The Dr. Hyman Show - From Drug Smuggler to Healer: How Nick Brewer Created Primal Moves
Episode Date: September 10, 2025On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Nick Brewer, founder of Primal Moves—a method born from his own healing journey. Once a pro skier turned drug smuggler, he spent ten years in p...rison, including four in solitary, where he discovered the power of breath and movement to rebuild his body and mind. I had the chance to try Nick’s class myself, and I was struck by how powerful such simple movements can be. I’m excited to share that experience with you. You can watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. [YOUTUBE THUMBNAIL] We discuss: • How to spot when your nervous system is stuck—and steps to restore balance • Why talk therapy alone can’t release trauma in the body • How group movement triggers natural feel-good brain chemistry • Why we feel cut off from our bodies and how to reconnect Healing starts in the body. By working through stress and pain, we gain the strength and energy to show up fully in life. My hope is that this conversation encourages you to explore these practices and see what they unlock for you. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by BON CHARGE, Timeline, Function Health, Big Bold Health, Paleovalley and LMNT. Head to boncharge.com and use code DRMARK for 15% off your order. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 10% off today. Join today at FunctionHealth.com/Mark and use code HYMAN100 to get $100 toward your membership. Get 30% off HTB Immune Energy Chews at bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK30. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order—just head to drinklmnt.com/hyman.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.
Went from Crackdown on Cocaine to Cracked Open in your consciousness.
I smashed myself to pieces.
I got into drug trafficking.
I found myself in South America.
I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine.
And I had a broken body and a broken mind.
You had this life as a smuggler.
It's finished.
And I sat and I asked, I said, what am I going to do?
And I heard this voice it came through and it said that I was going to be a facilitator of movement into people's lives.
So it was through a damaged body that I develop primal moves.
Nick Brewer is the founder of primal moves.
Fusing movement.
Breathwork.
And trauma-informed awareness.
He turned a prison sentence into a blueprint for freedom.
Reconnecting people to their bodies.
And out of pain.
People say, what's the meaning of life?
What's the purpose of life?
To me, it's getting free.
There's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well
because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
They think it's a place where they can reside.
It's comfortable.
So many people don't live in their body.
They are disconnected.
from their body.
As part of my recovery from back surgery, I've been using the red light therapy panel from
bond charge, and it's become a consistent part of my wellness routine.
What I love about red and near-infrared light is how researchers are exploring their effects
on things like tissue repair, circulation, and even supporting our mitochondria.
I use the panel at home to help unwind after physical therapy or to support recovery
after exercise or travel. It's easy to integrate just a few minutes a day, no complicated
setup, and I personally found it helpful for managing occasional discomfort and supporting overall
resilience. If you're looking for a simple research-informed tool to support your recovery or
performance goals, this is one I recommend exploring. Visit bondcharge.com and use code DR mark for
15% off. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com, code DR-Mark. Trust me when I say that I've tried a lot of
supplements over the years, but there are just a few that I cannot travel without, and one of them
is mitopure by timeline. It contains urolithin A, a power.
compound that supports your mitochondria, the tiny power plants in your cells that drive energy,
metabolism, and healthy aging. I take it as part of my young forever longevity shake. Why? Because it
helps clear out old dysfunctional mitochondria and helps your body build new, more efficient ones.
That means better energy, better muscle function, better brain health, all the things that start to
slow down as we age. And now timeline has made it even easier to take with sugar-free strawberry
gummies. Two a day gives you the full, clinically effective dose. They taste great and they're part of my
daily routine, no skipping. Timeline is offering my listeners a special discount. Just go to
timeline.com slash DR. Hyman and give yourselves the support they deserve. Nick, welcome
on podcast. So great to have you on today. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for host to me. I'm a big fan of yours.
Oh, ditto. I mean, here we are in Ibiza, in your house, or Ibitha, as they say in Spain.
This morning, I just came from one of your classes called Primal Moose, which we're going to talk about,
which is a powerful way of rehabilitating the body and gaining strength.
of healing injury and I've known you for years I've come to your class for years but I don't
think the world really knows about you very much and I don't think the world knows about this practice
that you've developed that is quite powerful and for me is this looks deceptively easy but
it's actually quite hard and and I want to sort of start off by kind of talking about
something that just happened to me which is I'm rehabilitating for my own back surgery
and I've shared a little about that
and I really was taken down
and I've been doing better and better
and it's been about six months
and I gained a lot of strength
and I was weight training by myself
because I was traveling
and I was lifting these weights
in a way that kind of tweak my back a little bit
and I was really hurting
and I was a little nervous about
that I do something wrong
that I screw it up.
I was uncomfortable but I decided
I'm going to go to the class
and just do what I can do
and I just did one class
and I was huffing and puffing and sweating
and by using these sort of very weird movements
that are like animal movements crawling on the floor
crawling backwards going on your side stomach stretching
it's like this kind of wild practice
in one class my pain was gone and I was like holy shit
it's powerful stuff yeah that's very rewarding to hear
I want to sort of start out by talking about your background
because it's so interesting and you know you're not your typical yoga teacher
who you know like our fitness trainer who kind of
just went through the traditional route.
You had a kind of a crazy story.
You went from basically cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness.
Through an incredible story that we can't really tell the whole thing because it takes hours.
And we were in Africa together and you told me the story.
It took hours to tell the story.
It blew my mind.
But essentially, I want you to sort of start by how you first injured yourself and then how you became like a drug smuggler.
and then how that led to you being in prison and then what you learned in prison.
So kind of take us through that story and what happened to you
and how you came out the other side as a whole human being.
Yeah, I mean, that's a big backdrop.
So, you know, first and foremost, movement is medicine.
It's a healer for the body.
It's a healer from the mind.
And when I was growing up in my teenage years, I was a pro skier.
I had an idyllic life.
I lived in the Alps.
I was on the international circuit.
and I broke my back in two places.
You fractured your vertebrae?
Yeah, I fractured L3 and L4, so compression fractures
and completely herniated all the lumbar spine.
That was the first injury.
Five years later, I broke T7 and T9 in a motocross accident.
So, you know, in my teenage years in my early 20s,
I smashed myself to pieces.
In the process of that, you know, I'd hit the self-destruct switch,
I'd gotten into drug trafficking.
I found myself in South America.
I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina
for smuggling cocaine
and I had a broken body and a broken mind
and it was the template that I had
for my skiing days.
I haven't had anybody on my podcast
who's been in prison for 10 years.
Actually, of those 10 years
that I spent in prison, I spent four years in isolation.
Wow.
Which is another story.
That was a deep, deep dive into myself, into practice
which is actually where a lot of the kind of benefits
and a lot of the rewards that I get today
for movement and meditative practices came from.
And that's kind of how and why I developed primal moves.
I came out of prison in 210 with a broken body.
You know, my spine looked like it had scoliosis.
I had total lumbar herniation.
I had degeneration of the discs.
When you went into prison.
Yeah.
So when I came out, I was in a lot of pain.
And I spent years practicing with the chiropractor.
The kind of modern medicine were like, look, let's just open up your spine.
Let's put a big bolt in there.
