TRIGGERnometry - Trauma Expert: Why We Celebrate Weakness Instead of Strength - Mark Walsh

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

SPONSORED BY: Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com Mark Walsh is an embodiment coach and trauma educator. He is the Founder of Embodiment Unlimited and hosts The Embodiment Podcast and The Embodiment Channel on YouTube. He has taught NGOs, police officers, the NHS and several militaries, working in over 40 countries and across multiple war zones including, most recently, Ukraine. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro  01:34 Mark’s Background 05:45 What is Trauma? 07:15 The Politicisation of Psychology 09:24 Is Trauma Hardwired? 11:18 Symptoms of Trauma 15:49 Fixing Yourself & Not The World 17:59 Sponsor Message: Manscaped 19:22 The Glamourisation of Trauma 22:16 How Humour Can Relieve Trauma 24:42 The Impact of Social Media 30:57 How Internet Culture Creeps in to Real Life 36:39 The Experience of Working in a Warzone 42:58 Why Do Some People Find Warzones Addictive? 44:24 What Russia is Doing in Ukraine 48:28 Atrocities Across Europe 52:09 Why is Russia the Way it is? 57:58 Pursuing Trauma 1:01:59 The Impersonation of Strength Vs Real Strength 1:04:50 What Does it Mean to Be Weak? 1:09:15 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We've developed this culture where the victim has almost become sacred. So there's a sort of supply and demand issue with trauma that everybody in a way wants to be traumatized. And you guys have talked a lot about activists and people who are kind of, you know, they're hypervigilant a lot of the time. They're looking for something that's hurt them. They're looking in a paranoid kind of way. It's go, you must be a racist, you must be a sexist. It's not the only thing that's going on, but one of the things that's going on is that people have been hurt. They've been abused and they have come to see the world as a threatening place and they're looking for threat everywhere.

So, you know, victim is the opposite of agency. It's the opposite of healing. I think one of the big problems in our society is that we don't have a way to be good and we need that. And it's almost a very old-fashioned idea. It's sort of about ethics and virtue and morality. But we need that as people. We need a way to be good. And in the absence of that, people will adopt whatever they're offered, which makes a very important.

maybe a good consumer or a good social justice person. All you have to do to be good is say this thing on social media. All right. So it offers people a cheap and easy way to be good. That we would pretend that strength is a vice and weaknesses of virtue and it's not. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is an embodiment teacher and trauma educator who's work and conflict zones like Syria, Afghanistan and more recently Ukraine. Mark Walsh, welcome to Trigonometry. Pleasure to be here. And I didn't mention the intro. You've had your own experiences with cancellations and, you know, people not liking what you say and stuff.

So I'm sure we'll get into all of that. Before we do, though, tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us. Sure. Well, first of all, I'm very happy right now because you just give me steak. So that's the first for me on an interview. It's what we do, man. I've been well fed.

Be well fed. Well, it's good. actually somebody wrote a hit piece about us or mostly about me and one of the main criticisms was when he came in here we were having steak so you're now problematic as well man I am my vegan friends in Brighton are going to be upset they're always upset that's what they do best grew up in East Anglia I was just saying to American friends I call it the Alabama of England I was from the Fens come from a family of teachers and crazy people

basically and my story in some ways is parallel to that of Western civilization in that I was really bright cognitively, but was a complete screw up. And by the time I was 17, I was very alcoholic, drug addicted, suicidal, just a mess. My dad was an alcoholic, because I kind of grew up in that, a kind of trauma soup, and thought, you know what, I go to university, study psychology, figure out what's going on here. But by that point, I kind of thought, you know what, maybe the answer isn't in a book. and I went to a martial arts school. I was involved in some sort of low-level crime and things.

I thought it would be a good idea to learn martial arts. And I went in there and I saw it into a dojo for the first week at university and it just spoke to me. And there was discipline and beauty. And just something in me went, you need that. And I just devoted myself to martial arts. Barely went into the library at university. And, you know, I did a psychology degree.

But, yeah, for me, pursued the martial arts as a living martial art student and then that sort of opened up into dance yoga meditation improv theater the whole field that i would now call the embodiment field which is all the things that work with the body as a bit more than a brain taxi and realized there was a whole sort of another education out there which would be very obvious to say a japanese person you know they would do martial arts and school and develop the character through that but wasn't obvious to me. And eventually started teaching that.

I teach a lot of coaches now. I was working in a non-profit sector for quite a while. So I was working in various areas of conflict. And yeah, most recently in Ukraine, it's a bit of an emotional day-to-day, actually, because it's today's anniversary of the invasion, as you know. So a lot of messages coming in before this were quite emotional. So I've got that kind of churned up a little bit today.

And we'll talk about that. Of course. You, and when I introduce you as embodiment teacher, I imagine most people are going, huh? What the hell is that? What the hell is that? Yeah, yeah. My family still do that.

So it's kind of like, are they still telling you to get a real job? No. I did a job with the House of Lords on Trauma about 10 years back. And then my dad went, oh my God, this must be a real job. Yeah. But until that point, yeah, they definitely, you know, for Christmas and stuff, they're like, what is it you do again? So it's a way of looking at a human being.

So I train a lot of coaches, I work with business people, different ways to describe it, but it's a form of intelligence, essentially. So you can be cognitively smart, but you could also be smart with people. You can be emotionally intelligent. You know, you can be charismatic. You can be, I don't know, good under pressure. All those things are part of embodied intelligence. And it's also just the kind of umbrella term for all the kind of mindfulness-based body arts.

So not so much exercise, not so much physicality. more the body as who we are. The body as relates to who we are as people. I'm very interested in that from a lens of trauma and culture and leadership and different things within that. That sounds really, really interesting. So trauma, we talk about it a lot,

but I don't think that people actually understand what is meant by the term trauma. What is trauma and how can it impact people's lives? Yeah, I mean, it's become a kind of fashionable term, right? Like, everybody's traumatized by everybody else in a way, which I find a bit silly, particularly when I look at some of my messages today. So overwhelming events. So overwhelming events create us get stuck in that fight or flight or freeze response.

So most people understand the idea of fight or flight. We all have that, a bit of stress in our lives going on. But if that's chronic, if you're chronically there, that impacts your perception, cognition, critically your relationships, or in the freeze response where people are more shut down, you'll see this more in Eastern Europe, close down them. You know, they're not smiling, the not being so empathic perhaps. And that makes relationships very difficult.

It means that people are very unhealthy, physically quite often. It can show up in loads and loads of ways across different domains. But yeah, being stuck in that fight-or-flight or freeze response is one very simple definition, usually coming from experiences of overwhelm and powerlessness. And yeah, it's a fascinating topic. It's a trendy topic. It's been hijacked by the left. We can talk about that.

And, you know, for me, it's just a very practical thing as well with some of the work I do. It's interesting that you mentioned, sorry, Francis. There's a political dimension to it. I find that a bit odd, actually. It is. It's very strange. So where to begin with this? I'm just trying to find the way in.

it's best to sort of think about this. So most psychologists are on the left. Okay, there's kind of, you know, Jordan Peterson may be in a couple of others who are more conservative or more centrist even. So they have a particular way of looking at the world. That way of looking at the world could be that it's society or culture

that causes problems. And it's not the individual's fault or responsibility. And there's definite truth to that. So, for example, there's a psychologist called Gabon Mata, who's very well known. does great work. And he says, hey, it's not your fault. It's society. It's culture. And that is an important perspective. But I would say it's probably not the only one. The other thing is our culture has become somewhat psychologized in that it's become a weapon. So if I say you've

upset me, that's one level. But if I say you've traumatized me or you know, you're an abuser or something like that, that's a much higher accusation. And we've developed this culture where the victim has almost become sacred. So there's a sort of supply and demand issue with trauma that everybody in a way wants to be traumatized because then it's like, okay, then I get certain accommodation. And I think it is a way of looking at the world. If somebody has trauma, they feel unsafe. The world has become a dangerous place.

