest, I say that some people reach very far just with collective knowledge and a very technical approach, and others reach extremely far with very little of IT.

And there is always outliers. There are always the outliers in that case. Another thought I head when you mentioned evil devil evolution, development is also the greek concepts of poems and and peace, and, and, and pis.

The growing of the seed into the tree. And the other process of the manufacturing of the chair from the tree, two processes of development, evolution very different, one from everything to something, the other from nothing to something. One is accumulation based. One is subtraction based. Both of these processes relate to collective knowledge, self knowledge, but they're not exactly just that.

And what is what should we do? This is a question that my friend ruth mos, he, he asks in the theses and thoughts, what is the ultimate for us? Should we manufacture our chair, or should we grow like into the tree? civilized?

The mind leaves average, the body is IT in this way, or should the mind also be left? Wild, wild and wise is a nice combination of words I like to place together. Wild, wise. So this is something that I try to bring into the way that I live my life and my practice, and I try to bring the information and the wisdom and the and the collective knowledge.

But I also try to let go of more and more until an essence is clean, until something is appearing and um because everything was already there, for example, he found sitting here, all the movements are already occurring. All the possibilities are. So it's just about, I need to open, I open this window, the air would come from here.

If I open this window, there would come. I don't need to drive my motion. I need to discover what is stopping IT from happening.

Something is constantly holding. And when we remove this, immediately movement appears. This is real deep movement versus the deriving movement that is a very wasteful.

At times like walking, you see people pushing through the walk instead of the controlled falling, that he should be fighting, punching, to manufacture the strength, and then to have someone who knows how to facilitate the conditions in which you are knocked out. He doesn't knock you out. IT hits versus I hit, like Bruce ley, he said.

So this is a beautiful thing to examine and to work within that so as to to see, am I skate boarding, am I using this perspective, or am I trying to to control because of risk and danger and trying to overly control something that actually can never be controlled, the to control this, to let go of the control. And then, okay, but what about all this collection of information, knowledge that I can bring in? Where do I wanna play? I can play down here, or I can play up here.

The collect knowledge is maybe take you further in, and then you're still going to need to do your individual work. A lot of people like to romanticize on that. And it's you don't need teachers.

We don't need nothing. We don't need information. It's not fully honest. You don't need but depends on where you want a function and how you want a function. They shouldn't be demo ized, but they shouldn't be overly glorified as well.

You mentioned about the opportunity for a movement, perhaps even all forms of a movement coming from deep within a cup raises to mind in the neuroscience of motor systems. We talk about motor neons, as I described, the ones that actually evoke contraction of muscles.

And then there is this category of of neurons that isn't often discussed, but certainly exist, aren't even disgusting kind of popular nomenclature of news science, which is the promoter system. Most of our movements are the reflection of certain patterns of transmission breaking through from the promoter to the actual motor. In other words, we are always in a anticipatory mode of movement. And as and I think you the way you describe IT, you clearly intuitively understand as you feel IT and and you recognize IT think of IT as a it's like a layer of the neurons is constantly humming um ready to go and it's the release of these gates that allows movement to occur in a particular way. Could be very smooth, could be very ballistic.

which is D N A. The same turning off and but all the information already there, right? And then the possibilities are just allowed.

So i'm allowed I don't do free will already, but I am allowed to do. I am there are possibilities and. I am dancing within that dance, but I am not the only dancer, so that's that's my sensation. At least with most states of being later, maybe there is other states that could be reached, stability that will arrive from the waters, from the movement of the waters.

Disarming these potential possibilities to be in that state to vibrate like this is very powerful for our lives to wake up in the morning and feel that living thing is the feeling of movement, and for me, is a result of the practice. And so then it's easy not to stagnate and then the mind can stay focus for hours like we've done today. And I can listen and tune in and I won't lose you, which is very difficult like I haven't had a good conversation here in the U. S. Is very difficult and I i've had your attention and you're listening, but it's rare it's rare that somebody can do that and um and it's a struggle, always a strugling but it's definitely my trick, my dirty trick.

The you said you're allowed and again, when taking some of the language and what you report about your experience and and turn a map to some concepts that relate to neural circuits in in the principles of neuroscience. We talk about instructiveness versus permissiveness. There are instructive cues like for instance, ince the the ability to pick up the pen and right, there's an instruction.

Clearly, there's motor command, but that's just one way of looking at IT. The way that actually works is that there's a promoter system that's already generating that movement. And what we've done as we have flung up in the gate and allow .

that movement to occur precisely surfing IT, right, surfing that current or this current or another current .

or opening the window exactly. And if you look at um the formal study of of movement and improvement of movement at the most basic example, like you is like a tenner serve. And if you just you've done this many times over, you map the trajectories, and in a novice, the lines are all over the place.

IT ends up looking more like a like a uh, tangle of rubber ball, right where, as in the fetter or the expert, you almost wonder if it's just one line being drawn. But the trajectories are incredibly stereotype. That's the reflection of one little narrow gate opening again and again and again.

Course, let me, let me inject something here from an old neology es, uh, you can say burn team, uh, the the soviet and he talked about degrees of freedom, and they did in order to increase productivity in soviet union. I don't know if you you've heard this story and he was brought in to examine the movement habits of the workers and collected some some information he placed. He was one of the first technet.

