Sense of Soul - Importance of Embodiment

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Mande and Shanna had a fun and inspiring conversation with the Embodiment Specialist Coach and host of the Embodiment Podcast, Mark Walsh! Mark Walsh has dedicated his life to studying the “embodied” approach to being a leader. Mark teaches how important working with the body is, and how it can change your life. He works with many unique skills that I’m sure you will appreciate! We loved his free ebook WORKING WITH NORMAL PEOPLE: A GUIDE FOR HIPPIES, free on his website as well as all of his videos. Check out all of his classes and support at embodiedfacilitator.com and www.integrationtraining.co.uk Also you must check out this amazing, enormous event, The Embodiment Conference 2020. With 10 topic-centred channels and over 1000 speakers, there is sure to be something for everyone. Check out the link below!  https://theembodimentconference.org As always check out the amazingness Sense of Soul has going on, like the new CLEAR Ancestry Workshop! www.mysenseofsoul.com Please rate comment and subscribe!  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Mark Walsh is here with us on Sense of Soul today and we are so excited. He is a public speaker, a coach, a podcast host, an author. He's taught embodied work in 30 countries and lived in seven of those. He's taught Aikido training for over 20 years in five continents. He's a black belt. He has an amazing sense of humor. He is also the director of the Embodiment Conference that's starting on October 14th. I'm assuming he has not had a lot of sleep because holy shit, this conference is a big deal. It's got over a thousand speakers. we are so stoked to have you. welcome Mark.

pleasure to be here. how are you doing on sleep? you know I'm sleeps okay. I'm doing seven hours a night. mostly I just work and sleep though I'm looking after myself. I was swimming in the sea at 10 o'clock at night last night and I didn't get swept along quite far I turned out but um night swimming meditating breath work walking in the park for a little bit of exercise and yoga so I'm kind of practice what I teach within Monument you know I'm like a solid six out of ten and given what we've got coming up I'm pretty pleased with that so um yeah given the size and the scale and scope of the event in two weeks

time you know i'm still standing so that's cool sometimes hard to keep a balance right now we're having to do two episodes a week because we have just so many amazing people and you know i'm like shoot i didn't even get to meditate today and i usually can feel it i'll feel it one way or the other yeah i noticed the difference when I meditate in the morning. I just essentially just got to prioritize it and hold that stuff as sacred. Also there's, you know, false economies of like,

oh, work longer and not do any exercise and not meditate and not, you know, not spend any social time. And eventually that always gets diminishing returns. So I've kind of learned that lesson the hard way a few times where sometimes I need to remind myself. And yeah, for me also, just as an embod an embodiment teacher you know there's an integrity piece there of not yes we're all allowed to be human and there's like not going so far out of integrity

and just totally getting into my head and being an online business guy the whole time yeah you gotta we gotta practice what we preach right yeah yeah so you know for me the embodiment conference embodiment podcast that's the kind of key piece for me is you know am i anchored in my body am i mindful of my body am i self-regulating you know i do i have a practice to improve myself and develop myself as a person through the body so that's that's my primary interest and um you know business we live in the real world it says i'm okay with that it's good to run a business it's good to do our podcasts and whatever else but without that foundation then you know it's dehumanizing and I've gone away from the anchor of what I really care about. Love it yeah well let's start at the beginning if you don't mind tell us you know what

got you into the work you do. Yeah I'd'd say abject failure. So, you know, I was really clever cognitively as a kid. So I was in school, I found it very easy. My parents were teachers, I read all the books in the school. And people said, you're really clever. And what I noticed was, even though I was very clever, cognitively, I was a screw up. You know, I was really alcoholic, drug addicted, awful relationships, behavioral issues. I guess they call ADHD now, you know, various low level criminal stuff. And I was miserable. You know, I was suicidal by the time I was 14, I guess. And I thought, hang on a minute, everyone's telling me I'm smart. And I'm wholeheartedly consuming Western

education in, you know, any form I can get it and yet I seem to be getting more and more screwed up and I thought well something else must be possible and a university by the time I got to university I was really disillusioned with western education and the sort of western you know body mind split really I wouldn't necessarily expressed it that way but that would have been the heart of it and I walked into Aikido dojo, a martial arts school. I had very practical reasons I wanted to learn to fight, moving to the big city and kind of being involved with some illegal stuff and what I saw in Aikido I just fell in love with. And I thought, ah, there's something in this.