Let's stitch the entire lumbar spine together and bolt it together.
and I was like no way
like there's no way we're going down that route just yet
so I started to
That's major surgery that's what I just had by the
Yeah I mean you know I think yours was
Undeniable you had to have it
I had that but I was still in that position of you know
I was 40 years of age yeah
And I was like I don't want to have a rod in my back
So I went down the route of yoga pilatus
Elementary gymnastics training
And I tapped into lots of different modalities of movement
And you know I just came out of prison as well
Where I developed a deep deep yoga practice
In prison
In prison.
And that was what started the whole kind of journey into rehabilitation, like physical and mental.
My body was not in a good place when I was 40.
I was in a lot of pain.
I had joint pain, my spine hurt.
More often than not, I'd be two or three weeks lying down in my bed in the fetal position
where the discs are just completely bulging.
I had no spinal stability.
I had no joint stability.
So I basically went about restabilizing my joints through quadrupedal body weight movement.
Quadripetal body weight movement.
Yeah, so my body weight moving on all fours.
Yeah.
In a non-linear fashion.
Yeah.
So it would be forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally.
Yeah.
Moving in multiple planes of direction, multiple joint action, but with my body weight,
not creating any levers in the body, which would then create stress in the lumbar spine,
which is what you've done.
You've picked up a weight in an awkward fashion.
And that lever, you know, the weak part of the lever is the hinge.
and that's what's happened.
You've just tweaked it.
So what I was looking at doing
was restabilizing my body.
So I did it through this practice.
So it was through a damaged body
that I developed primal moves.
And the story that I'm hearing from you today
is a story that I've heard
hundreds and hundreds of times
that people come to class
and they've got stiff bodies,
jammed up bodies,
herniations in their lower back,
destabilized joints,
hypermobility,
stiffness,
and just basically like degenerating bodies.
They come to class once, twice, three times.
They get hooked and they're going away happy humans.
Yeah.
And they're going away pain-free.
And then they take on them really, then they start to embody the practice.
Because not only do they get their physical youth back,
but they actually start to like grow with that
and really start to enjoy their body again and start doing things in their 40s and 50s
that they thought they'd never ever be able to do again.
You said earlier you were in solitary confinement for four years.
I mean, that would drive most people insane.
I mean, you'll end up climbing the walls.
Yeah.
And, you know, there are practices like the darker treats.
that the Tibetans do
where they go for months
or longer in darkness.
And Vipasanas.
Yeah.
But you didn't choose this.
It chose me.
It chose you.
And four years is a hell of a long time.
Yeah.
It's a long time.
It's a long time.
And you were in a little cell.
Yep.
I was in a cell.
It was probably two meters by three meters.
It had a tiny little window at the top.
And gray concrete walls.
And you had to figure out how to move in that space.
So I had some books on yoga that I managed to get sent in.
So they'll let you have books in solitary.
So I could have books.
I was in there like 22 hours a day.
So I did a lot of city practice.
I did a lot of kind of reflection, a lot of mind work.
I started to study the works of Ramrah Maharashi,
which was about observing the mind and the ego,
which I actually didn't even know we had one until I got into isolation.
So this was really quite effective.
You didn't know you had a mind and an ego?
I had no idea that we had a mind and an ego prior to going into prison.
You were just going through life.
I was completely numbed out and desensitized going through life like a bullet.
Like a steam train, completely on the self-destruct mission.
So actually it was a really beautiful process of actually going into that space of, you know,
I was a very grateful convict, albeit, you know, South American prisons are slightly rough.
And Argentina was not a pleasant place to be in prison.
It wasn't like where Martha Stewart went to prison.
No, no, no, no.
It was nothing like that.
The opportunity that I had to go into that isolated period for four years of my life was really quite profound.
And, you know, I got into the yoga practice, but it was still.
static. So that was fine. It kept me moving. I was basically practicing all day. But when I got
I mean yoga postures? Yeah, it was static. It was map based. So when I got out of prison and I had
a studio to move in, I thought, wow, let's try moving this across the floor. So I was doing my
sans salutations and the static poses. You know, instead of just staying on the mat, I actually
moved across the floor. And then it was through the healing that started to come around my body.
And then I started to practice with clients. And through that, the practice,
built a small community in London and it was from this community and observing bodies that then
I really started to systemize an entire method around it and then you kind of found that yourself
out of prison but your body was still not great and then through these embodied practices that
we now you've called primal moves you've been able to sort of repair all that so all the broken
back all the discrenations all the pain because you're like in your mid-50s now you're one of the
strongest guys I've never met. And you can do like a one-armed handstand and crazy shit.
Exactly. And it is my absolute joy. And you feel like that sort of that time in prison helped
you sort of get grounded and present in yourself. So you could kind of start to listen to what was
happening. Because you didn't have a lot of distractions. Pre-prison, I was totally distracted.
I was numb down and I was desensitized. Going into prison and going into isolation and going back
into that space of stillness and started to embody myself, meaning I was,
able to actually feel and stop thinking you know so instead of asking myself what I was
thinking I was asking myself what am I feeling yeah and that was a completely different
outlook that was a completely different lens to look at my life through you know how am I
feeling in the morning how am I sleeping what do I feel like how's my cognition how's my
memory how's my evacuation do I have energy am I recovered am I feeling depressed so I was
actually able to start feeling myself again yeah and then I worked out that
But through embodying these practices, which was a lot of breath work and a lot of movement,
you know, I was able to remove that, that kind of depressed feeling that came down into me.
You know, anything that became stagnant, any stuck energies, I moved them through with practice.
It was through moving my body that I was able to free myself completely.
So not only do you kind of move your way out of physical pain, you were able to move your way out of
emotional and mental pain.
Absolutely.
Because all the traumas that I had, you know, from 15 years of smuggling and breaking my body and being on that self-destructive path, I was actually able to go in there and start healing that in prison through these practices.
You know, I realized I was so stuck.
I was so stuck in my head.
I was so rigid.
There was so much control.
There was so much manipulation going on up there.
There was a lot of darkness that was going on in my life at the time and I had no idea.
Yeah, it was just your life.
That was basically what it was.
And then as I started to work through my body,
I started to work through the facial system,
I started to work through the mind.
You know, I also broke down.
You know, I had mental breakdowns as well.
I think three or four years into prison.
I'd been in isolation for about two years,
and it brought me to my knees.
You know, I had a complete emotional mental breakdown.
What did that look like?
What did that look like?
That looked like a baby crying on the floor,
sobbing for about two weeks,
completely broken and shaking.
You were kind of letting go of your old self.
old self with my I was having a total ego death I didn't even know it yeah it completely crushed me
it brought me to my knees I lay there crying and sobbing for about two weeks and where I was there
was no humanity there was no one coming around to check up on you and say hey hey hey you doing
you want a hug do you need something you need any help the prison guards weren't doing that
the prison guards in South America didn't even come and check they just came and check for dead bodies
they just want give you your food and the thing they gave you a head count that was it
I didn't even feed you no well how did you your
food. You had to get your food in. So they just went to. Someone from the outside had to bring your food in
for you and you'd have it in boxes and bags and you had to try and make it and cook it
somehow. Really? So there was no food in prison. The people dying with malnutrition. It was
terrible. It was horrific. It was like third world. That's a powerful story because, you know,
most of us are pretty locked into our psychological framework. Our emotions are pretty
sort of fixed in the way we relate to the world to our experience, to relationships, to work,
to family, to ourselves. And those rigid patterns like,
keep us from being free.
