Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How to Heal Your Body and Mind Through Movement, The Surprising Benefits of Walking Backwards & How Optimising Your Breath Can Transform Your Relationships with Lawrence van Lingen #491

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

What if I told you that normalising your breathing pattern and walking backwards every day could change your life? My guest this week explains just how this is possible. There are very few people in the movement world who ‘grab’ me online and suck me into their world with the quality of their content, but one person who did this a few months ago was this week’s guest, Lawrence van Lingen. Lawrence is a highly sought-after expert in biomechanics, bodywork, and human performance. Described by Triathlete Magazine as ‘the genius of running,’ Lawrence has over 25 years’ experience working with elite athletes and everyday people. He’s developed a unique approach that goes beyond traditional methods, blending a deep knowledge of movement, posture, and breath to optimize our performance and overall well-being.  Lawrence works with some of the world’s greatest athletes to enhance their performance and help them with so called ‘untreatable’ injuries and, his online running workshops have become the backbone of remarkable athletic comebacks and they’ve also helped many people around the world, move without pain and with greater enjoyment. In order to help more people, Lawrence has created a wonderful online community that includes live and recorded classes where people of all ages and abilities can learn to understand their bodies, move better, and ultimately feel and live better. You can see all details at www.lawrencevanlingen.com. In this conversation, we discuss the intricate connection between breathing, movement, and our overall wellbeing. Lawrence explains how incorrect breathing not only affects our physical health but also impacts our stress levels, anxiety, mood, and even our relationships with others. Lawrence also explains how 3 practices: normalising our breathing patterns, walking backwards and using a flow rope - can prove transformative for so many. These are simple yet powerful techniques that can revolutionise not only how you move, but also how you feel. We explore the fascinating concept of how our bodies store emotions and trauma and how movement can be a powerful tool for release and healing. What I love about Lawrence's holistic approach is how he looks at the whole body as a system, acknowledging that to move well, we need to focus on what’s happening ‘upstream’ in our lives that could be impacting our physical health. We also touch on some thought-provoking philosophical ideas. Lawrence challenges us to consider whether we're ‘happening to life, or life is happening to us,’ encouraging a more active and intentional approach to our movement and overall health. His ‘mastery, not medals’ mantra offers a refreshing perspective on achievement and personal growth. For those interested in the technical side of running, we also discuss the phenomenon of ‘super shoes’ and their potential benefits. I myself have been doing one of Lawrence’s breathing routines that I first learned about on his YouTube channel and have experienced the incredible benefits. And, by the end of our conversation, you’ll have the tools to start making positive changes in your own life, too. This episode is not just about running or physical health; it's a deep dive into how we can live more authentically and connect better with our bodies and minds.   Thanks to our sponsors: https://drinkag1.com/livemore http://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.essilor.com https://airbnb.co.uk/host   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/491   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

When you become true in yourself and you trust your movement and you trust your body and you become more authentic to yourself or more expressive of who you are and you find your voice, relationships radically change around you. I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about this because this is life changing and I want to help change people's lives and movement for the better in a sustainable long-term way. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far.

My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated not only by how much we move, but how well and efficiently we move as well. And there's a big difference. Now, someone who truly understands this as well as anyone is this week's fantastic guest. There are very few people in the movement world who grab me online and suck me into their world with the quality of their content. But one person who did this a few months ago is Lawrence van Lingen. Lawrence is a highly sought-after expert in biomechanics, bodywork, and human performance. Described by Triathlete magazine as the genius of running,

Lawrence has over 25 years experience working with elite athletes and everyday people. And he's developed a rather unique approach that goes beyond traditional methods, blending a deep knowledge of movement, posture and breath to optimize our performance and overall well-being. Lawrence is sought after by some of the world's greatest athletes to enhance their performance and help them with so-called untreatable injuries. And his online running workshops have become the backbone of remarkable athletic comebacks. And they've also helped many people around the world move without pain and with greater enjoyment. In order to help more people, Lawrence has created a wonderful online community that includes live and recorded classes where

people of all ages and abilities can learn to understand their bodies, move better, and ultimately feel and live better. And you can see your details on his website, which is lawrencevanlingan.com. Now in this week's conversation, Lawrence and I discuss the intimate connection between breathing, movement, and our overall well-being. Lawrence explains how incorrect breathing not only affects our physical health, Lawrence explains how incorrect breathing not only affects our physical health, but also impacts our stress levels, anxiety, moods, and even our relationships with others. He also explains how three practices, normalizing our breathing patterns, walking backwards, and using a flow rope, can prove transformative for so many.

rope can prove transformative for so many. These are simple yet powerful techniques that can revolutionize not only how you move, but also how you feel. In fact, as you'll shortly find out, for the last few months, I myself have been doing one of Lawrence's breathing routines that I first learned about on his YouTube channel and have experienced the incredible benefits. And by the end of this conversation, you'll have so many practical tools to bring into your life, should you choose to do so. One of the things I just love about Lawrence is his rounded, holistic, and dare I say it, philosophical approach. Yes, he's a brilliant movement coach, but I think Lawrence's thoughts and ideas go far beyond just movement. I think they're about helping us live a calmer, more grounded, and ultimately, a more authentic life.

it and ultimately a more authentic life. I wanted to ask you, do you think that humans are born to run? And if we are, why do so many people struggle with running with things like pain? Yeah, I think from an evolutionary standpoint, the feeling would be that we evolved to run and it's it's an integral part of human design and human dna um you've got to be kind of careful because there are obviously some people that can't run or it's not going to be part of their world and you want to be respectful of that and obviously it's harder for some people to run. I feel like maybe some people really adapted well to agriculture and sort of more standing around than hunting and gathering, if that makes sense.

You get people with really big calves, really big feet, and someone that's a more natural runner will have a really light bone structure in their feet and long Achilles. So there is genetic predisposition to some people are way more talented at running. But yeah, I think running all humans should be able to run if they're healthy. So that's really interesting that perspective that you feel some people may have adapted to not be quite as natural at running as other people, which kind of makes sense. But given that a lot of us probably are, on some level at least, born to run, we have that within

us, the mechanics, the capability of running. Running is increasing in popularity as a sport, as a pastime. Yet, it seems, depending on what research you look at, that running injuries are quite significant and many people want to run but can't run because of pain. Why do you think that is? I think a small part of that, interestingly enough, is I don't think we've quite shared our sort of more primate shape of being on all fours.

And it's a small component. Like I think humans still haven't fully adapted to being upright on two legs. We've been upright on two legs for a relatively brief period of time if you think of our evolutionary of ancestry. And that's a small component. But otherwise, I'd say the two big things is modern lifestyle. And for me, I'm pretty fascinated in the nervous system and the effect of the nervous system has on the way we move.

And I feel like, you know, we sit a lot, we sit in flexion. Most people, I mean, there's people that can quote the stats accurately, but the vast majority of people have accumulated trauma, nervous system trauma, a history of trauma, dysregulated nervous systems. And your nervous system influences the timing and the way we move and the way we stand and the way we feel. And somewhere in there lies the problem.

Yeah. You are a quite exceptional coach who's got a reputation for helping people who can't be helped get out of pain and run efficiently and compete at things like the Olympics, right? Yeah. So you're clearly looking at the human body in a way that many people aren't. What has drawn me very much to your approach is the fact that to me you seem to really go upstream to what are the root causes here yeah what's actually really going on not just there's back pain or foot pain or hip pain or whatever it's like let's go further up the chain and figure out why that's happening

in the first place would you agree with that yes 100 you can't work with humans in a reactive nature. It just doesn't work. And also, if you have a logic stream, if the first assumption is wrong, everything other, although it might be correct, is also wrong. And so you always want to work as fundamentally as you can and as an upstream as you can. And it's really, really important to look at the human as a whole and as a system. And I think modern medicine and general life has taught us to specialize and be reductionist. So we're trying to know more and more and more about smaller and smaller parts,

but at some point that breaks down. And humans are systems. You have to understand how to talk to a system or influence a system. And we're not trained to do it, or it's not a natural way of thinking for a lot of people either. Yeah.

You're speaking my language there. Yeah. This is for sure something that I think has frustrated me since I qualified as a medical doctor many years ago now, that a lot of our training is reductionist. Yeah. You know, I guess a very relatable example might be a patient comes in with a headache.

And of course, there are many causes of a headache and we have to screen people and make sure we're not missing anything serious. But a lot of our training is, I would argue, stuck downstream. So the patient has something and then we have a selection of treatment modalities, usually a selection of drugs to try and treat the headache. But I remember, you know, a couple of years into my career as a doctor thinking, well, yeah, okay, I get that. Symptom relief has its place, but why does this person have a headache in the first place? And I guess my whole career, I have been trying to help people understand, let's start to go further upstream.

Are there similar examples of that in running? Things that people commonly complain of and they try and get treated a certain way, which may have some utility for a few weeks perhaps, but doesn't deal with the root cause. Are there any sort of common examples? All of it is an example. There's very few people that can treat human as a system.

I mean, the easiest would be, let's say, your head position because your head's so heavy and it sits on the top. And so if we had to sort of think about balancing a ball on a stick in your hand, we'd start to understand that where that ball is, is really, really important. And most people, you know, don't have a great posture or their head's tilted to one side or it's too far forward. And it just immediately affects everything. You know, your upper cervical region, just the atlas axis, you know, the top of your neck, if that's not balanced and stacked, no joint in your body will stack properly. And so these are, I don't

want the listeners to think that, oh, I'm paralyzed or insecure, you know, I have doubt, or this is difficult, because the really nice thing about a system is if you put some goodness into the system, the whole system gets better. And an example of that would be, you know, if you can do this at home, you can can try sort of bend forward and try and touch your toes and get a sense of how flexible your hamstrings are and if you take a like a lacrosse ball or ball and you roll it underneath your foot you know both feet just for two minutes on either side and you go back your hamstrings will be more flexible you'll be your range of motion will very likely improve and then you can

come back tomorrow and then you could do eye exercises. So you could just look at your thumb and then look at your thumb in a distance and look at it close and then look at it far and then maybe move it around the room and then look at the horizon and look at a narrow object and then go and measure your hamstring range of motion and it'll increase as well. And so that's from two ends of your body in two different pathways, you're increasing the health of the system. What you're speaking to there for me is this idea that everything in the body is connected. We're interconnected, right? And so let's talk about hamstrings for a minute because it's very common for people to say they have tight hamstrings. And so I would say the commonest solution that many people think they need for

their tight hamstrings is to stretch their hamstrings. But what you have just demonstrated with those examples is that if you go a bit upstream, a bit further upstream, well, maybe the reason your hamstrings are tight is because of either your feet or your eye movements. Is that sort of an accurate summary of what you just said? Yes, but I want to bring that back a little bit. You know, your eyes and your feet are a factor, but it's probably sitting. You know, you sit with shortened hamstrings and you sit with shortened hip flexors. And the hip flexors and the hamstrings and you sit with um shortened hip flexors and the hip flexor and hamstrings are synergist now you know the point of what i was trying to say is you can you can interact with the system almost from any direction okay you know um as to

the blame yeah what you can't do is you can't it's generally not fruitful to work on a first order thinking so oh my muscle is short I therefore need to lengthen it by stretching. And here lies the paradox in my world is engineers don't really run the show. So we don't even have a formal definition for stretching in medicine, which is extraordinary. You think like, you know, an engineer knows,

I don't know, there's a formula for everything. And everyone knows exactly what you're talking about if you talk about velocity. But it is, the human is so complex and it's organic and it's moving and it's changing. And so that's what makes it hard. And I think a lot of people don't have agency or tools to help.

And it's kind of sad. A lot of the people that come and see me, it's all been first order. Your hamstrings are short, stretch them. This muscle's weak, strengthen it. But you have to ask the deeper question of why would your hamstrings be short? What in your lifestyle is contributing towards those factors? I guess when I was trying to summarize your point,

I guess I was trying to get across to people this idea that the site of the symptom is not always the site of the problem. So tight hamstrings can have a variety of different causes. And if you just, in inverted commas, stretch that hamstring... Yeah, you're not getting at the root. You're not getting at the root. And sure, you may get some temporary relief, but if you don't address the underlying causes,

it's going to retighten. It's going to come straight back, right? And clearly I know because the testimonials when people talk about you are just exquisite because so many people come to you, so many top athletes come to you when they've tried everything else and you seem to be able to unlock what has been missing. Let's talk about breathing, because we're talking about this interconnected nature. I have changed my own morning routine over the last couple of months since I saw one of your breathing tutorials on YouTube.

I think it's absolutely brilliant. And it's how I start every day now. Why is the breath so important when it comes to our movement? Yeah, I think breath's the first place you want to start so so we talk about systems systems are really hard to change and and it's really hard to change habits in humans because we become stable or pigeonholed or used to a certain environment so um which i think is one of the reasons why i think why it gets difficult to work with people in the systems approach because humans are so resistant inherently to change.