Don't know how it's called in english day, kinetic capturing of motion with moving pictures in that time. And so he placed thoughts, and they took these photos, which became kind of moving. And what he discovered was something very interesting.

The accuracy y of the heat of the sledge hammer increased, while the variance in the various point became more, not less. So IT wasn't a fixed pattern. IT was a meta pattern.

And this pattern is adjusted in this way to achieve the perfect execution. Those were very early findings. I'm not sure how does that h sit with everything, but i'm sure there is some true stood for my experience. Basically the self adJusting dynamic nature of the system allows you to reach a very constant and stable and result by being so open and letting go of your control.

Um the example you give fits very well with the one that I described before because in i'm recalling the experiment, if people want to look this up as a paper will put IT in the showing te caption a guy also happened to be harvard named sa leski h hungaria. I'm clearly pronouncing his name wrong, but I know ba and I remember the slide in my minds eye and the trajectory that was mapped as the movement of the tennis racket, not of the limit themselves in the federal case, so that I think a gines well with what you're describing yeah those that exploration of degrees of freedom is where the opportunity for real advancement and expansion of skill shows up as if I think the way it's been described to me as that we go from unskilled to skilled and then there's mastery and then there's this top tear, which is this beautiful then layer that so few people occupy, which is virtuosity, in which the practitioner invites variability and chance back in as an opportunity to do truly new things.

made me think many years ago, this this kind of the thinking about so what is that entity? Because obviously it's not technique and IT wouldn't even be honest to say it's a movement pattern. There is too much diversity there.

I started to talk about that. I call that movement sleep or meta technique, but the world technique is already been. So there is some kind of a dynamic slave in which you can move in as long as you are not out of this sleeve.

You're still within the bound is of achieving the result that you're after and then that the results adaptation of all these elements inside to keep you in the sleeve, the sleep is not constricted as we one thought, oh, beautiful technique. There are many ways to skin a cat. And and that experience, that variety, that diversity goes into virtuosity is too true.

Freedom, because your focus is on the writing. You don't point that the moon, look at your finger. And and and that's really in an essence being a virtually for me like mastery. Let's say, if there is such a thing this.

I do believe there is such a thing and i'll flawed and attempt embarrass you by saying I think that i'm not alone in viewing you as a virtual movement. I think that I think that's what comes to mind because there's this notion that not everything is preplanned, that even you might not know what you're going to do next until the moment of execution, but that here i'm projecting my own my own assumptions.

I'd like to talk about mindsets in approaching practice A A bit more, but I want to wait into that territory by talking about vision in the eyes, something that we both share a deep, interesting in the eye from the background of visual neuroscience, but also from the realization that, you know, we have this incredible ability to adjust the a picture of a visual window. We can focus very narrow ly. We can focus very broadly.

So something I encountered, I think, first, as a child, realizing that I could spend all day watching ants play in a very fine domain and then look up and go inside and realize a whole world, and realizing wall, i'll never be able to consume the full range of experiences at any one moment. Their answer, probably in the corner of this room doing their thing. And so too, or our approached to movement can be, as you mention, very big and dynamic in terms of the broad movements of our limbs, are fine articulation when you begin a practice.

Or and as you move through a practice, do you apply a regimented way of focusing your vision? Are you in panoramic vision? Are you in in a very narrow field of view? Or does IT entirely depend? And for the person who is a true beginner, true novice like myself, how should I show up to the practice .

with my eyes? There is a good starting point as you help a lot, a lot of people to understand when you encounter difficulties with other, it's very powerful to start with the eyes. Another thing important to understand and to experience you, you can't believe me, or you got ta examine IT for yourself.

We do not move the eyes as well as we think we do, because as long as you can see and move the eyes, people never think about IT. That IT can be trained, that IT can be improved. The sector and their effect vate are far reaching.

The eyes lead to the inner eye. You can think of IT in a beautiful metaphorical way. And it's a representation of the way that we use various coverity and mind processes and also, of course, affect the body.

The eyes live in many ways, and the head is also a very because all of these inputs are coming in here. So it's very easy to lead the body in. If you look at the center way from the head, it's a very powerful and easy thing.

For example, you when when you teach boxers how to bob, usually it's not done in the way that I I believe IT IT should be done. You teach IT with the periphery. They teach IT from the feet, because they have the idea, which is correct, that you need do IT in special conditions, in movement, in space.

But in reality, the head will organize the feat for you. Instead, you are now putting two elements together, and then with years of practice, you hope of find them together. Well, I prefer to do something else, because if i'll pull your head now to the decide, you will immediately start to organize your feet under you.

So I give you just one element to manipulate the system from that, how I would teach someone something like this. Many animals hunt to with the head, so you can see that the body running forward while the head is turning to the sign, the whole thing follows afterward. So it's a very powerful way to address movement, not the only one there many modes, thankfully, and we were very adaptable in that, but definitely a primary one.

And then the use of the basis, of course, may be the most important element with that usually. Yeah, what else can I say about the eyes? They thought, how do you come in? Well, IT depends on the practice.

