Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #83 Aaron Alexander

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

Manual Therapist, Movement coach, and host of the Align podcast, Aaron Alexander makes his third appearance on the show to share some of the interesting facts and ideas from his journal. We cover a wide range of topics from the nervous system to wasps to Romanian orphans. This episode has something for everyone. Connect with Aaron Alexander Website | https://alignpodcast.com/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/AlignMovement/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/alignpodcast/?hl=en Twitter | https://twitter.com/alignpodcast?lang=en YouTube | https://bit.ly/2meaIEH Listen to the Align podcast | https://alignpodcast.com/podcast/ Show Notes: I AM | https://vimeo.com/182109151 Working For The Weekend | https://bit.ly/1aNc7Xo Wasp zombifies cockroach |https://bit.ly/2h5n3Kg New Elton John Movie | https://bit.ly/2VvDxN3 Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic| Romanian Orphanages | https://bbc.in/2UjuKkz Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit on: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit        Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour   iTunes  | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher  | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify  | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY

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And to top it off, we will be offering free shipping. Some exclusions apply. 25% off supplements. 18% off fitness and certifications, 20% off foods, 50% off digital downloads, DVDs, and books. That's 50-5-0, son. 30% off apparel and personal care. In addition to massive price cuts, the more you buy, the more awesomeness you unlock. A 10% off coupon to use anytime. Free shipping and premium free gifts are all available this year. Make this summer the best of your life by stocking up now. The sale starts on April 22nd, so mark your damn calendars. Free gifts and doorbusters are in limited supply, so hashtag get on it, or you might just miss it. Be the first notified about our semi-annual sale at onnit.com slash semi-annual-sale. All right, y'all. We have, I think, round three, volume three with Aaron Alexander. Aaron is the host of the Align podcast.

He has a fucking brand new book that I absolutely cannot wait to have come out. Won't be out by the time this podcast is released, but please stay tuned. Follow us online if you're not already. What do we get into? Well, if you remember the water boy, Henry Winkler, better known as the Fonz, plays one of the coaches in the water boy, and he has this green spiral-bound book that has all these cool-ass plays in it. And Red takes the book from him and he feels like he loses his mojo. Then he realizes all that stuff's up in my head. But what's cool is Aaron brought his notebook in, a little journal with things that he finds fascinating. And I really just

hammered him on the damn journal. So we dive into all things Aaron finds to be really rad scientifically or just cool shit we're learning about the body. We talk about his new book, what it's all about. And as always, I fucking love Aaron. He's a great guy. I hope you guys dig this one as much as I did. Aaron Alexander returns to the show. Back. We have your journal out in front of us, which is not podcast topics. It's just stuff that you find interesting. That's right. All right. So let's fucking dive in. You're trying to give me a quote and I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Save it. It's not a quote. Save it. It's not a quote. What is it? All right. All right. The first thing, this wasn't my intention, by the way, just for listeners.

I don't have an intention. But here we are. so the first thing that's in the journal that i find interesting so the vagus nerve um 80 of the fire is like kind of a famous nerve it's it's known as the the wandering nerve helps with innervating the the diaphragm various different organs um really big on function of your autonomic nervous system so like how you feel your resting state um parasympathetic all that stuff yeah regulating it but so anyway so 80 of the nerve fibers from that are afferent meaning they're sensory and so the reason that i think that's really interesting is kind of like metaphoric in a sense that 80 of this nerve amongst other ones as well are made for sensation and then there's 20% that's the efferent that's based off of the motor.

Do, go, have at it, execute. Oh, no shit. And so it's really fascinating that the world that we live in is kind of flipped in that. So most of us, we're like 80-20 the opposite direction. We're just fucking go, get it. And then there's this little bit of like every now and again maybe i feel something yeah yeah meanwhile the actual function and structure of your nervous

system is set up in such a way that it's like feel anyways that's the first thing in my notebook i love that i love that that's a great way to start it off uh wim hoffs talks quite a bit about the vegas nerve um also you've seen the documentary i am with uh tom shadyak no it's awesome so watch it and i'm going to tell my listeners right now you have to watch the documentary because aubrey marcus and i are going to have tom shadyak on our podcast he was the director of liar liar ace ventura Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, the original, um, ton of fucking great movies. Bruce Almighty, like basically gave Jim Carrey his career. Obviously Jim Carrey's Jim Carrey, but, and he would have taken off no matter what, but awesome dude, super woke. And he did this awesome documentary called I Am where he travels searching like the meaning of

happiness. And he talks to meditators and monks and buddhists and just all over the fucking world he travels in search of what brings makes people happy and it's really fucking cool it's a dope story what's he find um he finds a lot of this has to do with the vagus nerve it has to do with tapping in in silence being comfortable in your own skin doing the work to heal and then from there you can appreciate you have gratitude for things like that because it gives you perspective on what's important and what isn't. Yeah. There's a guy, Steven Porges, who founded the whole polyvagal theory and kind of polyvagal polyvagal more than one bagel. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, really. Um, you know, so he found it. He's, he's like a main pioneer in that whole whole kind of uh

discovery what is polyvagal without me cracking jokes because of the polyamory yeah so just the vagus nerve isn't just one specific nerve it actually breaks into one into the front and to the back and both sides of those control different sides of like more of that like sympathetic parasympathetic side of the nervous system so poor just pioneered that stuff and one of the things that he gets into he has a thing called safe sound project ssp and he has people listen to these audio tapes i haven't actually listened to it to know exactly i've just read about it um but i believe it's a five-day program people can just check it out look up ssp ste, Stephen Borges, Polyvagal Theory. And he ends up with this audio tape,

essentially tuning people's nervous system with these audio frequencies. No shit. That's what we're doing all the time. Is he using sound bowls or tuning forks or things like that? What's he doing? Or is he just playing like a note? I think it's,