And so breath is a fantastic sort of portal into creating change. So a couple of reasons why your breath might get out of whack is let's say you fell. might get out of whack is let's say you fell. Sometimes when you fall, you brace, you guard, your diaphragm becomes splintered, you might fall and catch your breath. You know, you might have injured your ribs or any sort of trauma can often, you know, you keep guarded and splintered. Maybe you've had an episode of pain, your breathing will be dysregulated. We have, it's really important for people to work on breathing every day because it's almost like brushing your teeth. It's just really good hygiene.

And that's because also screens. So there's a thing called screen apnea or email apnea. When our pupils are fixed and don't change their aperture much, it affects our breathing and our breathing rate. And so we want to slow down breathing. And then what's another example? And then commonly you'll have people that are told to engage their core. And this is what I see in the athletic realm, which is pretty common is if you engage your core by pulling your belly

button in, your diaphragm goes up. And when you breathe, your ribs should go up and your diaphragm should come down. That is healthy breathing. And lot of people for for various reasons get into a reciprocal breathing pattern which is diaphragm goes up as your ribs go up and that projects your breath up into the upper you into upper chest and it's called like apical breathing or reciprocal breathing um and these reverse breathing patterns are really, really harmful. And if you don't correct that reciprocal breathing pattern, it's very, very difficult to treat or get anywhere with the human. This goes beyond movement though, doesn't it? Because if we're talking about this interconnecting nature of the body, if you're breathing dysfunctionally, like I think many people

are these days, or at least sub-optimally, yes, that can have an impact on your movement. It can have an impact on pain. It could have an impact on how stressed you feel. It can have an impact on your mood. It can have an impact on your anxiety. It can have an impact on your anxiety. It can have an impact on how you interact with your wife, your husband, your partner, your children. So it's a proper upstream lever to get right, isn't it? Would you agree with that? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it is the most important thing to work with.

You'll hear it said again and again, and no one kind of ever does it because I think they don't have agency or it's not powerful enough. But breathing is the first thing that any physical therapist or any movement-based person or any sort of intervention with a human you should work on because again if your breathing pattern is stuck you end up being anxious and um i i use them and the analogy is almost a drowning person drowning people tend to hyperventilate and they get very, very anxious

and then their behavior becomes very inappropriate. So they'll drown the lifesaver coming to help to get another breath of air. And you've seen this because you were a lifeguard, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For 10 years, I was a community lifeguard. Because you were explaining this to me before.

It's absolutely fascinating because that's an extreme case of where someone's breathing's gone. Yeah. You know, where they can actually be saved and they make poor decisions yeah are you saying though is the is the analogy that that's an extreme case where someone's drowning yeah but actually many of us are kind of sub drowning every day day because of poor breathing patterns. Yeah, and I think the listener is going to feel,

oh, that's me. They'll relate to that story. And to save that person, the quickest way to get them out of the water is to slow their breathing down and tell them, I've got you. This is safe. We're going to be okay. And you breathe with them and you slow their breathing down

and then they'll relax and you can pull them out the water. And it's that Viktor Frankl saying, you need a pause between the stimulus and the response and most people we're riders on the elephant your your nervous system is dictating your movements your behavior you you you're operating 100 or very close to 100 on habit and there's no gap between the stimulus and the response and you can't teach a drowning person how to swim. And I can't teach someone to move out of pain if they have a breathing pattern disorder, apart from the mechanical problems that it causes. You obviously see a particular type of person, right?

Yeah. But if I was to ask you to estimate out of the number of people who come and see you, what percentage have some kind of breathing pattern disorder, where would you put that percentage? Above 90. So greater than 90% of people you feel have some degree of breathing pattern disorder. Yeah. It's really easy. I mean, anyone listening now, just take a deep breath in, just take a really deep breath in and notice, does your belly button go in when you take a deep breath in or does it go out? And, you know, the listeners can feedback in which you probably find the overwhelming majority is your diaphragm will go up with your ribs.

how common breathing dysfunction is, the impact it can have on so many facets of our life and our wellbeing. But I will say that you've got some great videos on YouTube. I would so recommend people check them out because you've got a great way of delivering the information and demonstrating it. But I have been doing, I would say three to four minutes

of the breathing exercises on your YouTube channel, maybe for six or even eight weeks now, and it has changed how I breathe. It's, and the reason I'm saying that is to say, guys, this works. And I'm telling you, I do three or four minutes when I wake up each morning. That is it.

And that is starting yeah and that is starting to reprogram it for me yeah yeah and i think personally well so well done and thank you i think personally really resetting your breathing when you first thing in the morning sets you up you take 20 000 breaths a day on average and and changing the the improving the quality and nature of those 20,000 breaths and possibly reducing them to even fewer breaths is a game changer because then that sets up change in your life. And it makes you more comfortable with change.

So it makes a big difference. And I think, yeah. Well, a lot of people will be listening because they want to know how to walk better and without pain and run better without pain. So let's really draw that link between the way that we breathe and the way that we run, for example. So if a runner is saying, well, you know, I run pretty well. I go to park run every Saturday and I don't seem to have too many problems, why should I work on my breathing?

Can you sort of explain why breathing is so paramount for your movement efficiency? So firstly, for injury prevention and extremity injuries in particular. So if you have a central breathing problem, it can predispose you to peripheral injuries because you basically get decreased blood flow and oxygenation.

Your body protects the core over other things. And so I don't really want to get into the physiology of it, but basically breathing pattern disorders actually predispose you to peripheral injuries. An example of that is Deputin's contracture. You're going to get a contracture in your hand. The person who's got a Deputin's contracture, you have a big adhesion in that diaphragm on that side. It's just...

You've seen that over and over again. I've never not seen it. I'm waiting to be proved wrong and I've never not seen it. So a big adhesion in your diaphragm on the same side as your deprotens contracture. And that goes for plantar fasciitis too and Achilles injuries. That's just from an injury perspective. And then performance-wise, if we see it at the elite level in triathletes, I work a lot with triathletes and in elite triathlete level, if you can improve someone's breathing pattern, you can see a change in their threshold

of 10 to 12 seconds per kilometer in a week. Yeah. For people who don't know what threshold means, can you explain? So that's as fast as you can sort of aerobically run so that's typically for the average if you're doing a park run of 5k it's probably how fast you can run a park run will increase by 12 10 12 15 seconds even more sometimes per kilometer just from just breathing yeah you swap your breathing pattern around i guarantee your running improves your running efficiency improves and and we can go into the the wires of that but that's just how it works yeah what's interesting for me there is again another idea i'm pretty obsessed with and have me for many years is that in this kind of health and wellness space many people are talking about the need to increase movement yeah and of course i about it, many people talk about

it. It is important that as we become more sedentary, that we're moving more. But very few people are talking about how to move, right? Quality of movement. Quality of movement, movement efficiency. And so for performance people, the fact that you can maybe get 15 seconds faster in a part run without doing any more training yeah just sorting out your breathing hopefully that will be like okay i need to listen yeah but for people with injuries and this is a um i think we should just briefly touch on the biochemistry because it's fascinating i have my audience are familiar with breathing and the importance i've had patrick mKeown on several times, James Nestor, Brian McKenzie. We've spoken about this in the past, but you said something to me on a message yesterday, which I found really, really interesting that when we're over-breathing,

which is many of us, we're lowering carbon dioxide and that is contributing to those sort of injuries like plantar fasciitis. I mean, that is fascinating. Yeah, because it creates a... Carbon dioxide is a bronchodilator and a vasodilator. It's a smooth muscle relaxer. So when you have an appropriate level of carbon dioxide, your blood vessels open up and you get more blood flow, and specifically to the periphery. And so if you want more blood flow in any tendon injury,

that is an absolute given. So hold on. So plantar fasciitis is very common. Yeah. Okay. And of course, there can be mechanical contributing factors, you know, with your biomechanics that might need addressing. But you're saying also, and or for some people, it's simply a case that because of their breathing

and they're breathing too much so they're blowing out carbon dioxide that's going down in their blood yeah and because it's a vasodilator so it's uh dilating the blood vessels yeah because your carbon dioxide is low relatively low yeah you're then constricting those blood vessels. There's less blood flow to things like your Achilles and the sole of your foot. So you're saying potentially for some people with those problems, you can do as much biomechanics as you want, but until you deal with the central breathing problem, you're always going to be fighting uphill. Yeah. You're going upstream. fighting up pale yeah you're going upstream and and yes when i i did an online slinky spine course and and after the the diaphragm release session um where we sort of did diaphragm release uh three

or four people emailed me and said that their plantar fasciitis had cleared up and that was within a week so you know that's out of 300 odd people. It's a shockingly large number because of the 300 people, I don't know how many people had plantar fasciitis, but three or four people emailed me and said that their plantar fasciitis cleared up. And the other one is just because we were talking about running and health and movement and head.

I had this great privilege of working with one of the greatest runners of all time and he had his first running injury at 60 that stopped him dead in his tracks and he's one of the all time greats right he just said look I'm not equipped to deal with this he says you might not believe this but this is

the first injury that stopped me from running in my entire running career and I've been running hard since I was 12 and he says I'm just not equipped to running career. And I've been running hard since I was 12. And he says, I'm just not equipped to deal with this because I've never had to face a problem. He's had niggles and he's had some health issues, but he never had a running injury. And it was interesting in his stance.

And then this is really, really important. You can't separate motion from emotion or how you feel and how you move. And I looked at his stance and he had like, he was move and i looked at his stunts and he had like he was standing with his toes dug into the ground he was leaning forward and he had like a sort of determined really well shifted forward posture and his that you know his toes were white and i said what's going on in your life and he says yeah i don't know and i said no no like business politically are you you know he says no he's he's at that stage he was facing strong

political opposition and and and he had to sort of dig his toes in and stand firm and stand his ground and sort of that was the theme of his life and you could see it in his posture and we just got him sort of rocking his toes up and down and rocking forward and you know getting him off his toes in his forefoot and he was running in two weeks. And so then again, there's this motion, emotion, psychological. I mean, humans are a system. And the one thing I just want, like people can get lost at this stage saying, oh, well, how do I know that's not me?

Or I resonate with this. And I don't want people to feel not empowered or enabled because again, just keep coming back to that theme that if you improve the environment of the system, it always improves. And we talk about a pot plant. You can have a pot plant in one corner of the room and it dies and you can just move it to another corner

and it thrives. And a lot of what we need to do in systems is realize you're a human in a system, a system in a system and improving your environment improves everything. Improving your breathing improves everything. in terms of this interconnected nature of everything yeah i think it's going to be a theme throughout this conversation because ultimately i think that is one of your kind of golden talents and abilities it's to witness someone

and actually be able to take a step back and go, well, what is really going on here? There's local causes in the body, but actually what's also going on with that person as a whole in their life? Are they stressed? Are they struggling to let go? Are they having toxic relationships? All those kinds of things, right? And we talk a lot about nutrition on this podcast at various times in terms of trying to help people make better choices. It's been very clear to me for a number of years that focusing on what we eat is important,

but it could be that focusing on why we eat might be even more important. why we eat might be even more important. So you can read that sugar or excess sugar is not helpful for you, and you can keep going on detoxes and two weeks where you give up, but it keeps coming back to where it was, unless you've identified the root causes of why you keep going to sugar, why when you're stressed, do you go to sugar? Why do you have, you're not able to manage it in a different way, for example. So when it comes to breathing, something you said to me yesterday, which I feel is so profound is this idea that cyclists, and many people know that there is a coffee and pastry culture with many cyclists. You were sort of drawing the link between that and mouth breathing. Can you talk about that for a second?

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forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code to all of my podcast listeners. Terms and conditions do apply. To get your 20% off code, all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. so cycling is interesting one is you you exercising in a very flexed position okay um and sort of leaning forward but you can cycle for a long time relatively to running you know i kind of like to think of a three to one ratio 30 minute run is probably the same as a 90 minute cycle okay so people go out for hours and typically their mouth breathe and it really really lights up your nervous system so if you mouth if you take a sharp or not a sharp if you take a generous breath in through your mouth you'll feel your your ribs move up and your shoulders move up and if you take a generous breath in through your nose you find you're far more likely to feel that

the breath goes deeper you draw air down into the bottom of your lungs. And so mouth breathing tends to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system or your fight or flight or freeze or fawn system, right? Your emergency power through the system. The stress part of your nervous system as opposed to the relaxation parts. Yeah. And so, you know, you can go for a bike ride and, you know, there's loud mechanical noises. There's cars that come past you.

It's probably a little bit of fear of downhill or risk or, you know, there's loud mechanical noises, there's cars that come past you, it's probably a little bit of fear of downhill or risk or, you know, and plus this apical mouth breathing, you can really sensitize your sympathetic nervous system. And then it's interesting that you become wired, but tired, and then you go to you want more stimulants. And so you end up with a coffee and pastry because you're feeding the dysfunction. because you're feeding the dysfunction. And it's really interesting. It's like a lot of people that are stuck in a state of sympathetic overdrive crave drama and crave stimulants because that's the only thing that keeps them going. I think that's much of the modern world. I think many people who just heard you say that will either recognize it in themselves

or I think more likely they might recognize it in someone close to them. Yeah, yeah. Because it's easier to see these patterns in other people than ourselves, right? Yeah, yeah. And again, just tying that back to what I said about sugar. Yes, you know, in inverted commas, you're a running coach, right? Yeah. But you're so much more than that

because I think you just help people have their whole body and their nervous systems move more efficiently, more together in harmony, which yes, will improve their running. But I believe a lot of our behaviors that we're trying to avoid, let's say sugar and alcohol or reduce. And I've been thinking a lot about this

because it's a topic in my next book basically but I think the reason we can't stop even though we have the knowledge is because we don't know we don't fully understand what that behavior is doing for us so if you're a chronic mouth breather and you're blowing off carbon dioxide

and you're activating your sympathetic nervous system so you're stressed part of your nerves chronically, you're going to naturally need more things to soothe that, whether it's caffeine, whether it's alcohol, whether it's sugar. So again, coming back to what you said was one of those root cause things that you deal with with everyone breathing. If you learn to regulate your breath, breathe in a more optimal way, you're naturally going to calm things down and you'll naturally be able to reduce your alcohol consumption,

your caffeine and your sugar. It's easier for sure. Yeah. Would you agree with that? Yeah, for sure. It's easier. I wouldn't, you know, habits are really, really hard to change. Extraordinarily hard to change.

And like I say, you know, we're riders on an elephant. Our nervous system kind of dictates what's going on. And I say to people, I'm not actually treating you, I'm treating your nervous system, which is your rational brain. You know, we're having a conversation, but your nervous system often dictates your habits or your behaviors or the way you talk. It's really, we're on autopilot.

Yeah. And so, again, it's that if you're a drowning person, they can't think, they can't make decisions. There's no rationality to their behavior. The lifeguard is trained, secure in that environment and they're thinking and they've got this. And we definitely want to shift towards that state. And breathing is a massive portal of entry into creating a

change or a space between the stimulus and the response and that pause, and then you can make decisions. And a lot of this is you actually become self-aware. And the amount of people that I work with that suddenly become self-aware will go, oh. And it's almost like you wake up and you realize like, oh, you know, almost like you wake up and you realize like, oh, you know, I was asleep before, or I was on autopilot, or I was not in charge of my life. And it is pretty profound. Yeah, I completely agree. We see the world through the state of our nervous system. We interact with the world through the state of our nervous system. And until it's amazing, like I can imagine many athletes saying that to you, because I also feel that there was a time in my life where I was asleep. And then you,

it's not even sudden, but you just suddenly realize, wait a minute, with every single external event, I have a choice in how I react to that. But until you realize that you think, no, I am a victim to the external actions in the world. Things happen. People talk to me a certain way. My boss says something. Of course, I'm going to be reactive to that. But at some point, and I think breathing and other things that you recommend, which we're definitely going to go through loads of practical things for people, I think it helps people develop that awareness to go, wait a second, there is time here for me to choose a response. So about the nervous system, when you treat someone in pain, you're essentially treating their nervous system, right? So let's just talk about um how emotions or trauma i guess get stored in our bodies and affect the

way that we move because i think it's really really important yeah and this is layers and it and it it goes deep and deeper so so i like the example of of your tailbone. You can fall and damage your coccyx, which is the tip of your sacrum, right at the bottom of your tailbone. And typically that'll tighten up your pelvic floor and you'll splint and guard if it's painful. And that can so profoundly change your gait pattern because basically what you lose is extension in your gait because you sort of, you know, your butt's sore and so you don't really want to take a big step going forward or you can't leave your, it changes the pattern and firing and also creates asymmetry.

And just from that, from having a tight pelvic floor, which affects your breathing, which affects your central nervous system, which affects the way you gait, you can literally see you know athletes i mean i gave you the example of a water polo player that that was you know just exceptional when snowboarding fell on their tailbone and had fear and guarding then she became asymmetrical from it and she actually complained of a knee injury and i was like no no no there's

what happened to you because you know luckily i'd seen her before and I knew this was not her normal state. And it affects the way you move so profoundly. Like think of a, you know, we're extraordinarily good at picking up people's body language and signals. It's a survival mechanism. So think of a dog with its tail between its legs. You know, well, that dog's cowardly or fearful

or running away from us. And then you think of a dog wagging its tail. I mean, you know, well, that dog's cowardly or fearful or running away from us. And you think of a dog wagging its tail. I mean, you know, it's two different things. And so you can have a system just from a trauma where you suddenly got your tail between your legs, you're not as confident as you were, your balance has decreased, your movement patterns have decreased, and you can just totally see someone's sort of almost worldly road around them. And that's just on a structural level. But generally speaking for a human being, if they have trauma, any sort of trauma, emotional trauma, physical trauma, you can diet them, put them in solitary confinement, play really loud noises,

shame them, kick them, do whatever you like, you will go into a fetal position. And that's one of this sort of relationship between extension and flexion and flexion is pretty much where we hold our deepest traumas and fears we're going to protective guarded state and a lot of what i'm doing is extension based running is to extend and run and open up and get out of that and into our sort of the best version of ourselves yeah You did an interview with this wonderful chap, Floris, on his podcast, which I saw a few weeks ago. And in that, Floris talks about how you did some work with him. Yeah. And then the following day, he went for a run and he broke down in tears and left you a message, which he very openly shared on that video.

Yeah. Now I think it's, I really want to pause here because I think there's something really quite profound here to talk about. Again, I appreciate that you are an inverted commas of running coach, but you're so much more than that. In fact, even calling you a running coach feeds into the reductionist mindset that we now have on everything. Because as you say, you just help the whole being function better. Many people have been traumatized in one way or another. Whether it's significant trauma from their parents or someone when they were growing up. Or just, frankly, at school when a teacher said something really

offhand and they contracted and felt guilt or shame which they've carried through for the rest of their life until they become aware and start to change it. So we've covered that in many different ways on this podcast over the last few years but what's really interesting to me is this idea that we hold it in our bodies, right? It drives us into a more flexed position, a curled position. Yeah, often, yeah. Right? Yeah, often. And then we often talk about healing from trauma through therapy. And there's a whole variety of different modalities, right? And many of them are fantastic and kind of utility for different people. There's no question about that. But I have felt,

and because I've experienced things myself over the past years working with Helen, and I've shared a lot of that with you, it is amazing how much of your trauma gets processed through opening up your movement in places that were previously tight. Certainly that's my impression of it. How would you describe it? And you know, I guess Floris was open about it on the show, so I don't think I'm talking about anything that's private information. It's out there on his YouTube channel. Can you just describe that and share describe that and share how better movement can help us process emotions i think the easiest way to because this is really profound i mean i've seen many many situations like flora's and you know unfortunately people say i want that and then it it doesn't happen you know sometimes they're

pretty serendipitous to have that powerful a release because he had this powerful just upwelling of emotion and liberation and sort of things come off his chest. And very brave of him to share that publicly, but that's not the norm, but it certainly does happen. But I think the way to think about it is if I smell lavender and talcum powder combined, I just get taken back to my gran like back to a

place in time i just i can literally feel my grands present in the room if i smell those two smells and so let's say you know you you you were a teacher's pet or something i don't know you had this crush on someone and they totally knocked the wind out of your sails or like if i think of myself that you know my mom passed away when i was 11 and it got uprooted from my environment and sent to a pretty, basically a toxic boarding school. Well, my perception of the boarding school is pretty toxic. I was certainly, it was rough, you know, there was caning and bullying and it was, it was pretty rough. So I'd gone from this loving, nurturing sort of safe environment. My mom died. I now go to a boarding school where, you know, I, you know, I don't know, someone whacked me on the bottom so hard I couldn't sit

for a week because I got the data when the country was founded wrong, you know, like sort of swapped the letters wrong, which didn't help my math after that, by the way. Funny that. So anyway, so if you go back, like that really knocked the wind out of my cells, right? And so it is really interesting is like you can then, and so you have this crestfallen posture or your chestfallen posture. You don't look particularly inspired and you can open up that posture

and correct it in adulthood. And what'll happen is oftentimes you'll actually get taken back. So when I did correct my posture and open up my chest and my posture, there was a massive sense of revisiting some of the past traumas and going through them. When this happens with people, I'd say it's fine.

It's like a bad smell leaving the room. Just don't hold onto it. Don't question why. It has significance. So your brain is gonna wanna process those emotions because remember the last time your chest had that position was before the trauma so you get taken back in time so 11 big trauma chest fallen you open up that chest as an adult your brain tags the last time that that happened with memories and and that's really a cool i think a way of of of thinking about how this trauma sort of

leaves our body through through physical movement yeah it's very healing and it's very very powerful and it's very complementary to any work that that anyone's doing you know does not work in opposition to to any other no it's just i remember remember maybe two or three years ago, I was working with my own movement coach, Helen Hall, who has been on the show a couple of times. And we've gone through various things in my body over a period of time. And what we were working on at that particular time was, you know, again, I don't want to misrepresent what Helen said to me, but essentially something you talk about as well, about leading with your heart, right? So running and even walking, but leading with your heart. And what was really interesting to me is that I've always felt previously, because I'm, I haven't measured myself in a while, but I have been six foot six and a half for a

while, although I feel I'm taller now as I've done all this movement work. And the stuff I've been doing with you this morning, I think it's making me taller again, right? It's incredible. So I'm probably six, seven, at least now. And I've always felt that, yeah, Rangan, you know, you were tall at 16 and you didn't want to stand out. So that's why you've got a flex posture. And that's why you've got a rounded back. And of course, that makes sense. You go to university, you're out in bars,

you're trying to make friends, you're trying to talk to girls, you know, all this stuff, you're coming down, right? And these days, my posture is so much better than it was. I remember that session with Helen so well, because we worked really hard on that. And I felt that my posture has mirrored my internal demeanor. So now, you know, I've had a public presence for about 10 years now, right? And I feel like many people at first, when they have a lot of public eyes on them, you sort of, it's quite intimidating and you don't want to say anything wrong or you don't want to offend anyone

and, you know, trying to keep the peace, even though I'm talking about things that maybe were not quite as conventional as they are now when I started yeah but I feel these days that I'm very calm positive or negative comments don't really bother me I feel that I'm much better able to express who I am yes I'm not really it's not dependent on whether I get a positive or negative opinion. I'm like, no, this is me. So I feel my posture has very much mirrored my internal demeanor. If that makes sense, I reckon to you it would. Yeah, totally. I mean, how could it be any other way?

It's not maybe, it's how could it be any other way? If you open hearted and the courage to open your heart and reveal your true authentic self and express your true authentic self. I think Gabo Matti's been on here before and he'll tell you times yeah many times so you know when a child is unable to express itself and doesn't have unconditional love it affects its nervous system it's a trauma and as an adult if you've learned to express yourself who you are with confidence and find your true voice that will be coupled with an open-hearted emotion and open-hearted posture and then that's really really what this is about

you're skilled at looking at the human body do you think that from watching somebody run you can get an insight into that personality yes i i so here's an interesting thing people ask me like who's really good examples of this and that i don't well one is if you're going to work with people as a system you need to hold the space that they're whole and perfect and you're going to walk with them and help guide them so you're not treating anyone you're walking with them towards a more whole and perfect state and there's a relationship and whatever i learned from you you know it's a two-way communication we both learn from each other and i can pay it forward with others from our experience but i don't i and it's just really interesting we talk about

running is like we take just help a person solve dysfunction in their body which frees up movement and then they run better so i don't give running cues and i very rarely like to judge someone's running and a lot of the time one of the ways i learned patterns of movement is i'd put those patterns in my body and see how it made me feel so i you know i could totally sort of mimic someone's body and posture and then how does it make me feel you know not that great you know i feel, and so having an expressive body or chameleon body where you can actually take on personas and change it can give you a really good insight of how they're feeling. But I typically don't judge people

and I don't look at them and I don't evaluate people. And so I don't have opinions about different people running because I don't, it's not my place to judge them or to say what they are. But when I do, yeah, you can get a real strong sense

of what's going on in their life and why they run like that. You run the way you run for reasons. Yeah, that's massive for me. In terms of practical things and that people can do, the two I feel that are quite relevant here from what I've heard you talk about before

are backward walking and the flow rope. Can we just go through them? Because I want to, as well as all this interesting theoretical stuff, I want to make sure people have something practical they can do straight after this conversation to start experiencing some of this stuff. Yeah.

Let's get the backward walking. Why is that so important? Why are you such a fan? And how can that affect our nervous system? So it seems as though there's a very strong relationship between what we call the anterior chain and the posterior chain in your nervous system. And so just like apical chest breathing will excite your sympathetic nervous system, anterior chain movement will kind of feed into sympathetic nervous system for some reason. Okay, there's three things you mentioned there,

anterior chain, posterior chain, and nervous system. Yeah. Right, so I think we all understand the nervous system. We've been talking about that throughout this conversation. Sympathetic and parasympathetic, yeah. Sympathetic is the stress half of the nervous system, as it were, and not technically half. Parasympathetic is the relaxation part of the nervous system.

Okay, and now just explaining what anterior chain and posterior chain, please. So anterior chain, and this is again, descriptive terms, you know, don't get too caught up into it, but it's a way of describing

something that's going on. Anterior chain would be if you had to visualize at the front of a horse. So you sort of galloping along with your back legs, you'd kick. So posterior chain

is more visualizing the back of a horse, like the extension. So can we say for a human, it's probably an oversimplification but can we say anterior chain is the front of the body and posterior chain is the back yes you you can and there's there's a little i can actually go through the muscles for you that are technically reminded the anterior chain is not quite where you think it is yes anterior implies the front but it's your posterior tibialis muscle okay um and then it goes into your medial the two inside hamstring muscles and your ductus and then what it does is it gets

up onto the front of your spine which is why it's the anterior chain it goes right up your spine along your psoas sort of through your diaphragm through your thoracic spine and up through your neck and so um and that's flexion. So if you had to flex, if you had to do a sit-up, you'd use your anterior chain in your core, but your adductors and medial hamstrings also involved, which is kind of important. Okay, and just to linking that

to what you said about emotions for a minute, you mentioned that when we experience a degree of trauma, we often go into a more flexed or fetal position. Does that mean that many of us who are adopting those positions are anterior chain dominant? Yes. Okay. So across society now, let's say a modern urban society where we sit down all day and we live stressful and pressured lives. You would say the vast majority of people in your experience are anterior chain dominant yes okay you need a little bit of latitude with these so we're talking

descriptive terms like this is gross simplifications okay and so and the breathing pattern disorder tends to make your anterior chain dominant because your diaphragm is tight your psoas which is an accessory breathing muscle gets tight too and for different reasons, right? So posterior chain is more the back of the horse's extension. There's three big muscles you need to sort of really get your head around, and two of them are the biggest muscles in your body, your glute max and your latissimus dorsi, your lats.

So the big back muscles. The big back muscles, and then the outside hamstring muscle big back muscles and then the the outside hamstring muscle your biceps femoris and that's that's you they call it your oblique sling your posterior oblique sling and that should be the driver of of running okay healthy running healthy efficient running yeah is driven by the posterior chain yeah and it should be extension based so specifically what that would mean is when your knee is behind your hip and your ankle is behind your knee,

so your knee is bent and your knee is behind your hip, the powerful running should come from you straightening your leg at that moment. Okay. And so that you actually, when knee is behind hip, your leg then straightens. And what a lot of people do that are anterior chain dominant would be their knee is bending throughout the gait cycle. So in other words, you're pulling back with your hamstring, anterior chain, and your knee is getting shorter and shorter. Your knee angle is getting shorter

and shorter through your gait cycle. And that would be an anterior chain dominant pattern. Whereas we want knee behind hip, then you straighten your leg. And this will tie back into breathing and the pause and the response because running should be land travel forward then drive and so you have to have space in your running in order to do that if you're reactive and quick in nature you'll put your foot down and pick it straight up okay so your running becomes rushed you don't have a sense of time all amazingly efficient runners and competent runners will describe landing they'll describe it differently but they'll describe at least two or three or four phases of running so land traveling forward then driving then floating their toes maybe

whereas people that are we're often taught pick your feet up or increase your turnover increase your cadence you know as your foot hits the ground you think the next thing i've got to do is pick it up but you have to have a pause where you're traveling forward on a connected leg and then you drive. So there's that delay. My understanding of the pose methods, which many people talk about is that you pick up the foot. Yeah. Right.

And I've tried it for a bit and it just didn't resonate with me at all, if I'm completely honest. Like I felt this just feels totally unnatural and wrong. To me, I understand that maybe people listening who found that helpful, I'm not at all criticizing the method. I'm just saying for me, I didn't find it helpful at all. Are you familiar with the pose methods?

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a large part of that is about leaning forwards, preventing yourself from falling, and you're sort of picking up your, using your hamstring to pick up your heel. Yeah. What's your take on that? The progressive lens brand Varilux are sponsoring today's episode. In today's digitally connected world, our eyes have to work

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So is the pose method an anterior chain method for you? Yeah. Got it. So you're basically saying that you don't feel that anterior chain dominant methods can help you keep your athletes and your clients healthy in the long term? Yeah. Okay. And I don't, you know, this is not an opinion.

Well, obviously I have an opinion. This is not opinion-based. This is because if you run with a posterior chain and extension-based gait, every single mark of your nervous system health will improve. Your heart rate variability will improve. Your blood lactate threshold will drop. Your running economy will improve. Your body starts to open up. Your nervous system opens up. Your sleep scores will improve. And so from all of those point of views, that's what we're looking for. Are we making the whole system bigger? And so I can't keep people that run on anterior chain.

I can't keep their joints aligned. I can't keep them healthy. Yeah. What you just said there, I think was so profound and worthy of a pause and a repeat, right? Okay. A lot of people want to improve their sleep. Yeah. Right?

A lot of people want to improve their heart rate variability, a marker of, you know of how well their nervous system is responding to the environment and their sort of life circumstances at any given time. They want better heart rate. They want a better lactate threshold to be fitter and more efficient.

They want those things. And they're often, I would argue, based upon what we're talking about looking at downstream markers right and they're trying to fix their sleep which is a good thing you know improving your sleep is definitely a good thing and yeah i guess what you just said there which i think is kind of an overarching theme throughout this conversation is this idea that when your body is moving well and efficiently as it has been designed to, you're not only going to run and walk pain-free and better and faster, right? And compete better if that's what you want to do.

Yeah. Your entire nervous system is going to change yes i don't think most people understand that i think they feel the nervous system is different yeah it's a separate thing right that you work on separately but you're saying become a better more efficient runner yeah with extension-based running yeah and you're going to find your heart rate your heart rate variables your nervous system your sleep is all going to improve can you just re-emphasize that point yeah i mean and you've seen it with your athletes haven't you yeah so i mean some of the athletes so i work in triathlon right and some of the athletes because they all cycle and run and there's also there's a lot of emphasis in in let's say you come from a swimming or cycling background and you want to learn to run it was kind of

over-engineered or overtaught and and there over-taught. And there was a cultural meme, as it were, in the correct use of the word meme, that you really needed to work on turnover because that was the hallmark of a really good runner. All runners have high turnover. Also known as cadence. Cadence, yeah. But that's causation and causality, right? If rich people drive Bentleys, buying a Bentley doesn't make you rich. So you can't mimic some things you shouldn't try and mimic because they're not for you yet. You know, that would be my take.

But anyway, so these two of the athletes that just went to the Olympics now for USA, you know, when I met them, they were insomniacs. They just didn't sleep. I mean, I think the one person said, I haven't slept for six days. So excuse me if I'm a bit jittery. And this is a high performance. This is like- They're at't sleep. I mean, I think the one person said, I haven't slept for six days. So excuse me if I'm a bit jittery. And this is a high performance.

This is like- They're at the Olympics. Yeah, there's Olympic level athletes. And so, yeah. And it goes way, way deeper than that is that people that change their nervous system, change their gait, make it more healthy, their personality shifts and they become,

you'll have seen this when you become true in yourself and you trust your movement and you trust your body and you become more authentic to yourself or more expressive of who you are and you you find your voice relationships radically change around you because a lot of these athletes you get pretty dogmatic coaches you've got to do it this way or you get pigeonholed and it can be quite disruptive because someone will basically stand their ground find their true authentic self start expressing themselves they start to trust their movement and their body and it can be a lot because you know someone might have been injury prone now they're not someone might have been fearful for the future or you know and and you can actually see quite strong improvements in personality and

that change in that system is often more disruptive for the people around them than for the person themselves. But that's how powerful it can be. And I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about this, because this is life changing. And I want to help change people's lives and movement for the better in a sustainable, long-term way. I want people to move well until they're very old. sustainable long-term way i want people to move well until they're very old and if you can if it is like a bit of a holy grail and but now i feel we have a way of teaching it and making it sustainable and making it um and easily easy to get across because this sounds really complicated and if you go back to backward walking it's not it's really really simple yeah and it really is

guys right so we're i'm just trying to set the scene for all the practical stuff that people can do. In relation to what we've just been talking about then, let's talk about backward walking, right? Because backward walking is something that most people who are listening to this will be able to implement and at least play around with. Now, I know on your YouTube channel,

you've got all tutorials on this. And I really would recommend, guys, you check out the YouTube channel, which is Inner Runner. Yes. Yeah. And your website. Yeah.

That's innerrunner.com. Yes. With one R in the middle. With one R in the middle. For some reason. Inner Runner. But for the purpose of this conversation, let's go through backward walking.

Yeah. And yeah, explain what it is, how do you do it, and why it's so impactful. So in this notion of hip extension based gait what we want to do is safely basically still be in full contact with the ground once your knee gets behind your hip and most people have already picked their foot up at that stage or certainly the heel off the ground so on one level backward walking when you take a step behind you you put your heel down on the ground

and you learn to trust the weight of your body through that leg. And that's what's missing in your running. So you're basically just putting in a good movement pattern and teaching your brain to trust your leg, your knee behind your hip, and your whole weight through that body. And so your brain says, oh, that's something that I can trust and relate to. In elite athletes or people that run high mileage, it's a really, really good idea because if you start to powerfully change the way you run, you end up loading your Achilles deeper and your calf complex deeper. And backward walking is a really good way of prepping those tissues for the demands that's going to come, which is increased range of motion.

Can I just make sure that everyone knows that this backward to come, which is increased range of motion. Can I just make sure that everyone knows that this backward walking that you recommend is not just for elite athletes, is it? No, it's for everyone. Yeah. So everyone, even if you just want to get around your local park run or just walk around your block in a much more efficient way, you feel that backward walking is one of those free accessible tools that can help most people yeah yeah and it comes with a sort of a government health warning is like if you i can tell you now if you if you normalize your breathing pattern and you backward walk your life will change and you need to understand that change is coming like no one that no one that does breathing like you did in the morning and backward walks, life is not going to change.

You look back in two, three years and you'll say, yes, my life changed and my environment changed and it's life changing. You need to understand that. Because some people are very fearful of change and I'm just telling you, it'll change your life. And it won't just change your life through the lens of better movement.

No. It will change everything. Your reactivity. Yeah. Your ability to stay detached detached become non-reactive deal with stress in the moment yeah sleep better because i was talking to a um a mate this week who i haven't seen in ages i was going how you doing mate and i was like i've got to be honest, I'm fantastic. Like genuinely, that's how I feel about my life these days. I feel life is great.

You look fantastic. But I think even since the summer, because we, as I explained to you, we were in Kenya for a few weeks. And every morning I'd get up early, I'd go, I'd make my coffee. And I was literally backward walking nonstop for a good five, 10 minutes every morning. I was doing your breathing

stuff and doing that. And of course I had a break as well, but I would say even this side of the summer now, and we're recording this in September, I just feel really good and calm. I had a conversation with my wife a few nights ago about some kind of important stuff that we both needed to talk about. And it just went so beautifully well. Yeah. Because, you know, from my side at least, I can't talk from her side, but from my side,

I just wasn't getting triggered. I was feeling calm. I was non-reactive. I was just dealing with things and, you know. Well, first you've got to connect heart to heart. And then again, we talk about open heartedness and getting the weight off your chest and the courage

to express yourself and then you connect properly with people yeah I'm just trying to echo what you said which is if people commit to breathing better and doing backward walking

you're saying very confidently with a kind of quiet confidence not an arrogant confidence let's call it a knowing with a knowing yeah that actually your life is going to change

yes right so back to backward walking again okay so how do they do it you know so there's two components

or two cues one is to take a step backward and it's best done barefoot if you can and please be careful and safe with this so I do it with elite athletes

often in like let's say a big gym and they will they will think of or any athlete of any level i really don't want to people to think i'm super elitist i work with all people and i've worked with very many spheres so like cycling rugby um i used to be an expert witness in whiplash and trauma and lots and lots of and i used to specialize in back pain failed back back pain cases, chronic pain. But anyway, even like elite athletes will walk into things

because they're so concentrating on the movement and it's novel that they lose, they have a narrow focus and so you'll walk into things. So please walk backwards in a safe environment. You're going to walk into a pole, you're going to walk off a sidewalk, you're going to walk into something

that you shouldn't walk. So generally speaking, the best, the safest place is actually just to walk into a pole. You're going to walk off a sidewalk. You're going to walk into something that you shouldn't walk. So generally speaking, the safest place is actually just to walk on a treadmill because it doesn't go anywhere and you can... How would you do it on a treadmill? So you just turn around. You turn around, so it's quite slow. Yeah. Yeah, so about 1.2 kilometers an hour or under one mile an hour is the right pace. Okay, so it's dead slow.

So if something happens, you're not traveling fast enough where something's going to happen yeah and here's one of the big secrets of the world is if you want to change a habit do it slowly if you do it quickly you'll do it reflexively and the way you've always done it before so if you wanted to change your handwriting your signature you have to learn slowly because if you do it quickly you'll go back to your automated process so we deliberately want to work on backward walking slowly because you'll learn much quicker it has a much deeper impact on your nervous system wow yeah so so you're walking backwards slowly so so the first cue would be soft toes heel down and preferably barefoot you're just going to get so much more proprioceptive feedback from your feet and the skin on the ground it just really really helps it helps with balance with stability with connection if you're on a treadmill at a gym

yeah some people are gonna not want to go barefoot so i i heard you in one video say listen barefoot is best but doing it with shoes on is better than not doing it yes yeah so i think that's an important message get it done just get it done you know the work that gets done is the work that gets done it doesn't have to be perfect. One of the big things is progress, not perfection. You know, just get the work done and just do a little bit and it doesn't matter as long as it's done.

Just, you know. Even a minute or two, like in your house, like I don't have that much room and you know, where I do it downstairs. So I'll be able to take seven or eight steps. Yes. And then I'll turn around and take seven or eight steps back. And then I'll turn around and take seven.

I create a space, move the ironing board, the clothes, horse, the drawing clothes. Yeah, that's fine. And I just do that. Lawn on the grass. If you're lucky enough to have a garden or lawn, you can do it there. Okay.

Or a school field. And so here's the thing. So people do that. Yes. And I would direct them to your video where you go through the two key steps. Yeah. One, I first one as you said is soft toes heel down but then it's also figuring out contralateral movement contralateral movements why is that so important um we neurodevelopmentally as a baby we kind of fire up one leg and then the other leg or your right arm

your right left leg and we don't really have sort of, there's different terms for it, like lateralization or contralateral movement. We don't sync up our right knee with our left arm, which is really, really important until we start crawling. So the crawling, we get a crossover crawling pattern. So when we go into a state of trauma or you can have stuck movement patterns a lot of people will default to a home more homolateral gait so that will be i call it well

i actually didn't um make up the name but it's grizzly bear walking so it's same side same side so as your your um your belly button should point towards your lead leg your front leg your front leg yeah the the lead leg the front leg or the standing leg when you walk forwards and when you walk backwards and we want that pattern in your body it's really really important yeah what's interesting and i shared this with you before is that we want contralateral movement, right? Yes. But I think you said that most people, the first time they do it, are in homolateral movements or gait. Yeah.

And, you know, in the four of us in my family, three of us did it in inverse commas the wrong way initially, myself included, right? And one of us who has got exceptionally good natural movement did it the right way, which is quite interesting to me. But I've now conditioned myself to do it the correct way. And it feels really good actually when you're doing it. It feels very freeing.

Yes. So that's also like you're putting your your nervous system in a state of of sort of how it's supposed to be and it likes it and these are you know a lot of the movement patterns are pre-programmed into us like if you buy a new computer and you flip it open you switch the on back the software is already there you know like everyone learns to walk everyone or more or less everyone but you figure it out yourself you know you lie on your back you move your, or more or less everyone. But you figure it out yourself. You know, you lie on your back,

you move your arms and legs, then baby go and then, you know, like, so these deep seated nervous system patterns, when you start tapping into them, the nervous system really, really likes it. And that's why it's so good for your autonomic nervous system. I mean, I know people that walk backwards in the evening

because it helps them sleep better. It helps your digestion. So, you know, people go for a walk in the evenings. I have athletes that walk backwards on the evening because it helps them sleep better. It helps your digestion. So, you know, people go for a walk in the evenings. I have athletes that walk backwards on the treadmill because it helps them digest and sleep better. Yeah. And it's very calming and it does feel good because it's like a lot of what we talk about, the sense of knowing. You go like, oh, oh, well, that feels good and it's really authentic. Yeah.

And you can start trusting and then that's really important. You need to trust your movement. And so a lot of this is about building trust. And so backward walking, you're learning to trust your leg. You're learning to trust the shape of healthy running. And you somehow reintegrating your contralateral movement patterns.

And if you just backward walk, your running will change for the better. You don't need any cue. It will change. Yeah, there's a couple of things I love about that. We've already mentioned how important our nervous system is. It influences every aspect of our being, our health, our happiness, the way we see the world. Two things that you mentioned about digestion and sleep. Yeah. Well, many people struggle with digestion and sleep, right? I don't mean together, but yes,

together as well as separately, right? I think't mean together, but yes, together as well as separately, right? I think there was one survey done recently that said 80% of UK adults experience some form of gastrointestinal issue in any given year. So that's most of the population. We know that many people struggle with their sleep, that they can't switch off, right? And we've touched on some of the reasons for that, so they run, including mouth breathing. And you're saying that backward walking is a tool that helps you calm your nervous system, right? So it's going to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and promote relaxation. So of course, if that helps your nervous system be more relaxed, well, of course, it's going to help

your digestion because you want to be digesting food, not in fight or flight when you're rushing around. You want to be calm and relaxed. Of course, it's going to help you sleep because one of the commonest causes for you not being able to sleep is they can't switch off. So that interconnect to nature is massive, isn't it? Yeah, it is and and to be able to walk and move through life in a way that's complementing your body your mechanics and your nervous system if you can figure that out it's really really powerful you know not everyone has the same response so some people walk backwards and they don't it's not going to help them sleep it's for some people it really does and and flow rope actually swinging you know quite a few people

end up using the flow rope in the evening because it helps them sleep and wind down from the day you know so these things land differently with different people so that you've got to kind of manage your expectations or not it's not a prescription for better sleep but you might yeah a lot of people will say oh wow i feel a lot calmer and a lot better and i i notice better here's the thing, right? If your sleep's already good, it's probably not going to help you sleep because you're already sleeping well, right? Yeah, yeah. If the reason you can't sleep is because of the temperature in your bedroom,

well, actually, this ain't going to address that, right? So I think we get waylaid a bit sometimes these days with, well, what's the prescription for sleep? What's the prescription for better running? What's the prescription for better digestion? Without realizing everything's connected, the prescription you need depends on what is the root cause of that problem for you. Yeah. So one of the things as well is as your nervous system calms down or as you get... So a lot of people will run and they'll feel like herky-jerky. There's many different parts what's really complicated and technical as you start to integrate and move better running becomes

simpler and and most athletes will will get to the point where they say their body disappears or they don't have any moving parts they're just a consciousness running or there's the sense of really really being connected what the interesting thing is is as is as this sort of system starts to get better, it's easier to figure out what's wrong. So then you'll notice the ambient temperature in my room is not applicable. Or, oh, I noticed that this thing, because it starts sticking out like a sore thumb. So your self-awareness is getting better. Yeah, well, there's less noise. And as things calm down, it's easier to pick up, well, what is in juxtaposition to what I want to do?

It becomes easier. And so for the athletes, like let's say you're working with someone, and this doesn't have to be an elite athlete, their intuition starts getting better. Their sense of trust and knowing their body gets better. And often athletes will come in and they'll totally nail it. Whereas in a complicated athlete with a dysregulated nervous system,

I like the word frayed. It's sort of frayed. It's got lots of ends and they're all stimulated. They can't make head or tail of what's going on. But once you start creating some sort of structure and organization and the noise calms down, they have a deeper appreciation for life. It's easier to be present and in the moment. And what happens is they'll start to come in and say, you know, my knees, my knees sore,

but I think it's coming from my hip, my foot, or they'll have a really good sense of knowing in their body what's going on. And, and, and, and it extends into other areas of problems. Like your, your sense of intuition and knowing improves. Whereas a lot of people, like I say, the drowning person, you don't want to trust his intuition. He wants to drown you to save himself. And then again, as you come out of that, your sense of gut instinct improves or your knowing improves.

You trust your body. And I think that's either you're the author of your journey in your life or you're a victim or you know life's happening to you are you happening to life was life happening to you and this is a very powerful way of starting to take better steps through forward through life with better instincts with better ability to figure out what is the problem so we start off with a really really complex at the beginning of this conversation are like oh wow, oh, wow, how do I start? This is overwhelming. I don't know.

And then after a while you go, oh, this is clear. Oh, I understand that. Or you can receive the good better and you can reject the bad better. When I think about root causes for better lives, root causes for health and happiness, I think one of the most important decisions you make consciously or subconsciously

is whether you're going to be a victim to life or in charge of your life. Yeah. I was talking to my kids about this over dinner last night because it's such an important point that I want them to absorb as kids that things are going to happen. Things are going to happen that you may not choose to happen.

Yeah. But in those moments, you have a choice as to whether you take a victim mindset, or whether you go, what can this moment teach me? What can I do now? You know, kids going back to school at the moment, after the summer break. And again, I was chatting to him yesterday and I said, hey, listen, guys, if you get put in classes, right, where your friends aren't this year, for whatever reason, right? And initially, you may not like it. You may wish I was put in classes with my friends. I said, okay, but let's think about this. What's the opportunity here? Right?

What is this situation offered to you that you would have not otherwise been able to see? Right? And so I try not to give them the answer. It's like, well, yeah, I guess I've got an opportunity to make new friends. I was like, yeah. So that's a principle you can apply to everything in life. And I kind of feel that is sort of what you're saying through the lens of movement is that, are you going to be the author of your own movement or not? Are you going to be the author of your own life or not? Yes. It's really, really quite profound. In fact, you have said that Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act,

is the greatest running book ever written. Yes. Please explain. Because, well, one is change requires courage. It requires courage for your kids to go into a new environment with new friends. But out of that, goodness will come. But to be creative is to be courageous. I did a poll on Instagram once and I said, which do you fear more, change, a creative act or feeling?

Which do you fear more? 55% of people respond, well, about 55, 56% responded with that they fear feeling more than anything else. Feeling. And so the courage to have feelings, to deal with your feelings, to express who you are is, it takes courage. You know, it's Wizard of Oz, you know, the cowardly lion didn't have a heart, you know, your heart is your, so, you know,ick rubin is just extraordinary in this in this world view um and and how to deal with creativity and what i try and do with athletes is we talk about mastery not medals so mastering your craft mastering yourself mastering a sense of self and the medals will come to you or they won't but you your identity is not attached to to to the

results and i think that's really really important and And Rick Rubin, he's just an extraordinary human being. And he sees things very, very clearly that, you know, a lot of what we need to do is we need to see the world as it is, not as it's been imprinted on us. And that's a victim mindset, you know, to not be a victim takes courage initially, but it gets easier and easier. And I can tell you, like, and I'm not sure. I've got a picture of me before my mom died when I was kind of in a happy place.

And my posture was horrific. I mean, it looked like someone just put a fist through my chest. Before your mom died? Yeah, yeah, yeah, before. So I often thought, like, well, why would I look like that? Why would a young, happy sort of kid look like this? And I think there was probably in utero trauma or really early trauma in my life or, I don't know, whatever.

You know, trauma is trauma, but something stuck in me. But when I got to boarding school, I mean, it was extraordinary. I was a victim. I had a victim's posture. And I was bullied mercilessly because I'm a soft target. And it's extraordinary. And then I lived my whole life as a victim and and you you you don't you know and when you're a victim you tend to be like it's like a rescue

dog you know you you can be snarly you can be reactive you can't like people want to help you people want to love you you know you don't trust them you put your hand out with a snack he's going to bite you you know you have such an an inappropriate relationship to the world because you just can't trust and you can't receive love. You can't receive anything because you're in this reactive, defensive, guarded nature. And it's one of the things, a little bit of a segue is be really careful of cues that make you reactive, guarded, or defensive, or braced, because you want your're bracing for impact and because of this whole emotional, sort of psycho-emotional or motion in motion. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.

I think it's really, really powerful. As we're recording this, the episode that went live yesterday on my podcast was with Professor Peter O'Sullivan. Yes, what fantastic work he's doing. Oh my word. Yeah. What fantastic work. But you were just talking about this psycho-emotional component. And one thing that me and Peter discussed was how dangerous or potentially dangerous it can be to scan someone's back. Yes. Right?

So, you know, very common scenario, especially where you live in America, where it's a private system where, you know, I don't think you have the same checks and balances over who gets scans as we might have in the UK and the National Health Service, for example, where it's not that easy to just go and get a back scan. Yeah.

Right? The problem being, you're a 35-year-old chap with lower back pain. There's no what we would call red flag signs, yet you get a scan. And then the scan says you've got a bulging disc at L4, L5. That's the cause of your backache. Despite the fact that there could be 60, 70% of your age group walking around with a bulging disc without any back pain. Yeah, totally asymptomatic. Yeah. But the idea has been put in that person's head that the reason you have back pain is because of your bulging disc at L4, L5. And you see this everywhere. When I used to play golf,

people talk about these things as though they're fat. Oh, know, my back's hurt. Yeah, yeah. I've got a scan. Yeah, I've got a disc at L4, L5. It may or may not be the cause, right? But what we believe about the source of our pain- Yeah, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like a mustard seed. You plant a mustard seed and it grows into a tree. Yeah, Which is why I think as healthcare professionals, we have to be so careful about what we say to a patient. And one of the things that I love about your approach, which very much echoes the approach I have always taken with patients in the past, is I want them to feel a sense of agency. I never want a patient to walk out the door

feeling as if they're dependent on my advice or what I can give them. Like even in the past, if I had to give something to help them, like a medication with a symptom, I would always make sure I gave them something that they knew they could do that will have an impact. And I think you very much share that philosophy.

Yeah, your job is to wean patience off you. Exactly. You know, and it is interesting. I found a quote once where it said, that's one of the hallmarks of a profession is to, like if law works really well, we need less lawyers and less laws because it's more efficient and it's done better.

You know, so if you're doing your job, your patients should need you less and less and trust themselves more and more. And I tell athletes, my job is to not make you dependent on me, to empower the person. What's really interesting is athletes that you work with that really do start to trust their body and start to be empowered, or non-athletes or anyone, often become a bit of a handful to treat because they don't like the way a normal let's say physiotherapist that's reductionist and telling them oh you have a weak core they're just like no

that i don't i don't acknowledge that and then it's really interesting is that we talk about it so how you present and how you show up is the sum of your entire life. Yeah. Okay. And most of what happens to you in life is beyond your control. You can't choose your parents. You can't choose your genetics. You can't choose where you're born.

You can't choose much of the environment that you've been put through in life. I mean, you have agency, but not as much as you like. So if you look at someone and you say, oh, you know, Rangan, your posture's not great, or you have a weak core, you have a glute medius, or you need to stand up straight. You've basically judged the entire person's life experiences and said that they're inadequate.

And I mean, how dare you? How do we get to the point where, then that's why I say I don't judge people's running. You've got to be very very very careful because how you run is a reflection of your entire life's process up until that point and who am i to judge you and and just changing that relationship just there is is so profound and you know we had an incident with one of the athletes at the olympics and she fell and hurt herself really badly. And she wants to sort of, you know, she's got other races to get on. And, you know, we just sat on the table

and before we started sort of treating or helping her, we both just sat there and cried a little because this was not great. And to acknowledge that moment and to just be vulnerable and present and acknowledge that, okay, this is not great and this is not how we want to go forward and just be human and have a really human connection.

Then after that, you can start painting your way out of the corner. But what happens is we're like, oh, well, you know, you've got to focus on your next race and you've got to put this behind you or you've got to focus on these things or these, you know, you have to acknowledge where people are at the moment and see them and connect with them as a human being and it's so powerful and you know then then things get better and that's why

i love your podcast and the work you're doing is it it's such a voice for good and reason and a refreshing for what's out there. Thank you. The Olympics, how was it? A lot. So were you in the Olympic village? No, no, no. This time I wasn't part of a federation.

I just went on my own and I worked with athletes. Now what's it like being at the Olympics? Does it sound more glamorous from the outside than it actually is in reality when you're there with athletes you have to coach yeah i think if you really invested with athletes you got to understand it's going to be a roller coaster and it's not all great i mean you know people ask me about the olympics and i say look you got to understand there's there's an athlete on the top steps got a gold medal and they're very happy in the moment but 48 hours later they might've found that that gold medal didn't fill the hole in their soul that was probably driving their high performance as much as they would like. Or they're totally sick of answering

the same old question, what does it feel like to be a gold medalist? Because you've done extraordinary amounts. Or it's kind of like, once you have enough for to take care of your basic needs after that money can amplify problems in your life you know and suddenly you realize i have a gold medal and the attention the media the opinions you know your social media account blows up the comments the opinions blows up too and a lot of people aren't actually equipped to deal with that and again mastery not metal seek mastery of your craft don't attach your value to your metal you know you'll see everyone. I'm double gold Olympian.

That's your identity. And it's not your identity. First and foremost, you're a beautiful human being that has every right to be loved. You don't have to do anything just to be amazing. You are enough and you have enough. That's your identity. And so anyway, that's the gold medalist.

The silver medalist is wondering like, what the hell could I have done to get gold medalist the silver medalist is wondering like what the hell could i have done to get gold then the bronze medal is happy the fourth person's questioning their life choices and it's just a range of emotions all the way down from that and you've got to take the good and the bad and like i think as a spectator let's say you watch faith kip yegan win and you know there's just this stadium erupts and there's just love and compassion and it's electrifying. But there were a whole lot of other people in the race that didn't have the same experience.

And you've got to, you know, there's injuries, there's people dropping out. So I think Olympics is a lot. It's the highs are high, the lows are low, and you're going to swap between them pretty darn quickly. I mean, you can see why you're such a wonderful coach for people because it is the whole person, isn't it? I love that phrase, mastery, not medals. I think we can all apply that to various aspects of our own life, whether we're budding Olympians or not. And that story of winning the gold and

then suddenly not knowing who you are or what's next. I mean, how many times do we hear this story over and over again? You know, about three years ago, Johnny Wilkerson was sitting where you're sitting. And literally, you know, was he 20, 21 years old when he kicks? He literally won the world cup and beat South Africa. Yeah. Okay. So sorry if it's painful, but the schoolboy dream, right? In the last minute of the World Cup final, you kick the winner.

You couldn't dream up a better scenario for lots of young boys who love rugby. But he did it and he said, and I've never forgot this, even before the ball had gone through and he'd scored even before yeah he was starting to go down yeah right one of the things he had to contend with is achieving his dreams at a young age yeah because the question then is what's next yeah what's driving me that so we know yeah you may know this more being very close to olympians. But how many of them right now in September,

like have lost their sense of who they are and their purpose. Like the Olympics was four weeks ago now. There's no more media coverage. There's no one asking them for interviews. Like that's hard. Yeah. Yeah. And you, yeah, you need a lot of compassion

because they're humans. And, you know, people judge on Instagram or in posts, like you could have done this better or some armchair expert. And maybe you could have done this better or some armchair expert. And maybe they could have done something better. Yes. But it still doesn't take away from them being a human being who was trying their best.

Yeah, exactly. You did the best that you could in the moment and nothing will ever be perfect. It's very, very rare that you'll have a perfect performance. You know, what we don't understand is a lot of the gold medalists can win with a subpar performance. They're that good, you know. And there's a notion of dysfunctional medalists can win with a subpar performance they're that good you know and there's a there's a notion of dysfunctional high performing dysfunctional just um you know

like lance armstrong is one of the best examples of a really really really high performer but like you know once it was revealed it was totally dysfunctional yeah and and so there is, you know, from the outside, you can celebrate those successes, but that might be, I mean, Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time at the time, massive depression afterwards, massive identity crisis. And it is suicidal ideation, I think. I think, you know, this is, and again, for me, the wider point is be careful who you look up to, right? So do you really want to be these heroes that you think you want to be? Maybe, maybe not. But I think, I mean, I've just written a chapter on this on my next book.

I'm really passionate about this idea of, you know, you think you want to be your heroes, but maybe you don't. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you don't. And maybe having that hero worship potentially is problematic and driving a lot of your behaviors. This whole idea of mastery, not medals, it's really fascinating.

When I spoke to Elid Kipchoge a couple of years ago, one week exactly after he broke the world record at that time in Berlin at the marathon, one of the things I said to him was, do you think you'll still be running when you've retired? And his response was just so beautiful because he was almost, or it appeared to me that he was almost shocked at the question.

Like, Fabergast is like, yeah, of course. Like, what would it say about me if I stopped running when I can't be the best anymore? Yeah, yeah. And I really love that because it really intertwines with another idea I've been sort of tossing around in my mind over the summer, which is, you know,

people say that athletes should retire at the top, right? Oh, they went on too long. Someone was criticizing Tiger Woods. I was hearing about that saying, oh, you know, one elite golfer was saying, Tiger's just embarrassing himself now. He should have given up a long time ago. You know, what's he doing to his legacy? And I thought, well, that's a really interesting way of looking at things.

Well, it depends what your purpose for playing golf is, right? If Tiger's purpose is every time I go on the golf course, with my limitations, my injuries, with my capabilities at that time, my job is to perform to the best that I can. Yeah, he's probably enjoying golf more than ever. Exactly. Because the process is bigger.

The puzzle is more engaging. I think it is for Tiger. It's more complex. I think it is. Yeah, he's totally immersed in the process. So people say, oh, he's trashing his legacy. Like, well, you're judging Tiger through your own lens of what you think someone else should be doing.

Why should he retire at the top and then no longer play? No, he's earned the right to totally express himself, do whatever he wants, and he's probably happy. But that's a societal narrative, isn't it? That, oh, they've gone on too long. But it depends. Like I always say, it's the energy behind the behavior that's more important than the behavior itself. What's your intention behind that behavior? If people

are focused on the process and not the outcome, why the hell does it matter when they retire? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? He's a golfer and he's the greatest golfer that's ever lived. And he gets to golf. And yeah. And he's probably happier. So I spoke to a young mountain bike and she came fourth at World Champs now. You know, and she was on the hot seat. So in other words, she had the fastest split at some stage and then she was bumped down to second.

And then you're hoping that second's going to be enough and then you get bumped to third. And you're like, oh, please, someone make a mistake or don't go faster than me. And then she ended up fourth, right? So you have a glimpse of what it could be to win. And then it gets, you know, pegged down the sort of the rankings. And she was a little crestfallen. And I said, the interesting thing about fourth is you know, you can improve and you're coming for people and you have a sense of purpose or fire in your belly and you, you hustling. And I said, probably, I know it's hard now, but probably when you look back, this will be the best time of your career because there's almost no doubt that she has the ability to be a world champion and will come one day, but then it changes. Then you've got a target on your back and then you judge, then you've got to defend and your whole mindset starts to change around it and it's i really think it's really really important that people frame sport

in a healthy way and have a healthy environment and one of my pet loves is the response of mitochondria to environment and creating a safe environment where athletes are it's totally okay to fail because that's how we learn. So there's no judgment on failure and creating a supportive environment where they feel you have to be able to be seen, expressed, and you need to be heard. And a lot of coaches talk over the top of athletes. They don't listen.

They don't first relate to the athlete. Like it's, you know, we use the example of trying to hurry a four-year-old up. You can't talk at them. It just distracts them or it just gets worse. You know, you know, we use the example of trying to hurry a four-year-old up. You can't talk at them. It just distracts them or it just gets worse. You know, you have to connect with them. And once you've seen that butterfly that they're obsessing with and spent a moment with them joyfully looking at a butterfly, then they'll totally go on and you can get them to school on time. But you try and say, hurry up, stop doing this.

And we talk at people. And in a safe environment, people's mitochondria flourish. And so you'll often see, let's say, an athlete's not thriving under a coach. And it's no blame on the coach. It's the environment that the athlete's in. For whatever it might be, someone else in the coaching environment might just be, I don't know. And sometimes people just move on. But they'll be languishing.

So their run times will be bad. They swim splits. They're not making terms. They're tired. They're fatigued. Sometimes they didn't want to go to training. You know, I had this situation with an athlete and I said, well, because the coach was at the pool deck and I said, and she just says, I think I have a virus. I need my blood tested. I'm exhausted. I can't make my times. I feel terrible. I just want to sleep all day. So I said, well, tomorrow morning, why don't you go for a ride?

Skip swimming. She goes for a ride. She says, oh my God, I'm fine. It must've been a 24 hour virus. I feel, or you know, short term, I feel amazing. Okay, so okay, off to swimming the next day. No, no, no, it's back. I need a blood test.

I said, I think you might find that so okay off to swimming the next day no no no it's back i need a blood test i said i think i think you might find that if you swim on your own or skip swimming for a while you might feel better you know and and she ended up leaving the coach and this happens like clockwork the next day some of these athletes are hitting their lifetime best numbers once they're out that environment and that perception changes yeah but yeah your mitochondria are so linked to your energy profile and your mood you know they're the powerhouse of yourselves and and um they are massively influenced by your environment and again so for people as well as you know first you need to sort of change and look after yourself and create some sort of agency but also you need to start moving into better environments

and realize we are just pot plants. And high performance is oxytocin, which is sort of feeling good and love and bonding and trust. And it's an environment where you're safe and secure no matter what you do. You loved and held and you can make mistakes safely. And that is the optimum healthy high performance and not an attachment to medals.

Like attachment on the process and that is true healthy high performance. And I won't work in any situation where that's not present. Yeah, on a personal level, I understand that you are working with some of the best, like some people have won world championships. And a lot of people are raving about you in that world, about the more root cause approach you're taking,

the kind of more holistic approach that has proven so beneficial for so many people. But trying to tie this to the kind of topic of this conversation, in essence, the reason why it's worth people paying attention and trying to improve the way that they move yeah it's because improving the way that they move is going to improve the way that they live yes and i think you you starting on a journey to find your purpose so many people say like i know my purpose my purpose is i'm put on this earth to help people move better i mean it's my purpose i

you know i know it i don't i'm not second guessing it's not me that is my purpose but it took me a long time to come to that purpose but i think once you start once the noise settles down once you start being more authentic and expressing yourself your purpose will find you and a lot of people don't feel like they don't have agency or don't have a purpose or they're overwhelmed in the world. But also, another way of looking at it is we can often only see what is defined by the constraints that we put up, right? So we're in a podcast studio at the moment, right? So I can look around and we can imagine how we might want to renovate and change the look of this podcast studio, as we often do. But we're limited by the size of this room, right? So we can only see what's possible

in the dimensions of this room, right? If we can only see what's possible in the dimensions of this room, right? If we had a different space, we'd see all kinds of different possibilities, right? What the hell has that got to do with what we're talking about? Well, let me try and connect it. If you're struggling to find your purpose and you're stuck in a certain movement pattern

in your body, right? And you think that's who you are. Yeah. You don't realize that's an adaptation to something that happened in your life, right? You can only see and feel emotions to the extent to which you can move. Yeah. So, in essence, if you broaden and expand the movement possibilities within you

if you get out of a flexion-based gait and more an extension-based gait less anterior chain dominant more posterior chain dominant then the way you see the world around you the way you might visualize your purpose and what you're here to do well that's also going to change yeah and how you see the world changes and how the world sees

you changes. Because someone walking around, like I said, I had a victim posture and I was just mercilessly bullied. And then you get out of a victim posture, no one messes with me anymore. And, you know, so how you see the world, like, you know, like I said to you, like, you look amazing. What's going on in your life? I know it's good. You can just see it. It just radiates out of you.

And you can see someone that's really, really depressed. You know, if you see someone with sort of their head forward and their chest collapsed and really low energy, you don't tell them to stand up straight. You go and ask them, how are you doing? What's going on in your life? them how are you doing what's going on in your life you know but as as you express your authentic self and as you move better and feel more secure and trust your body then other people will trust you so all your relationships improve and how you see the world changes and how the world sees you changes and it is interesting like athletes that swap from anterior chain to posterior chain often you know coaches don't resonate with them anymore and life just starts

to change around them it's a really interesting yeah it's fascinating the practical tools we mentioned so far are uh breathing yeah and i will direct people to that video um because i think it's it's it's just really simple really easy to do yeah and can be very very impactful very quickly we've spoken about backward walking. And again, you've got videos on YouTube for that to help people. You mentioned the flow rope. I know what it is because I've had one for three weeks because you told me to get one

and you've said, don't use it until I see you. Because you wanted to see me use it for the first time. So I disciplined myself to not use it. So we've had a play around in the garden, which is great yeah um what is it and why are you such a big fan um so the flow rope i hashtagged on instagram head over foot and i noticed well someone else has been posting head over foot and then so i was quite interested like well there's a lot of posts for head over foot. And then so I was quite interested, like, well, there's a lot of posts for head over foot. And I came across this guy

called David Weck. And David Weck's basically the originator of the flow rope. And the inventor of the BOSU ball as well. And the BOSU ball, yeah. So anyway, I was watching David Weck and I looked and I just thought, oh my word,

this guy is really, really onto something. I use the flow rope a little differently from david wick for me it's just a tool and it's a segue like an entry portal but the important thing about the flow rope is you can learn the sensation of anterior chain versus posterior chain so you can learn what posterior chain feels like some people are neurologically trapped in an anterior chain pattern and they'll so you're never ever going to expect that to show up in their running so cyclists in particular are very and often very anterior chain because they're flexed over the bike because they learn to generate power in a

flexed position yeah knee in front of hip massively is when you drive down on the pedal so that helps you in cycling does it or does it yeah yeah so it helps you in cycling but potentially is problematic for your running yeah yeah and remember you know i really work with triathletes and they can often have a hard time because they're so anterior chain dominant they can really have a hard time running well and some people just don't have access to the neurological patterns of posterior chain so you get the rope which is yeah i mean first of all just my experience of using it this morning was it's so up my street. It's so much fun, right?

And you can see kids wanting to do it. I'm going to be doing it every day, I'm sure. It's great biofeedback, yeah. And so there's these figure of eight patterns. You can do it forward or backwards. And I think you're saying that some people, and you've had elite athletes who can do it one way, but not another way.

Like the brain just doesn't compute how to do it. Yeah. And so why, if the brain doesn't compute how can do it one way, but not another way. Like the brain just doesn't compute how to do it. And so why, if the brain doesn't compute how to do it one way, what's the benefit of learning that? Well, one is neuroplasticity and balancing out your brain. And so, and it is interesting is most people, I've never seen someone that's totally posterior chain dominant and can't do anterior. I've only seen it the other way around where people are so strongly anterior chain or chopping down with the rope

they can't go back they can't go back figure of eight and often they'll be like dyslexic or have real problems with math which is interesting because your cerebellum is math and your frontal cortex so there's there is a break there is a um you know gently putting you probably don't have an integration through an integration through your cerebellum and your frontal cortex. Are you saying you can have some degree of difficulty learning when you can just do it anteriorly and not posteriorly? So it can affect the way your brain acquires information? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because your brain is just processing information.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, you know, your brain is just processing information. But if I see someone that's strongly anterior chain and cannot swing it posteriorly, I often say, yeah, you know, I'm really bad at math or excellent in one department, but compromise in another department. So to me, it seems like it's a really beautiful way of just getting balance between left and right sides of the body, front and back, the brain, the cerebellum. It feels like all these things you're just going to start integrating together. Yeah, so you're starting to integrate sort of movement patterns and healthy movement patterns.

It's a tool, and one of the tools is to get a sense of what is your posterior or anterior chain. And then also when you swing the floor up, you always, it's always moving away from you. And so you start moving from the center out. And a lot of people, if you're stuck in, let's say, you know, rescue dog mode, you're reactive and you tend to defend

or guard or brace or move from the outside in. Like a visualization would be like a really novice golfer will hit the ball with their hands and their torso is very, you know, very stable. So they're sort of whacking with their hands and not rotating their torso.

Whereas really good golfers will lead with their hips. So their hips come past the ball first, then hands and club. And so you end up with the flow rope, you end up learning to create movement and generate movement from a central pattern and then it flows out to the extremities.

And that you really want in running because a small, powerful movement in the hip almost whiplashes through your foot, whereas you can move from the outside in and you can say, well, I'm really focusing on my hands and my feet, but then you're creating central tension. So the flow rope really starts at some stage to start

it animates your spine and it's really really good at rehabilitating your spine you've got lots and lots of at every vertebral segment in your spine you've got these sort of crisscross muscles and the flow rope starts to animate your spine and most people get taller after swinging the flow rope or regain their true height which is kind of your true potential and it's also very playful yeah it's fun play is something that we need yeah and we often lose as we become adults and get weighed down with responsibilities it's you feel like a kid again yeah yeah which i think is a really good thing that's also returning back to you know with trauma like so so we touched on this earlier this notion of you can have a childhood trauma and it can affect you for the rest of your adult life.

Often if you move, if you wake up the patterns that you never had before the trauma or you start to be able to express yourself, many, many times people will reframe their whole childhood. So they'll be in victim mode. They'll tell you, oh, this happened to my childhood and this happened and they'll remember the bad things. And this can happen with people that went through very serious emotional trauma or personal trauma. And once you sort of release that trauma out of the body, they often look back and they start remembering all the good parts of their childhood and all the joyful and happy. I mean, I had one lady who was swinging the flow rope.

And while she was swinging the rope, she had this overwhelming sense of love just flood through her body. And she says, what's that? And she says, oh, God, that's my mother's love. And her mother had passed away and she had a very antagonistic relationship with her sister. And so, I mean, you gotta understand

individual results may vary, right? But so she's swinging the robe and she says this love and she says, that's my mother's love. And she realized that her mother used to knit for her and you can't knit angry because the knots become too tight. You have to mother's love. And she realized that her mother used to knit for her. And you can't knit angry because the knots become too tight. You have to knit with love.

Otherwise the garments misshapen. And she says, my mother was always knitting for me and she loved me. And that was the sign of her love and totally healed her relationship with her sister. And so you go like, oh, okay, well, that's really interesting. So yeah, it wakes up and balance and integrates your brain.

It's just pretty wonderful. But as a tool for running, you start to learn to move with length and space from the center out. Yeah. Once you've purchased a flow rope, that's it. Everything's free, right? You can watch online. You can go to your YouTube channel

or your Instagram to figure out what sort of drills to do. Is it something specific about that rope or can people like fold up a skipping rope and do it or anything? Anything. I think David Weck apparently started with shoelaces. I do it online with sweatpants, a towel, a jacket.

Oh, anything, really? Yeah, just anything. Theraband, cords, anything. Oh, wow. So this one, I mean, if we really break it down, I mean, it's been a pretty deep conversation about all kinds of different things. But for me, there's three clear practical exercises

we've spoken about that people can start experimenting with and exploring immediately. So there's a breathing practice where people are initiating the breath from the diaphragm. And I don't think we covered it, but I know on your video you mentioned that sometimes it's helpful to just sort of 50% block your nose

with your thumb and index finger. It really helped me me it really helps you initiate your diaphragm yeah yeah it helps me not finish my inbred too quickly actually for me that's how i felt it's um we mentioned backward walking yes another thing that's free right so not asking anyone to get anything and the third thing is a flow rope yeah which yes you can buy i bought from waytherope.com, I think in the UK. And I think there's some places in America or Germany that you recommended as well.

Yeah, in Europe, yeah. But you can just use a skipping rope or a towel or anything to start getting that motion. That's what I love, that these things are very accessible. People just need to kind of do them, right? Yeah. And try not to do too much too soon.

Just start small because it's got to be sustainable. I mean, whatever you start, say, can I continue this for a while? And then, you know, because it's just one foot in front of the other and there's no hurry. And hurry slowly, be patient, progress, not perfection. Yeah. And they're free. And what I like about backward walking, I think, is that it'll profoundly improve your running. What I like about backward walking, I think, is that it'll profoundly improve your running and you'll learn that you didn't have to think about it while you're running.

Your running will just change. And that in itself is a lesson. You know, you do the work and the things come to you rather than me saying, hey, your running's wrong and this is what you need to do to fix it. And if you can just learn that lesson, you're off to a really, really good start. Changing topic slightly, I wanted to talk to you about super shoes, these new inventions, well, I guess relatively new that maybe people are familiar with, like elite marathon runners using. And, you know, I've read stuff that, you know, for the right runner, it can maybe improve times by up to 4%. That's maybe higher now. You probably know it better than me.

I have a bias towards people day to day wearing or at least experimenting with minimalist shoes for a variety of reasons. Yes. You know, more connection to the ground. I'm totally on board with that. Yeah. So people have heard me talk about that before. I know you share a similar philosophy. However, one thing I was really struck by is your assertion that the super shoes actually for running, so not for walking around to the shops or anything, but for running can be a fantastic educational tool. So you're the first person who I've heard say that, and you're the first person who has made me even contemplate whether occasionally for a run on concrete or tarmac i might benefit from using a super shoe yeah

please explain so a super shoe is you know they've created a carbon plate and then really um sort of like reactive foam that sort of when you when you compress the when you bend the carbon plate and you compress the foam you sort of catapult it out of that stance. And I really, Super Shoes has improved running across planet Earth profoundly and in a positive way. And the reason is because it's a biofeedback tool. So you learn to land, compress the foam, and then use elastic energy out of that foam

and that implies that you're using the stored elastic energy in your in your body which is a very good thing because a lot of people think running is primarily a muscular or strength-based activity where it's actually it's it's a one is it's a whole body experience but you really are using your body as an elastic store of energy. You want that elastic weak core, don't you? Yeah, your Achilles is the biggest spring in your body and you need to use it appropriately. Yeah, so it's less of that muscular tension.

Yeah, you're starting to see people really starting to get that, oh, there's an energy return system. It's efficiency, it's easier. They're not working for it all the time. Is it fair to say that if you already have really good running mechanics, let's take Kipchoge as an example, because I believe that maybe the Nike shoe was designed around him

to go under two hours, which he did in that sort of 159 event that was put on. Yeah, a number of things here. If you've already got great running mechanics and you're using the elastic recoil of your tendons and your ligaments when you land, a super shoe is going to help, right? A super shoe is going to almost allow you

to do what you're already doing and kind of put a rocket underneath it. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Yeah, it'll amplify your natural, really great running mechanics. If you've got poor running mechanics or suboptimal running mechanics,

is there a risk that going in super shoes will get you injured? Yeah, so you've got to be quite careful for this. So if you have poor running mechanics, super shoes might actually help improve them. Because they'll teach you. They'll teach you. So it's a feedback.

It's just, it's a tool, you know, we don't want to get emotional about this. It's a tool that might be appropriate for you at a certain time and might not be appropriate for you. It might not, like every tool, guys. So, yeah, like every tool. So what will happen is

you're quite high off the ground and the foam is pretty spongy, so they can be unstable. So if you're inherently really unstable in your ankles, you might find that you roll over too much in the super shoe and then they are not for you. And you'll probably figure out pretty quickly

that your sort of mechanics are breaking down in the super shoe. Like your ankle's rolling in or your knee hurts or you feel clumsy or inefficient. So that might be a signal to say at the moment, this is not the right tool for me. It's time to work on your your foot mechanics and you know other things other things right um but generally speaking for for not a fast runner you'll start they help you with the timing so they got a massive it's called a four foot meta rocker which is just a fancy name for a big slope from your foot to your toes. And so as you run in them,

as you roll forward over that, it helps you with that land load release, which is hip extension based gait. So you're rolling off this forefoot and you sort of spring off. So it helps you with the timing of your running. And so one of the things we do with the flow rope is teach you the timing and shape of running because running can be perceived as timing. the things we do the flow rope is teach you the timing and shape of running because running can be perceived as timing you know you will say oh well you have hip drop because your glute medius is weak you shouldn't be in that position in the first place and so you can change your whole posture by changing your timing or like we understand that with with golf right your hand should not be ahead of your hips when you hit the golf ball your hips should be ahead of your hand should not be ahead of your hips when you hit the golf ball your hips should be ahead of your hand and that's really hard to teach really hard i mean only the pros get it sort of

so the super shoe teaches you land compress the foam and then you bounce out of it and you roll off your forefoot and those can be really tricky to teach people how to do so it's a natural biofeedback mechanism where for some people, simply going on them and paying attention will automatically start to change the way that you stand and your timing and how you move. You do an analogy before we start recording to women wearing high heel shoes. Yeah, like stilettos. You have to put your ankle. So that's the other part of it is because they're high off the ground,

it tends to amplify misalignment of joints. So if you put a pair of stilettos on, you have to put your ankle down in neutral. Otherwise, you're going to roll your ankle. So is this something like women who are listening who have worn high heels or still do wear high heels, they will naturally have had to figure this out so that they're not going to topple over when they're wearing high heels. Yeah, it's sort of the same analogies.

Like if you don't want to sprain your ankle in high heels, you better put your ankle down properly. When you're high off the ground, you actually need to correct your biomechanics. Otherwise, you'll roll your ankle. And so from that biofeedback point of view as well, I've seen years ago, Hoka, when it first came out, I've seen an athlete, she was in when it first came out, I've seen an

athlete, you know, she was in a pair of pretty maximumless shoes. I've never ever seen someone's joint mechanics improving. It happened in 30 seconds on a treadmill. She used to have really rolling on her ankles, not knees, just, you know, really disconnected running. And she put a pair of Hoka on and she ran on the treadmill and everything just for her cleaned up wow you know it's extraordinary and that's not the case for everyone but generally speaking you know we are we visual learners i like visually what i see in running at the moment i think running is getting better and better and i think a lot of the performance breakthroughs we're seeing is is better practice compounding on the fact that the shoe actually makes you run in the moment and mechanics are improving and i like the narration that like

i'm hearing commentators at the olympics say oh that's a fast relaxed running form or look how relaxed they are whereas i promise you 15 years ago no one was talking about relaxed running it was tight engaged muscling it yeah yeah just a couple of things there one is that you've really made me think about whether I should try them because I'm interested now to know well what does it feel like what by a feedback will I get about my own body you know what what are the final things I'm trying to tweak and change yeah well perhaps that'll do it automatically right so it's interesting for me second is what you said about relaxed running one thing you always notice of the elites in any sport,

and running is no exception. And one of the things I enjoyed about the Olympics this year, watching the track events, was some of the runners, it was just the most beautiful sight to watch. Effortless speed. Yeah. You know, and some, you know,

I was with the kids and we were watching and saying, let's have a look at the start, like at the 1500 meters, we wrote the start. Who do we think might win? And who do we think is going to struggle based upon who looks relaxed? And whose form and posture are we drawn to? Because something doesn't look quite fluid. And it wasn't 100% at the time, but often we'd go, well, that person just looks super relaxed. Whereas that person just for whatever reason doesn't,

and it looks like it's an effort. So that was really interesting. And I think just trying to bring this conversation to a close, many people who listen to this podcast do park run, it's a phenomenon in the UK and in many countries around the world now. And if you go to any park run, which is a 5K in your local town on a Saturday,

where some people walk it, right, which is great, but it's great, you get a community together, everyone's supportive of each other, it's a wonderful environment. They have, I think the catchphrase is, no one ever comes last, because there's always a tail walker who will technically be last. So it's just, you know, you talk about the environment and it being supportive.

It's wonderful. But there'll be many people listening to this who'll be like, yeah, I go each week. And if you go each week, you'll kind of see a whole variety of different forms and postures. Like people are completing it, but some people are completing it efficiently. you'll kind of see a whole variety of different forms and postures. Like people are completing it, but some people are completing it efficiently. They look compact. Some people have got, you know,

really quite interesting postures and styles of running, which just shows how incredible we are as a species. How diverse we are, yeah. Yeah, it's incredible to watch. But some people look as though they've really, they've struggled. So let's say they're getting a good time, if that's what's important to them, but the shoulders by their ears, they've really been pushing, right? Can you speak to that person who might think, well, everything's fine, because you're basically saying, I think, Lawrence, that if they just apply themselves a little bit away from parkrun

to things like the flow rope, to backward walking, to a daily breath practice, you're kind of saying, I think, that actually that parkrun could be much more enjoyable for them. Is that a good way of framing it? Yes, I think so. You know, because, well, there would be this notion of some people can't accept ease or can't accept talent or can't accept goodness because you had to work so hard for everything. So a lot of time people actually work too hard on the thing they're doing.

So please, you know, for everyone is like we have the saying saying don't crush your dreams in a tight fist you gotta hold you know hold your dreams lightly in your hand and again this reframing of mastery not medals um and and i think a really helpful way of thinking about asymmetry because we're talking about asymmetry what makes i mean a lot of the world-class athletes are extraordinarily symmetrical compared to other people right um is we tighten with the twist and we let go and relax and things fall into place and and a certain sense of ease comes into your life and in your movements and so you know you practice these things and you need to graciously accept that running might become easier and have have an okay relationship with that because some

people don't some people want it to be hard because they feel they didn't deserve it if it's not really really hard and they over struggle but yeah totally you can you will start to hopefully you know have a better relationship with your running it should feel easier it should feel like to move better i don't know so with jan ferdino his movement changed so powerfully. He did a track session and he struggled with his as well. And he said like, so he did, I don't know, like quite a lot, like eight by one Ks. And he says, that's not enough. And then he did some 400s and he says,

no, I want to do more. Because he was so used to being beat up after eight by one kilometers. And he says, I don't have that sensation that I've beat my body up. I want it. And it was like, yeah, well, now you're an efficient runner and good things come to you

and you have to graciously accept that you're more talented. And he had to totally reframe his relationship with running and that you're not that beat up. And I have this discussion often with athletes. For people who never heard of Jan Frodena, can you just briefly explain who he is? So Jan Frodena is a good friend of mine now. He's one of the greatest triathletes of all time. He's an Olympic medal, short course world

champion multiple times and an Ironman multiple times. He's acknowledged as sort of the greatest of all time in triathlon. Wow. Or one of. It's interesting as you were just talking about this idea that sometimes you have to feel that you've really worked hard to actually deserve something. Oh man, I've felt that in my life for sure. And again, part of this evolution of how I feel I am and how I show up is I think my my relationship to working hard or not even working hard, the feeling that you've worked hard and pushed has dramatically changed. And one question I've been using for a number of years is what would this look like if it was easy? Yeah. And it's been so profound for me because I'm also used to, or for much of my life, I was conditioned to,

if I didn't really work hard and push and stay up late and actually have to stress, it can't be good. It's not worth it. But, you know, last week I submitted the final edits for my sixth book, which comes out in January. And it was a very relaxed experience. That's amazing. Because I've trained myself.

Well, now I want to read it. Well, but it's also, it doesn't have to be hard. And I don't think people fully understand that when your movement becomes more efficient, you can actually go and run quite fast and not actually feel that hard some of the time. You know, it's beautiful.

People think running has to be hard, but it doesn't, does it? No, it doesn't. No. Well, some of the time you know it's beautiful yeah people think running has to be hard but it doesn't does it no it doesn't no well i think because you know we need to acknowledge that i think sometimes things have to be hard so that you can appreciate when they're good and and you know everyone's got a i one of these notions is i haven't read the book there's a book called the hero's journey but But for me, The Hero's Journey is interesting. It's like, you know, you have to struggle. You have to sacrifice. You all go through periods of stress because if you don't,

I don't think you appreciate once you start to resolve things. So, you know, my message to everyone listening is wherever you are at is perfect and you're good enough and you are enough and you have enough and it's okay and just this notion that you can move past and into a period of more ease and we were talking earlier about like you know when you're talented when you're young you often don't appreciate it and it's often very difficult to get talented people to work hard. I mean, it's extraordinary how talented some people can be. You know, like when people are properly talented,

it's insane. I mean, I don't know, like Mozart was composing at four or two or something ridiculous, you know. And so, but often you don't appreciate it. And then when the gift gets taken away and then it comes back again. And I, you know, talking about this with talented people

is I say, it's not your gift. You're not talented. That's a gift that you're creating. Because in running, the only certainty we know is one day you'll have run your last best time. You will just start slowing down at some point. And so it's not your gift. It will be taken away from you.

And so don't attach your identity to something that's transient. And so I think, yeah, there's multiple sort of layers to this whole conversation. But you can say that again. I mean, what started off as a conversation about better running and breathing

has turned into how to heal from trauma and deep philosophical thoughts about the world and who we are and our place in the world. I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, Lawrence. I honestly think that the work you do is incredible. I love it. For people who want to kind of follow you and keep up to date,

I've mentioned YouTube and Instagram. There's also your website, innerrunner.com. Can you just go through where people can go and what kind of you can offer them? Yeah, I think that would be at the innerrunner.com. And we have a community on there. We do live classes three times a week when I'm not traveling too much.

And then, yeah, I'm busy putting together like a run workshop. So there's a ton of resources on there, but that's like-minded people get together and talk about running and go through it. And we do a Monday mobility class and a Wednesday mastery class, of course, mastery, not medals.

And then a Thursday breathing class. Wow. And then, yeah, just Instagram. And I don't really know what happens on Facebook, but I have an account there. Lawrence, I really appreciate everything you do. I appreciate you making the journey to come to the studio. The work we've done as well,

I think is going to beautifully complement the work I've done with Helen. I very much resonate with both of your philosophies, as I've said, very holistic, very root cause. Just to finish off, for someone who has listened. Yeah, thank you. listened yeah thank you yes thank you they know there's something in this conversation that is important for them yeah right there's something that they go i've not heard things being spoken about like that before i know this applies to me

for that person who perhaps always has pain when they walk or run and feels that they've tried everything and feels that actually movement or running no longer fits into their life, right? What would you say to them? There's always hope just because you haven't met someone that can help you doesn't mean you can't be helped and it's very okay to walk or do what you can in the moment but keep doing what you can and and it's amazing you know like what does Rumi say when when you start on the way the way appears

and I think sort of just putting one foot in front of the other, literally the metaphor of just walking. And, you know, walk with me, walk with you, walk with people that care about you, that are offering you solutions. And it's amazing how many resources there are out to help you, whereas I think sometimes we can get blindsided by how many things are going wrong in our life or, again, you know, how stuck we can be.

But just start with walking. Walking is, we could have a whole podcast just on walking. Walking is one of the most healing, natural, integrative, it's good for everything, PTSD, mood disorders, you know, and movement, movement is so, so powerful. So just put one foot in front of the other. Don't try too hard. You know, it's just do something. And just even if the do something in that day is just acknowledging that I'm going to do something, that's a step in the right direction. Pleasure to meet you.

That's it coming on the show. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I cannot wait for our part two together. Thank you, Rangan. This has just been absolutely amazing. Thank you. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Don't forget to check out Lawrence's website,

lawrencevanlingan.com. On it, he has so many helpful resources. And if you want to join his brilliant online community where he offers four live classes every week, Monday Mobility, Wednesday Masterclass, Thursday Breathing, Friday Strength Session, he has kindly agreed to give my listeners a 20% off discount. All you need to do is go to his website and use the code FBLM20. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

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