Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1742: Improve Your Life & Overcome Pain With Movement Featuring Aaron Alexander

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin interview Aaron Alexander. The current state of Aaron. (2:12) The reality of becoming the shape of the place you spend a lot of time in. (6:03) Defining the outcomes you prefer to achieve, and reverse engineering your lifestyle back from that point. (8:31) How much of an improvement can you make in your movement as an adult? (11:48) Practical advice for the average person looking to make improvements in their daily lives. (14:52) Why structured workouts don’t matter much if you haven’t addressed your fundamental lifestyle conditions. (21:55) The driving force behind his latest book. (26:36) The staple movements he loves to put the body in and why. (27:44) Why do we breathe the way that we breathe? (31:54) The practices he has for his clients to help with anxiety and depression. (41:15) Why he left Los Angeles. (50:21) Do not be afraid to ask more questions. (53:50) Why the worst thing to happen is nothing at all. (59:10) The value in building strong mental patterns. (1:03:55) What is pain? (1:09:55) Does he see a renewed interest in people wanting to improve their health and fitness? (1:17:32) Related Links/Products Mentioned February Promotion: MAPS Performance and MAPS Aesthetic 50% off!! **Promo code “FEB50” at checkout** Visit Super Coffee for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “MINDPUMP” at checkout** African hunter-gatherers prefer squatting to sitting — and this may explain why they’re healthier Shoulder Pain? The Solution & Prevention, Revised & Expanded – Book by John M. Kirsch M.D. Association of Grip Strength With Risk of All-Cause Mortality, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Cancer in Community-Dwelling Populations: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Align Podcast: Bruce Lipton: Why Your Consciousness Creates your Biology Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art – Book by James Nestor Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life: The Dangers of Mouth Breathing and Why Nose or Nasal Breathing is Preferred, Based on the Native American Experience – Book by George Catlin The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques for a Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter You – Book by Patrick McKeown Amy Cuddy: Your body language may shape who you are | TED Talk Good posture is important for physical and mental health Mind Pump #1490: How To Improve Your Posture Average undesired weight gain reported by adults in the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as of Feb. 2021, by demographic Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Aaron Alexander (@alignpodcast)  Instagram Aaron Alexander Website Dr. John Kirsch Bruce H. Lipton, PhD Pavel Tsatsouline (@strongfirst)  Instagram Patrick McKeown (@buteykoclinic)  Instagram Wim Hof (@iceman_hof)  Instagram Steven Lin (@drstevenlin)  Instagram Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)  Instagram Dr. John Sarno

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, right in today's episode. We talk about all about movement, the value of movement. How to inject certain movements into your day to improve your mobility, your health, your wellbeing,

to lift you out of depression and anxiety, especially during these really weird times. And we talked to our friend Aaron Alexander. He's a podcast host of the Align Method and wrote a book, excuse me, Align Podcast and wrote a book called The Align Method. Great book, he's a movement specialist, super intelligent guy, we had a great discussion

with him on this particular podcast. Now, this podcast is brought to you by Super Coffee. Now, if you like coffee, that's great, but try Super Coffee. It has added ingredients to make the caffeine more effective, things like theanine that make that buzz smoother and last longer. They also have coffees that are protein infused, so you don't just drink regular coffee. You got coffee with protein and maybe even some medium-chain triglycerides make you feel

really good. It's a great company, great natural pre-workout. Go check them out. Head over to mindpumppartners.com. Click on super coffee and use the code mindpump for 25% off your entire purchase. Also, we're running a sale right now on two very popular maps, workout programs. Okay, so the first program that's on sale is maps, performance. That program's all about training to move and look like an athlete. The other program that's on sale is Maps Esthetic. This is a bodybuilder-inspired program designed to help you develop symmetry, balance, and developed muscles. They're both 50% off.

Okay, so it's a huge sale. Here's how you can get access to either one. If you want Maps Performance, go to MapsGreen.com. If you want Maps Esthetic, go to Mapsgreen.com. If you want maps aesthetic, go to mapsblack.com. For both of them, the discount code is F-E-B-50 for 50% off. So what do you been up to? I was on your show recently, but we really wouldn't get a chance to talk about you too much

and what your business is up to and what you've been up to. And you obviously look healthy, you always look real healthy. Thanks, man. What's going on? Is this for recorded podcasters? This is for a catch up. Oh I see, you're gonna, you wanna, you wanna, there's a stuff you can tell the audience,

the stuff you can't tell them. Oh no, no. No, if you're recording, you know, there's a guy, he's like, this is what I'm doing, you know. You don't wanna sound cocky. We were like, oh, pretty much fucking crushing life since you asked at him.

Yeah, exactly. No, we're the people there's a lot of it. Pretty much fucking crushing life since you asked at him. Yeah, exactly. No, we're the people that listen. This is for the podcast, but yeah, let us know what you've been up to, man. Well, I mean, I think the, obviously, the last year been working on the book, which is really exciting, and transitioned to Austin, Texas, which is exciting. So that's been kind of went through like a whole phase of

slowly, gradually working my way into even like a higher level of minimalism than was before. As, you know, preparation of transition to leave L.I.M. if to Austin. So don't waste a lot of time. I'm just gonna expand on that because you're a good person to expand on this. Yeah, what do you mean by, like, you're in that you're in a transition of minimalism while you're also scaling and probably becoming more and more successful. So talk to me about what that's like. Yeah. Well, so minimizing material stuff and really just kind of

doing an examination or an audit of each of the things that I have in my life. And that includes components in the business and people involved in the business and offerings within the business. And so things that we're not actually bringing, you know, like, Proto's principle, we're the 20, 20, 20% of things that are providing 80% of the value. They're the things that we're not actually providing that value from both the material, like, stuff perspective and also from a, like a courses and programs that we're offering perspective, just cutting out the superfluous stuff to have more focus on the few things that I actually value. And moving is such a beautiful

way to do that because you know you're forced to fit everything into a handful of boxes and transition to a new place. You know, and so that's been that's been the thing. It's like forcing myself to do that. Anything that you were reluctant to let go of or that you have found a little challenging. I wrestle with this thing all the time. Like, ah, should I cut back on some of these things? I was always like, I want to fire everyone. No, really though, like where there are things in your life that you felt were you know you were wasting money on or you had

and you didn't need that you decided to cut out and were there anything that you struggled with letting go of? No, I find letting go of stuff incredibly gratifying. So there is not a lot to tip. I'm actually on the other end where I'm eager to let go of stuff. not a lot, I'm actually on the other end where I'm eager to let go of stuff. There hasn't so, I think it's something that's invaluable coming from a business lens specifically or really anyone is having an outside eyes on what you're doing. So for us, we just recently hired a couple of new people that are, you know, they're just really excellent with systems and marketing and organization and, you know, funnels and offerings and all of that.

And you know, those are things that I'm not good with, you know, like I'm better with being creative and connecting and commuting and all that stuff. You know, so having outside eyes to look in and say, here's exactly what we need to be doing. This other stuff, there's ideas that you had, they're great, but they're kind of just like noise to defining what you actually want. And so having outside eyes in the form of a coach

has been really supportive. Yeah, Aaron, you're one of those rare individuals that lives the things that he communicates. You do very much. When I met you, you could tell. I mean, you live the way that you talk, which is a bit rare. So you talk about minimizing things.

What does that look like in terms of the space you live in? Does that mean you live in a really small place with just kind of the stuff that you need? You only have a couple pairs of shoes. You don't have very many clothes or they'll look like something different. No, it's just looking, so walking into a room and you know, how does that just paying attention to how that room viscerally makes a person feel, I think is quite valuable. And then also acknowledging the reality that you become the shape of the room that you spend a lot of time in. You know, like the Jim Rohn quote, you become the product of the five people you spend

the most time with. You know, there's a Winston Churchill quote first, like we this in the in the Alive Method book. First, we shape our houses and then eventually they shape us. You know, so having that acknowledgement and awareness that you literally become the shape of the space that you're in. And so for me, walking into my home, the first thing you see is there's a view out into nature.