You need to start to have some kind of a checklist of what you're looking to do. And then by this, you can start to tailor the way that you use your eyes, the same thing I do for posture, the same thing I do for stance, the same thing eventually I do for state. And there's different flavors.

There is no correct way to use eye. Sometimes it's very preferable soft, open awareness orientation. Sometimes it's very focused, noticed, pulling this to opposite awareness and focus, which is often put together and confused.

But and then the eyes are like the immediate and the easiest entry point into that. Another thing is the placement of the head and the eyes, like, for example, when we lower our chin, we seem to to see Better. When we raise the eyebrows, there is too much exposure of top light sources.

And so people would usually, when looking into the distance, will till their their chin in. And in many scenario, tilting of the the chin to the side or placing, just like listening with the ear, placing a certain eye or dominant eye, depending on various and areas. And this is all like information that I can come in celebrity and think about and jump my practice forward, instead of just letting the experience teach me that i'm using some kind of a thinking process to improve.

And this is not cheating. This is great and we need work. We got ta try. It's a it's a process and those are some thoughts to start to play with.

Yeah um i'd love that you mention chung down because we all have a natural reflect. When chin goes down, ice goes up and the opposite is true. When he goes up, uh, eyes go down.

And there are two separate clusters of neons in the these cranial nerve nuclei that as we call them, when eyes are up, IT increases our level of alertness overall. This is not you, this is not a wool science. This is, this is the the function of this trainer nuclear.

Our eyes are down. We go into states of more common quiet s, and this makes perfect sense, you know, then the eyelids usually go down, and then people fall asleep. Eyes up does not mean head up because as you said, there's a very dynamic controller of the amount of luminance depending on the environment.

So that and then as you mention, this difference between focus and awareness, I think, is a really important one. When we are in this more pandemic, soft gaze as and broad awareness, big, big swash, a visual field, as we say, the neurons that control, that come through a pathway called magno seller pathway. In any event, those neurons are much thicker, thicker cables.

They transmit much faster, just like thick pipes can Carry more water more quickly. And your reaction time is for at least four time, is what IT is in this awareness mode. Then IT is when you're narrowly focused on something.

And this is counter intuitive, I think, to a lot of people. But the person who is running to catch the ball is not tracking the the ball in a smooth movement. Most of their vision is in proper vision. When we drive in this period, vision and our reaction times are much, much faster. So I don't know if I am reluctant to encourage people to shift, told a particular type of practice for a particular type vision I think I, I hope, agree on crack me from wrong, is that expLoring these different extremes and everything in between is where the real value is, panoramic focused, eyes head up, eyes down and down, eyes up, playing with IT and expLoring IT in in as opposed to for the first ten minutes of practice be in panoria mac vision. You know the sort of a earlier today we were joking about and kind of um lamenting effect of this word biohacking exists or that the optimal performance is that they are unfortunate terms because they suggest that if you just plugged IT in, this can be like two plus two equals four and you're going to get IT right every time. Another .

pragmatic be tear if I can offer. Um since our culture has been more geared than pushing us towards focus the the focus of the icon, primary language reading and and other things will have less opportunities to work with the more open panoramic one. So IT would be smart to start to baLance things out a bit more.

When you are in nature, you don't look at each leaf, everything is moving and you are kind of immersing that. And then something attract your attention or it's a bird, and you focus and you go back into the general state, the basic state, which is open awareness. Here we switch things around in our modern culture.

We are mostly focused and then we sometimes daydream, which is maybe some kind of A. Some kind of a balancing act that comes from deep within. I don't know. Maybe you can you can share some information about that, but I see that many times people need to the focuses overly done by far in our in our lives.

I couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of i'll leave in ventures so far as to say that the a lot of the visual deficits that we now see in Young people biopic, literally near sighted, this occurs because if we look at things that are too close to us as children or as adults, the eyeball actually gets longer. The lens focuses the visual image in front of, near to the lens, near sided, then in front of the, where IT should land.

And basically, it's a lack of pandemic vision that is or open awareness that driving these changes and nowaday, we are essentially most people are ninety percent of the time in this narrow focus mode. Right before recording, we took a break and went up to look at a vista to look off to the distance. Incredibly useful, easy practice at some level.

But I think most people are not doing the sort of thing. And the way that IT shapes the mind and the perception of time, of course, is a whole other kingdom of ideas. But one thing i'd like to relate, this element of vision to an open awareness is, earlier you mentioned the cone of auditory attention.

The other sense that we can play with in, as in our practice and throughout the day, do you see any value to both pay attention to things in a very narrow cone of auditory attention, but also just walking and listening to all the sounds at once? I can imagine that could be useful. And in terms of physical movement, says I was going, say, where your ears, your ears are always more less than the same place. But where's you're hearing when you approach your practice?

Another set of parameters to to think about and to play with and to be aware of. Also, I have the experience that some people are Better at using this system or that system and and you would be amazed how differently the same result, seemingly outside results are done by different practitioners and in different areas. This goes into this mutation and change ideas.

What really jumps us forward eventually, some kind of a mutation. So is, like all of our culture and practices and success puts a closer and closer to each other. So we have the same opinions everywhere around the world, becoming more and more the same, less than less different. But the real hope comes from the different so and where we have a difficult, difficult ty in promoting that.

