The Real Secret to a Healthy Mind and Body | Aaron Alexander on Health Theory

you know so I think that if you miss out on your life essentially because you're always trying to go for that arrive at that place the place won't come because you're patterning yourself for that mindset at some point I'll be there now so it's love if that's your mindset that you're patterning there's no such thing is there it's just false summit after false summon after false summit so the sooner that you can get to the point more like that child and enjoy the process of rolling over to your side and standing up and walking and smiling and then eventually you will arrive everyone welcome to hell theory today's guest is Aron Alexander he's a manual therapist and movement coach known for his work with some of the world's most accomplished athletes and celebrities he's also a sought-after speaker on the topics of movement and wellness the host of the top-rated align podcast and the author of the upcoming book the align method Aaron there's a lot of alignment concepts in your work and I would love to know one what is the alignment method what's all that about and how did it get started say a line method is this gonna be around a way a roundabout way to describe what the heck the align method is there's an interesting quote from philosopher called Alvin Toffler and said the successful people the future will be able to learn unlearn and relearn and so what the align method breaks down is how do we start to integrate more effective principles of movement and to let it literally every aspect of our lives so that includes the way that you sit the way that you stand the way that you breathe the way that you walk body language the way that you communicate sounds that you have in your surrounding environment all affects your physiology site what you're looking at or not looking at you know so we can start to tap into all of these kind of like divergent aspects of movement that have been on the outskirts but I think are actually the underlying foundation of our health one of the things that you talk about a lot that I find super interesting is how our body posture our body language is connected to our brain what are some of the key notions around that that people may not be aware of yeah so there's all sorts of interesting research around body language and movement affecting one just obviously you know like like dance is one of the most effective tools for staving off cognitive dysfunction so one your body processes sound or your brain processes sound in a totally separate portion of the brain it has its own storage house for it like music is coming you know so okay I turn these other parts when I start moving and you know you have that sensation when you're here like your favorite song and all of a sudden like your whole physiology changes you know way different than that somebody you know is just having a conversation in the background so it's literally tapping on a different part of the brain music and then coordinating yourself to that sound and then there's the social engagement aspect of dance so just that connection with another person literally starts to heal your nervous system and puts you into more of like a rest digest healing type state and you know you're moving around you're smiling you're taking yourself less seriously you know so there's a lot of the the things that we that's the scientific lens isolates it shines the flashlight on you know we have these polysyllabic words like this is what's happening but I think underneath that dance starts to tap into some of them are like the magic aspects of being a person yeah so I think a lot about state change and the ability to take control of your your psychological state so I take a lot of cold showers and one thing that I found was I started to really hate them so I'd been taking them probably for about eight months and I was just like oh why am I doing this and like all of my connection to the sort of physiological impact and how important it was began to wane and like my enthusiasm was really beginning to slip for it and so I thought what I should be doing is taking the time instead of just getting into the cold water and really hating it to change my state to use it as a way to practice that state change so I would put on music that would put me into a more aggressive state of mind so I sort of attacked the cold shower and I found that really powerful as a way to practice my state change which then made the cold showers feel very different but I find that music is the easiest way for me to radically alter yeah you have do you work with people on that at all now particularly you know so like what I've noticed happen over the years is the conversations and end up manifesting themselves as we're going through different you know unwinding adhesions and stuck postural patterns all of a sudden people start you know everybody's heard of like going to get a massage and having tears and you know sensations like that but it's fascinating watching the different conversations that a person will start to tap into and having memories of things moments with their mother or their father and you know so it's that's been the really interesting thing that I've seen kind of changed over the years is how our postural patterns really are directly tied into the way that we're thinking we're feeling you know and music I think is a really great tool to start to tap into that talk to me about Rolfing so I've heard of it I don't know a lot about it what's the core thesis if that's the yeah so it shares a lot of principles from like osteopathic medicine and essentially the focus of it is if we can get the physical body to come into alignment then you know essentially we're like stacking up all of the pipes and as you're stacking up all the joints you're stacking up the the nervous system tissue and the cardiovascular tissue and there's to think if like your body essentially is like a pond and so you want all of those hoses for that pump system to be open so that they can flow and then circulate the