Modern Wisdom - #230 - Mark Walsh - How To Get Out Of Your Own Head

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

Mark Walsh is the Director of the Embodied Facilitator Course & Founder of the Embodiment Conference. We all spend a lot of time being cerebral. But by celebrating the powers of cognition, are we missing out on the wisdom accessible in our body? Expect to learn Mark's framework for improving your embodiment, his favourite tactics for how to get yourself out of your head, how embodiment can be used every day to benefit your personal growth and much more... Sponsor: Get 50% discount on your FitBook Membership at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Sign up for The Embodiment Conference here - https://theembodimentconference.org/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. I guess today is Mark Walsh and today we are talking about embodiment, how to get out of your own head. I think in the 21st century we spend a lot of time celebrating intellectual achievements and being cerebral in this scientific society, but there's a lot of enjoyment and wisdom that you can get from just getting into your body and allowing yourself to be more open and feel less constrained by the ruminating, obsessive thoughts that go around your mind. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, you can go to theembodumentconference.org, which is

linked in the show notes below, and you can sign up to what might be the biggest educational event ever in human history with half a million people attending. And you can go for free what might be the biggest educational event ever in human history with half a million people attending. And you can go for free. That's Mark's event. It sounds really cool and if there's more of the same that we go through today, I think it will be of massive benefit to a lot of you. So go and check that out. But for now, it's time for the Wies and Wonderful Mark Walsh. Music Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Mark Walsh, Mark, welcome to the show.

Pleasure, I've listened to it, so it's happened. I'm happy to be on. Thank you, man. What does embodiment actually mean? Get us that. Every single interview is different answers. One, you know your body is a part of you. It's not just like a pen. It's a part of who you are as a person, your body. pen. Something it's a part of who you are as a person, your body, the subjective view of the body. So the body has an aspect of our being, there's an aspect of who we are as people. There's a reason if people lose an arm, they get more upset than if they lose a pen, because it's part of them. Another term for embodiment would be the umbrella, the umbrella term for all the body mind arts. So I've done martial arts, yoga, meditation,

conscious dance, body therapy, improv, bodywork, all these things have something in common. They relate to the body for awareness and the body as part of who we are. So even then they look very different, they have this thing in common. So we need a sort of terminology for that. You could say body mind arts, you could say somatic arts. In body men is the word I tend to use. So that would be another definition. Third definition could be a form of intelligence and we could drill down into exactly what the skill sets are within that. So how's that front open? Nice man. I like it. Considering embodiment to me is a, if you asked me to define it, I wouldn't really understand. Maybe I embody the role of a parent.

I embody the role of a podcaster. You know, but so it's crossing the barrier between the mental and the physical whilst remaining in the body. Yeah, so the common sense usage is actually quite close to the technical usage. We say, you know, such and such in bodies leadership, we understand that there's only so much you can learn

from a book. If someone said to you, you know, I've read Chris, I've read a lot of books on kissing. I'm an amazing lover. Go for it. You know, I've looked at a lot of websites on how to drive a card. You want to lift a new car, so you might say,

well, hang on, that's one way of knowing, that's knowing about something, right? So, if you listen to some of your podcast prep for this, it tends to be the Wested philosophical tradition is to think about or to know about or to learn about. And that's useful, like it's useful for me to know the capital of France is Paris. But that's quite different from the embodied knowledge of Paris. It's quite different from, you know, having your coffee in Paris and there's a certain kind of light that comes up in the morning and being aware of that or the French way of being, God forbid,

or that manner of Frenchness. So this is a different kind of knowledge and requires a different kind of learning. So at school, I read every book in the library. I was in the sixth form, high school for American listeners, and literally speed read every book in that library. And yeah, I was suicidal, drug addicted, miserable, failing at my first intimate relationships. And everyone was telling me I was really clever.

They said, you've got high IQ, you know, a very clever guy. And I said, if I'm so clever, why am I so miserable? What was education, how has education failed me? Well, the goal of education, especially at that age, isn't to make you happy. Yeah, I mean, there's a sort of frame that you can say, it's social conformity, but even if it were just knowledge,

the sort of main view of that is you learn about things, you acquire knowledge and it's, you know, Wikipedia hasn of that is you learn about things, you acquire knowledge and Wikipedia hasn't solved the world's problems, right? We've got on this phone, there's more knowledge than most human beings had in your Alexander's library or whatever, right? So there's all that information there, but is that the same as wisdom? And if I want to change, if I want to grow as a person, I'm going to at the very least have to acquire skills like kissing and driving, or maybe even a deeper level change who I am as a person. And while you can take a drug or go on a weekend workshop, what really works there is actually embodying something different and that takes practice over time. I've been thinking a lot this year about the world of self-development, self-improvement, and I think a lot of the challenges that were coming up against are given very cerebral

answers. People try and think themselves out. This is a post-modern, post-enlightenment, scientific, utilitarian, very transactional kind of environment that we're living in. And that has some wonderful advantages, unlike the Greeks who thought that bloodletting was a great way to get rid of diseases, or I think Aristotle believed that the brain only existed to get heat out of the body. You know, we've made the scientific revolution has given us some wonderful insights and drilling down into the world of personal development, self development,

a lot of the guests that I've had on this show, they do, by its very nature, we can only ever show someone, or tell someone what to do, we can't do it for them. And I suppose that the, that bifurcation in distributing what people can do versus them actually enacting it and bodying it and doing it, is that, are we getting into some part of the framework that you look at here by seeing that distinction?

Yeah, so there's a distinction between knowing about and knowing to do and knowing to be. I mean, if we look at the Greeks, they had the word Soma, which meant the body and its wholeness, the embodied body, and it had socks, which meant kind of a hunk of meat. And that's generally how the body's viewed as a hunk of meat. Even in a gym where you're trying to get fit, the body is an object, which is a fundamentally dehumanizing position. The Greeks also had a philosophy in the gym. The gymnasia wasn't a place just to lift weights. It was also a place for emotional and psychological lifting.