Like I saw like the discipline. I thought, I need that. And that's something I'm not going to learn from a book. You know, you can't learn to kiss from Wikipedia. You can't learn leadership from a textbook. I realized the key things in life were what I would now call embodied learning. I find that a lot of young people that are kind of stuck in that same place that you're at

tend to always go join the army or the navy or, you know, that's their go-to to get that discipline. They know they need it. They know they want it. And so it's nice to think that there's something else out there. Yeah, I mean, the British army is much smaller than the American military,

so it's not so easy in the Britain terms of numbers. also it's kind of a hippie in some ways. so I've got family in the military so I'm not against that but it's certainly you know 18 that would have been an unimaginable idea and I also see yoga being a big draw for a lot of people. there's people that are working in office and they might be 20 but they might be 40 they might be 50 and they just go you know what there has to be more to life than the nine to five or they're just stressed every day they're in new york or london or paris or wherever and they're on the subway every day and then they do a yoga class and they actually feel good and they feel good

for the first time maybe in years and maybe they sleep better and maybe their sex life starts to improve and they go hang on a, there's something else here. And that is normalized now. Like, you know, back when I started this stuff, it was less normal. But since then, we've had the whole mindfulness revolution. And, you know, mindfulness is really the basis of what I would call embodiment. So, you know, that is now what we see with the conference, how popular this kind of stuff is.

It's not weird to do yoga you guys in colorado right so maybe the only conscious dance was first of all was in boulder and then it spread to denver and before you know it spread to the little redneck time outside of denver you know it's like if things are spreading yeah well i mean most people will seek a vice of some sort to help that anxiety and stress in their life or pain. And so a lot of times it's just, you know, the go-to medications or the drugs and alcohol. So it's wonderful that, you know, as a man, that you're able to teach this and share your story about how, hey, I do yoga.

You know, sometimes men just need some more feminine energy man because we need more healthy masculine energy the last thing we need is more feminine energy in a feminized world so i mean you know i would your young men it's absolutely great to send them to martial arts and i've seen that be beneficial to young women too as well i think across genders embodiment is healthy and helpful though there is some stuff that's gendered within it i think coming from a home where i didn't necessarily have a healthy role model um role modeling is gendered whether people like that or not uh to have male figures in my life in martial arts who were healthy kind of role models

i think was very you know and all through the ages you know like young man older man you're being thrown around by 70 year olds teaches you a certain amount of respect you know but I also had female martial arts teachers too and I'm glad for them as well well you know because if you go with the other vices all you'll find is more self-hatred or lower self-esteem where you'll have a better chance of kind of looking inward and having more self-love to more self-awareness what I love about you though is that you tend to really focus on discernment in the body what is embodied coaching or what what is this technique that you uncovered to be so successful for people? Yeah, I mean, just to follow up on your point, first of all, around vices, I think we all try and self-regulate.

And eventually you get to the limits of your self-regulation strategy, whether that be shopping or drugs or yoga even actually as well. So in terms of, you know, that urge to self-regulate is a very healthy one. In terms of embodied coaching, okay, so whatever your change modality, whether it's coaching, therapy, facilitation, whatever, if you ignore the body, it doesn't work. It's as simple as that. So you can't talk your way out of things. So if somebody has, I don't know, any kind of issue, a confidence issue, that is, yes, it's about what they're telling themselves, but it's also about how they hold themselves right this is in some ways common sense but it can be uh studied and refined and there are people you know masters of this art in the states and in europe so body coaching is a field that uses the body in coaching but rather than like the body is fitness some people hear body and

they think you know press-ups and having a six-pack or being a certain shape it's actually seeing the body as part of who we are so part of our being is how we breathe how we move and it's not just body language in that we don't just express ourselves with our body we create ourselves with our body so as a coach if I want to help someone shift into a different way of being, not just learn a trick or a tip, I mean, you know, I can give you a quick breathing exercise to relax when you're doing a presentation. Great, easy, nice and helpful. However, on a deeper level, like who are you as a person? Let's work on that level. And that's where the body comes in. Can you give us like an example, like maybe someone? John, what about you? You happy to go live here let's do it