So what do you do about that? And one response is to try and control the world, try and control people's, speech, thinking, etc. I think a sort of integrated approach that takes both a left and a right-wing perspective is a healthier perspective for looking at trauma more sort of holistically. The other thing is sometimes it just seems a little bit

like first world problems these days, particularly compared to Ukraine or somewhere like that. Mark, but the issue is as well that we talk about trauma, I was listening to an interview with Dr. Steve Peters who wrote The Chimp Paradox and the former guests on Trigononauts. And he actually says that there are some traumas that can never be overcome.

Because the hardwiring of the brain, particularly if it happens, I think it's below the age of nine or ten, it's just hardwired there. And there's not a lot you can do about it. You can learn to cope with it. You can learn to find ways to deal with it. But you're never in a sense going to be able to overcome it. Do you agree with that? I'd say there's a lot you can do. And this is, you know, for example, if I'm educating people about trauma. One of the things I'll say is, hey, here's how you might spot it. And I've heard soldiers, for example, in Ukraine go, wow, I didn't realize that's why I'm drinking, or that's why I'm finding it hard to be with my wife, or that's why I'm getting irritated with my kids.

So just education is brilliant, first of all, just learning about it. There are definitely things you can do to make it better. I mean, I'm a case study of that. You know, I grew up in a pretty rough household. And I have a good marriage. I have a good job. I'm relatively healthy, physically. there are effective treatments out there. There are things that work. So, for example, one of the things I do is I signpost people, I say, hey, you might want to check out this therapy. And they say, I don't like talking about my feelings.

It's like, no problem. You might want to check out this one. Well, you don't have to talk. So there are a bunch of stuff out there that works. And one of the main messages I have when I meet people with trauma is like there is hope. I've definitely seen that. You know, my mentor works with abused children, for example, some of the worst cases you can imagine.

I've worked in multiple war zones and there is hope. And there's a lot we can do. There's cultural stuff around that. Like some whole cultures are traumatized. Like I've worked in Israel, in Russia and Ukraine. And there are whole cultures where trauma has become almost normal. And that's pretty interesting to me too. So what are the symptoms of someone who's traumatized?

How does it manifest physically? How does it manifest emotionally? Okay, so two main sets of symptoms. We've got hyper-arousal symptoms and numbing symptoms. So you can think of it as too much or too little, the nervous system being shut down or wired or some combination thereof. Hyperalza symptoms. Sleeplessness. So, for example, one of the reasons I used to drink is because I couldn't sleep.

Now I can sleep fine without any kind of sedative, right? But I was hyperalzed. That's anxiety, sleeplessness. I'd wake up absolutely buzzing. You'll see this in Israel. People are just wired. You know, I went on a holiday there, and my wife's like, because she's Ukrainian, so she can go on holiday there fairly easily without a visa. And she went, it's a beautiful place, Tel Aviv, and the food's nice.

And your friends are lovely. We've got lots of good friends there, but she said, it's not very relaxing. You know what I'm talking about? It's wired, you know? So, and I can feel that. I can walk in a room and go, okay, this trauma here, these people have got that nervous system state where they're in that fight or flight. And that can manifest in loads of ways, like how people think, you know, their politics,

they want, they're scared, so they want a politician to be more authoritarian, right? Or they're paranoid. Like, there's scarcity. There's a sense of not enough and you've got to fight for yours. There's a certain way of looking at the world. And it also may affect the digestion. It may affect the immune system. It may affect sexual systems.

So, like, there's loads of ways that being wired could manifest. And then the other side of things is the shutdown. So that's, you know, the Russian smile, you know. That's the emotional numb. where sometimes numb people hurt people because they don't have that normal emotional response to another suffering. That's where it's dangerous.

They might just feel cut off from life. I remember just coming back from some places and just being very blank. It's like a thousand yards there or the sort of lack of emotion rather than hyper emotion. And then people self-medicate in different ways, right? So let's say someone is hyper.

They might use alcohol or opiates to come down. if someone's not feeling they might be, I don't know, have a crazy sex life or do bungee jumping or something just to feel alive. There's ways people try and medicate those issues. I'd say a key thing that comes out of it is the damage it does to relationship. It is hard to be in a trusting intimate relationship with trauma. That's why so many like British servicemen, for example, get divorced. It's why somebody firemen and policemen have problems. Nurses have problems in their marriages.

or with their kids. So, yeah, how it affects intimacy. The fight or flight system is kind of antagonistic to our kind of connect, sort of more mammalian connection system. So there's neurological reasons for this that others are better educated than me in. It's really, really interesting in the way that you've broken it down and the way you've displayed, because I used to work in a school, everybody drink. But one of the signs that we knew if a child had suffered sexual abuse is because they were hypersexual at an anal.

age before they, before puberty, for example, or if they were going through puberty, they were hypersexual. And before people would look at a child behaving like that and shame them for it. But now, because we have better knowledge, we look at that child and go, okay, there's something going on here. This needs investigating. Yeah, I saw that in slums of Brazil when I worked there, and it was pretty disturbing to see, but it's a warning sign. Or even little things like, I used to work a lot with kids in England. And if you tap a kid on the shoulder, a normal kid will go, oh, yeah, they won't do nothing. They won't just sit there, like, learn helplessness. And they won't go, you know, they won't get paranoid or attack you or anything like that.

They'll just go, oh, someone's tapped me on the shoulder. And you see that right through to adults and how they respond to things. You know, do they respond with apathy and not doing anything or like a hypervigilance? So, you know, you guys talked a lot. Love your podcast, by the way, I'm a fan. And you guys have talked a lot about activists and people who are kind of, you know, they're hypervigilant a lot of the time. They're looking for something that's hurt them. They're looking in a paranoid kind of way. To go, oh, you must be a racist.

You must be a sexist. It's not the only thing that's going on. But one of the things that's going on is that people have been hurt. They've been abused. And they have come to see the world as a threatening place. And they're looking for threat everywhere. I think also, and you tell me what you think about this, but my impression is as well is there is a certain validation.

But if you are not in a healthy place yourself and you don't want to deal with that and you don't want to admit that and you don't want to consciously be aware of that, it's very comforting to say, well, the world is messed up. I'm fine. I'm fine. The world's messed up. And that's why I'm going to go out there and, you know, do these things to fix the world. Then I'll feel fine. Whereas I don't think that's really how it works. No.

I mean, if I feel unsafe, if I feel unwell in my body, the place that goes to myself now that may be a societal constant. context of that. I mean, Gabel's absolutely right, that there's, you know, certain conditions, I think poverty is one of the biggest ones. People just don't talk about, it's a big problem. People don't talk about poverty in the UK, I think. But the idea that you can't fix yourself through trying to fix the world. You're in the wrong location. But in a way, it's appealing because turning in on yourself, really looking at your issues addressing things, that's difficult. That takes real courage. So it's much easier to go out there in the world. And if there's a societal system that says that makes you a good person.

