From Stiffness to Stillness: How to Reset Your Body, Soothe Your Mind and Reclaim Your Energy with Lawrence van Lingen #559

Summary

Episode Summary: "From Stiffness to Stillness: How to Reset Your Body, Soothe Your Mind and Reclaim Your Energy with Lawrence van Lingen" (#559)

Podcast: Feel Better, Live More with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Host: Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Guest: Lawrence van Lingen, Expert in Biomechanics, Bodywork, and Human Performance
Release Date: May 27, 2025

---

Introduction

In this enlightening episode, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee welcomes back Lawrence van Lingen, a renowned expert in biomechanics and human performance, for a deep dive into optimizing movement, reducing stress, and enhancing overall well-being. Building on their successful first conversation (Episode 491), Lawrence shares advanced insights and practical tools to help listeners move better, feel better, and live more.

---

The Power of Backward Walking

Lawrence van Lingen emphasizes backward walking as a transformative practice:

"It's an antidote to modern life. It introduces an element of play into our movement... it changes the timing of your walking." ([05:28])

Key Benefits:

• Nervous System Regulation: Backward walking activates the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting calmness and reducing stress.
• Postural Improvement: It decompresses the lower back and pelvis, creating space in the joints and improving overall posture.
• Movement Efficiency: Encourages full weight distribution through the legs, reducing tension and enhancing walking and running mechanics.

Practical Guidance:

• Duration: Start with five minutes a day to maximize neuroplasticity ([23:14]).
• Environment: Preferably outdoors on textured surfaces like grass or sand for better foot engagement. If outdoors isn't feasible, walking barefoot on a carpet indoors is acceptable ([22:38]).
• Technique: Relax toes, ensure heel contact with the ground, and align the belly button towards the lead leg to maintain proper posture ([24:35]).

---

Balancing Tonic and Phasic Muscles

Lawrence introduces the concepts of tonic and phasic muscles, crucial for balanced movement and stress management.

• Tonic Muscles: These are postural muscles that maintain bodily stability and are endurance-based. Examples include the psoas and hamstrings. Dysfunction often leads to tightness and reactivity.

• Phasic Muscles: These muscles are responsible for movement and are fast-twitch, facilitating actions like running and twisting. Examples include the gluteus maximus and medius.

"The majority of people have an imbalance where tonic muscles hold tension, inhibiting phasic muscles from functioning optimally." ([82:30])

Impact on Movement and Stress:

• Imbalance Consequences: Tight tonic muscles can restrict movement patterns, leading to inefficiencies and increased injury risk.
• Restoration Techniques: Practices like backward walking and breathing exercises help restore balance, allowing phasic muscles to activate effectively.

---

Practical Movement Tools

1. Flow Rope Exercises:

• Purpose: Enhances spinal movement and rhythm.
• Technique: Swing the rope backward in a figure-eight pattern to promote symmetrical and efficient running form.
• Quote: "The flow rope is really good at unwinding tension and making your running symmetrical." ([97:42])

2. Tire Walking (Resisted Walking):

• Purpose: Strengthens hip extensors and balances tonic-phasic muscle interaction.
• Technique: Walk with a tire or resistance to engage the glutes and improve gait patterns.
• Benefit: Encourages hip extension and natural running mechanics.

3. Happy Hip Hack:

• Purpose: Lengthens and releases the psoas, activating the glutes.
• Technique: As you step, raise the corresponding arm overhead, promoting balanced hip movement.
• Quote: "It's incredibly easy and makes a big difference." ([99:27])

---

Movement and Stress Regulation

Lawrence discusses the intricate link between movement patterns and the autonomic nervous system:

"Emotion and motion cannot be separated. If you move better, you experience life better." ([21:02])

Key Points:

• Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic: Modern life often keeps us in a sympathetic (stress) state. Balanced movement practices activate the parasympathetic (relaxation) state.
• Neuroplasticity: Engaging in new movement patterns like backward walking fosters brain adaptability, enhancing overall well-being.

---

Running Efficiency and Injury Prevention

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on transforming the relationship with running to prevent injuries and improve performance.

Insights:

• Efficiency Over Intensity: Emphasizing smooth, efficient movement over pushing hard reduces injury risk and enhances running enjoyment.

"When you run efficiently, you don't get tired, you don't break down as much, and it's not as harmful." ([40:43])

• Cultural Influences: Western individualistic approaches often lead to overexertion and comparison-driven stress, detracting from the natural joy of running.
• Community Support: Running with a group or partner fosters accountability and shared improvement, contrasting with solo, performance-focused running.

Practical Advice:

• Listen to Your Body: Prioritize movement quality over meeting time goals. If pain exceeds a manageable level, it's wise to pull out without self-judgment.

---

The Role of Community and Culture in Movement

Lawrence contrasts different cultural approaches to running and movement:

"In Africa, running was way more organic and rhythmic, while in America, it's over-engineered." ([72:19])

Key Points:

• Supportive Environments: Communities that emphasize camaraderie and collective improvement foster better movement habits.
• Cultural Differences: Non-Western cultures often integrate movement naturally into daily life, reducing the stress and competition seen in Western practices.

---

Impact of Screens on Posture and Movement

The conversation delves into how modern screen use adversely affects physical health:

"Staring at screens disrupts breathing patterns, leading to tight diaphragms and poor posture." ([113:54])

Effects:

• Postural Strain: Prolonged screen time leads to forward head posture, increased neck tension, and spinal compression.
• Breathing Disruption: Screen use often leads to shallow, rapid breathing, exacerbating stress and reducing oxygen intake efficiency.
• Visual Fatigue: Continuous focus on small screens diminishes peripheral vision and can contribute to myopia.

Mitigation Strategies:

• Breathing Exercises: Practices like humming and specific breathing protocols can restore healthy diaphragm function and balance nervous system states.
• Movement Breaks: Incorporate regular movement and stretching to counteract the static posture of screen time.

---

Breathing and Its Connection to Movement and Stress

Lawrence highlights the critical role of breathing in maintaining movement efficiency and stress regulation:

"Breathing is intrinsically linked to posture and movement. A healthy diaphragm enhances both." ([85:59])

Key Concepts:

• Somato Visceral Movement: Integrates body and organ movement, promoting a centered and relaxed posture.
• Breathing Practices: Techniques that emphasize deep, controlled breathing can enhance breath-holding capacity and reduce sympathetic nervous system dominance.

Practical Exercises:

• Breathing App - Airy: Lawrence introduces the Airy app, offering free guided breathing practices to improve resilience and relaxation.
• Happy Hip Hack: Combines breathing with movement to activate phasic muscles while relaxing tonic muscles.

---

Conclusion: Empowerment through Movement

Dr. Chatterjee and Lawrence van Lingen conclude the episode by reinforcing the transformative power of movement. By adopting practices like backward walking, flow rope exercises, and mindful breathing, listeners can reset their bodies, soothe their minds, and reclaim their energy.

Final Thoughts:

"Your body isn't broken, it's just been misunderstood. Pain, stiffness, and fatigue aren't just things to manage; they're messages." ([28:00])

Actionable Takeaways:

• Start Small: Begin with simple movements like five minutes of backward walking daily.
• Engage with Community: Join Lawrence's online community for guided classes and support.
• Incorporate Breathing Practices: Use tools like the Airy app to enhance breathing and reduce stress.

Resources:

• Lawrence's Website: lawrencevanlingen.com
• Online Community Discount: Use code FBLM10 for a 10% discount on classes.
• Breathing App: Search for "Airy" on Apple or Android stores.

---

Notable Quotes

• Lawrence van Lingen: "Emotion and motion cannot be separated... it's just life changing." ([01:01])
• Lawrence van Lingen: "The majority of people have an imbalance where tonic muscles hold tension, inhibiting phasic muscles from functioning optimally." ([82:30])
• Dr. Rangan Chatterjee: "When you feel better, you live more." ([Final Statement])

---

This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to enhance their physical movement, reduce stress, and improve overall quality of life through simple, effective practices. Whether you're an elite athlete or someone seeking everyday well-being, the insights shared by Lawrence van Lingen offer valuable tools to achieve a healthier, more balanced life.

Transcript

[A]

I'm really excited to share that I've been selected as one of the very few Apple Podcasts Creators We Love a campaign that celebrates leaders and trailblazers in podcasting. Thank you to everyone who has listened and shared this show with their family and friends over the years. And if you have discovered the show for the very first time through the creators We Love Campaign. Welcome and I hope you enjoy listening.

[B]

Emotion and motion cannot be separated if you get it right. It's so incredibly powerful. You move better and you experience life better and then the way the world interacts with you changes. You make better choices and people around you react far differently to when you calm. It's just life changing. Your relationships heal, Your way you see the world gets better. You just deepen and enrich and improve every aspect of your life. It's much more than movement. So just start with one small thing and have hope and trust and believe and it'll change your life.

[A]

Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast Feel Better Live More. Our posture, our breath, and the way our feet strike the ground all tell a story of how we move through life. But how often are we actually paying attention? Today's returning guest is the inspirational Lawrence Van Lingen. Lawrence is a highly sought after expert in biomechanics, bodywork and human performance. Described by Triathlete Magazine as the genius of running, Lawrence has over 25 years experience working with elite athletes and and everyday people and he's developed a quite unique approach that goes beyond traditional methods, blending a deep knowledge of movement, posture and breath to optimize performance and overall well being. Now Lawrence works with some of the world's greatest athletes to enhance their performance and help them with so called untreatable injuries. And his online running workshops have helped many people around the world move without pain and with greater enjoyment. In fact, Lawrence has very kindly agreed to offer a 10% discount to any of my listeners who wish to join his wonderful online community where he offers four live classes per week covering topics like mobility, breathing, strength and so much more. Just go to lawrencevanlingen.com and and use the code FBLM10 now. Lawrence first came on my podcast back on episode 491 and because that conversation proved to be such a big hit with so many of you, I decided to invite him back for a part two. For me, the beauty with Lawrence is not just what he says, it's also how he says it. In this Conversation we discuss a variety of different topics and including the life changing benefits of backward walking, the relationship between our stress levels and the way that we move, why most of us are over breathing and the implications of doing so. The true role of our diaphragm, how modern habits like sitting, shoe wearing and screen use are affecting us, why your feet are more than just a base. How fascia, the body's connective tissue matrix, influences everything from flexibility to feeling grounded. And why stretching alone is not always enough to resolve tightness. Lawrence's clear explanations and everyday metaphors bring the body's complexity to life. And throughout the conversation he shares simple, practical tools that you can integrate into into your life immediately. This really is a conversation about empowerment. Your body isn't broken, it's just been misunderstood. Pain, stiffness and fatigue aren't just things to manage, they're messages. And when we learn to listen, we can move better, feel better and live better. Lawrence, you work with some of the best athletes on the planet. You're an amazing movement coach. You're so much more than that. But one thing you recommend to a lot of your athletes is backward walking. Why?

[B]

I think there's a lot that goes on with backward walking. If I had to distill it out really simply, I think it's basically an antidote to modern life. I think it introduces an element of play into our movement. It's grounding, it changes the timing of your walking. So I think we spend a lot of time in flexion, a lot of time sitting, and it's a really, really good way to sort of open up your posture and create length and space and kind of get the chair out of your posture. But there's a lot to unpack in backward walking. It's just, it's something that you should just try and do and experience for yourself.

[A]

What are some of the benefits that people can get if they start backward walking?

[B]

For a lot of people, it down regulates your nervous system. So it can be very calming. And that's amazing in and of itself to find a way that can kind of quickly ground you or calm you or change your autonomic nervous system. And then the other one, it kind of decompresses your lower back and pelvis and creates space in your joints when you're stepping back and you put your whole weight through your leg. You almost learn to trust the tensegrity, which is like a fascia word, the internal sort of structure of your body and you learn to put your whole weight through your leg. Whereas a lot of time people are kind of hurried and rushing and taking the next step. And there's a lot of tension in their movement. It really frees up tension from your walking and running.

[A]

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think most people listening to us right now will have heard the benefits of walking more. Yeah, we all know, don't we, that we should be trying to walk more in society. And the modern world has made it harder or certainly more difficult for many people to get basic levels of low intensity movement that we would have had for much of our evolution. But there's very few people who are talking about backward walking, which is super interesting for me. You've told me before that some of your athletes were. Will actually do a bit of backward walking before they go to bed. It helps them switch off, it helps them calm down. And so there's this relationship, isn't there, between the way we move and our body's stress levels?

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

You know, can you talk a little bit about that?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, this is something that I'm really immersing myself in at the moment. And it's because it's so powerful when you get it right and it makes such a big change. And it's this relationship between your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. So, you know, for, for clarification, I think most people are pretty familiar with these terms now, but your parasympathetics rest and digest and your sympathetic nervous system would be sort of like what we need to in an emergency state. So it's fight or flight or fawn or freeze. And I think a lot of people are overstimulated in the modern world and so can tend to be a little bit wired or a little bit anxious and a little bit uptight and. And we really do need to calm down, regulate. And you're seeing this incredible interplay between your autonomic nervous systems and the way you move and the way you breathe. And if you get it right, it's so incredibly powerful. And so we really do want to sort of learn how to downregulate the stress at the end of the day so that you sleep better, so that you wake up and your next days better. But also in that moment, learning how to move with more ease, learning how to move in a more relaxed manner, learning how to move in a more grounded manner. Then walking becomes rehabilitation. And so your forward walking gets so much better. If you, if you walking and it's a creative act and you're thinking, and you're thinking better on your feet. Whereas, you know, on another level, you could be anxious and angry and stomping along or, you know, rushing to get somewhere and having a sense of anxiety and time pressure. And, you know, those are not the same walking. And I think modern life can pull you into a state where you're not really aware of. Of you're just in a constant state of reacting. You're always late, you got deadlines, you're always rushing somewhere. You're not immersing yourself in the. In the walking itself. You know, you're not extracting all the gold from walking that there could be. So I think that's kind of where I'm playing around with it at the moment, is trying to get people more centered, more embodied, more in themselves. And then you move better and you experience life better and you make better choices and people around you react far differently to when you calm. So it's just life changing. Yeah, it's much more than movement.