okay uh what's the challenge you have in your life bear in mind this is on the internet so you know you might want to change the names of the guilty oh no it's okay i'm an open book um i'm also in recovery and in aa and i'm like me too we have a good attitude where we just throw all of our shit out there. So here we go. I have no patience. I lack patience. I appreciate that. I can relate to that one. Yeah. Patience is for losers. Okay. So having what you call no patience is an embodied mode, right? So do you tend to be more forwards or more back? Like literally physically, like right now I can see but you want to tell me i stand very high shoulders up the head up it tends to be people that impatient

are on the balls of their feet they're kind of coming forwards and actually if i look now you're sitting that's how you're sitting right now compared to shana who's not sitting that way it's different she's kind of like oh okay and you're like okay mark let's do it okay i don't care let's dive in you're forwards right and there's nothing wrong with that that's beautiful that's cool i like it i personally like it and it's one way of being so first thing is all i teach is really awareness and choice so becoming aware of when you have that forwardsness you know when you have that like rushing into things and you can exaggerate that if you want to like actually play with it and being like okay you

know if i was your therapist i'd be like where does this come from tell me about your mother i don't actually give a shit about that stuff but all i'm interested in is you become aware you're doing it and then if you want try something else like lean back breathe a little slower a little deeper it's hard to be impatient when you're breathing slow and smooth yeah feel your back against the chair or just imagine a hand on your back someone supportive maybe and you're breathing and then we can practice right so like if i was your coach we could do like a simulator where you'd be practicing that urge to jump in feeling it in your body in your posture and your breath and then choosing something else and then then we'd set up a practice. So you could do that on a daily basis. Like every day,

let's say you buy, do you like coffee? Can't live without it. I'm with you. It's the, it's the lifeblood. So when you're ordering your coffee, you'd be like going forwards,

giving my coffee. And then we turn that into a practice where you come back onto your heels, you go down and back and then practice patience every day, just in the coffee shop. And then you build that muscle. Does that make sense? Oh my perfect sense my my son's just like me and he walks on the ball of his feet literally cross-cultural people recognize that in africa brazil russia you see that stuff everywhere oh my gosh this is just fantastic mark i you know it's so funny because

you feel like you're so aware of everything but this is the body part that i feel like has been missing i do a lot of things like this just for the audio people she's tilting my head back and forth like and it's so annoying when i look back at me i'm just like oh my god what the hell why am i doing that well it i could give you some insight into it if you wanted, but that's kind of a female placating pattern. You'll see a lot. Princess Diana was the extreme of it,

you know, vulnerability pattern. It's like, here's my jugular. But it doesn't really matter why you do it. What matters is do you want to keep doing it, right? Right, okay. And what way of, bodies become invisible. It's like the taste of your own mouth or like,

am I wearing underpants right now? I actually, I'm not sure. Cause they're comfortable ones. And I, you know, it's your embodiments a bit like that, you know,

like try crossing your arms. Cross them the other way. Oh God, you screwed me up on that one. It was weird, right? Oh, you do it with the fingers,

you know, crossing your hands together. So your embodiment is actually kind of invisible, your habitual embodiment, your unconscious embodiment. So my job is to help make it a bit more visible, a bit more obvious and bring people's patterns to light. And then rather than say you're broken or you're screwed,

I mean, we're all screwed up, right? You have to be screwed up one way or another. Instead of saying, you know, do I want to develop some range? Do I want to develop some choice? Maybe being impatient is good sometimes, like cut the crap, let's get on with it. But other times, you know, when someone's upset and you're trying to listen to them, you're like, come on, you know, maybe not. So this is what I teach. This is fabulous. I mean, I was watching some of your videos on your website to prepare for

this episode. And I noticed that you have such a gift of reading people which is something that mandy and i are both very good at we can be chameleons with with whatever energy enters our space i wanted to know was that something that you have always had there's different skills in embodiment one is self-awareness another one would be self-regulation right like i'm pretty stressed with the conference right now, but I probably don't come across that stressed to you, right? Even though we're two weeks out of a quarter of a million person event. Okay.

Cause I'm self-regulating. That's a skill. Another skill we could say is body reading. Yeah. And there's two levels that one is just empathy. And some people are definitely more empathic. I'm not particularly, I'm not a psychopath. I'm kind of in the middle, you know?