An embodied perspective is one which recognizes that these things are deeply intertwined. We say academic, meaning a relevant, meaning know, my friend is an academic, got love him, you know, I tried to tell him my embodiment and he was like, well, my body just gets me from one lecture to another. And I was like, dude, there's real consequences to that, you know, in his case, it's health consequences, emotional consequences. And there's a human consequence for being hypersuribral, being, you know, this is called no centric, you're sometimes here. There's slightly potential way of just saying that thought is what matters and actually our embodied life, our embodied being are.

You know, like everything, like we're building relationship, right? Someone I reached out to, I thought he seems like a cool guy, let's get to know each other. Now even though we're doing that virtually, the felt sense of each other is the key thing. It's like, is this a man I can push on and trust? Is this someone who's going to be fun to have a laugh with? Is this someone who's got backbone and spine? There's a reason we use that kind of language when we describe character. And let's say I'm in the business well doing business leadership training, which I've done quite a lot of, they'll be very good at telling you what a leader should have. I've done my MBA,

you know, leadership, be empathic, and and charismatic and then you'll say, well, how do you develop that? Right? Or you'll be philosophers, they'll say, well, you've got to manage to have these virtues. Well, Jesus said, you know, you love a by neighbor. And I'm always thought was kind of lacking on the detail, Chris. I've always thought was kind of lacking on the method. So and this is where I think somebody, Asian arts were ahead of the Western knowledge in a way that you had a practice. They had a way

of developing oneself. And if someone's stressed or wants to be a better leader, you know, someone's listening to this and they're lonely because of COVID or you know, they're isolated or someone's listening to this and they're just being driven and not spied by their boss, they don't really need more information. They need a practice. They need to be able to shift their way of being. I think you're very right. The fact that we believe that more knowledge is the answer, as

opposed to increasing our compliance to the knowledge that we already have, every personal trainer or anyone that's ever been to the gym knows that it's not really that much about what diet or what training plan you follow versus whether you follow it consistently over a long enough period of time. If you do anything long enough, you'll get good at it. Now, the hope is that the thing that you do for long enough to get good at it isn't drugs or isn't cheating on your partner or whatever it might be. Just to bookend something you mentioned there, you talked about the Greeks and about how the gymnasia was this place that was not only one of physical being but of mental being as well. Did you know that Plato's real name wasn't Plato? What was his real name?

Keith. I really know, thankfully not. There was also, there was no Keith spawn in the UK in 2018. That's another, they're a dying breed. Um, Aristocles, it was claimed that Plato's real name was Aristocles and that Plato was a nickname that translates to roughly the broad, derived either from the width of his shoulders, the results of training for wrestling or the breadth of his style or from the size of his forehead.

So hopefully it's from the broadness of his shoulders, not the size of his forehead. Yeah, and this is for our history, people have talked about how George Washington South of horse, Nelson Mandela was a boxer, there's not the only one. But this has been lost somewhat if we look at our current crop of politicians or corporate trainers. You mentioned practice. Like we're all practicing something. Like everyone out there listening to this, maybe you've got, you know,

YouTube on your phone where you're taking a shit, maybe you're walking down the street, maybe you've got it on the car. You're practicing a way of being. Like I interviewed people from my podcast and you see that way of being all the time. So soon as someone comes on, some people are like,

right in your face. Other people are like, right in your face. Other people are like, oh, let me examine this. Some people are wide and they're like, big. Americans can be, there's a cultural embodiment. You're like, hey, and other people, you had Douglas Murray on us. He's like, you know, Douglas has his particular Douglasness, doesn't he?

And it's very particular, it's a flavor. And that is great for some things and a rubbish for others. So my general approach to personal growth whether it's business, yogis, life cages, whoever I'm working with is awareness, range and choice. So first thing is we need to know what we're doing. What's the default? Right? Like most people don't know which way they cross their arms, but then you try it both ways. You know, and you go, ah, okay, that's really uncomfortable. Oh, double your fingers. Yeah. So this is like your personality. There's you can, you can leave forwards, leave back. And people can try this. Go on the balls of their feet and then on the heels. You know, it's like go up. You know, some people, they're kind of all up here on the, and they're very anxious or they're like, dude, like totally spacey, like in Northern California.

Or, you know, my family are like Irish potato people. They write down here in the earth. You know, and you see this in different parts of England, you know, some's more grounded. Like, I've no other tends to be a bit more grounded and not in the South but more up here. So this cultural fact is not everyone because it's individual factors to the situational factors,

this relational factors, these are all going on in embodiment. So I don't know if you like this all the time. This is the first time I've seen you, right? So all of you just like to see interviews. So there's all these different aspects of embodiment. But if we bring some awareness to that, maybe we can try something different. The first place that anyone has to go with any type of change, presumably is cultivating a sense of awareness of what they're doing at the moment. No, they're self, nothing new. Where do you go next? Choice. So this is the difference with mindfulness and embodiment. Mindfulness is like, be aware of your state.

And it's like, I'm really angry, right? And it's like, well hang on a minute, I've got a meeting with my staff. This is a real example. Absolutely pissed off with something really angry. And then it was like, well, I don't want to bring that to my team. That's not going to be a helpful state to bring to my team. So then then we become the philosophy won't help you here, but the physiology will. So here we then have the physiological shifts. So maybe it's, you know, I put my feet on the ground, come back in my chair, I just saw for my jaw, I let my peripheral vision open up, I take a deep belly breath and, you know,

people listening can try this if they want me. You know, you can do this with your eyes open, driving a car. Huh, okay, tell me again, what was it you were saying, Chris? So that ability to shift state is so key. And you know, you don't want to be that guy on the high street showing saying, I'm not angry. He doesn't even know he's angry. But if he did know he's angry, he'd still have a second thing to do, which would be to shift it. If he wanted, or he could express it, which is another skill, that's another

embodied skill. A lot of my fellow English men lack is the ability to express himself. You know, like I lived in Brazil for men lag is the ability to express themselves. You know, like I lived in Brazil for a while and the slums were Brazil working there and I got back and I was just more fluid and reliant and my mom was like, where did you get those hips? You know, I lived above the nightclub for six months in Brazil.