Um and so this is another thing that can be promoted with the right practices, the right, for example, I work with corporate or even work with government before to bring in some of that freshness with simple habits in the work day or in the education of children or in in in companies increasing productivity. I don't really give a fuck, but i'm there to give what I view is important. And what is important may be increases productivity, but it's more important to visit IT improves people's lives who are involved and improves yeah be being and becoming being and becoming to these two entities.

I'm not there. I'm on my way. I'm a process. So thinking about her, the wait that people use their ears, the waited people use listening again, we can talk about placement of the head and posture, and sometimes angling as well, sharper angle ching down.

Some people tend to use the the shape of the ear, people with different years, closer or further out. This is it's if you are very sensitive and you're looking around, you would see this is affecting people's motion. Even the shape of our face, like the development of the vocal courts in speaking, will totally change how we are, how we look.

But how we listen also will do the same. I don't have any proof of IT, but i'm a IT is something I believe in. Well.

people will even make their ears bigger, right? We we try become like low panic foxes or or something. I mean, don't really that actually why we do this is to capture more sound waves, right um and the leaning is that the localization of sound is based on a simple brain stem calculation of interval time differences, the time in which something the brain intuitively IT just knows because it's pretty hard wired circuit that if a sound arrives first to this year than that year that is likely to coming from over here.

Whether if its dead center arrives at the two of the same time that it's um it's almost no ridiculous ly simple when one here's IT no one intended but um IT is a an incredibly valuable way of thinking about how the architecture of the body changes our experience. I want along those line earlier, you mention something. And IT and IT flagged an important question for me. When I see people walking sometimes and sometimes I think, well, they move in a strange way occasionally and see somebody, they walk, really it's impressive for a whatever reason. You know, you just think, well, they sort of glide along. People come in different shapes and sizes, short tour, so long arms and said a, do you think that if people have A A body type that facilitate certain kinds of movement and not others, that they should intentionally try and move in the way that is right at the edge of the kind of friction and chAllenge in order to um shape new possibilities or do you think that they should lean into the smooth execution of what comes most naturally to them?

Yeah I think a good practices to have many walks because. They required. And of course, there is a very efficient the if you have the experience, IT will naturally develop an unravel. And if not, you can get some collective knowledge and improve. And then there is A A lot of em emotional things related to work, like how i'm walking into a business meeting and or how i'm walking out of a bad situation.

And there is a lot of beautiful things to to research their practically with yourself, trying to approach someone with the chin slightly down, very linear, very efficient in the streight test line, or trying to approach someone a little bit more rounded from the side and you and tilting your head. And you will see totally different results, totally different communication that happens over people's heads. But if your sensitive, you realized that, wow, this opened the door.

Instead, many people, you start on the minus. My sister, my big sister talley, always as I started on the minus. Why do I start on the zero with them? You know so but it's it's part of the approach.

You can affect that and you can start even on the plus, if you are the slime, as the practitioner needs to be. So this is something to play with and to work with. Then you have, of course, body proportions and ways.

And and we have all these, like technical invasions, mathematics and trigonometry and architecture. They invaded our bodies. They invaded our nervous system, and now our work and our physical practices, they look linear and efficient.

The past between two points is a straight line and not, this is bio. Mechanics is not mechanics. Nothing there is, but given there is no gospel. So the work is sometimes have to go around or sway from side to side. And there is coiling and coil, and they are moving bits.

And what about the the coordination of my breathing with my walk? Because if I walk to linearly, there is less pumping of the air naturally in and out. So now I have to forcefully bring IT in and out. I am wasteful.

And that's why you see in last years, these incredible runners, a specially long distance, doing things we never thought were possible in the most, in the worst possible way that we used to think, pro nation and and all kinds of things like our technical thoughts were totally misguided and wrong. And and somebody comes in, does IT in, in some some way that is totally wrong, and he gets results we could never get. That's that's the beauty of playfulness. Experiment change being different as you're .

determined as i'm smiling because one of my favorite ite neuroscientists, he's out of the university chicago. I was in a meeting, there was an argument about evolution of the nervous system, and he said at the end, and people were arguing about whether not this gene in one animal was homologous to this gene in humans. That said, I can get very dicey.

And he said very, very appropriately, that one of the major jobs of evolution is to take existing cell types and circuits and give them new functions. But that can only be done through the playful exploration of new possibilities, which I think maps very well to what you're saying that at the extreme threshold of technical execution, you know, mastery, mastery, mastery, you your obviously performance is very high. But the opportunity for evolution of the sport or the music or the dance or the intellectual levers is limited because you're not introducing variability in the attempt to get proper execution is you're limiting oneself.

And hence, I I want to offer something that is relating to you. We should be wary of. Defining the mechanisms. And putting certain meaning with certain processes and ways, because just history and experience shows IT doesn't work well for us most times.

