Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / Jenn Cutliffe - The Mind-Body Warrior: Yoga, Martial Arts, and Mental Resilience
Transcript
- Speaker 1: Kickboxing saved my life and how I'd start to understand like, why did that happen and how did that happen? And I understood that my body was the only place to go. And so in those two years, I like re-integrated back into my body instead of going into it neck up and I wanna be important and I wanna be in the front of the room and I wanna tell people what to do. was, I wanna come back home. Speaker 2: And I've never had this experience before in any exercise class. I felt like I was at like a plant medicine ceremony and it was arranged in a very ritualistic way and the lights were perfect. But there was also a DJ and we had some ecstatic dance. It was very experiential and it was cool to see those modalities kind of merge. We did some yoga, we did some strike training and some more CrossFit style stuff and it was such a unique fusion of things. I asked you the question of how do you answer this question of what do you do? Because I've had a struggle of like, do I describe? How do I explain it? You know, you don't really fit into one box, which is a beautiful thing. So, Jen, thanks for coming on. Thank you. First question. When you're on an airplane and someone next to you turns and says, so Jen, what do you do? What's your answer for them? ⁓ Speaker 1: I like that angle in. I'm a personal trainer primarily, and I look at it from a somatic lens. Speaker 2: So what does that mean? Semantic lens. Speaker 1: So taking the entire human experience and kind of infusing that into the workout experience. So what I've learned through my experience working out is that it can be used as a meditation and can be used to like get into the crevices of not only your body, but like your emotional worlds. So. Speaker 2: crevices of your body and your emotional world. I love that. I love the use of the word crevice. That's deep and literally pun intended. ⁓ Yeah, you know, I ⁓ did a class with you. was called somatic strength. What can you tell us about that? How did that come to be? ⁓ Speaker 1: Wow, I forgot that you came to class. ⁓ my gosh, wow. It's been a long winding road of four months. Just like maybe totally like stop and remember. ⁓ So that came to be from bringing together yoga and strength training and also understanding that most people hate working out. So I have tried to create a class that is for the people that think that they can't work out. So using. like just music that keeps us dancing and moving, but also entering in in a way that like helps the nervous system know that wherever we go, we will be safe and we'll be held. Speaker 2: In the body. In the body. Yeah. Yeah. so when I went there, I walked in and I've never had this experience before in any exercise class. I felt like I was at like a plant medicine ceremony. Like it was, there was a circle and it was arranged in a very ritualistic way and the lights were perfect, but there was also a DJ and we had some ecstatic dance and it was very experiential. ⁓ which is cool for me because I'm very much above the neck all the time and exercise yoga, things like that. It's hard to drop into the body and just like. And it was cool to see those modalities kind of merge. We did some yoga and we did some strength training and some more CrossFit style stuff. And it was such a unique fusion of things ⁓ that I asked you the question of how do you answer this question of what do you do? Because I've had a struggle of like, how do I describe, how do I explain it? You you don't really fit into one box, which is a beautiful thing. Speaker 1: Yeah. And what you said, that's like why I wanted to create somatic strength. And to me, somatic strength feels like a redundant phrase because strength training inherently, like where else can it happen? But in your body, but you just said it's been a neck up experience for you. that's so many people that's like having to rewrite the, fact that we live here and this is just the like navigator or even just the lens that everything else. Speaker 2: Yeah. How did this, like, what was your journey like to bring all of these elements together? Like where did, what started first and then what kind of came later? Speaker 1: What started first was kickboxing. found there's a gym called Hotbox that's in Nashville. It's a great, ⁓ just cardio kickboxing gym. And that blew my world open to be able to learn a skill and do challenging cardio at the same time. just like saved my life in so many ways to like have a hard challenging place to go when things were hard. ⁓ so that's where I started. And then all of the trainers there were so bad ass and just so like, knew themselves and weren't like the typical fitness guru that's like all about macros and sleep and, know, and all of those things are very important, but these trainers were like work hard, play hard, party hard, like just go all in to life. And so that was so inspiring to me. So was like, I want to be like them. And so then I got certified and went all the way into the gym rat worlds for a couple of years and then burned. all the way out. And I was the head coach at Mayweather Boxing for a while. And that's like masculine, masculine energy, ⁓ holding pads for like men twice the size of me and just like teaching way too much and crashed out, burned out and stepped out of the fitness industry for two years and got my 200 hour yoga certification during that time. And also went down into like the pits of like existential. dread and don't want to be here kind of energy. I've experienced suicidal ideation for my whole life. And so then I started to like remember that kickboxing saved my life and how I'd start to understand like, why did that happen and how did that happen? And I understood that my body was the only place to go. And so in those two years, I like re. integrated back into my body instead of going into it neck up and I want to be important and I want to be in the front of the room and I want to tell people what to do. It was, I want to come back home. And so I spent two years figuring out like what my body actually like felt safe doing and how strength felt safe. And then at the end of that two year road, I had six months where I got to live with my parents and fully like shut out the societal responsibilities and incubated and came up with somatic strength as like something that's a conversation with the nervous system. Speaker 2: I love that. A conversation with the nervous system. Yeah, a two way conversation, which is good because for me, for a lot of my life, it was a one way conversation and I didn't know that it was even a conversation. I just thought I was sick all the time, you know, I thought I was miserable and unhappy and it was just a constitutional thing. You know, I have. Speaker 1: I wasn't aware. ⁓ Speaker 2: A big narrative in my life has been exercise as therapy or exercise as medicine. In fact, a lot of my relationship to exercise has been healing from the drugs that doctors were giving me, you know, or the belief that I needed those drugs to be happy. Well, and they when they didn't work, ⁓ it's awfully depressing when it's like you're depressed, this drugs will fix you. Then they won't. It's like, whoops, well, we got no answer. I feel so much better. You know, and like, and I for a while I wanted to study the neuroscience of exercise because I just want to be like, why does this work better than Antidepressants. Right. You know, beats antidepressants, beating exercise and a head to head trial. And there is also, I'm just noticing a lot of that, the similarity in our stories of like, it's, I'm sure that there's a neurobiology to how you feel after you exercise. mean, we feel great after we do it. Not before. We don't want to do it. kind like an ice bath. Like I don't want to do it. Therefore I'm going to do it. Right. Cause I'll feel great later. Speaker 1: a big part of the power. Speaker 2: Right. Therefore, I'm going to do it because I don't want to do it. That's my mind trying to keep me sick. But there's also something that's, think, more than biology, because I think there's part of us that is more than material. And it seems like you've touched on a piece of that where combining kickboxing and yoga, or not combining them, but bringing both into your life, there's almost like a spiritual component to your relationship to exercise that I find very interesting. Yeah. Speaker 1: Absolutely, mean the kickboxing and yoga is like the masculine and the feminine. If you look at those moves slowed down or sped up, you're doing the same thing. It's just one is power and one is... Exactly, and they both have both. ⁓ Yeah, something that you said, I'm gonna just slow down for a moment. Speaker 2: Grace. Yeah. ⁓ Speaker 1: Yeah, pulling all of it into like one encompassing experience is like capacity building. It's like what you said when you have something that you want, you know you should do and you don't fucking want to do it. And you do it anyways. The trust that is built between you and you is unmatched. Nobody can, no medicine and no person could give that to you. And doing it and not telling anybody about it. Speaker 2: Yeah, like not bragging about it. Yeah. to post something about it. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's what's been so powerful with this new space that I get to run my business out of this warehouse is this gigantic 20,000 square foot warehouse that you've seen. And when I go in there alone, it's a whole throughout the whole month of January was a whole conversation. I would sit outside of my car for like 45 minutes, like talking myself into and out of and into like, can do this, just get in there. And then I would get in and that was a whole next chapter of like fighting myself and my resistance. Like, okay, just turn the music on. Turn the heat up, get the lights right. And we just begin like shit and whatever that is, just roll around on the floor and let, let the process unfold. And I mean, the trust that I have with myself now is like nothing I've experienced before, which is why, I mean, what this conversation was kind of sparked by was that photo carousel. ⁓ which was so like you asking me the question that you did saying like, how did it feel to post? I was so grateful for you to ask that because it. allowed me to check in with like, wow, it didn't feel like anything. Like it felt like I'm just. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Speaker 1: because I'm in deep relationship with my body. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing to see it makes sense that ⁓ it, I think it makes intellectual sense that someone who is a fitness professional would have that relationship with their body. But I think that because of the way social media and like fitness influencing works, it's probably much more common that it's the opposite. Like I said, I think there's a lot of fitness influencers that have very, very unhealthy relationships with their body. Yeah. And ⁓ it's kind of refreshing and like satisfying to hear like, yeah, that this has been part of your journey of like, self-love and being at home in the body. It's been a difficult thing, definitely for me. ⁓ And there is something about exercise, yoga in particular, my discipline that I practice is ashtanga. And it is kind of a combination of power and grace. And I like it because I can't get lost. I ⁓ can't get a dyspraxic or whatever and get, there's no mirrors. It's just, it's my practice. It's hard, but it just forces you to ground in the body. And ⁓ at first, for a while, it was very challenging because there's a reason you dropped out of the body in the first place. There's a reason we couldn't be safe there. And so when you start coming back into it in a controlled way, you start to find what you were hiding from in the first place. And that is a deep process. ⁓ it's been like, I, ⁓ you said something I wanna talk about, you said trust with yourself. I love that, I love that. Like it's like a trust bond with self. And for me, for a long time, I didn't have that because there was a lot of like self abandonment. And I've got like these issues with autoimmune stuff, which I think is like a lack of trust in my body. That's how I'm starting to think of it is like my body doesn't trust me to eat food that is good. And ⁓ there was years of just like defeatedness and there's something about moving your body, intentionally exercise, or even just for me, I started walking like after I got off of my prescription drugs that I withdrew from. My body was just beat down. couldn't walk to end of my driveway. It was way overweight. It was like 250 pounds. And, and like, I just was tired all the time. And I just started walking at Lake Ratner and there was Gainer Ridge where you got to go up three or 400 feet. And that would like break me. I would have to stop several times on the way up, but I did it every day at least once a day for like a year, unless it was like wet and closed or something. But some days I would do it twice a day. Cause I was going through with, you know, withdrawal and I was like, my serotonin dopamine, all that was real messed up. couldn't experience pleasure and I'm just get out in nature and do it. after a while it wasn't hard anymore. And so I started needing to have that next level of hard because of being like, Hey, I can, can do this gainer edge thing. Like what else can I do now? Right. Your, your capacity physically had expanded, but really it was more like constitutionally, Like the idea of my sense of self and what I was capable of that capacity began to expand. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. I can see like there's something really magical about that, that I don't know another, I don't know another door I could have walked through at that time in my life, other than just walking, which was an introduction for me for, for exercise. Speaker 1: Yeah, because the mind isn't going to figure it out. It's not like we can therapy as much as we until the cows come home and it was walking and just being with your thoughts because walking that left right is like the EMDR. Speaker 2: Yep. Bilateral stimulation. Yeah. Yeah. Without knowing that you're doing it too, which for me, cause then I'd have to think like, am I doing it wrong? Right. Do you have rumination? Like, do you kind of loop and things like that? Or do you have a history of that? Yes. Yeah. So it was that why it was that something that kickboxing was helpful with at first, is that what you gravitated towards it? Speaker 1: So I have to like way later actually just recently I discovered the like EMDR connection powerful EMDR connection with kickboxing, but that's a big part of what helps Speaker 2: Yeah. I was in a treatment center once. It's actually one here. I moved here to go to it. ⁓ There was a woman there who was, I think she was a therapist, but she was a martial artist and she used, she practiced Kali. Do know that martial art? It's a Filipino martial art with it's meant for knives, but they use sticks to practice. It's fighting sticks. And so you'll do left, right. You'll have a partner and it's left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. it's, not really, it's not high intensity. It's more than Tai Chi, but not yoga. But you're you're you have to attune to another person you have to watch their movement and you're doing it in the point is and they make this kind of Satisfying whack whack whack whack and you can do like little things and it's kind of an art form ⁓ It is it is but it's ⁓ I Think probably less outwardly violent. I think like then like striking something with a fist I think I imagine in a treatment setting there are probably people that were would not be able to start with punching something maybe Speaker 1: It's like pad work with Muay Thai. I don't know. Yes, but I've actually thought about wanting to get into treatment centers with this. Speaker 2: ⁓ yeah. mean, I think there's, there's a huge demand in that world. Yes, there's a huge demand in the world and the treatment world right now for just anything other than, than CBT and 12 step work and anything that's experiential and you know, that's a big value add. But, ⁓ I am curious about like, I've done a little more time. I have the hips of a baby giraffe, so it does make things difficult. I think over time it will like it's in my socket. I've got a weird morphology on my, my femoral head. Speaker 1: way to help to do it. Speaker 2: that I learned from yoga actually, mainly it just like, was a little challenging at first mentally to just like, to hit things. You know, it's a weird thing because anger is one of these things that we have, we just as our society, I think we don't do well in this society with anger. As a man, like I've received a lot of messages about, you just can never be angry. Like you're inherently dangerous if you're angry about anything. So just swallow it, you know, and a lot of men do Speaker 1: Eight more. Speaker 2: Just get drunk, like or whatever, like just whatever you got to do to just not be authentic about how you're feeling in the moment. And I think there's some of that for me that I run up against it with like doing Muay Thai or like hitting a bag or whatever is, this, I'm not supposed to be doing this. You know what mean? And that's a good example of the kind of thing that if you're in a treatment setting where you're learning to work with emotion, that's a valuable thing to come up with. I probably would have benefited if I'd started doing it earlier. Speaker 1: Yeah. And the, ⁓ the ability to meet anger in Muay Thai and see that through is like, that is the capacity building where you can like stay with it. And there's, mean, pretty much all of my male clients say exactly what you say at first. There's a resistance to stepping into trying Muay Thai because of the fear of your own rage and your own anger, which I think is incredibly important to just look at. and meet, ⁓ especially, I think that's why I, as like a woman, and I'm a fairly like masculine leading woman and that there's a power in that because I can help men feel nurtured and safe while also meeting that anger and like sending it back into the earth. Because when I'm catching pads, I'm not absorbing your energy. I'm a lightning rod to like put it back. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's almost like a shock absorption of like receiving it, letting it go. Yeah. Speaker 1: And it's that same thing, what was the name of the modality? It's that same thing of like, have to attune energetically in order for me not to get punched in the face and for us to actually like get somewhere, which creates a dance of it and a new way to like face your anger because it has to be seen through. The bottled upness obviously ain't working. Speaker 2: Cali. Cali. K-A-L-I. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just like the thing is, it's like, what's the alternative? mean, a lot of people, it's just not really discussed. I mean, I can't there in this conversation. I've been thinking about a show I've never really watched in a long time. Mad Men. It's about that's basically about the fifties turning into the sixties and like corporate culture and advertising. But like, you know, everybody smokes all the time. It was just the things that were normalized back then. There's people smoking, drinking during the day all day. And the misogyny was just kind of unbelievable. And it was also one of those things where it's like if nobody's Speaker 1: I haven't watched it. Speaker 2: else is living a different way, there's no one around to bring to light that this is kind of not a good way to live. And I think that's been, especially in family systems, when everybody in your family system follows the same, obeys the same family rules, like anger is forbidden, let's say, that could be a family rule, no one knows that that's, like, what else would there be? You know what I mean? Right, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what do we do instead? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know and so like these things of and of course in my family I remember when I was a kid I was getting bullied a lot and I asked if I could do martial arts and it was just like an absolute No, you know, there wasn't much available in the 90s in Louisiana either right, know I mean it wasn't really until UFC kind of got big that it was a thing and now Something that I have you can probably bat this down pretty quickly I keep thinking that's too late in life for me to build this skill because I think it probably takes a long time to build skills and like martial arts or am I wrong about that? Speaker 1: ⁓ everybody's different. There is a, a humbling moment of the climb of the mountain, but you move your body, you know, you have body awareness, you know how things work. So you would learn. Speaker 2: I'm getting there. I'm getting there. That's been a journey for me. I got injured in yoga a lot. ⁓ I didn't know that when things hurt, that's not normal. Like you shouldn't just keep going. It's a very, yeah. Can you tell me more about that? Speaker 1: Sensation versus pain is an important conversation. ⁓ well, especially in yoga, cause there's like, like pigeon pose, for example, is an incredibly sensational place to be, but your knee can hurt like be in a joint and like the pelvis, shape of our pelvis. There's so many different ways. Like you said, your femoral head is connected in a way that most isn't, but there's like so many different angles that the pelvis can sit in. So. ⁓ and that contributes to the way that we sit into pigeons. So, ⁓ an instructor can cue for you to have your shin parallel to the top of the mat, but for some knees and some hips that literally blocks your access from your glute. And that would be pain versus a sensation, which is like when you're stretching muscles, like, ⁓ my God, it's a lot, but it's not, it doesn't feel like you're going to break. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, that's again like all everything you just said I'm like this seems a lot like a metaphor for Therapy like trauma therapy is a sensation versus pain Yeah, your window of tolerance of what you can handle versus where it's like this isn't in anybody's window Speaker 1: Right, exactly, this is not safe and I'm gonna go. Speaker 2: For me, a lot of the time it was like, this isn't in my window of tolerance because I'm weak. Like my window is not big enough. And when sometimes it was just sufferers like, no, no, you're, you know, my, like my femoral head is not like that. It's like that. So like in range, external rotation will dig into my acetabulum and tear it. And like, then you got problems, but I was just sitting in it. Yet it's a thing with that too. think in yoga, you just sit in pain, like you can really mess up your connective tissue, right? Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. And that's why you like yoga needs to be a vinyasa krama is a term in yoga philosophy. That means a step-by-step digestible process. a good yoga class leads you in like the Srivastana that you cry in. That's like, know, the vinyasa krama of it all was well done. Okay. Cause your body like was safe throughout the whole thing. And so the, the, Getting into a yoga practice is a capacity building experience because you're gently, hopefully, able to meet your edges and feel what sensation versus pain feels like and learn how to breathe and pull back. And that does correlate really well to therapy when you come up into conflict or a hard conversation or like a really, really hard grief moment or something, you know how to be in there and you know that like, got me here. And I know how and when to exit. that's, yoga is so powerful for those metaphors. Speaker 2: For trauma-informed. have you done any training with trauma-informed yoga or have you looked into that modality at all? Speaker 1: I haven't, and I have a little bit of beef with trauma informed and I can be controversial here. Yes, you can, of course. Yeah. I love to have things nervous system informed. The trauma informed world, I feel like has made it so that we don't actually meet our edges and we stay like, I want to keep this comfy and not like. Speaker 2: safetyism. Speaker 1: Cause it takes a very, very practiced practitioner to know that line in a client, to know like, I'm going to push you here and know that like, even though your body is trembling, that is normal. And that is actually part of the process versus like you're hyperventilating and I'm going to tell you to keep going. Like that fine balance. Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. Well, I think it does take intuition and like just, um, I guess empathy, attunement to just kind of know what your client's going through. Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, I was realizing the other day that one of the read people would say like yoga should never hurt. I would just feel ashamed because I'm like, it always hurts. Like it always hurts. Cause I think I took a long time to know the difference in pain and discomfort. And, um, but yeah, it's still, it's just like, it just, there's always kind of like aches and pains in my body. And I've been doing more with exercise mainly cause I just to be able to sit without pain, which is what Asana means. And it's ironic that it's still the thing that causes the most pain is to sit on the floor. But if I can get my knees under my hips, it's more good. It's just, it's usually I'm tall and my femurs are long. So it's like, it takes some doing, but I can get there at the end of an Ashanas session. I can just sit on the floor and, lotus and it's, it's amazing. Speaker 1: That's the hardest position. It is. That's how you know that it is. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it is working there because it's what it's designed to do in a shangha. But ⁓ the pain versus discomfort thing, ⁓ you mentioned like the safety and like in the trauma-informed world is about keeping people way far away from anything that might challenge them. And I can relate to that. Someone mentioned, said something to me the other day, not the other day, some weeks ago about like feeling unsafe. And I just kind of feeling, because I just expressed, I think, a little bit of anger. And I had a thought like, yeah, it's not really my job to make you feel safe. It's my job to keep you safe. you're safe, but it's kind of not on me how you feel. You know, like, and if you feel unsafe when you're objectively not unsafe, that's something worth exploring. Something worth exploring. It's not my job to take responsibility for that. Speaker 1: and that's responsibility. Speaker 2: i heard something that somebody who was a security director in my team basically said the same thing news on right now college campuses there's a lot of discussion of this too it's kind of this trauma-informed safety ism yet writes in this that to you problem now means i don't feel safe because of your ideas right right here i see that you have Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm triggered and It's like there's no panther at the mouth of the cave. Like we're actually just having to go for some. Speaker 2: Well, and so it's I think doing martial arts is kind of a radical thing and for that worldview It is interesting that yoga a lot of people see yoga is something that's just all about peace man This is like peace and love and the breath and everything and that's reductive and an incomplete view of yoga, of course And just in the same way that martial arts is not all about violence, right? Yeah, discipline and devotion. Yeah. Yeah, what which arts martial arts have you practiced? Just that's your main one. What's I is Speaker 1: about discipline and division. More time. Speaker 2: There are differences in Muay Thai really in traditional boxing, like American boxing, other than the feet and the knees. Speaker 1: Kind of. I mean, there's not much kicking in boxing. And I think that Muay Thai is, there are differences. I'm not educated enough to say what they are. Speaker 2: Yeah. Why Muay Thai for you? Speaker 1: ⁓ it's how I was trained and I did at Mayweather, was boxing cause Floyd Mayweather is strictly boxing. and I think that's boring cause I'm, I think as a woman, my power lives in my legs. That was more, more interesting to me. And I was trained by like really, really good fighters, which made it make sense as a warrior dance. Speaker 2: Yes, I love that. Muay Thai does, I mean, it's, it is, it can be incredibly kinetically violent, of course. ⁓ But there is, it's beautiful to watch. It's almost kind of, it reminds me a little bit of Tae Kwon Do. If you just watch people do like their kata, it almost looks like a dance. But Muay Thai seems more functional. Like you can actually, you can actually, you know, engage in defense with it. Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. And for men and for women, kind of has a different medicine. Like for women, it's helpful to like know that you got you out in the world. Like walking down the street at night alone as a woman is different than walking down the street at night alone as a man. for me, when I started getting like kickboxing, not that I'm ever going to like fight somebody or hit somebody, but I know my body and I know how I can move if it were to come to that, which for me is empowering. And for men, I feel like it's a, like you're meeting your anger. with grace kind of experience. Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing I learned, I've done, I don't know, more than half a dozen classes maybe or so. It was a couple of years ago. And then I realized what I was looking for probably was yoga. Like, and it's what I needed at that time was a combination of mindfulness and movement. But what I, the biggest takeaway I had from learning Muay Thai was, I was how technical it is and how much strength was at my stage, probably more of a liability. Cause I would just try to, to just power my way through everything. And it would be very ineffective. You know, if you just try to like, go haymaker on shit all the time, you'll get maybe you'll get one or two effective blows and then you'll be so tired. Right. You know, and that there is a way of like this idea of building a skill. one of the first things you mentioned that like I can build a skill while also exercising and training and strengthening my body. What does that mean to you? when you would say build a skill, like can you explain what that means? Speaker 1: I mean, you have to like what you were just saying, you have to know how to do the thing in order to have it be fun. Yeah. ⁓ so that kind of skill building, the more attuned my body got with the skill of Muay Thai, the more fun and more cardio, the hardy, the hardy or the cardio. and what I always said when I was working at Hotbox a lot and like helping people understand the value of those classes, like it's a great way to trick your body into doing cardio. Speaker 2: The harder you could work. I got it. I love it. I love it. Speaker 1: Like when you're out of shape, you, it's the worst, worst thing in the world to do cardio, to go on a run. Are you kidding me? But if you're learning a skill, you're just doing something hard and you happen to be out of breath. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, three months down the road, you can go for a mile run and you feel like a brand new person. Speaker 2: I know. Yeah. That was for me. started, um, I've had a history. I swam when I was younger, much younger, and then I would like lift weights. We do like bodybuilding style stuff. Cause I was very, very thin when I was younger and then on the other side of 30 in 15 years of not working out, I was not thin and you know, running, walking was like really hard. I started lifting weights again, just cause I was trying to lose weight and so I was trying to maintain muscle. Just lift weights while walking and just kind of controlling your calories. And I did it. I took a very science-based approach to it because I. Speaker 1: really the most effective way to lose weight. Speaker 2: like to overanalyze this part of the fun for me was the data driven element of it and looked at how bodybuilders do things because they literally have it down to a science. I got kind of bored with it after a while, to be honest with you, because I was like, I'm not learning any, but there were skills like, like doing the movements of like resistance training or skills, but I just got bored with it. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to do the same thing, but a little more of it next time. Like there was no variety. so I think that Chris Williamson talks about Men when they hit their thirties go through manna paws. Have you heard of this? I this is when you realize like you've just been jacking away trying to get as big and strong as possible without ever thinking about like Hey, my shoulder always hurts like I wonder if that's normal or like I can't sit on the ground and not be in pain And like I don't sleep well It's just all right because it's like well, it's like doing this thing to fit in basically. Yeah, and without ever really thinking about Speaker 1: What's the neck up? Speaker 2: Hey, wonder if it, I wonder what it would be like to actually be strong and athletic instead of just look strong and athletic, you know? And so I went through that and started doing some different things, but ⁓ yeah, building that skill for me really went from there to yoga. And it was cool to see a progression in what I could actually do as opposed to like how hard I could do what I could already do. And now I do calisthenics, which is like, I've just found I've just been love with it. I'm so obsessed with calisthenics. Speaker 1: That's what the human body loves. Speaker 2: ⁓ my God, it's like my inner child work. I swing on monkey bars. I get upside down and do handstands. There's rings. I swing on stuff. My favorite thing is the P bars, like parallel bars. can just kind of swing and do L sets and stuff. And it's not really like adding 10 pounds to your bench press and then just doing the same movement. There really is a thing with calisthenics where at a certain point you either can do this movement or you can't. And there's no real like taking weight off the bar. when it's your body weight, there's modifications and stuff you can do, but it's so exhilarating and empowering in a way to be like, couldn't do this two weeks ago, and now I just did it and I kinda can't wait to come back and try it again. And that's how it's also felt like to make friends, like learning that skill. I mean, all of these things are so transferable are of learning how to date, and I'm still figuring that out again, because that was. not a part of my life for long time, but like at a certain point you don't know how to do these things. And then you try and try and try. And then all of sudden, Oh my God, I think I did that right. Yeah. You know, Oh my God. You know, and it's, it's gotta be cool with martial arts. There's just so many things. There's an, there's an infinity of things you could learn, especially if you get into mixed martial arts. It's a cool way. Now I'm just like, obviously I'm going to have to do this now. Yeah. I have, I have, but it is, I'm just continuing to be fascinated by the parallels between Speaker 1: Yeah Yeah, you've sold yourself. Speaker 2: the fitness things that you do and also like the other applications towards mental health. It's just a really amazing, amazing combination of lanes that you've kind of brought together. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's how I've survived this long, I think, to make life make sense. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. you think that, do you think it, what does it mean to you that, you you've been able to find purpose from like all the hard stuff you've been through, found a way that worked for you, and then now it's your career? Speaker 1: I'm so grateful. So grateful. ⁓ I think that, I mean, once I really locked into personal responsibility, like that changed my whole life. Like understanding that all of the things that happened to me are actually my superpower and that's why I, like I was bullied from the time I was in kindergarten until I moved out of the town when I was 16 years old. And that understanding, I could be poor me and nobody likes me and I'm whatever. Or I can say, know what it feels like to be the outcast in the room in a million different iterations. I know what it feels like to feel alone and not seen and whatever. And I never want anybody to feel like that. And I could pinpoint, I can see the person that's feeling that in a crowd of a million because I was there. Speaker 2: Yeah, you have that sensitivity and you can just tell. People carry themselves in a certain way. Yeah. Speaker 1: all lives in the body. So I turned it into my career because I cannot, if I don't have the time to spend three hours with my body per day, and I'm not working out for three hours, but just presence, I'm not good. I'll spin out fairly quickly. And so in order for me to make money in this capitalistic world and make it all make sense for me and my body, it was the only way. And luckily I am fascinated by all that makes up. the human. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I, uh, when I, so whenever I do an immersion or a handstand or whatever, I did cross it for a while and there's just too much volume. I don't need almost any carbohydrate, but like going over my head, there are people who can just look at me and go, you got a rotator, rotator cuff injury in your right shoulder. Don't you? Like they can just tell by looking at my body and the way you were just talking, I wonder if you can do that for emotional wounds. Like if you can just see by the way people carry themselves. Speaker 1: Some, for Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, I mean, rounded shoulders and like the prolonged grief and that kind of thing. But yeah, I mean, there are like kind of universal things that people carry in different places. There's this book that I love so much, it's called The Body Heals Itself. And it's, it combines like all of the things that I do, but way more better. It's like anatomy and the chakra system and the energetic system and the emotional world and how all of that. connect. So it has like a myofascial release exercise for the quads and what the energy is associated with the quads. And the quads are what we, ⁓ the muscles we use to jump up towards opportunity, also the muscles that we use to stop quick and pivot if we need to change direction. So knee pain can come from when we're like needing to change direction in life, more resisting. Yeah. Speaker 2: called the body heals itself. know the other? Speaker 1: ⁓ I can't remember her name. Speaker 2: Is it Louisa or something? Speaker 1: No, it's not Louise Hayes. No. There she is referenced in. Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen something similar with her. It's more like medical things. It's like if you've got a thing on your, you know, if you've got a boil on your whatever and this is Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. The body heals itself. Yeah, I mean, the body keeps the score is a big buck. You read that? Speaker 1: Kind of like an encyclopedia. I got beef with that one. Do you? Just a little bit. I think once I found the body heals itself, I think the body keeps the score. It misses the mark and actually like leading us towards what the fuck do we do about that? Which is what so many healing books have done for so long. Like get you to this point of like, I feel seen and understood. And then they just leave you there. Speaker 2: Right, don't really have a prescription for what to do. Right. The author of Body Keeps Its Score, Bessel van der Kolk, he has this clinic called the Trauma Clinic in Massachusetts. Almost all of what they're doing now is yoga, dance, and theater. Incredible. That's basically all of it. Yeah, and theater, when I did, one of the things that I've done that, ⁓ acting, has applications for therapy and especially trauma therapy. that is, it's like an order, it's qualitatively different from everything else. And it's because it forces, mean, the work of acting is psychology. You have to understand the psychology of the character and you have to understand what would they be feeling in this moment. Then you've got to access your own emotional memory for what does that feel like to feel that way. And so you've got some memory back there that you're working with, you're trying to bring it for this performance. But what I love about acting is, Nobody else really needs to know what's in the memory bank that you're calling on, which was a thing that was always missing for me with like in group therapy settings or in treatment settings. They want you to talk about this stuff for all these strangers. And I've been in treatment settings with, especially with men where it's just not going to happen. Like there's just like there, there's so much shame and social, social stigma around certain aspects of the human experience that men are just kind of not supposed to talk about. And But if you're doing Shakespeare or whatever, like if you've got issues with your father and you're playing Hamlet, it's a different thing and you can be seen without having to feel so exposed. And it is a cool thing and it's an interesting thing that he does that, but also the yoga and the dance make perfect sense. Dance is also part of your medicine that you have. In somatic strength, there's dance. Tell me about that. I mean, what's the importance of dance? Speaker 1: Yeah. ecstatic dance. you, you've done ecstatic dance? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it is life-changing life changing. I couldn't dance in front of people and then I did. Yeah Speaker 1: and it just changed it changed my life. Speaker 2: Absolutely, and no alcohol too. Yeah, that I quit drinking years ago and like, if I knew I had to dance, I would just get blackout drunk to do it. Like, was just the only way I could just calm the overwhelm of my nervous system. one of the best parts of not drinking was just having a permanent excuse to not have to dance. You know, so I was in this room with another guest, Jeff Sikarsky, and he was telling me, I was like, I think that's the next thing I need to try. And he's like, it's on Sunday. And I was like, oh, I was like, all right, I'm on the Internet. I guess I got to do it. And I went and did it. And it was like it was hard. But just our friend, Jess Miller, came up to me and was like, because I just like I don't know how to dance in my mind was, you know, I just don't know how to do it right. And she started dancing with me or whatever. And I just came out of show. I was like, oh, my God, I love this. can't wait to do it again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: That's like the only rule is there are no rules. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically, yeah, but it was just liberating to move the body, you know, and to feel what that feels like. exactly. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's really what it is for me. I mean, my mom was a dancer, so I think I have that kind of in me. But because she was... I mean, dancers had a tough experience, especially in the 80s. They were not treated well, and so she didn't want me to go down that path, so I was never led there. But my body, it's like it's in my blood to move. So when I found ecstatic dance, I was... mean, to be able to be that free, the no-talking rule was so powerful for me because like... at a bar or at a club, like even just somebody telling me, even if somebody comes up to me and tells me that I am a great dancer, I shut all the way down. So the no talking rule at Ecstatic Dance was like, nobody's going to tell me anything about what's happening. I can just be here with all this amazing. And ⁓ I've started to find that it's a great way to warm up for a workout. Like, ⁓ if I can't get out of my own way, I'll just put a wacky song on and like. Speaker 2: Move. One thing I'm thinking of too, I did physical therapy for a while to figure out the hip stuff where I got an x-ray and we figured out like, you have the hips of a baby giraffe. That's just what you've got to live with. ⁓ But like when something would hurt, like in a joint, I just freaked out when I never experienced that before. So I just quit moving. And it took me a while to really accept that that's. the opposite of what I to do. needed to move and get fluid into the joints and lubricate them. And just when you were saying dancing is a warmup, I'm like, ⁓ God, that's brilliant. Because you're to move every joint, basically, and you're going to get fluid in and you're going to move around, you're going to warm up and... Speaker 1: And get some dopamine in there to make you feel better about working out. Speaker 2: Music and booty dance in front of the mirror and whatever you got to do. Yeah. Yeah. It feels good. For a long time, I would have felt like it was a betrayal to feel that good. You know what I mean? Like it was, would, that was one of the things with exercise too. ⁓ it was hard to act with self love cause I didn't love myself. You know, so it felt like a betrayal. Affirmations are like that too. Do you, I do. Can you relate to that at all? Or do you have, you know, any clients that are like, I don't, you know, that started with the same thing. Speaker 1: Yeah, mean, affirmations are hard, especially when you've gone so long with the opposite of like degrading yourself and letting the inner critic run the show. It can feel like, I mean, the imposter syndrome of an affirmation after years of self-loathing is insane. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for me, I did find that like, affirmations are still a little difficult for me. I'm so verbal anyway. It doesn't really do much to move the needle, but acting in contravention to the things that you believe. Like, if you don't really love yourself, exercise, like a daily exercise habit, will just annihilate that. Like, because the two things cannot exist at the same time. I've said, like, no one has ever said, that's enough cocaine for me for one night. I'm going to make it to my 5 a.m. hot yoga in the morning. Like what they would really say is like, we have enough cocaine to get to the five? Like, you know what I mean? Like, then if they showed up, it would be terrible. But like, you know what I mean? It's just, very hard to have both of those habits in your life because at an identity level, like both things can't really coexist. know, you either love your body or you don't. And for me, I was just, you know, mainly just, I needed a reason to get out of the house for a while. And I knew that I felt better when I exercised. Speaker 1: See you Speaker 2: And after a while, it's just like, I've come to love my body and it's the center of my, like my mental health is built on it because it is very hard to make self-destructive decisions when I've got this project I'm working on here, you know, that is really important to me. And I'm like three years into building it. It's like, so like nicotine or alcohol, it's like, ooh, like no, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I do indulge in a little nicotine. I ain't gonna lie to the people. Speaker 2: Do you use it as like a cognitive enhancer, like to use it or do you just kind of enjoy? Speaker 1: I guess so. have ADHD, so it does... Speaker 2: focused it was you what kind of magazine you use Speaker 1: I, ⁓ the bags of like loose leaf tobacco I roll my own. You'll roll a little bit of ganja. You know, jazz, cigarette. Speaker 2: the answer that have to have never heard that sort of split yet yet yet yet yet now i mean that i mean uh... what about that canada's to that help you with recovery or i mean is it prefer more for mental health or Speaker 1: I'd be more honest about that, you know? ⁓ Definitely doesn't help with recovery, I would imagine. ⁓ But it's good for, yeah, mental health. keeps me, I have, like, I run my own business and you understand this, like there are many hats to wear and so it helps me. It helps me put the different hats on. Speaker 2: All of that. All of that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Are there particular hats that are easier to put on with it? Speaker 1: ⁓ yes. Yeah, definitely the financial team is not, does not do well with a split before. ⁓ Speaker 2: Doesn't do well. I know some people that are accountants that are just committed stoners and they will have to get hired. I mean, if anything could make accounting more durable, like doable, you know, guess it's it's so boring that you have to be so high to do it. And I'm like, maybe pick a different career. It's like, what's what you want to do? Yeah. So, so that's not good for that, but like, do you use it for anything? Do you have any creative tasks or things that you do? Speaker 1: That is bonkers. I mean, I do a lot of video. do all my own marketing. So if you're working. Speaker 2: Your video work is great, Thank you. I love it. ⁓ Your aesthetic is very similar to mine. You make lots of use of shadow. Yeah. And I do too. Like shadow is kind of a motif in my art. it means something and I'm not 100 % sure what it means to me. But like, like it. Shadow is what makes light, which is what makes light interesting. Yeah. Because if you have no shadow and it's just light, technically it's just a white smudge. Yeah. But like, it's just, yeah, it's just kind of like every really underwhelming photo I've ever seen. I'm like, there's no contrast in it. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: and you have this very moody, vibey aesthetic, which I find interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting that ⁓ just kind of, it's weird of whatever we think is aesthetically pleasing, ⁓ I think probably has a lot to do with like our internal emotional state, but we don't really know it. Like, I mean, I like the things I like and I'm like, I'm sure there's a connection between that and this other thing, but I don't see that connection. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you reflecting that to me, I don't intentionally do that at all. Like I don't, I don't think about. Speaker 2: You like what you like. Yeah. Yeah, you like what you like. You like what looks cool to you. Speaker 1: Yeah, but it makes sense in like the way that I live life. I have lived a lot in the shadows. Yeah, me And I've had to work for the... Speaker 2: Light. Me too, right. But there's also something empowering about being able to work with the shadows and to be able to make them beautiful. I think that some of that is for me, wanting to make things that have been, the darkness, wanting to make the darkness of life into something beautiful. Yeah. And there is a, like a reclaiming of our experience. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Dark doesn't mean scary. Speaker 2: doesn't have to, you know, that's kind of the narrative. We get to determine that. You mentioned something earlier. I've been wanting to come back to when you said when you found personal responsibility, it kind of changed everything. Could you elaborate on that? Speaker 1: Yeah. ⁓ So I did my 300 hour yoga teacher training last year and going through the sutras was, mean, the sutras is person, it's responsibility training is really how I see it. It basically says like, if you, the first sutra is if you are in a trajectory of your life that you don't like, if something's happening in your life, there's no other time but right now to find a mentor, find a resource, find something and go do the thing. And then the unfolding of the sutras is like, you continue to come back to self reflection. And if I'm doing this thing that I know is out of alignment, I understand that my life is going to be trash until I find alignment. And it's just a million different iterations of that. ⁓ so going through that training, every single sutra we would hit, it was visceral how triggering each one was if I was out of alignment in a certain way. At the time I was in a relationship that was long due over. ⁓ And so anytime we would come up against like once you see the thing and you don't do the thing about it, you're going to suffer. Kind of thing I would like kind of. Speaker 2: Yeah. There's like a spiritual inevitability to it. Yes. Speaker 1: Yeah, the suffering of lack of responsibility is inevitable. And then so that training helped me end that relationship with not a fuck you, I'm going the other way because you've done this to me, but I'm so grateful for where we've come and how far we've walked and our path has now come to a completion and I'm gonna take the responsibility and go this way. And... Everything from that showed me my abandonment wounds. showed me how I grieve because the way that ending unfolded tested every single relational trigger I could have come up against. And the only person to come back to was me. The call was coming from inside the house. And so, and the way that it unfolded, were like community members that had their own feelings about it. And so I was having all of these and I followed the train. all the way to shit town anger and there's nothing there. That is just hell. And so to get my way back, I had to take personal responsibility for how did I play a part in making that communication so confusing that now I can't even talk to that person and like, where was my responsibility in that shrapnel? Some relationships are still in my life, some relationships are not, and that's fantastic because I was able to see that no matter what, I got me. Yeah. Um, and it's like just zooming back in. It's like the, the whole concept of like, if you're triggered by something that I say, it is not my responsibility to handle your trigger. It's your responsibility to say, this is, this is the story that is coming up in my mind that I'm bringing to the table right now. And I either want to talk about it right now, or I'm going to go handle it and I'll be able to reflect with you later. Speaker 2: Provided you have the capacity to do that. That's the thing about building capacity, expanding that window of tolerance. sounds like that was the first, it sounds like this break up, I guess we'll call it that, the way you ended this relationship, it was a first for you to do it that way. Speaker 1: Yeah, I had never broken up with anybody. I've always been, it's always been the other way around. Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, you've reflected a lot on what that was like. mean, how long ago was this for you? So, I mean, looking back on it a year later, what do think you've learned from that experience? Speaker 1: A year now. that my integrity is my responsibility and the integrity of others is theirs. Right. And that. spewing responsibility elsewhere will only shrapnel your energy, shrapnel my energy further. ⁓ so the biggest thing that I've learned is that when I feel something, the first thing to do is to come home and not look for somebody else to fix it or affirm it. Yeah. ⁓ cause that was a big pattern of mine was to like the codependent, the deep rooted codependent pattern of like. I feel uncomfortable in my own body, so my brain's gonna find any possible reason that it's your fault so that you can help me with it. nobody ever can give you the scratch, that itch that that need is looking for. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've found that sometimes you can get temporary relief through another person, but it's not really, it's not making it go away, you're just dissociating from it. It's still building. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's kind of like getting high to avoid your problems or whatever. We have a lot of. Speaker 1: You heard your child is still like, wait, no, but it wasn't. Speaker 2: I think when you're getting your fix, you can't hear it. So it's just freaking out more. Right. You know, what is, what does the word responsibility mean to you? I mean, can you, do you have a way of how you would define that? Speaker 1: Ooh, your ability to respond and integrity. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess power to respond, like literally the ability to do something about it. ⁓ It's a very empowering word. I had a very hard time with that word for a long time because I also have ADD and it's been a real challenge. School was in some ways a breeze, but also in most ways that mattered really, really hard because I just would not remember anything. I'd forget to do stuff and I still now... I've realized that ADD is the reason that sometimes I'll just be like weirdly afraid that I'm in trouble. And it's because everything's going well. And when you're a kid and you have ADD, you walk into an ambush without even knowing it because you don't even remember about the thing that you forgot to. You didn't forget because you technically weren't paying attention in the first place. So there's no memory in there for you to not have access to. And I would always be told how irresponsible I was. like being responsible means like being a good person, but I would felt like I was incapable of doing it. So it was a hard word for me to really learn until I finally realized like it was more like control over my own life, control over my own behaviors. It's funny how responsibility was a triggering word for me and control was not. It was just the relationship I had with Speaker 1: Interesting, Because when you have somebody controlling the path, then there's less to remember. Speaker 2: and it's like i don't know i mean trauma like yet one else also there was a big realization at one point that like so i mentioned like i could walk in my driveway and uh... that there is a sort of time uh... he started got me starting cold showers as little like what i first was able to get out of bed and i'm glad one with a long withdrawal of about four months from uh... from uh... prescription psychotropic medication and so i grew this beard second shaver bait or whatever i was woke up at this beard after i would keep it Speaker 1: I mean, it's great. Speaker 2: It's great now. I just got it trimmed the other day. takes 45 minutes to trim my beard and like 10 minutes to do my hair. Incredible. love that It is. It's true, but that's just how it works. I put probably more products in my beard than a lot of women do in their hair. So all of that changed and I was just like, oh my God. Basically overnight, I could get up and things were brighter and just things started to break. I just woke up one day and I made my bed and I was like, oh my God, what did I just do? I'd never done that before. And I told my therapist like, great. And used to start taking cold showers. And I was like, why? Cause Huberman was a big deal at that time. He is still now, I guess, but the cold water thing. And I was like, what's the point? And I thought he was going to give me some neurobiology explanation. And what he said was it'll help you build grit. Like you'll just be able to get to do our thing. 30 seconds of just cold water. It was hard. It was hard. 30 seconds showering every day was actually the really where I would have should have started. And it was a way of getting me to shower every day. Cause hygiene was just, I was too depressed. There was no way. Um, and uh, From about that time to like four and a half, four months later from there, I summited a 14-er, 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. It's called quandary. It's the easiest of the 14-ers. But what he said was, should do quandary. Quandary's easy. Quandary's not easy. It's incredibly hard. It's just the easiest one of the 14-ers. Half of them are impossible. But I did it. took, and was like, yeah, it probably taking about four hours. It took me like seven and a half hours to get up and come down. I got charged by Goat at the summit. which is cool. got on video and uh, but it was like, man, I can't believe I just did that. And um, I was on like a family vacation and um, none of my family understood what I was doing. Like I went off and did it by myself and like they're just my, my folks are, they like to go, we're from Louisiana. We like to go to the Gulf coast, sit on a beach, all inclusive resort kind of deal. And I'd been pushing for years, let's do anything different. They went to Breckenridge, but um, I'm still the adventurous in the family. And, you know, I tried calling and FaceTiming them because I got reception, perfect reception up to 14,000 feet. FaceTime, I called all these, FaceTimed all these people, my friends, family, whatever, and nobody answered. And I was like so mad that no one was like happy for me or proud of me or didn't understand how big of a moment it was. And so was on the way down. I was just pissed off at everybody else, you know, and it's a long way down to think about it. It's not as long as the way up, but it's a long way down. And I just kind of realized like, hey, no one's coming to my rescue. I did this for myself. I don't really need other people's, other people's like validation that this was an important moment. If they don't get it, they don't get it. Maybe they'll never get it, but I get it. And it was a changing moment for me. It really was just like I was bitter, but I had about two and a half hours going down a mountain. literally went to the top of a mountain to find wisdom. And I found it in the form of this bitter pill that I'd swallow, which was no one's coming to my rescue. And I'm in my thirties and like, this is for me to do. And I think other people will be glad when they see the results of me taking responsibility, but they're not going to, you know, they're not going to cheer me on while I'm doing it. It is a very solitary experience to have that, be, and you've said a lot about like coming back home and that home is in the body, right? And it's, it is kind of a solitary experience to be in the body, but it is a place that you can always come back to. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And it's that, like, you following the resentment, the bitter train all the way to Shit Town to find that, that's actually not where you wanted to be at all, which is the thing that got you to where you wanted to be. It's that same, like... Speaker 2: Yeah, but like that option is still available. You know what I mean? Like it's available to all of us. It's just like for me, like I could just go back to like getting super drunk all the time. Like, you I could do that. Like it's a choice. I mean, I couldn't right now because my life has become so good. I really wouldn't be willing to live without what I have. I'm not willing to live without good sleep. Yeah. Like when I don't get a good sleep, it's a, it's a, it's a mess. Um, I mean, for, and really it's been a big challenge for me, like with, with just all the challenges of my body and my nervous system and dysautonomia. Speaker 1: Couldn't though. Speaker 2: to be awake during the day and asleep at night has been the biggest challenge of my life. And now I'm basically able to do that without having to take drugs to do it. And I'm not messing with that. I don't even take caffeine anymore because it's it's a stimulant. It messes everything up. So I probably could not live with the dysfunction that I used to live with. You just cannot know, but like, you when you have things like complex PTSD, living with dysfunction is just... Speaker 1: Right, yeah, once you know you cannot know. Speaker 2: normal. It's just Tuesday. You know, it's just like the things that people just don't really realize when everything is hard, that you're just basically triaging everything. But in principle, like I could go back to the bitterness. I could go back to the victim mentality. That neural pathway still is there. We don't close those off. You don't unlearn to swing a golf club. You might get a little rusty at it, but you can get real good at it real fast and start again. You know, that's how skills work. So there is, it's like a continuing decision that, yeah, no, I'm not gonna go down that path. Like I'm gonna do the harder thing because the life I want is on the other side of hard things and a few hard conversations. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And that makes me think of like Abraham Hicks, you're familiar with law of attraction. Yeah. And Abraham is like ⁓ Esther Hicks channels this like being named Abraham. There's just many videos on YouTube and books and whatever, but basically it's, it's along the same lines of personal responsibility and focusing your thoughts and choosing your thoughts and then seeing from that, how your reality unfolds is that like, Speaker 2: ⁓ I do know of law of attraction. Speaker 1: we have the power to choose to go down the shit train or we have the power to go towards our dreams. And it takes, what they say is it takes just 17 seconds for a thought to pass if we don't cling to it. So if some whack ass intrusive thought comes into your mind, if you have the capacity and response ability to let set, like even set a timer on your phone 20 seconds and just focus on your breath, that thought will disappear. And that. is I don't even know why I said that and thought of that, but just the power of the mind is like. Speaker 2: It's incredible. I've had a really hard time with intrusive thoughts, repetitive thoughts, rumination, perseveration, and it's very hard. mean, for a long time, I would lose hours or days to just like a lot of them involving anger or fear or things like that. And probably because I haven't had a way to like vent that out, to express it. Do you think there's a difference between venting something and like processing it, expressing it? Yes. Yeah, you do? Can you tell me more? Speaker 1: venting, ⁓ is without the goal of a solution and processing is like in hopes of gaining deeper understanding. Speaker 2: Yeah, venting has no responsibility. Yeah. think like I've come to realize that too, there are some people that like, they just want to vent. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, but here's the thing, the stuff you're venting off is the energy that's supposed to tell you to change. Yeah. You know, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you want me to carry it, you know, so that you can feel better about it, but you're just going to be back here tomorrow in a week. Yeah. Or the next time you have the same pattern come up with your relationships or whatever. Speaker 1: If you could just turn that mirror. Speaker 2: Right. And yeah, it's hard. And venting comes through the mouth. Mm-hmm. So, you know, it comes from talking. Yeah. Whereas I don't know, I don't know if you did it energetically in the body, if it would be the same thing. I mean... Speaker 1: I mean, letting out a steam vent through the body. If you have like irrational anger, it's way better to let it out through the body than through the mind. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wonder if anger can ever be irrational. I'm not sure if any emotions are actually ever truly irrational. I think it's the Speaker 1: Anger can be fear confused. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I get that. makes sense. Anger, it situationally incongruent is what I would say. But like, if you understood that person's life experience, it would always make sense. Even if it doesn't make sense to them, like, because anger doesn't come from nowhere any more than joy or fear or whatever. It's just that where it's coming from is not necessarily what's happening in the room in that moment. Speaker 1: Correct. Anger is the most peculiar emotion because of that. Like joy doesn't come from... You can pinpoint where joy Speaker 2: That's good point. but you usually can, it's unusual that you'll have joy flashbacks. ⁓ Speaker 1: I love when that happens. It's usually jokes that I tell myself that come back into my brain. Speaker 2: remember it's like that was a good joke and it was a great day when I came up with that. Yeah, I do too. I do too. Well, you know, the thing, the benefit of like living your life on the internet is that you can go back and recount those memories. And you get to curate your life and everything else. Why do you think anger is that peculiar emotion like that? Do you think it's just because it's socially taboo to express? Speaker 1: Document the funny Maybe. ⁓ I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Because it's been, it hasn't been given proper space because there's so much, because it is the biggest emotion. It's big. Yeah. Like it's gay. It's got a lot of space to take up and shell. Yeah. But can also do a lot of harm. Like anger has cost lives. Speaker 2: Of course, of course. mean, that's the one that I'm, it's, think the one of the ones, you we have these forbidden emotions we put in our shadow. For me, like, anger and sadness and guilt have been like three that I've come up recently where I've been like, ⁓ God, I've got issues with this and I didn't know about it for years of doing like trauma therapy and somatic experience therapy was one that I, where I literally learned what emotions were by locating them in my body and just kind of deducing, well, like, based on what was said, this feeling here must be shame. It's interesting, it's fascinating that it works that way, but it does. You have alexithymine, you don't know what you feel. That's how I did it for me, but anger is one where it's a whole body experience. And it does feel like, and I think a lot of men feel this way too, is I'm just afraid of what I might do. If I allow myself to feel it, I'm afraid I might hurt someone or myself or whatever else. it seems like a more moral choice to not take that risk. And maybe in isolation and like one in this particular instance, that might be okay, like in the moment, but over time, like the cumulative effect of always erring on the side of let's do the safer thing, you end up with all this anger and I feel like it's gotta have somewhere to go. And when you're a child, like if you can't really be angry at your caregivers or your parents, So like you just directed it on yourself. Freud said that depression was anger directed at the self. And that makes a lot of sense because a lot of depression is a lot of self-contempt. ⁓ yeah, it's an interesting emotion that it's kind of got this, it's like a peculiar one. It's a good word for it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just, it's requiring a new conversation. Like, yeah, I feel like men would be less scared of what their anger could do if they were able to meet their rage in a container. And no, like if I were to punch somebody, this is what it would feel like for my body. And that's the impact that it would have, you know, based on punching 150 pound bag or whatever. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that I've heard that a lot of like fights that happen with men are just men that are scared. Like they're just physically afraid in that moment or they've never been punched in the face before or whatever and they don't know what to do. Do you think that's true? Yeah. Speaker 1: I mean, it's all fear. Anger, for the most part, anger is fear. It's not actually that you're mad about something. It's that you're scared that you're not able to get your need met. Speaker 2: It's like you're Speaker 1: So scared that you're mad now. Cause that's, mean, it's safer. It's way safer for the body to be in anger and to be in fight mode versus scared and fawning or, you know, freezing. Speaker 2: Do you, like after, when you work with your clients, do you ordinarily, like, do you have a, like a, I hate to use the word post-mortem, or like almost after care, like after a session to just kind of talk through what came up emotionally or? Speaker 1: Yeah, and each session, especially ones that are more emotionally charged, are different. ⁓ But we always ground it back down. And oftentimes, it's that clients will need to come in and just get everything out verbally, processing-wise. And then we'll move into the body. And by the time we get through with the session, there's nothing left to talk about. Speaker 2: Good. Cool. sounds nothing left to talk about. Sounds really relaxing. Yeah. For me, because there's always something more to talk about. Yeah. That's what I'm here. I'm trying to figure out a way to make money from it. Speaker 1: I mean, we're just gonna we could go for days Speaker 2: Good yes, I've never had one never had a conversation so far on this podcast where I felt like I didn't have you know had too much time. Yeah, I mean it's just never happened ⁓ You know I did an interesting thing about a week and half ago in Louisiana while I was stopping there at the doctor's office I did acupuncture ⁓ and it was ear acupuncture And it was interesting. It was something it was a particular technique called nada which I just loved because I was you know very much into the idea of nothingness. Yeah. There's a kind of yoga meditation called Shunya. Have you heard of it? Shunya means zero or void. It's basically zeroing out the ego. And so to try to just back out and be only witness. And I've just found so much has helped me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, but also creatively. It's very hard. Like writer's block is very hard. Things like that. That's all ego. Yeah. Not wanting you to become. Right. Speaker 1: Don't leave Speaker 2: i want you to become the person you always really want to be using you will be you anymore ⁓ so i was really curious about it but it's ⁓ not also stands for the national acupuncture detox association it was founded by black panthers you know the political movement in the seventies to help their members got heroin to help black people out there when the incredible like these in in new york so i was on here at the time or any you know whatever but like i just like shall do it was offered to me and The effect on me was with these few needles in my ear, I stopped thinking in words for about an hour and it was such a relief. Yeah. It was such a relief. And the only, mean, it was, it was like total, but I was completely clear. I was watching wind blow through the trees and I wasn't thinking trees, green wind, but I was seeing it and thinking about impermanence without thinking the word impermanence. You can just, can tell it's satisfying to just be alive and awake, but not be constantly thinking. a relief. And the only thing that really for me is similar is like after I used to swim and it was just always max effort for me, I think probably because of the way my hips displaced in the water or whatever. So after an hour of swimming a mile or whatever, the total calm of the body and like the quieting of the mind and just laying like that. And there is something about that that's kind of like you'd say like Shavasana and cry. I've never really had that experience with Shavasana, but yoga it is kind of like that's probably the only activity where in the moment there's just not enough room for words. Because with the discipline I'm doing with the shangha, so much of it is about the breath and the focus and the drishti and just remembering what's next. That just kind of crowds out everything else. Speaker 1: Right, yeah. And there's a Sanskrit phrase, it's, ⁓ chali vatam chali chitam, which means, as goes the breath, so goes the mind. So as we focus more on the breath and it becomes more important that we are only focusing on the breath, the mind is. Speaker 2: You know, breathing was really hard for me too. I had to learn to breathe. Same thing as just learning to move and everything else. ⁓ And it still can be challenging. I wonder if you have any ideas on why that would be? Well, I've tried holotropic breathing, you know, like the Wim Hof thing where you breathe intense in and out and then you can, in theory, have a psychedelic experience. I've tried that. I get really sick. I get really bad vertigo, dizzy. Speaker 1: What about it is challenging? For everybody, there's a lot of contraindications to that. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I know I have dysautonomia. My autonomic nervous system is usually not in the right gear. Yeah. So that probably makes it way worse. Yeah. But I do still, if I'm consciously focusing on my breath, it can kind of spin me out. ⁓ I think I held my breath for a long time. This is an adaptation of like fear. Yeah. And I think that's probably why I talk so much because it was the only way to stay. not passed out. It all makes sense, it's interesting doing things like box breathing or 478 or things like that. I can get a little anxious. Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting. think that, I mean, box breathing can put you, make you feel like you're in a box. So like, yeah, that makes sense. What I would recommend to just have something more useful is just an extended exhale. So, ⁓ counting what your normal inhale is, like a count of four or three or four, and then starting to double that. So in for four, out for four, in for four, out for five, in for four, out for six, until you get to four to eight and then hang there for a little while and then walk your way back down. Ooh. And it kind of helps just expand the system without having it box you in. Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. Well, it's like the gradually elongating it to because like I've learned just a little bit from yoga and about, guess, the logic of how breath works. And it's not necessarily about like it's not just the ratio of inhale to exhale, but it's also about like you're moving in a direction. So like I took a cold shower before I came here because I wanted to wake up and I just immediately was like, OK, I need to just focus on not. hyperventilating. Like I'm just trying to slow my breathing and it's not the breathing being slow that relaxes me. It's the slowing. Right. And yeah, that caught when you were like, yeah, four to four, four to five, four to six. I was like, Ooh, yeah. Like, I bet that would be really nice. Yeah. So you did, you said you did a 300 hour training. Was that in addition to a 200 hours? So you'll do a 200 hours, like a, do your intro to yoga teacher training and then 300. Speaker 1: Yeah, ease yourself in. Mm-hmm. Yeah, typically 200 hours are like more vinyasa, like physically focused and then the 300 is typically more philosophically focused. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Was there a particular discipline or style of yoga that you've trained in or is it? Speaker 1: ⁓ I mean, just power flow is what I got into initially. ⁓ I, my body loves yin, but I struggled to lead myself through yin practices. ⁓ but I have, I never really jived with Ashtanga, just it was very specific and I like flow. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good, that's a really good point. I think what I don't like about, what I like about Ashtanga so much is that it is so rigid, I think, because again, like I need containment in that space and ⁓ my whole life is flow. You know, I think I flow too much, you know, and I do things that when I feel like them rather than when I need to do them a lot. And so I think that for that reason, Ashtanga has been good for me, but I could totally see how probably the much more, it's much more popular to do vinyasa. think like if you look at any yoga app or whatever, 90 % of the classes you're gonna find are gonna be a hot flow or a vinyasa or whatever. And yeah, that's a beautiful way that you put it. I'm sure that martial arts is like that too, because like you're not really constrained on what you are gonna do at the moment. Speaker 1: Yeah, there's general principles of like how we get from point A to point B in both of them, but how you place everything in the middle, there's no rules. Speaker 2: Do you think that between martial arts and yoga, would you say they have like a, ⁓ a comparable emphasis on breathing? Speaker 1: Yes. And yoga just uses exhales to release, whereas Muay Thai uses exhales to find power. Yeah, so it's just... Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. There's also a timing and a synchronization and yeah, that was a big eye opener for me too when I started practicing both was I think yoga for me really is you're doing the movement so that you can breathe almost like it was a, it was a reframe of like the breathing was supposed to make the movement easier at first is what I thought. Then I realized later like, no, no, no, I think I'm doing this movement to challenge my breath, to challenge myself to cause what the stronger it's like. That's most of the discipline for me is remembering, yeah, the whole point of me doing this hard thing that's kind of uncomfortable is to not hyperventilate. Not hold my breath. yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: Right, it's to learn how to breathe. Yeah. And I find it really interesting to play with the timing of your breath, like letting the breath inspire the movement in yoga. So breathing first, it's like when you're doing cat cow, like letting your inhale and then you move your spine, letting a different part of Speaker 2: Interesting. I'm definitely looking forward to try that. It's cool. I'm glad you use the word inspire because a lot of people don't really think about the fact that means to breathe in. Yeah. And expire means to breathe out. ⁓ Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Yeah, so you want the breath to inspire the movement in yoga, which actually ultimately helps your system understand how to breathe in those challenging places a little bit more. Speaker 2: Have you, ⁓ in your yoga training, like, is meditation just without movement, is that a part of your practice? Speaker 1: It is, it's again, something that I struggle with is sitting still meditation. but it is crucial. I have a sauna now in my little apartment, like one of those standup saunas and that I call it my timeout box, cause that's where I'm able to just sit inside. Speaker 2: I'm you have a good relationship to that idea of a time out box that's super hot that in. It's like get in the hot box. Exactly. You're not punishing yourself. It's just, good. Speaker 1: Yeah, just going to be with myself and it's the easiest place for me to fully immerse in just nothingness. ⁓ But I struggle to just choose to sit in meditation. I think, I mean, all of us do. Our minds, there's so much going on to just like choose stillness is wild. But that's what the vinyasa practice is for. Yeah, Shavasana, everything that we do is actually just because we're trying to get to Shavasana. Speaker 2: Get it through that. Yeah, I get it. ⁓ And do you find that like when you're in a practice, like when you're actually going through the movements, does it focus your mind in a way that is meditative? Yeah. Yeah. And you self lead, I assume, like you're leading yourself usually. So I imagine there's like an extra component of concentration on the process of what you're doing and why and where it's gonna flow next. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, which makes I am kind of longing for right now finding a studio or a place that I want to enjoy and enjoy going because to be led, especially as a facilitator is an important experience. Well, I recently, guess, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago took a YIN class from someone else and literally just like simply being guided to get into the very first position on our back, I teared up. Speaker 2: Yeah, also. Speaker 1: because my body was just like, I don't have, I'm good. I don't have to dictate, I don't have to think about it. I'm gonna be put where I need to be. And the emotional experience that that was, was like a big loud, we need this more. Like we need, I need to feel held and like I'm not working my way through something on my own. Speaker 2: Yeah, having to do everything. Yeah. Yen is like the female side of the art, right? Yeah. But I mean, the word yen makes this like yen is the kind of the female, yang is the male, right? It's interesting that you found that experience there because I've thought a lot about recently just the difference between how we view. Speaker 1: on poses. Speaker 2: masculinity and femininity and really the the archetypes of the divine feminine and divine masculine and I'm very interested in it with my art and just with a lot of things and problems of modern masculinity are definitely something that I'm thinking about a lot and I think that the way our economy works now that requires everybody to just be working and hustling and having a side hustle and everything else all the time is challenging for everybody but I think it falls particularly hard on women to just be doing all the fucking time. Yeah. And I can definitely feel some of that with your business that you've got going on. mean, like you do have to do everything because no one's coming to your rescue. And if you don't have anyone to pay to do it, like, that's where I think the satisfaction comes from, but you're just caring all the time. And then also when it's like your spiritual practice, your personal mental health practice to have to be deciding all that too, it must be an extraordinary relief to just have someone else, especially in a yin practice say to just, I've got you. I can tell you what you're going to do. You don't have to think or make any decisions. You just have to lay there and. Speaker 1: Yeah, just follow the sound of my voice. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2: That's beautiful that you have that and yeah, it's important to I mean it's almost kind of like therapists neither in therapist right? You know at some point you got to have someone else just Yeah, be able to figure some stuff out for you Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Cause I mean, recently I've said a lot, like my executive function muscle is, is fatigued because it's like every, yeah, the call and every respect is coming from inside the house. Yeah. ⁓ but I know that like, have a desire to have a homestead one day and like have like a wellness center and like dojo and everything in the same place. And I know that the work that I'm doing right now does not even compare to what it's going to take to make that a reality. So. Speaker 2: You're doing this work so that you can do that work. Yeah. But your capacity will expand. Yeah, mean, that's what you're doing. You know, you're strengthening muscle. You're that muscle. Yeah. There's I've learned a lot about it. Just I started meditating. One of the reasons I decided to move here was there was a meditation center, Wildheart Meditation. I love Wildheart. Yeah. It was just nice. Like I wanted access to anything other than Christianity, which is where the in the milieu that I was raised. was all it was really, really around. And ⁓ Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: was very interested in meditation, wanted to learn more, but didn't have access. And I practiced there for a little while, for about, I don't know, first year I was here. And then I kind of moved more towards Zen meditation. That was where I was at when I started martial arts. mean, because like Japanese martial arts are a very Zen art, like there's Budo and things like the idea of just, you know, the art of war basically. um, Zen is very empty. Like Buddhism is very empty, literally. Like you're kind of, you're emptying the cup of the mind and it's about emptiness and that's nice. It's a good, it's an interesting way to start, but like I wanted more content and I, the reason I started practicing yoga was I just, I was recommended to go to a Kundalini class so many times. I'm like, I'll do it. Then I show up and like, it's, you know, my workout clothes, you know, expecting to like just do a whatever. And we just sat on the same spot. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Breathe. It was intense pain. It was painful to sit and cross-legged pose and sit up and breathe. I was overweight and tired, but I think it was so painful that I just started tripping out. I had a full-on psychedelic experience in this office park on a Tuesday. was wild. It was so wild. And after, I mean, was trying not to laugh. And afterwards, the people that were in there, I was having tea. they were like, I was like, so I hope you all weren't offended. I hope you didn't think I was laughing at you. And they were like... Yeah, that's exactly what we thought you were doing. And I was like, no, I was like, I was tripping and they're like, ⁓ yeah, like a lot of people will go years of doing this without doing it. But you did the first time and I was like, yeah, I'll give it a B minus. I mean, was like, but just, it did show me like, okay, there's a there there on the other side of this. like yoga, the world of meditation and yoga is so diverse. Like for me, I found Buddhism was mostly about one or two concepts and ideas and just that's it. But the thing that was, I found so fascinating about yogic styles of meditation is they're not based on emptiness. They're based on focus. Yes. The concentration. And there's a lot of different ways. And as an ADD person, that's just catnip. Like wait, I can learn to focus. Great. Let's do that. And there's a lot of different ways to focus and like focusing on the body is kind of what the discipline of Hatha yoga is. That's a really cool thing too. But there's another practice I've been doing lately that I'll recommend and it's called ⁓ Tratika. Do you know it? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: I look at a candle and it's the easiest way. mean, I'm a visual artist. I look at photographs all day. I've done neurofeedback that has helped me pay it. can literally pay attention to a screen better than anything else. My brain's been trained to do that, but I just will look at a candle and stared at with an open eye for, or I'll look at a yontra. Yantras are getting wild because they're so complex and whatever. But if you'll stare at it without blinking or moving your eyes for a minute or more, then you close your eyes, it stays. And it's like burned in the obssons in your brain and your eyes have, you know, exhausted themselves. And so you just kind of stare at it and it moves. And it's just, it's so fascinating, but it's much, it's just so non-ordinary and weird that the boredom factor is not as much of a deterrent. Yeah. And that's a big issue. think with people that are ADD, the thought of sitting still and doing nothing with your eyes closed for 20 minutes is very daunting. Speaker 1: It's impossible for, mean, ADD mind, like the Western mind in general. we're not, we don't, we can't empty our mind. Speaker 2: And the digital stuff that we see like, you know, all day. Yeah. So at least I can just focus on this thing. It does bring kind of a level of clarity. And it's cool that there's probably hundreds of other things like that that are out there that we can do that are, that are different from the traditional just mindfulness. Speaker 1: And that's like where, I can't remember what chapter in the sutras it's in, but it's all about like ways to practice meditation and Tritaka is in there. And what it talks about is like, the goal is not to empty our mind. It is just to hone our focus, monkey, hone the monkey mind so that it knows where to point towards. Which is like that flame practice is brilliant because then you can start to hone your visualization muscle because you can see that like, I can see the flame still. Ooh, I wonder if I can turn it into a tree. And then you're able to like dream up your whole dream life inside of your mind. Speaker 2: Sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. To be able to create images in my head is kind of what I do all day is what I'm trying to do. ⁓ becoming a photographer, it's a relief to be able to just show people. Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to describe it. It's like, this is what I'm trying to do. And they're like, ⁓ got it. People ask me, I I asked you, like, what do you do? How do you answer that question? It is weird that people in this, our culture, want to define us by what we do for living. But I think in both of our cases, it is probably a good way to Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: to open the door to who we really are. Because what you do is so personal to you and your experience and me, this is too. ⁓ But I also don't really know how to answer the question. I can say like I'm a photographer and I'm a YouTuber and I'm on the road to becoming a men's coach. ⁓ like really when people ask what kind of photography are you into, I really don't know what to say. I don't know the answer, truly. But at least with photography I can just be like this, this is what I like. And they'll go, ooh, that's amazing. Speaker 1: Yeah. My balls deep in the human experience. That's it! Speaker 2: Like that's it. I'm just, a human being having an experience. I don't always do it that well. It's frequently messy and sometimes it makes weird smells, but like I'm doing it, you know, like I'm doing it, I'm doing it, you know, I mean, for a long time, I wasn't sure that I would be either, you know, I'm going to turn 40 this year and I really didn't think I was going to make it that long. I mean, I was planning on it, you know? And so it's a cool thing to feel differently about it. Speaker 1: To have 40 feel like a celebration is amazing. Speaker 2: I guess it's gotten to where for me for birthdays it's just a lot often it's just another day. guess this with this one I'll probably do something I suppose I'm not the kind of person to say hey let's come celebrate my birthday. ⁓ Speaker 1: Well, because you didn't think you were going to make it to your 40th birthday. Speaker 2: It's probably worth celebrating. Yeah, yeah, that's probably worth marking that event. If nothing else is like a ha ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I think there's a lot of people that have that experience and are silent about it. Right. And there's the saying that I can't remember who wrote this, but it's that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I assume today if that was written, it would be most people. Men was a generic term for everybody back then. But ⁓ I think that's true for a lot of accountants that need to get high to do their job. mean, ⁓ and I was just hurtling towards a life I didn't want for so long and my body kept sabotaging it. And I'm grateful for that now, but at the time it was so devastating. It was so hard. I thought I was going to be a lawyer and then I thought I was going to be a law professor and wanted to go into business and do venture capital and start companies and whatever. And what I really wanted was just a creative outlet and creative freedom. It really wasn't until a couple of years ago. I was just watching movies and I learned what a, what a, an independent film is basically a little startup company, but you can, it's what it is. You gotta have a pitch deck. You gotta raise money. And I'm like, Oh, I know how all this works, but there's, it's really in service of a creative vision. I mean, you hope to make money so that you get to make another movie, but like you've got to create a vision. You want it to work. But then once you make it, it lives forever. You don't have to keep running it. It was always my thing with starting companies. was like, I just want to get, it together and then move on. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm glad I didn't find that there's a much more direct way to create. But and the thing is, once I found once I got my diet, exercise, sleep, and then really started leaning into the fact like, ⁓ I'm a creative person. That's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. And I moved here and live in a city where like there's other artists. It's amazing how much easier it is to be happy. Right. know, and whereas now I'm also like it was impossible before. Right. You know? Man, wasn't even up here. It was in somebody else's up here. Like it was in someone else's idea of what up here should be. You know, I was trying to live a version of what other people thought life should be like. And I wouldn't have guessed that this is where I would have ended up because I didn't, I would have thought it would have been wrong to envision this kind of thing. This just came to my mind because you were talking about creating images in your head, entirely full of cloth. Speaker 1: living just up here. Speaker 2: to be able to do that with your life is a cool thing. And I didn't used to have that freedom. Speaker 1: And it takes, it's a skill. It's a skill that we can build, that we have to trust ourselves. Speaker 2: to yeah yeah it all really started with just like learning to move my body we're kind of coming back to the work that you do is if you can't do that I think like if you just cannot be able to go and break a sweat even a light sweat three or four times a week on a consistent basis everything else in life is probably gonna be pretty hard yeah I think like if you're just incapable of doing that of having that grit and so it's like why not start there mm-hmm and Speaker 1: because this is where we live. Ultimately, this is the only place where we're always going to be. Yeah. And so all the messages, it's like our gut is, it's like, you know, this autoimmune stuff, our gut is directly connected to our mind. That's actually where we feel. Speaker 2: where all the serotonin from like 90 % of your serotonin comes out of your gut. Yeah. Speaker 1: It's so important. then the heart needs to be a part of that conversation because yoga philosophy believes that we actually, our mind lives here. And this is just something that we look at the world with, but our mind is here. And this channel has to be clear in order for anything that comes out of this thing to make any sort of sense or that goes in. Speaker 2: Yeah, right. That's right, too. Both things where it's like, it's weird that we have the one orifice to do both. We gotta put stuff in it then we gotta bring sounds out. It is weird, you know, that like, and it was just like, yeah. I saw, I've been studying, I'm in a course called the Neuro-Shamanic Path, learning about neuro-shamanism and neuro-shamanism. It's interesting. It's kind of a new thing. My friend Laura Martina, she was my first guest on this podcast and it's a new program that she's doing. She's the neuro-shamanic healer. She got degree in neuroscience and then she's a clinical therapist, but she uses these shamanic practices. It's kind of in her, in her heritage. And it's interesting. Neuro shamanism is basically shamanism, it's with an understanding of the, like the neuroscience of how, why drumming works the way it does. Like, how trans states happen and essentially brainwave activity and just the science of the nervous system and things like that. ⁓ and so it's, it's tantalizing to a Western mind that wants the neuro, but then you get there for the shamanism and it's a cool thing. A lot of it is about seeing symbols and it's finding meaning in symbols. Like you were saying about the body heals itself about like what this part of the quads do. There's a meaning in what the quads do. They're not just these random appendages. And ⁓ I saw, I live out East and the East part of Nashville on like in a rural area and there's red tail hawks everywhere and they eat birds. It's interesting. And I've got a book on animal symbols and it says that when you see a bird with another bird in its talons, it's a symbol that you are what you eat. Like that's what nature's trying to tell you in that moment. And like, so be careful. And I think that to me, that means like in general, what am I consuming? Like am I looking at slop? know, like, or am I creating or whatever? And so, yeah, ⁓ it's an interesting thing again, because like we have the one thing, it's like, what do you eat? And that does kind of affect, the way I feel is totally different once I started like, trying to change my body composition really was how things really started was like I just want to lose weight in a sensible way. And then now it's like, oh man, how good can I feel? Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not only what you eat, it's like what you're consuming with your eyes, what you're like, what you're watching in years. ⁓ Speaker 2: Yeah. constant noise and words coming in. It's not good for me. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where the focus of the mind, like choosing, being able to choose what you focus on and then maintaining focus, that's where the personal responsibility to bring it all back comes in. Where once you have that superpower, and you must choose the thing that makes you feel good, because once you start to feel like, ⁓ when I watch that TV show, I feel like shit afterwards. Yes. You can't do that thing anymore. You have to be Speaker 2: Like that's the thing, have to be like my meditation practice, my mindfulness practice has given me the awareness, like the information and know like, oh, how do I feel right now? Terrible. Like what did I just do? I looked at YouTube for six hours today. I got no dopamine left. Of course I feel terrible. I didn't interact with the person, I didn't touch grass. I didn't get any sunshine. I'm like Nosferatu in my apartment, watching things in the dark, which is what I like to do, because I'm a purist and I don't like glare. ⁓ I mean, it's just, is, you know, doing it, so I can't have glare in here. What is this? I have been wanting to ask, ⁓ one thing we haven't talked about almost at all is like body composition at all, or like body image. And I'm wondering how many people will come to work with you that that's kind of their goal is to lose weight or gain weight or whatever. And just kind of what are your thoughts on that as a motivation to exercise? Speaker 1: ⁓ Mostly women come to me with like a weight loss desire. ⁓ I haven't had a lot of men come my way for ⁓ body composition change. I think that's probably because of the way that I'm oriented marketing wise that I'm not like an athletic trainer necessarily. ⁓ For me, I feel like body composition, the body composition that changes when you start exercising is just a cool fringe benefit of getting healthy. And Like the body tells the truth. If you're doing things that are good for your body, your body will respond in positive ways. I don't think that it's a good motivator to like have a goal of changing body composition unless you're trying to do bodybuilding or like shows or whatever. ⁓ I don't think. ⁓ cause that, that type of person that enjoys the counting of macros, the science behind it is a very specific makeup of person, athletic athlete. Speaker 2: Why not a good motivator? Speaker 1: versus the average human that just wants to feel good doesn't give a flying flip about that. They just wanna feel good. And they also, think that the main goal is that they want to lose weight and look a certain way, but that is not gonna be the thing that's gonna keep them showing up. Because what actually happens when you're losing weight is like a first month and you'll probably drop a bunch of the shit that you have been carrying for a long time. Yeah, water. A lot of water and maybe a little bit of stuff that was like right on the edge. And then the second month, typically you're going to gain a little bit of weight. If you're, if you're constantly looking at the scale, you're going to gain a little bit because your muscle, your body composition is changing. Your muscle mass is increasing. You're probably retaining a little bit of water because your body's trying to recalibrate to what this new way is. A lot of women, a lot of people in general will see the number go up thinking that their goal is to lose weight and fuck, this isn't working. I got to try something else or I got to do something else drastic. And then they stop versus the third month comes along. And that's when you start to see actual numbers drop and body composition change. you, if that's the goal and you're, you're out of shape and you hate walking to the end of your driveway, you are not going to stick around for three months. Yeah. If that's your goal. Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, three months, that seems like really that's an accelerated time frame. It took me. mean, I was it took me. Speaker 1: Well, you're not going to reach your goal weight, but you're going to start to see Speaker 2: see things. Yeah. I think I started to, I started to gain muscle faster. Cause when you're, when you're plus 30 % body fat as a man, you can put on some muscle. It's just in that environment. It's very anabolic. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, and so for me, and I was also looking at the number, I also, have massive fluctuations in body water. Five pounds a day is no big deal for me. It's more than usual now, but when I was 250 pounds, you know, that's, that's what Speaker 1: You're gonna see the number go Speaker 2: What is it? Two and a half percent of body weight. Right. It's not a huge swing. And that's like, that's one bad day of eating or like to, if I over train or whatever. So I've also, I weigh myself every day now and just kind of look at averages, but, not take any of the numbers at all that seriously. But I've also, for me, it's amazing that people think that the weight matters. Cause I, when people tell me they're like, you know, they're like, ⁓ I want to lose some weight. And I'm like, are you a wrestler? Like, like, are you in a combat sport where your weight matters? Like, are you a cyclist or would you like to look different because the stuff that looks good tends to weigh more. know, muscle weighs way more than fat. And that's a lot. think a lot of women don't really grasp that either. They're like, ⁓ I want to lose this weight on a scale. And I'm like, well, like if you don't eat anything, you don't eat enough, you'll lose weight, but you're not going to look better. You're not going to feel good at all. You're to rebound and end up weighing more. And it is, it is funny how it's, does it feel when people come to you with this goal? Speaker 1: trying to feel worse. Speaker 2: I mean, it's getting them in the door. know, so in sense that's good, like, do you feel conflicted at all about like knowing like, okay, this person wants to change their body composition, but like, that's not, that might not be what's going to get them to stay. Speaker 1: will acknowledge that for myself, but typically it's not far away to find the actual goal that's brought them there. Speaker 2: They don't want to necessarily want to look better. They want to feel better about how they look. Speaker 1: Yeah, and society has told us that in order for women, smaller is better. I am more valuable when I'm smaller. So that's going to be my least vulnerable goal to share with you. Right. Speaker 2: socially acceptable to say, I just want to be smaller. Right. Right. For men, it would be bigger. Probably would be the version of that. Yeah. Do you think that I'm not really super versed in this, but I mean, it seems like there's definitely a rise in body dysmorphia among men. Have you, are you kind of aware, like there's this thing called looks maxing. Do you know what that is? There's things people do to themselves that I would describe it as mutilating the body in service of looking and fitting some sort of non-existent, non-existent ideal aesthetic. male aesthetic ideal. There's this guy, can't remember, he'll pulverize his cheekbones with a fucking hammer before he goes out so we'll get the perfect puffiness or whatever. It's like a light whatever, and then of course they're doing steroids and SARMs and all this stuff where it's just like you might look different for a year or two but you're gonna die pretty soon or whatever. It's a sad thing, it's always been... Speaker 1: ⁓ my lord. Speaker 2: Women in particular, it's just the way women have always been portrayed in media has to have had that effect on women. But now it seems to also be a problem with men. Yeah. And it's a scary thing because with men, like the shortcut to getting bigger is just to take a bunch of drugs. Speaker 1: Right, and there's also a massive testosterone issue in men. I know. So that's the correlation of those two things that we're like artificially trying to get this thing. Like actually the goal that we're looking for, the reason why men are longing to be bigger is actually because their systems are like, no, we need more testosterone in our system. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting that the drive to just want to feel bigger and stronger or whatever is really just like a hormonal imbalance. Yeah. Do you have any idea what do you think might be causing that for men like the testosterone? Speaker 1: Many things. mean, food and water is a big one. The fact that there's so much birth control in our water system. All drinking that. Speaker 2: I don't drink any water tap water either like because I'm the only thing I really do still do is testosterone replacement therapy. That's probably the thing for me. ⁓ Speaker 1: But I think that it's also the trauma-informed worlds and the not allowing men to meet their edges for so long. Speaker 2: Yeah, to have to contain things that are masculine. School is like that too. Yeah. Yeah. mean, there's a lot of discourse lately. Richard Reeves has been writing about like the problem of boys and men and especially the educational challenges that boys have in particular, because like our, you know, our frontal lobes are a couple of years behind our age peers. They're female and school's hard for like little boys. like it's basically like sit still, do your homework, know, play by the rules, color inside the lines. It's not correct. Women are a lot better at that when they're younger. Speaker 1: Because boys are meant to be playing and like, wrestling around. Speaker 2: The last person I interviewed here was a neuropsychiatrist, he's a child psychiatrist, and he was talking about the obesity epidemic in children, and one of the reasons is that they've eliminated recess from a lot of schools. Can you believe this? Speaker 1: That's fucking insane. I'm furious. Speaker 2: It's like, they need 15 more minutes of reading. And I'm like, that 15 minutes will be a waste of time. They don't understand like the science also of neuroplasticity. mean, for me, ⁓ meditation was one of the things that kept me going with my fitness change because I would work out so that I could immediately meditate, you know, while my brain was still soft and plastic and it did make a difference a lot. ⁓ And I think like kids should probably have recess right before school. Speaker 1: They're just mad that they're not outside. Speaker 2: And then again at midday. Yeah, it is interesting. I'm from Louisiana. Everybody smells when they go out and play in Louisiana. Like you just stink. Like you're covered in sweat and moisture and whatever. And they're just going to accept that like schools are going to have to be smellier. But like the kids will learn and they'll be calmer and there'll be less like violent outbursts and whatever. And yeah, it just we're not meant to be sedentary. Speaker 1: And especially young boys. Yoga was developed initially to help young boys with discipline. Speaker 2: I've heard that about Ashtanga. Yeah. In particular, it was developed to get nine and 10 year old boys with ADD to sit still long enough to meditate. Yeah. And it's interesting that I think that's why I like it so much because Ashtanga to me, the best way I can describe it is it's a discipline that is meant to fatigue the nervous system. Like from just from doing a lot of weightlifting and knowing what it is to just like crush it with back squats and whatever, and then your hands shake. Your hands shake from doing squats. It's like what's cause your nervous system's exhausted. And I've just kind of learned different kinds of fatigue, local fatigue, neural fatigue. And what I get after I shatanga is neural fatigue. My whole body, my nervous system is exhausted. And, ⁓ my God, I just sit still for like ever. That's all I'm able to do basically. But like, it's a lot easier to meditate when you're not fidgeting or whatever, you know? And that would be an amazing thing for, to bring yoga just to schools. Even, you know, for both genders, but just for young children. It's interesting that people don't tend to get into it until they're in their high school 20s or older. Speaker 1: become the uncarved block. Yeah, it's really for, yeah, boys. Young boys. Speaker 2: Also Muay Thai too. mean if you could bring only one of those to schools, which one would you think would be more important? Muay Thai. Why so? Speaker 1: More time. ⁓ because I feel like the way that the world is going is requiring just humanity as a whole to have more grit and more ability to meet edges and understand what safe versus unsafe fire is energetically. So I think that, yeah. Yeah. But I don't, I think that both are almost equally important. Speaker 2: Yeah. mean, it's also, do you do a little bit of both in most of your, like when you have a class? mean, there's, like, when I did your somatic strength class, what I loved about it was just that there was a very seamless flow, I would say fusion between yoga and then functional strength. And I don't think I did any Muay Thai in that class, but there was stuff I'd done from CrossFit that was like the fun stuff for me. That was not, not the calisthenics, calisthenics was the fun stuff, but like, yeah, we just, we would be in it like in a yoga flow and then we'd get up and do another thing and come back to it and like, That's cool. So it's also a way where like you gotta not give people a choice. It's just like you're gonna do some, kickboxing and some yoga and yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my favorite. think I learned that most at Mayweather when I didn't agree with their programming at all. And so I just taught my own class and learned how to trick those people into doing yoga, where after a couple of weeks, they were like, wait, are you having us do yoga at the end of these classes? I am. You're breathing and you're moving at the same Speaker 2: One of my best friends that I my life I moved to Colorado with them was a college football running back when he was younger and then you know, it's just a lot of pain from doing this but also anybody that like that position on the team that's always a freak athlete. He's probably the best athlete on the team usually. Yeah, you know because they're big and they're fast and powerful and he got into doing yoga. It's kind of similar story like Ricky Williams. He got into yoga in Ayurveda and just wanted to heal the body and the knees and joints and he that for a while and then some years back he got into martial arts, MMA. And I was just talking to him about the parallels and he was like, dude, having a solid base, like being a yoga instructor and having a daily practice, such an incredible base for jujitsu. Like the mobility of it and just the body awareness. Yeah, imagine that's huge on Muay Thai because how often you're on one foot. You're on one part, just a part of one foot. Speaker 1: Balance, yeah, all of Yeah, and that also translates into all of life. How can you stay powerful and strong and balanced and loose enough to get the fuck out the way if you need to? Nimble. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, could you see yourself ever like going and studying Muay Thai like abroad like in Thailand? Speaker 1: I would love to, but I also don't believe that what I like, I that's super fighter territory and I don't know if it would be transferable to what you're doing so much. And I don't, I don't know if I would be received as well as I would like to be, but that is also my own fear. Yeah. But the ⁓ Muay Thai camps that I've seen in Thailand are just incredible. Speaker 2: transfer. that's true Speaker 1: Yeah, but those are some intense, real fighters and I have never and will never have any desire to fight. Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not actually wanting to compete. I was gonna ask that earlier. And the people that you're training are not competing either. It's like martial arts for life. Yeah. Yeah. It's like learning to be like a fighter, a warrior in your life. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: Yeah, these punches aren't coming back at you. You just get to throw them. Speaker 2: That is that is cool. You know, there is something, though, I don't want to get hit in the head. My brain health is too important to me. That was my thing with Muay Thai. was like, and at a certain point, I think if you're trying to build a skill and that's all you really care about there, you need to spar because otherwise, like there's a saying, Mike, I was thinking on the way here, Mike Tyson is saying everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. And it is kind of like that, like making a movie or like images like. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: anything I was thinking about that in regards to this, was like, I could plan and have like a list of questions or whatever to ask you. I wouldn't be paying attention to the conversation. I mean, you know, I got this feedback. I mean, so it's like, just, I kind of have an intention on what I'm going to do. Um, and medicine works like this too. Like I have an intention on what I'm going to do there, but I'm not going to try to predetermine how things are going to go because it's just, it's a, it's a waste of time. Yeah, I kind of did some feedback here just about my style of interviewing and like listening to people, which I'm like, I think it's kind of point of what I'm trying to do, but that there are apparently other people that'll ask a question and someone will go into some horrible existential story about how they lost their father at a young age or whatever. And then the interviewer will just go, so what do you have for breakfast? It's just like, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, well, it's like one of the benefits of I get to pick who I talk to. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: You know, so I'm already interested, you know, before I already have an idea of what it is that I find about you that is fascinating. And, ⁓ it has been really cool to sit down and talk with you about like, it's nice to talk to people who again, don't really have like, they don't have the one box they fit in. And it is, that's how I started basically every podcast now is just ask people like, if you're at a cocktail party and someone turns you and says, so what do you do? How do you answer it? and then there's the second question of like, and what do you really think about? like who you are and what you do. Because it is weird to have to explain, like on my Instagram bio, you know, I've got like, this is the things that I do. think mine says contemplative creator, YouTuber, photographer, and human being. I'm like, I mean, a human being, you know, I'm a subjective experience having itself. don't like, but you know, people want to locate you in the economy, basically, like what do you do? And it's cool that I don't think the, I think that people like us defy that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Like you could be like, yeah, I'm a martial artist and a yogi. like, yeah, mean, stuff that you do is amazing. But also like your, what you do, that mental health is seems like such an important part, like the foundation of what you're doing and the fitness and the yoga and the Muay Thai like seem to be just avenues to get you there, modalities, conduits. And that's a cool thing because Speaker 1: And a filmmaker in a... Speaker 2: there's probably more conduits you could add and will add I'm sure over time you're gonna just nerd out about the next thing, sure ADD. You're find your next obsession. You're gonna find an obsession. Yeah, you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. And it'll make sense. It's been a challenge for me to figure out that like, it doesn't have to be coherent to other people. I just need to do what I can't stop thinking about. know, like photography was a side quest for sure. I just started shooting, so I wanted to be a filmmaker and I... Speaker 1: Yeah Speaker 2: didn't think I was gonna be any good at it, and I wanted to practice. And now it's become its own thing, and I kinda also wanna do coaching, like life coaching, not like athletic coaching. And to me, I'm like, there's a synthesis there. Like there's something about being seen that's healing for people. It's a different experience for men versus women, and ⁓ that's fascinating to me. ⁓ But the idea that I could heal something in someone, or maybe in the culture by taking the photograph. Yes. portraying them in a certain way. ⁓ That's cool. And it makes no sense. Like no one would set out to do that. Right. You know, I wouldn't have. Yeah. I just was doing it because it's just kind of what I think about when I'm not pressed for money. It's not what I my time. Yeah. You know, and so it's a cool thing for you. The way you described your journey of like starting with just kickboxing and kind of saying save your life and burning out on it and finding yoga, which is that that makes a lot of sense that that progression would happen that way. Speaker 1: He Speaker 2: Like you've done the yang and now you found the more the yen and then to bring them together Yeah, yeah and all in the realm of mental health. It's a really unique and wonderful and beautiful journey And it's been a really cool experience to just be able to sit down and talk with you. Yeah ⁓ my gosh, thank you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to we're gonna have to come back and go to your gym Yeah, yeah and do some stuff there. Absolutely just to show it's just it's just a really cool space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So good. It's sweet. And that would be great. Just since January, so going on five months. Speaker 2: How long have you had it? people that are in Nashville that have made it this far, where is it? Speaker 1: It's across from the adventure science center and I'm not going to say the address now, yeah. Wedgwood Houston area. Yeah. And on Saturdays every morning, every Saturday morning at nine 30, I have a class open to the public and now a Monday evening class at six 30. Muay Thai focus. Speaker 2: What is the Monday evening class? Moist high focus Monday evening at 630. Yeah. Okay. And then the Saturday morning class is what? Speaker 1: More just strength-based yoga, the workout for people who hate work. Somatic Saturday. Movement Monday. Movement Monday? I think, but Muay Thai Monday. Speaker 2: You can call these I've also seen devotion dojo. Is that something? Speaker 1: Yeah, so that is, ⁓ I've been kind of just trying to figure out how best to serve people and what works best. My ideal would be five of the same people walking through a process for three months together, which is what the devotion dojo is, but it's a very wonky time to be a person in this world and hard to commit and hard to know what even tomorrow is going to look like. instead of that, you're leading up to that potentially the Monday night class is kind of the devotion dojo, low stakes. buy in. instead of like committing to three months, just come. Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll have I'm sure you'll have some like regulars and that were people that are gonna want to deepen their practice and that'll probably be a seamless transition Speaker 1: Yeah, it is all regulars anyways. So I'm basically doing the things. It's like what you said, like I have the intention of what I want and how it all looks in form is not up to me. Speaker 2: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Well, there's like a, there's a flow to it. It's like you said, we're just going back to what you were saying about it. You're the way you like your practice, your yoga practices. You need that flow because there's a freedom and an allowing, you know, like letting something happen rather than making it happen. that's been a cool approach to life for me. Like I've been finding I'm still really imperfect at it, but I'm, know, the more I try it, the better it works. Yeah. Speaker 1: It's like the law of attraction thing, ask and it is given and there's this middle part in between where we just must be patient and trust and not get too on our mind about the fact that it's not happening yet. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. mean, letting go of outcomes in general for me. mean, ⁓ this book, there's this book, The Creative Act. You know it? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People that know it have that response. People that don't, when they just stare at you blankly, they're like, dude, you don't know about The Creative Act. There's that one, it's Rick Rubin that wrote it. I listened to it. It's because he's got a little bell at the end of every chapter. It's like a meditation prompt. Speaker 1: You haven't read it. Wow, I mean, it felt like reading a meditation. Speaker 2: I just do one chapter at a time. I used to do it on the way to film school. I just listen to one chapter and then you'd ring a little bell and it'd be three, four or five minutes or whatever. And then I would just think the rest of ride. And there's a line in it from the Bhagavad Gita, which I think I just need to read, listen to the Gita now. It's like, it's way shorter than the creative act. But it's from the Bhagavad Gita and the phrase is basically we're entitled to our work, but not to the merits of our work. Like, like we're not really entitled to any particular outcome. All you're entitled to is the input. Like you get to choose what inputs you want to put in. then there are things that are likely to happen. Like you said, like body composition is the ultimate lagging indicator of your lifestyle. just, it just is. It's kind of like grip strength. Like there's no way to fake that. Right. You're a VO2 max. Like you can't hack that. You just, you know, over time it, you know, your lifestyle becomes, you know, a weighing machine on what you're going to look like. but still you can't like guarantee that you're particular body part is gonna look a certain way or whatever and like, or that people are gonna feel a certain way about the way you look. Right? Like you're not gonna get that guy or girl or whatever, you know, by getting the biceps that you think that, know, like it just doesn't work that way, but you can put the time in like, and you can make meaning of that. And that's, that's your gift. And that was a big takeaway I took from the creative act was ⁓ the less I think about the result of what I'm doing, the better the results are. Yes. Especially with art. Cause like, If you're trying to make it for other people, or you're trying to build or create something so that other people will like it or give you money or give it a certain result, it ends up being like really watered down and uninteresting. And you're not really saying anything bold at that point. And that's how I, my criticism, a lot of like modern cinema, especially in the last 10 years has been what I call factory filmmaking. And it's just movies by committee. It's like, how can we appeal to everybody and they appeal to nobody and they suck. things are changing, fortunately, in that realm, but that's also like life. Like you just can't please everybody. And ⁓ there is this thing for me lately, and it sounds like for you, just like letting life blow you in the directions where you're feeling it, and if you're in tune with what's going on inside, you ordinarily can hear the call, or at least you don't ignore it. You just live with something being wrong. Speaker 1: Yeah, you stay in devotion to the things that feel good and the things that are in alignment. And the more you do that, it all just works out. And it does mean it's not hard and painful along the way, but. Speaker 2: Yeah, but then again, as long as that goes back to responsibility, if you chose that hard, at least you have a choice. Problems we prayed for. You're going to have hard, like, if you don't do anything all day and you have no responsibility, your life's going be really, really hard. Like, you know, or if you do hard things every day, your life can be easy and you get to choose which kind of hard you want. Yeah. Basically, like we all have that choice. Yeah. Is provided we have the capacity to choose hopefully the better kind of hard. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm really inspired. Literally. Speaker 1: freaking Speaker 2: Breathe in a lot. I've got talking with you. I definitely feel like if nothing else, I'm like, yeah, I think it's time for me to start working with my anger and going to do some Muay Thai with you. I think you will. Yeah. I need to check my calendar and like literally make sure I can do it. Was Monday at 630? Yeah, I think I did. I committed to ecstatic dance in this room and that was really paid off for me. Yeah. And I think that ⁓ feeling the freedom of that kind of movement, I'm probably ready and my hips are so much healthier now after two years of yoga and calisthenics. Speaker 1: So I'll see you Monday night. Speaker 2: And even CrossFit to help that so it's like yeah, it's time but really it's like the anger piece Yeah, I need to get right with that because I've started to think a lot of the issues I with my body or my body immune stuff is just Trapped anger holding on. Yeah retention. So yeah, I'm really really glad that we connected this way and you got to know you so well and ⁓ This has been so fun. So thank you so much. Yeah Speaker 1: Thank you. I'll see you in the dojo. Speaker 2: Absolutely. All right. Thank you. That's a wrap.