So there's like a little dog park across the street and then there's a river across the street. That was very much by design. I was looking for a place where I can look out and be like with the nature. We can get into why that matters. And then my place looks pretty normal. I have a flat screen TV on the wall. I have a couch.

There's lots of plants and books and stuff around. The difference would be that would be kind of like define, this place compared to maybe someplace else would be, there's ample space to move around on the ground. So I have a comfortable rug. Right now as we're recording this, I'm sitting on this infrared mat. I have like a, you know, a little myofascial ball thing here. I've got this little prickly pad, whatever sleep induction mat. I've got like self-care crap all over the place. I'm sitting on a floor cushion. So while we're having this conversation,

I'm in a body of bond. Right, like a bond right now. That's, improves the testosterone. Yeah, that's right, Red. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's good. So during this conversation, it's an opportunity for us to take this time

and like do some freaking yoga or FRC or whatever mobility work that we'd prefer to do with our toes and our ankles and our knees and our hips and our lower back and pelvic floor muscles. Yeah, I want to comment on that because again, he does what he says. I know someone may be watching this and saying, oh yeah, but does he really do that? He does. You come into a room and there's no camera, there's no nothing and you'll start stretching and moving on the floor

because you take that as an opportunity. Now, I'm on a chair right now, and this is pretty much how I am most of the day, just sitting in this chair, probably not ideal, but I think what you do is a good idea, especially because we're so sedentary all day long that it keeps things healthy and moving properly. And I have no interest in being the outlandish,

heretical look at me, five finger toe, barefoot guy, but hole gazing, like in the middle of a mall, like I don't, I don't, I don't not care to be different. I don't care to make a point of this. Whatever. Like I don't, I don't think I have like no interest in identifying with like, oh, I'm the guy doing something different. To me, I find the concept of,

hang, if you're waiting for a bus, or you're in an airport waiting for your plane, the concept of you having access to the natural human arresting position of popping a squat, like that's just normal. Yeah. So it's re-normalizing that. And so when someone looks and is like,

oh, wow, you're like a yogi, you're like a malasna. It's like, no, this is a fucking squat. Like this is just you resting in your body. Yeah, that's a good point. It's more natural and normal than what I'm doing, which is sitting in a chair. Well, there's no normal or natural, it's like the naturalistic fallacy, just because

something's natural makes it better. It's just defining what are the outcomes that you prefer to achieve and then reverse engineering your lifestyle and your environment and your relationships and your nutrition and everything back from that point. And so if you look at cultures, so there's recently some research from University of Southern California, a researcher went out and spent time with HOTSA in northern Tanzania, and they strapped the HOTSA tribes people up with these mechanisms that could measure the range of motion of their hips and their knees. And they found that the tribesmen were going through a similar amount of, or they're spending

similar amount of time in resting positions as industrialized cultures, the average that came up with is 9.82 hours per day. The difference was the manner that they're resting. So they're kneeling, they're squatting, they're essentially just hanging out like any human being pre-kindergarten would hang out. The way a human being pre-kindergarten, pre- you know, the indoctrination of the desk and sitting and you're sick if you're not able to sit and stare into a book or into a screen all day, concept. That's a learned thing that happens around age five, depending on unless you're going like a Waldorf school or something. Before that, you pretty much

do all this stuff. And that's what a primate would do. That's what a person in, you know, a more of like ancestral lifestyle would do, it's very freaking normal. That's just normal. I have a question for you around that, Aaron, because it brings up a lot of questions actually. One of the main ones is, we're raised in these Western industrialized societies, and for better or worse, it's just different

than the way our bodies evolved for most human history. And you named some of it, right? We're sitting on chairs, we're sitting in front of desks. We wear shoes all the time. And there's a lot of the development and plasticity of the brain in the body that occurs when we're young, that we lose somewhat as we get older.

Like for example, you could teach a six year old or a seven year old multiple languages and once they learn all of them, they don't have an accent either in any of them. They speak them fluently with no accent or with the proper accent, I should say, as an adult, you learn another language. You can learn it, but you'll always have an accent in the accent of the primary language that you've learned when you were a kid because that plasticity is somewhat lost. How much of an improvement can you make in your movement as an adult when you were a kid because that plasticity is somewhat lost. How much of an improvement can you make in your movement as an adult when you were a kid, when you wore shoes and you sat at desks and is there a significant amount of difference you can make and can you go all the way back to what your body was supposed to be able

to do or is some of that lost permanently because you lost those formative, I guess, plastic years? I think the only, the only permanent loss in a body and would be a surgery. If you have a metal plate in place of what used to be bone and it was still undergoing wolf's law, you know, where it's going to be changing based off its environmental stimuli. In that case, it's a different scenario. I love surgery. I have lots of friends who have hit hip surgeries, various surgeries. I think it's like really changed your life for better. But that's the only variable where it's like, well, like now we're working with something different than this really highly adaptable biological system.

But if you're younger, obviously your body's going to be able to change with a bit more quickness, but no, your body's continually under a state of construction 100% of the time. As we're having this conversation, we're all going through this magical electrical process called mechanotransduction, and essentially your butts by being in contact with the chairs the way that they are. And if someone's taking a walk listening to this, perhaps they're having that contact with the feet and the various tensions that are pulling throughout every muscle and all the connective tissue through your body. It's creating electrical stimuli. It's

called piezoelectricity. And you guys already know all about this. And it's sending thezoelectricity, and you guys already know all about this. And it's sending the signal to your clasped and blast cells, fibroclasts and osteo-class and these cells that chew up tissue or build tissue back. It's sending the signal to those cells on how to grow. So 100% of the time, as long as you're living, sentient, walking, locomoting, being, your body is continually under constant development. That doesn't change.

Do you have any advice for the average person who, you know, because one of the challenges I encountered as a trainer was initially, there were so many things I'd want people to change, right? They'd come to me and say they want to lose weight. And I'm like, okay, here's the list of all the things that we can do to maximize your results. And I quickly learned, I don't want to say quickly, I actually took me years to figure out that.

It just didn't work for most people because there was too much, it was too much all at once and I had to kind of really focus on small changes and things that had a large impact in relationship to the time that it was taken to do them. And I had to learn how to become effective essentially in that sense. And just accept that most people are not gonna be

fitness fanatics. Do you have like real practical advice or tips for people along these lines for the average person? Not the fitness fanatic, but somebody is, you know, they go to the gym twice a week and they wanna improve their health. Like are there like easy or, I don't wanna say easy, but simple changes that can yield a good

measurable change or response that they can do in their normal lives? Yeah, million percent. To me, I think with working with clients or the whole function of writing the Alive Method book was to provide all of the simple, tangible tips and trips, tricks, and kind of like lifestyle, subtle lifestyle shifts that we can make, that it's almost like imperceptible, but they end up having massive impact. And so a big part of that would be

like going back to the shape of your environment. If you have a space in your home where it does naturally make sense to go through the full up and down range of motion and getting up and down off the ground. Again, I feel it feels almost dumb to talk about because it should I mean, should the dumb word too, but it ideally it would have just already been happening and never would have been taking away. Right. suddenly a culture starts drinking a quarter of the amount of water that would be optimal for hydration. And then suddenly, 80 years later, people are like, I think we need to drink a little bit

more water. And it sounds like this wild idea. And so when you're going up and down through that full range of motion, fall risk is the number one leading reason for elderly needed assisted living. How many millions or billions of dollars is invested and elderly needing support? Because there's a danger, there's a risk of falling into the ground and not being able to get back up

and needing to be supported in that way. I mean, that's just so much, even outside of the money, just like the sovereignty and autonomy of our grandparents and our parents and eventually ourselves. That doesn't need to happen. Just even that in and of itself, if that was the only thing that this conversation was about,

I think that would be enough. From there, going into saying, another thing that's pretty relevant, especially right now, you know, would be having full functional range of motion of your rib cage and, you know, your lung capacity, being able to access that vital lung capacity. And if we are sitting, hunching over a lot, you know, slouched over into a chair, it's not a good or bad moralistic thing. It just happens to cause those ribs to start to lose their potential to go through that full range of motion. Like each rib when you breathe, ideally it should move like the handle of a bucket. So inhalation, it's coming up, exhalation's coming down, inhalation's coming up, and it's going through this full range of motion.