fluid inside that pond and if you can be well circulated pond then you're a healthy pond most of us in modern culture are moving in such a way like the mold that were housed in is such a way that it kind of closes up and kinks some of those hoses you know and then instead of going into more of like a structural route we end up seeking out supplements and seeking out various different type of you know rehab and such but the initial foundation of Rolfing or Osteopathy is that we can align the system and then the body will start to begin to heal itself and how does Rolfing differ from chiropractic chiropractic is focusing more on high velocity adjustments so we're going you're getting that that cavitation that pop Rolfing is focusing on connective tissue or fascia and it's more of like a slow velocity adjustment and so it's also emphasizing working in the space between muscles called the muscular septa so as you're going through and working with that connective tissue the goal is for your body all of your sliding surfaces to be able to do this you know see you instead of thinking of yourself as like six hundred and forty odd muscles individual muscles you can think of yourself as like six hundred and forty pockets and it's that relationship of those pockets if they start to get bound and stuck together then that will change the shape of your movement change the shape of your movement now of a sudden you start to have this it's like a rut you know so every time you breathe you're literally practicing that breath pattern you know so when someone's breathing in such a way that puts them into more of like a fight flight panic type place ie your shoulders are hunched up to your ears and you're kind of activating all these muscles and you're like could please someone just rub my shoulders you know it's like the issue may not be coming from the actual you know sternocleidomastoid or trapezius or scalenes or whatever it might actually be coming from perhaps your physiology still being stuck in some of what of like a fearful state not feeling safe in the room not feeling safe in your family not feeling safe in your life and so you can start to speak into that felt state of the person manually with you know physical manipulations or exercise or dance or you can speak into the physical body via talk therapy and via meditation and be you know all these other places so you can go top-down or bottom-up it's two sides of the same rope one thing I have found is that the way that I hold myself really does make a difference when people talk about power posing and things like that like there's really stuff that actually has a pretty big impact on how I feel in terms of reducing anxiety or making me feel more confident is that where this all sort of tends to play it so that's it there's there's various different studies to show like that like one interesting one is just by putting a golf tee in around your brow so and and so kind of contracting the brow kind of putting into like resting [ __ ] type position literally starts to make people perceive the world is more annoying and being like I feel a little bit angrier you know and the same thing when you raise somebody if you notice if you put a pencil right here here I got a horrendous day in that smile position all of a sudden you're starting to tap into that at least your lifetime perhaps Millennia's of lifetime that when I go like this it means something good is happening and it's important if you are smiling you want to smile with the your eyes as well doesn't need to be in a diabolical way fake the smile with your eyes as well and that will be a more true indication that you're actually feeling well that cool one thing that I've talked before so anybody who's super familiar with the show will will have heard this but when my wife and I were early in our relationship I had read a study about the holding the pencil in the mouth and how faking a smile can actually change your neuro chemistry I thought whoa that if that's true that's really profound like what if I could really change my neuro chemistry just by forcing myself to laugh out loud what are some other things like that that people can deploy in their life to put themselves into a better place you're kind of describing them you know so something that's interesting is as you're describing just simply like laughing that's been hardwired into your system as something that calms you down you know so it's an indication that you're doing well so there's that part like the anchored part but literally just that exhalation that or or playing a flute or singing it after you do all of those things you feel so much better because you're literally playing your physiology you know so as opposed to if you get surprised obviously in you go you know so you're playing your physiology saying okay one time to light up and go we got to bust the door down and get out of here versus it's like oh we're having sex or we're laughing and we're playing a song you know so you can start to tap into all of those ancient physiological systems just through doing something as simple as like having a laugh you could like laugh therapy go to like laugh yoga or something like that very interesting you have experimented with psychedelics yes sure so what is what's been some of the learnings from that what is if anything the the stripping of the ego or the dissolution of the sense of self like is that your experience and has it been beneficial yeah for me it's been really beneficial you know like ramadasa he talks about to get eventually to become nobody is kind of the goal you first need to become somebody and he says we grow up being raised by professional somebody errs you know so like your mom and your dad and Shay like your mom she's like she's a mother and she's a cook and she's a maybe she's a singer and she has all these things that makes her somebody and your dad he's an accountant and he's drives this nice car and somebody you know and so that's what we identify with but all that stuff can be taken away right away you know underneath all that somebody