So it's like some people are just really naturally empathic. That can actually be a problem for them. You can actually be like taking on too much, right? So you have to get learned. Like some of my clients, I have to learn to turn that shit off because they're just absorbing everyone's anger and fear and bad feeling. And it's nice to just be like, boom, you know? And whereas other people need a little bit more training in there and so there's the empathy side and then

we have the more cognitive side which is body reading so you know so for example i'm i was aware that one of you was leaning forwards and one of you was head tilting just to use the and about 10 other things just just they're like two that we've mentioned right so that's something i'm tracking and i'm not i'm not arrogant around it like you could have just like hurt your neck yesterday right in the gym right i don't know uh it could be some cultural thing i don't understand yet about america i don't know but i've got guesses because i've seen that pattern before okay so so when manny's like talking about impatience and i've already seen her kind of coming forwards and you know i'm like i already had kind of an image of what that how that might be embodied for her and then we started playing with that.

So yeah that's a skill you can get better. I think I spent some time in war zones and post-conflict areas and when people are pointing guns at you and shouting at you in African language you don't speak it's really important you start to understand what's going on in their body. So like that I've worked in some dangerous places like the favela slums of Brazil and Afghanistan and places like that. And I think that definitely tuned it to that radar

because think about like a comfortable pre-COVID nice, normal Western life. There's no real consequences for being a dumbass, right? Like, I mean, maybe you get hit by a car but that's about about the only chance you know so it's I think having some like something like martial arts or something like living in war zones gives people a reason to be tuned in the other thing is I've just touched a lot of bodies and partly in martial arts and partly just being very promiscuous before I got married

I lived in Brazil I would would have been rude not to. And like that just means because I've touched a lot of bodies you develop the skill to be able to look at someone and get a sense of what they're doing. Does that make sense? I touched a lot of bodies as well. A lot. Your body worker? Yeah. I'm a body worker, yeah. More ethical reasons. So like a body worker, as soon as a good body worker puts hands on you, right, you know, okay, this one's a body worker. Yeah. More ethical reason. So like a body worker, you're like, as soon as you put a good body worker puts hands on you, right. You know,

okay, this one's a crier or, Oh, this one's got a lot of stress or, Oh, this one's nervous or this one's sensitive. So I'm going to have to use a gentle touch or this one likes the elbow. You know, I'm going to have to really go out and have to work hard. So good. Yeah. A good body worker is feeling that and you've got enough experience that you put hands on someone you go oh one of them. it's kind of the same with me when I'm talking to people and doing some coaching of my own or helping people in recovery but I'm not working with the

body I'm working with their emotions like I feel them out and I know I can just shoot the shit really fucking straight to this person and I don't have to sugarcoat it or I know that they're sensitive and I need to kind of like ease my way in great I had that sense with you Mandy I was like okay like you know I'm also in recovery I see different addicts bodies right and some people are just full of shit and you're like listen it's your fucking responsibility stop making excuses other people it's just like are you okay you know it's gonna be okay let's just be nice yeah right as a coach how fast i go how hard i go like how many jokes i make like i kind

of feel comfortable with you i could probably make some pretty dirty jokes and there's other clients i'm just like nah that's not gonna land well so sensitivity of being an embodied human right is you're feeling like what's necessary what's useful. and I'll be honest with you I think I got a lot of that skill bartending and waitressing. people don't understand like you're really a chameleon and you really get to know everyone and all different types of people when you're in that industry. you know I was just talking about I used to be a bartender first in Cambridgebridge and then in uh and then in ireland uh where my family are from and it's very interesting because you sort of see the raw humanity you see people at their most ugly violent

hypersexual uh aggressive you know you get to see all the emotions even in england we're kind of buttoned down you know our emotions are like under the surface and then as soon as we get drunk it's football hooligans you know so you really do learn something about humanity and it also gave me a sense of like how do I want to live like seeing drunk people night after night and I was one of those people at the time as well I'd be you know drunk after working every night and I'd go is that really the person I want to be? Is that the practice that's going to build the best Mark Walsh that I can build? And, you know, my conclusion was hell no, eventually. And I knew it was not a, I'm not demonizing it. For some people, it saves their lives.