If we're continually stuck in one range, those intercostal muscles aren't able to function optimally. Those ribs are not able to go through that full range of motion, there's going to be a limitation in your ability to breathe. And so something really simple that we could do to change that relationship would just be get our freaking hands up over our head. And then from there, maybe grab a bar, grab a tree branch, and just hang. And so it doesn't need to be, I'm on this sweet pull-up program. And I'm going, getting gains, and I'm doing muscle ups, and I'm getting famous on Instagram. It could literally just be, throw a pull-up bar in between any doorway that you pass through

regularly. You're changing your visual field, you're changing the shape of your environment. And then it's almost like your arms are lifted up above your head for you. Like if you walk past a pull-up bar in a doorway, seven out of ten times, you'll probably just naturally go like, woo, you'll do a little swing through there just because it's there. So you multiply that times a day, a week, a month, a year, that starts to be really meaningful impact. And there's a whole book about this called Shoulder Pain by a orthopedic surgeon called Dr. John Kirsch. And he found

that working in the specific study, we had this he found that there was 92 subjects in the study. All of them were potentially going to undergo surgery for shoulder impingement syndrome. And what he found was that 90 out of 92 were able to be completely relieved of any pain and recover full range of motion by simply going through a very basic hanging protocol daily. It was total out about 90 seconds in total. I go over this and hanging chapter in the line of the book. And then there's just a few other simple exercises. All that stuff we include in there. And it's just like, it's another thing where it's like,

it almost is like, oh, I can't believe that this is the conversation. But a lot of the most simple tools are the most effective. And as we get over complicated with our approach to things, oftentimes, it's just kind of confusing and we end up having lots of complex, highly nuanced debates that go nowhere. No one's arguing with, it grip is a better indicator for cardiovascular health than blood pressure. You know, so I include that in the book as well.

It's like, I don't remember the exact numbers. You can look it up, but every thing is like every seven pound increase or decrease in hand grip, it would increase the likelihood by some specific percentage of suffering, a heart attack or some type of cardiovascular disease in your life. And it's sorry for messing with, I don't know if that the exact statistics are on that, but anybody can just look up that research study and get all the details. And like those basic fundamentals, they're consistent across all cultures, all languages, men,

women, you know, any person. And most of us have this really, just glaring, low hanging fruit sitting in front of us. And we're not taking advantage of that. And then we're going for this really complex protocols. So all I'm saying is like, first, let's clean up the low hanging fruit. That's just like in your home, in your office, in your travel. And then from there, let's do some of the more complex stuff. Now, would you say your main mission and what you've been writing about the most in your books

is to kind of teach people how to incorporate a lot of these like primal fundamental type movements that will benefit their body the most without necessarily having to create the structured workout and programming and are you more focused on just, you know, here's a few things that you can do to really help your body out right now as it stands in your crazy lifestyle that you have going on. Yeah, I like structured workouts and programs, but I don't care about them as much if we haven't addressed the fundamental lifestyle conditions. And the reason that I have that perspective is because I worked with clients. My my soul work for 12 years before starting, even having a social media handle or starting a podcast or anything like that, was just working with clients to try to help them achieve their

fitness goals or relief pain goals or whatever their physical goals were. What I found with that was that we would have really, you know, we would get great results. And then that back thing or knee thing or shoulder thing that was totally gone for six days or 10 days would start to drift back. You know, I'd say see that pattern happening enough times or if it's, you know, you're on like some yo-yo diet thing

or some, you know, workout thing. You look jacked in tan for three months. Everyone's like, oh my god, you're amazing. And then you see that person again in another three months, you're like, oh my god, what happened? So to me, I'm saying, what's the container that this plan exists in? So then I kind of wound back and said,

okay, I'm now I'm really interested in your container. And that's like, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Bruce Lipton, is it kind of like pioneer concepts around epigenetics. And he was a cell biologist or still is a cell biologist. And what he said to me in a podcast I did with him a couple of years ago was that when he was in his lab, if they wanted to create a change in the cells and a petri dish, you don't do anything

to the cell. You change the culture that the cell exists within and then the cell shifts because the cell is an extension or a continuation of the culture that it resides in. You know? And so, like... Oh, I had to leave LA. is an extension or a continuation of the culture that it resides in. And so, like, Oh, I had to leave LA. Oh, yeah. I mean, so yeah, I mean, you think about that. That's like, you can, you're, we're sensitive to our environment.

You know, we're sensitive to the people around. We're sensitive to, you know, if you live in a cult, like I just had a consultation call with someone in Sweden before this, and they are, they're feeling kind of like low energy, and like they know the things to do, but they just don't really have that motivation to do it. And so we go through them, like, well,

how much sunlight are you getting in a day? They're like, well, not enough. I work in cryptocurrency, I'm on my computer all day long, in my office, I'm on my chair, like, I'm like, well, not enough. I work in cryptocurrency. I'm on my computer all day long in my office, I'm on my chair. Like, I'm like, okay, I mean, inadequate exposure to sunlight and vitamin D levels, like that's associated to depression.

And, you know, like every did form of dis-E as you can think of, there's gonna be some relationship in there. Well, maybe not everyone, but vitamin D is important for a lot of functions in the body. And so that was just blatantly obvious low-hanging fruit. I'm like, what are we even talking about if you're not getting enough sun each day? It's like calling and saying, I have this flower

and it's wilting and it just won't grow. And it's in a closet, I don't understand why isn't it growing. It's like, well, do you take it outside at all? And so it's just interesting to me how obvious, not obvious, but how many people know what to do. And a lot of the solutions are quite simple. And if you really get under the hood of a lot of people's lifestyles, it's like, oh my God, there's so much here.

I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, we don't need to add a lot. I like what you're saying about changing the environment. I remember as a kid, when I was a kid I did judo and one of the students there, his, his family was from Japan. And I remember visiting them and seeing everybody sit on the floor when we ate a meal. And they, and it was old young. Everybody sat on the floor real comfortably.

And I remember thinking, that's so uncomfortable. And I asked them about it and he's like, well, young, everybody sat on the floor real comfortably, and I remember thinking that's so uncomfortable, and I asked them about it and he's like, well, no, it's very comfortable. Oh, of course, because you do this every single day, like this is how you sit down, and we kind of lost that ability. So what was the main motivation for your new book and who did you write it for? Like, what's the, what was the driving force behind the latest book that you're putting out here? So this is an expanded and revised version

of a book that came out a couple of years ago. So a big part of it, one, I wanted to add a more movement to the book. So in the end, we include essentially like a 40 to 45 minute movement sequence program that people can follow with regularity and essentially just goes through and gets in like all the nooks and crannies of every joint in the body and a pretty simplistic way. And then also, you know, when, if you do a book, you know, you write it when I wrote it

three years ago, like my mind changes and personality changes and voice changes, you know, and so having the opportunity to go through and refine and make it be just more in my voice was a really amazing opportunity, the publishers, you know, offered me to do. And so yeah, it was just an opportunity to kind of go through and like refine and bring it up to date to now three years later. Aaron, you mentioned the dead hang, which I love that. What are some other either movements or isometric positions that you love? What are some staple movements or positions

that you love to put the body in and why? Well, I mean, be defining movement. I think from the lens of kind of like we're talking about it I think that coming into Breathing would be a form of movement You know, and so starting to pay attention to the way that you way that you breathe so two things one from like a weightlifting perspective starting to understand Your ability to create intramdenial pressure, bracing your spine naturally