Did nothing but fucking fight and dance for six months and I came back and it was like, there was a different embodiment. Cause I've been, you know this, like you got holiday for a week even you can start to soak up the embodiment or you go down to London for Newcastle, it's a different vibe, right? Yeah, very, very, very much so. So we've got awareness to begin with, we need to know that we are X and I'm going to guess that this could be macro or micro that we are angry in the moment or that we are perhaps unhappy or frustrated over time.

Stay in trade. So awareness of state is easy. You can feel it. That's mindfulness. Awareness of trait is invisible. It's like the taste of your own mouth. You have to have it pointed out or you have to do some kind of comparison to feel the difference.

So the guy who's always angry doesn't feel angry He does just his it's like comfortable underpants is you know, you've you've got an use to it You know, I'm like I'm not even wearing anything. I don't want any for ages But it's like you used to that in body man So you have to step out of it to feel it it might not it might only be by stepping out there and you're like Shit, I'm spending a lot of angry most of the time and even realize everybody else can see it. But he can't.

State is much easier. It's like being tired or being energized or, you know, I can notice like, oh, you'll be nervous for this interview, not a lot, but a little bit. Okay. Might want to slow down a little bit, Mark. So if I can notice my state, I can change it. Trey. Yeah.

I'm going to guess that knowledge or the learning is going to help us more moving from step one to step two rather than just being step one. Step one of the awareness of either our state or trait is simply cultivating a mindfulness of what is happening, either in that moment or what has changed over time, but moving on to step two, which is choice. So it's manners and choice. But you don't necessarily know, you mentioned the man that is angry, even if he becomes aware of his anger, needs to learn or needs to have a particular process

that he can follow in order to enact that anger, to release that anger, to deal with that anger, to do whatever. So I guess that you do require some knowledge in the choice section. Yeah, and I'm not anti-knowledge. I love what the West brings in terms of science and the Renaissance. I love the fact that we can dissect things and I'm a geek for this stuff. I'll look at practices and I'll say, okay, you could try. You're kind of coaching this like Russian business guy today and it's like, he's kind of a bit stiff, you know. And I'm like, okay, you could try conscious dance, you could try it in front of comedy. You know,

I could just give you a little exercise to do at home that just takes two minutes because you're a busy guy. You know, this is where we get geeky and this is where I know that expert knowledge can come in to know how to shift. But people are also pretty intuitive about this stuff. Like, you know, I could take something to say, let's say there's a young woman who's lost her confidence. This happens to a lot of girls and teenage years that embodiment kind of folds over. They get these kind of round shoulders. They lose that natural confidence kids have. Now, someone like that, they know what it's like to be confident because they've

seen it. And at some point in their life they've done it Even if they only do it one day and a hundred So actually people know, you know like if I say to a little kid which direction is happy? Sounds like a weird question, but the you I asked that to a seven year old and they jumped up in there Right like in which direction is angry? Is it tight or is it relaxed? Well most people would go okay, it's forwards and tight. Yeah, people can figure this stuff out. I mean, I have maps for it, and as I said, I geek out about it,

but it's like human inheritance really to know this stuff. So it got choice. What's the third? That's it. There's awareness, there's awareness range and choice. The range means that you can actually have some options. That's kind of the middle ground. Sometimes I say awareness acceptance and choice. So range means that you can actually have some options. That's kind of the middle ground. Sometimes I say awareness acceptance and choice. So this is the paradox of change that we need to know how we are.

And then say, OK, that is how I am. And right now I'm scared. Right now I'm angry. Saying yes to that. You know, I was listening to your man on who is a stoic guy, you know, being able to accept things, a really important skill. And then moving to, do I want to change something, can I change something, am I going to take the time to develop myself? Maybe that's a small practice, like walking a little bit more. You know, you see something like walking their arms, the vapid, they take small steps. You know, their practice can be walking to work every morning with just a little bit more push from the back foot, swinging the arms just a little bit more. It's going to, like, every day for 10 minutes. And then we have the relational side. Okay, so we have awareness and choice for self, but then what about

other people? Before we go on to that, there may be people who are naturally or trained to be more utilitarian, very pragmatic, and they will say, well, that's all well and good mark, tell me a walk a little bit more off my heels and stand up straight with my shoulders back like Jordan Peterson, but that's that's just a physical movement. That's me just drilling your tell me to walk a particular way that doesn't change anything about me other than my gate. Yeah. So the first thing I'd say is don't believe a word I say. Okay. The first thing I'd say is try these things. I mean, I could be some cult leader lying to you for my own financial benefit. So don't believe me. Like that would be nice. And who the hell am I?

I'm just some guy from the internet. So I would say try it. You know, for example, I get some guy to do star jumps jumping jacks, they call them in America and say, tell me you're sad. It's just impossible. Right? It's like I like if you get someone to do burpees and no one's happy. If you make them do burpees, no one's happy if you make them do star jumps this I'm a torture. Here's another one. Someone's tired and I say, right, well, you could do chest breathing for three breaths. Right? Okay, you feel more or less tired. 99.9% of people saying, I feel more awake, I feel less tired. Right, don't believe me, like test this stuff. You know, and if you have enough

trust after a few of these little tests to do a bigger test, like taking up tango dancing, or taking up karate, or, you know, taking up whatever salsa dancing, whatever it is, and then see how it changes your life. That's my philosophy. This is not a religion. Yeah, I really enjoyed this insight I got from Derek Sivers earlier on this year. Founder of CD Baby. Really, really insightful guy.

He talked about most books are spending their time convincing you that the author's word is worth trusting. The vast majority of books are either context or justification. And what's really interesting about that, and it's an insight that I'd never heard, I've rift quite a lot this year on a lot of books, a blog posts that should have been a tweet expanded out into 200 pages.

Right. But what Derek hit upon that I really, really enjoyed is that most books have one particular key insight, but the problem is that you don't trust the author enough to believe it. So they have to, they have to give you all of these different examples. Like if you're best friend, who's last five pieces of advice for you about relationships or the horse that you should pick or whether you should move house or that job or whatever, if they just gave you gold advice and they came up and said, well, mate, here's the central the central thrust of and just said the bottom line impact of a particular book. You'd be like, yeah, cool.