And I think one of the big problems in our society is that we don't have a way to be good. Like if you were in feudal Japan or ancient Greece or even modern China, there's a clear way to establish virtue. And we need that. And it's almost a very old-fashioned idea. It's sort of ethics and virtue and morality. But we need that as people. We need a way to be good.

And in the absence of that, people will adopt whatever they're offered. which may be a good consumer or a good social justice person. It's like, all you have to do to be good is say this thing on social media. All right, so it offers people a cheap and easy way to be good. And potentially they feel that there's some going to be some sort of healing in that. Which, they could be. There is a point in post-traumatic growth where people help others, and that's part of their own healing. But yeah, I've definitely seen a lot of trauma in the kind of activism world.

And I think it would be a lot kind of kind of, kind of, kind of, if that trauma was healed. This episode sponsored by IP Vanish. IP Vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP Vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi.

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So we come from the comedy industry. And you just see people go, you know, they talk about their depression and it becomes a badge and identity of I'm depressed. And you think to yourself, well, this may be true. And as somebody who has seen people in their family suffer from a real severe crippling depression.

You go, well, that might be true, but how is it helping you what you were doing? And if you make an if you identify as depressed, are you going to want to get better? Right, because that's now who you are, right? So if someone's, I've heard people introduce themselves at workshops by talking about their trauma. And I'm like, well, unless that's the point of what we're doing, that's strange to me. It's kind of like trauma's kind of like having a cop, you know, half of us have got one, but don't introduce yourself at parties by getting it out. You know, for me, it's a little, it's a bit much.

And if people are stuck, there's a time when you need to say, I was abused, or my people were abused, right? You're Ukrainian, not Jewish or whatever it is, right? There's a time when that's helpful rather than saying it was nothing. I remember the first time I went to a therapist 20 or years ago, whatever, and I was saying, yeah, I had an alcoholic dad, and my cousin killed himself. But it's nothing. It's not a big deal, right?

And he was like, uh. You know, maybe. So there is a time when it's helpful to adopt a trauma identity sort of as a passing thing. But I think getting stuck there, and if there's a culture in society that gives you kudos for being a victim, actually that doesn't help healing.

What helps healing is empowerment. You get over trauma by being empowered. This is why soldiers don't get traumatized when they're fighting. Soldiers get traumatized when they're being shelled, like in Wilburne-or-on-on-the-front now in Ukraine. Why? Because they're not empowered. when they're fighting, they have a sense of power.

They have a sense of agency. So, you know, victim is the opposite of agency. It's the opposite of healing. The other thing that's critical and relevant to you guys is to me, the opposite of trauma is actually play. So having a sense of humor, like my mentors is a wily old Jewish guy and he's always making all these jokes. And some of them are just like, they're pretty on the edge.

And the jokes he makes with his patience, they're coming from a good place. And they're very healing. it's very much part of Jewish culture and my experience of Jewish mentors. It is, yeah. What's interesting, I don't think that's true of all Jews, actually. I mean, nothing's true of all Jews, but... Not according to the Labour Party.

But I remember I did a show at the Jewish center in London. And they really didn't like my show, actually. Which is fine, people are allowed not to like my comedy. But, well, they shouldn't be, but they are. But what happened was afterwards there was like a Q&A and somebody said like, why is your, like, why is your humor so dark? Wow. And I was like, well, where I'm from in the former Soviet Union, like,

and I told this joke about how after a pogrom, after Jews have been massacred in a town somewhere in Russia, the Jews sort of come back and they find the rabbi who's been crucified on the wall of the synagogue. And they walk up to him and they go, rabbi, rabbi, does it hurt? And he goes, well, only when I laugh. And I said that, and they had the same reaction as France.

Am I allowed to laugh at that? But I've always thought that is the way the Jewish people in those parts of the world where they experienced awful trauma, learned to process it. And a lot of the Jewish jokes that I grew up with in Russia, in Uzbekistan, in Ukraine, they were based very much on that sort of like, we've had a horrible history,

and we're still laughing. Yeah, I mean, it might be more of a British thing and the British kind of Jewish community. I mean... The Brits ruined Jews. I've worked a lot of psychologists in Israel and a lot of them have got pretty wicked senses of humor. That's my experience. That makes sense. People can laugh at things.

So it's, yeah, yeah. I think it's one of the... I think it's something that actually Britain adds quite well into the psychology world because Americans aren't very funny. Okay. And they run psychology. There are stand-ups, of course, who are amazing. But as a culture, humor is not valued in the same way as it is in my family Irish

so I'd say Anglo-Irish culture banter and humor is just everywhere Australia, South Africa, the whole kind of British kind of area plus Ireland and I think that's remarkable human can be remarkably healing it allows us to take space from something. It's also

empowering because if you can laugh at something it hasn't got you anymore right like working in Ukraine last year like with a lot of jokes and as long as people understand you're not laughing at the It's not, it's not, I talk about towards connection humor rather than away connection humor. You can feel if someone's making a joke

because they're just uncomfortable and they don't want to connect, they don't want to go connect themselves or others. But I think it's remarkably underused by psychologists as a healing strategy. And I was lucky my mentor happened to be, have a sick fucking sense of humor. The other thing, before we move on to your experience

of working in war zones and all that like stuff, talking about, I mean, one of the things, as you know, we talk about a lot is the impact of social media on the world and the culture war and the anger that seems to exist and everyone's constantly bickering and fighting. And we've had our fair share of it ourselves and been involved in it too. Like, how do you see the impact of social media and the internet

on the work that you do? I'll broaden that question out if you don't mind a bit. we're in a disembodied world. So what I mean by that is we are regulated by self-regulation, co-regulation. We could say eco-regulation, like we're in a beautiful countryside here. You know, as soon as I got out of the car, so I was like, oh, that's nice, you relax.

You know, as soon as I had dinner with you, lunch with you guys, we chat, we eat together, move together, laugh together, you co-regulate. Self-regulation, I meditate this morning, right? It's actually the least important, I'd say, those three. And Theo-regulation, a term, one of my, Greek colleagues made up, meaning, like, regulated by meaning.

And Western civilization has lost a lot of its sense of meaning in the sacred. Yes. We've lost connection to nature, particularly in the big cities. I find I'm in London on the weekend. It's super stressful compared to where I live in the countryside. We've lost a lot of co-regulation. I mean, particularly, you know, during the Chinese plague, that was... I'm going to call it that.

During the Chinese plague, it was really... Co-regulation was almost under attack. And you could be more or less conspiratorial about that. But no faith, this is what says, I'm okay, you're okay. Right? We don't like having babies hate it if you cover your face, right? Or you play a game by covering your face and then smiling because they go get scared and they go, oh, it's fine, you know?

So this was covered. We weren't allowed to touch. We weren't allowed to be around each other. Like that's what keeps human being sane. Like that is literally the basis of our sanity. It is amazing how undermade that point. was during the pandemic because it was like, well, you've got to wear the mask because it's for everyone's benefit. I mean, very questionable by that, but we won't go there. But also like that side of it was

never discussed. Almost no one when actually this is really bad for human beings. Co-regulation is the essence of physical health, like mental health, but even just physical health. Like old people die without touch, without love, without connection. Babies die without this thing. Even die, or if you feed them, they're like the Romanian orphans. They, they'd like the Romanian orphans. grow up, you know, unwell, psychologically, you know, even if you feed them physically. Remember the Romanian orphans? Yes, I do, yeah. So they were physically looked after, but they didn't have any touch.