when you're picking up heavy stuff off of the ground, or even if you're doing a push up, or if you're throwing a punch, or throwing a kick, to be able to access Dr. Stuart McGill calls it the double pulse, where if you're throwing a punch or throw a kick, you're first going to stabilize through your midline. You're going to get really tight like a stone for a second to create leverage, and then your appendage turns into a whip,

comes out, and then turns a stone again upon impact, and then released and you go through that cycle. In order to do that, you need to be able to move your torso into a strong stable, well-oriented position to create leverage for the rest of the body. You know, so a great starting point for that would be just paying attention to breathing through the nose. If you're breathing through the nose throughout the day, and we can talk about like specific, like, exercise things as well. But when I hear like movement, you know, my mind typically goes in other directions, but just paying attention to the value and getting air through the nose because lots of reasons. One, it slows down the amount of air that you can take in. So you're going to take in about 30th amount of air. So every time you're

taking a breath with your nose, you're going to be engaging those diaphragmatic muscles. You know, and so when you're breathing as well, a movement to pay attention to is bring your hands down the side of the ribs and breathing horizontally. You could call it a breathing outward, bringing that breath into the low back. So bring your hands into your low back

and pay attention to just, can you create that pressure? Can you create a little engagement or like almost like a pushing sensation in your low back. And if you can do that just when you're hanging out, then that sets you up to be able to do a deadlift or do a squat or do a pushup or do anything meaningful with your body

where you're creating leverage. You know, so what's like a move that I would do, I would say start paying attention to that pretty much all the time, what's a tip that could start to help people to be able to engage that and understand like what that is as opposed to like just like a theoretical concept, you get a weight belt.

The value of a weight belt isn't because it just stabilizes your spine, it's because it teaches your body how to create that intramural pressure and actually have a feedback mechanism to be able to push against the belt so you create your own stabilization. So I think a kind of like a static type movement or like one thing that I think would be really helpful for a lot of people is invest in a little weight belt. You just get like a Velcro one, just kind of push this so you get pressure around your midsection and start tinkering

with creating that outward pressure while you are in the gym doing, you could try it with a push up, try it with a squat, try it with a lunge, try it with a military press. You know, most of these movements that we're doing, if we're not stabilizing through the midsection, you know, Pavel Satsulin, I think it's his analogy,

where he talks about it's like shooting a cannon out of a canoe. If you're shooting a cannon out of a canoe, you wreck your canoe. Like if you want a big old cannon, you need to first stabilize your midsection or your canoe. So that would be something that I would think as far as, you know, I don't know, like a dumbbell curls or something. Like I think that getting

into the root of how do we do all of the movements, understanding how to engage with our breath efficiently is going to be crown zero. Yeah, you know, Aaron, oftentimes when we lose the ability to do something, I guess, properly or in an optimal way, it's because we've learned to do that thing in a different way that's more optimal based off of what we're asking everybody to do. For example, if I walk in high heels all the time, then my body's gonna learn how to walk well in heels, but it's not gonna be very good at walking

without the heels and ultimately walking in heels is a sub-optimal way to walk because humans didn't evolve necessarily, walking with our heels so elevated. So here's the direction I'm going. We're talking about breathing. And I've heard lots of people say, we don't breathe right or we breathe suboptimally. Like why? Why do we, why do we breathe the way that we breathe? What is that benefiting or why have we learned to breathe in ways that are not optimal for, you know, rib function, oxygen utilization, relaxation, like all the things people say.

I mean, there's a lot of other, like there's interesting, there's the the breathe book by James Nester. There's shut your mouth, close your shut your mouth, save your life by, who is it, George Catlin, oxygen advantage, butaco method, to be great places to go with this. There's a lot of different muing, John Mu, like there was anything in the realm of, what is it called, functional? I forgot the other term for it,

but all of those directions would be, there's would be great channels to go down with that. I think it can start from being a baby, you know, maybe you had like a tongue tie would be one potential thing. And then as a child, you weren't able to naturally have your tongue rest up on the roof of the mouth. And so then you're going to naturally be breathing through your mouth, likely throughout the day.

Like right now, people listening, if you just bring your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, then you're not going to breathe through your mouth. I just did that right now. You're saying that. That's such a simple great tip right there. Like as you were talking, I did that. And then it just forces you to go right to your nose instead of your brain. Is that part of the muing method where it's also affected orthodontics? Exactly. Yeah. So your tongue acts as a natural retainer for your upper palate or your maxilla. So when you are naturally just breathing like a human, once again, like this is just

breathing like a human. This isn't some wild crazy thing. This is just accessing the 30 odd functions that your nose, your nasal passages have specifically for respiration and like the one that your mouth does. Your mouth just allows you to get a lot of air quick. Like that's the function of your mouth from a breathing perspective. But if you're over breathing and this kind of gets into like Patrick McEwan and Oxygen Advantage and would take a method, If you're over breathing, your cells become less effective at releasing oxygen.

So your red blood cells, they end up, they have a higher, it's called oxygen binding affinity when you have a lot of air. And so when you're breathing all the time, your cells essentially become lazy because they think that your body has access to all the air in the world. When you reduce the amount of air

that your body has access to, by nasal breathing will be one thing. Just slowing down your breath through your nose would be helpful as well. And when you're breathing ideally, I got this from Patrick McEwan as well, who he helped revise the nose breathing chapter and Wim Hof helped with it as well.

Well, Wim Hof didn't really help. He read through and like, gave me a thumbs up. He's like, he's like, I like it. But when you're breathing, ideally, it should be so soft and so smooth that you don't even feel the little hairs inside your nose moving. Like they should just be still. You know, and you shouldn't, if someone, if you approach someone and you can hear them heavy breathing, that's an indication that that person is sick,

or they're winded, if they're winded, that's fine. But if you're at rest, you're like, like that person, you're like, oh my God, like they need help, I hope that my parents. I hope that my parents, like 500 pounds are, you know what I mean? But maybe it's like, right, right. Exactly my first. Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then within, so there's a lot of things. I know the question was, how does this happen in the first place? There's a lot of potential reasons this happens in the first place. Another direction, because pre-agrarian age, and like even into researching into like Native Americans and such. Having malocclusion or crooked teeth was pretty much like an non-event. And the reason for that

is the body naturally has this retaining mechanism called your tongue that maintains spaciousness in the mouth, and also naturally you're probably going to be eating rougher foods. So when you're eating rougher foods, you're gnawing through a stick, or you're biting on whatever it is you need to bite because you don't have a bunch of really sharp razor blades. So maybe you kind of like are using your mouth like a tool, kind of like you use the rest of your body like a tool. Like you pick something up off of the ground, you're essentially outsourcing your muscles to be a tool to pick something up off of the ground.

Your masseter muscles and everything, like it's all fair game. And so if you're actively utilizing those muscles, then those muscles respond and you're going to have a stronger jawline and you might have, you're not going to that like, receding chin. I just had Stephen Lennon my podcast, he's a functional dentist and we got really deep into the value of fat soluble vitamins, which are missing from a lot of modern people's diets, particularly AD and K3. And they have this interesting like trilogy where they affect with each other, they all pair off each other to help with your bony development and development of more things than just bones.

And so if you're missing some of those natural foods, such as maybe organ meats and things of the sort, where they're very rich in this fat-saleable vitamins, that also is gonna impact your bony development. But the big, very clear elephant in the room is if you have crooked teeth or your mouth breathing, any of that, just look at where is your tongue. And if you want to get stronger and more efficient with the way that you move, that tongue, engagement of the tongue, is actually as well going to be helpful with

engagement of the tongue is actually as well, going to be helpful with increasing strength, as well as jaw strength. If you're squeezing down your jaw and there's been research for this in relation to pull-ups, people on average can get a couple more pull-ups out. So when you're going to pull up, if you have a mouthpiece, or I've seen it done where you have a little weight or around your mouth, and it's like hanging down,

you're like, you got to hold all the weight up. You actually end up, and I think what this would ultimately probably relate to would be one, maybe some better orientation of the cervical spine, you know, and like maybe find like neutrality in the spine. But I think a big thing is, is concept that you guys are probably familiar with called irradiation, which is like one of the Sheraton's laws. It's essentially when you are contracting that by having a stronger contraction, it allows you the potential to engage more motor units throughout the whole body. So the more of your body that you use, the stronger your body will become.