[A]

There's a couple of interesting themes there for me, Lawrence. Okay. Firstly, this idea that many people these days are chronically stressed. Okay. So they're chronically in the sympathetic part of their nervous system, which is the fight or flight part, as opposed to the parasympathetic, that relaxation part. Okay. I think many stroke. Most people listening would go, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that. Okay, I'm too busy, I'm too stressed. I'm looking for practices that help me de stress. Now what's interesting for me is I think a lot of people, when they think of, you know, winding down their nervous system and switching off, a lot of the time they're thinking about doing less things or maybe practices like meditation or journaling. Right. And again, nothing wrong with those things. Right. But you're talking about a particular movement practice, backward walking, as a way to downregulate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now I think that's. I guess some people would. Would maybe say, well, yoga helps me down regulate in the evening. It helps me switch off. Okay. So that I think that is an understanding that movement, the right kind of movements can help us down regulate. But I guess I'm really interested as to why you think backward walking does this. Is it because it's such a pattern interrupter? So because we don't do it, our brain is having to adapt because suddenly, you know, you're walking now not with the heel down first, your toes going down first, and you're. Do you know what I mean? Is part of it a pattern interrupter for the brain?

[B]

Yeah. There's an element of neuroplasticity because you know you're walking backwards and you. You sort of have a fresh look at walking, but it's. There's a twofold answer to that question, is if you walk forward and you're up on your toes and sort of elevated, you'll feed into your sympathetic nervous system. But if you use your whole foot and you really sort of trust the ground and your heels hit the ground, what'll tend to happen is you'll activate more your parasympathetic nervous system. And so walking backwards, you learn to trust your heel. You learn to connect your bones. And so if you just walk backwards, and as you put your whole weight through the leg that you're standing on, and as you translate backwards, you learn to take a lot of tension out of your hips and your adductors and your hamstring muscles and your leg muscles. And because of that, you learn to move in a way that's much softer. And it's. It really does impact the nervous system, and it might not work. You know, some people are really big responders, and I think from our previous lesson, a lot of people walk backwards and have very, very quick results within a week. They're like, oh, my word, this is incredible. And then the second one is, I think it impacts our tonic and phasic muscle system. You know, you had a great run this morning, and we sort of got a new move. And, yeah, really getting into your tonic and phasic muscle system as a. As a way of actually understanding and healthily intervening and healing your autonomic nervous system.

[A]

Okay, we'll get to tonic or tonic and phasic muscles in just a minute.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This. This word you. You mention a lot. Trust. Yeah, it's really interesting. Ever since I started consuming your content online, one of the things that I always loved about the way you talk about movement was it is. You know, in many ways, you talk about movement as being life. The way we move is the way we live. If you can't trust through movement, you can't trust in life. I'm not saying you directly say those words. This is what I take from it. This is how I think about it. And I think sometimes we, the collective, we. We think about movement as separate from our lives. Okay, so I've got my job. I need to answer my emails. I need to do this. And then if I have some time, because I heard on a podcast that movement is good for me. I need to go to the gym and move my body. Yeah, again, I understand that. I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But what I really love about your work, and this is how I think about movement, is the way you move. Your ability to trust yourself when you move impacts your wider life beyond that specific movement. And backward walking's really interesting, isn't it? Because if you think about it on so many levels, you're having to trust. You know, have you had experiences of athletes who perhaps were, for whatever reason, maybe trauma, past experiences, you know, bad relationships, whatever it might be, struggled to trust in life and through the trusting of their movement, through something like backward walking, it started to impact their lives beyond that movement.

[B]

Yeah, and I think you're really onto something. So the trust notion, you know, it's like in, I don't know, they'll have people fall backwards and you. And you get caught from behind. You know, there's an element of that for sure, but the more people start to trust their bodies, it, you know, trust starts to show up elsewhere in your life. Like, let's say running. Running. We can, we're going to hopefully talk about this a little bit later. You know, running, the injury rates are really, really high. And so a lot of people have a sort of a love, hate or a fear sort of relationship with running. They're always injured or when's the next injury going to come? Or you are injured and you're very, very frustrated. Like if, say we're an antelope in the savannah in Africa, if you walking with a limp, you know, you're the food, like you're the weakest in the link. We don't like limping, we don't like being insecure. We don't like not trusting our knee or our bodies or our joints, it's very, very unsettling. So if you can start to trust your body, like, you know, and you're confident that if you reasonably well behaved, you're not going to be injured, that's very, very empowering. And, and we see it with athletes for sure. I mean, like Taylor, who I work very closely with, she had In, I think three years, 13 MRIs.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And, you know, in the last nearly two years, she hasn't had a single MRI. And her level of trust in her body is, is blossoming in all areas of her life. And the self confidence and she's just showing up different. And the way she perceives the world's changing, the way the world perceives her as changing. You just know he has a young, confident woman that's stepping into her power and, you know, you can't fake that. Well, you can try and fake that, but it comes from a very authentic.

[A]

Place for people who are not familiar with the elite triathlon world. Can you just explain who Taylor Knipp is? Because she's not just any athlete, is she?

[B]

No, no, Taylor's. Taylor's a very special athlete. So she's won world 70.3 champs three times. And last year she won the inaugural T100, which is like a middle distance triathlon racing. She won every race she entered in that.

[A]

And so she's one of the best triathletes on the planet.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. At the moment, currently middle distance, she's unparalleled and you know, she went to the Olympics for two different sports. She went for cycling and for triathlon. She's. She's exceptional.

[A]

Yeah. That whole idea that, you know, maybe before she started working with you or taking this approach, she had 13 MRI scans in three years. The fact that running injury rates are so high, I definitely. Let's come to that in just a moment. Let's just. For people who are interested in backward walking, we'll shoot a video afterwards and we'll try and sort of pop it in or pop a link so people can see it, but just give us some rough guidance. How can people actually do it? Is it outside? Is it inside? You know, is it on a treadmill? Like, just walk us through those things, please.

[B]

Okay. So you want to be safe. Okay. You know, don't. It's very easy when you're walking backwards to walk into things. So if we do it in a gym, for example, with athletes, they'll. They'll actually focus on what they're doing so much and they will walk into equipment. So try and walk in the place where there's quite a bit of space or you're familiar with. So, like your back garden is great because you know how big it is.

[A]

Yeah. I think we touched on it first in our first conversation. But I think it's such an important concept for people to realize is I feel very much that your posture will often reflect your personality.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I know for me that the more open I'm able to be, the more, the more trusting I'm able to be, the more I'm able to actually, you know, be with my height. I'm a tall guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I'm actually getting taller. I'm, I think an inch taller.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like my spinal measurement compared to five years ago.

[B]

Yeah. Well, that's important and that's what we want. We want to decompress the spine Exactly.

[A]

So it's not that it's not like I'm suddenly miraculously growing. It's that I wasn't in my full height before.

[B]

No. Yeah. You've regained your potential. That's what you're supposed to be. That's your birthright.

[A]

Exactly. But this is where it gets really interesting for me, Lawrence, is that that is also reflected in my personality. So I was telling you in the kitchen just before, and I think, make change at last. That is my sixth book that came out just a few months ago. Now it is without question the best and most confident book I've ever written. And I don't think you can take my posture and the way I move away from that because. Okay, so I'm, you know, 6 foot 7 now, I think. Okay. But like many tall people, you try and hide your height. You know, when you're like 18, 19, 20, you're at university, you're trying to fit in, you're trying to make friends. You know, you're trying to get down to everyone's level. So what does that mean? As you get down, you start to compress your chest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I've realized that as I can move into my body better, as I can lead with my heart and have an open chest and be in my height, I'm more confident, I'm more secure. I'm less concerned with whether people agree with what I put in that book or not. I'm like, it's fine if you disagree, no problem. Like, this is how I see the world. If you find it helpful, great. If you don't, okay, no worries. So again, you asked me about backward walking. I'm saying backward walking and a number of other movement practices have helped me change my posture, change my height. And that has also played out in the way I interact with the world.

[B]

Yeah. And then the way the world interacts with you changes. Yeah, it's amazing. And I mean, you know, for the listeners, we had a treatment session yesterday and your body's just so much better. Your joints are more aligned, you've got space in your joints, your stack, your posture, everything's dramatically improved since I lost saw you. So sometimes, you know, people say walking backwards, you notice it's initial result and then there's slow change. But that's why you, whatever you choose to do, you should stick with. Because if we took wrong and now back into your old body, you'd hate it. You just wouldn't want to be in that same. Usually like, no, no, no, get me out of here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And because it's a learned technique. You know, if we. If we could take what you knew now and then take you back, back five years ago and put wrong and now into that body, you know, instantaneously, you'd have a different posture. So posture is almost a learned technique.

[A]

I'd have a different posture and a different personality.

[B]

And a different personality, yeah. Emotion and motion cannot be separated. And your posture and your deportment, and we see it in the lines of your face. You can see it and, you know, we're a reflection of what we habitually do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And how we move and how we think are absolutely linked. And that's why, like with running, often we'll give emotional postures rather than a cue. So instead of saying, oh, drop your elbow, you know, you want to have a sort of run with an open heart or run with a sense of trust. It's more powerful because then you start to realize, oh, that's how I keep. This sensation is the feeling of it. You know, the feeling of what it means to you to be open hearted, what it means to you to be in your full power. It'll mean something different to someone else. But it's a really good running cue.

[A]

If someone wants to start backward walking on the back of what they've heard and go, okay, all right, Lawrence. Wrong. And you sold me not. I need to. I want to start playing around with backward walking. Because people love a bit more precise guidance, don't they? Like, what is it? Is it five minutes a day, ten minutes a day? Morning, evening, barefoot, wearing shoes, you know, just help someone understand that.

[B]

Okay, so yeah, you're going to walk backwards into a new life.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

So what we want to do is prefer ideal situations. Backward grass. We want texture or sand. So we want texture in our feet. And you got more nerve endings in your feet than your hands. So. So skin on something pushing up into your arches, like ground or sand would be. Absolutely.

[A]

So outside, if you can.

[B]

If you can. Barefoot.

[A]

Barefoot.

[B]

No. Barefoot shoes. Skin on the ground.

[A]

Skin on the ground. Now let's just pause there a minute. If you don't have access to grass or sand, do the best you can. Do the best. What about, can it be okay on a carpet inside?

[B]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Barefoot on the carpet. Barefoot is best. So barefoot on the carpet inside. AstroTurf gym. Barefoot's better, but if it's with shoes, it's fine. Just do the work. You gotta start somewhere. You don't have to nail it, you know, Perfection is the enemy of progress. Yeah, love that Just get it done.

[A]

Get it done. And how long for.

[B]

And so five minutes.

[A]

Five minutes a day?

[B]

Yeah, five minutes. We really want to try for five minutes. Pretty continuous. And the reason is your brain will sort of discombobulate or break down after about two minutes or 90 seconds. And you almost want to refocus and then go again. And we think that in the second part of that practice, you will get more neuroplasticity and more gains out of it. It's kind of like you play guitar, right? You should do your scales for five minutes. And often you can concentrate, it's really easy for about 90 seconds. And then at about the 2 minute mark, you'll make a few mistakes, and then you concentrate. And then the second part of your practice seems to create neural change and neuroplasticity. So five minutes is the magic number.

[A]

Okay. So five minutes a day backward walking, barefoot. And I know from when I started to do it that there's a particular pattern you want. Right. And I know, I think I shared this on the first one. Like, in my family of four, three of us did the wrong pattern initially. So our intuitive feeling was we didn't do it. Right. My daughter nailed it first time. She just got it. I can now nail it because I know it. But I mean, we'll try and shoot a video to show people. But can you. Are you able to articulate it in words for people so they know?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So the cues are soft toes. So as you step backwards, you want to relax your toes and let your toes bend on the ground.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then your heel goes down. Your heel must you. As you step backwards, you want to be able to have full weight through your heels. It's really important.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So that's the important thing. And then your belly button, or your sort of solar plexus, so here where your ribs are, that should point towards the lead leg, the leg in front of you. And it's very common for people to sort of step out of pattern the wrong way around, which would be your. Your belly button pointing to the leg that's stepping backwards.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. And that's basically a reversal of your normal gait patterns. And that's one of the reasons some people respond to it. Once you restore that pattern, it has a profound effect on the nervous system. So if you walk the wrong way around, you want to be thinking, oh, this is an opportunity. Because if I correct this, good things are going to happen.

[A]

Yeah. And not just in your backward walking practice. Right. Your stress levels, how relaxed you feel. But Also, I'm guessing when you go forward walking or when you go for your parkrun at the weekends, you're going to run with more efficiency because of the backward walking practice.

[B]

Yeah, totally. And it shows up really, really quickly. So I would encourage anyone that if you're going to do flow rope, measure your height before you, because the flow rope often decompresses people's spines by about an inch and pretty rapidly.

[A]

What that, that term. You used it a lot last time as well. Decompress the spine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What does that mean?

[B]

So your, your body works like a suspension bridge. We've got rigid levers and elastic tissue. It's a combination of the two. So steel and, you know, like a suspension bridge has steel and concrete. Right. So your spine can often be compressed by muscle tension. So all the. There's hundreds of muscles that run up and down your spine. There's a lot of long muscles that run across multiple joint segments and if they're tight, they'll compress your spine. And the flow rope and learning to sort of move from the center and taking the tension out of your movement will. Will relax those muscles and your spine will decompress. It gets longer. You actually take pressure off the discs. So anyone that's got back pain or, you know, has sort of degeneration of their spine. You know, I really strongly encourage you, if you start these sort of practices, you know, for flow rope, measure yourself your height, and I'm pretty sure you'll decompose. You know, if people comment and come back and say, yeah, I measured myself and I got taller, it'll be really good feedback because a lot of people will. And I always expected it should happen. And with backward walking, your running will improve and it'll improve quickly. You'll. If you take a before and after video. So you take a video of you running on the treadmill from the side and you walk backwards five minutes a day. And it doesn't have to be every day. It can be three times a week. Whatever you can fit in, you know, within two weeks. And if you, you know, video you're running again, it'll have. Your form will have changed. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And for the better. And, you know, your experience of running will be, will be better.