I think it's more like frequencies. Okay. Yeah. And then there's also beats or I don't know if it's binaural beats. I don't think it is binaural. Okay. You know, but so what's interesting with that is,

is that our nervous systems, we're always being tuned by our environment, you know? So that's what you see with like, you know, a mother speaking to their child, you know know it's like there's something about that he calls a prosodic voice it's like this melodic voice the child's like oh you know so kids are like knock it off i've had it don't like that yeah yeah you know so kids are so good with sensing this stuff

and that's what's really interesting is it's like, we, I just find it endlessly fascinating how our physical world forms our structure and forms our emotions, forms the way that we think, forms the way that we feel, even to the point that you can put an audio tape inside your, in between your ears, and it can literally start to work with things like ADHD, anxiety, depression, a whole plethora of different disorders, I guess you could call them, challenges just through tones. And it's just so many people look at kids that are like growing up in the inner city, you know, and they're constantly, you know, doors slamming, parents yelling at each other. Really challenging. You know, it's very easy for us to feel like it's just like oh well i never hit the kid it's like well the sound was hitting

him all day yeah yeah you know and so it's it's it's just fascinating to me how how how easily how malleable we are yeah yeah it's it's i don't know it's it's funny because there is there's two sides of that coin there is the i'm going to make myself bulletproof or whatever term you want to use and and you know from there that could be like a you know you have this hard-nosed military idea of what it means to be a man and then you also have the flip side of that coin and there's nothing wrong with that i think it's probably critical for, for combat, but you know, the flip side of that coin, being able to have a full expression of feeling and being aware of that, being aware that everything has an impact on you and all stress

is stress in the body. So if you have chronic stress from an emotional and emotionally fucked up partnership or work or financial or shitty diet fill in the blank or chronic bad sleep like all those things contribute yep to and then there's there's a balance between you stress versus the other stress the bad stress you know and so like that's that's the dance like that's what we're doing you know if you're into like biohacking or like any variety of getting healthier it's figuring out what's that balance between pushing myself to the point of hypertrophy if you want your muscles to grow you know or or whatever whatever adaptation that you're seeking what's the point that i'll actually gain that adaptation versus what's the point where i went too far and I crash. Yeah. And that's the whole game. And most of us, I think, are more in a place of chronic stress. It seems to be the general consensus.

And our solution is more, again, it's that the inverse of what the function of the vagus nerve, we go more motor, more go. I just got to push through it. I'm going to push through this week. I'll rest this weekend. It's like, dude, maybe there's a chance you've been pushing through it for 30 years. You know, and you haven't, you never even had the tools,

access to the tools for you to actually step back and feel and start to actually heal. You know, I think that that's something that's just, that's something I'm really enamored with, like meditation. You know, like before doing stuff like this, I one point was like and today a little bit because we were kind of like just in a sense rolling out of bed actually um you know so i'm kind of like trying to stir things up uh but previously i was like all push-ups all go like whoa you know now i'm

like meditation before doing something like this slow it down you know so it I think it's, maybe that happens with like age or something. I don't know. Yeah, that might be it. We're getting older. How old are you now? Not too old. 31. Oh God.

You're a baby. Oh no, I know. I turned 37 this month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look older because of the beard. Yeah, yeah. You have no gray in it actually. So you still look your age and you have a beautiful hairline.

Thank you very much. All right. Enough about you. Appreciate that. What else? what else have we gotten this, this little play? This reminds me of, uh, of, uh, the Fonz's green playbook in the water boy. All right. Let's talk about all the great, the great plays gets stolen from him. Yeah. All right. So something else that I find interesting is production of nitric oxide naturally in the body. You know, so people are seeking out like Viagra and all these different supplements, NO2, whatever.

I'm sure there's a supplement called NO2. So humming, there's a guy called Charles Lundsberg. Dude, I've heard this guy. Was it on your podcast or Green Shields? I'm sure we've talked about it. I'm not sure. So he's professor of nitrous oxide, which I didn't know that existed,

but apparently it does. And he found that just a simple act of humming increases no2 uh by 15 times inside your bloodstream so there's i think some of this stuff is a little bit potentially dubious as far as like how long the no2 lasts in the body all that um but it's just a fascinating thing like breathing through your nose in general ends up increasing NO2 dramatically in the body. I think it's something like 35 times, but I might be, you got to fact check that part, but more. So you have this labyrinth that the air passes through in your nasal passages. And as it does that, it picks up these NO2 molecules.