Ness is that ocean of oh wow we're all actually probably kind of similar we're probably about the same thing and I've actually had this experience almost like the first time that I've ever experienced really feeling safe and really feeling loved was during experiences one particular with five Meo DMT which is comes from a toad in Mexico and it's considered to be like one of the most potent psychedelics and it's a really fast experience so it lasts for about six minutes during that experience I had a really fascinating moment of feeling as though all of this contraction of Aaron you know and guarding my heart and you know having to be perceived as being strong or thinking that I have to be in order to be loved you know or I have enough money or I have enough success and all that stuff those were all almost like like binds that I hold and in that moment for that span of six minutes all of a sudden it felt as though all those binds just like washed out my feet and in that moment it's like oh wow like that's actually the sensation of love you know and I think that we can find I think human connection is an example of a psychedelic experience or maybe going for a trip you could travel to another country it's like oh you're having it you're going having a trip you know so you have a seven-day trip in Italy and that will change your perspective d tribal eyes you like there's Campbell talked or perhaps if you don't have the money or the resources at the time maybe you could do a six-hour trip and invest in some psilocybin and get a guide and you know go up in the mountains and do that instead so that was that was a fascinating moment was realizing viscerally in that moment the amount of fear and contraction that I've carried in my body for I don't know how long a long time how do you bring that back and make that useful in your everyday life I think practicing compassion is really big then you practice compassion right now you know we can do it you know see like before we were talking like going past all of the kind of like the busy how's the weather kind of talk and connecting with person a person that at a deeper level asking more I don't want to say penetrating questions but just like going outside of the the [ __ ] with people and I think any time you're in the grocery line with somebody and they are checking you out or you're getting a coffee or whatever like really looking at somebody in the eyes like pay attention the color of people's eyes that's actually something that I have new line method book you know like so your mission throughout the the week if you want to have homework is each day as you're walking around you're getting your coffee and you're doing an interview or you're going to work like when you're walking past a person make an effort to recognize the color of that person's eyes and what you'll notice with that is till start to see a really beautiful human being in front of you you know instead of I think like normalcy like that's a disease you know if you look around and you think the world is just like everything's just normal you know it's like no you're missing out on the miracle of being here right now you know and that's back to the psychedelic thing that's like literally exactly what psychedelics I think a primary purpose of them is it gives you for that moment it gives you a window in more of a child's mind again you know and so as we become adult everything just becomes these rote kind of there's just minutia we just kind of go through the go through the steps and I think that's like the build up of a myth life crisis waiting to happen you know you're like [ __ ] I want my 30 years back you know but meanwhile and anytime we can start to actually look in and notice the color of each other's eyes and like experience the magic of that moment let's go a little deeper into what makes for the magic in a moment so if I'm hearing you right so adulthood is sort of the layering of different identities it's the sense that I'm supposed to be some way I'm supposed to sit up straight it's it feels like like you're saying there's like a calcification of things and Men maybe I'm delusional I am truly open to that but I hear people oftentimes talk about kids as if they are idyllic and I will definitely subscribe more to I was such a [ __ ] when I was a kid I did not have deep wisdom I was [ __ ] terrified I did not understand myself I did not understand my place in the universe like nothing about childhood felt empowering and in many ways my adult life is is a somewhat violent reaction to how out of control I felt as a kid how the world did not make sense I was under other people's thumbs I could not live my life the way that I wanted to and quite frankly could not process data in a way that made any [ __ ] sense whatsoever yeah so when I hear people talk about that I kind of get what they mean like there is there is a an openness to kids there's a sponge-like quality which can be wonderful but it can also be deeply problematic because that you talk very powerfully about how your environment shapes you just massively and so when you say like it brings you back in a positive way to like a childlike quality what what is that magic what are the qualities that people should be striving towards yeah so the childlike aspect that I think is is really great is I like that language of you know almost like like Calla saying or crystallizing or calcifying you know we get calcified in our ways as adults and a culture now we get an indoctrinated into a certain perspective and a certain movement and the way that we think and feel what's pretty interesting about a child is they're directly in relation with nature they're directly relation with gravity as well you know so from a mechanical perspective because a child doesn't have all of the muscles to kind of hold themselves into these strange contrived positions they have to just sit up and find this perfect stack an alignment in gravity but then there is a time that perhaps a baby needs to walk across a busy road you know and then all of a sudden it's pretty