[A]

What's really interesting, Lawrence, is those two practices you mentioned, backward walking and the flow rope, not only are they incredibly beneficial for multiple aspects of our health, our happiness, our wider lives, they're also really fun. Yeah, right. A lot of people have this love hate relationship with movement don't they? They hear public health messaging that they should move more, but what? For some reason, and there can be many reasons, they don't enjoy the movement and maybe the particular movement they're doing. Or it could also be that their body is locked in certain patterns, so movement feels hard and difficult. Backward walking and the flow rope like you're going to have a smile on your face as you do them. You feel like you're a child again playing around. How important is that when it comes to healing our bodies? Today's episode is sponsored by vivobarefoot. So if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you will know that I am a huge fan of barefoot shoes and believe that everyone at some point in their life should try wearing them. I myself have been wearing Vivo barefoot shoes exclusively now for over 11 years, well before they started supporting my podcast. So why do I think you should give them a go? Well, not only are they really comfortable, many people also find that when they start wearing them, all kinds of niggles like back pain, knee pain, hip pain, even neck pain can sometimes get better. We also know from research that wearing barefoot shoes regularly helps to strengthen your foot muscles. Now this is really important. People think about strengthening their arms in the gym or other body parts, but your feet muscles are some of the most important muscles in your body. They help you walk, interact with the ground and balance. So now that spring is finally here and many of you will be trying to get outside more and move your bodies, why not give vivobarefoot shoes a try? One of my all time favorites is the Primus Trail which come in a variety of different colors for men and women. And although I've been wearing them for many years now, I do think that the Primus Trail are a great shoe to start off with if you're new to barefoot shoes. So why not make 2025 a year you give them a go. And don't forget it is completely risk free to do so because vivo offer a 100 day trial for new customers. So if you're not happy you can just send them back for a full refund if you go to vivobarefoot.com forward/live more they are giving 20% off as a one time code to all of my podcast listeners. Terms and conditions apply. To get your 20% off codes all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com forward/live. More Mitopure from Timeline Nutrition are one of the sponsors of today's show. Now like many of you, I want to proactively preserve my health, mobility and strength as I get older. And of course, what I have been talking about for many years is the importance of paying attention to what I consider the four key pillars of health, food, movement, sleep and relaxation. However, I do believe that certain supplements can also play a useful role. Mitopure is a supplement that contains a precise dose of the rare postbiotic urolithin A. It works by promoting an essential cellular cleanup process that clears out damaged mitochondria and helps to target the effects of age related cellular decline. Now, what I really like about this company is their dedication to ongoing research, including randomized controlled trials in humans, many of which you can see on their homepage. Now, I want to be really clear. Mitopure is not the cheapest supplement to buy and not everyone will be able to afford it. As I mentioned at the start, the four big levers for our health and well being are food, movement, sleep and relaxation. And in my books and on this podcast I routinely share simple things that are completely free that will absolutely improve your short term and your long term health. However, if you do have the resources, I think that Mytopure is a supplement that is well worth considering. I myself take it. And for listeners of my podcast, timeline is offering 25% off your MyTapure order. To take advantage, go to timeline.comlivemore that's timeline.comlivemore.

[B]

Well, it's really, really important, I think, let's say for the listener, you're sitting there and said, well, I wonder how wired I am or how stuck in a sympathetic state I am, you know? Well, one of the things is if you're not curious and you don't have a sense of play, you're in a sympathetic state. So parasympathetic and curiosity and play go hand in hand.

[A]

Okay, hold on, just pause there a minute. I want to make sure everyone follows the terms. So, sympathetic nervous system. I know we've covered it, but I just want to land this point right. Sympathetic nervous system is the stress part of your nervous system, which you don't want to be in all the time, just now and again. But unfortunately, in the modern world, many of us are mostly in that state. The opposite is the parasympathetic nervous system, the relaxation part of the nervous system. You're basically saying one way you can ask yourself and determine if you are in that stress state or that relaxation state is to ask yourself how playful and curious you are. Because if you are in the relaxed state, you are gonna be curious.

[B]

Yeah, you should be playful and curious. And that's the precursor to neuroplasticity. It's the door you have to go through walking backwards to get into a sense of change. And so what would be the opposite of playful and curious would be reactive, opinionated, guarded, defensive, fearful. You know, the lack of trust. So, yeah, trust play and curiosity would indicate that your nervous system is healthy. And yeah, it's. It's really hard to imagine that people are going to walk backwards and not start smiling or, you know, laughing or. Yeah. And then. And it's so important. And then. And then what happens is when you start bringing those concepts, you know, the flow rub can bring a sense of creativity and flow and release. And a lot of people with the flow rope, you know, also can be very downregulating because you're sort of mobilizing the spine and you're waking up all these incredible nerve endings and muscles feeding back into your brain, which you're not. You know, we all understand, like, a massage can be really feel really, really good, you know. Well, that's because we were sort of wired for touch and movement. And so it releases oxytocin. And oxytocin is the hormone of trust. So you can start, you know, doing these things and totally reframe your relationship with movement into a healthier one. You know, that. That Strava did a questionnaire of quite a lot of runners, and 90% of people don't like running. They run because they perceive the benefits of it, but they don't enjoy running. And we definitely want to shift 90% of people hating running and 10% enjoying it to 90% of people enjoying running and having a healthy relationship with running and movement because then it's sustainable.

[A]

That is a staggering statistic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Now, I don't know the sample size. I don't know.

[B]

It was like 10,000 people.

[A]

Yeah. And again, I don't know if the people were more likely to answer if they didn't like running as opposed to, you know, I get all that stuff. But nonetheless, even if it's a, you know, not quite. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's still pretty alarming. Well, yeah, Strava's a, you know, a movement tracking app. Right. So people are interested in movements. If they're on the app, they're monitoring.

[B]

Their fitness and their activity levels. For sure.

[A]

Yeah. 90% not enjoying running. It's a remarkable statistic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It makes you think, why do they actually keep doing it if they're not enjoying it?

[B]

Yeah. Well, probably for the benefits afterwards or because they're told that it's good for them, you know, and it doesn't seem to be that intrinsic. I mean, Dan Lieberman touches on this. Professor DAN Lieberman, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, we're kind of wired to conserve calories, and so there is an initial resistance to exercise, you know, but once you get into, then it rapidly reframes and you realize, oh, I feel so much better. I mean, often you don't feel like going for a run, but you feel fantastic afterwards. So there's always a bit of resistance to, to exercise or doing hard things, usually.

[A]

I wonder what your take on this is, Lawrence My perspective is that.

[B]

One.

[A]

Of the reasons a lot of people don't enjoy movement or running for that matter, is because there are restrictions in their body. So when they, you know, they, whether it be from stress, trauma, stored emotions, the modern work environment, it changes our body. So we then take that changed body to this kind of natural, playful activity like running, right? And we're taking, I don't know, this kind of flexed, inefficient body into that movement, right? So then we don't enjoy that movement. Or let's tie this into those injury rates. The running injury rates are through the roof. I think you told me yesterday or this morning that running entry rates are higher than NFL.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you know, again, there's stats and, you know, but yeah, I mean, pretty decent American football injury. American football, yeah. You're more. The injuries are miles higher for running.

[A]

Than NFL, but the natural conclusion for some people would then be, running's bad for you, running's bad for you. But maybe it's not that running is bad for you. It's the way that you are running is not currently helping you.

[B]

Yeah, totally. I mean, you've, you've experienced it. You had a great run this morning. I mean, it's just, it's extraordinary when you get it right, like how it's, it's just, it's a pretty incredible experience. You feel your body opening up, space in your joints, a sense of energy, a sense of lightness, a sense of sort of animation or. And, you know, it's just, it's just profound. And yeah, a lot of people, unfortunately, just will never, ever in their lives experience what you experienced this morning. And so it's just much harder than it could be. And then I think a lot of people try too hard when they run and, you know, almost like a work ethic, you straining or you're forcing it and, you know, like, there's ego involved or you're being trapped, or you're worrying how fast you're running, or you're not good enough, or, you know, you're comparing yourself to others. Whereas you, running should pretty much be within yourself. And we walked multiple times this morning. You know, we played, we walked, we skipped, then we ran, then we slowed down. And it's okay to play if, you know, hunters, you had to be curious about where the animal was going. You know, if we. If we go into this persistent hunter model. But, yeah, we. You know, the hunter was tired, he'd slow down, or every now and again, you'd stop to slow down and listen, because you can't really listen when you're running. So I think an element of play and element of not being. You know, I've got my pace. I want to run this pace. I should be running this pace. I want to basically run faster than I ran last week. You know, we just bring a whole lot of drama to running that just really doesn't need to exist there.

[A]

Yeah, I think this is such a big issue. Right. I've noticed it. I don't have it myself anymore, that's for sure. But you see it everywhere, particularly with running. You know, I think it's called the Strava effects. You know, when people know their run is being tracked on Strava, they're like, oh, my God, I can't post that time. I must go quicker. What will people think? It's like, who are you having this conversation with? It's like. It's just an internal conversation with no one, basically. But we cause ourselves this mental stress over nothing. It should be this expression for you and you alone. And so a couple of things come to mind there, Lawrence, for me, okay? One is the fact that you told me last night after you treated me, that you've made so many improvements in your running efficiency that now you can do like a 20k run and not feel it the next day. Yeah, that is super interesting to me, because there's an idea, and I'm not saying people should or shouldn't run every day, but there is an idea that when I run, of course I'm gonna have pain the following day and stiffness the following day, but that's not necessarily true if you're running with beautiful running efficiency. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, so that's quite interesting to me.

[B]

Yeah, we see. I mean, for me personally, running, you know, I obsessed about running because I couldn't run, and I found it harder than it should be, and it wasn't very good. So if you look, I did triathlon, right? My swimming was exceptional, My biking was okay. And it didn't feel like I had a hard. I thought I could just, with time and effort, I'd. I'd get better at cycling. But I was a very, very bad runner. And when I ran, it hurt. Like, my muscles would get sore, my muscles would get damaged. So I'd have to train more and more to condition myself enough to be able to do long runs, and it would beat me up. And now I have a totally different relationship with running. You know, I'm really, really efficient when I run. It feels amazing. I don't get tired. I don't break down as much. It's not as harmful for me at all. And we have this. So I worked with Jan Frodeno, right. Who was a gold medalist in the Olympics in triathlon and multiple world champion. His running efficiency improved so much that he said, like, I kind of stole his, his track workout from him. So what. What he meant by this is, you know, he go down to the track and he'd do sort of eight by one kilometers, and then afterwards he'd be pretty beat up. But he enjoyed the satisfaction because it was like I'd done work and he actually liked the sensation of being beat up. And then every day he'd just have physio deep tissue try and restore himself. And the next day he just repeated. And I was with him in Andorra when he did a track workout, and he said that didn't touch sides. It feels like I haven't worked enough and I haven't done enough. So he added two more, I think 1Ks on there. So he did 10 by 1Ks and said, that's still not enough. And you started doing 400 repeats. And I was like, dude, it's enough. But your relationship with running is so changed that, you know, and this is in a. In a world champion and a gold medalist. So we really can change our relationship with running through how well we move.

[A]

It's super interesting that you talking about this Olympic medalist, this world champion, and from. From what you just shared there, it strikes me as though he had conditioned himself over a number of years that if this workout is going to help me improve my performance, it's got to feel hard.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I've got to feel as though I've worked.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There wasn't this idea that it could actually feel effortless or more efficient.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. And I, I really find that point interesting because I would say one of the biggest things I've changed with myself over the past few years, it's. This goes beyond movement, actually. This is just. Well, can you separate movement from personality? I don't think so. But I also, you know, I remember I used to cram for exams at school, at medical school. You know, I had to feel the pressure. I had to stay up late to know. Oh, yeah, you've, you've write, you've really tried to get it in there for the exam. And over the last few years, it's very much been a different approach to, for me to be thinking, oh, well, does it, what if it doesn't feel hard? What does this look like if it was gonna feel easy? And it's been a seismic shift because I can now go into things not feeling that stress that I have internally generated to make me feel something is worthwhile. I'll tell you, actually, I don't think I've shared this with anyone yet. In March, I did a 16 date national theater tour of the UK. Okay. And it was an incredible experience for a variety of different reasons, but one of the things, actually there was, I can't remember which event it was, but some of my mates were there in my dressing room beforehand. And I said, I'm kind of feeling so calm, like I'm not even feeling remotely stressed about going on stage. And then this is where when you change, you have to almost challenge existing narratives.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

That have maybe served you in the past.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the comment, look, I've changed a lot over the last few years, but still, one of the things people will say about stress is that a little bit of stress is good for you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Too much stress starts to give you diminishing returns and starts to become problematic. And I believe that is generally true.

[B]

Yeah. And I think chronic unrelenting stress.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So parts where you push and then fall back, but it's that chronic unrelenting.

[A]

And I've been really thinking about this. Well, I thought about it for a few weeks now, but I was thinking on, when I was on the road in March, I was thinking, people say, and I've said before, that you need a little bit of stress to get on stage and perform.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I promise you, Lawrence, some days I felt, I felt no stress, no anxiety, no pressure going out on stage because all I had to do was be myself. I didn't kind of need any stress, you know? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So it's just making sense.

[A]

How do you see that?