For some people, they just have a glass of wine once a week and good for them. But certainly for me, it wasn't going to be helpful. So that's, you know, I quit. I feel like you have set yourself aside looking at coaches you have just more of a original and unique practice in what you teach and i don't think that i've really seen anything like it and so i feel like it's a very original and i want to talk about some of the really cool things that i thought why can i say why oh please say why most coaches are fucking boring and the reason is that photocopies of a few americans so the so most of the world is copying not even american west coast

northern california and particular airy bullshitty style and you know that's one style right but even for like I don't know like a lady in New Jersey working in a bar that's bullshit let alone for someone in Russia so most coaches are completely inauthentic because they don't have the balls to be themselves they think it's the safe option to copy someone else and actually that's the least safe option because you end up as this weird photocopy of some other personality and your soul dies a little bit every day. And for me, it just, I just wasn't worth it. You know, from, I just, I think I had an extended death meditation through my own addiction and for various work I did. And there was a certain corner I turned when I just went,

I don't give a shit. have to be me you know it's like i've got gay friends in russia and it's not so easy being gay in russia but a lot of them actually make a choice at a certain point they go you know what screw it um i'm not gonna keep hiding this even though it's not so easy in russia like there's a time when we just have to go screw it and actually we i just constantly i see on instagram and facebook and all the rest of it coaches saying the same old shit that they haven't learned the hard way in their own lives. So, yes, please be yourselves. Yeah, no, I can totally appreciate that.

Some of the things, well, aside the fact that you focus a lot on the body, which I think that people often forget. And it's not just the moving of the body like yoga and the martial arts. Like you said, it was kind of the of and discernment of how your body feels but you have tango improv okay so embodied it has roots right like and they all teach you something different like i learned a certain discipline from aikido actually a certain sensitivity to and then yoga teaches you something else meditation something else body therapy something else improv comedy something else conscious dance or contact dance or tango something else so all these fields you can't master them all in a lifetime but you can taste them you know you could do a year of time you could be dancing tango in a year you know go twice two nights a week for a year you'd be pretty good

tango dancer i did that and i did cage fighting for a year and i did feldenkrais for a year and improv for a year and you know i'll do something for a year and improv for a year. And I, you know, I'll do something for a year and I'll get, you know, the basics, the kind of not a black belt, but maybe an orange belt. Anything can be an embodied practice. If you're developing yourself through that practice.

So you can do surfing just for fun. There's nothing wrong with that. Or you could do surfing as an embodiment practice. Right now, certain things have a tradition of being embodiment practices. It's easier to make a Japanese martial art into an embodiment practice than it is, say, like going to L.A. fitness because it's just a different culture. Right. There's a culture of awareness in a dojo where there isn't necessarily in a gym. So we can talk about cultures. We can talk about how we build awareness and ultimately like what embodiment you want to build.

So some people say, I'm going to do Aikido because you do you do aikido i'm going to do tango because it's cool and i'll say that's okay and if it's if it's the first art you're getting into just do whatever floats your boat have fun whatever okay but if people are a little bit more serious i'd say what's the way of being you want to develop is it patience or is it impatience is it kindness or is it fierceness is it niceness like i uh one of my students erica she has a course for women who are too nice so her whole course is to help women who are too nice to have better boundaries and be a bit more kick-ass now that's not what i need i don't need a course for women who are too nice i need something else right so it's like this is where we need to be a little bit as you said before discerning and I think discernment is becoming a critical skill because there's so much out there there's so many good so much good stuff

on the internet so many zoom classes now so how do we choose and that would be one orientation to how to choose I also love that you teach interpersonal skills but even something as simple and fun as flirting which i thought was so freaking fun it raises your vibration talk about that okay so flirting so flirting is embodiment skill right like tuning into someone else is this gonna be well received and that's always a risk and it's normally the man who's making the risk even in 2020 but at least you can make a guess right is this going to be well received and also it's a body play certain cultures like i've lived in like brazil or france flirting is just happening all the time you know a friend of mine in france said it's a french man isn't flirting with you be offended right like that's just normal or like my friends i lived in brazil and in brazil it's just the