Actually, there's one beautiful slash tragic story from Romanian orphans. There was one kid by the light switch, and there was hundreds of kids in this room. And every day, the janitor would come in and turn the lights on and off. On the morning, off in the evening. And as he was doing that, he would just ruffle the hair of this kid. Right. And that was the only kid that developed in that room full of hundreds of kids. just from one touch a day

that's how important it can be it's beautiful and sad at the same time and yeah we're already in a culture which is lacking that's not even a strong enough word which is in poverty

of human touch and connection and we're in poverty when it comes to community in this culture compared to our actual ancestors who grew up in and I won't idealise them but one thing most tribal communities did have is co-regulation.

And then with that ritual, you know, with that, like one of my students were saying the other day, why do I feel like an imposter? And I'm like, because the whole village hasn't initiated you into this career. You know, you haven't had the seal of approval of your elders. You haven't, you know, you're not part of a community that has ritual and meaning and a shared religion and all the rest of it. So not having that sense is crazy.

being online sends us crazy it's like being sat still sends us crazy when we sit we gradually lose our feeling sense you do that all day long staring at a computer

and social media is a conspiracy I mean it is it's literally designed to keep us anxious so we spend more on the advertising it's not you know someone's evil

they just want to make more money right so it is a conspiracy in that it's designed to put us into fire-flight So it's designed to put it into a trauma state, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, because if we're in that agitated fight-flote state, we keep scrolling, we keep looking, we feel like,

you know, did you ever have those spirits where you, like, have really nice weekend with your wife, with your friends, and you're in nature, and you're lots of touch, and everything's great. You don't feel like checking your phone. No. Because you're not anxious. It's also been, someone told me, I think it's a work of BF Skinner that social media has been designed

with the same principles as the gambling industry. Yeah, or print conditioning. So it's reward and punishment, right? It's there to give you little dopamine hits, right? Yeah. And once you start chasing that dopamine, it's drug-like. So you get that hit, and then you want every increasing amounts of dopamine. And what used to get you high now no longer does.

So you're wanting the bigger and bigger rush. Well, I'm in long-term recovery. I'm 17 years sober, right? And it's very much like drug addiction as someone who's been in alcohol and drug addiction. and needing that hit, I remember what it's like to wake up and look at Facebook straight away. You know, I have to put some boundaries

around myself around that. You know, it's actually quite nice I don't get a signal here. So the last two hours, I haven't checked my phone. It's kind of a relief. And I'm not against technology. I have a YouTube channel and podcast.

I think it's amazing that you guys can reach who you reach without being a big studio subject to corporate interests and things. So it's fantastic technology and use with care. Use we care. And that goes for computer games, porn, just sitting, emailing all day,

but particularly something like porn or computer games or social media that's been designed with that conditioning in mind. So we're disembodied. And social media is a part of that. People lose their empathy when they're disembodied and basically become temporarily psychopathic. You know what? That is such a good way of putting it because I actually use my social media.

a lot less, the bigger it gets. Yeah. Well, you think it'd be the opposite. I'd be like, oh, I'm on this number now. Oh, let's keep feeding the machine. And increasingly, I'm just like, well, I don't like this, the way we're having these discussions. And it seems to me that, you know, we recently, it's like there's a sense that it doesn't matter how angry, how rude, how destructive, your approach is, it can never be angry, destructive, or rude enough for a lot of people.

And this temporary psychopathy, I mean, that's a very good way of describing it. I mean, that is the symptom of our culture generally. Some cultures, like, I'd say, Russian culture even more. You know, it's more endemic in some places. And, you know, it's technologically enhanced here. It's trauma somewhere else. And essentially, when you're not tuned into your body, when you're not got that natural empathic resonance.

Like, if I would imagine a kitten, right? fluffy kitten. If I were to take that kitten, strangle it to death, any normal person would have a physical response. They go, gross, right? So, but if we're not in our bodies, if we're cut off for myself, whether it's through big trauma or being on the internet all day

or whatever it is, that natural resonance isn't there. And that is very dangerous. And you see behaviour on the internet, you go, would you talk to someone in a pub like this? Like, one of my rules is, don't accept behaviour that would get you a punch in the head in the pub, right? Like, like, people don't do that normally.

And actually in life, most people are all right. Most people are pretty centrist. They're pretty reasonable. You know, you've gone on the internet for five minutes. It looks like there's this huge, massive culture war. And I think that while that has come into real life to some degree, I got banned from a cafe recently because they overheard me speaking and didn't like something I was saying.

And they banned me from the cafe. I'm like, look, it's not Facebook, mate. Do you know what I mean? You're not unfriending me here. Like, we can have a conversation. And what was the problem? I don't think I was saying anything too outrageous, but they didn't like my politics or whatever.

And I just remember thinking, God, this is creeping a bit into real life. Well, that's why we are concerned about it. On the one hand, on the other hand, like, we had a guest on our show, Sam Harris. And Sam said some things that I really fundamentally disagree with. But that's the point of the show. You could say something I fundamentally disagree with. And people went after him in a way that made us extremely uncomfortable. Strange, isn't it?

And I was like, okay. he said something that I fundamentally, I think is wrong. I also thought it was dangerous that way of thinking. I didn't like it. I didn't agree with him. But people will go after him like he is the devil. Yet when someone on their side attacks someone else with far more viciousness and unpleasantness and whatever, they are more than happy to see that happen.

Yeah. And if we're not well regulated, and that comes from the self-regulation, the co-regulation, the eco-regulation, if we're not well-regulated, it becomes intolerable. and everything's a life threat. Trauma sees everything is a life threat. You know, everything's life and death. And actually, things aren't life and death. We can disagree on things, you know.

Who's more attractive? South American moms or East European moms? You know, we could have that debate. But, you know, we can disagree. We can make silly jokes. And humor can come back in if we're well regulated. Forgiveness can come back in. You're being like, hey, I didn't like what you said,

but, you know, we can still. get on. And I think we look at people being badly badly regulated and we go is that that's their fault. Do more yoga. Go do yoga. And it's like, but the society's making everyone crazy. Yeah.

You know, and we've lost our meaning in society and we've lost our cultural coherence. And we've lost our connection to nature. A little fucking yoga class twice a week isn't really going to cut it. You know, go do the yoga. I love yoga. It's great. We do martial arts we've been talking about. I think martial arts are fantastic. But honestly, you need community, you need friends, you need good relationships, you need

nature, you need all these things that we evolved to have and to keep us same. And in the absence of that, people get pretty prickly, to say the least. And we've been fed a lie in that, you know, it's social media, it's a way to build communities, it's a way to find friends, it's a way to make friends. And look, some people do make friends online. I'm not denigrating that. But the reality is it's a very, very poor and pey. limitation of what you can find

IRL as a kid say? Yeah, I mean, porn isn't sex, right? And, you know, Facebook friends aren't real friends. And these, you know, I think you can curate networks to make them friendlier. Like we have a Facebook group that's pretty, for our company, it's pretty friendly.