Or IT becomes like this much more elaborate thing, even if we were somewhat in the right direction, because even thinking this way can offer a lot like for example, your advice about heat, dopamine, light offers a lot of benefit, but also can create problems. And the IT can enclose something um which uh the the improviser will find the my drivers right like take a some paper clip and you make IT into something great. And this is really our we are the biggest providers around like that's that's what made us who we are, I think. And this is incredible what what we can do with IT. You know that they have russian american space exploration story with the spaceman famous story about the development .

of the space pen, pen.

I an urban myth, I don't know if it's true, but I like IT. So I use IT. So there was this, of course, space competition. And the russians put the first animal in space .

and the first monkey.

and then like, uh, and they put the first sputnik, the satellite and manner in space. But americans took the men on the moon and on the way lot of technologies got developed in the americans, because of lack of gravity out there, developed the spacemen with a huge investment. The russians used the pencil.

So I don't know if I don't know if it's true. I don't think IT is, but IT IT represents something in the state of mind. Like you look at, for example, the military equipment, soviet equipment is all can do multiple things.

And IT means that it's heavy, it's less sufficient, it's not as lighting, but even the navy seals will still Carry A N A K with certain conditions. why? Because you can pour a whole bucket of send into the mechanism, and IT will keep running, while the most advanced german hacer and cohn accurate and light weapons for every grain can get stuck and overly specialized. And there's something about this opens that we humans needs to keep, and also may be something for our leaders to be more of less specialist and more in this openness, less capable in this or that way, but more capable of doing the whole thing.

A little love the story, whether not it's legend or not. Its its legendary because it's it's fantastic. As you say in the laboratory, whenever someone takes on a project in my lab, I we say you have to ask yourself how much technical detail and chAllenge you wanted take on.

Because with more technology, advanced technology, yes, there is the opportunity for more discovery, but more downtime. Your phone will literally take longer if you're going to use a microscope that's out of commission thirty percent of the time and you just have to understand that. So there's a dynamic interplay there.

by the way. I think that scientists get IT, right? It's where you transmit the knowledge out of the scientific field because science have debate and everything, you're not so connected.

Of course, this can happen as well. But then when he goes out, and this simple person, without the experience, takes IT more as a gospel, as a fix thing. And then was just a report, was just reporting some functions here and play with IT.

See what he does for you. Because with all the greatest information that I can give, the person will examining IT and IT might be not useful at all for him. This is the practitioner.

Make IT your own. Go practice. Try heat, cold, light, movement.

Awareness to this, awareness to this. And this is up to you to make IT yours. But we don't like to have this responsibility now.

People prefer to have the this will work the first time every time, and will serve you best compared everything else. And and well, there are more reliable tools than others. In my mind, the more reliable tools tend to be ones that are grounded in our innate physiology um as opposed to some I don't like the word hack in fact I love the word bio hack is that we were talking about again earlier because the hack in my mind is is something that is designed for one purpose that's used for another. It's not the most efficient use of that tool nor is IT naturally the best solution where as biology has some very good solutions but they don't always work, not every time. I earlier today we did a practice in which which involved invasion.

I shall we say of very personal space we weren't standing super closed for any duty reason but there was where big god for a bid but we but there was um we were close enough to together we could touch one tour shows and we were doing that as part of this practice and you encourage me to pay attention to, you know, how does that feel to have someone in your party, personal space? And then this notion of reactivity, I find this in immensely interesting and potentially powerful practice because I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people suffer from anxious, just being in a face to face conversation. Some people have a lot of anxiety about being physically close to people, whether not they know them or not.

And many people are reactive. They are in that anticipatory, say, or something that was gonna happen. And sometimes is this relates to trauma and negative experience.

But sometimes, no, sometimes they're just not used to being in dynamic. Yn amic, excuse me, IT exchanged with other beings. And so one thing I love about the movement practice and how dynamic is that one can explore that space. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit more.

yeah. Touch, proximity, all these things, though, also taking very IT IT, takes a very think limited place in our lives. People are not touched and they don't touch enough.

There are certain bubbles of every personal space, according to culture, according to environment. What is right? What is wrong? And then came all, of course, political correctness and harassment and all kids.

And this is a problem. It's a problem to navigate all this scenario. And I think we are there is definitely decide which is suffering.

People go to B, J, J, glasses to touch, not to learn B, J, J. Most of IT, they're not even aware of IT before they would go to a prostitute. Maybe IT would not be honest to say that yet. This is not required of necessary more in our lives. Children who are not touched with a lot of information about that and the problems, but at all and not touch, there is not a lot of information.

And I think it's no less of a problem because something that has to be constantly present and then proximately being able to, as you said, remove certain activity and to learn to control that, that volume, volume control over how reactive I am. And in other scenario, how do I remove this reactivity altogether is very important for performance and also for our lives for clear thinking at that because everything is moving through us and he's being monitored red by us. So everything has the potential to detract us from a certain direction of exploration.

Or and if you're reactive, you are slave IT. IT becomes worse and worse and worse. Or for example, fighter or a football player at eta has done what to take, what not to take.

The fact that you can sense more doesn't mean you should react with the and the practice helps that by bringing people into these scenes, but often times disarming them, like when we were working closely today. And because you have a certain background with boxing or fighting, I can tell you you're missing some kind of a way to be in that space that is not martial. So you Carry a certain tone, although you are very kind person, but often times you helped me without realizing you're holding me with a lot of rank, for example.