So if you're doing a bench press, for example, or a squat or anything, ideally that bench press movement, which you guys know way more about this, I think, like these topics that I do, I'm more of an enthusiast, but a strong bench presser is going to be bench pressing with every freaking muscle in their body. It's by no means like a pec major, pec minor tricep into your adult exercise. And if it is that, you probably don't have a big bench press. And so incorporated in that would be, look like tongue posture and jaw posture

and really a whole body. Yeah, no, this is true. I remember reading about Weston A. Price. He was a dentist that traveled the world and he would take pictures of these, what they referred to as primitive people's teeth and jaws. And noticed, none of them had dental care, but nobody had cavities, nobody needed braces,

nobody needed their wisdom teeth pulled out. And it was really big, straight teeth and jaws and he all related it to their diet. I'm sure that they, very little grains and lots of animal meat and proteins and tubers and vegetables, and they had like different shaped faces, jaws, and their teeth were all extremely healthy. So, yeah, I've read a lot about what you're saying, and it's quite interesting that it worked out that way.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, and again, once again, it like comes back to very simplistic, almost like silly concepts, like a lot of the things that make us really healthy. It's like, oh yeah, you mean that those things that people were like the brutes were doing? You know, the people that we think are like, oh, like simple minded is like, yeah, exactly They were from a cellular biological perspective winning. Yeah, the simple tense. That's true Now Aaron, I got I got a good question for you because you know, we're talking about kind of the challenges of modern life And you know, we've changed our environments so much and like you said the body adapts to the environment and

requirements so much. And like you said, the body adapts to the environment. And especially the last couple of years, we've gone through a very kind of strange, I guess, stress-filled time for a lot of people. We see anxiety and depression at record levels. And I think stress, although we've always experienced stress, it's very different now, right? It's not as extreme and acute, but it's kind of this constant level of stress that we have or constantly reminded to be afraid because of media and social media and it's just, it's very different. Do you have any practices for your clients around this, especially over the last couple years? Do you tell them to avoid like social media media or have like a day where they black everything out and they're just disconnected from all that stuff. Is there anything that you've done

to help people through this? Yeah, I mean the irony is when we are looking into our cell phones, which is where most people are probably consuming most of their media at this point, you are one, myopically focusing your eyes and on a single point like you would if there was a predator outside. And when you are in that myopically focused position, which Andrew Huberman is someone that's, you know, he's quite brilliant in this whole conversation. He also helped revise the vision chapter in my book. I'm very grateful for him for doing that.

You're literally, you're, you're, you're team your autonomic nervous system to already be in a threat response. Interesting. Which is impressive. And then if you were also to piggyback on that, it's like, okay, cool. Vision affects autonomic nervous system. It's continuous with our central nervous system. When you are in a relaxed visual posture, you're taking in the panorama, you're just spacing out. If an animal is under threat, they don't space out. They don't just like, unless maybe they're going into

like a freeze mode, and they're like playing dead, which is a whole other level. But if you're just having a moment, you're just like, oh, you're just kind of taking in the whole horizon of the whole panorama, you're not being chased by anything. You don't suspect there's a panther in the woods. You're just taking it all in.

And so your autonomic nervous system is also tied into that, say, ah, okay, you know, mind pump crew is relaxing, they're chilling. Now, let's start to put the body into a place where we can rest my chest and repair and go into that response. And so that's the first thing, it's understanding that your vision is a tool.

It's like a toggle that you can pull on to affect your state. And then another interesting thing is postural patterns. This is obviously contentious territory. The whole concept of postural feedback that when you are in certain positions, they make you feel a certain way when you're in other positions, they make another way.

There's like the Amy Cutty Research from Harvard where they suggested that being in a superwoman pose can increase testosterone levels and decrease cortisol. The inverse happens when they're kind of like a hunched over, like I lost position. You know, there's a lot of contention going back and forth with that. But if you look at any, you know, watch a UFC fighter come into a ring. Like, they're not going to come into the ring typically in a position where they're kind of like just hunched over and kind of knees are

dropping in valgusly and shoulders are rolling forward and they're kind of forward head posture and they're kind of moping in. You almost exclusively not see that. You know, and in culture, it's a similar thing. We're always conveying this information back and forth to each other. You know, and there was a study from San Francisco State University where they took different groups of students. They had one group in a hunched over posture, and then another group in it, and just like an upright, like a super one type posture. And what they found was it was easy for people in the upright posture to be able to remember past positive experiences in their lives.

And when you go into kind of this, ugh, like deflated, hunched over posture, it's easier for you to access memories of sadness. Not a moralistic, bad or good thing. It's just different options and expressions that we have. You know, and so when you are in a, that posture, hunching over into your phone, so says you are in a, that posture, hunching over into your phone,

so says the research from San Francisco State University, I mean, there's like a whole bounty of different studies going into this theory called postural feedback. And so you can look into any of that. But I think really it's just like studies, they have a bias, and a lot of studies that don't prove the bias,

just get thrown away, you know, and there was that, there was that, that article on the Lancet that suggested like over 50% of studies are kind of bullshit anyway. And so I think, I think with all of this, it's like looking at, like take the study with the grain of salt, test it within yourself, see if you notice a change, you know, and then the last thing that I'll say that I think is an interesting study, and as I'm shooting on studies, came from researchers in New York State University, I think it was in 1981, and they went into a prison, and they asked various different prisoners that were in there for violent crimes.

They gave them, they showed them images and videos of people walking down a street and said, which of these people would you be likely to rob? Who would be prey for you? And what they found was that it wasn't about their sex, it wasn't other size, it wasn't about their race, it was about their level of directionality and wholeness is the term they use for their movement. If they move with a whol, like a sense of wholeness, like the parts were connected, they're here, they're getting to hear from the straight line. Yeah, there's no disorganization or disorientation. It's like, boom, like I'm, wow, I'm like, you know, think of like a, like there's a river out here in front of me. There's like kayakers that go through there. Like if that kayak is like, you know,

hydrodynamic and everyone's even on each side, it's like, boo, it's cutting through the water. You don't mess with that kayak. And over the kayak, it's kind of like, there's two rowers on this side and six on that side and like the bell's kind of this way and the stern's that way. It's kind of like, you know, it's taking on some water.

It's like it's a yard sale. You can do whatever you want with that kayak. And we're continually conveying these messages to each other. Anytime you're out in public, or even with yourself just looking in the mirror, you're like, how many people are rehearsing stories about themselves. And then when you get finished with a workout, and you're with your bros, your girls, you're like, ah, like you feel the best you felt in it, you know, days to weeks to months. What's your posture in that present moment? It's not hunched over staring in the phone posture. And then we're habituated to kind of lurking back or lurching back into that, into that,

that like home phone position. And, you know And I think there's enough research to suggest that it does impact the way that we feel and make us feel like there's a potential threat of losing or there's a threat that exists in some capacity. And then on top of that, what are the messages that we're getting through there? I think coming back to that minimalism,

minimizing your visual intake of media is immensely viable. You know, examining like every visual image that you're consuming, like hopefully right now you listening to this, you're conscious like, yes, this is net positive in my life. If it's not, life. If it's not, stop. Like, take control, like cut it out. And I think we are maybe excessively generous with the visual information that we expose ourselves to, because I think we don't necessarily notice the immediate impact, but long-term and immediate as well. I think thinking of it as like this is something that I am, this information I'm digesting, I'm mass-decating it, I'm digesting it, I'm processing it, you know, and I'm making it kind of like a part of my system. And if you're

taking in information that's continually projecting, you know, all the things, fear, separation, division, all of that, you know, I think just, you know, watch out for it. Just start paying attention. I mean, that's the first step with it. Yeah. I think it makes sense. I think that your inside communicates to the outside and how it should position a move.