But when it's a stranger, that's not the case. And it'd be a authority and trust, right? So I know it's embodied phenomena as well. I mean, there's a reason, you know, British airways when they say, you know, tonight, we'll be flying at 10,000 feet and blah, blah, blah, and your mother would probably find me attractive, you know. There's a, there's a embodiment

to the British airways voice, for example. Now, if they were like, hello, welcome to British Airways, we're going to Malaga. I hope it's going to be fine. I mean, just the anxiety. You'd hear that fight of flight response and you wouldn't trust that guy. So, I mean, it one's embodiment of this two factors, warmth from power. So, one factor is, like, is this personal, theoretically competent. Now, we can base that on past experience, like, you know, I've listened to your podcast, so I know you're a competent interviewer, for example, right, I can

base that on that experience. However, if I didn't, I would get that sense from the first three seconds of this interview, because you're relaxed. You're like, I know what I'm doing. You know, this is home based for me. Welcome to my home, you know, the podcast I do this all the time, you know, it's episode, whatever it is, 250, yeah. And then there's warmth, right? But if you just did power, you'd be like, okay, Mark, fuck you. I'm in charge. And I was going on, you know, like, like, I'm the boss here. And then I'd be like, oh, I'm comfortable. I don't feel very relaxed. So it's, you know, with children,

with horses, with human beings, generally, like like this is just what we need to convey, and these are embodied capabilities. Cool, so we've looked at the individual and then relation. Relational. Fives about relationship, right? If we're just on our own in a cave, it's not a very satisfying life for most people.

So it's the same thing. This is the embodiment skill set, in embodiment intelligent, or sometimes call it, awareness and choice, then we have self and others. So other, we have awareness of other and that state and pattern. Same thing, okay, state and trait. So it's, can I look at someone and go, you're right, like I was talking to my colleague yesterday and I just went, are you okay? And she went, actually my mom's in hospital and my housemates hate me. And it's like, she just needed to listen, you know, 10 minutes of me listening to her

before we could get with the business meeting. It was fine, I didn't mind at all. But how do I not court just in my gut, in my empathy is embodied. Without embodiment, you're psychopathic, right? Like if you're not feeling and we all have this experience, maybe on the tube or walking through a crowded street or when we're stressed during a rush, we lose empathy.

Because our body tightens, we lose the ability to resonate. You've had that experience, right? I've just been a bit of a dick and then afterwards going, I'm sorry, I was stressed, I shouldn't have said that and you'd lost empathy in that moment. So when we're relaxed and we're open, we're sent it to ourselves, we've done this stuff we just talked about, we've got some chance at resonating with other people. In this case, realizing where my colleague wasn't very well and you needed a bit of listening to. So that's the listening side, the empathy, and then this body reading where we can look at different patterns. And that's always a guess, and it's to be approached with humility. But in a way, it's common sense, you're walking down the street, someone's there, you go, this doesn't feel good.

You get either in your own body or you see something that you're looking around, they've got a certain muscle tone, they've got a certain tension in their body, their breathing's a certain way and you go, maybe best cross the road, yeah. So it's like, you know, I worked in war zones for years and I've got quite a tune to this. I spent a lot of time watching people who I didn't really speak their language or I was just learning their language like Brazilian, Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan. And I go, is this safe? So I was quite motivated to figure out whether they were shouting because that was just their culture and like, you know, like in the Mediterranean

and the school, shout, all was it that they were angry and this could be a dangerous situation. And the other thing is just touching a lot of bodies. If you touch a lot of bodies, you start to get a different felt sense of them. So I was traveling around the world doing martial arts. And after touching several thousand bodies like in quite intimate ways in some ways, you start to get a bit of a better felt sense of people than the average person.

So that's the sort of third of the four capabilities, which is awareness of other people. I did for a long time when I was a kid, I did Laogha Kung Fu, which is a southern style of Kung Fu, very popular. And I did that to Brownsash, and a big part of that is sticking hands. Yes. So with that, anyone who doesn't know what that is, it looks a little bit like a dance. You have your wrists on my wrists, from your right on my left, my left on your right, and we roll our wrists between each other. And what you're waiting for, as you're moving forward, the other person will move backwards, and as they move towards you, you'll move backwards. And what you're waiting for is a break. If that person breaks contact with your wrists, and you're flowing backwards and forwards, left and right, in circles, and then you'll reverse the circles, and you're waiting for is a break. If that person breaks contact with your wrists and you're flowing backwards and forwards left and right and circles and

then you'll reverse the circles and you're waiting for a break. And at that break is an opening at which you can then move into that person. But if you move into them when they're still touching you, they know you're moving and they can reverse that particular move and then you'll end up being struck. So that insight, incredibly intimate, use the word intimate there, which is one that comes sort of quite heavily loaded, but it's really correct. You know, that was some of the most intimate understandings that I got of how other people's bodies worked. And really, you know, sort of being honest, other than proper bodywork that I've had done to me or that I've said, oh, how you make like your back to it and like give me, that I'll give you a hand.

Other than that, or you know, much more intimate sort of passionate relationship stuff, you don't, I don't know, I've done that. My understanding, my genuine felt understanding of what other people's bodies are and how they move would be significantly lower. And I know that doing Laogha Kung Fu is an outlier. You know, you're not like you,

you might as a great sensitivity person. It doesn't surprise me of the martial arts, by the way. I can feel that in person. You know, it's a way when someone carries himself even years afterwards, when they've had that character training. And some, you know, some practices have that sensitivity. Sometimes people learn a physical skill

and it never really transfers into their life, you know. What like any particular physical skills that you see in people that don't tend to translate across much? Yeah, it's all been everything, but let's take let's say you spend let's take a popular practice yoga. So people could get very good at being calm in yoga and then walk out of yoga, pick up their phone, go on Facebook and immediately start a flame war. Now they've got a little bit of a holiday from their life in yoga and they've had a bit of calming down, which is, you know, it's good for all of us, so good luck to you if that's what you want to do. But they haven't really learned any skills, they haven't really transferred any skills across from yoga into their life, which is kind of a pity and there's ways, you know, I point out

from my yoga students about how to increase the transfer. Or else, particularly, it's a particular container, say in a keto school or a yoga school. It's got its own clothes, its own ritual, its own words, stay with the phone example. There's no mobile phones, right? So I spend about an hour a day on my mobile phone, at least, I'd say.