And and I just IT was clear to me you're not fully aware of what is unfolding and is just, of course, a question of experience. So to be able to be in the scary but do something else which is not gear towards winning, losing competition or just being able to play with another person, like, for example, contacting provisions, took that and played with that. And the work of Steve pakistan, for the ones who are not familiar.

So this this is where I I call the the the hybrid become very useful like we we don't when when you are practicing in this open way, you are not bound by specific rule set or ways of doing things. IT can be a fight, but IT can be IT dance a moment after another thing that they learn from cup wala. The situations very tRicky there because i've seen kids doing cart wills in brazil and and scissors fall from their pockets.

why? Why would you go to with a seizure in your pocket? Obviously, there is certain intentions. And then at other times you see back flips and beautiful things. But people die in couple well every year.

Breaks or something .

kicks to the face from various violence. It's I, my explored other marsh arts and boxing was involved with A, M, M, A and B, G, J. But I tell you, the most violent arena is that.

why? Because it's unknown. One moment it's smiles. Another moment, it's something else and it's uncontrolled, is no categories, is no weight and it's a street phenomenon. So you have musical instruments, sometimes they break IT on your head. People don't see that, but you can look on line on youtube and see some of that side of couple well, which is actually the day today in brazil and the reality and how things unfolded.

So it's very important to explore many ways of being within different distances and spaces from other people and touched in different ways and not contextualized IT always in the same way I can touch your chest in one way, I can touch IT with the exact same pressure and speed, but will feel very different. The parameters are not sure, certain intentions, certain combination of posters, always. And this is beautiful exploration.

And again, I would encourage you and others to explore the discomfort, for example, certain discomfort to be with a man in certain scenario with a woman, and trying to see what is that. Because if we are truly strong, we are not afraid of anything. If we truly know who we are in, we are in that exploration, we don't know the end result, but we are in a research, and then we are not afraid of being in death or this.

And we don't come out of boundaries. And this will improve our culture tremendously. Of course, there must be agreement. You never force yourself that you meet someone who is also interested in that exploration, and then you do IT.

And there many scenario to do that with traditional practices, like learning to grapple or or going to contacting provisions and and studying there, or going to dance to lighting dance class or and there is, of course, my favorite is to create and to come up with your own hybrid of death and scenario, communicating with your loved one through movement, not sitting around food and talking, moving together in all kinds of way. Sometimes it's working together and sometimes it's all kinds of IT can be game playful. IT can be romantic and there many shades.

Sex doesn't start here and and here. Write is like the continuing. We don't even need to defined in that way. So with time, I think IT unlocks a lot of things. People become much stronger in a good sense, in sense of becoming being and the we abuse less and we can approach yeah other aspects to us.

I love the idea that through the exploration of a range of physical contacts provided, one knows they can always return to their center, so to speak. Then there is a lot of opportunity that opens up. I I wish there was more of that encouraged in children's play but also as you mention in in adult environment because yeah nowa ys for all sorts of reasons that you touched on um the idea of keeping at least in arms and distances become critical.

There are a lot of environments actually where how ging is not allowed. I don't know what it's like in is robot in the states, many institutions, you you're not allowed to, not anyone else's body. There's actually a wonderful study that comes to my from and israeli laboratory. I get no one sole was over there um who has shown that um by recording people's first interactions that when people meet if they shake cans, they almost always, I think it's greater than eighty five percent at the time. They will then wipe the chemicals from the other person onto their own eyes, typically their eyes or their face.

This changed a little bit during the whole pandemic thing, but this is thought to be a Carry over from what other animals do in terms of exchanging micro biome elements, exchanging chemicals that we're constantly feeding, uh subconscious with the uh chemical knowledge of the chemical constituents of other people, right? So IT IT goes way beyond how people smell, how they look at that. A more touch seems to me, just as you said about its consensual seems like it's just a really good thing overall.

And I think maybe also important for discharging, discharging certain experience remodeling reframing. So like touches very powerful in that if if you're touch and you're touching a lot, you you're unpacking and your experience that touch that maybe has been traumatic and you're reframing IT, you have the opportunity, and which is something interesting.

I I, i've heard some story about some traditional culture in which when you were burned by mistake, they would immediately burn you again. And IT made me think, and then there would not be any burn Marks, and there would not be the same side effects that the clam IT made me thinks. Like, what's the source of this? And I I realized that maybe IT allows a certain completion to happen, that in the traumatic moment is not there.

So the reexported, while you're still open, the pores are still open, allows you to refrain the experience and then the unfolding of the rest of the event is very different. This is if you're touching in your practice in the day today and you're working with people and you're being touched and people come close or further away, IT happens naturally. Yeah, and if you pass a certain limit and is IT becomes too much, there is always, of course, communication that has to be present. Certain cultures make this communication free. Certain cultures post israel, for example, post here free.

So in israel they will say that didn't feel good to me here, that felt good. That was fine.

Yeah, IT would be more common. And here in the airport, the guys that me, i'm gonna slide my hands up towards your crash until I meet the hard stop. And and then he does this in a way that he supposed to show me.