The constructs that we create in their head,
which actually I realized
post-prison that
freedom is actually a state of mind
because I've met so many people
that are actually in prison
because it is bound by their thoughts.
They're so rigid. They've built so many constructs
that actually they've stopped themselves from being free anymore
and I didn't actually realize that until I got out of prison.
That's true. You can be a billionaire and be still
in the prison of your mind.
Exactly. So I was euphorically, year five in prison,
I was euphalically happy.
that's incredible
euphorically happy
she went from like
breaking completely down
yeah from having
complete ego deaths
total mental emotional
breakdowns
again it was
it was movement
and meditation
breath work
of a daily practice
that got me
out of that
but I went into states
of absolute
euphoric happiness
which I haven't actually
achieved since
being in prison
because now I'm actually
you know I'm back in the world
and I've got distraction again
yeah yeah
you know I have a house
I have to pay rent
I have a business
business. I need to pay salaries. You know, I have a lover. So I have desires. So I actually went
into some really interesting states of being when I was in there. Yeah. And it's a sort of a gift
in disguise, right? Totally. I mean, I had that now as a reference point to go back to. So I've been
there. I've understood that blissful state of nothingness. You know, when you absolutely
own nothing, have nothing. And you can be blissfully happily. So I have experienced that. Well, I'm
curious about what happened in the process of the breakdown because you describe it almost as a
physical experience you're both laying on the floor sobbing and going through the somatic expression
and discharge of all the emotion you know talk therapy really doesn't do that no and for me you know
I went through a lot of things in my life I've had many illnesses many marriages probably about five
years ago I found myself fairly you know sort of stuck in the prison of my own beliefs in mind
And I knew intellectually what the issues were from my childhood and my mother who was a child of deaf parents and how that affected her and how that affected her parenting me.
And it's a long story, but I really did not know how to get rid of it.
And through a series of processes and things, I was able to kind of have this semantic experience where I just like literally broke down on the floor, crying and crying for days, like a week.
Yeah, so you've had that breakdown.
And I, and I, and it was the weirdest thing.
I had the same experience after you.
I literally, after it was all free from that, I emerged and I felt euphoric, like high.
Like I just taken some, like drugs, but like happy drugs.
I hate it.
And it was, it was pretty remarkable.
And I just went around in this state for quite a while.
It's why I think being in your body is so important and why the work you do is so important.
Because if we just stay in our heads, we'll never get there.
And you were, you were forced into it.
willing. Exactly. And I had no one to talk to. Yeah. So I couldn't do talk therapy. Yeah.
So the only way that I knew was somatic work. To release myself of pain, mental, emotional and
physical, all I could do was move. And sometimes I woke up in pain. My hips were hurting,
my shoulders, but my pain, my head was in pain. You know, so I had no one actually there to talk
to you. I had no one to intellectualize it or compartmentalize it with. But I understood, okay,
these were the traumas, but the only way I could actually release myself from that was from
basic breath work and movement.
And it was actually the movement,
the somatic work that I was doing in the prison
and just constantly working with my somatic nervous system
that started to ease out.
It was agitating all this stuck energy.
It was agitating these traumas
to move out of the somatic system
out of the fascial system
and it was freeing me up.
You know, don't get wrong.
Some days I had to stand there in my room
for maybe an hour having an internal fight with myself
because there was one part of me
that wanted to lay down
and just be depressed.
And there was another part of it.
It was like, no, you've got to do your practice
because this pain your feeling
will move through your body.
Yeah.
The water you drink,
the air you breathe,
and the fabrics you live in,
your environment can leave a fingerprint on your health.
Well, guess what?
Function health measures it.
Consider PFS, the forever chemicals,
everybody's talking about,
which are often found in nonstick pans
and water resistant clothing.
Well, they build up in your body
and they impact your cholesterol.
metabolism, your thyroid function, your immune response, and more.
Well, mold exposure, that's another culprit.
Chronic inflammation of mold spores can trigger this problem we call SERS or chronic
inflammatory response syndrome.
It's a condition where the immune system mounts a persistent and, unfortunately, inappropriate
reaction to mold toxins.
And there's biomarkers.
Biomarkers like C4A can indicate this kind of immune activation, while other inflammatory
markers like HSCRP can reveal how environmental exposures are impacting your health.
you can make better choices about your household and your future.
You can access over 160 lab tests from heart to hormones,
toxins, to inflammation, stress, and lots more.
You can also access MRI scans at an additional cost,
all attract in one secure place over time.
It's a near 360 view to see what's happening inside your body.
And you can learn more and join at functionhealth.com slash mark
and use the code Hyman 100 to get $100 toward your membership.
That's only for the first thousand people.
this week. Your immune system isn't just your body's defense. It's a reflection of how well your
cells function every day. That's why I'm excited about Himalayan tartary buckwheat or H.TB. An incredible
nutrient-dense seed loaded with polyphenols like rutin and quercidin, compound studied for their
roles in immune balance and healthy aging. Big Bold Health has taken this ancient seed and sprouted it
to unlock even more nutritional power. The result, H-TB immune energy chews, a delicious, on-the-go
way to support your immune system with precision.
Each chew delivers 500 milligrams of sprouted H.T.B plus zinc, vitamin D3, vitamin C, and magnesium.
Whether you're traveling, working long hours, or just want an easy way to boost your daily
resilience, these chews make it simple. I've made them part of my daily wellness routine,
and I think you'll feel the difference too. Try them today at big boldhealth.com and use code
DR Mark 30 for 30% off your first order.
I would literally stand there and have a stand-up fight with myself.
hour and I would not move until I did my practice and the euphoid feeling that came
through me as I started to move my body even raising my hands above my head and
touching the floor yeah and synchronizing that with some breathing yeah lightness
came yeah and it moved through me and I went through this like a year two years
of this internal fight of to practice or not to practice yeah you know that's why
now for me I think one of the reasons that primal moves
has become so successful is because of 15 years, I've shown up every single day to practice.
Yeah.
And when you don't feel like that, right?
Everyone comes down and they see me kind of leading through example and inspiration.
Like, hey, this guy's down.
They're looking at a great concrete floor two or three hours a day and he's euphically happy.
I'll try that.
I went through a different experience recently where I kind of went through this portal
where I almost died and I had an infection in my back.
It led to an abscess and I had had major surgery and I was in bed for six weeks.
I couldn't walk.
I lost 20 pounds, which I'm already pretty skinny.
I came out of that, and I was really unable to move.
I couldn't tie my shoes.
I couldn't get off the toilet by myself.
I couldn't do the most basic life things that you think getting dressed.
You take it for granted.
Yeah, I mean, and I recently saw my surgeon, and he said,
most people at your stage are on a walker or maybe never get off a walker.