[B]

Well, totally. Well, it requires, let's say you tell a lie. Okay. So I don't know. I did Something really bad, and I'm being interrogated by the police and I tell a lie. It's exhausting. You got to be consistent. You got to work at it, you know, it's draining. And a lot of people, I wouldn't say living a lie, but not as authentic as they can or don't express themselves as purely as they can. Whereas if you just show up and that's you, there's. There's no drama, there's no fuss, there's no mental emotion. You're not. You don't have to second guess yourself. You don't have to think, well, did I say this? Did I mean this? Am I in character? It's just you, you know, and. And it's really, really, you know, you know, that's getting down to the crux of all of this sort of the movement drama is just shedding away the drama and expressing yourself and because it's liberating and it frees up energy and that's why it's high performance.

[A]

Why do so many people allow comparison and the time that they're running something in to infiltrate and get in the way of their experience of running?

[B]

I think it's culturally imprinted on us. It's keeping up with the Joneses. It's school, it's hierarchy everywhere.

[A]

I mean, you grew up in South Africa.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And you moved to America. Is it, Is that the same there? I know there's many cultural differences.

[B]

I think. No, I think if you wanted to go to a cultural place in the world at the moment where that wasn't apparent, it would be. You go into the Amazon or into Tanzania and find subsistence hunters. Because in a small band of like, let's say 100 people, everyone adds value and your value is different. So some person's good at skinning and some person's good at hunting and some, you know, everyone's got a different role and function. And I don't think there's the same sense of comparison. But from a social structure, I mean, chimps, you know, there's hierarchy in the chimps. You got the, you know, the alpha males, whatever. We just. Hierarchical. That's part of the human condition. But if you can let it, you know, you don't want to let that sense of hierarchy in comparison ruin your life.

[A]

Or, you know, for someone who is listening to us and let's say, loves to do a 5k park run every Saturday, something that's very, very popular in the uk, especially with my audience, and they're trying to PB So get A personal best. Every single Saturday, they've got a busy job, maybe they're stressed, but Saturday morning it's like, no, no, I've got to go and push it. And they are someone who always compares. And even if they have a good run, but it was 10 seconds. So within last week, instead of looking at the fact that, hey, I got out there and I started the weekend with some fresh air in nature, they're beating themselves up that they were 10 seconds slower than the week before. What would you say to them?

[B]

Is it worth it? What's the cost? I mean, is it, you know, is it worth it? Are you ruining a beautiful Saturday morning? Is it worth it? Perfection is the enemy of performance, which there's not that narrative. It's excellence. You've got to show up every day and be like, amazing. It's the devil's in the detail. Or there's marginal gains, but trying too hard just never works out right. And I think most people, when you, if you look at the greats, like, you know, Iliad Kipchoge, he trains within himself most of the time. He only really, really pushes himself in a race when it matters. And, you know, so, yeah, it's law of diminishing returns. You're gonna go to that park, run, you're ruining a really good experience and an opportunity. And running is so social. We, we're a band of brothers. Like the African proverb is, you know, if you want to go fast, go, go alone, but if you want to go far, run with friends. I think running as well is one of those lessons in life because it's a great metaphor for life is at some stage you just start slowing down and you've run your last, fastest time. You know, you can go to Boston Marathon and you go to age quality. You know, you're running in your age group and you got to qualify. So you can always compete against your relative age. But I think, you know, judging your self worth or your personality or how you're, I don't know, just judging your self worth based on how fast you run, it's not a great metric. What I will say is instead of don't and telling people what to do and what they shouldn't do, you know, the way to do this is learn to run more efficiently, learn to trust your body, and suddenly the drama seems to just disappear. I think you've experienced that. Yeah, you know, you trust your running, you enjoy your running. It feels amazing. You're showing up and suddenly there's no need to try and better Yourself every week to the next. And chances are you are running faster.

[A]

Exactly. I am.

[B]

Your potential's open.

[A]

I'm not even looking at my times. What really drives me is efficiency, is fluidity of movement. And I'm really, as you can probably see, as Helen can see, I think too much focus in society has been on how much we move and not how we move.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So all the guidance says you've got to run more, you've got to walk more, you gotta, you gotta work on your strength. And we'll cover all these things because I know you've got some interesting thoughts on these topics. But, but very little of the messaging is about how you're doing those movements. You have this beautiful phrase, I think, Clarence, you say we need to move in a way that respects our joints.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What does that mean?

[B]

Joints have a particular pattern. So like your, your hip joint, your, you know, where your femur joins your, your pelvis as you move into flexion. So as you bring your knee forward, it's sort of coupled with external rotation and as you move it into extension behind, it's coupled with internal rotation. You want to respect that pattern. There's very strong ligaments that reinforce that pattern. The muscles around that reinforce that pattern. So that's a pattern. You want to run with that pattern. For those of you that walk backwards and you, you'll, you know, you realize, oh, hang on, my belly button is pointing towards the back leg, not the front leg. You know, that hip's working out of pattern. So you're not respecting the joint. These are biomechanically just how it works. An example would like, even if your elbow, if I bend my elbow, you know, my elbow can bend, you know, this far, that way it cannot. That's, that's as far as it goes that way we need to respect that. That's a, that's a hardwired into your joint. Let's say you've got knee pain and it starts to hurt in your joints, especially weight bearing joints. You know, you need to recognize you're not running in a way, first learn to move in a way that doesn't hurt your joints. And then what we do is we strengthen it up, which is almost the current narrative is if you have an injury, you're going to rehab it and strengthen it. And I think what I would say is first learn to move in a way that doesn't stress the joint and then strengthen up and rehab that movement. It's just a little bit of a different way of looking at it. But we have to respect our joints.

[A]

It's interesting, as you say, that I'm drawn to the London Marathon. We're a few days out from the 2025 London Marathon. That's one of the reasons you're in the UK is because you're running the event. Okay. So firstly, in a society, in a running world obsessed with goals, I would argue overly obsessed with goals. Or that the over focus on goals can come at a cost, that a lot of us aren't recognizing. What is your goal or what is your plan for this Saturday or this Sunday's London Marathon? I should say that's the first question. But the second question is in relation to what you've just said, we should move in a way that respects our joints. The London Marathon is an incredible event. And what will no doubt happen this year, as happens every year, is that some people will still complete that and raise a lot of money for charity, let's say. But they will not be moving in a way that respects their joints. Right. So first of all, let's talk about your relationship with the London Marathon this Sunday. But then let's move into that because I think, I think there's this narrative in society that it's always good to do a marathon. Ah, you know, I did it. I pushed through. But I know, and I'm sure you know more than me. People who've literally was so bloody minded about completing a marathon, they then never ran again afterwards, ever. Cause they broke themselves or they wrecked their knee and that impacted their life for years afterwards. But hey, they got the marathon. They can put that on their Instagram handle. I completed the marathon. It's a really interesting relationship I think we have. So what's your relationship, number one? And then how would you help someone think about this sort of other conundrum?

[B]

Yeah, so my relationship is I'm gonna run with Chris Evans. So I'm gonna run with a friend. You know, we're gonna go far, run with someone. So I don't have a time goal. I just simply would like to run with him. And if we decide not to run with each other, then that's just okay, you know, we can just go on and do our own race. So I don't actually have much of a time goal or pacing goal. I'll just run with him. And which is interesting because I haven't run a marathon in a long time. And I really enjoyed the fact that I was sort of almost like a little bit late notice, I think I was given 11 weeks notice to run a marathon. You Know, time to prepare. But I think, like, it was good for us because I hadn't been doing long runs for quite a long time. We just sort of run 6 to 8Ks every day, but at altitude, at a high. So we're running 40 to 50 minutes a day. And then on the weekends, we'd run 10Ks or at that altitude like an hour, just over an hour. And that we were pretty set in that routine. So it was actually quite nice to get out of my comfort zone, run a little bit longer.

[A]

So you're looking to have fun.

[B]

So I'm looking to have fun, yeah. And camaraderie in a sense of fellowship.

[A]

And if I'm not trying to tempt fate at all, I don't think this can happen. But let's say during the, the race on Sunday.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At some point you start to feel something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Now, obviously, you know your body very well. This is your area. You're a, you know, an incredible expert.

[B]

Right.

[A]

With the human body and how it moves. So you, you can probably figure it out on the fly. But let's say you got to a point where you're like, actually, this is hurting and this pain in my knee is getting worse. You're going to pull out, right?

[B]

Yeah, 100%.

[A]

100%.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Because your identity is not wrapped up in you completing that race.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

You pulling out doesn't say anything about your worth as a human being.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's good. I mean, so what I think for.

[A]

Some people listening to this right now.

[B]

That is, yeah, you're a quitter or you're a loser. But I mean, those are labels. Like, you're not a quitter or a loser.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And interestingly enough with Taylor, So Taylor did. Taylor Knibbs, you know, the triathlete we were talking about, she did Iron man on. In Kona. Not last year, the year before.

[A]

And that is the. Just for people who are not familiar about the world, that is the, the.

[B]

Pinnacle of the pinnacle.

[A]

You have to like the pros even have to qualify to even get in. And that's in Hawaii.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it's a bit. It's a big deal, like 3.8k swim, 180k bike and then a marathon afterwards. And it's in heat and hot conditions and wind. It's. It's pretty brutal. Right. And I was kind of helping her and she wasn't as well prepared for the race as she could have been. Like, she didn't do very long Iron man specific prep, and she's never done an ironman before. So one of the agreements was that if I thought she was doing any permanent damage, I could tell her and she'd walk off the course. So not, you know, not her feeling like I'm damaged to the point that I'm hurting myself. She says, lawrence, if you think I'm now doing, I'm now damaging or impeding my future career, you tell me and I will step off the course. That was like an agreement that she made. So at the world class level, you know, where we, we really do idolize these people, you know, to have that sort of sense that I'm not risking my future career, my future self in this race. And to come back to your second point about, you know, I have a tragic, tragic story where a very well known marathon runner was going through sort of online and publicly on social media, a problem with her knee and running through knee pain and she was having injections and you know, it was a story and there was blogging about it and we can get through. And one of my clients that was really enamored with this ended up with a double knee replacement and ended up with a hip replacement as well. So three joints replacements because she was following her idol, trying to get through this, you know, run through and, and do marathons and training. And she wanted, she was so desperate to do a, a trail race, she ended up with double knee replacement and a hip replacement.

[A]

This conversation is going to go out after the London Marathon. Okay. But I just want to only because I've come across this so many times and so have you. Right now someone's listening to this and let's say they have a big race coming up that they signed up for a year ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was a big deal. And they've had it on the calendar.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And they're like, oh my God, I can't believe I've got in. I'm going to do this. But they know as they're training that something keeps flaring their hip or their knee or their back. And they know, but they think I just push through for a few more weeks and do the race. If they were your athletes and you were their coach, what kind of things would you be saying to them? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Nutrition can often seem really complicated. We get confused about what exact diets we should be following and which supplements we might benefit from taking. And that's one of the many reasons that I love AG1. And have been taking it for over six years. AG1 makes it simple to be the best version of you. Over 70 ingredients 1 scoop once a day for less than a cup of coffee. It's a science driven daily health drink which supports your energy, focus and immune system. It also helps support your gut health. For example, it contains calcium which contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes and biotin to maintain your own intestinal mucous membrane. Now, the scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry. And I talk to them regularly and am really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. In fact, AG1 has gone through 53 versions as they continue to iterate in line with the latest research. And the best thing of course is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life. So if you want to Support your health seven mornings a week, you can start with AG1. Subscribe now and get a free bottle of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.comlivemore to unlock this exclusive offer and get started on your journey to better health today. This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Now, I've got a friend who's always on the move. Whether it's a work trip, weekend getaways or trips abroad, he's constantly traveling and he told me recently that whenever he goes away, he hosts his home on Airbnb. Have you ever thought about hosting your place on Airbnb? It's actually so much easier than you might think. What makes it even easier now is Airbnb's new co host network. If you haven't heard about it, it's a feature where you team up with with a local co host to help manage things for you. Which is a big plus. If, like my friends, you're away a lot. You see a co host can do things like help you get set up, message guests, even photograph your space, basically taking care of the details so that you don't have to. It means you can earn some extra money whilst you are away, knowing that your home and your guests are in good hands. So if you've ever thought about hosting but thought you didn't have the time, co hosting could be the thing that makes it work. Find a co [e-mail] host.

[B]

I think so as a guideline, if you have more than 3 out of 10 pain when you're running, it's concerning. It's okay to sort of wake up and feel a little stiff and then it should clear up very quickly. But if you have persistent pain and if it's more than three out of 10 or when you're running, it gets worse while you're running, you really need to reconsider what you're doing and it's not worth it. Like when you, when you create inflammation, somewhere is inflammation everywhere. So when you create joint inflammation and you damage a joint, it's irreparable. It's, it's. I've seen some pretty crazy things happen in, in 30 years of working with people where you do see osteoarthritis, reverse itself, but it's, it's very, very rare. And you have to have like, sort of like on the, if you looked at your spine, you've decompressed it by an inch. If you took an MRI from a year ago to an MRI now, this MRI would look better than a year ago. More likely because you've got your disc, heights would be higher, you'd have better hydration of your disc. So there we, there might be some deterioration maybe somewhere, but it's more likely that you've reversed that deterioration. That is extraordinarily uncommon. Okay. So no, you, you hurt a joint and you damage cartilage and you damage bone. You put inflammation in the joint, it's very, very difficult to settle down. And it's not just that. It's that joint. It's now systemic. And so you really are harming your health. And then you're creating a fear response. And you're not trusting your running, you're not trusting your joint. You guarded, you're defensive, you're gambling your future. Yeah.

[A]

For this short term goal of completing a marathon. Or again, I'm not trying to put people off. Right. I get what a phenomenal experience it is. People raise money for charity. But I think, I think also for some people, I think they may regret doing it when they're not ready. Looking back, they go, actually, maybe I shouldn't have done that.

[B]

Yeah. And I think more.