And people are pretty cool there because we just don't tolerate anything else. And then, you know, we tolerate different views, but not personally insulting people. Yeah. It's behavior you prevent. Exactly. We say you can say anything you want here,

but you can't say, in any way. You can't personally insult people. Certain platforms may be friendlier. But personally, I look at it like going to a dangerous country. You know, I go to Instagram, half an hour a week, do my Q&A, you know, interact a little bit with some positive people.

Then I turn it off my phone. Sometimes I'll even delete the app. Yeah, I'll delete the app because you have to, I'll have to be then on Wi-Fi again to upload it again. I just treat it like a job. It's like going to Afghanistan and coming out again kind of thing, you know? And as I said, it can be positive, but it's not what we're wired

it's not what makes us healthy. And without embodied practice, there's real problems. So we're talking about Instagram being like Afghanistan, and you have worked in war zones. I mean, the obvious question is, what is that like? Because for most people listening and watching this, they have no idea, thankfully. It's a lot of fun.

Didn't expect that. It's a lot of fun. If you have deep-seated trauma. I mean, the first time I worked in a corporation, I went, oh, this feels like a war zone. So, like, the nervous system of the average business in London is like a war zone. I was like, oh, this is familiar. I was familiar from my household growing up.

It was familiar from places I've worked. And when I went to a war zone, part of me just relaxed and went, okay, now the danger's real. Now I can actually accommodate this. I can actually do things to prevent this. So, I mean, I've worked post-conflict and places that are actually quite nice, like Cyprus. I don't want to overstate this. It's not like I'm sort of, you know, getting shot out. on the front lines or something, right?

I mean, going to Leviv, for example, it was anxiety-provoking. And I remember, you know, the first, we're doing a... Lviv, just for people who don't know, is Western Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, so we're doing a trauma training there. It was like week two of the war as well. So the war broke out. I wanted to go fight. That was my first response.

I felt this is a violation. This is not okay. And I spoke to a few friends of mine, my friend Alex, being one, if you're out there, Alex, good move. And he's like, Mark, you'll probably get shot if you're a soldier, but you're a pretty good trauma trainer. So I said, okay, we'll go do that. So went to do a training out there.

The local psychologists were like, great, we need help, we're overwhelmed. You know, you can do a lot with just training people. And then, you know, the first alarm goes off on the first day. And it's someone trying to kill you. You know, it's a rocket. There's a rocket coming in your direction. And it might be a way off. It might be close.

You don't know. And there's that moment of like, shit, this is someone trying to kill me. And I've had that many times. You know, I've had that in Israel. I've had that in West Africa, East Africa. Slums of Brazil was probably the place that left the most mark on me. But, you know, even though I've been to a lot of places, you could see everyone immediately does that.

And I just go, right, guys, take a breath, take a moment. Let's walk to the bombshell. We've got three minutes, because often people get hurt, panicking. And it was pretty uncomfortable. Like, half the training was done in a cold car park bombshell stuff. You know, that was pretty uncomfortable. But then it's also, I don't want to play the violin too much, because, you know, just around fantastic, awesome, wise, beautiful, cool people doing something meaningful.

I mean, so many people lack meaning in their lives, you know, doing that project. I never felt like I was my mate Polish Pete's driving. We're delivering medical supplies that we've picked up in a pretty dodgy way, but we're helping out because the hospital was cut off from, it was getting its supplies from Kiev. And at that point in the war, Kiev was surrounded, more or less. So they couldn't get supplies. So we pick some up. And, yeah, we're driving them there.

And it's kind of enjoyable. It's like, okay, this is a bit dangerous. And it's, you know, we've done risk assessments and things. I mean, honestly, the chances were getting killed were probably 1% or something like less than that. You know, again, no one overstated compared to somebody who's volunteering on the front lines. But there was meaning and there was community

and I was working with great people. And they're messaging me today on the anniversary. And there's love and there's meaning and there's all those things. I mean, life purpose is huge, right? And I just went, I was made for this. You know, my mum said, don't go, because that's what moms have to do, right? And I was like, mum, come on, I wasn't, what was I made for, if not this kind of thing? You know, this is a perfect job for me.

Especially because I knew a bit of the language. I had a lot of connections there, you know. So, as I said, we did a training and eventually actually, some local psychologists, A bunch of young psychologists. Tell you what, see people grow up quick. It's a big difference between a 25-year-old in teaching trauma work in Ukraine and 25-year-old in East London, I'll tell you.

Yeah, the one in East London's probably seen more, man. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, so the team were basically just a bunch of young psychology. I went, because I thought I can't do this on my own, so I turned up at the local university and just went, give me a psychology graduates. And then I went to a convent,

found a bunch of nuns who could help, and they were just psychologically trained. And eventually they set up a local charity, so they've been doing it themselves. And they've very proud of them today, actually. They've trained, I think it's 13,000 people, including all the nurses, doctors and teachers in Lviv, which is one of the biggest cities in Ukraine,

and it's full of refugees. So it's probably the most trauma-aware city in the world now. And they hope to expand it to the whole country, and they've already got people in Odessa and Kiev and places. And what are you teaching, Basic psychological first aid. So when people have acute trauma, so let's say you're in a car accident, you're going to have maybe shaky, you're going to have that response. There's things you can do that mean that's less likely to become a long-term trauma response. Like what? What can you do? Love people, empathize with them, appropriate touch. There are techniques you can use. I won't get too into here, but there's various kind of psychological techniques. Sometimes it's just that co-regulation of another human being. You know, I mean, what would you do if your child fell over and hurt themselves? Pick them up, give them a hug.

Right. Totally natural instinct, right? You touch. I mean, obviously, you've got to be careful with touch. It's not always the appropriate thing today. Bit of love, bit of attention, listening to people sometimes. And being around them, giving them some advice, signposting them to useful resources. So instead of going to get drunk, they go to a psychologist or whatever, yeah?

So psychological first aid. Then one is just psychological education. So trauma's different from sort of physically or not. and actually knowing about it really helps, like knowing that that's a hyperalysis symptom. Ah, that's why I'm having problems with my partner. So they do a lot of psycho-education as well. And they work with the, you know,

the psychologists who are actually doing therapy, which is a whole different thing. And, you know, I couldn't train people's therapists in 10 days. I'm not a therapist myself. So, yeah, it's brilliant what they're doing. And I'm super proud of all the girls. The menial girls, the men are young women because the men are fighting.

I'm really proud of them. and, as I said, emotional mourning this morning for all of us. Mark, did you get a little insight into why certain people find war zones addictive? Yeah. I mean, I used to. And Ukraine was the first one I'd been to for quite a while, because when I got married, my wife, as an interpreter, in the first part of the Ukraine conflict.

Because the conflict now is a continuity of a longer conflict. It's where I met her. And I sort of said, like, I won't do this anymore. And I'd given it up because I thought, when you're married, it's a bit different, you know. And there's an attraction, you feel very alive. So the average office worker in the UK doesn't, isn't on their edge. They don't feel alive.

And it was a year ago I was there, and I can feel that like it was yesterday. And sometimes in a positive way, but it can take a little bit of getting used to being back home again. Post-deployment or after the event is quite difficult for soldiers. and I've worked with a lot of humanitarian I've mostly worked with, like Oxfam and Save the Children and stuff like that. And that's pretty difficult coming home because your mates are talking about the mortgage and the football

and you're thinking about dead kids. Yeah? So it's pretty rough. Like the coming home can be shocking. And then the aliveness of being there is in different places is certainly addictive. And I think these days I've sort of got a bit past that. Our next training is going to be done in Poland.