And I did what you did, no matter how.
bad I felt or how depressed I was or how broken I was. I literally got up into the gym every
day and worked with physical therapists and trainer. I started moving. I'm not 100% back yet,
but I'm out of pain. I'm moving. I'm doing your class. No, I mean, I've seen the MRI scans
of your spine. It's incredible. Yeah, I've got all hardware in there, like a hardware store
in there. And, you know, I'm there with a bunch of 30 year olds in the class. And I'm
65 and that's amazing that's inspiring and it's just like your body has that capacity and what
I really find interesting and I wonder if you're any insight of this is as I look around the
world and especially in America so many people don't live in their body they are disconnected
from their body and you can see their bodies become overweight or they they are hunched over or
they're you can see they don't move fluidly and and it's interesting that people are kind of locked in
this state of physical contraction and don't really even know it or aware of it.
And they don't realize that there's a way to the other side of that and actually getting
free.
Because I think more and more because we're so connected to our devices, we're so not having
to move our bodies, we're just sort of out of this traditional way of living that we've done
for hundreds of thousands of years.
I think the question that for you is seeing what's happening in the world around
this sort of disconnection from our body.
how do we start to inch forward because it feels like a big hurl for a lot of people who
who aren't in their bodies who aren't exercising regularly who aren't moving regularly
to actually go from that to doing something yeah it's a big push I mean it's mental you have to
like you have no it has to be a mindset you need to shift the perception of your mindset and make
movement a lifestyle it has to become part of your life you know I say to a lot of people here
that you know have full-time jobs and they work that you need to actually book this session in
and make it part of your life
it needs to be embodied
as a daily practice
and they see the benefits from that
and trying to create that shift
of people where they actually think
yeah you know what
just going to give myself one hour a day
to go to class
or to get on the mat
or to go to the gym
and do something
even go for a walk or a swim
but something just move your body
because this is a hunter-gatherer body
it needs to move
it was designed and created to move
and the more you move it
the better it feels
and it will degenerate
The body, if you sit in a chair all day, the body will just slowly degenerate
quicker than you think.
That's true.
It doesn't discriminate.
The more you move it, the better it's going to feel.
I mean, I was in bed for six weeks, and I never felt so debilitated.
Powerless, yeah.
Powerless, but also just like my body lost all of its function, and I couldn't go to the
bathroom by myself.
I couldn't do the most simple life skills.
I think because if you had that template, that framework of being healthy,
Because, well, I could get, I could remember what it was like, but I was like,
you remember what it felt like.
So you had muscle memory to be like, hey, I want to go back to feeling like this.
I don't want to feel like I am now.
I mean, I was a yoga teacher in my, you know, 20s and, you know, we had seven hours
of yoga day for like a month.
Yeah.
You get pretty flexible.
But even as kids, you know, growing up now, you know, it's not in the school curriculum.
There's no sport.
There's not a daily session of sport where they're encouraging children to move and be fit and be
conscious and try and be embodied and do mindful practices.
You know, they sat down in a chair and they're given a book.
And that's true.
And I think, you know, because we're so disconnected from our bodies,
I think it also prevents us from being able to access a very powerful liberating force,
which is using the body and the somatic practices, as you call them,
to start to free up a lot of the stuck emotions and the beliefs and the fears.
And yes, sometimes, you know, talk therapy helps or coaching helps
or those things can be helpful or psychedelic medicine.
But I think, you know, movement is medicine.
you said that right at the beginning
is powerful
and a lot of people
are into longevity
and they want to take
this vitamin or this drug
or do this special thing
or take a hyperbaric chamber
or whatever
and it's like you don't actually move
for me it's bypassing
they're trying to hack their way
to health by bypassing
doing the hard work
which is actually to go into a class
I mean one of the beautiful things
about Primal
is a very community driven brand
so we have like a big group
of people that move together
and that's really beautiful
and really inspiring
You know, we sometimes have 80 people come into class.
I know, it's pretty crowded this morning.
And I was like, very beautiful about that because of, you know, you get this.
I could really find a, I could really find a place on the hanging bar.
On the high bar, yeah.
So many people there, but, you know, just moving together as a group, it brings about exponential growth.
Yeah.
You know, it brings a flow state around.
It's inspiring.
You release oxytocins.
You release serotonium and dopamine.
You get that happy drug feeling of just moving in a group.
Yeah.
You know, when you're doing a class, which biomechanically, what you're doing, you know,
works not only do you feel emotionally good but you feel bloody physically good as well yeah you know and
that's what primal essentially is yeah it's sort of like healing almost invisibly when you do it and you don't
have to think about it you just and it's and you know I think whether it's yoga whether it's
primal moves or whether it's in other forms of exercise if people can get in their bodies it's really
the key to yeah to feeling good to healing if I don't exercise for a few days I start to feel cranky
it's physical longevity you know people talk a lot about
physical longevity these days you know just move and so do are you familiar with the science around
around how this all works in terms of the somatic healing of primal or just in general i've studied it
i've looked into it quite deeply so can you tell us sort of about the the science behind this because
i think it's you know people may not really be aware of what the the sort of underlying
principles are of why this works and how it works i've written a manual on this
I wrote a 100-page manual on why primal moves works.
Where can people find that?
You have to do one of my teacher trainings to get that.
That's like my blueprint.
So it's a big topic,
is a big conversation about what it does.
But it's actually starting to,
it starts to rebuild muscle mass.
It starts to restabilize your joints.
It starts to increase cognitive and behavioral patterns physically and mentally.
It's nonlinear.
It starts to break down rigidity in the mind.
The fascial networks, it starts to move the fluids around in the facial system.
The motion creates the lotion.
The body starts to move.
It starts to become lean and supple.
It becomes healthy.
The muscles are working properly.
You start to get bone density, muscle density again.
You know, you're working with neuronal and non-neuronal intelligence.
You know, the cells are working to release stem cell, creating stem cell because of this
micro trauma in the body.
Every time you're moving,
cross the floor, all the joints are creating what we call micro-microtrauma,
which then gives stem cell a job to actually start healing you again.
You know, if you don't do anything, stem cell doesn't work.
It doesn't need to.
It goes to sleep.
The more you work your body, the more stem cell has a job.
So it starts to heal the body.
It starts to rejuvenate the muscles, the bones, the skin, the connective tissue.
You know, along with that, if you're also eating consciously as well, that for me is hacking.
That's biohacking.
Breathing, eating, moving.
I think the hurdle for a lot of people is just getting started.
right so how would you sort of advise people who want to get just show up to class
show up to class well not every town has primal moves yet yeah so we well we've got a digital
space so you where do you find it online so www.com so we've got a plug and play
really cheap subscription model and on there you've got probably like 150 sessions and it's mat
based so all you need is a mat and a small space you don't need to go to a gym you don't need
equipment. You can literally roll out your
mat, open up your
tablet, and you get visual.
You don't need a big floor space to do it?
So I guide the sessions.
Actually, I built it in COVID because
when the studios started to shut in COVID,
everyone reached out to me and was like, hey,
how can we practice? So I built this very
simple plug and play digital
space where people could just literally
turn on the system and they could work
through their bodies if we have like full flow classes
or you can work on stabilizing
your spine, opening your hips.
strengthen your shoulders.