And we breathe through our mouth. We don't have that. Yeah. And there's no filter in the mouth either. And there's no filter. It doesn't cool the air down. It ends up being a little bit, a bit like collapsive on the actual structure of your jaw you know so when you're naturally all this like chinese medicine stuff where people are saying

you're like oh you like put the tongue up to the roof of the mouth you know complete the micro cosmic orbit so you can have a full body orgasm you know like that's they're like tongue to the roof of the mouth to complete that electrical circuit from language that a lot of people in like Western world might not love. But structurally, you're literally pushing that tongue out against that hard palate

to create space in your jawline. So when children, if they're mouth breathers, which sounds like so terrible, calling somebody a mouth breather, like, oh. There's more mouth breathers in the world mouth breathers, which sounds like so terrible, calling somebody a mouth breather, like, oh. There's more mouth breathers in the world. Yeah, it sounds like worse.

Maybe it's pretty bad, actually. But it's pretty defaming that word, mouth breathing. But literally, as you're doing that, you'll see it's just not attractive, for one thing. So the jaw starts to kind of recede back. And you kind of get like this double chin type thing. And then as you're doing that, you're not pushing up with the tongue. So now all you have is the musculature of your face pressing in, collapsing your facial structure. And so to get that like... I want this to be the clip that we run on social media.

We'll be making that fucking face. Yes. Good. Yes. Good. I'm sure that'll be the case. So it starts collapsing your facial structure. So your muscles are active. You're constantly compressing yourself.

And that outward force from the tongue, in this case, is helpful with balancing that and creating space pretty freaking fascinating and then along with that final piece um as a mouth breather the tendency is to become more of like a clavicular breather so breathing up around your neck you know so that's like the startle reflex using uh accessory muscles very sympathetic yeah yeah so and all that stuff's good like there's no like it's it's easy to bash sympathetic versus parasympathetic that's not the case every time you take a breath in that's a sympathetic response we're trying to take breath out that's

parasympathetic you can tune that too but the tendency i just mouth breathe a little bit hope people weren't offended um but the tendency with that is if you're breathing through your mouth like that you're kind of chronically putting yourself a little bit more into that side of that startle reflex. Once again, how many people for the last 30 years of their lives have been stuck in a chronic startle reflex and they just don't realize it? So something as simple as just starting to bring that breath through your nose, that compounded times a day, times a week, times a times a year times 20 years like huge impact you know so there's small subtle things that we're just not thinking about but they're there they're on the table there's so much shit that we can do right now that would change our biology for the you know for the future version of ourselves that That we're just like, whatever.

I'll get to it later. You're not going to get to it later. Get to it now or shut up. Diet starts tomorrow, Aaron. You'd like shit today. What else we got in here? Oh, man. There's a lot. I got to dig in

if we're going to go like that. All right. Well, this is kind of interesting. Half of Americans can't afford a $400 bill, an unexpected bill. 90% of doctor visits are stress-based. I think it's all associated. I mean, that's kind of a separate, but I think that that could potentially be tied back into like a physiological type thing as well. You know, people chronically living in this

like i'm on the edge of disaster yeah you know like you when was the last time you were in that place you you remember you remember this i'm sure uh edge of disaster couldn't afford a sub thousand dollar bill like that that would ruin ruin your world i would say 2018 damn yeah what's that like um it's pretty stressful you know i think it's it's i mean this is the first time in my life where i've been able to really not spend frivolously and do whatever the fuck i want i don't have fuck you money, but I'm certainly in a place now where I don't worry about how much we spend at the grocery store. I don't worry if we have a friend in town and we need to buy him food. I don't worry about

any of those things anymore. And if we get a bill, I can pay it, you know? So even just like, I bet on, uh, came Alaska's and his last fight versus Francis and Gano. And I lost 1700 bucks. That'll probably be my last bet for a long time, maybe ever, just because that's the nature of MMA. You went learned. But I was able to pay my guy really quickly. It wasn't like I had to wait or I was, fuck man, where's this going to come from? I wouldn't have made the bet. You don't bet if you don't have the money to lose, basically i had the money to lose and um and i love kane wanted to show my support and root for him and also thought he was gonna win that's the

real reason i put money on him but yes you know like that that that's like a polar opposite expression of that where it's like hey we can still afford all of our food we can get babysitters we can have date nights and if i have you know an occasional loss in mma betting then um it's not going to break the bank where we're fucked and now we can't go on dates and yeah we have to have uh you know 150 spending limit every time we go to the store like shit like that you know so i think i remember rogan talking about that the first time he went from wondering if he could pay his bills each month and living check to check to where like that shift happened where he didn't need to worry about it anymore yeah he always had money in his account yeah i mean that's pretty much been 2019 there is i mean but fucking 2018 i was overdrawn a couple

times well in my checking you do a lot but it's so funny so i so i come from i think a far more like scarce model than um maybe some people that I... I don't know. Maybe not. What is your model? You come from a scarce model? I come from super scarce. You come from a super scarce model.

We ate Spam. We grew up on Spam, Kraft mac and cheese. Occasionally, we'd get kielbasa sausage in the mac and cheese. But we were shopping at Lucky's, Albertsons. But how did you feel? Eating that way? Yeah. Did you feel like you were okay?

Did you always feel like you were fed? Did you always feel comfortable? You always feel like you were protected and safe? No, we didn't go without. We didn't go without food. Even if we had to eat Bush's baked beans for dinner, we didn't go without food. So I think that because I had more of like a, I think like a shock in my upbringing, where it's like, oh, all all of a sudden like the floor is being

pulled from out and it seems like we don't know what's going to happen is dad going to be dead is is the house going to go away is like what's what's next i have a feeling i suspect that that kind of inclined me more towards like a scarcity type mindset of like at any time all this shit could blow up yeah you know and so i've kind of had this like chronic squirrel you know stashing nuts away okay okay yeah there's a lot of people since i was like a little guy you like our grandparents who lived through the great depression a lot of them live that way they're just penny pinchers and that this because they couldn't unlearn what the great depression was like yeah and it's crazy to think like that was, you know, less than a hundred years ago, fucking damn sure it can happen again. I mean, you saw the housing crisis in 2008.