So let's say I've learned a breathing exercise, like belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. Well, why don't you try that with your phone? And if that's too easy, get your email on your phone and then see if you're still breathing. Right? And we can actually train that as a transferable skill. So that's one of the things I do with students. We'll start with, like let's say we're still training the stress response. So we'll start with throwing a tissue at them, throwing a Kleenex at them, and they flinch, right? I mean, it actually even works online, you wanna try? Okay, what is your doing with your body

when I threw that out of the camera? Yeah, you wanna move backwards, you want the jerk backwards. Did you move backwards, yes or no? A little bit, yeah. Yeah, a little bit, and you tend to start probably a little bit too, right? Yeah. And you're breathing change a little bit?

A little short, sharp breath in. Okay, great. So good noticing you have higher body awareness than a lot of the beginning. That would already indicate to me you had some real practice behind you already. And then you would get with building your awareness of that fight flight response. Then we could give you a technique to work with it. It could be something as simple as, can I offer you one now, Chris? Is that all right?

Like a little... Fire away, man. Your eyes are quite narrow. And maybe you're just looking at the camera. It made me to be today. I don't know, but try opening up your visions so you can see all around the computer, not just the computer for your jaw a little bit. We call this the Russian smile in Russia.

Say, ah. Ah. Okay, we're having that time with us through the tissue. Nothing. Not whole at less, right? So we actually just trained you to reduce your flight response. Now, throwing tissues at you is completely pointless. But what we could do, and I won't do this online because it's a bit personal, we could train the takers into a coaching environment and we could use a situation

like a piece of criticism or something stressful, maybe a girlfriend criticizes your your mom or your boss, and we could then train that to A, again, notice the response, and B, to then reduce that response. So this is the reducing the flight flight response because it's usually not helpful unless you know, you've got a heavy rock to lift or something, it doesn't really help for our social interaction. Or we could work with expressing it, right? That would be a whole other set of practices. Cool. Just to close that open loop that we've got, there will be a lot of people listening. There will be a lot of people listening who do yoga and thinking, oh, fucking hell, Mark's rumbled me there. I do really enjoy my practice. I do feel very mindful, very embodied, very centered when I'm doing my yoga. And yet, you're

right, I really struggle in ex-situation, in traffic when I get out, when I have this, that, and you know,, how can people that are practicing yoga or similar to other practices transfer that across into their day to day life? Yeah, that is the question I've spent my life really looking at that. So first of all, I'm not slagging off yoga. If anyone's enjoying yoga, if it gives you a break, it makes you less stress, great, keep doing it.

Good for you, no problem, I like yoga. So I want to say that first of all, because otherwise people think you're kicking their puppy a little bit. You know, it's, people get very attached to practices because they help people. Um, so how to transfer it? One, notice what you do 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after class. So bring in a bit of an awareness to, for example, I've seen people be really abusive to the person at the desk and like just unpleasant as they go paying for their cars and then go into yoga and sit down and start saying, oh, and it's like, dude, you're not even 10 minutes before you're being mean to someone, right?

So we can open up before and after. Another thing is you can have reminders. So, you know, I find it great for this, you just set your phone to go off five times a day when it goes off, you do one yoga breath, one full yoga breath five times a day. Okay, there's another one. Another one, micro poses. So, if you've got a YouTube, they can look all this up. It's much easier to show than tell, but there's something called in body yoga principles to where you explore this on YouTube. You have warrior pose, right? How do you get warrior pose into your life? You find the way of doing that on a small level. So this takes me five, ten minutes to train a yogi and we can take a

pose that you know really well and we can then take it into walking, standing and talking. And I'll say right, ask me for a cup of tea and warrior pose, right? Ask me for a cup of tea and the opposite of warrior pose. How would you walk like a warrior and they go, well, you know, but with my arms, I'd extend from my back leg, I'd look straight ahead. Okay, great, do that. And then we've taken warrior pose as a sort of bad bit of exercise into stretching, into something they can use in conversation, something they can use as a practice walking down the street, something they can use to stand slightly differently without looking too weird. Now we've made it into transferable practice.

There's about 10 other things, but there's three for stars. That's some nice takeaways. You mentioned that we were at three out of four. Yeah, so we've done an awareness and choice itself, and we did other awareness, so it's empathy and body reading, but we didn't do influence. So really it's just based on the other three. So how do you calm someone down? Or wait them up, or make them laugh, or turn them on, or whatever the influence you want to have on someone else is, that's through the body. I'll give you an example of this. I was working rush-trial, I was just there now actually, and I have an interpreter, and my interpreter says it's very polite, slightly nervous, very particular young lady called Julie, and it's quite difficult because I'll say, and she'll say, and it completely changes

the message. So she's actually to her credit, she's learnt my embodiment and she kind of steps into it. And another example from there, when I make a joke, people laugh before she translates it. Why? Because the embodiment is what's being conveyed. And this is what we do all the time. Like I used to work with kids a lot. I used to work in like you know, you know, PGL, like outward education and big groups of kids running around the words. Lots of fun. And you know, you have to hold their authority. That's a body thing. It almost doesn't matter what you say. You know, like my best mate, he'll haven't seen me in ages.