darn helpful be like I've got some culture and doctrine ation that knows how those stoplights work and I'm gonna be able to move us across here together it's almost like it seems like you're taking care of the child but in fact you know obviously the child's just an extension of you and in many cases the child is taking care of the parents you know because they're showing them that side of compassion and love and you know being completely sometimes uncomfortably honest with the situation you know so I think that not to romanticize being a child or being an adult it's usually like somewhere in between so I think they both have have value ya know that makes a lot of sense talk to me about that notion of our environment has these massive repercussions on us what should people be aware of that maybe they're not what is sort of an ideal environment and maybe that changes from time to time yeah so one thing fall risk for elderly you know recently in an interview just a few days ago I was like literally brought to tears thinking about the idea of my mom falling on the ground and not being able to get up from the ground you know being 80 years old or whatever age and like just thinking of like okay I'm here I'm doing all my somebody nests and I'm doing interviews I'm making books and all that and then my mom's at home and she slipped and she fell and she can't get up but if you come from a culture that gets up and down off the ground with regularity you know so like you know Southeast Asia or northern Africa or eastern Mediterranean places like that there shouldn't have minimal to no instance of osteoarthritis of the hips really low in the knees fall risk just doesn't exist your body is is built and to go all the way down to the ground all the way back up you know and then we kind of got this idea of you know like the disease of affluence or affluenza so it's like okay if I sit up on the chair above all of you then I'm kind of I'm back into my somebody nasai min control I'm the boss you know I sit up in my Range Rover and then I sit in my prestigious leather chair and you know or maybe now I got like a standing desk you know because I'm progressive you know so now I stand in place while I stare into my screen you know and what we've been doing forever is we've been spending a lot of time on the ground and as you're going down to the ground you're mobilizing your knees or mobilizing your ankles you're mobilizing your hips you're circulating lymphatic fluid then rate to move that fluid it's through muscular contraction so I'm saying is our bodies have been it's like an internal healing mechanism it's kind of like with your computer it has like a you know and you goes into sleep mode it'll go in and kind of like restore the files and clean the files up essentially that's what those positions in the book of compositions of repose you know so when you're resting it's literally the other side of the coin of your fitness now so the way that you sit it's just as valuable as the way that you work out in the gym or do any of your more like active stuff and it's important that if you are going to spend more time on the ground to make it really comfortable and make it very inhabitable and so yet get a really comfy rug get some like floor pillows get some Moroccan poof's you know put it near a window which is another part of exercising your physiology looking out into the distance literally activates more of that parasympathetic side of your nervous system when we're contracting our eyes through staring up close all day long that contraction from that sense essentially is redistributed through the rest of the body so if you're feeling stressed out tense and contracted and then you come home and you're like man I just need to take a break I need a chill Instagram you're literally making the problem worse you know what you really need is you need to put the phone down you need to take a walk you need to get sun exposure to your skin you need to get sun exposure to your eyes you need to look up into the trees look up into the clouds that literally start to open you up at a cellular emotional physical all the levels if you open up any level you open up the rest of the levels you know so the way that our world is structured the mold that we inhabit presently is geared toward the direction of stress you know and so then when you look like ADHD medication for ADHD is going up from 2008 to 2016 it's going up 89% with adolescents you know and so that's like the kids like they want to move and they want to walk and they want to climb trees and they want to wrestle and they want to push and they want to play and they want express themselves sexually you know but instead we put all that down and then the person starts to kind of have a weird tic you know because they're coming out of themselves they always say okay well we could change the environment that would be expensive medication you know and soon all of a sudden we're altering their neuro chemistry from the inside as opposed to altering their environment from the outside so talk to me about that what is an environment that we should be cultivating so we should be getting out and walking got that one looking at a distance that's good what what else hang-hang what does that mean literally hang yeah it's super simple man like all the simple stuff is you know it's it's the most effective and the book I recommended a minute and a half total each day you know get a little pull-up bar 30 bucks on Amazon or whatever we get you we'll get you there or I'll find a tree branch would be even better and literally just reach up you could play with you know all-terrain contraction more the index finger or pinky kind of make it more dynamic if you want but just that action of getting your arms up overhead and starting to decompress that shoulder girdle you're starting to open up the ribs open up the lungs open up the heart now so our viscera our organs they're not just these isolated bags inside of a vacuum they function based off of your movement you know so we think of oh I'm gonna do a liver