It's very likely, um, very likely will happen again in our lifetime, but, um, I don't know what's better, you know, like the way I live now and I've, the way I lived last year, even when I, when I wasn't, I wasn't wasn't broke i was making good money but we have a lot of expenses you know my my wife doesn't work and i wanted to stay that way i don't want to outsource who raises our children yeah and um but i think with that there was always just a trust that i have that all will be provided for anything that i need is coming and so i don't know if that's blind faith it's not me thinking of it in like terms of like the secret and shit like that it's it's just me realizing like there will be times where we have to pinch pennies times where we can spend a little bit more and in that ebb and flow i don't have to fucking worry about losing the house or my car or any of that stuff

you know like i don't i don't think that way um probably should stash some more away for sure. You ever think about, like, the save 10% of everything you get kind of thing? That's what a lot of... I've heard that. A lot of financial folks recommend. Yeah, that might be a good idea. It's something...

I think something like that is a valuable thing. Well, I'm maxing my 401k. I'm doing other things in that sense. So, I mean, we can tie it back to like a biological thing too like i think having that that's that 10 could be that breath nose or nose nose breathing as you're in the room you know it's like a daily practice yeah it could be that sitting on the floor it could be that get a freaking pull-up bar hang it between your office door and just give a little a little hang you know every time i kind of think of that as being kind of like you're you're you're adding money into your your account

yeah you know so most of us throughout the whole day we're just fucking banging out credit boom boom boom you know it's like it's like you have so many opportunities just like just 10 man it's not complicated that's the thing though it does need to be daily especially when it comes to like like anything that's for you even just the way our work work is set up you know like grind for five days then take two days off and it's like i'm just gonna get through it and then i'll and then i'll rest and it's like no most people get shit-faced on the weekends yeah you know quite a few americans and canadians do get shit-faced on the weekends aussies too you know and it's like that you canadians do get shit faced on the weekends aussies too you

know and it's like that you're not recovering before you go back to work but everybody's working for the weekend that was a walkout song i went out to my lover boy like it's so fucking true like that's it and then you think like over time because it's all you got to pay that debt back it's all on credit you ever see credit. You ever see those wasps that hijack the brains of cockroaches? And then they put their baby, their sack of babies, whatever the hell. Inside a roach? Yeah. Dude, it's pretty cool.

And then they come out of their gut like alien? Yeah. Is that where we're at? Scott, look this shit up. Look up wasp hijacks. The article I look up wasp hijacks the article i saw was hijacked spiders but it has a video of of roaches anyways if you guys could we can link to it in the show notes of the world it's so cool dude so this so the wasp jumps on the back of this cockroach and it does this weird like sexual looking penetratory thing down through you know

whatever it's thorax or something shoots some type of neurotoxic load inside of it and then the and then it's like and then it just kind of waddles off and then it's like they kind of like they separate kind of like they just got done having sex in a way and then they're like oh oh that's crazy. And then they come back. And then the cockroach is like this docile, brainwashed critter that's like, hey, what's up? And then the wasp is like, hey, what's up? Come with me. And it literally like, I don't know if it takes it by its hand somehow,

but it like. They walk arm in arm together down the street. They walk over to this little like cockroach sanctuary area, like a little like safe haven to put the cockroach, which is now just the womb for the wasps, future wasp children. And it lays this sack of eggs. I think it's like inside, if I'm remembering correctly. Or like somewhere. It lays it in there somewhere. You just got to look the video up. And then we got this brainwashed cockroach that creates these babies for the wasp.

And does it die upon creating the babies? Yeah. Yeah. It's done. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's done. But so what I want is like a graphic probably going a little bit too far or maybe not no um analogy go far but i wonder that sometimes if people look into their cell phone and people like working for the weekend and people

spending their whole entire life just investing themselves to like making it just making it as long as you're in that place of like oh fuck man if i i can't afford 400 bucks if my cell phone breaks i'm not paying rent kind of feels a little bit like the cockroach to me you know we're like whatever you say just take me by the hand and keep me safe yeah you know okay cool sweet boss man is like i'm just gonna penetrate some eggs into you and you're going to work for me. And you're going to sort this future of my children out. And, and then you'll die. And then you'll fucking die.

I don't know. I mean, that's pretty dark. The show took a gruesome turn for the worse. The darkest. But we can take it back. We can take it back. That's right.

Show me something positive in that notebook. All right. This is the easiest interview forever. Aaron's journal. Next. All right. So I was watching Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes.

Great movie. So good. Fucking great movie. God, Freddie Mercury is so dope. Probably one of the best movies in the history of movies I've seen for a while. Okay, real quick. Have you seen the trailer for the new Elton John movie? No.

It looks insane. It looks so dope. It looks fucking... I can't wait. I'm a huge Elton fan. I can't fucking wait to watch it. I didn't really even know, because Prince... Because we now know that I'm a whippersnapper.