sensuality that's there that you know in england or maybe most of north america just isn't there yeah there's that it's like a whole way of being like i got back from brazil and my mom was like where did you get those hips you know because like I was moving in this different way right and but that also could be a problem like I had one Brazilian student who was constantly being missing she was a working in America in a major airline and she would constantly be misinterpreted by people yeah well because it can be innocent I mean it can be not innocent but I mean for me I feel like a lot of it is just personality with women with with everyone oh i flirt with old ladies and gay guys they're my favorite to flirt with

oh my god yes i love little men my favorite so much fun because you can have all the fun without the consequences um so yeah i mean flirting is an embodied skill and people can definitely get better at it and you know this i'm not saying I'm a master, for sure. And I've screwed it up at times, definitely. But that is a skill. And, you know, I will have a practice of complimenting people, for example. You know, I have a student who's, I had one student who was just terrible with the opposite sex, just terrible.

And he was like, one time he was really clever guy like genius level guy and he said last night i was in tears with my mother because she said she realized she would never have grandchildren because i can't speak to women and i went meet me at the beach tomorrow at 10 a.m this is in tel aviv okay and first thing we did is i taught him a centering exercise i said this is how you calm yourself down put your feet on the floor bend your knees breathe with your belly this guy was a genius and no one had ever taught him that and he was like oh i feel better i'm like yeah i'm like okay now go tell the old lady she has beautiful hair or beautiful eyes and he went and did that and i went and then he was like how was

that he said cool i said now go tell the young woman he'd find attractive and he was like okay um you have beautiful eyes thanks then just run away but he was like that's the first time in my life I've ever done that you know and then by the end of it me and him are you know flirting with twins and all the rest of it. so him the pressure was flirting for someone else the pressure might be a job interview, it might be talking on a stage, it might be running a conference, it might be the screaming kids. I mean we all have pressures right for some of us find flirting easy and you know I've always been a natural at that. There's other things that I've found hard, like not getting drunk every night, right? Like for me, that was the thing I needed to learn the self-regulation around. Yeah, I needed to learn how to not get drunk every night and morning.

And morning, you were morning drinking too, awesome. So like addiction would be another area. So we could keep going between these different, you know, between these different areas and embodiment skill sets. We're all on a spectrum of one kind or another right now some of us may be diagnosable as addict autistic adhd and don't don't hear my jokes as lack of compassion because this is my family in different ways we've got everything one reason i'm so interested in this stuff but they're all scales and mostly what they are is and there's wiring involved right like i probably have a gene for alcoholism because my dad was the same as me.

But there's also skill sets. If I can learn to self-regulate better, right? Like that's going to help me with my addictive issues. If my cousin who's Asperger's can learn some slightly to tune into other people a bit better, that's going to help his social skills. And we're all starting from different places, but I think most people are settling for kind of a very low level, like the average person's ability to manage their

like their anger or their depression or anxiety, whatever, it's so low level. And it's easy to use external things to pick us up and to calm us down. But this is this is a birthright. This is a set of skills you can learn. I also noticed that when I was on your website, you do extensive non-violent communication training. And when I thought of that, of course, I thought about, you know, 2020 and the issues around how police and people confront each other. And I was like, whoa, let's talk about that for a minute. What is that? Yeah. You okay, Shana? You look like you spaced out a minute I just want to check you're okay I was just trying I was trying to listen it's hard listening it's annoying who wants to listen no just checking you're okay I want to be you know I want to be tuned in with the people I'm speaking with

it's a system a guy called Marshall Rosenberg invented it it's not my expertise i have had some training in it there are something called embodied peace building as well which my mentor from ohio paul linden uh founded which is a very useful system i think in the world we're in today the ability to listen to step out of our own points of view uh to depolarize i mean your country's on the verge of a civil war i mean you're heading in a direction which is not good yeah can we come live with you for during the election yeah no problem listen i'm gonna be in london doing the embodiment conference so my house will be free my wife won't mind if you bring your cat my wife will be okay with it okay doesn't really like loud people but if you bring a cat and

don't talk she'll be happy yeah but i mean jokes aside it's scary times right the polarization everyone's anxious because of covid people's economy has been wrecked and there's a low level of like disembodiment and agitation people are othering very easily now now you don't know if i'm super liberal or super conservative right so you could but you could other me very easily by saying oh he's one of those woke lefties or he's one of those conservative blah blah blah blah yeah and actually i'm kind of you know depends on the issue i always say i'm liberal sexually but conservative on my taxes you know so? So it's like, it's complex. So I would say as soon as we cognitively put these people in boxes, we've lost already.