He'll see me once or twice a year back home. And he'll say, Mark, you're the biggest nobet I've ever met in my life. You're such a wanker. But what is body saying is I love you and I missed you. You know, this is proper bridge bloke thing to do. And that's actually, I can tell that's what he's body saying, because my body relaxes and it opens. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So this is the fundamental way we influence people. Like, you know, let's say you're interested in attraction. Maybe these guys are women out there and they're interested in being more attractive. Now, you can wear some clothes and get a haircut and maybe learn some pickup lines, but if you're not embodying attractive qualities, you won't even be looked at. You won't even be looked at by women or men. And as soon as you have those, it's just like you can be wearing the Dirt E.T. shirt with food on it and have

your hair all over the place. And you've all got a mate like that, isn't he annoying? You know, who kind of had that naturally, never had to learn it. He had that. We call it charisma or chemistry or, you know, chemistry is the body thing. If you and your partners love life has gone, and I've worked with gay community law in Russia as well, so this works with gay people too, but if you're in your party, your love life is gone a bit flour. It's you've lost polarity. That's embodied, you know, if you're young and shizzy, or you're young and shizzy, and that's not, it's not really going to help. So can you actually step into that polarity, step into that where you can influence them? And this is an embodied skill,

I'm tremendously useful for any kind of leaders or influences. What are the biggest challenges that people come up against when trying to improve their influence? They're not basing it on the other stuff. So they try and go straight to the tricks and they're not basing it on their own self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy. So they need to sort of, they sort of come to me and say, look, I'm fine, but everyone else is fucked up. All right, maybe let's look at that. So,, that's probably the biggest challenge and just not being in their bodies. I mean, it's like, I'm normal and I'm your manager. I'm completely in my head.

I've got no embodied presence. I'm not feeling anything and I'm trying to inspire you today. Just not having any kind of passion or embodied presence at all. That's not going to be helpful. I put in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago that you are the common denominator in your life. What is more likely, all of your relationships end badly, let's say, or your boss always seems to like you, or you always seem to be much better with money than all of your friends, or you just never get invited out to parties, whatever it might be, wherever you go,

there you'll be. Like, you're always going to, you are the common denominator in your life. And I know it's hard, it's hard for everyone to hear because it feels so bestowed on you, right? Like, whatever the common threads are that exist in your life, because it feels so bestowed on you, right? Like whatever the common threads are that exist in your life, they manifest in your mind like a curse

that's been thrown down from the heavens. And that's also the way that our emotions then manifest them, right? The feeling of love is oxytocin. Love is an action done in the body. So, but the way that you sense it, the way that it actually manifests when you try and think and break it down and you feel it in your chest and you feel the warmth, that doesn't feel anything like just a chemical getting

released. And the same thing goes for the situations that occur in your life. The challenges that you face feel like they've been bestowed upon you and the successes that you've faced also for people dealing with imposter syndrome feel like they've been bestowed upon you and the success is that you face also for people dealing with imposter syndrome feel like they've been bestowed upon you too. Yeah, I mean personal responsibility is the first thing I teach all my new employees. When I just took a big team on for the conference we were talking about earlier and the first thing I told them is personal responsibility. It's like, in embodiment we call it somatic responsibility.

It's like no one made you angry. You made you angry. I mean, you know, you might say, hey, he made me angry and there's a shorthand and that's fine. But really, I did angry in my body. This is from Paul Lindem, one of my main teachers. I did angry in my body when he said X, right? Like that, even if it was an unconscious choice, it was a choice.

And then actually it's radical to take responsibility over yourself. And there are, that's the conservative truth, right? The personal responsibility. The liberal truth is equally important to balance, which is that there are conditions. And those conditions might be intergenerational trauma, it might be poverty, it might be whatever the, this, you know, living in Moscow,

it might be that you haven't even breakfast. That's what that morning, there's lots of conditions, right? So we have to acknowledge both for those things, the conditions and the responsibility. And for me, embodiment is a great way to take responsibility over myself and get out of that victim position. I want to get onto the embodiment conference in a little bit, but before we do that, can you try and give us some more common embodiment techniques, the most common ones that you use with your clients or that you've been taught, that you think the broadest cross section of people that I know can probably benefit

from some of these. Yeah, great. So, I mean, we've got state changes and then we've got how do we develop ourselves? There's people, there's no quick wins for the second one, okay? Like, the second one, you want to develop yourself as a person, get a practice, start going to karate or tango or conscious dance, you know, do meditation every morning, great, that's a long-term project. But people often need the quick wins first so they can have some sort of stage end, which is fair enough. So, stand differently, walk differently, sit differently, breathe differently, there you go, that's about it. Breath, do you want to breathe a bit more in the chest or a bit more in the belly? That will have a different impact. Which do we want? Well, it depends what you want it for. So when everyone talks about good breathing or good posture, my next question is, well, what for? So if I'm trying to go to bed at night and I want to go to sleep,

long, smooth out breath. Yeah. That's kind of multi-breath. If I want to wait myself up in the morning, express so breath. I was in bed this morning, I had to five T breath. If I want to wait myself up in the morning Express so breath I was in bed this morning I had to five hours sleep, I need to get up to see my team. I was like Okay, just one one breath If sometimes you only got two three seconds, right? Did that go down a bed? Okay, simple get up technique Whoa, I'm like I'm gonna have a wake from doing it just now. And then like this evening. It's like what are we at? Like it's like oh, we've got a few hours. like, I'm gonna have a wake from doing it. Just now, and then like this evening, it's like, what are we at? It's like, oh, we've got a few hours, yeah, but there'll be a,

oh, that makes me just go asleep. Just I don't wanna do that too much, actually, being interviewed. So there's two breaths where you're right away. We can say yang in the end, belly and long out breath versus the in breath. How do you stand? Do you wanna take up space or do you wanna be more private? More width or less width? More forwards, do you want to be more engaged? Like as an interviewer, right?

You can be more engaged. Hey Mark, tell me that. Or you can be more back. Avaluating, taking your space. Yeah, and we can go up and down. Do you want to be more down? It's just like grounded, solid, stubborn, will fight them on the beaches. Yeah. Or do you want to be more up here, more lively and inspired and light and fun and will depends when, right? Maybe you want to be serious now, you're at work, but later on you're relaxing, you know, you haven't fun with your friends at the pub, you want to be a bit more up and up.