I said, you know, let's do it. You can come to play. Poland and we'll do the training there. But yeah. It's interesting that thing that you talk about, the aliveness because we had Dan Hardy for my UFC title contender on the show. And he was talking about how before his big fights, he'd like get his affairs in order. He'd like give books back to people and movies so that he could, you know, like he would

go in there 100%. And I think that's a, I think you're right that so many of us lack that. sense of aliveness in our comfortable lives. And maybe that's the trade-off. Yeah, I mean, I found it in martial arts in the Western world. And that's a very healthy way. My wife and I were going to the climbing war recently, which again, super healthy thing to, you know, have some excitement, adrenaline, but in a controlled kind of, very wholesome, actually, very wholesome a climbing wall, just really good, nice people. So these days, I don't feel so drawn to it. You know, it was very, like, and there's only so much I can take. I mean, I'm not the toughest person. And the story,

I'm supervising essentially. So there's about 100 trainers in Ukraine, right? And there's management team, and they speak good English, so I supervise online, basically. And I help out, and I give advice, and I listen to them. And sometimes we talk about their boyfriends,

and sometimes we talk about torture chambers and rape and, you know, shit like that. And there's only so much I can take with that. And I know my capacity now. Like, I know that I can do that a certain number of hours a week. And then I need to, you know, go talk to one of my business clients about their leadership thing.

that's much lighter. And I think knowing your capacity, and this is a big thing for anyone who's in the NGO world or in the humanitarian world, or nurse or anyone like that, you've got to be self-aware enough to go, okay, what's my limit here?

And you see, like, teachers will burn out from working in the city schools and stuff as well, right? Yeah, you do. I think as a teacher in an inner city school, the average person has got about 10 years. Right. I think after that, you just get exposed and you see too much stuff where,

and particularly, when it involves children. It just makes far more of an impact. Obviously, when it happens to an adult, that is terrible and awful. It's rough for kids, yeah. Yeah, but with a kid, when you see what happens to them and what they go through, it really does leave an impact. Yeah, I got sent some Kerson, if people want to have nightmares,

Kerson Children's Torture, they could Google. And people should know what the Russian military are doing in Ukraine. They should know, because some of it won't be on the BBC, because it's too dark. And that got me way more than stuff I'd heard about adults, you know. What should people know? The extent of what's going on? I mean, in terms of, I mean, this is, I actually thought that as a head time I'm going,

this is trigonometry. Maybe this is the only actual trigger warning you should have. I mean, a real trigger warning is where you say, hey, this could, someone who's watching who has gone through certain things, this could actually put them back in that. And like, that's been extended to me and I'm just a bit upset about your politics or I don't like your glasses or something, right? Right. So, but actual trigger, like, I mean, there are things that I go, how much do we want

to talk about that in a public space, not knowing who's watching? I mean, the endemic sexual violence of the Russian military, absolutely endemic, is heartbreaking. And I get fucking so angry when I think about it. And obviously, you know, the team there are hearing different stories from refugees and first-hand accounts. This is not made up. the problem is the media have lost everyone's trust, particularly after COVID.

Trump breaks it. Yeah, we've been lied to so much that people think Ukraine's a lie. And actually, while the media presentation may be one-sided, there's a reason it's one-sided. One country invaded another one. And, you know, some of my friends who are a bit more alternative and conspiratorial will say, is this, is there really a trustee? Is it Ukraine? Yes, there is.

And I'll just say people can look them up and Google them. Yeah, well, it's weird. I sometimes get people on Twitter going, if this is a real war, why there's no footage? And I'm like, I can show you 50 telegram channels. Yeah, loads of footage. Yeah. Endemic sexual violence.

Yeah, I'd rather not go. No, no, no one wants to go into the graphic detail. I'm just saying, I think people should hear the sort of slightly more generalized version of the things that people are dealing with. Yeah, I mean, so look at the history of what was the Soviet military. So people don't know this, but Berlin was raped en masse. Not just Berlin, women in Poland, who had nothing to do with the last year. Across Eastern Europe, absolutely.

Millions of rapes. Yeah, yeah. But in Berlin, they think Berlin alone may have been one million. Yeah. Just an absolute nightmare. And no one was ever prosecuted. You can see YouTube footage of, you know, guys that were on TV in the 70s laughing about it. Old soldiers from Soviet soldiers.

So, do you know, Soldier Nitzin, he has a, whole short story. He's talking, he was very traumatized actually by witnessing a gang rape by Soviet soldiers. Yeah, I mean, horrific stuff and I knew it would happen. So when I spoke to my team, I said, you need to get ready to hear some stories. Because I just went, A, it does always happen in war to some extent, horrible as that is, but particularly with the historical precedent and particularly with a traumatized country that's already got a lot of numb people. So, like, if it happens in war anyway. But for example, there's very few instances

of Israeli soldiers doing that in Israel. And there's reasons for that historically and how the militaries are in the accountability. Now, not to say they don't do other things that may be not okay, but that's just not that. It's just not that. And, yeah, certainly the civilian targeting.

It's not just the odd missile that's, you know, a friend of mine was in an area of Kiev that was just being shelled by artillery and it was absolutely totally civilian air and it was shelled for days, maybe weeks on end. my mother-in-law was in a town far away from the front line and was doing a shopping and the shopping centre opposite was blown up and you know an old lady jumped on her and stopped getting killed and she ended up having dust covered in her and you know there's a picture of a pram with a child's foot next to the pram and that was just out that was literally 20 metres from where my mother-in-law was you know so these are first-hand accounts we're talking about here you know and um yeah Maybe there was a military meeting at the back of the shopping center, someone had said or something like this. But the civilian targeting is absolutely clear what's going on.

It's a terrorizing and it's a genocide. It's not you're having a war and in war, you know, sometimes you break eggs to make omelets kind of thing. It's not that. It's not that at all. So the civilian targeting would be another one. You know, what goes on every time they push back the Russians. And Boucher was the first time. I mean, my team before and after Boucher was two different. it was kids and then it was adults in that team after Boucher.

And that's because it was the first time Russians were pushed back and then they discover things. And Bucci was tiny compared to things since. So what's going on behind the lines, kids being abducted and taken to Russia? I don't know. But every time that line is pushed back and, you know, that seems to be,

God willing, the Ukrainian military is doing a great job. I mean, you know, Putin is losing and the Russian military is incompetent despite still being very dangerous. It's not my expertise to talk about military matters. However, you know, Putin increasingly to me looks like a weak old man. And as he is pushed back,

we will see the extent of some of these atrocities because most of the land that was taken, a lot of the land that was taken is still there. And so what do you do with a population like that? where awful, terrible things like the events and the acts that you have spoken about. What do you do to... After the event? After the event to create some kind of heat?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, what normally happens is it doesn't heal, then it just repeats. You see the Middle East, Russia is a case study of that, right? Well, actually, I was going to ask you this, not to interrupt your turn of thought, but you've alluded repeatedly that Eastern Europe is a part of the world that people, carry a lot of trauma. And one of the things I remember, there's a Russian psychologist whose name I won't remember now,

who talks about how Russia is one of the countries with the highest rates of domestic violence and physical child abuse, where it's kind of considered normal for adults to beat their children to get them to behave or whatever. And he basically talks about how that carries through. And actually, there was even more interesting,

there was somebody who talked about how, if you look at the sort of things that people search for in porn by country, It shows a very sadistic mentality in certain countries in Russia's at the top of that list. So where does that come from? Lack of empathy.