Amazing.
So there's a lot of content on there.
That's definitely my future.
Yeah, and obviously now what we're trying to do,
you know,
because there's so many people
that have come into this community of Pramble
that when they're going home to their cities
throughout the states in Europe,
they're actually wanting to open studios.
So now we have a whole training program,
and the idea is that over the next few years
we're going to be opening,
you know, like mothership destination studios
in the bigger cities.
That's great.
And if you don't live in one of those cities,
you can do it online.
Exactly.
I think, I'm going to start doing that.
I miss it like when I'm not here.
I'm like,
I'm like, I'm not...
I mean, the session's like half an hour.
There's 10, 20, 30 minute sessions.
That's all you need.
Just a little bit every single day.
You just got to tap into the body every day.
And also it gets you out of your head.
You know, for me,
there's nothing more pleasurable than living in my body.
It's the most pleasurable place I can ever be.
Well, I think most people don't live in their body.
They don't pay attention to the signals that their body says.
They don't eat when they're hungry and not eat when they're not hungry.
They don't sleep when they're tired.
They push themselves.
people are in all sorts of strange disconnect from their physical body.
They're upregulated, they're anxious, they're living on sugar, their sleep patterns aren't good.
And you're very disciplined about your practices, right?
Really, yeah, it's a daily thing for me.
It's a non-negotiable.
Tell us about your food patterns and your habits, because it's different than most people.
So I'm a very simple eater.
I'm 80% carnival.
So my main meat is red meat, and I'm super particular about how.
source it so I actually go to the farm myself I look at the cows I need to understand
that the cow is walking around eating grass under the sun and does not go in the
barn and the way that the animals killed is very special as you know the whole food
conversation is a big topic is a big debate and getting well-sourced foods is a
really hard thing to do these days you know the soils are devitalized they're
demineralized the foods are genetically modified the animals are being injected with
God knows what. So sourcing your food is a, for me, it's a really important thing.
You know, what I believe that, you know, what we eat is what we are. You know, what's going
in the soils and what's going in these animals is who our body becomes. So, you know,
my, my, my meat's grass fed, grass finished, and I eat a lot of it. I don't eat many
vegetables. I don't eat greens. I eat fruit. Which were explaining to me why. Because
like, well, greens are good or vegetables are good. So why do you? I started to feel inflamed.
Because you were noticing what your body was feeling. So I was observing my gut.
it didn't feel good.
When I ate greens,
my gut started to feel almost a bit achy
and I started to feel
a little bit
I had like joint ache
and a bit foggy in the head.
So I'd go through long periods
say three to six months
of doing processes of elimination of foods
that I would eat and wouldn't eat.
So I stopped eating grains completely.
I eat very few carbs.
You know, every now
then I might go out and have some pasta
or some rice
but very seldom, like once or twice a month.
I don't eat many sugars, hardly any.
I eat fruit and all the animals.
And potatoes.
Potatoes.
My classic meal would be a fillet steak, barely cooked, with lashions of ghee.
Yeah.
So I eat a lot of ghee.
I eat a lot of fat and a lot of protein.
So I'm essentially, I'm fueled by mitochondria,
which is the cell's ability to produce energy as opposed to insulin.
So my energy levels throughout the day are really well balanced.
Neiman, yeah.
I have a tularte.
and a pan of chocolate so I keep it real I have like my my percentage of diet which is what I call
my junk diet yeah yeah why keep it real you know I have a pan of chocolate I have a coffee every
now and I might have an ice cream yeah you know I like to keep it real yeah but I know that 75 80
percent of what I eat is grass for animals really well sourced and for me like you know to
understand my mark as I wake up in the morning and I I know you feel it you know how about how
am I feeling how am I sleeping how's my recovery how's my mind is it for
How's my gut? How's my evacuation? In my practice, my physical practice, you know, how's my body recovering? How am I training? How's my energy levels? It's 95. And they're good. I just recently had my blood's done and I had them checked and they said, well, your blood to like that of a man 30 years ago. Yeah. Of a 30 year old man. Yeah. Like my testosterone is up at a thousand. Yeah. My HDL is really healthy. My hemoglobin is good. My minerals, my
Ritamins are really high, and they say, I mean, this is incredible. You don't eat vegetables. Do you take supplements? No. So I don't take supplements. I avoid supplements at all costs. I've started to take creatine just to see how it feels for like cognition and recovery. But I don't supplement. I literally just source really good foods, train and breathe. And that for me is hacking. I take a sauna four times a week and I get in the ice bath when I can. But again, it's more of a lifestyle as opposed to, you know, I try and avoid supplements. And I try and I try.
and convert people onto healthy foods, healthy living?
Well, you know, it's interesting, you know, historically we never took supplements
because we had a very nutrient-dense diet.
And if you look at Hunter-Gatherers diets, and this has been well studied, you know,
the amount of vitamins, minerals were extremely high compared to modern diets.
And they also had animals that were eating wild plants.
Exactly.
And those wild plants are full of not just vitamins and minerals, but also phytochemicals that
are very healing.
And there's an amazing guy, did a podcast with him, a couple of podcasts, because one of the most incredible people I've ever met named Fred Provenza, who wrote a book called nourishment about what we can learn from animals about how to eat.
And what he said was he studied rangeland ecology and the relationship between plants and animals, the soil and nature.
He found that the animals would eat, you know, a few main, like, calorie crops or plants, but then they would sample up to 100 or more different plants that had different properties, the different minerals.
or different nutrients
and that the animals knew
like I've been in the Amazon
I remember seeing
this side of this river
which is clay
and the parish
just came like fly in fox
and we're eating the minerals
because they knew their bodies needed
from the soul yeah right
we're so disconnected
we think we need like skittles
you know like oh that looks good
the thing is now the food
has lost its vitality
and so we have to overeat
over consume to get all the minerals
and vitamins that we need
and now we're lacking
whereas you know if I eat
three or four hundred grams of grass-fed grass-finish fillet steak. It's so densely nutritious that
actually that's all I need for the afternoon. That and a few potatoes for flavor. But that's it.
And a couple of big scoops of ghee and I'm done. I feel absolutely amazing. And the meat you're
eating though is different because it's animals who are eating wild plants and who are actually
getting those phytochemicals in their meat and the nutrients in their meat and the fatty acids
and their meat that are different.
Yeah.
And those actually have profound biological effects.
So it's not only what you eat,
it's what you're eating ate.
No, I'm really, I mean, I'm very careful.
If I go out to a restaurant, you know,
I'm super careful about if I eat meat or not.
You know, I want to know that it's grass-fed.
You know, because if you eat industrial meat,
you're going to get sick.
Yeah.
It's a fact.
You're going to get inflamed.
And, you know, I go through periods sometimes if I go away on holiday,
then I will, you know, I'll venture out and I'll eat vegetables.
And I get flatulents.
I get swelling in my gut, I get bloating, I get fogginess in the head, I wake up in the morning and I feel drowsy.
So I'm thinking, well, that can't be good.
Well, what's fascinating, Nick, is that, you know, you went from being this kind of broken guy who was dealing drugs and running cocaine between the Argentina and the UK and eating McDonald's.