But I think the communication is two way. I think the outside gives information to your brain and your inside and tells you what's going on outside my body, and if you're standing in a way that would show fear or anxiety or stress, your brain's gonna get the message and say, okay, we need to be prepared for those things and we need to feel that particular way. I wanna ask you something a little bit more personal

because we kind of touched on how you moved from LA to Austin I have a lot of friends who did that recently. I have a lot of friends who left LA and moved to have one Don't move to Austin or the friend that moved to Tennessee another friend that moved to Florida and The they said that LA was just they became a bit toxic for them and they had to leave the environment and they mentioned a few things Did you find that for yourself? Did you leave because that environment just wasn't conducive to the stuff that you value or was it something else? I don't, I just don't like people telling me what to do. It just bothers me. So maybe that might be like you a lot more now. I like you more too, but I would like you a lot more.

Yeah, so that might be some, you know, there might be some psychoanological union, something relation to authority or mother or father, something there, but with someone's imposing their will on me, and I don't understand the logic in the will. And all of the research that I'm seeing is not in alignment with any kind of pragmatic understanding of this command.

And it's just do this because I told you to. It really irks me. And so for me, I think there's probably something there for me to like kind of look at in other ways, but then also, I think there's probably something there for me to like kind of look at in other ways, but then also, you know, I just don't, yeah, I don't, I don't need to be in a place that I get kind of, I feel defensive, you know, and Texas is pretty good about, you know, you can notice many guns as you want, you can, you know, you can, there's, I think there's a policy or a law that says you can't actually demand that someone wears a mask, which I love that you wear a mask. I love that you have a vaccine. I love that you have 100 boosters.

Like I want you to just, whatever you want, like I love that for you. You have fun with it. Fuck off. Like that with it. Fuck off. Like, that's it. And until there would be research that would suggest that the antibodies that I am, I am teaming with because I've had the vid twice, where to suggest that my antibodies are worse

than your vaccine, then once again, mind your business. Once we get to a point where your vaccine is absolutely undoubtedly, the research that suggests is that you cannot transfer the disease anymore, and you can't contract the disease, then maybe we have a conversation. But at this point, that's not what the research suggests.

So for me, I'm just like, just mind your business. And so I'm going to place myself into a container where people are better about minding their business. Yeah, I'm going to take a step further. I don't care what the research says. It's my choice. So, and it's your choice to not be around me if you don't want to, but it's my choice.

And if I want to choose to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes all day, I can. If I want to choose to put my life at risk, that's my choice too, it's your choice. And the issue comes when it's like, okay, you can smoke cigarettes, but then you blow cigarette smoke into my window. Yeah.

And that's when it's like, okay, well now, that's fine. It's okay. It's okay on your property or wherever you own and you tie and I can't. That's fine. It's, but you get my you get my point. This has been an interesting two years for people in our space because we are in the health and wellness space. And I would say predictably, probably the most pushback against a lot of these laws and mandates. And by the way,

we're two years into it. And I think anybody now can look back and be like, Oh, yeah, there were a lot of things that were there were a lot of overreactions and a lot of fear-based stuff. I think it's pretty clear. It's not controversial anymore. But there was a rely I predictably a lot of pushback from people in our space. And I think it's because we're responsible for own health. We've already been taking our own health seriously since before you even considered it when you were afraid or whatever.

So how did you handle all of that? It was so hard for me to look at and see what was going on and hear no talk about improving someone's health through exercise and nutrition. Although you're seeing it now because the narrative has completely fall apart or falling apart, you saw almost none of that before. Like how did you handle that? Did you pull your hair out or were you just like,

turn it off? Let me focus on things that I can control. So I from the beginning of March have been on the side of we need to be asking more questions. This doesn't completely add up. I'm not saying anything. All I'm saying is we need to ask more questions because it has been and it still is essentially like

cancelable and illegal to say anything. Which that in of itself is indicative of something I think even more meaningful than any kind of viral disease. And so since the beginning, that's been my perspective is just we need to ask questions. We need to ask questions. And if someone is just telling you to stop asking questions, it's probably time to ask even more questions about that person. And they're biases and what's who are they working

for exactly? And that's not me saying, again, not me saying anything, it's just continually to maintain that perspective of just, you know, if you feel curious about something or something doesn't add up, your leadership should be on the side of, oh, I want you to ask questions until we all understand. Like I support you being curious, because I think that's what makes America a really amazing special place to live in. And I never really appreciated America being an American until the last two years.

And now I'm like, I want it. Yeah, like this is cool. That's cool. That's meaningful to have that freedom to think and freedom to speak, and freedom to live the way that you'd like, as long as you're not, you know, hurting somebody else. And so from the the health perspective, I have since day one been saying, we need to be outside with regularity.

You need to open all your windows up, you know, you need to, if you have some type of infection or issue of something that's this or like allowing nature and plants and oxygenated air like that's going to be to come into your home. That's going to be one of the primary foundations and solutions. You need ample sunlight, you need vitamin D, you need enough movement, you need community, you need connection, you need purpose, You need connection, you need purpose. And if you're living in a place where, I saw this Instagram video recently where the guy's talking about an abusive relationship

that you might get to see this. It might, you guys might need to be honest, but it's a guy and he's talking about this girl and he's a relationship with this man. And I'm not gonna remember all of it, but he's like, he doesn't let her go to work and he doesn't let her see her friends. They can only see each other via Facebook

or Instagram or whatever. And he's like, he like gas lights or like all these different, it was way more eloquent and impactful than that. But then at the end, you're like, man, this guy sounds like a narcissistic, dangerous. He's so cool. Like, he needs to be a jail.

His name is Gavin Newsom. Yeah. That's like, that's literally been the suggested scenario for two years. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's amazing when you think about it. Again, I'm not saying anything because I don't have enough information and I don't have a meaningful enough opinion to be like, oh, this is what's happening. But if that doesn't make you ask questions, like, what could?

Yeah, it's been really strife, I think it's a lizard people. That's what I'm gonna say. No, but it's been, it has been very strange. I will say this. You said you're, you know, about, I guess, grateful to be living here. We did pretty good compared to everybody else. Now, we didn't do perfect or great, but we did pretty good, thankfully, because we have a state system and a court system that really slows shit down. So, in comparison to our other free We slow shit down. So, in comparison to our other free Western nation, you know, friends and countries, we did pretty damn good. Yeah, I mean, it's way better than most of Europe, Canada and Australia in terms of, you know,

what we're... Let's hope it goes. Let's hope it goes. And that direction. The narrative is already falling apart. You can already see in the politicians are changing their tune because they're trying to get elected in midterms. But I want to ask you more because you're such a smart guy.

You're actually one of the smartest people I think I know. And you're pretty damn, you're really good at human behavior and identifying human behavior and motivations. This has been an observation in mass fear. And it's not the first time. I mean, historically I can go through a name several times when we've all gotten scared and did stuff that wasn't very rational because of it.

But this is the first time, this is recent. Like, were you sitting there kind of looking at how people were acting and observing and going, oh my gosh, like this is, this is mob mentality in some cases and this fear is taking over. And it's addicting. It's almost like people were afraid and they wanted to be more afraid. So they kept scaring themselves more and more. Did you sit there and watch all this and kind of be like, well, what's happening here?

Well, so there's, I mean, there's a bunch of things. And it's such an endlessly interesting topic that will probably unpack for years to come. But the worst thing to happen to someone is nothing at all, as a quote from somebody, I don't know who exactly. But I think so many people live these, what's the other quote, quiet lives of desperation. It's like Henry David Thoreau. So many people are in

kind of this place. It's just like this is just boring. You know, I met this job. I'm in this cubicle. I'm getting this like junk partial spectrum light throughout the day. And then I'm getting this artificial sun in my eyeballs all night. And you know, I'm in this kind of so-so relationship maybe or I'm not really feeling I feel like I'm falling short of like my potential. You know, I have this like deep seated yearning for something more. You know, and I think that when there's a culture

of people that are in that, like Alan Watts calls it eating the menu and confusing it for the meal, I think there's so many people that are in this kind of like menu life where you're getting the superficial version of a thing but you're not really getting like the real stuff. And I think that a culture of people that are largely baked in that way of life are kind of waiting for some, it's like a Tinder box for something.