[A]

That's sad.

[B]

That is sad.

[A]

But that's identity. That's like being attached to this story. That actually the time I get in this marathon actually says something about me as a human being. And it doesn't.

[B]

Yeah. And that goes back to trust. So the Harvard Review or something. Trust is authenticity, empathy, and logic. You know, if there's a breakdown in logic, like, of course your health is more important than an event that's just made up. And you know, it's not authentic because you're not, you're not truly concerned with yourself and showing up and being the best version of yourself. There's, there's, there's compromise. You're ling society or, or the opinions of your friends or, you know, you're too embarrassed to show yourself up at the running club because you, you know, like, that's not authentic. You're not being true to yourself. You don't have a real sense of sort of strong identity. And anyone relating to you should have a sense of empathy. They should understand that. Yeah, marathon's hard. You're not going to get it right every single time. Pros often don't show up at the starting line when they don't feel good. So it's just a breakdown of a whole lot of things.

[A]

I wonder how much of this is. It's cultural in the sense that you brought up Kipchoge. Okay. I had the great privilege of having a long form chat with him a couple of years ago on this show. And he had literally broken the world record the week before in Berlin. And then he was coming to London to do press and interviews. And very luckily I had some time with him. And one of the things I've never forgotten from that conversation is this idea that he never ever runs by himself. Yeah, never. It's always with his crew, his running club, they run together. And to me it was like, this is so interesting because, you know, we explored it together. This idea that in the west, that's a very broad term that people often go for runs by themselves. You know, work was tough. I need to make sure I'm taking care of my health and doing something. So I'm gonna go for a run to unwind.

[B]

Yeah, okay.

[A]

I do that. So I'm not judging it or criticizing it.

[B]

I mean, there's a book, the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

[A]

Yeah, but these guys don't have that. It's a different culture. Right. They run together. And I remember he said, he said, you know, one of the reasons we run together is if, you know, if I'm not showing up for whatever reason, someone's gonna be phoning, said, hey, Elliot, are you okay? What's wrong?

[B]

Why aren't you here?

[A]

You know, we're all at 6am, we're all running today.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I thought that was such a beautiful thing for me to think about, this relationship we have with running. So coming back to this big identity that people now have about their park run time on a Saturday or whether they can even do a marathon or not. It's surely it all comes from this western individualistic mindset whereby it does say something about me. Whereas if you always run a community and in a supportive tribe, well, maybe there's less of a need to define yourself by the time you run a five km.

[B]

Yeah, totally. And you know, like you say it is Western or let's say I don't. You go to Scandinavia, you're the son of someone you know, you any. I don't know, there's a. She was a crossfitter. Any Thor's daughter. You're the daughter of Thor. So your identity is more familial and you can be in. In China and your identity is your tribe or are you a value of your tribe or you know, you, you are concerned. It's a very, very western idea that you're the most important person and that you're running for yourself. And, and it's really healthy to, to be a part of a community because the culture is the coach and the, you know, those guys, they don't, they won't tell you what to do, how to do it.

[A]

The.

[B]

There's no sort of direct instruction. There's no sense of guilt or blame or you shouldn't be running like that or this is bad form. You start running like that and you'll start picking up their pattern and their rhythm. We were talking about this morning, like Buddha says, if one person in the house meditates, the whole house meditates with them. One as you start running with people that run better, your form will naturally improve and the way you understand and approach. So this community based running approach is really, really important.

[A]

Yeah, I'll.

[B]

I both Jan and Taylor really like it if I ride a bicycle next to them when they run. And it's just for the community and the camaraderie and just holding a space because you're almost bringing a sense of calm and relaxation and ease and they pick up on it and then they just run better. So we incredibly sensitive social creatures and we can get so locked up in our little silos and running on a treadmill and doing our workouts and following a training plan. And one of the amazing things about London is how many people there are and we just go like, yeah, the crowds and the energy, we, we absolutely understand that people make running better, but then we train in a way that's like an antithesis to that. It's not. It's crazy.

[A]

You've got your own online community, don't You?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How do some of the themes that you've just mentioned show up in the community that you kind of host and curate?

[B]

I think the culture is the coach. Like, let's say I'm the coach and I'm going to say, I think wrongdon that you should be running in this way or you should be doing this or this is the workout. Right. When you have a culture, you realize, like, oh, that's not appropriate. I need to behave like this because no one else is doing it. Does it make sense? So it's a much softer way of shaping and malleable. Like, that's why businesses have a strong culture. Because then everyone knows, oh, at Apple, this is how we do things. Or at this place, this is how we do things. Schools have culture. So culture, like, if you play for the All Blacks, it's a very, very different experience than if you played NFL.

[A]

In what way?

[B]

Because of the culture? Well, the All Blacks play for each other. And the captain and the vice captain will clean the change rooms and make sure the change rooms are clean afterwards when they leave. You know, you lead by example and you as a captain are service to your team. And, and the All Blacks, if you played rugby against, let's say England, they didn't. They'd invite England, the team round for, for drinks and a social function afterwards. So you can socially decompress. You can, you can interact with the people that you just competed with. Like, I promise you, you know, like the Denver Broncos are not having drinks with the Philadelphia Eagles after an NFL match, you know, and no one's cleaning up after themselves in the change room.

[A]

This culture piece is so interesting and I'm really fascinated. Because you grew up in South Africa and moved to America, are you able to articulate some of the cultural differences between those two amazing countries? There must be some really stark differences, I imagine.

[B]

Yeah. I think in running is how hard people try to run in America, the effort that people put into it and then how technical it's perceived to be and how sort of almost over engineered and the massive sort of role that strength and conditioning plays in running. In South Africa, running was way more organic and sort of they run on rhythm and feel. I mean, I worked a lot with African runners and often they weren't that worried about pain because they could deal with pain. And we were touching on this earlier is like some of the runners came from such a humble and hard upbringing that they were just naturally really, really tough. Okay. So they didn't have to work on resilience and mental Toughness, that is. They've got that in spades. But, you know, when they were running, they were more concerned with, I've lost my rhythm or I've lost my feel or it's not quite working like it should be. Whereas, you know, in America, you know, a lot of people perceive that you've got to be tough to run, and. And you almost, you know, I think in generally your quality and standard of life is a lot higher. So sometimes people almost feel like they need to work on their mental resilience or fortitude or toughness. But, you know, people are obsessed with pain culturally, you know, and joint pain and obsessed with strengthening the pain out of their body. Like. Yeah, you know, rather than this notion of rhythm or feel or working with your body.

[A]

And, you know, that thing about strength is really interesting. Let's talk about strength, because one of the things in this health and wellness space at the moment is the growing awareness of the importance of our strength and our lean muscle mass as we get older.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So as we get older, unless we do something about it, we're going to lose muscle mass. And maintaining that, preserving it as much as you can, is very important for your longevity and your ability to stay well as you get older. I'm agreed on that. But then going back to what I said before, I think there's too much focus on the what and not the how.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So let's take strength, for example. Preserving your muscle mass is important. Yeah, right. There are multiple ways you can do that. Yes. You could do that at the gym. You could also do that in many other, more. You could call them natural ways, perhaps. But one of my concerns is that a lot of people don't move very well. They've got all these inefficiencies in their body. They can't walk very well, they can't run very well. They then hear the podcast on strength and start going to the gym, maybe with a personal trainer, if they can afford it. Many people can't, so they're trying to figure this stuff out by themselves, and then they're strengthening on top of these imbalances. So they think, yeah, I'm doing my strength training. But I do worry with some people, they're actually making things worse in the long term. I'm not trying to put people off, right?

[B]

No, no. We really do want people to move strength and get out then.

[A]

But I think. I don't know.

[B]

I do feel a sense of confidence, too, you know, and just to be clear, there is also a metabolic cost to this muscle so at some point, it's the law of diminishing returns. And we kind of see that in, in bodybuilders, you know, hypertrophic bodybuilders, like, let's say, you know, old Arnold, Arnold's friends are all dead. The miracle of Arnold is how long lived he is. I think we have a society problem. And, you know, like I was telling joking, it's like, it's really dangerous being an influencer these days because a lot of influencers are all having major joint surgery and joint replacements at very inappropriate ages.

[A]

Well, I see a lot of bodybuilders or people with big muscles who tick the box. They've got strength, right? They've preserved their muscle mass, but there looks to be a stiffness and a roboticness in the way that they move. Okay, I'm not having to go at anyone. To be clear, everything has a cost, right? There's a consequence to everything we do. And I think that that freedom in movement, that efficiency, that mobility is also important as we age. So if you're putting on strength and at the cost of those things. Yeah, I'm not sure it's going to end that well.

[B]

I think it's really a world of diminishing returns. And like, let's say, you know, we understand that if you've got a big V8 muscle car, you know, it's going to cost a lot of money in gas to keep going. And when you, you know, when you work an engine hard, you might be sort of slightly shortening your life expectancy, not lengthening it, but so. And you're not athletic. You know, if I was going to pick a basketball team and we were going to play some hoops or whatever, you know, I'm not going to go to the gym, and the biggest person there is the person I'm leaving out of my team. So there is a point where, you know, what is the goal? Is it function or is it just hypertrophic or looking good? And a lot of people, and that's okay for where you are at that moment in your life, but a lot of people, it's looking good. I mean, I know triathletes that are more concerned with looking good than their performance. You know, that vanity metric and their appearance is more important than, than actually performing.

[A]

So how do you deal with that as a coach?

[B]

Okay, so one is, I don't coach in terms of training and training programs anymore. I, I did it for a little while in a kind of niche market for, for select few individuals. But I don't actually write training programs. I'm more like a movement coach. Just to be clear. I don't. I, I really am very, very picky with who I put my time and effort and energy into. So only people with a really clear sense of trust and understanding so that a person like that wouldn't even enter in my world. There's no. They have no access to me because it's. Why it's a, it's. It's a. You know, my job is not to try and tell you how to live your life. You know, for where I'm at. I'm interested in. In a professional athlete that wants to sort of focus on MA medals and express themselves and bring their fullest potential to what they're doing. And at that level, you know, we're not having conversations about what you look like and how it's important to you. It's just that, that. That would have needed to fall away in your life by the time you'd want to work with me one on one. Yeah, you just, you know, it's not part of my world.

[A]

Earlier on, we were talking about tonic or tonic muscles via phasic muscles. We were talking about the stress response and how that's int. Linked with the way that we move.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So I don't think we actually expanded on those terms. So it's really, really interesting, this stuff. Okay. And it, and it relates to breathing, which a lot of people have questions on. So can you. Let's go back to that. We're talking about the relationship between the way that we move and our stress levels and our stress response system. What are tonic muscles? What are phasic muscles? And why should we even care about these things?

[B]

So I think, you know, one of the things we just touched on with strength is this compartmentalization. We're not compartments. Everything interacts with itself. And so the interrelation, the interrelatedness of all of this, or the human is a system. And so for the listeners now, don't, don't. We'll go through some technique. We'll keep it relatively simple. The big takeaway with this is how the different systems start to interrelate with each other. Because I don't think it's something that we're kind of taught at medical school. And I don't think it's something that most people are very good at or have a high level of awareness. Right. So we have tonic muscles, which are your postural muscles and often breathing muscles. So an example, a very famous muscle is your psoas muscle. Is a tonic muscle. Your hamstrings are a tonic muscle. They help support your posture. And a tonic muscle is more slow twitch. So it's because it's endurance based. So you have to hold your posture for a relatively long period of time. So there's a lot of slow twitch muscle fibers so that they endurance based muscles.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. And that's your tonic muscle. And when tonic muscles become dysfunctional, they tend to have a lot of tone. So that's easy to remember. And they tend to be reactive. So tight reactive muscle. So a lot of people have tight reactive hamstrings. A lot of people have tight reactive psoas muscles. Okay. The opposition sort of muscle of that is your phasic muscles and phasic muscles are your movement muscles. So the quick animated I'm moving my hands, how do I get forward, how do I go somewhere in life? Or phasic. Your glute max and glute medius or phasic muscles.

[A]

So your butt muscles.

[B]

Your butt muscles. Yeah. And so really simplistically, the muscles, your hip flexors are tonic and your hip extensors are phasic. So you can almost think like it's just not quite this simple. So someone that really understands is going to say, well, that's too simplistic just for the sake of getting somewhere with this conversation. The muscles in the front of your hips are tonic and the muscles at the back are phasic.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. The important part is when phasic muscles are dysfunctional, they become weak or inhibited. Your core muscles are also phasic because you're using your core to twist and animate quite rapidly.

[A]

So this idea that many people have sleepy butt muscles fits in here.

[B]

Yeah. Or weak core.

[A]

Weak core and weak butt muscles.

[B]

Yeah. These are phasic muscles that are prone to being inhibited. So you've gotta instead of. So people will obsess with trying to strengthen their glutes and it doesn't work. I mean, you know, I guarantee this is resonating with so much of you. So many of people in the audience is like, you know, I do a ton of core and a ton of bad exercises and I have weak core and weak glutes. Well, they're being inhibited by your tonic muscles. The tight reactive tonic muscles that tend to lock on and hold on for a long period of time are stopping your phasic muscles from moving.

[A]

Okay. So just relating to this, the things and the themes we've just been talking about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you have or you've been told or you've seen that you have weak glutes and you're trying to address that. It's easy for people to go, oh, they're weak. Yeah, I must strengthen those muscles.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But you're saying for some people, simply trying to strengthen them without identifying and working on the root cause of why they're weak in the first place is not going to lead to any improvements or any results. And you're saying that for some people it's this relationship between tonic and phasic muscles.

[B]

Yeah, I wouldn't say some, I'd say the majority.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Most people, your most efficient route is to restore the balance between the two. Rehab and strengthening generally needs to be simple. I mean, Pavel Tatuline is sort of the guy that brought kettlebells to America. Like he says, find a very simple strength routine and then just do it for decades, you know what I mean? So we have this perception of, oh well, I don't know, I'm doing hip bridges and my glutes aren't switching on or don't seem to be improving. So now I need to do more complex exercises or more different. Were you looking on Instagram and you're saying like, oh my word, that's why my butt muscles not engaging. So we can start to get very, very complex and do a lot more. Whereas simple rehab should work and if it's not, you need to probably pause at that moment, say, I wonder why my muscles not responding because I'm giving it an appropriate dose or stimulus.

[A]

Will doing some work on people's breathing patterns. I know we spoke a little bit about that in our first convers conversation. And I shared how in one of your YouTube videos you have many more now, Lawrence, you are pumping out the content on your YouTube channel for sure.

[B]

You're inspiring me, Rangan.

[A]

But it's great. There's this beautiful. I think it's a 15 minute video that I. For a few months I literally followed it and interestingly enough, pretty soon after doing that, I went to see Helen and on her machine, Doris, that tracks everything, she's like, she could see just doing those breathing exercises, how it changed the way that I moved. Just amazing. It was amazing for me to see that. But how does breath work relate to this tonic phasic muscle interaction? Or does it?

[B]

So I think with tonic muscles and phasic muscles, we've got to go just one level sort of deeper. So Dr. Steve Porges wrote about the polyvagal theory.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so your diaphragm is a tonic muscle and your pelvic floors are tonic muscles and their breathing muscles, and they're intrinsically linked to your posture. So on a very powerful level, if you interact, if you get a healthier diaphragm, and let's say a lot of people, you remember the default for tonic muscles, that they're dysfunctional is spasm or tone and reactiveness. So if you have a tight, reactive diaphragm, it's massively going to affect your breathing and the state of your autonomic.

[A]

Nervous system and those glutes that you're trying to strengthen. Yeah.

[B]

And so there is a relationship between tonic, which tends to be more parasympathetic, and phasic, which tends to be more upregulatory or sympathetic. So if you had to run away from a bear, you're going to use your phasic muscles. So there is. There is a feedback loop here. And so breathing is a fantastic segue into balancing out your tonic and phasic muscles. Because if you soften your diaphragm and you have a greater soft, like, excursion, your diaphragm can then draw deeper and move without tension. You're going to, one is, you know, change your autonomic nervous system. You're going to make it healthier, you're going to be able to rest and digest. And two is it changes the tone of the muscles and it's a feedback loop. So as your tonic muscle tensions change, your glutes can switch on. So you want to put soft, slow. That's why Feldenkrais. So a lot of people said you do like Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais was slow, soft, somato visceral movement, which means like organ and spine movement, which is richly slow twitch. So slow, soft breathing, slow, soft somato visceral movements tend to make the tonic muscles let go, and then your phasic muscle system is just much easier to switch on.

[A]

I heard yesterday your conversation with the Foot Collective recently on their podcast, and I think I'm pretty sure it was in that conversation you said that slow somatovisceral movement is the biggest deficiency that modern humans have, or something to that effect.

[B]

Yes. Western, certainly, where I'm living.

[A]

Yeah. So this is really interesting. Okay. What does somato visceral movement mean?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, why are we so deficient in it? And how can we start correcting that?

[B]

So somato visceral means soma the body and viscera the organs. So it's like this. Let's go back to embryology so when we just a little bean in the embryo, how we neuro developmentally developed, we have a sort of central notochord, which is where your spine comes out of. And so somato visceral movement is like this central slow, soft contractions or moving from the center out. We kind of discussed this on the run this morning. If you can learn to move from the center out, if you, you can either move from the outside in. So let's say my hands move a lot and you're almost creating tension into your body. Or you can move from the center and your hands express. Your hands get to express what the center is creating. Or think of a fly fishing rod. Your. Your hands moving a little bit, but the fly at the ends, darting all over. And you can, with great precision and a small hand movement, land a fly in the water and dip it out and pull it back in. Okay. So somato visceral movement is the ability to move from your spine, move from the center out, and do so in a slow, controlled manner. That's a force amplifier. So it's like cracking a whip. Your hand's not moving at supersonic speeds, but the end of the whip is moving at a supersonic speed. A lot of people and you experience this, you using your hands to help generate movement, but then that's movement going from the outside inside. And you can't move with your hands. The end of a whip at a supersonic speed. It's impossible. So in terms of movement, generally speaking, your, you know, if you can use your spine as an engine, you tend to amplify the speed of the movement at the extremities. So it's a really cool way of looking at it. But why it's deficient is everything we've been talking about culturally. You know, John Wayne rode a horse and he had a stiff spine. And you had to have backbone. You had to have backbone to go to war so that you play staccato drums before war to, to give you a backbone, to give you a stiff spine. Because, you know, and I know it's kind of weird. People. This freaks people out. But it's got a lot to do with. We live in rigid structures. You know, we're in a beautiful room, okay. And I really like the look and feel for it, but everything's a straight hard edge. We're not in nature. There's no straight lines in nature. I mean, some trees are pretty straight. So I think we, we culturally, we move on hard surfaces. We're sitting in chairs, we're surrounded by pretty rigid architecture. And so we've become pretty rigid. And then, like I say, this obsession with almost moving from the outside or your outer sleeve, which is your mask, and how you show up in the world. We want a six pack. We want to cosmetically look good. And people are walking around with a sort of tight or engaged stomach and a tighter out and we're suppressing our internal movement. And again, it's that level of authenticity. You know, nothing. Everything I'm saying just ties in together. We're one person, it's all one thing.

[A]

How do we start bringing in somato visceral movement if it's deficient?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think one way you're saying is with breath work practices.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

How else can we start bringing in somato visceral movements?

[B]

Kind of everything I do the flow rope. Flow rope is massively somato visceral. Yeah. Spinal engine. You learn to animate your spine and to move from the sacrum out.

[A]

And what's interesting about that just if I just share my own experience, I've got, I think, pretty good at some of those basic moves on the flow rope. But I was probably overusing my hands. And so what I'm trying to do at the moment is use the hands less and see if, you know, my inside, my pelvis, my hips, my spine can generate those movements. So the hands are almost just holding on for the rides. But it's not coming from the hands because you can cheat it with your hands, which is fine, I think, to start with, as you're learning it. Right.

[B]

Yeah. As soon as you learn some of the basic patterns, like let's say it's really important that you can swing the flow rope backwards in a figure of eight. And most people, if you, if you're sympathetic or if you've got an imbalance in your tonic and phasic system, you probably like chopping down because you're going to be flexion based and you won't want to extend. So you won't.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When you swing the rope, you're chopping down and you're not swinging it backwards or underhand. So it's really important to get the underhand figure of eight pattern down. With a flow rope, if you pick up and you can swing any rope, a jump rope, a skipping rope, you can swing a towel, you can swing the records, you can swing a pair of sweatpants, it doesn't really matter if you enjoy it.

[A]

It's just easier with the flow rope.

[B]

Yeah. If you enjoy it, then get One, you know. But anyway, so you swinging the flow rope, if you can swing it backwards in a figure of eight patterns, that's the most important thing. We really like the dragon roll for running. I know a lot of your listeners run.

[A]

Can I ask? Cause I Learned that off YouTube about a month ago. Right. I love it. Okay, is it drag and roll or is it dragon roll?

[B]

I didn't invent the dragon roll, so I think it's a dragon roll. But you teach it as drag and then roll. So it's both.

[A]

Got it. And guys, for anyone who wants to know how to do this, like, you've got a YouTube channel with all these how to's on there. Right. So your YouTube channel has literally got.

[B]

Yeah. How to make a flow rope, how to swing the flow rope, how to get the flow rope to help you with the timing and gate patterns and movements.

[A]

One thing we haven't done yet, we're gonna do after this conversation and we're gonna film it, is tire walking.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Where? Well, first of all, can you explain what tire walking is and does it or how does it fit into the things that we've just been talking about?

[B]

Okay, that is a very good question. So tire walking or resisted walking. So you're walking with resistance is basically restoring tonic and phasic muscle balance.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, and the reason when you walk, you don't really use your glute max and you don't really use your hip extensors because it's almost too slow, it's too passive.

[A]

You're not meant to. Well, even if you're walking well, you're not going to use them much.

[B]

Yeah. You're not using them much even if you walk well. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It's just not an activity that requires a lot of hip drive. Walking is very efficient. We populated planet Earth because we so such efficient walkers. So we don't really use our glutes. We don't drive forward when we walk. So what we're doing with a tire is adding a bit of resistance to walking so that you can then get hip extension or your hip extensors, your gluten max can basically help push your hip forward. Right. So that's why we add resistance because people say, well, do I have to walk the tire? It really helps people move across the line in terms of sorting out this tonic and phasic muscle balance. So and then we. We almost like reverse walking backwards. So, like when we walk backwards, our belly button should point to our lead leg and your heels should really have a good Contact with the ground. And you should have a sense of relaxing your hips in order to make that happen. With resisted or tire walking, you just flip it around. Now you're going to step forward and the thing that you want to do is as your knee goes past your hip, you then want to straighten your leg so it ties into the flow rope. It's like this delayed first you move in the hip, then you move in the knee, and then you move in the foot because you're almost cracking a whip.

[A]

So the timing, the flow, the rhythm.

[B]

Yeah, the sequencing. So tire walking is simply learning how to get the steps step back into your running and into your gauge. Because a lot of people pull themselves forward with their hamstrings or a lot of people have got really tight feet. Or maybe you were taught natural running, natural running by running on your forefoot or picking your hamstrings up off the ground, or flexion based running. So like, you know, you've got to lift your knees or on your forefoot. So basically trying to get that tension out of your running and learning to basically run by pressing the earth away. So running is about downforce. You experienced it this morning. You know, when you start hitting the ground down, you start to free up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So not a pulling. So. So running is how you get tire walking or resisted walking is how you get the step back into your gait patterns and it's really, really good for you. And then we've got like the happy hip hack, which is, which we'll also do. And that really what it does is you actually lengthen and release the inhibition from the tonic muscle. Your psoas and then your glutes really switch on. So coupling resisted walking with arms overhead pattern is really, really an amazing way of, of creating that synergy of you lengthening and making healthy your tonic muscles and then switching on your phasic muscles.

[A]

Okay, so we're saying that the balance between toning muscles and phasic muscles is really important. Many of us have got that balance slightly wrong or maybe a lot wrong, which is impacting our nervous systems. It's impacting the way that we move, our efficiency, our injuries. Right. So you're then saying one of the things we want to then focus on if we're trying to move more efficiently and move in a way that respects our joys, is to do some practices, hopefully that are fun and enjoyable, that naturally start to correct this. Okay. One thing you can do is backward walking, which we spoke about at the start of this conversation. One of the other things you can do is play around with the flow rope. And on a personal level, I love the flow rope. And it's playful. You feel like a child. And when you walk or run after you've been using it, you feel that flow. You feel that rhythm. You know, when you're talking about those African runners and they're more in tune with the rhythm feels off. I feel flow rope is a way to give you that sense of rhythm. So when you run, it's less technical than in your head and more about feeling.

[B]

So the flare up as well is if you. If you're an awkward runner, you know, if your one elbow is a little bit up, the flow rope after starts to tidy you running up. So you start to look way, way, way more symmetrical, which is really cool.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just doing the flare up so, you know, I don't have to say to you drop your elbow or that's inappropriate, or, you know, the flow rope really starts to make you symmetrical. And I think a really good way of. Of thinking about that is we tighten with a twist, and you. You might have an asymmetry because you've got tension, and we let go and things fall into place. But the flow rope is really, really good at unwinding tension. And because of the symmetry and the timing, we start to unwind. And it makes people that run with the flow rope, it takes time, but start to run very, very beautifully and very, very symmetrically.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it just gets tidy. And you look at that news, it's that undefinable quality. I know some people use the term, and I think it's terrible. Like, what defines good and bad? But it's like. It's like, let's say food. What makes a really great meal and what makes not such a great meal? What makes something taste off? You know, when you look at someone that moves well, you go like, that's something. You know, what is that indefinable thing? And the flow rope puts that into your running and your movement.

[A]

Okay, so we got backward walking flow rope. We mentioned tire walking. So for people who are interested in taking it, you know, not upper level necessarily. You know, people who are interested in this stuff. And, you know, I've got the drill ready. We're gonna do it. We're gonna, you know, with an old tire, make it. And hopefully shoot a video to show people what the sorts are. But there are videos on your YouTube channel anyway. That's also gonna help.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then the fourth one you mentioned, which we did yesterday, and I've been Obsessed with already this morning, this healthy hip pack, which is the current name you've given it. Guys, this is. This is a brilliant exercise. It's really easy. Yeah. Right. I don't know if you can do it wrong. And I. I feel after I do it, I feel two things. I feel I'm standing up more. Yeah. I feel I'm. I'm. My heart's more open.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And at the same time, I feel more grounded.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's. It's. It's a very simple. So can you. I don't know if you've already done this. Can we. Can we try and describe it? And then what we'll do, we'll shoot it, and Certainly for the YouTube version, we'll try and just put it in the screen in the corner so someone can at least see what it looks like. But you're able to. I know it's hard with movements to try and talk about them in words.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Give it a go.

[B]

Okay. So the Happy Hip hack. It's remarkably simple. It's so simple, you're gonna say, no, it can't be that good. It's amazing. Right?

[A]

I agree.

[B]

You really, really got to try this. I think, for people trying to fit up, because now it's a lot. Suddenly you've got like, oh, I got to do this and this and this. You know, I think it works better if you understand backward walking in these movement patterns. Certainly. But anyway, it's really, really simple and make a big, big difference. And if you very skeptical about everything we've been saying, just do this one drill, and I'm pretty sure it'll change the way you run and move and your experience of movement. So basically, all that you do is as you take a step on the same side that you. Stepping back with your driving leg, you just raise your arm above your head. Okay. And so the right leg will be back, and my right arm's above my head. And then you'll swap, and you'll go left leg back, left arm over your head.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so for people that were backward walking and you were walking the wrong way around, so you couldn't get your belly button to face your lead leg. If you walk forwards with this pattern, your belly button will face your lead leg. So I don't have to. You don't have to try and cue it into someone. You don't have to try and get them to correct. It'll just naturally happen. Whereas it can take. Well, I mean, I know I've had people that have sort of walked A tie and done resisted walking the wrong way around for three months before they figured out, oh, hang on, my belly button isn't actually facing my lead leg. So this immediately corrects that posture. You cannot basically do this wrong. I think the only thing you gotta be mindful of is drive through your heel. So leave your heel on the ground when you do it. Yeah, okay. It's if you're very reactive and like I say, if you've been running on your forefoot, you might get up onto your toes doing it. So leave your heel on the ground and then just basically step and you put length on the one side.

[A]

I love what I call sort of root cause exercises or movements like these where you're not directly working on your running or how your arms or hips are moving when you run. You're just doing a few fun activity and exercise and it naturally starts to change all those things because I guess.

[B]

It'S very, very upstream, this movement.

[A]

Exactly. And that's what I think is what, you know, whether it's in medicine where I feel we're too downstream just treating the symptoms rather than getting to the.

[B]

Root cause and being reactive.

[A]

And being reactive. The same kind of thing as with movement, isn't it? Often it's like, oh, well, you're doing that and you're running. Change the way you hold your hand in your running. But it could be that. Is there an exercise that you could do that would naturally make that happen?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm really trying hard to do is trying to address the root cause of things so that downstream falls into place. And this is one of them. This is extraordinarily powerful. So what it does, it really helps restore your tonic phasic balance. You can couple it with resisted walking. So you can walk the tire in this pattern because now you're strengthening your glutes as well as releasing your tonic muscles. For those of you who are technically minded and saying, well, why is it so powerful and what level it's interacting on? One is it's a crawling pattern. So we were touching on this this morning with running. You're saying, but running is equal and opposite. So why is it same leg, same side? And one of the reasons, because that's how you crawl. When you crawl, your right hand reaches forward and your right leg goes backwards. So you're putting a crawling pattern into your upright gate. And we crawl for a reason. So when we crawl, we learn really healthy gait patterns. So you as a child might have skipped crawling or didn't Crawl that much. And this is common these days because parents don't get down onto the level of the children. So the child's on the floor and everyone's up there and they want to get going. So then they'll try and climb up chairs and stand on their feet prematurely. Or maybe you'll put in a baby walker, a jolly jumper. You know, kids, we're talking about this flexion pattern. Kids don't lie on the floor and open up. They go from the carry cot to the baby feeder, which is sitting upright, to the chair in the car. And they never really lie on the ground and learn to crawl and roll and put some of these functional patterns into them. So it's a crawling pattern. And what happens is you're lengthening your psoas, which basically stops its inhibition of your hip extensors and your liacus. So your lycus functions in. We talk about these joint patterns. Your lycus inflection is an external rotation, but when it lengthens, it's internal rotation and extension. So you put that internal rotation extension into your hip length through your psoas. You're getting your shoulder off your hip. So if someone's running, you got the dreaded hip drop and you think it's a glute medius problem. This is really, really good. And then also because your shoulder starts to elevate. So when you're walking, your shoulder starts to elevate up. You put the third dimension into your running and it makes it much, much easier for you to realize you have to have down and up in your running. So you have to sort of step into the earth to get to go forward. So that shoulder popping up. So a lot of people will swing their shoulders from side to side to try and run or try and use their hands. And once you start the stepping pattern, you realize, no, the running and the energy is just up and down and you just happen to move forward. So it really powerfully, on so many levels, will totally transform your running.

[A]

You mentioned some of the things that we now do with our kids that is so different from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and the knock on consequences this can have. Right? Yes. We talk about this a lot on the show in the context of food, for example, and how our food supply has changed. But even those movement inputs into the developing child's brain that we've always had are now being leapfrogged in the name of progress. But we have the question, is that really progress? Right. Screens are another thing that have been dramatically introduced into Children's lives, but also our lives as adults. So I'm interested in your perspective on screens. What is the impact of screen use? What happens to our eyes, to our neck, to our hamstrings? What is the impact on our muscles? Cause I think a lot of the time we're talking about screens through the lens of what is the content people are consuming on their screens? That's a valid point. What is the impact on our circadian rhythms by looking at these brightness lights into the evening when we're not designed to look at bright lights in the evening? Okay. So content circadian disruption that I've spoken about quite a bit on this show, but I think you have quite a fresh perspective on the impact that screens are having on our movement.

[B]

Yeah. So I think two sort of central things is the ability to do hard things in our serotonin levels and our hormone levels, which I'm sure you've discussed as well, is profound. So I think a lot of people are losing a sense of agency and the ability to do things in a sort of level of focus, which is.

[A]

Because it's too easy to be distracted by your screen.

[B]

Yeah. You get cheap serotonin hits.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, so it's just on a. And you just end up in a feedback loop. I mean, how many times have you picked your phone up, checked your emails, checked your messages, gone on to Instagram, then there's nothing there for you. So what do you do? You check your email, check your. You know, you're just cycling through these apps. I was thinking in this crazy feedback loop of. Of doing nothing, and.

[A]

And you think you've done something.

[B]

You think, well, it's stressful because humans are actually partly prey, not just predators. You know, we like to think we apex. The apex of the species on the planet, but, you know, wait until you encounter a lion in the wild, and you'll very quickly realize, like, you're not an apex predator. Right. So. So we like to immerse ourselves in our environment to make sure our environment's safe. So just think of, you know, you look at an Instagram post and you transport it to Africa. Part of your brain is like, oh, this is a new environment. What's the threat? Am I okay? You know, I mean, like, it's. It's not just looking. You can be exhausted after work, being on your phone, and there's. I don't want to get. What I want to get into is the eye and the movement and your posture, which is kind of what you're asking. But Also this notion of we know that people's reflexes, people's ability to play sport diminish after being on the phone.

[A]

I don't even think we know the long term consequences here, right, of being able to be easily distracted. Because it's also. What are you not doing with that time Now? Last year I filmed this Channel 4 documentary on screens and Children with Matt and Emma Willis.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Matt Willis is a singer, songwriter, he's part of the British band Busted. Right. And I don't think this made the final edit in the show, but one of the days we were filming and I think we were talking to the parents of the kids who frankly, all of them said that we've lost our children to technology. None of them wanted their kids on the technology, but they were all doing it because everyone else's kids were on it. Right. It was this really bizarre situation. No one wants it. Everyone's doing it. Cause they think everyone else's kids are doing it. But that everyone, or all those parents at least were saying, we've lost our kids to technology. Right. And Matt said something so interesting, which is he was one of the main songwriters in Busted and he said, you know, yes, he has to really carve out time now to write songs because he goes, you know how many of these great songs and albums that we listen to came from boredom? People were bored. You know what, I'm just gonna pick up my guitar and start playing. And after a few hours they start to express these em and we get these gorgeous songs. I'm wondering what's gonna happen in 20, 30 years when that boredom is literally being engineered out of our lives. Right? So Matt was saying, I don't write anywhere near as many songs. I don't pick up my guitar. I don't pick it up as much as I used to because it's easier to pick up your phone. My son and I love playing snooker. Snooker coach a few years ago said to me that he worries now that snooker's a hard game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To get really good is difficult. You have to put in time, attention, practice. You have to go through not being very good before you break through. Why would a kid do that anymore when it's just easier to get these hits on a screen? Right. So just, just echoing what you're saying.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I mean, when you stare at a screen also small screens are terrible because your rate of attention is terrible. So what you'll get out of a email message on a screen is not the same as if you were on a big screen or if you printed it on paper. So I think that's really, really.

[A]

What do you mean, it's not the same.

[B]

So you're, if, if I sent you a reasonably technical email, you know, a long email with, with valid points and content on, on your phone as a text message. If you looked at your ability to sort of what you got out of that email or text message would be different. If I send it to you via an email and you looked it on a big screen because you're sitting back and you, you've got a bit of a broader perspective and your eyes are bigger. So more panoramic view, not pinpoint focus. Okay. And if you printed out that out into analog and to paper, your retention rate would go through the roof. So we're getting data, but we can't even interpret it decently because how our eyes perceive it affects our retention rates.

[A]

There's also research showing that children do not retain stuff as well on a screen as if on paper.

[B]

Yeah. And you must write it out.

[A]

Yeah. And I'm, I'm just to be clear, I, I'm very, very against the rapid adoption of technology into the classrooms. I think it's coming a huge cost for a variety of different reasons that we're covering.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, but purely just on that of, of learning. What, what do we want our kids to do at school? We want them to learn, but yeah. We know that they're learning better.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If it's on paper as opposed to a screen. So why would you not give them the learning on a piece of paper as opposed to a screen?

[B]

Yeah, it's better. And, and well, anyway, so, so the radical impact that our eyes have in our posture, how we interpret data, how we see the world, you know, how much, I mean, this is all sort of relevant, but one of the things that we do as well is when you look at a screen, you hold your breath. It's called screen apnea or email apnea. So here's a really interesting. If you, you'll say, no, that's not true. So a great breathing practice is to hum or whistle. Whistling's gone out of fashion. It used to be a big thing. You whistled while you worked. Right. So, but you can hum. So let's say, you know, humming slows down your rate of breathing, which is really, really good for you. So we can start to over breathe or take too many breaths per minute. So humming is, you know, if I breathe in and then I hum out. Okay. I'm slowing my rate of breathing. I'll take, I'll take fewer breaths per minute, which is generally a good idea. Okay. Try and hum and write an email and be on your phone. It's almost impossible. So looking at the screen disrupts your breathing patterns so radically. And when your diaphragm, when you hold your breath, your diaphragm tends to get tight. And people are over breathing and having breathing issues just by screens. Yeah, they're really, really hard to breathe through an email or screen or a text.

[A]

There was a study, I think it was ucla.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe five years ago. And in that study, I think the conclusion was that 80% of office workers change the way that they breathe when they're looking at their email inbox.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Which is incredible. And not for the better.

[B]

No, not for the better. No, no, no. And hopefully what you get out of this conversation is at a very, very intrinsic, deep level, you know, in a space that you don't really want to mess with you. You get your autonomic nervous system wrong. It's not great. It's really, really difficult sometimes to, to create health in a damaged autonomic nervous system.

[A]

Okay. So we don't retain information as well when we're reading it on a small screen compared to a big screen or on paper. It also messes with your breathing patterns, which of course I was going to ask about posture, but of course messing with your breathing patterns is going to relate to your posture. Yeah, but what else does it do to your posture?

[B]

So the fixed fukal. So your pupils become fixed and they don't really dilate and change the aperture and your focal distance changes. So one, it can ruin your vision.

[A]

Yeah, we know that it's increasing rates of myopia.

[B]

Yeah, perfect. Okay, so that's a big deal. But what happens is your eye muscles are intrinsically linked to your postural muscles and like, so just on a very, very quick feedback loop, you can do like if you bend forward to touch your toes and get a sense of how flexible, let's say your hamstrings and your back is. So like whether you can touch the floor just. So do that now. And then what you want to do is take your finger and look at the back of your nail and then we do pencil push ups. So you take your finger and you sort of move it out and then move it closer to you while you're staying focused, while you're staying focused on the nail. So you really want to be able to focus on the nail and then move out and then move closer. So basically you're changing your focal distance of your eyes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And then the third component is go close far and then look up and then have a try and really relax your eyes as if you're looking at a sunset, like so panoramic. And you do that just for a minute and then bend forward and try and touch your toes and you'll be more flexible. It really, really changes your eye muscles and how relaxed your eyes are. And whether your eyes are able to open and close and change in distance radically affects the tone of your postural muscles. The other thing that's really important is the muscles at the back of your neck, at the top of your head, your suboccipital muscles are intrinsically linked to your eye patterns. And that's so that we can track a bird or a ball. So, you know, if something comes past us, our eyes track it, our head immediately moves. And when we stare at a screen, our peripheral vision decreases so that you can have more accidents. You can be in a car accident because you didn't see them coming, because we have no more peripheral vision, which is one of the things backward walking does. It really opens up your peripheral vision. So it's great for that and your ability to be aware of things behind you, which most people are so forward focused that they've lost. But tight upper cervical muscles means restricted head movements and to head posture. Text neck text posture and then your back tightens up and your hamstrings tighten up and you affected your movement patterns. And it's not happening on one level, it's happening on the level of the eye. The actual posture with your head forward, your head's really heavy. It weighs what a bowling ball weighs. So for every inch your head travels further forward, it's four times the pressure at the base of your neck. People are walking around with their head four inches too far forward. That's 16 times 15 pounds through the base of your neck. And you wonder why you've got neck pain and a breathing pattern disorder and.

[A]

Wondering why they're tired and you've got a migraine, all kinds of whatever it.

[B]

Might be, and your upper cervical region. So one of the things that defines us, like Dan Lieberman talks about this, is our neutral ligament. Because only animals that run have a neutral ligament. So chimpanzees don't have a neutral ligament. So that's at the base of your neck.

[A]

N U C H A L N.

[B]

U C H A L the base of your neck.

[A]

So only animals that run have a.

[B]

Neutral ligament because it's a head stabilizer. So we really need to work on stabilizing our heads when we run. So possibly it's really good neck rehab to run because it's a strong stimulus to stabilize your head.

[A]

It's amazing. I think about my own profession.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And how many of the issues that we've just spoken about end up in front of doctors. Neck pain, migraines, stress related issues that I can't sleep. Right. But we learn, you know, it was a while ago since I was in medical school, but this idea that our posture, that the function follows our structure. We're not taught this stuff. Right. We're literally taught, oh, that's the symptom is the head. Oh, that's the headache. Okay. What could be causing that? Or what's the name of that headache? Is it a migraine? Is it a tension headache? Is it something else? And then we can decide what drug treatment we can give for that is is broadly speaking, you know, with a few caveats, kind of how we're trained.