Eating McDonald's.
To being at 55 in a way that you really remade your whole self physically, spiritually, spiritually.
emotionally, mentally, from the ground up.
And most people don't have to go through what you went through
to get there.
But what's so fascinating to me is that, you know, very few people pay attention
to what's happening in their body in real time every day and then listen to it.
Now, I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your body.
It'll tell you exactly what's going on.
You're like, oh, I ate this and my stomach feels that.
Most people have no clue that what they eat affects how they feel.
When I was in prison as well, obviously I saw the effects of the huge.
condition at its worst, you know, not only for living and the way that humans were treating
each other, but what they were eating. So I, I experienced such darkness that when I got out
of prison, I was like, okay, I'm going to completely rewrite the story because I don't want to go there
ever again. You know, I completely rewrote my story. And how old were you when you got out of prison?
40. 40. So I've been going 15 years now, yeah. Wow. And I've never looked back once.
Wow. I got out of prison and I think within six weeks, I was coaching. And I never took back.
I got out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
And I had to go home and live in my parents at the age of 40 with no money
in the bedroom I grew up in.
And that was tough.
I mean, imagine going back to your parents.
Well, you were, you know, a millionaire, right?
I was a multi-millionaire.
I mean, I had everything.
I had boats, cars, cars, all the toys, I mean, houses, investments.
I was ahead of the game in my early 30s.
And I lost everything.
And that was a good process as well.
That was, you know, a big process around attachment.
because it was a tough call coming out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
And when you were in prison, did you have the sense that you were wanting to move into teaching what you learned there?
I didn't quite know.
I was on such a healing journey.
You know, everything was really about healing my body and my mind.
And I knew that there was going to be a big shift and a big change.
But I didn't actually quite know what I was going to do because I never knew when I was going to get out of prison.
You know, in South America, prisons are to stay there indefinitely.
because the justice systems are so bad.
Early 2010 they came around to see me
and they literally said to me one day
you got five minutes to get your shit together
we're expelling you from the country
and a bunch of guys came with machine guns
and they shackled me to a van
they took me to the airport
and they put me on the back of a plane
so my first experience was freedom
was the back of a jumbo jet
with 400 tourists.
Imagine I'd just been in this wild prison
in South America
where they're killing each other for fun
I was shackled and as I got to the bottom of the stairs
of the airplane they unshackled me
they took me to the top of the stairs
the captain was there to meet me
and he said to me
when you get to the UK you'll be free to go
wow so I sat on the back of the plane
for 12 hours and it was like a time warp
and I tell you something very interesting was
this was the first realisation
that I ever had of living in your body
and in your head because I sat at the back of the
playing i was like a zen monk you know i've just been in prison for six seven years isolation for
four and i just sat still and i looked around me i was like wow these people don't stop fidgeting
right you know they were playing with the in-house entertainment they kept opening and closing
these poppers and doing these zips up putting things in the overhead locker they had these
new phones that had these screens on a thing called facebook and they were just like sitting there tapping
and messaging away and i just thought to myself oh my god
these people literally cannot stop fidgeting this so anxious and I suddenly realized wow they're
like totally in their heads not in their bodies yeah and this was the first understanding I actually
had of observing that in real life you know because in prison I couldn't observe that I could only
observe myself and then when I arrived to Heathrow T5 the next day I was I was sitting down and I went
and bought myself a coffee the first thing I bought in seven years and I sat there and I asked
myself I was like you know what the hell are you going to go and do yeah you know you had this life
as a smuggler it's finished yeah you've just sat in prison and you've rehabilitated yourself and you
have all this knowledge on yoga but it's not that compartmentalized you got nowhere to go and you've
got no money and I sat and I asked I said what am I going to do and I heard this voice it came
through and it said that movement and meditative practices had such a profound impact on my life
that it freed me from prison.
And if I could facilitate that into one person's life,
then everything would be worthwhile.
And with that message, I got on the train,
I went home to my mum knowing I was going to be a facilitator
of movement into people's lives.
And since that day,
I've only ever focused on facilitating moving into one person's life.
And now we get like 25,000 people a year
that come to the space in Ibiza.
And the same thing is now following through Europe and the States.
So that has been my, it's almost like I was given this mission
and I've stuck to it.
I believe in it so much that I actually invested in the studio in Los Angeles
because I think it's something that can help transform people
and help them in a very sort of sort of subtle,
almost sneaky way, get inside people.
Totally.
And helps them land in their physical body.
I come from a place of addictions, of alcoholism, and of trauma.
So I know that these practices have helped to,
cure me and shift that and through the studios i work with a lot of people that have a lot of
trauma they work with a lot of addictions you know i'm surrounded by them and they use this practice
to help channel the behavior of their mind you know and they say to me this is really helping me
yeah you know this is really helping me stay centered grounded i'm learning to live in my body
you know i'm leaving the narcotics alone i've stopped drinking i've stopped smoking i'm
getting healthy i'm getting straight so i know it works on so many subtle levels
We've all been there.
You're on the go, starving, and your only options are ultra-processed snacks made from GMO corn, hydrogenated oils, and sometimes even mole-contaminated meat.
No thanks.
That's why I always keep paleo valleys 100% grass-fed beef sticks on hand.
These aren't your average meat sticks.
They're made from grass-fed and finished beef raised on regenerative American farms using rotational grazing to restore soil health, their fermented old-world style.
a process that takes four times longer, but delivers better flavor, enhanced digestibility,
and supports gut health. No sugar, no gluten, no MSG, just organic spices, and nutrient-dense protein.
These sticks come in five delicious flavors, original, jalapeno, summer sausage,
garlic summer sausage, and terriaki. And they've already sold over 35 million sticks.
So clearly, I'm not the only fan, whether you're traveling, packing a lunchbox,
or need a quick protein hit between meetings,
Paleo Valley's beef sticks are the cleanest, most sustainable snack you can reach for.
Try them now at paleovali.com slash hymen and get 15% off your order today.
Let's talk hydration, because most people are getting it wrong.
If you're feeling tired, foggy, crampy, or just off, it could be your electrolytes.
I see it all the time in my community, especially with folks who are active, eating clean,
or doing intermittent fasting.
That's why I use and recommend Element.
Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix that skips all the junk.
No sugar, no food dies, no artificial ingredient.
Just science-backed hydration, with sodium levels that support optimal health,
two to three times what current guidelines recommend.
It's a game changer for athletes, biohackers, busy parents,
and anyone who wants to feel and function their best.
Even Navy SEALs and Olympians use it.
Right now, Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack of their most popular flavors,
citrus salt, raspberry salt, watermelon salt, and orange salt, with any purchase.
That's eight single serving packets for free.
Go to drinkelement.com slash Hyman to claim your free sample pack with any order.
That's drinkelement.com slash hymen.
Well, what's so interesting, Nick, is, and I'm sure you've heard this,
but as I'm doing it, and I was there this morning, the movements are so foreign.
Yeah.
Things that you normally don't do, like you're outstretched, you know, with your arms
and you're kind of walking, like, with your feet and your hands on the floor,
and your body stretch out like Superman.
And it's like not easier.
You're going backwards and doing strange things that, yeah.
that you normally don't do.