And also the dysregulation, like people are screaming about whether it's anti-abortion or pro-life. If you're screaming about it, no one's listening. No one cares. You're just upsetting people. You're just alienating people. Whatever your point of view. Notice again, I'm not taking a side here here i'm saying sides are a bad idea um and you don't want

to go the route of civil war i've studied a lot of history and you know what i see the the tendency of alienation othering uh and now leading to violence with this backdrop of sort of covid mild trauma not good not good, not good. So I hope we pull back from that brink. And I think embodiment is a part of that. The trauma work of embodiment, the self-regulation work, the intimacy work, and God, being able to have a sense of humor. Like I worry if like, even the jokes we've made on the podcast today,

which are fairly mild, I worry that people are going to be like, you know, if guys if you're offended deal with it well and and that's why i actually could really appreciate last night i was on your website and i did subscribe because i wanted to get this ebook called working with normal people a guide for hippies just was magnificent it was written for me thank you very much mark working in with normal people a guide for hippies that's a funny book also with the conference i actually because it's self-published i can actually give the pdf away which i couldn't if it was published this is embodiment moving your mindfulness which is my main book which is on amazon and all

the rest of it and we actually give that away for free when people sign up with the conference now. My attitude has always been both as a business person be generous it comes back to you, you get your business coming and also just I want this stuff to be out there. I want people like we've got translation into nine languages for the environment conference. So people are talking about trauma can be as Arabic, Chinese know, Chinese, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Brazilian, Portuguese, French, German, it's all there. Because I feel like the world really needs to hear this stuff. And not just my point of view, like the conference is 1000 points of view, and really very diverse. You know, when we talk about diversity, we don't just mean different colours of American, we mean different points of view from different parts of the world,

different perspectives. Yes, we look at the normal kind of diversity kind of criteria, but much more than that. For me to put that out to the world free of charge, I mean, we only charge for the recordings if people want. So basically the business model is we make it free to everyone. Probably half a million people will turn up. And then 1% of those will buy the recordings,

which will pay back the $ million dollars i've invested so um that's that's the slightly mental business model but i like that model because it means it's accessible to people well let's talk about this conference because i'm blown away by it i mean you're just offering so much you have over a thousand speakers it starts October 14th it goes through the 25th can you talk about some of the speakers that you'll have there and the different areas of the conference yes we've got 10 different areas so it's like meditation martial arts dance traumas are very popular one people like um body people like Pete Levine, Gabble Mate, Stephen Porges they're very popular we've got

the embodied leadership track so those people that like listening it's like coaching and leadership people like richard strozy heckler when you palmer uh there's people from the yoga world so like anyone who's anyone in yoga pretty much like the most famous kind of you know best known yoga people plus on top of all the best known people we want to give the kids a chance the young up-and-coming people the people in africa and russia and singapore um you know it's a truly global event it's 24 hours a day and there's 10 channels running simultaneously so if you're interested in body mind stuff you can think of it like the best free tv channel for 10 days you could imagine and then if people want to buy the recordings they can then have to wow that's so much so where do people find that they go to the embodiment conference.org

the embodiment conference.org or they could probably just put embodiment conference into google as i said it's completely free to all uh it's kind of like my mount everest you know like people are like oh i'll come next year i I'm like, dude, this is not going to be a next year. This is a one-off. This is, this is something we're doing that's really unreasonably epic. And we had a 50,000 pound computer systems and clever Israelis design, especially just so you can find what you want. Cause the risk of course be like, Hey, I'm going to get overwhelmed.

I'm not going to see everything. No, you're not. But what you can do is use the computer portal we've built and you can find what you want. Because the risk could, of course, be like, hey, I'm going to get overwhelmed. I'm not going to be able to see everything. No, you're not. But what you can do is use the computer portal we've built. And you can say, right, I want a beginner's trauma session on Tuesday that isn't too active. And it's like, bing, bing, bing, two sessions come up. So the computer system makes the whole thing manageable. You can save things into your diary.