It's like just something to get riled up about because I'm alive. You know, if I feel out of control in my life, you know, the tendency will be to impose my control upon someone lower than me on the socioeconomic hierarchy, typically. Or just in this case, now suddenly policy makes it so that anybody that's not doing the thing that you do, they are now lower on like the moralistic hierarchy. And now you can impose your opinion on your authority on them. And so that's whenever someone is kind of like a cunt to me about something in relation to masks or whatever it may be, I typically, not always.

Sometimes my tendency is to kind of like nudge the B-hive and be more aggravating, which is not mature. The Justin Apropos. Yeah, but... Shagged a tree. Yeah, I shake it up. I know it's not the right decision, but the other side of that is, if you want to be like the bigger person, you know, is to come from place of acknowledging, accepting that if you lived, if you were born by the same parents at the same time, ate the same food, you know, hung out with the same people in the same city, and suddenly, you know, arrived at this point, like you would be that person. So that person isn't that person,

that person is a product of their environmental conditions and their parents and every type of environmental stimuli that they've bumped into throughout their life. So they're not that person. So you can't be mad at that person. And so you can be understanding of the culture that they've been bred from. And then from there you can have some compassion for like, huh? Interesting.

You've arrived to this point, and it really irritates me. But if I came from where you came from, I would think the same. Yeah, that's been like the challenge for me throughout this is to actually have compassion for the people that I find really annoying. Yeah, that's a very interesting take. And I agree for the most part, I mean, I forgot who said this. I might have been Jordan Peterson who says, you know, if you look at history and saw what the Nazis did and how the Germans behaved, and you think that you, if you went back in

time, you would be Schindler, you probably wouldn't. You'd probably be one of the people that stood by and let things happen because that's just, that's the majority. That's just the majority and that's just human nature. And then, you know, to what you're saying about living a kind of a boring life, you know, it's funny, I read a statistic. And there was a part of the statistic that was very strange.

So most of it, most of these statistics I'm about to say were very predictable. And then there was one part that was really weird, but then it made sense later on. So the average amount, I just talked about this on a podcast. I'd love your opinion on this, right? The average American gained over throughout the pandemic over 40 pounds, okay?

So this is huge weight gain over the course of the pandemic. The highest weight gain group were millennials, okay? Millennials and then the generation under them gained the most amount of weight. People over 65 gained the least amount of weight. And at first you're like, that's kind of weird, like they're older, they're less active, lower metabolic rate, like what's going on? You would think that they'd gain more weight, maybe they got sick and we're thinking about this. And then I thought about my grandfather. So I have a grandfather who's 91 years old

and nothing scares this man. I remember I talked him about everything. I'm like, you know, this one, everything was first going down. We don't know what's going on. We don't know much about COVID, you know, in the very beginning, understandably, we're like, let's figure this out, right? So he had to stay at home and we'd bring him groceries

and that was it. And he's like, this is stupid, I don't care, whatever. And I'm like, no, no, you can't do this. You gotta stay at home. We gotta make sure we keep you safe. He goes, I don't give a shit about this. And I said, well, I don't understand why you're not scared. He goes, you kidding me.

He goes, I was 13 years old, standing on the top of trains, getting to the next town to try to make money for my family. I lived through the Great Depression. I lived at the remnants of, after the World War had gone through Sicily and ravaged it. He goes, I'm not scared of this. And I thought, well, I lived at the remnants of, you know, after the World War had gone through Sicily and ravaged it, like, he goes, I'm not scared of this. And I thought, well, I guess that makes sense. If you live your whole life, you know,

like kind of perfect and nothing ever happens to you, we very easily afraid, but you fear my grandfather, like it's gonna take like Godzilla for him to be like, all right, let's get out of town, type of deal. So, yeah, I think what you're saying is, I didn't, you know, I didn't think of it that way, but now it makes, it all makes kind of perfect. I think, you know, I got this from Andy Galpin and layered Hamilton, and it was very first heard this idea of like modern people are just too darn precious.

You know, we're so precious with our diets, and you got to be perfectly guitaric, and like, oh my god, I had, you know, a half bite of a simple sugar, you know, you know, suddenly my blood sugar is spiking and I have to go take a 45 minute nap and I need to go take some bio optimizers, blood sugar, stabilizing pills and it's like, okay, cool. I'm going to take a walk outside and kind of recollect and I'm going to meditate and get some crystals and like, oh, call my therapist. I'm like, okay, go. I'm back. I was like that. You know, that's a thing, you know, being able to come to a point. And having, because we live in a culture where we've largely outsourced most,

at least mechanical stress to technology, we need to elect to engage with that stress in the form of cold plunges or going for a high-acre, exercising, lifting weights, and growing, adding these hermetic stressors into our lives, because we've done such an impeccable job at divorcing ourselves from those. So cool. Aaron, let me use an analogy. It just came to me.

Autoimmune, we know some stuff about autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases have just exploded in modern times. One of the things that we've connected to autoimmune issues is that it's like the immune system when it doesn't have to deal with a lot of insults, it starts to find things to attack. You'll find children who grow up on farms or on animals, they have far less autoimmune issues. There's also studies that show that someone

with like Crohn's disease, if you give them like a parasite, all of a sudden Crohn's disease, the symptoms drop down considerably. So it's almost like our fear mechanisms, if you think of it like the immune system, and it's had nothing to really be afraid against, and it's so it's looking for things to be stressed out over. And when we finally give it something

that's got a little bit of a literally, it just went crazy, like an autoimmune issue. Like we just go, we just freak out and we go nuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've asked this question to a lot of people that do have like a great depth in that conversation. And I don't, I don't feel like I have enough authority or meaningful enough opinion to suggest like auto immune conditions are some relation like self-hate or self-destruction. And intuitively I'm like,

but in relation to the elderly thing that there is actually some interesting data on and the perspective of elderly is back pain statistically tends to diminish with people after age 60. Well, weird. Which is interesting. An antidepressant medication, for my understanding, last I read, is the highest among, I think it's like late 30, early 40 white women. Yeah, and often antidepressants will reduce,

or eliminate back pain for people who don't have anatomical or anything that you can identify in an MRI. Human antidepressant back pain goes away. Right, right, right. And then there's like endless research of, you know, that suggesting that specific musculoskeletal, postural patterns are not one-to-one relationships for inciting pain.

You know, so if you have a some shoulder thing or a forward head posture or discogenic thing or knee, meniscus, whatever, you know, flat feet, you know, which flat feet are probably as bad as people make them out to be. But, you know, if you have these patterns that a lot of kinesio people be like, aha, like that's the thing. Most research is suggested that there's not a clear connection to postural patterns creating pain. You know, obviously, I think there is like a, there is a mechanistic wear and tear.

If you're using ineffective inefficient movement patterns and kind of like grinding your joints eventually that's probably the some type of inflammation and something. But pain is really complex. Super complex. Super complex. We, we, we, the, like the broader we, you know, and I've, this has been the question. One of the primary questions that I've had literally for the last like, at least decade decade, you know, at least like seven years doing my podcast, I ask people, what is pain a lot?