In order to actually do them,
you have to be so present and aware in your body.
Totally.
That all your thoughts kind of go away.
So like you're just there.
No, it brings a presence about.
Yeah, because yoga, like, I can kind of get my mind sometimes to be still,
but a lot of times it's drifting and I'm like in my head.
Yeah.
Because in yoga, you're kind of your map based, you're static.
Yeah.
And they're asking you to be still.
You know, that's a hard thing.
Yeah.
You know, to sit and be still and not think is almost impossible.
So it's, for me, it's like a moving meditation.
Exactly.
And that's exactly, you know, I came through a lot of practice of Ashdanga Yoga,
which again is a very beautiful moving meditation.
I didn't find that it was, it didn't functionally fit all the physical needs that I wanted,
but it was very beautiful practice.
I was really inspired from these practices.
So it was through the community and so many bodies that I was actually able to fully develop the system,
where it has now for so many people become a moving meditation.
The practice works physically.
that they understand and they know that and I know that
you know I've seen so many benefits
from thousands and thousands of people over 15 years
but for me it's now people say it's like they're checking
yeah it's like their daily place they come to
you know it's like their morning church session they just come in
they're getting their bodies and they sometimes they call it church
it's like for me it's like a moving church yeah it's kind of moving church
it's a moving meditation you know it's so rewarding to see
the effects that people receive from this
not just physically but
mentally emotionally yeah it's beautiful and it's a bridge into something deeper you know because
then people actually learn to you know channel the behavior of their body their mind becomes quiet
then they can go more into like seetty practices which is pretty difficult if you haven't learned
to kind of control your body and your breath so then just try and sit it's almost impossible
you know because you're going to be thinking about last night and tomorrow night and what you're going to
buy and what you're going to eat you know the mind is just like a constant yeah it's like a monkey mind
it's to channel the behavior that's really hard so for me to channel it through
movement is where it sits. It's interesting because when I trained in yoga, which was 42 years
ago, a while ago, before they had yoga mats and before they had Lula Lemon, we had like sweatpants
in a towel, basically. The practice was powerful because I was like 23 at the time and it was seven
hours a day of yoga. But the practice was called meditation in motion. It was a Kapala yoga and basically
it was a constant flow of movement
and not just a static practice.
And it was very breath-focused.
Yeah.
So it was like breath and movement
and meditation sort of all in one,
which is kind of what Primal Moose is.
It's like breath and meditation.
It connects those three together.
And also, you know, in the classes
there is a bit of chit-chat,
which creates that social interaction.
Was anybody else in prison doing this with you?
Were you able to sort of bring anybody else into it?
You're just a weird guy doing this stuff.
Yeah, I was kind of like the weird
crank. They looked at me like, and this guy's lost it. And actually, I mean, it was two or three
years after being on the main wing in prison and just observing the human condition that is
worst, that I actually took voluntary isolation. Because I wanted to be out of it. Yeah.
You know, I was tired of... So you weren't forced to be in... No, I wanted to go into isolation
because of the conditions were so bad. The violence perpetrated between humans to human was horrific.
Worried by getting stabbed. Stabbed, killed, over nothing. Now, life had no value. And I thought, you know,
I'm done with this. I'd rather be on my own all day
and checked out and tapping into something
completely different. You know, and I used it as I
turned it into a little ashram. Like a mini
cell ashram. Literally. It was a
four year Vapasana. That's crazy.
I mean, said quickly, four years
isn't that long, but as
you start going through the seasons,
you start to realize
that you go very deep and start peeling
back a lot of the layers of the mind and you
really get to know yourself. I mean, they say, you know,
you want to let a man
know who he is, just put him in a room
with these thoughts. You know, it doesn't take long before the, like the default mind, the
superficial part of the mind disappears. And then you start going really deep into, you know,
your framework and your blueprint. And you're able to sort of see that. Very clearly. It takes
some time. You know, eventually the mind will quieten down and your blueprint will come through.
Any issues will come through. All your traumas, they will come through. You will be confronted with
yourself. Yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, I decided to take a retreat and I went for a month,
in a cabin by myself in Vermont.
No phone, no computer,
beautiful, a journal, no books,
just food, me, nature, God.
They did have a wood-fired sauna though,
I liked that, and it was in the winter, it was in December.
But the first few weeks were a little challenging,
and then I got really high.
Like, I got really happy, euphoric,
and realized that I didn't need anything.
Yeah, less is more, for sure.
If I had a place to sleep and I had some food
and some clothes to wear,
the rest is gravy, you know?
Exactly.
You'd be surprised, you know, how quickly the distraction dies down.
All the cessations of thought, eventually they quieten down.
Most people can't do that.
So how do people start to sort of break down those old stories and the beliefs and their ego
and the things that keep them in prison?
Because I think, you know, people say, what's the meaning of life?
What's the purpose of life?
To me, it's getting free.
I mean, having an embodied practice to start with is a good place to go.
having a physical practice
which is mindful
is definitely a good place to start
just starting to fill your body
is a very good place to start
then you can start working on the other stuff
but if you're just going to sit there in your head
and try and intellectually work it all out
there's no semantic work being done there
it's like doing your own talk therapy
and you can talk yourself
in and out of an empty carpal box all day long
but you're still going to wake up the next day
with the same shit
well you can see it I mean there's a book
the body keeps score and you can see
totally how when you watch
observe people where their bodies are not free where they're constricted or limited or just
completely living outside of their body i mean how you know how does someone get to 300 pounds you know
it's like by being very unconscious at what point you know do you not stop to look and be okay
that's enough well it's just trauma usually it's pain it's it's it's feeding an emptiness it's
there's all the psychological reasons yeah but you know when you just start to do the
simplest things to move, it's kind of a, it's almost like a trap door to get to freedom.
It's like, you know, where's that sort of magic button you could push? We can push a lot of
places, but I think if more people lived in their bodies and inhabited their bodies and were
doing what you call in body practices, which are not that hard to do, and don't take that much
time, it's really profound what happens. And for me, I know it's the quarter of who I am. If I don't
move, I don't feel good and I don't feel like I'm alive and I don't feel like I'm free.
For me, being sick and not being able to get out of bed for six weeks and not be able to walk
for months and, you know, I was like on a cane for a long time.
It's amazing what you just did there.
Yeah, just a few months.
Like I just, you know, but the body has this incredible reparative capacity.
The body is one of the most amazing creations ever.
Yeah.
And I have people don't realize that.
It's so intelligent.
And so I've injured myself, where I've done this, or I've done that, so I can't do this, I can't do that.
And they started feeling all these limitations.
If I have an injury, I'm going to stop this or I'm going to stop that.
Instead of going, okay, how do I actually get to repair my system?
How do I get to heal those things?
And I was talking to a friend recently about the yoga teacher, because he was a yoga teacher training with me.
The yoga teacher that taught us was a 65-year-old woman named Lila, a German woman,
who was in a wheelchair, had massive back surgery, kind of like me, had, had,
spinal fusion basically made herself completely like gumby, which is like flexible.
And as a yoga teacher, through the embodied practices that we're talking about through
breath and movement.
It's medicine.