And where does that come from? Trauma. And where does that come from? Russia's history. I mean, you know, Russia's been invaded by everyone from the Mongols to Napoleon to the Polish to Hitler. Swedes, Lithuanians.

And then on top of that, yeah, Swedish, how embarrassing? On top of being invaded by the Swedish, how embarrassing. And on top of that, they've been invaded by the Swedish. How embarrassing. And on top of that, they've been, added their own level of trauma with the gulags, as you know, in your book, you detail this. The level of trauma in the Soviet system was just huge and endemic.

And this is a wound that's a huge wound. This is never to excuse any immoral behavior. And if we wouldn't want to understand it, we should understand that traumatize, you know, none people hurt people. Yeah? Because that natural, we're, unless we're actual psychopaths, it's a very small percentage of the population. the majority of it, as we were talking about sexual violence there, you know, it feels gross, right? It's not a comfortable, pleasant subject. And that's a normal human response.

And that can be cut off through the numbing of trauma. And particularly when it's endemic and it's over time and it's multiple periods, it becomes a norm. So you see little Russian kids, they're like, look, they're smiling, they're happy, they're active. And in a few years, you know, the affect is gone on the face, right? The Russian smile and, you know, that kind of, kind of. classic Russian look or in the chest you'll see the classic tension bands it's called armoring in body psychology you know you can spot a Polish person in the street in England can you because there's a certain look you know in the body so it doesn't mean that everyone who has trauma becomes

abusive or unpleasant some people go the opposite way they become very sensitive and compassionate but there's a good number of people who that trauma shuts down that natural empathy on top of that you'll see like the drug you know Russian men die 10 years younger than Russian women because of the rates of alcoholism. This is... The average life expectancy for a man in Russia is 64. Yeah, it's not great. So, yeah, the self-medication side of things is there.

You know, they made it recently not illegal to beat your wife for less you hospitalise her. That's a law in Russia. You can hit your wife unless you'd be hospitalized, that may be illegal, but you probably won't get prosecuted. You know, I've worked a lot with the gay community in Russia. You'll see it in the way people are other groups and make them and us kind of thing.

So it's in the thinking. that scarcity of this is not enough. And you will see that worse all across Eastern Europe, but you'll see it worst in Russia. And it kind of gets softer as you. There was a story that became viral of a woman who, the Ukrainians were hacking a lot of communications because a lot of the Russian soldiers were using mobile phones.

And they found messages from this woman on it. I think it was a dead soldier's phone, actually, from his wife saying, I know you're going to have sex with the low. local women, but just use a condom. Yeah, I've seen that footage too. Yeah, my wife showed me that. Yeah, and she translated it.

You're a woman. Yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? It becomes a coldness to others. Yeah. And the Russian reputation for coldness is not undeserved. That's not, you know, I've got, it's like the racism. I've got lots of good Russian friends.

But I do have a lot of Russian friends. They used to be colleagues. And people can be very loving and caring once you're on the inside of that. And the same with my Jewish friends. But again, that's another trauma thing. It's them and us. It's your inside or you're out. Every time I go to Israel, I put on five kilos because I get fed so much.

Unless you've got to eat food or else we're going to starve to death. It's a trauma pattern. You'll see it in Poland, too. You used to see it more in Ireland, though it's kind of fading now because the famine was way back. So these cultural trauma patterns exist and they run through us, even if we ourselves haven't had personal traumatic experiences. And I think it is important that we talk about trauma at this level and not let it just become a middle class pursuit.

I actually emailed a lot of the world's top trauma people. We run summits and conferences. I know a lot of these guys. And I've messaged them before Ukraine saying, hey, any advice? And a lot of them messaged back saying, I don't really know what to say because we don't really deal with real trauma. And I was like, you've made millions from this. It's big business trauma now.

Now, there's exceptions to that. Stephen Porges is great who does polyvable theory. which I recommend people look up. David Bisselli has a technique called TRE, which is a shaking trauma release technique. He was great. He's ex-humanitarian. So there are exceptions.

But there's a whole trauma industry now and this kind of weird middle-class, far-left politics around it where it just becomes a way to sort of beat people around the head and claim status. And it also makes people feel different. Like being special.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, nobody wants to be part of the whole. No one wants to be part of the tribe anymore. Everybody wants to be, you know, separate, have their own unique thing. And in a way, these people are feeding that demand. It's capitalism in action, really, isn't it?

There's a market for it. Yeah, there's a market for it. There's a market for it. As soon as we make the victim sacred, then it puts it up on a pedestal. And Jonathan Haidt's talked about that better than I can. I think what we've lost is the value of strength. So the Ukrainians, I know, are strong.

male and female, some strong women I work with, some badass, I married one, some badass women, you know, and the men. And they say things like, we love our men, they defend us from attack. And I'm like, God, it's so nice to hear something nice about men, you know. And there's a way in which strength in Eastern Europe isn't mocked. You know, I mean, I'm staying in East London tonight and I'm looking around kind of trendy hipster, East London. I just see weak boys dressed like clowns. Like, come on, guys, you know. Like, it's not a virtue to be weak. I think someone gives an example of, I read my dad's eulogy at his funeral. He wasn't a perfect man, but there was love there, and I wanted to read his eulogy. And I was

glad I had that martial arts training. When I wasn't a mess, I was able to help with the parking and greet my uncle. And, you know, I was glad when I read his eulogy. that I could do. I was glad I had the strength, even though I was scared to go to Ukraine. It's not about not being scared, right? We need that. We need it for life. Life, I don't think people would notice,

but life is fucking hard. Life is cancer. Life is your mom having Alzheimer's, right? Life is, if your life isn't hard now, great, let's be grateful. Let's be grateful for the, we were saying this lunch, right? We live in this wonderful place. I have a comparison point.

I'm staying in, living in this nice, in the English town and the west of England and every day, it's like, this is amazing. This is so much fucking better than Afghanistan. You know, immigrants aren't mugs. They're not trying to move here because they're idiots. They're trying to move here because it's nice. And this self-hating has got to stop, you know, to actually to embrace the Western civilization and the strengths we have, even if we're not perfect.

And Ukrainians want to be Western. You know, they're leaning towards the West. That's what Putin doesn't want. But that's their choice. And they're not doing that because they're CIA manipulated or something. They're doing that because it's fucking better. Yeah, that's why they're doing that. You write about this in your book.