We've got learning lists so you can decide what you want to learn about. You might say, I'm interested in addiction. addiction you might say i'm interested in coaching and then you can find exactly what you want on the computer system so it's um it's quite a venture and as a as a leader it's been a step up for me you know i'm used to doing trainings of 30 or 40 people or maybe doing a talk to a few hundred and this is just a whole nother scale you know so um it's an interesting personal growth process as a leader for sure congratulations that's amazing i know that one person that stuck out that nancy and i talk often about is tara brock we really appreciate her practice

jack cornfield uh other meditators that are coming. Sharon Salzberg is absolutely lovely. Dan Segal, Leslie Kamenoff from the yoga world. Catherine Booker from New York does great breath work. Irene Lyons, Tammy Simon from Sanju. Ken Wilber, he's kind of big philosopher. Daria Halperin from the dance world. Joseph Goldstein, another great meditator. Kirsten Neff another meditator, Michaela Bowen who's more from the kind of intimacy world, all the founders of all the big conscious dance schools, Liz Koch who does trauma stuff, Richard and Mary Richard Freeman, Mary Taylor from the yoga world, Esha Eckhart, I mean it's ridiculous. and this really fucking funny guy named mark walsh everyone laughs at my jokes mandy it's unbelievable that's that's bullshit bullshit isn't it i'm on

best behavior i'm trying to be on best behavior because it's like when i'm doing my thing i can just be rude but when i'm being the host of the conference i try and be a little bit you know hey you know what? And then after that, for some reason, I just pictured you on Dancing with the Stars. After the conference, my ass is on a beach for two or three weeks drinking non-alcoholic margaritas and getting daily time massage.

That's my plan for after the conference, okay? I just wanted to also say that i really appreciated your video that i found on your story on the fake couch i think your story offers a lot of hope yeah yeah yeah yeah i did too that was great i think your story offers a lot of hope i mean you were uh drunk at almost 16 years old you got in a bad car accident. You walked into a couple meetings and by 27, you started your own company. I mean, fucking kudos. And that offers hope to a lot of the younger generation that is feeling stuck right now and lost. So I loved your story. We, you know, on Sense the Soul always have people on that have turned pain into purpose and you have

taken that to a whole nother level. So thank you for putting your light out into the world. And we're just glad I don't even know how I fucking found you, to be honest. I was on Instagram, and I was just looking around. And then I saw your face. And then I British guy. Let's get him on. Oh, my God It's been a pleasure. And do you want to know who my favorite is? Yes. My friend Brooke McNamara in Boulder, Colorado has a dodge show with her best friend. And at the end of it, you have to vote for one of them. Well, we do have something that you have to do at the end of ours, though. And now it's time for break that shit down just to speak to you i want

to say to anyone out there listening that if you are you know deep in drug addiction or you you know you were born with some squirky gene you know whether you're blonde or brunette okay whether you're american or british or whatever you've been born with like there's possibilities right there's possibilities and you know like i really feel like i'm living a life of purpose right now and you know beautiful wife pretty healthy money in the bank it's like feel good and i'm not saying i have a stress-free life a purposeful life can be quite intense and stressful at times but it's certainly meaningful and i just say for the kids go for meaning don't go for impress your friends don't go for being woke and trying to you know say the right things to appease people uh go for what's meaningful for you whatever that is and i just

encourage everyone to get some kind of a body practice as well you know whether it's yoga or dance or martial arts whatever floats your boat that will improve your life to have some kind of embodied practice. Yeah. It might just be taking a breath here and there, walking barefoot on the grass for five minutes and feeling your feet on the ground. It might just be leaning back in your chair, Mandy, when you're finding yourself getting patient.

You know, like it might be these little things. I don't want people to come away with the idea they have to be a super athlete or go and dance with the stars, you know? Like embodiment can be small things. And I just encourage people to take a look at the embodiment conference the embodiment conference.org the books on amazon if they're interested just look up if you google embodiment you're going to find my podcast and my book and the conference and all the rest of it so um yeah and there's

loads of free stuff out there loads of other good people in the space not just me so i just want to encourage people to do that awesome we really appreciate you loads of fun loads of fun i got blondes or brunettes i don't know which way to go now you both think so awesome yeah i know we're pretty rad this has been fun yeah thank you so much pleasure have a good one thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you.

We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.