It really is.
It has to be a non-negotiable.
And once you start tapping into it and realizing the benefits of really simple embodied
movement practices, you won't turn back.
I think this whole idea of somatic medicine is kind of foreign to people.
You know, we're used to therapy and talk therapy.
You know, I found for my patients and for myself and for many, you can talk all day long,
but if you don't change this sort of meat suit that we're in into something that can be a
transducer for understanding, for healing, for repair, you kind of become almost rigidified in these patterns.
And so I really encourage everybody listening to think about how they can, in their own life,
start to inhabit their body as a way of not just,
getting fit or living a long time or for exercise,
but as a way of starting to heal some of the psycho-emotional, spiritual things
that we all carry through life that we get stuck in.
It's a big step, you know, and also there's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well.
Yeah.
Because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
They think it's a place where they can reside that sometimes feels quite normal.
It's comfortable. I mean, I used to live in pain.
You know, I used to live in my trauma-based state of living.
That was my day-to-day way of living.
numb down, desensitized and in pain.
And it felt good.
Sometimes I still go back there.
You know, I can regress.
I can relapse and I can go into this place of traumatic pain which feels normal to me.
But luckily I've got tools where I can move that through.
So if someone's listening and they want to reset their nervous system and they want to begin
to kind of start with some tools, if you feel anxious or stuck or disconnected, like where do people
start?
What's the practice that you recommend just starting with?
in terms of reconnecting with your body.
I mean, if they have access to go to a local studio
and do a body weight movement-based class,
it could be yoga, it could be Pilates.
Any kind of movement-based practice
is a great place to start.
That's the beginning.
And make it a practice, make it a daily practice.
And very quickly, you're going to see the benefits and the shifts.
So don't, don't overthink it, but just start somewhere.
Yeah, people say to me, what do I do?
Might just show up to class.
Or go to primalmoves.com.
Yeah, exactly.
Just show up.
Just do that for yourself.
Give yourself that one thing.
Show up to class.
Show up for yourself once a day and do something.
And that will be a bridge into something different.
Like you say you have 10 minute classes, 20 minute classes, 30 minute classes.
It's a start.
Yeah.
It gets you into the body.
It gets you feeling.
The relationship to yourself will start to shift very quick.
But sometimes I do see that even people who do a lot of yoga, for example, they still can be rigid in their mind.
Yeah.
And so can you kind of explain that in terms of why some people can.
A lot of the yoga practices are quite dogmatic.
They're tradition-based.
So when I was building the primal system,
I made sure that it was stripped back
from any esoteric or traditional belief system.
We don't actually do any spiritual work in there as such.
I don't teach a belief system.
We're not teaching yoga or Buddhism.
We don't use any kind of lineage as such,
other than that of practice.
My lineage is just practice.
Just do it.
Just do it.
But we're not actually trying to share a belief system.
If someone wants to come to practice to have a belief system, that's fine.
But we're going to try and break that, that rigidity.
And a lot of times in yoga, there's a lot of lineages that are very traditional
and they're talked through dogma.
So people, again, are getting stuck in rigid kind of thought patterns.
It has to be a certain way.
And that was another reason why I actually broke away from a lot of the
kind of traditional yogic practices.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I still do breath work.
If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
I go to Primal every day.
If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
But it could just be a practice.
So we strip it back from anything esoteric.
And people really enjoy that because we're not trying to put our beliefs upon anyone
in class.
And people really find that very refreshing.
It is refreshing.
Yeah.
You know, we're coming to do a practice and that's it.
Showing up could be the spiritual part of it.
And it could be enough.
And also the movements are so unique and different that you do.
And they're sometimes very physically challenging and hard
that it seems to break a lot of the rigid patterns of thinking and being and moving.
It's an agitator.
Yeah, it definitely shakes things up.
Exactly.
When you agitate.
How do you do this?
And how do I make my body do this thing?
So, I mean, sometimes I get a lot of people asking me questions in class.
And I can see that they're really stuck in their heads.
And they put their hands on the floor and they can't move.
And I say to them, you're completely in your head.
Yeah.
Stop thinking.
Just move your body.
And I don't know how.
I said, just follow these people.
Just move that way.
And they start moving.
And I look back at me and they smile.
You know, I can see their body language.
They're overthinking how to move.
And the body actually knows how to move in that direction.
It's such an amazing thing.
So this has been an incredible conversation.
You've gone from being a guy with a broken body,
with a broken life in prison.
And it's basically resurrected yourself.
Completely.
Yeah.
And have transformed your physical, emotional,
mental spiritual self in a way that you're now sharing with people and inviting them in with you to try
and it's so beautiful and it's so rare and i think you don't put yourself out there as a guru as some
guy who's got the answer but you just encourage you to just live in their body i'm a student like
everyone else just live in your body yeah which most of us don't get connected to your body which
most of us aren't and to listen to your body which most of us don't know how to do yeah and and when
you start to do those simple things like if i if i
If I eat something that isn't good for me, my body tells me, like, I feel it.
Yeah, you feel it.
And I'm like, if I'm in Europe and I'm eating at like 10.30 at night, yeah, my body's like,
no, don't do that, you know.
The invitation is really to start to listen, like to start to listen to your body and start
to change the way you.
Yeah, observe how you feel.
Observe how you feel.
Connect the dots between.
Yeah, wake up in the morning and sit on the edge of the bed.
Don't look at your phone.
Ask yourself, you know, before you open your apps that's telling you how you slept, ask yourself
how you slept. Ask yourself how are you feeling? Yeah. You know, are you foggy? How's your gut? How's
your recovery? Yeah. How are you feeling? Yeah. And then from that you can work out, okay, let's,
let's maybe shift some things today. Let's eat differently or eat earlier. Or change the way that I'm
eating and change the way that I'm moving. It's such a simple invitation. It's just you're inviting
people just to listen. Very much so. To be aware and to be present. I don't use any apps.
Yeah. For health data at all. Amazing. Nick, what a journey you've been on. What a gift you've given to the
world. I think everybody should check out primal moose.com.
Thanks, Mark.
They can find you on Instagram at Primal Movese Biza.
Prima Mousa Biza. I-B-I-Z-A.
And check out your studios where they're coming around in America.
You're going to be in Los Angeles.
You're going to be in Miami, Austin, New York, San Francisco.
When is Austin opening?
Because I live in Austin.
We should be doing Austin next year.
Amazing, great.
Yeah, in 26.
I'll be there every day.
Fantastic.
So, Nick, thanks so much for what you do.
Thanks, Mark.
I've been a real pleasure to show with you.
Thank you.
If you love this.
When it comes to something.
you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest, and most
potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store,
where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety,
purity, and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients,
and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your
disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health,
you name it. Dr.hyman.com has the world's best selection of top quality premium supplements
all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman.
So check out Dr.hyman.com, because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very
best will do. That's Dr.hyman.com, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N dot com.
Podcasts, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.
You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman.
Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions.
Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your
podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video
of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr.
Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center,
my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This
podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the
views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute
for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is
provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice
or services.
If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic,
the ultra-wellness center at ultra-wellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.
It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner
and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health.
health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's
podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.