I didn't even know how rad Prince was. Really? That movie, like, really? Because, like, his music's so eccentric. It's hard to really, unless you were there. He's a total artist. I know, but now I know more. Oh, I said Prince.

Yeah, you said Prince. Oh, I meant Queen. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I meant Queen. Freddie Mercury. No, he was just a fucking performer. Like, he could fucking own the stage. Yeah. Yeah, I had no idea how rad he was just a fucking performer yeah he could fucking own the stage yeah yeah i didn't i had no idea it was crazy the background and i don't know how much that's accurate everybody always comes out after a movie like then like well this followed the truth yeah this was you know

inconsistent with what actually happened it's like it was just a fucking dope movie i loved it yeah so anyways so freddie mercury he in the beginning of that i was an airplane which is where all good movies manifest themselves and i was watching this watching this this this one and in the beginning part of it he's like trying to get the job to be the new lead singer for i don't know what they're called at the time i don't think they're called queen yet whatever they're called like some high school band and they lose their lead singer and they're like oh man and and fred frame worker comes up he's like well i could sing for you he's got this like jacked up mouth and he's all weird and they're like uh like that's not gonna work and he mentions that he has four extra incisors in his mouth

that's why his mouth's all jacked up and so because he has that extra space ie nose breathing he's able to create more vocal range aka he's able to create more vocal range, aka he's able to create more expression. So, if you're able to have that range of motion in your, in this case, the incisors in your mouth, your jawline, but also how does that manifest itself in the shoulder girdle? How does it manifest itself in the hip girdle, in the knees, ankle range of motion um you know just all of all of the ranges of motion throughout your body if you have full range of motion in your body at any point in the body it gives you more capacity for more emotional expression or any form of expression and so i just thought to me i was just like damn that's dope you know so it's like it's just it just goes back

to nose breathing essentially everything goes back i think there's a book called jaws that brian mckenzie mentioned on the show that talks quite a bit about this but um yeah you know like it's funny because like you're talking about expression if you ever try to dance like ecstatic dance after deadlifting or back squats yeah it fucks you up you're fucked yeah you're too stiff you know you're over there in the corner doing the two-step yeah you know you can't really move and open yourself in a corner with that stuff yeah you know so weight lifting and that's what i i'm sure you see um is people being kind of obsessive or dogmatic almost or religious with like specific types of exercise to the point that they become just like any dogma they become stuck inside that they can't see outside of the pale of that you know and so

it's like it's that example exactly when you're all stiff and it looks like there's a stick going up your ass from your like you're working out and then the rest of the week you move literally like literally there's something wrong with you yeah you know it's like you're programming walk with stick in my ass like you're missing out on precious opportunities that you could have been working on movement function yeah well i think they're that's all just balance right you know oh yeah i'm pro deadlifting and all that stuff i love deadlift i love back squat i fucking love back squat and i like a lot of different variations but a barbell back squat is pretty fucking awesome with with what it causes physiologically with that you also have to pay attention to how much mobility work you're doing

you know like really like getting into a squat position while you're sore and hanging out there you know i don't know i can't really do that 10 minute kelly stirret in one whack but i can get through the 10 minute squat test throughout the day. And that adds up. Oh, it's easy. That's the 10%. That's the saving up. Just pop down.

I mean, you saw me do it at your house probably 16 times already. You can put your balls to the floor. That's right. Every time I, whatever, I got to freaking tinker something on my backpack. I'll put the backpack on the ground i'll go down to a deep squat and tinker it down there i have the option to stand up you know but it's like this is a perfect opportunity to mobilize my stuff you know and so with with the with the the weight lifting i think it's the same thing we were talking about kind of earlier it's like it's

what is it at what point is it excess you know so you can practice weightlifting and work more at a neurological level or more like a neuromuscular level where you're trying to really kind of recruit motor units and create a more effective lightning storm connection into your muscles and do five by fives or something like that. Five by five doing five reps, five sets. As an example, and focus more on like actual strength output you know as opposed to just going until you murder your tissue yeah and you literally can't move all the time yeah yeah high volume training i mean it's it's the one thing

that shifted for me over the years since retiring is that if I'm going to train high intensity, it's a very low volume. And if I'm going to train high volume, it's very low intensity. You know, like I'll do a, if I'm doing any kind of mileage on a distance run, it's nose breathing pace, you know? And then if I'm around sprints all out, I'm not doing a whole lot of those. Like we did four sprints yesterday for a 10th of a mile 160 yard sprints for pretty much all out in in succession with each other and it was fucking hard yeah it was not fun after that i didn't fucking enjoy the rest of the workout yeah because we started with that maybe we should have finished with that but you know what the biggest oh go on sorry i was just gonna say like that when you do something

like that you have to understand what the intensity should match the volume in terms of how it's they're going to teeter-totter is what i'm getting at you know they need to teeter-totter because when you go all out for a long period of time that's when you can destroy yourself yeah and i think sometimes it's a good idea to go like sundance ceremony style and like have a serious blowout you know not that I know anything about what the experience of having a Sundance is like, but, um, you know, I know what doing some variety of hard ish things is like, and I feel like those experiences throughout my life have been some of the most valuable, you know, so I'm not preaching always moderation. I think sometimes