So we can use posture. Walking I've mentioned, simple ass techniques. You're someone like me who tends to rush, walk a bit slower, walk more on the heels, you're someone that lacks confidence, well when it's slightly, it doesn't have to be money, Python, just a slightly longer stride, push from your back for a little bit more. Yeah, look up, you know, the John Peterson thing about, you know, stand up tall, it's not wrong, it's just not very detailed,

right? It's just fine, it's just, you know, stand up tall. It's not wrong. It's just not very detailed, right? It's just fine. It's just, you know, I did a video on what could be added to that. Um, so what have we done? Sitting again, you know, how do you want to sit posture breathing movements? So these are basic tools. Um, and then we could look a bit more ecotereically, you know, like a bit more creatively, like, um, like right now, imagine visualise the hand of someone supportive on your back, someone from your past, the teacher, maybe a dad or a grandparent, and lean into that. Yeah, you just shifted. How was that? It's a nice cue.

Nice, huh? So you can have a visualisation. Sometimes I'm visualising on five, visualising on angel wings, visualizer, feet, a trees, I mean, you know, some people love visualization, but other people it doesn't work for. So yeah, all we can say, okay, like I'm one of my translator, Julie and Moscow, good love, it's one of our best friends now. She says when she wants to be more confident in kick-ass, she's kind of like, you know, she does a sort of her inner mark, and she sort of moves and stands a bit like me. And if I want to be sort of nice and polite and a bit less offensive, I can be a bit more like Julie, right? Like that's a mode because I'm quite familiar with Julie from years of standing next to her.

I can just, it's like channel, but there's nothing weird about it. It's just, I'm bringing that person to mind. There's a body. There's a, this quality with Julie, ee, a particularness. And I change as soon as I start to put on. But all this stuff is just hacks. And in my book, plug, there's a whole chapter on sort of hacks and like little quick wins you can do, things you can do as you get in a chair, self coaching. It doesn't have to be complicated.

You know, the iPhone that goes off and reminds you to breathe, that sort of thing. But really, if I'm working with people in long term, it's the practices. It's what you're really practicing. And yes, we can give you shapes, the practice, yoga shapes and poses, but it's something like, you know, you mentioned your kung fu practice.

You know, that has stayed with you. That has stayed with you years later because you put the hours in. And let's grow up. Yes, it's nice to go and do some way how I scroll mushrooms. Yes, it's nice to jump up and down and, you know, do a workshop and you know, pump the air and feel good. But unless you're really developing a practice, that stuff's not going to stick. Let's get real. All the books in the world won't solve your problems. I can listen to a thousand podcasts from me or from you and learn about stoic philosophy and listen to Douglas Montgomery and all

these great thinkers, but unless I develop a practice, I'm not changing. That difference between state and trade, I think, is a really good point to make. And again, it comes back to the transactional nature of what the self-development world has come to. And we try as much as possible to talk about compliance on this show to try and remind people that what you do every day is what you'll end up becoming. There's a concept which you might love actually with the martial arts reference from Ethan Supply, my buddy who was in Wolf or Wall Street, big, huge actor, massive guy out of my name is Earl, and now he's lost 300 pounds and he's got beard, and he wears his cap on backwards, and instructor that he had gave him a rule, which is called no bad reps. And no bad reps is a really smart way to remind us that you're always drilling something. Yes. The way that myelin sheaths wrap

around the neurology, neurology, neurology, neurology of how the myelin sheaths wrap around the neurology, neurology? Yeah, neurology of how the myelin sheaths wrap around in your brain isn't that you don't get to choose not to make a habit. You just get to choose which habit it is that you're making. Got this reading? You're wiring together. Right now, everyone listening to this right now, something is wiring together.

Neurons that wire together. They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're firing together right now, they're wiring together. Right now, to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they Like that's, you can just be completely unconscious with that. Or you can say, you know what, I choose something different. And I'm a believer of any embodied practice. If people want to do yoga or dance or martial arts, different people like different things, great. Get in your body, start to feel again.

Stop thinking that wanking over porn and reading books is gonna cut it. Like get into a dojo, go do yoga, do something that you get into your body again and reclaim that humanity. What are some suggestions you've got people think? Yeah, Mark fellow is all right, like that embodiment stuff sounds pretty good. First off, let's say that we're in COVID, which we are, what can or should, what would be a good suggestion for people to start. And then let's say that we're back into the real world,

what some things perhaps that people have overlooked that would be a little bit more left-field. Okay, if they're a completely beginner, if they're pretty cerebral like my academic friend, any movement practice that involves feeling, whatever's comfortable and happy and inspires you, whether it's martial arts, dance, yoga, whatever, okay, you can do that at home, the Zoom classes and all these things now. We're actually more available than ever before. So, you know, getting up from your chair, this I don't like, you can see I'm getting ants and I'm sitting still for an hour, you know, I normally move around a lot more.

Being in nature, being around other embodied people, they're the key factors. But movement is the first one. Do some simple things, even if it's just 10 minutes of mindful breathing a day, a little bit of mindful barefoot walking on the grass in the park, that's what I do. And then if you feel inspired to do a class, if people are listening to this and they already have a practice, next level, examine it, is it transferring question warm? Is your yoga or your cryo ever getting off the mat? Yeah. Question two, is your practice chosen from your neurosis and just making you more and more like how you are? Maybe you actually need a second practice. Like I did martial arts for ages, I got very disciplined, you know, I got that Japanese thing that I needed to get my

sober and to, you know, give me that structure in my body, but then I got a bit uptight and I needed to go to fire rhythms and let it all hang loose and dance and be free. So there's like different things, if you've already got one practice, you might want to look at a second one. And what's a more left field suggestion when the world reopens? Well, let's all have an all-in castle. I think I'm in the snow. I think I'll go clubbing in new castle and have a great time. That was my-

That was a lot more- That's fine, guest list available text below. You mentioned about like interpretive dance and comedy and all this sort of stuff. You know, all of these different practices might, their horses for courses, but getting into the body, I really like that idea.