cleanse you know I'm gonna like change my physiology through what I put into my face meanwhile we very rarely think about like what about getting in and like actually coming in contact with these places but just taking a walk you're you could think of this visceral system kind of like a rag and you're twisting that rag out if you have a bunch of gunk in that rag in order to get the gunk out you go what activating your feet all that tissue and your lower body it not only is good like a nice foot massage but it stimulates your brain by going up in different contours you're teaching more sophistication and around every joint through your body you know so have you tried slacklining no okay well since lot have you've ever seen someone tries running it's [ __ ] amazing alright you know so when a person is starting to slackline for the first time they'll step their foot up on the line and typically the first reactions are foot sleep like pretty easy you know what's happening there is this don't have any sophistication in their nervous system in and around that hip and the ankle and what happens is you start to cultivate that sophistication a little bit through just repetition spending more time in that in stable environment all of a sudden you can you can calm down you can press your foot down to the line stand up you can follow your breath and you know what we're doing and from a movement perspective in the world is because we're taking away any potential for adaptation we're making ourselves kind of almost like more of a dangerous body to operate your notion of like all these micro opportunities I think is really really interesting and I want to walk people through just since I've met you which is now maybe 40 minutes ago yeah you showed up at the house without your shirt when I greet you you're laying on the floor and then you wanted to do yoga before we started I said no backer and then you I don't know what that means okay and then took off your shoes to sit down so it's like you legit are taking all of these micro opportunities I haven't seen you hanging it mmm but I'll assume that you probably do take those opportunities as well so all right those are four things what are some other micro opportunities that we have are you getting up and down off the floor like a bunch of times throughout the day I mean think of a person that lives in you know a more like tribal environment or hunter-gatherer more like a natural setting naturally their body's gonna go through these ranges of motions if you've spent in any time in like third world countries which is kind of funny term the concept of exercise is very foreign you know it's just somebody wearing a bunch of like like a neon vest and like a sun protective cap thing and they got their puffy sneakers on and they're like exorcising down the street you were like what the hell is going on like what planet are they from you know because they're investing themselves in all of those opportunities for adaptation just for the way they live their life you know so yeah I wrote the almost the whole book from either this position like I'm in kind of like a suit cosmetic position now or a lot of it was I was laying on my belly you know and I'd put a pillow underneath my hips so I'm not putting too much extense an extension in my lower back you know so what is that oh that's the inverse of what I spent most of my life as a high school middle school what I'm trying to tell the teachers that I don't give a [ __ ] you know I'm trying to let people know that I'm very cool you know so I kind of walk around like this and you know what that is is for me it's protecting myself because if I fail I was never even trying in the first place you know so I start to put on that posture of just so you know guys I don't actually care about any of this right now but then eventually that kind of disinclined me or calloused myself from allowing people in so I started off postural II in this position of letting you know that I don't really care about this experience or you or anything because I actually don't wanna be hurt by you because I maybe have fear of abandonment and then eventually that posture sticks on to me and it affects the way that I communicate with people in my daily life and then I start to go into this life of Solitude so you actually think this rabbit hole is really interesting so talk to me about that talk to me a little bit about what happened with your dad and how your life is a reaction to where you started you said that you had a pretty sort of bright line at 18 that sent you on a whole new path yeah yeah I had a really miraculous experience of my dad becoming really addicted to drugs crack specifically around when I was 16 and yeah he ended up I mean it was really bad he was like essentially on the very he's hanging on to life by like a hair you know like the fact that he was like I would literally rehearse his death every day probably I don't know like a strange number of times 82 more than that times just like going through like bracing like okay pretty sure this is it you know somebody to come home and he's gonna be you know overdosed rumor he's gonna I'm gonna get a call this gonna be gone but the aftermath of that is one changing my my posture changing my emotions I kind of went through like it's called anhedonia which is essentially like feeling numb to the world like no I don't feel happy I don't feel sad everything is just this kind of gray and you're so getting to experience that and then seeing the byproduct was I went into hiding in the form of bodybuilding no so I went in and yeah I think you can go like multiple directions with with things like that when you're in kind of a numb place you can you know go off and maybe start hurting other people or you can go off and hurt yourself or maybe you start just doing the route that I did and just packing on muscle you know and kind of showing people that I'm strong and I'm in control you know so my home environment at the time felt like it was out of control so then I go into excessive control and support in my body you