[B]

Of course. Yeah.

[A]

I've always looked at the human body here, literally. And I remember at medical school, like following online or reading magazines about this kind of stuff about posture and I thought, wow, if you've got someone really bad posture in their head forward position, I don't know how many of their symptoms might be related to that until that's corrected. Yeah. But it's not this whole thing of that. The way we look at health now or body parts is so reductionist. It's so separate everything out. Or that's a head issue. Oh, that's a neck issue. Or that's a knee issue. So. Well, maybe there's a root cause behind them all. Yeah.

[B]

But it comes back to. So it just ties in beautifully. When people are tight in tension, they tend to move in a disconnected way. And when it's disconnected, it lights up in your brain as multiple moving parts and movement is complicated. And so like when you work with people and let's say you and you start with backward walking, one of the things you integrating your joints, you're making movements simpler, you're tying the jots together. So what will happen is when you really get this right and you run down the road, it won't be busy and there won't be a lot of moving parts. It'll feel like one thing. So everything starts to fit together and become one in your mind because it's integrated, becomes one and then you become better thinking in systems. So, you know, someone is asking me, Lawrence, how did I end up where I ended up? It's by Working yourself and integrating your body and learning to move better. And the more, the better you move as a system, the better you are at systems thinking. And system thinking is very, very hard for most people. What you do have to do is you have to know the basics really well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think I told you when I met Dan Lieberman and you know, I had dinner with him, it's extraordinary. Life changing at the time and I realized like, I really need to know my anatomy better.

[A]

What was it about meeting Dan that was so life changing for you?

[B]

One, he's curious and playful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's a, he's a great guy, you know, and you. So I just realized like this guy's having fun and he loves what he does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and that's why the quality of his work's so extraordinary. And it's gonna last for times, you know, and people like misrepresent him and misquote him and project all stuff onto me. He's having fun and he truly loves what he does and he loves teaching, he loves being in help. So that was a big thing. His, his whole perspective on how important evolutionary are. Like so a lot of what we're talking about, if you just go Dan Lieberman mode. It's a mismatch of evolution. We haven't caught up and adapted to the technology and the food and the diet that we, we live. We haven't, you know, so it's, it's the evolution sort of mismatch. And the other one was, was how structured and routine his life was and with quite a lot of thought. So he, he, I can't remember how far his house was from work, but he specifically bought a house that was, let's say, 20 or 40 minutes away from work, walking distance, so that he could walk to work and back every day. Because that's walking for him is really, really important. So that's where he gathers his thoughts, prepares for his lecture, you know, the creativity and thinking. So, and, and his day, his routine, you know, his routine. Pretty simple life and just very, very productive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And sort of non negotiables. An hour breakfast with his family in the morning, 90 minutes supper with his family in the evening, you know, walk to work, work back from work. Like so I don't know, he was just a true, true inspiration and kind of like you saw something in me that I didn't see in myself.

[A]

Why is it, do you think that Dan and me can see things in you that you weren't able to see in yourself or didn't have the trust in yourself.

[B]

You know, a lot. You know, growing up, childhood, I lost my mother when I was 11, you know, boarding school, being bullied a little bit. I don't know, society like I think Rick Rubin says, like your job as an artist is to sort of break through all the obstacles that society's beaten into you, you know, if you want to think clearly. So I don't know.

[A]

Do you have more trust in yourself these days?

[B]

Oh, yeah. You know, my. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about what I'm doing and I want to really start working on my influencing and my YouTube and get this content out there is. It's been totally, totally life changing for me. I mean, I'm 54 now and I run better than I've ever run in my entire life. I love running more, I move better. I feel so much more confident and comfortable in who I am, in my authenticity. It's so incredibly rewarding when you start getting this right. And I wish that for everyone.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And not, not in a way you must, and I'm telling you to do this, I'm just saying, come on in, the water's great. And if we can just slowly, one person at a time, on a deeply authentic level, start to live better, you know, we can just heal the planet or make the world a better place.

[A]

Yeah. Well, Lawrence, as you know, I think you're incredible. I think you not only do you have a proven track records with elite athletes, you move far beyond that. You just help people move better, move with more freedom, express themselves with more freedom, be more authentic. All these things you do. I think you have a wonderful way with words and a wonderful manner, which is what I think draws a lot of people to you. You clearly want to help for people who want to kind of get involved with you. You've got this online community and you've got this new breathing app that you've created. Okay, so tell us about the online community. Who's it for and what do people get if they sign up for that?

[B]

So the online community, you know, we talked on this earlier about the culture is the coach. We're trying to create a community of like minded people and you can go on there and someone's very likely experienced what you've experienced and there's just this sense of you can come there, you can learn by assimilating, you can say, oh, that's how they solve that problem. That's interesting. This relates to me without, without it being too direct. So a good cultural space to be in to start Thinking about movement and not just running, walking, movement, how you.

[A]

Show up in the world and you go on there. You give classes.

[B]

There's mobility, four classes a week. Monday mobility class. On Wednesday we do a mastery class. So we'll deep dive into some aspect of movement or Thursdays is a breathing class and it's a very, very safe and secure breathing class. You know, breathing needs to be safe and we'll talk about why. So, so Thursday we do a breathing class and then Friday we do a strength class. And then I have community only videos on there. So some of the stuff that I do, I don't release to the public. And it's more because of structure. We really do want you to understand the basics before you start doing something a little bit more advanced because you can get distracted. You can be trying to solve a problem that's not appropriate for you at that time.

[A]

So people can go to your website. That's lawrencevanlingen.com.com.

[B]

Yeah. Also I go on there, you can ask me questions. So it's a way of people having access to me and my knowledge.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. So that's one thing people can do. Yeah, Obviously follow you on Instagram and social channel. I think Instagram's your main channel from what I can tell, apart from YouTube, of course. And then tell me about the Aerie app. This is a new thing you're putting out into the world that's, you know, you're pretty excited about, aren't you?

[B]

Yeah, I am. I mean, breathing is really, really important. It was born out of frustration that the apps didn't have what I wanted. And so one of my. One of the people in my class said, oh, we can build that app for you. So it's like the app that I wanted to create. And we've got a signature sort of breathing protocol on there. Like we call it level up breathing or resilience breathing. So it's free. So it's. It's A E R I. The Airy app. If you search Airy app, it should be available on Apple and Android. And it's free. There's a couple of different breath practices, so one's calm ones to help you sleep. Your 3, 4, 5 breathing. Is it your favorite breathing protocols on there? So thank you, but I'm. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. But I think what we want to do is. We talked earlier, you and I, we took. We. Not on this podcast. We talked about if you get injured in a place of trust, it can be very, very difficult to heal. That.

[A]

Well, hold on. So when people hear that, they might go, yeah, okay, this is obviously pretty harrowing. But we know, for example, some people trust their parents, and then their parents have abused that trust in a variety of different ways. Okay, but you don't just mean that, do you?

[B]

No. Well, I do mean that. So if you try, like. Like, let's say we were training a dog, and, like, you have a rescue dog, and it's had a traumatic past, and so you want to gain its trust, you betray that trust. It's much harder for a traumatized dog to then regain that trust again. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So is it. But if you have a puppy that grew up happy, resilient, lots of love, it's just trusting, you know, you can do wrong to that dog, and it's far more forgiving now. So let's say, I don't know, like, I. You. It's happened before with, like, you're in a safe space, and you do assisted stretching, and someone stretches you too far and you get injured. Those injuries are often unsizably difficult to help people with because it happened in a place of trust. And so breathing's the same. When you're working on breathing, the more relaxed you are, the easier it is to hold your breath, because nervous energy basically burns up calories. And this is one of the reasons you go back to autonomic and nervous. It's exhausting being in a sympathetic state.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So anyone here who's not curious and playful, start thinking you might be more tired than you think, because it's exhausting to run an overdrive all the time. Okay. So anyway, we go back to breathing. So breathing is so powerful. And also breath holding, practice. So one is. It takes back your agency and your ability to sort of do hard things or to concentrate. So if you find, like, your phone's robbed your free will or your ability to concentrate, breathing is a really, really good way to reclaim that. The reward system for it really, really helps with. With sort of scatterbrain. Right. And doing hard things. But if it's in a place of trust, you learn to relax. And the more you relax, the easier it is to hold your breath for longer. Whereas the more you force it and the more you try, the harder it is to hold your breath for longer, Which I think is a great analogy. We're talking about the marathon people training too hard, people trying too hard, people forcing it. So breathing in a safe space, in a position of trust is very, very empowering and a good, great life lesson. And it's a transferable skill to many parts of your life. What happens is many, many people have done breathing and let's say you, you go after it or you do hyperventilating breathing or you, you know, you have a pretty aggressive breathing practice. There are lots and lots of people that have got, it creates a sense of anxiety in them so they basically upregulate and feeling way more anxious afterwards. Coming to these people with tinnitus or tinnitus. So tinnitus is also a sign that you're sympathetically in overdrive. There's a couple of levels that tinnitus works on but it's basically an upregulating of your nervous system in your ears. And so anyway breathing for us is in a very, very safe and measured way and we want to increase your breath holding time. And so like the resilience breathing on there is designed for that is to, to teach you how to slow your breathing down, increase your breath hold time, have recovery add somato visceral movement to it. All the things we've been talking about in one beautiful practice and we talk about doing it is while you're holding your breath, not to focus on holding your breath but to focus on mantras or visualizations and, and which is like what I'm going to do on the London marathon on this weekend. Like the, the discomfort is inevitable, I wouldn't call it pain, but the suffering is optional. And you shouldn't focus on the uncomfortableness of your sensations. You should be focusing on are you doing the things right or are you moving well or you can do visualizations or mantras. Because in breathing practice that's what we do by focusing on not holding your breath. It's pretty extraordinary. People's breath holding times just absolutely opens up and the other one, it ties in a lot of the work that you do or the walking backwards when you're order when your tonic and phasic muscle system starts to relax and starts to work. In synergy we can see really big improvements in your breath holding time. And the opposite, it's bi directional. So what happens is I had an athlete and of a ridiculously high caliber, right. But was running on with a mismatch between turning and phasing muscles. Sort of very, very hamstring dominant and hip flexor dominant. Couldn't improve her breath holding times. They would not improve for three months. She tried to work on breath holding for 20 to 30 minutes three times a week and her ability to hold a breath did not budge. It probably got worse over three months, her husband's went from a breathe out score of like under 20 seconds to like nearly 90 seconds and her stayed at 2720 seconds or 17 seconds. So a lot of the time when we start balancing your phasic muscle system, when you start hip extension based in your posture opens up, your ability to hold your breath opens up and it gets easier. So it's quite a nice way to have your finger on the thumb of. Am I moving better? Because generally as you move better it gets easier to. To improve your breath holding.

[A]

Yeah, so.

[B]

So for us we. The dose for resilience training would be about 15 to 20 minutes. But if you do it once a week, if you're moving well, your ability to hold your breath will increase. I love it. And most breath experts will say you've got to do at least 20, 30 minutes three times a week to do that.

[A]

Yeah, that's amazing. So Lawrence vanlingen.com is where they can find the community, the Airy app, A E R I. They can look on Android and on Apple and get that. Lawrence, I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation as always. There's definitely enough to go into a part three, which I'll be trying to get in the diary with you next time you are in the uk, of course. Good luck for the marathon on Saturday. And just to finish off, Lawrence, for, for someone who's listened to this conversation and it's a bit fed up with their body.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They've given up on movements and things like running and walking because it hurts, it doesn't feel good. They don't think that those movements are for them. What would you say to them?

[B]

Come on in, the water's great. Start moving in the right direction like baby steps and don't be paralyzed by perfection. Just start. It's just learning. It's like when you pick up a guitar, you are not going to play that guitar well, that's just inevitable. There's very few prodigies in the world so, you know, there's. It'll be a bit difficult in the beginning, it'll be a little bit uncomfortable, it won't be in your comfort zone, but it's just a journey that you should definitely, definitely start. We need to age well. You know, we go back to longevity. You know, I want to have, have quality of life when I'm old. You know, I, I don't think I'm obsessed with how long I want to live as, as in how the quality of life of my later years. And I think, you know, we really do need to start putting money in the bank for our future selves. You're going to look back. If you're moving well at 80, you are going to look back and you're going to thank your current self so much and it's so empowering and your relationships heal. Your way you see the world gets better, you just deepen and enrichen and improve every aspect of your life. And so it's absolutely crazy not to. I understand why. Because we can be stuck in patterns of self harm or we can be really, really fearful. So just start with one small thing and have hope and trust and believe and it's just a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's not complicated. I know we talked about all this elegant stuff. It's not difficult. It's all one thing. It's just we're not used to being having it explained this way.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, if people don't like all the explanations about tonic muscles and phasing muscle imbalance.

[B]

Doesn't matter.

[A]

Doesn't matter because if you do the backward walk and the flow rope, you're gonna naturally start to work on those things straight away. So that's a pretty good place to start. Lawrence, you're an incredible human being. I feel very lucky to call you a friend. I really appreciate you coming on the show again. You are literally doing such wonderful work all over the world. It's a pleasure for me to be able to help you spread your message. Thank you with more people. I think many more people need to hear it. And thanks so much for coming back on the show.

[B]

Well, thank you so much for having me and yeah, you're a blessing and all your good work. You're an inspiration.

[A]

Oh thanks man. Really hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation as always do have a think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And don't forget to check out Lawrence's website, www.lawrencevanlingen.com on it. He has so many helpful resources and of course if you want to join his brilliant online community where he offers four live classes per week, he is giving my audience a fantastic 10% discount. Just go to his website and use the code FBLM10. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for [e-mail] Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all the all kinds of different topics. Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcast Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the Episode Notes in your podcast app and always remember, you are the architect of your own health, making lifestyle changes always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more.