I think as well this year more than ever, I've noticed the lack of variety in the movements that I've been able to do. You know, I haven't been, no one's been going to a nightclub in 2020. No one's been really spending a ton in the UK. We weren't even allowed to go out of the house. You could maybe barefoot on the grass once per day.

Unless you got a garden. People been locked in their houses. You live in a city. It might be a fair distance for you to get to some nature. So I think that there's a really good case to be made that taking yourself out of your mind and I'm gonna make a pejorative statement about the vast majority of people who choose to listen

to podcasts and consume this type of content in any case. I think that'll select for a particularly cerebral type of person already. I think there'll exist a lot more in their head than their will in their body. And I certainly know that I do as someone who thinks that he's trying to push these boundaries already. So I definitely agree. I think there's a lot that can be taken from the embodiment practice. Yeah.

Man should be well-danced and well-for as well as well-read. And I love reading, you know, loaded books behind me, ordered about five, yesterday, I'll probably get around to reading two of them if I'm lucky. I love reading, but we need something more than that if we're going to grow as people. We need a practice. We need some way to get back in our bodies. And as you say in these times, I think it's particularly important. We're, you know, we're in this slightly disembodied world right now and yeah I'd encourage people to whatever in body practice appeals to them give it a go. I love it. Tell us about your conference.

Okay so we have a huge conference coming up where to begin. I love embodiment. I think it's a good thing. I'd like to sit out in the world. I've been putting stuff out online on YouTube and my podcast and embodiment for free. And then I went hang on a minute, we could do an online event two years ago. We did it for the first time. Everyone laughed at us because no one knew what zoom was then. 15,000 people turned up. And then I thought to myself, well, hang on, how big can we make this? And now we've got a thousand speakers, probably going to be half a million people booked in. The embodiment conference is called the embodiment conference dog. All the top names in trauma and yoga, in meditation, martial arts, free to the world. We make our money by buying

the record, people buy the recordings, but it's totally free of people when I listen into it. It's the embodiment conference dog. And I'm going to be honest, it's a free of people when I listen into it. It's the embodiment conference.org. And I'm gonna be honest, it's a terrifying proposition. All of a sudden, I'm the mayor of a small town, and I mean, I'm million pounds to do it. And I'm in charge of a team of 60 people. And I'm like, you know, I'm used to doing little embodiment training for 30 or 50 people.

So it's a bit of a step up for me. And what can I say? I've been inspired by it. I feel stressed by it. I feel happy I'm doing it, I feel frustrated sometimes, it's the full spectrum, it's like a Mount Everest decline, but it's happening, it's really happening, so if people are all too curious about this stuff, the embodiment conference would be a good place to get a taste, get a free taste of many, many different

approaches like a kind of tapas meal, you know. When is it? It is the 40th, the 25th of October. It's online, it's free for everyone, free to register, really easy to do. And there's 10 different channels running simultaneously 24 hours a day. It's in nine languages as well. So if people want to listen to it in German or Spanish or Chinese or whatever they can. So it's, yeah, we think it's the largest educational event in human history.

It's certainly the largest online summit there's ever been. It's pretty ambitious and it's scope. And we've got this very clever computer systems and Israeli friends mind made, which is sort of means you can find what you want rather than just get lost in it. So you can say, right, I want to learn about trauma and I want to begin as class and I want it next Tuesday and you just put all that in and you can find what you need. Dude, what event, man? That is a serious undertaking. You know, someone told me, hey, I'll we'll be about next year. I said, I'm not going to go next. I'm going to talk about it. This is crazy. Like, it's really something.

And I wanted to push it and just see how far it would go. And you know, have that personal challenge. And as I said, I think this embodiment is needed in the world today. I think we are disconnected from ourselves. And that leads to all sorts of problems, whether it be health problems, emotional problems, we're disconnected from each other, you know, we're disconnected

from the planet and those things cannot continue. So even in this weird techie, you know, tuning in online, learning in body, not the internet world, we need to find a way to come home to the body and I hope this is some contribution towards that. Awesome, man. I think that's a really noble pursuit. And I'm going to guess that this was planned long before COVID kicked off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 80 months in the moment. Yet 2020, probably a pretty good year for people to have this

some sense of community or connection to half a million people. Yeah, I mean, the Facebook ad price came down if nothing else, you know, but it was, when I'm joking, I don't wish COVID on anyone. It can be nasty, particularly for elderly people, content, but I think a lot of people isolated stuck indoors, having we've done a lot of lead up events to this with events on stress and trauma and, you know, all different things like that. And you could see it was really beneficial for people to, even if they were in the house to be able to connect with other people. That feels like a

worthwhile thing to be putting out there and giving some of the skills and the experts and just making it globally available for everyone online. So I'm proud of it, to be honest. May it feel like we've already achieved something just getting to this point. And yeah, it's definitely a test for me as a leader. It's not always easy, but I'm probably doing it. Congratulations, man. People want to check it out. Where do they go? The embodimentconference.org, or if they just Google embodiment conference, people will like what I've been hearing as well as well. They can look at YouTube channels, the podcast, they've got a book out called embodiment. Basically, you start Googling in the word Embodiment,

you're going to come up with all this stuff and there's loads of free resources online. So yeah, I want to encourage people to look up those and there's lots of other teachers in this field, not just me and if I'm not your cup of tea, you might like Paul Lindorne, Richard Stresy, Heckler, Wendy Palmer. There's a whole load of great teachers out there in the world.

I love it. Everything that we've gone through, we've linked in the show notes below. I'll be tuning in. I think I'll ask you for your top superstars from the conference that we like asking you to choose your favorite children or something. I'm gonna have to tell you off line.

I was gonna say, I'm gonna ask for the secret. It's a little bit political. The super secret best of guest list, and I'm gonna get, I'm gonna tune in and do that. Mark, today's been really, really fun, man. I really enjoyed it and I think that the concepts that we've gone through hopefully will help a lot of people. Like I say, anyone that's interested in finding out a little bit more about this, I'll have linked most of the stuff that you need or if not, just search Mark Walsh or the embodiment conference online and

you'll be able to find out some more. For now, man, thank you so much. Thanks for talking time, Chris Pleasure.