Like anytime I think someone has an interesting lens on it, like that's one of the questions on the podcast is like, what is pain, you know, and most people don't know exactly what the stuff is, but it seems like there is some level of, there's general tendencies, there's consistencies, but one of them, you know, is there's a psychosomatic component to it. And this is like what's healing back pain, Dr. John, what is his name? John, what's the healing back pain? I don't know. Oh, shoot, what's his name? Anyway, so he calls it TMS, tension, myocytis syndrome. And what he suggests is that if you have some type of, I'll remember his name before the end of this,

but if you have some type of repressed anger or anxiety or some fear or something, you think of the times in your life that maybe you wanted to like cry or you wanted to yell, but it wasn't socially appropriate to do so in that moment. You have this physical expression of like you know, if you're crying, you might feel like you're diaphragm contracting, or you might feel like this like, you know, weight in your throat, not appropriate to do it. So it's almost like you literally like swallow it down in a way and then you just kind

of collect yourself and move on. Like that doesn't really happen in nature, you know, and for the most part in nature, you know, you can get it into like Robert Sipolsky's work, Isaac Ristok, at Alster's, you can get a Peter Levine's work, awakening the tiger within, Bessel Vanderkalk, gets into this, body keeps the score. Yeah, I'm gonna back you up here. First off, the dog just pulled it up as Dr. John Sarno. Yeah, Dr. Sarno, thank you. I'm gonna back you up because someone may be listening

and thinking, oh, this sounds like whatever. First off, there's what causes the pain. There's the pain itself, which is, by the way, if you ever talk to a doctor that deals with, I'm talking Western medicine doctor that deals with pain, they will tell you it's one of the most difficult jobs in the world because it's so hard to define pain and what kind of pain it is and to treat,

and we don't, you know, it's very, very challenging. But there's also the relationship to the pain. Perception, your tolerance. Yeah, like, I mean, you know, like, when I would train a new client, and we would do an exercise, they would, and they never worked out before, the pain would be almost intolerable. Now, I feel just as much if not more pain than they do when I work out,

the difference is I have a different relationship to the pain. When I'm doing exercise, I'm embracing and enjoying it because it's part of the process and you learn that and you change your, your, your relationship to that. So, very complex, but I'm gonna back you up. There was a study, and I believe there's been couple studies like this where they actually took people, this is true, with knee pain, and they went in, cut, this was a study, they cut open, so everybody went in, left knee pain, right knee pain, whatever, they cut the knee open, half the people,

they actually did a surgical procedure, the other half they just closed the knee open, half the people, they actually did a surgical procedure. The other half, they just closed the knee back up. So they just cut it, closed the back up, did nothing. They could not find a difference between the pain relief, between the group that had this procedure, and the group that did not have the procedure. They thought they had a procedure, and they had the same amount of pain relief as the group that actually had the procedure. So very strange.

Yeah, that was done in Finland. They're doing miniscotomies with people and they're following for a year and even beyond that. It was pretty much about 50-50. Like, some people got better, some people didn't get better in both sides. Really got the mock surgery or the surgery. So weird. So weird. Wow. You know, I mean, a lot of the pain that we might experience or the pain relief that we might experience, one, the one thing. So, one of the things I feel like, if I just stop the conversation at postural patterns and mechanics don't always associate the pain and then we stop

talking, that's not the end of the conversation. Movement consistently across the board is shown to be very helpful with relief of pain. Yes. You know, and so it's, if you are a person that is just say someone has four head posture, they have a scoliosis, or they have, you know, whatever the, whatever the thing is, you know, anterior, anterior pelvis, or they have a valgus knee, or whatever, you're not going to be able to just look at that body and say, aha, you have pain in this place. In fact, oftentimes it pain in this place. In fact, oftentimes it's the complete opposite. So if someone has a lot of tension,

say their hips hiked up, or they have a lot of tension on the SI on the right side, oftentimes there's going to be some sensation of pain on the left. It's interesting. But movement pretty much across the board is shown to be supportive. So that's not saying, okay, we're all screwed.

It's just this emotional daddy issue thing that's somewhere in my liver, not that at all. Moving your body, working out, exercising, whatever form makes you feel good for the most part is going to be supportive. And then within that, let's build the body from a mechanically efficient, productive way and understand these foundational principles on how to move well. And then once I understand that, then I can overlay those principles into almost any medium of movement practice.

I can go to CrossFit and be safe. I can go to Yoga Studio and be safe. I can dance and be safe. I can run. Running is so darn complex. I mean, running is a movement practice. It is like, with people just suddenly, it's 2022, your butt jiggles too much, and you want to lose 20 pounds. And you've been sitting on your butt,

kind of hunching over this position, and limiting range of motion in your ankles, and your knees are weak because they haven't gone beyond the point of your toes for the last ever, because that's the education that you learned is really bad. Your hips, flexors are tight like everything's like locked down and you're like, you go for a cool run in a marathon. Yeah. And go run to fatigue. Yeah. Terrible idea. Absolutely. No, that is from a hormonal perspective as well. Yeah.

It's just learning, I'll shut up because I know there's probably other stuff you want to say, but learning how so cool if I want to run, what do I do? You get a coach, be a great, great, great thing, but learning how to sprint would be very effective. So starting to work more like interval-based training instead of just doing that gradual kind of death march for five miles and coming back and having this hormonal dump and your joints are in fire. That part, it seems like low hanging fruit, but there's more nuance to running than what most of us I think might think. Totally. I want to back you up even more on the movement thing. Yes, movement

does affect our physical body and correct movement patterns, not stuff. But you cannot separate it from how it affects us emotionally and mentally and psychologically. So although pain is very complex, one of the reasons why movement is so effective at working through pain is not just because of the physical mechanical aspects, but it's also the emotional and psychological aspects. So that's why it's so damn effective and across the board movement is more consistently effective when it comes to pain than pain medicine or surgeries, especially in the long term.

And it's because it does all those things. So it's not just, so I know you were defending it for a second, but it affects everything. You cannot separate the emotional, mental, psychological and the physical with movement. It's all one and all of it works together. Speaking of which, we predicted that this year, people in the health and fitness and wellness space would see a surge of a renewed interest, a surge of clients and interests like we haven't seen in a long time. And we predicted this because,

well, probably because the gems were closed for a while, people were afraid, people are kind of slowly losing the fear, everybody's feeling like crap, and they're like, I gotta go exercise, I need to move, I need to work with someone to make myself feel better. Are you seeing this as well on your end? Are you seeing this kind of renewed interest end? Are you seeing this renewed interest and just this new surge of people interested

and wanting to improve their health and fitness? Yes, and I'm seeing both. I'm seeing one, if you create a too big of a distance between you and the thing that you want, sometimes it can seem impossible to achieve. Sure. So I think, yes, for people that have been getting outside and have been getting some movement in each day

and getting some sunlight in each day and paying attention to the food that they put in their face and paying attention to maintaining relationships and kind of like, there's kind of keeping that baseline. I think those people oftentimes have even greater motivation than everybody else, you know, paradoxically. And so within that, if we get deeper into that whole kind of like that, I was talking to the person I was doing the call with today in Sweden where he's kind of in this, like, seems like this, like, backup, you know,

like almost like a hole that it feels like it might feel impossible to get out of. That's, you know, that's an interesting spot. You know, and so with the people in that position, I think offering really like small little steps just to get the engine turning enough that we can kind of get the alternator going and get the body, you know back up and running. But yeah, so I have, but I think probably received more interest than his common, but I've also seen a lot of like helplessness, type of sensation.

Yeah. All right, Aaron, where can people find this book that your new book and where can people find you? Because I think again, you're so valuable, so I'd like people to check out your stuff. Thanks. Yeah, really appreciate it. I feel the exact same way about you guys. The book, I mean, I deal you walk, you know, Barnes and Noble or Target or

someplace of the sort. I mean, it's in any bookstore. It's called The Align Method. And I have the book here that layered Hamilton on the cover here, something I think people say like what's the book by. He, it's the foundational principles for unlocking peak human potential. So that's really the intention of creating the book was providing the foundational principles that we need from a mechanical lens, how to move the body, but then also looking adjusting our lens on fitness into it's not a thing that we do, but it's every aspect of our lives we're, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, podcast world I'd recommend they can go back and listen to my episode with you guys I listen one Bruce Lipton be a fine place But yeah books books anywhere books are sold. It's called the online method. Excellent. Thank you again. Thanks It's a great conversation. Yeah, thank you guys. I appreciate you freedom out there. Yeah

Good kitchen up with you bro. All right, we'll talk to you later man. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

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