And it's, you know, for me, what's missing is a practice for that. So I'm an embodiment teacher. This is trauma's part what I do. Mostly I'm training coaches, you know, teachers, business people. And they don't have a practice. So in Japan, kids do kendo, kids do martial arts. right some cultures the kids have to meditate or whatever right

we don't have that in the west we used to have it with sports we used to have it with sports so you know there's just saying waterloo was one on the playing fields of Eaton because originally you know we invented all the good sports as you know for us and originally sports were thought of as character formation and then they became entertainment or something else they originally were embodied practices and I see that re-emerging in you know climbing and other things

It doesn't have to be Eastern, though it could be. And I feel like that's what we really lack here is something to a praxis that's called psychologically to build the value, to embody the values that are there. And, you know, Ukrainians are fighting to be part of that world. And so many people in this country and other Western countries are just throwing it away like it was nothing. It's an observation that I had some time ago when I sort of looked around and I see that in a world where men are actively discouraged from, from being men, which is what I think is happening,

you see increasing numbers of young men going to the gym to get buff. I had to look at the impersonation of manhood. And I don't, I mean, some people will be insulted by that description. And like most of the guys over there, behind the scenes, they're all deaf. Good looking boys. Yeah. But there is, to me, it's a displacement effect where, to me, what strength, what you're talking about strength, that's not about being, six to and having big guns. It's about a mental resilience. It's about a willingness to stand up

for things you believe in. It's about a combination of traits that used to be, as you say, considered like necessary and important and are appreciated by the way by women in society. And it can be built in the gym because you can go at the gym and face hardship and you can go at the gym. You can go to look nice, right? Yeah. To look like some magazine says you should look, right? But you can be in the gym going, okay, I'm here for my discipline. And this is, you know, to do something difficult, whether it's, the problem with Western life now is it's too easy. Yeah.

So it makes us weak, right? It's a very simple, simple problem we have. It's a nice problem to have. So cold showers, I take cold showers. Yeah. You know, because it's difficult. Yeah, yeah. Right?

And you make yourself do it. The same way, I lift weights. But the same with meditating. You know, I sit quietly with myself. That's not easy. I mean, I did a lot of martial arts before I went on a meditation retreat. And five days of silence. I mean, you know, from an Irish.

background. That was fucking a bit much, you know. So there's that. And then I talked to you, saying to Francis earlier that my students, we send them to yoga, martial arts, conscious dance, but we also send them to improv. And that's one of the things they're most scared of, because that's a social humiliation potentially. You know, that takes real courage. I think it's where we respect the Joe Rogans and the, you know, the different comedians who are in this space because we know the verbal strength and the emotional strength to stand up and tell a joke and it may be full flat. That's another kind of strength.

So yeah, you can work out in the gym, but you can work out in the dojo, you can work out in the meditation cushion. There's lots of ways to be, you know, back to the beginning of the story, right? These are the strengths that I didn't have as a 17-year-old who'd read every book in the library. Wikipedia isn't solving all the world's problems. We don't need more information.

get your phone out and have all the information you want. But how are we training ourselves? And we need to because, you know, if Ukraine isn't coming to the door now, and it might. But if a war isn't coming to the door, cancer is or divorces or your kid could get ill, God forbid. Or do you know what I mean? It's like something's coming to you. Life happens, man.

So it's like if being weak is actually irresponsible. Being weak makes you a liability to the tribe. What does it mean to be weak? to not be able to handle adversity. And I don't necessarily, I think there's levels of it, right? So there's a physical strength. And maybe if you're eight years old, you don't have that. But when you're 80, you might have a lot of emotional strength.

Yeah, the person that can read the eulogy, the person that can talk to their friend who's been sexually assaulted and actually be with her when you're hearing things you don't want to hear. Yeah? The person that can just get up in the morning and go to work. because they've got what I put food on the table, that kind of resilience. There's layers to it, right? So physical, I think, is part of that to be relatively healthy, I think, is a helpful thing.

It can be a good foundation. I think martial arts are a great training. You know, if I was running the school system, I, you know, would absolutely like the Japanese, I would make that mandatory kind of scholistic kind of thing. But just having this mentality, it's the kind of weak point at the West that we have some great strengths in the West. And again, I'll be the first to tell them. but we tend to be a bit cognitive, we're not going to think our way out of this one. So, yeah, for me, I was glad I had that training doing the Ukraine project,

tried to pass some of that on. And I always say to the people there, do your practices, you know, do your yoga, do your meditation, do what you can because when, if you're self-regulated, as well as you can be, when you're with other people, you can pass that on. Yeah, and it's about confronting adversity. that to me is strength. It's been prepared to work on your weaknesses. Like we've used the analogy of the gym

and young guys going to the gym. To me, it's seeing a guy who's buff on top and he's got little chicken legs. You know, parsnip body is what I call them. Yeah, yes. So facing things that are difficult deliberately and systematically. You can't just people say, oh, parenting is my practice.

That's not a practice. because life's just throwing stuff at you. I can't say to my partner, can you be 20% less annoying? Because I'm trying to find the sweet spot here, you know? So the beautiful thing about a gym or a dojo or somewhere where there's kind of that kind of control is we can find that spot that's difficult but not traumatizing.

Like a good Aikido dojo or a good karate dojo, they won't traumatize you. They will challenge you. Same, you know, weightlifting, you put a amount on the bar that challenges you. And if we're not challenging ourselves, And yeah, we'll be gradually getting weaker. And then when life throws something too much at us, we will break.

And we'll not only let ourselves down, we will let our loved ones down. And that's unacceptable. Yeah. And I don't think we talk about that enough. No. We pretend that strength is a vice and weaknesses of virtue, and it's not. Why do we do that? I don't know.

I think potentially the emasculation of Western cultures, there's potentially an agenda are there. I think we've confused cognitive knowing with wisdom and with skills acquisition. So it's a problem in understanding what learning is. Like the English verb to learn actually means a bunch of things. I mean, a weak populace is easy to control, right? If we wanted to get a tinful hats out, right? We're easily manipulatable if we're nice consumers, perhaps, if we're not in touch with our own values. I mean, an advert says buy X, right? Now, if I'm tuned into myself and I go, do I need X?

Can I live without X? Do I feel resonance for that? Do I want that? So I think it's potentially something to do with the wider system, but it's a bit above my pay grade. So I think I'll say, I'm not sure about that one. Mark, and on that happy note, we, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

Actually, just, it's interesting you mentioned about having a controlled environment because I always get really frustrated when I go and play basketball somewhere. And I'm not a good basketball player. But if the level is not good enough for me, I can't play that. Because you're not on your edge, right? Yeah, and the level, like, ideally, everyone has to be better than me. Like, that's my sweet spot. A bit better, though, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to play with Michael Jordan. I mean, I'd love to play with Michael Jordan, but I don't think it'd go well. But anyway, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. And the last question we always ask is what is the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? What say you to that? First of all, I'd say look up, say in Ukraine, the charity in Ukraine, financially not connected with me, independently run. People want to support that.

The thing we're not talking about, gratitude. We mentioned it at lunch. I think, I got a bit angry today. Some of the things we're talking about kind of, I get my blood up, you know. And I'm really grateful to live in the UK. I'm really grateful we have peace. I'm super grateful to you guys. I want to say a personal thank you.

You know, like watching this show made me feel less lonely when there was council culture things happening in my life a few years ago. You know, I'm personally grateful. And I think gratitude is the emotion of enough. And in a consumer culture, where the tech apparatus is set up to make us feel not enough, and to want more and to be anxious, anything that brings out that feeling of, you know what, I'm really grateful. And that is a cure for a lot of ills. So thanks for reminding me of that

today, guys. Perfect. Well, thank you for coming on. And if people want to find you online, where's the best way to do that, or your courses, or your work? Yes. The word embodiment, if you put that into Amazon, Instagram, Tinder, like, not just a grinder. Unlimited.com. We've got an app, we've got a website, loads of free resources on trauma and other things there. Embodimentunlimited.com. Mark Walsh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you guys for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon.

Another brilliant episodes like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it is always available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. What does you think about people claiming to have PTSD after someone has disagreed with online and how does their trauma compare with that of people who've been in war zones? This episode sponsored by

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