know and then eventually that leads to the body snapping you know and so that learned turned into various different injuries and chronic pain and stress and anxiety and all that you know it's like a building you know if you up or in a you know a high-rise you can feel the building kind of swaying a little bit and if you don't know about architecture you're like oh my god like this is not okay you're like no no no like the swaying like that's what keeps us alive that's what keeps us safe you know so because they came from a place of feeling like oh I'm out of control I go into hyper control which eventually goes into a stiff building which eventually can translate into like snapping and that's the thing that's where it gets really kind of sneaky as I was applauded you know and that's you know we get applauded for getting a fancier car for getting more muscles for getting fancier clothes getting a fancier watch you know like those are the things that people say like wow you're really doing a great job man you know you're like okay I need to do more of that you know but it's it's not so often that we get applauded for like the inner parts because people don't really see that you know ramadasa another thing where you said you can't teach what you know you can only teach what you are you know and so the person that is living their life they're living their words they're living their work their that's what they're teaching what you were about the whole time is how you actually live your life when nobody's looking you know and so that's more interested in that now yeah that we share so if hanging walking barefoot really testing yourself from different angles and doing natural things like squatting down and not losing sight of that if that's the the alignment method for the body what's the align method for the mind mmm yeah I mean all that is is for the mind but then I also do value stillness you know cetacean stillness or something different both what is the different part I think that will starting off just meditation I think every time those thoughts come in to control us and shake us up we say okay cool that's good you know it's totally fine you know and then we come back to that concentration point you know and then it comes through Mitch fix us up and come back to that concentration point the same thing how you can practice compassion you know I think a compassionate person isn't just a person that is like oh well like they're a great guy it's like no like they worked you know if you're a competitive immerse in if you're a person that makes people feel welcome that's something that you cultivated like you actually intentionally made that be a thing you know and so the same thing I think gaining some semblance of connection or control or relationship would be at a better word with your thoughts I think stillness in the form of meditation I think is like a great starting point that's been one of the most profound tools that I've had in my life what kind of meditation do you do the piscina is though is the one that I've I've studied the most so I did like a the pasta vase is just silent it's focusing on the breath to start through the nose then you have the attention to start to focus on other parts throughout your body you know so then the vapp asana meditation is bringing awareness into the top of your head and the side of your face and your ears and your nose and your neck and your nipples and your like all the way down through it's almost like you're going through and starting to heal those different parts of yourself know so when people have pain in their body oftentimes they'll create a disconnect or disassociation you know and so what you're doing in that experience of just sitting down and taking away all of the distractions so a hundred percent of your bandwidth is going into what's happening inside of yourself you're almost like slowly starting to crack a light into those different parts that heave you've disconnected from because they're too painful and then you know he says eventually become enlightened is there a pain management aspect to that like in yeah in the awareness is it have you done it is it I've heard people talk about like imagining a dial and you're turning it down yeah yeah you knew that Sood wank of the reason that he got so enamored by meditation in the first place he's like one of the wealthiest people in India he's going now but he had these really debilitating headaches and so he's this wealthy businessman he's got the whole world by the balls but he's his face feels like it's gonna explode all day long and he saw every doctor cuz he had all this money so he went around the world all the medications like all the technology everything he could do and then finally he discovered this for pasta meditation and yeah there's different little like tactics and tools that people play with and then what I found as I would kind of go in and go deeper deeper deeper and trying to visualize see the pain which is a strange thing to do I'd find eventually you'd get to the bottom of it and there was there was several moments where I'd literally get to the bottom of it and it would kind of like it would like compostable go away you know so pain in the body there's a guy called dr. John Sarno wrote mind of her back pain and he claims that a very high percentage of people's chronic pain he calls it tension Myositis is actually a product of repressed anger or repressed you know sadness just general repression and it's a fascinating thing when you start to go in and shine the light on those places of yourself that may have been repressed since maybe you were a little little boy or a little girl and you start to really just like whatever it is I see you and I accept it and I love it a lot of people shame around having a penis or having a vagina or even taking their shirt off like why are you so okay with wearing a shirt or wearing the watch or all those things like that's not even your skin and you're proud of it no but you have all this shame wrapped around the stuff underneath that you know so I feels