I have no enjoyment in that, and for me he just feels aggressive. But his his intention is good showing me. But if IT was a loving touch, he would be nice for for me, actually, personally, that he would be gentle.

But he goes up there and he shows me, I have no enjoyment in this buh. It's my testaccio right there. So it's it's it's different choices.

I don't think it's like worse or but this description can be a bit associated. And what does that make me think is IT truly what he feels or not because IT fears robotic, so it's not. So sometimes I rather not say IT and i'm going to touch your chest and just play my head on the chest.

And of course, we can avoid the problem. I am not suggesting that there is, but there is an examination. And because I moved around around the world, i've seen many things and i've seen benefits here, benefits there and and in the practice, I think it's important to discuss this, to examine this. I don't have a solution, but it's something to talk about.

IT is something to talk about. And i'm glad you raise IT because I think that is so clear to me that much of the value of a movement practice involves this dynamic interaction with somebody else. Well, as you point out, that can be performed on one zone and practice throughout one's day, but the unpredictably is a key element to all of them and and bringing out all the the potential that that you've described.

And in reference to the this notion of trauma and burn and return, my colleague gets stanford David bo. He's works on trauma and he's has actually on this podcast, he voice that he is against things like trigger warnings because of the way that IT puts the nervous system into the state of readily ess and reactivity that can exacerbate of problems. Whereas um it's very clear from the literature on trauma and trauma relief that the way to deal with that is through a controlled, but clearly a controlled rex power to the trauma in order to diminish the emotional response over time.

I mean very clear if we avoid the thing, obviously don't anna reinjure ourselves or retrain matiz ed, but if one avoid the thing that makes them upset over and over all that, does this serve to create a heightened state of readers? IT primes more trauma. yeah. So I think that makes good sense.

I think impressions are very useful here also when stepping into an area in which draw mechanick r and then by going through the impression that is already occurred, you create some kind of a thermal layer of protection. So i've already been hit when i'm entering that space. So or I ve already been touched in a way that I didn't like. If I go to a contacting provisions class and just running this scenario in your head protest so well glad you mention .

running scenario in your head was been curious all day as to where or not you do visualization or mental rehearsal of physical movement um this is IT seems be a popular idea in in the states people always asking me, can you just imagine A A movement and learn IT Better than were you to actually perform IT? My hunch based on, in my understand, scientific res, that visualization can be useful to some extent for people that are very good at visualization, but for many people, that doesn't help and that there's nothing like real physical practice to improve physical practice.

Yeah, the word visualization is not good. Obviously, IT has to be experiential in a very complete way, not just visually, of course. And unless you already developed certain experience, tangible experience that has been that has benefit from feedback, from outside feedback, IT is not very useful thing to do, and IT ends up a being fabrications.

But if you are very experienced and you already gained the benefit of being burnt t here or over extended here, then you have a certain experience, then you can strengthen certain aspects of IT. But you got ta be careful, because you do not have feedback. And because of the missing feedback, you might develop illusions.

IT might be that you develop stronger patterning, but ultimately this would lead you away from the enlivens of the movement itself. The drilling, for example, very useful to learn a general infrastructure of the movement's slave or the technique. But then to dress IT up, you need feedback. You needed to be alive. You need to receive something corrective.

For many people, the approach, movement in the form of way training or yoga running, yoga bit more about dynamic, but is fairly linear types of exercise and movement pala on rowing, these kinds of things. I think most people will probably not depart from those practices entirely because they like them. I'm speaking about myself.

I like some of those very much. I enjoy them um but in terms of thinking about adding a movement practice to one's s already existing exercise regime, I can imagine thread ing IT throughout today. I can imagine having a dedicated movement practice.

One thing that have started doing on the basis of some of your teachings, and I just have created this ideas, rather than statically standing there in lifting weight, actually walking from as a alternate repetitions, IT occurred me that i'd never done a coral, a bisset coral, with one foot in front of the other. And then i'd never actually switched that up and is a kind of an odd stance to be standing in parallel. And cooling one's ARM is have a ridiculous movement when one thinks IT.

So I started in corporate something that you get some strange looks in the gym, but I just give them strange looks back. So what are your thoughts about these very linear forms of exercise and um and do you encourage people to expand the play space um as IT were for these kinds of exercise? Or do you think that movement practice is just best explored through three dimensionality gravity and maybe a sticker ball?

It's definitely a problem。 And it's it's approach able. People want to quit.

People want a heck, people want the icing. There is no cake. There's no chicken.

And just like industries of icing, icing, icing on what what are you putting IT on? So for me, that's why I am i'm going towards this site is like I have my life now. Tell me what movement practices I should pursue.

You are movement. In essence. You are not thinking of yourself in in any serious way. In through my eyes, there is a dynamic entity to you.

The body is a huge, is a huge part of the communicating you genetic players, the personalities that cut, developed and built around various influences, but then the results, some kind of an essence, something that works from within the cells. And if you grew up in my family and I grew up in your million IT would still be the same. And that is something that I always try to think about.

What is that inside of me? So I think these practices, they're very good, but they're not designed for the gold. We think they were designed to IT orients towards something else. For example, the yoga. There is a good book called the yoga body, which will destroy a lot of people.

The yoga practice and IT goes into, how did we get to this yoga? The influence of swedish dynasts s and mongolian compostion ists and the western, the west affecting IT, and then the ancient practice, which was barely a sona related posture position. So actually, you said you guys less clear.

Yog is very linear, very clear these days. These lines look at all the traditional sense. They look like nothing like yoga.

Look at tie dance, look at chinese dances, martial arts. So round, it's all current, like them, like out nature, what you see, nature and the movement of the animals. So where does IT come from these things to understand? Because IT designs, you now IT shape.

You you're placing yourself in these forces of change and these streams of change, and you have a good intention. You just want this or that. But the joke is on us.

And this is the movement practice for me, is first, education. Start to think about this. I have nothing that I can just wrinkle now, some magic powder that will help resolve this because it's a start of the deep investigation. And then some of the things, let's talk pragmatically because what you described is not about you placing the front in front when you're calling. It's about the examination.

This is why IT IT is a very good direction, and then you will need another one, another one, don't get stuck on that foot in front, but and try to do with the eyes closed or with a different head poster, and you will see things arrive, unrelated things, because the associative mind, the thinking this relates, this doesn't get to the heart with never. So just infusing these elements, like in a cup, will create endless combinations, possibilities and a lot of discovery. And this form es humidity of the practitioner.

I don't know. I try like today with you, I tried various combinations, and oh, I discover something out there is this is a playful approach, and this is a researcher approach. I don't try to fit my truth into something.

And there to examine. I don't have a motive yet. why? Because i'm fine. I don't depend on that to define myself. I'm a human being.

But if I don't have that sense of worth, i'm already like gear towards. I need to do this. I need to prove this.

I have this agenda. And this is how we get all the lies in the world and all the the problems and difficulties sold these practices. They are related to IT to prove this, that this way, why we need muscles for X, Y, Z.

And a lot of the. Reported outcomes are often from my places like funny, I hear about something like I I heard you say about correctitude practice that actually experiencing from outside if somebody else or you are receiving grade to this actually more powerful, it's true. But I see why it's i'm not sure everybody says if somebody tries to feel gratitude, just sit with dice clothes or watch a movie and sense the grade to there.

IT would be clear to you, one is very difficult to do and the others very easy. Hence, if creditor is achieved easier this way, that's why IT works like that. Although all the traditional practices are about you.

And by chAllenging yourself to sense that credit with yourself, they achieve much more powerful thing. But this is not the research people, the people in the research. We don't have a lot of those people.

So a lot of the things that are can arrive was wait, training, the benefits or the way that the the horn effect and the effect of cognition eeta. I when you open a bit and you go far out, you see certain things, not the truth, but maybe less delusion. You can, there is nothing definite, but there is, there is something maybe more wholesome that appears.

Yeah, but I think this is so this is a state, state of exploration. I don't want to have the same thought. If I already added, I would.

I want to to have the same thought I already had IT. I don't want to have the same practice. I don't want you.

I curve already in this way. I want to experience something else. I want to. There is a benefit to game. No, but that was Better.

The Better is Better, is is not more, is not faster, is a Better, is Better and Better isn't we don't know what Better is, right? So it's like it's oh, this is Better. I don't know.

It's just more weight. It's one more kilo, but maybe I remove one kilo. I discovered something like, for example, the power development that has been shown to gain certain benefits when you light on the load and you accelerated more in certain conditions.

But who discovered IT a practitioner, a math person? Uh, not diverse. tion. Ski, A C R. ski. They reported something, but that was already within the grasp of the practitioners, I think.

And as a as a researcher, this is very powerful to remind yourself this and to work with that. And as a practitioner, as a living human being for everyone, I think something very useful. And then those place that you're doing IT people give you this the weird looks and like, yeah I tell people you don't want to be Normal.

If you don't get the weird looks, you're not moving in the right direction. You're moving in in, in a very fix. And you already know the result of that direction, let's say at least that.

So continue to play with data, continue to play. Look elsewhere. Look at places you didn't look at, because this is still like within the same layer, one foot in front, one foot behind.

What happens when you do IT with a smile, the same workout, and when you do IT with a frown? Or what happens, breath holding or blood stretch as all this. It's great play and I think very beneficial to do to go through of IT.

I think it's a wonderful message. What I keep hearing from you over and over again is to that people should explore, explore, explore and and I I want to thank you for your time today first of all um for the incredible teaching here at the table but also the introduction to A A movement practice although now I attempted to say that i've been moving my whole life, i've just know I was that there was such a vast land escape.

Um also you're willingness to treat out in this a journey that is truly unique you know, the greatest compliment that one can give in science is the one that I want to tell you now because it's entirely appropriate, which is we say you're an end of one right that and you truly are I don't think there's anyone that has been as willing to embrace existing practices, evolve, then create new practices and um and to share so broadly to really be willing to give and teach so much knowledge. Earlier you made dimension of your your goals of in part of being wild and wise. And i'm here to tell you that you are both wild and wise. And so thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you for joining me today for my discussion about the science and practice of movement and movement culture with edo port toll. You would like to learn more about edo and his workshops and other aspects of what he does. Please go to his social media.

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