blowing out is a really cool thing to do and see what's, what can you potentially but what's the thing i was thinking is with yesterday like one of the most powerful aspects of the training that we did yesterday i think was the community part no doubt we're slapping butts we're high-fiving we're freaking everybody did a group wrestle with like whitney and the miller so it wasn't totally so it wasn't totally creepy it was it was not anything wrong with that man on man out of the situation was not 50 50 bisexual it's so funny how guys do that like even during the picture like oh let's uh put whitney in the middle or whitney in the middle when they went in the middle in the middle that was good miller in the middle of the middle like car seats yeah you know if the girls if the girls that's like she needs balance it it's gonna be you old people see whatever people are cute so you're writing a book right today a book when's

it coming out january 2020 probably maybe february oh yeah that's that's the interesting thing like me by myself there'd be a good chance that i'd finish the manuscript say that was great experience i learned a lot and then just move on me with like a whole group of people you know teams of people in new york and la and all the kind of like organization and a co-writer working and it's like i'm like oh shit i have to show up totally different game for me yeah you know and so yeah so uh january or february we don't have official book deadline yet they say spring of 2020 which means anywhere from like december to like actual spring essentially okay and that's gonna be all about movement kind of sort of it's more like it's kind of like what we're talking about like i don't my lens isn't so like move, you know, it's kind of more like

the mind body part is the thing that I'm really enamored by and interested in. So what have you learned? That's interesting because one of the things that I loved about Chris Ryan when he was saying, you don't write a book about the thing, you know, you write a book about the thing you don't know that way you get to learn while you're totally. Oh dude. What have you learned new that you didn't know before in writing this book man i mean honestly the upcoming book is one that i will be able to use as a the baseline foundation for what i'm interested in studying for the rest of my life i'm almost positive i can say that like i can keep on going deeper and deeper into each one of those chapters and say okay cool like i'm still in like the nascent baseline figuring this stuff out i'll probably say when i'm 60 hopefully yeah you know and so one example well something that i i think i i've learned quite a

bit about quite more about is just, how our environment forms us. So a few of the chapters in there is really simple, actionable tools on how you can start to align, because it's the name of my everything, your home and your office and your travel so that you can get a little bit more of that 10% savings every time you're just existing in your house um but one of the interesting things is is just like the the psychic weight of being in a disorganized house being a messy house you know so you go into a room like you are being imprinted by everything in that room you know we're imprinting each other right now we're literally like you know we're attuning we're kind of like becoming in part with each other right now you know you can feel that i'm sure like that's a part of that's like part of my root chakra yeah exactly totally i'm getting a semi yeah um you know and so when you go into a room like just paying attention to like oh wow

do you feel tired you know do you like chronically you've like chronic fatigue or whatever kind of terms you put on it and then you go into your house and every time you walk into the room shit's disheveled your bed's unmade you got stuff on the floor you just have you're like a hoarder kind of sort of maybe not completely but it's almost like borderline like that's tiring to be in like your brain literally has to process those things as you walk into that room. Yeah. And so something as simple as that, there's all sorts of research around that, how it actually is, it makes your cognitive function more efficient to be in a room that is feng shui. Yep. Declutter, declutter that, let the energy flow. Declutter that. Yeah. Like looking at

your space because it is an extension of your mind, an extension of your biology. Someone was saying that about cleaning the yard. Like if your yard is fucking overgrown and not well organized, then that's kind of the reflection of your life at that point. Fuck yeah. So like, you know, pulling the weeds, mowing the lawn, that's all important stuff. Even if you just have it done and it's done every two weeks by a lawn care person, that's still, you know, that's still okay. It doesn't mean you have to do it yourself, but like you got to get that done. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that's, that's, I'm a chapter in the book is the, the, the power of touch, you know, and that's something. So essentially I,

the book that I'm writing, it gets into all of the fringe subjects of like fitness you know so so i'm like it's cool we we understand you know that we you know pull-ups and all that stuff which i have like hanging and all i have this the standard fundamentals in there okay um but there's a lot of other components that don't have as loud of a voice that i think is is like the foundation of our health you know for example being contacted by another human being yeah you know you're familiar with like the foundation of our health you know for example being contacted by another human being yeah you know you're familiar with like the romanian orphanages i feel like i probably talked to you about it before no yeah tell me oh this is good yeah this is important stuff um so i thought you were taking a notepad out you're taking a snooze thing out

i was like oh kyle really cares what i'm saying i got a fucking note taker right here my boy ryan chiles note taker for you um romanian orphanages orphanages um so during the fall of uh communism there was a lot of um romanian children's there was like like an excess of of babies and they to the point that it was like they just they couldn't take care, there was like an excess of babies. And to the point that it was like they couldn't take care of them. It was essentially like a storage house for babies and children. And what they found is that there's a thing called failure to thrive, where essentially if you don't have that contact,

not just physical contact, but also that emotional attunement. Like, we need it. Your body stops processing information, essentially. Your body stops growing. And so, with these children, they end up having all sorts of learning disabilities. They wouldn't grow correctly just because they're not contacted. And they're like, whoa, what's wrong? It's something in the water or whatever. Did all their parents die in the water or whatever you're like and then all of a sudden all their parents die and in the war i think it was because they were i don't actually know the exact the exact uh

reason of why there were so many there i was like looking into what the exact reason was like recently i was like what is the exact thing i'm sure somebody listening i'm sure a lot of people listening know this um so i apologize for not knowing i don't know that anyone listening knows this but continue whatever back to the point of the kids damn it yeah anyways um but throughout that though they they weren't able to grow essentially you know and they have all these learning disabilities and then they ended up being able to get more caretakers and after they got more caretakers all of a sudden they start oh they start they start to grow they start to get stronger they start to you know laugh and they start to like come alive essentially you know and so it's like

that i think it's easy for us to think like oh yeah of course you gotta touch a baby duh no big deal i think adults are just a bunch of big babies we are for sure for sure you know so it's a similar thing like if you look at like we were talking recently about like macaque baboons um their average time that they're grooming each other throughout the day is like 120 minutes a day all they would need is like 30 minutes you know so like over 20 of their day is devoted we did i did an instagram post with you when i was like grooming your your neck your traps aka I was like leaning my elbow into his shoulder. And so that's something that you see in primates. It's like a supernatural thing.

They touch each other. Super normal. In fact, it's a part of our whole political hierarchy. It's a part of our whole care system. If we don't do that we don't if there's this this tribal disconnect right what are we kind of in right now in western culture you know it feels to me like essentially we're in a tribal disconnect is the way it's the way it appears you know like our tribe is this digital tribe inside of the screen you know it's really hard to groom a screen in fact it's true you can't it's almost

like you are grooming it in a way i think that's some real shit i think we are i think we are grooming i think we're grooming the future the future race the future singularity whatever electronic age it seems like that definitely definitely could be the case it'd be interesting to see like the vision not that everything that i see in plant medicines comes to be true, but I would say 95% of it does. There was nothing to fear with the rise of AI. Yeah, with you. You are the cell phone. Seamless integration.

We're already integrated completely with it. Well, it's easy to shit on the cell phone. I'm not shitting on the cell phone. I think it's, with anything, it's a tool. A lot of people have said this more times. I don't need to say it again, but I'm going to I'm not, I'm not shitting on the cell phone. I think it's, if anything, it's a tool. I mean, everybody's, a lot of people said this more times. I don't need to say it again, but I'm going to say it again. You know, it's like a, it's like a knife. You can use a knife for, to cut your arm off or you can use it to like chop vegetables.

You know, so the cell phone is a full, powerful tool. Amazing tool. Incredible. You know, but I think that it's it's we need more emotional intelligence is the big thing yeah you know so that's something like we have other people have said this too i don't remember how it goes exactly but we have like the what was it like the technological intelligence of like a seventh grader and the emotional intelligence of like a four-year-old you know not that exactly but something around about you know like we have this we have like pretty pretty

deep technological intelligence maybe um but as far as the way people feel wielding all that stuff you know i don't i don't think it's it'sized. You know, it feels like there is a push though. I mean, obviously people listen to the show and, and, and line podcast are on the path, you know, they're trying to do shit, right. Uh, but you see it in corporate wellness, you know, XOs is in with Intel and Google and a ton of these giant corporations and they have nap pods and fucking full-blown crossfit workout centers on campus and all these different things and really good food where you can choose like any kind of food in every single building on the google campus um i think that's the shift going forward you know

and like here at on it we have unlimited pto obviously they fucking somebody's keeping an eye on that it's not like i can take off 300 days a year and still get paid the same yeah but i don't even know what pto means that's how time off no i know i know now after you said it yeah that's how yeah but like there's there's a lot of things like that where you have that kind of flexibility and um i think that's the shift we see because big corporations realize as you study this stuff that if you want better work output there should be time to meditate or time to nap in the middle of the day and then the second half your day will be way better you won't have that mid-afternoon lull and if there's good healthy

food you can grab then and there's still shit food there but you have the choice right and they they also did this too this is really cool was their biggest displays have green apples bananas and fruit and their smallest displays have like pop tarts and the bullshit that people would eat because they know the first thing you see that's what you gravitate towards yeah so like that it's everything is designed with intention and i think when you look at it that way it gives me hope for the future because we've been fucking so off course for so long. And it really is just negligence. It has nothing to do with ill will. It has nothing to do with, you know, I mean, I certainly think big agriculture, there's

a problem with big agriculture and things like that. But, you know, food scientists are going to make stuff flavorful. And as Rob Wolf talks about, we were wired to eat. So those flavor combinations make us want to eat more. But outside of that that there will be a return to eating whole foods and fucking really you know good things things that make us feel better that help us operate better yeah this is like a tinfoil rant so i'll keep it very limited but it really surprises me that that like the food substitutes like you're describing

like jolly ranches and shit are even legal oh yeah well in a lot of countries they aren't in like northern europe they're pretty pretty well regulated in fact craft had to change uh their mac and cheese in order to be able to sell it in there because they really protect children so they could they had to use a notto which is a natural food coloring for yellow, instead of like yellow one or whatever the fucking number is, right? They couldn't use artificial colors. They couldn't use artificial sweeteners. There's no aspartame allowed in chewing gum anywhere in Northern Europe, in the Nordic countries.

So, you know, and that's in our gum. It's in our Diet Coke. It's fucking everywhere. Yeah. You know, it's in sugar-free Red Bull. I mean, it's a neurotoxin. It's like nobody's looking out for us here. Your government's not looking out for you here.

I think people are looking out for us. I think in general, their intention, maybe not us, but they're looking out for something. I don't think the intention of most of these corporations is like evil well i would agree with most but i mean i don't think the intention of monsanto is to destroy the earth because then there's nobody left to sell i bet you from their perspective they think they're doing the best thing they can do but yeah i mean but they're not you know what i'm saying like they're not you could think like you could think like nor am i we're gonna solve world hunger by creating genetically modified foods and then that's the sales pitch you give to everyone they know better they know they're genetically modifying food

to use more glyphosate round up a product they make yeah you know i'm saying like they certainly they know that they at least know the the yeah it is for cash it's for profit absolutely yeah i just i feel as though we're a product of our environment. We're a product of our education, you know? And so these companies, they're getting the education that this is the way, you know, and this is the direction they go. And it's like what our species of human has done over millennia as we've figured out how to make our life more comfortable. And this gets back to, I'm veering back towards movement stuff because that's the only thing that I'd like spend any time like looking into, which I probably need to expand my horizons. But that's what we've done. We've ameliorated anything that's like challenging, physically challenging for our bodies to do.

And it's like like i think that the intention of that is positive you know like it started off positive you know and now it gets to the point where it's like okay we've gone kind of too far that we're kind of reaching like idiocracy level like like we're there you know if you look like go to a fucking hockey game or go to a football game nothing against anybody but like just look around the stands you know and i'm sure it's not you or your family i'm sure you guys are the ones that are like keeping it together but in general if you look around it's like oh it's okay like i see a I see an uncanny resemblance to, to that movie, I think, you know? And so, so within that, I think what we need to do is we just need to like, we need to do our own research.

Like we can't trust the man. Yeah. You can't go blind faith with anybody. You need to do your own research. You know, you need to seek out people that are, um, doing a good job, you know, seek out people that are bright in their you know you need to seek out people that are um doing a good job you know seek out people that are bright in their eyes you know seek out people that are healthy seek out people that are efficient so you feel like effective at what they're doing you know and that's the magic of things like this podcast that's the magic of things like like social media and like like we all have like these little kind of like our little like heroes that we can look up to. And I think that we're like, who watches the news? Do you watch the news?

No, but old people do. A lot of people do. Like newspapers? My family members watch the fucking news because they feel like they don't know what's going on in the world. I'm like, wait a minute. It's the bad news. You're going to learn what's bad in the world, not anything of relevance. We need to know what's terrible in the world. How can we go one without knowing that i can find out very like there was a you sent a package out to me

back in the day here in austin and there was an austin bomber who was making bombs at people's doorsteps in the form of a package and he fucked a lot of people up um that's an important thing to know if you live in austin well i don't't watch the news. And how did I hear about that? Word of mouth. Right. People are like, dude, you hear about that fucking Austin bomber? Yeah. And it's on Twitter.

It's on social media. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not a. But that's the thing. The things that you need to hear. You're going to surface. Will make it onto Twitter. Yeah, you don't have to watch to hear. Because you actually have people that you intentionally follow.

Mm-hmm. You know, so if you see like a light, know of like i like that guy whatever he's done working whatever he's reading about i want to read it yeah you know or you can listen to like the just the bad news like just what's what's projected in order to get you to you know what what what what bleeds leads you know so it's just that shock factor of getting and that's i mean social media is certainly guilty of that as well but you can still be decisive upon who you're falling within social media yeah you know so it feels to me as as though there is like a transition happening where you

can actually choose you can actually make a conscious decision of where your information comes from yeah it's pretty cool which podcast to listen to obviously y'all are listening to podcasts that's awesome but i mean like there's i see that shift coming to just look at the way podcasting is blown up and look at the way youtube is blown up and obviously there's a lot of bullshit on youtube there's a lot of bullshit in podcasts but the cream rises to the top mr and alexander and you have one of my favorite podcasts i'm about to jump on it bam we need a potty break it It's been a quick 40, 45. Right, Ryan Giles? How long was that? 48. There we go. Damn, your timing.

That's a good indication that you have solid introspection skills. Oh, but you've been looking at your fucking cell phone. Never mind. You thought I had my internal clock going? No, that's real tough. I'm trying to keep us on track. You've got to massage Aubrey's genitals later. It's 11 or 2. You've got to get his on track. You got to massage Aubrey's genitals later. Oh, yeah. We're going to do an intra-anal massage.

No, we're not. That's right. You got to get his deep prostate going. Jesus. All right. I love you, brother. I love you. Align podcast.

We're going over to the other side, the dark side. Align therapy. We'll link to all the fucking social medias. Align therapy is not a thing. It's just Align podcast. Okay. Align podcast. What's your social handle?

Align podcast. Okay. Yeah. Website's Align podcast. All that stuff's the line podcast cool easy peasy easy peasy jumping over all right thanks for listening thank you guys for tuning in to hoh with aaron alexander from align podcast hope you guys dug it remember 10 off all supplements and food products at on it.com slash podcast and go out and get yourself at onnit.com slash podcast. And go out and get yourself from elidenpodcast.com. One of his amazing travel bands. This thing has a little door jam. You stick

it into a door. So if you're in a hotel or an Airbnb, or even at the house, you can just latch this thing. You can even latch it into your fucking car door if you're camping and you can open up your body. He has a ton of free videos online, much like our good friend, Dr. Kelly Sturette. And you can check out all the different ways you can open up your body with his Align band at alignpodcast.com. Thanks for tuning in.