to me is if we can get to a point where we have complete utter acceptance of every aspect of ourselves all of a sudden it's like you know we start to do that with other people and you know the world becomes more loving how do you so one I love the notion of accept yourself but I also love the notion of and I'm so curious to see how you react to this you're not good enough yet mmm so for me it's like this constant knowing when to push on one and when to push on the other so anytime where you're eroding your sense of self I think that's problematic and if you're thinking and believing something that is tearing you down and making you like yourself less I would say don't do that but at the same time if you want to achieve something extraordinary even to go deep into meditation is a sense of I could have more peace I could feel better in some way and so it's crossing that chasm of skillset and so knowing when to go I'm not good at this yet I want to get better I'm gonna force myself to stay focused even though I don't want to go back and sit down and do another pop asana meditation session I'm going to because I want to be able to you know heal the pain somewhere in my body or whatever the thing of connection is you're trying to do I find that there has to be a desire to be in a different state so how do you balance the like complete acceptance with but also there are things that I want to accomplish yeah well so I think oftentimes in conversations like this it's easy for a person to put them a position of like a rival you know and okay cool I've arrived and you know I'm up here and let me tell you how you do that I mean I go through self-worth stuff like before coming over here you know like it's a regular daily experience for me and I think that within that I think talking about it is a really big deal you know because I think we try to protect ourselves behind all the things that I already mentioned and then I protect and then you protect to counter that and then we kind of live this like buffered relationship it's important I think to talk about these things you know and make it make a point to say you know what like yeah I'm dealing with self-worth stuff or I'm dealing with I don't feel good like it's it's it's okay to not feel okay and then I think that it's okay to want something different but the the journey is in really embracing and loving the moment now and then naturally more like the child he or she is able to move within that field of gravity and naturally find that new motion and know well now I'm squatting and now I'm standing and now I felt well I push up and I come back and I went through this journey wow I'm back from standing and it was like wow you're so beautiful it's amazing but meanwhile the kid had no idea that its end goal was to you know stand or walk or whatever it was just kind of dancing and moving and enjoying that sensation of pushing and twisting and turning you know so I think that if you miss out on your life essentially because you're always trying to go for that arrive at that place the place won't come because you're patterning yourself for that mindset at some point I'll be there now so as love if that's your mindset that you're patterning there's no such thing is there it's just false summit after fall summon after fall summit so certainly you can get to the point more like that child and enjoy the process of rolling over to your side and standing up and walking and smiling and then eventually you will arrive you know but I think that it's it's valuable valuable to have goals but you knew you want to be able to appreciate the moment and the journey as you're going well sad where can people find out more about you hmm well the book the alignment book comes out December 24th it'll be on pre-sale at the align book calm and then there would be some bonuses and such the people can get with that if they get on a pre-sale and then afterwards any bookstore anywhere do you find books and then I host the align podcast and yeah everything's aligned podcast so social media is my podcast instagrams where I'm most I frequent the most as I'm slowly weaning myself away from my cell phone addiction but that's the place that I'm at the most nice if you were gonna have people make one change that would have the biggest impact on their health what change would you have them make can I see one and a half sure okay so the ones hands you the one tangible thing like mechanical do it right now is literally just spend more time on the ground you know so that literally could be like keep your couch and just bring your legs up on the couch or maybe you know lie down on your back more often put your feet up on the side like look at your chair apparatus as more of an opportunity for wellness you know so if you see a again back to the kid romanticizing the kid get onto a chair they don't see it the way that adults see is like okay I sit and plus I kind of hunched over and then I get the phone out like okay doing it you know they're like oh I may want to twist and turn explore you know so look at all of the stuff even in Western culture all of those are just opportunities if we just kind of change the filter that we perceive it so and just spend more time in the ground in general and then the less tangible thing I think is I think actively cultivate compassion to go back to what we were saying before like make that be a focus today as when you're out in the world when you have those opportunities of someone kind of doing something that would like trigger you see it as an opportunity to be able to help as opposed to just an opportunity like SWAT them down you know so actively cultivate compassion I think would be the thing that I would say nice I like both of those guys this dude definitely lives what he talks I will just vouch for everything in the hour and a half that I have known him it has been spot-on exactly the stuff that he preaches so I can't give it a higher recommendation than that if you haven't already be sure to subscribe until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential