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[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.000] Coming up on this episode of the Dr.
[00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:02.640] Hyman Show.
[00:00:02.800 --> 00:00:07.120] Went from cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness.
[00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:08.240] I smashed myself to pieces.
[00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:10.080] I'd gotten into drug trafficking.
[00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:12.160] I found myself in South America.
[00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:15.600] I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine.
[00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:17.280] And I had a broken body and a broken mind.
[00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:19.600] You had this life as a smuggler, it's finished.
[00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:22.080] And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I going to do?
[00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:27.440] And I heard this voice, it came through, and it said that I was going to be a facilitator of movement into people's lives.
[00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:31.600] So it was through a damaged body that I developed primal moves.
[00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:38.000] Nick Brewer is the founder of Primal Moves, fusing movement, breathwork, and trauma-informed awareness.
[00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:40.480] He turned a prison sentence into a blueprint for freedom.
[00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.320] Reconnecting people to their bodies.
[00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:43.440] And out of pain.
[00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:44.640] People say, What's the meaning of life?
[00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:45.920] What's the purpose of life?
[00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:47.120] To me, it's getting free.
[00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:51.760] There's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
[00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:53.360] They think it's a place where they can reside.
[00:00:53.360 --> 00:00:54.160] It's comfortable.
[00:00:54.160 --> 00:00:56.080] So many people don't live in their body.
[00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:58.880] They are disconnected from their body.
[00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:10.320] As part of my recovery from back surgery, I've been using the red light therapy panel from Bond Charge, and it's become a consistent part of my wellness routine.
[00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:18.960] What I love about red and near-infrared light is how researchers are exploring their effects on things like tissue repair, circulation, and even supporting our mitochondria.
[00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:24.400] I use the panel at home to help unwind after physical therapy or to support recovery after exercise or travel.
[00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:32.800] It's easy to integrate just a few minutes a day, no complicated setup, and I personally found it helpful for managing occasional discomfort and supporting overall resilience.
[00:01:32.800 --> 00:01:38.960] If you're looking for a simple research-informed tool to support your recovery or performance goals, this is one I recommend exploring.
[00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:42.640] Visit Bondcharge.com and use code DRMARC for 15% off.
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[00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:47.520] Code D-R-Mark.
[00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:53.440] Trust me when I say that I've tried a lot of supplements over the years, but there are just a few that I cannot travel without.
[00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:55.440] And one of them is Mitopure by Timeline.
[00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:59.360] It contains urolithin A, a powerful compound that supports your mitochondria.
[00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:03.400] The tiny power plants in your cells that drive energy, metabolism, and healthy aging.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:05.880] I take it as part of my Young Forever longevity shake.
[00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:06.440] Why?
[00:02:06.440 --> 00:02:12.200] Because it helps clear out old, dysfunctional mitochondria and helps your body build new, more efficient ones.
[00:02:12.200 --> 00:02:17.880] That means better energy, better muscle function, better brain health, all the things that start to slow down as we age.
[00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:22.040] And now, Timeline has made it even easier to take with sugar-free strawberry gummies.
[00:02:22.040 --> 00:02:25.560] Two a day gives you the full, clinically effective dose.
[00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.200] They taste great and they're part of my daily routine.
[00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:29.240] No skipping.
[00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:32.040] Timeline is offering my listeners a special discount.
[00:02:32.040 --> 00:02:37.880] Just go to timeline.com/slash DRHyman and give yourselves the support they deserve.
[00:02:38.200 --> 00:02:39.560] Nick, welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:39.560 --> 00:02:41.240] So great to have you on today.
[00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:41.800] Thanks, Bob.
[00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:42.600] Thanks for hosting me.
[00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:43.560] I'm a big fan of yours.
[00:02:43.720 --> 00:02:44.440] Oh, Ditto.
[00:02:44.440 --> 00:02:48.600] I mean, here we are in Ibiza in your house or Ibiza, as they say in Spain.
[00:02:48.600 --> 00:02:59.960] This morning, I just came from one of your classes called Timo Moves, which we're going to talk about, which is a powerful way of rehabilitating the body, of gaining strength, of healing injury.
[00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:01.800] And I've known you for years.
[00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:05.640] I've come to your class for years, but I don't think the world really knows about you very much.
[00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:11.640] And I don't think the world knows about this practice that you developed that is quite powerful.
[00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:17.320] And for me, it looks deceptively easy, but it's actually quite hard.
[00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:27.160] And I want to sort of start off by kind of talking about something that just happened to me, which is I'm rehabilitating for my own back surgery.
[00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:28.840] And I've shared a little bit about that.
[00:03:28.840 --> 00:03:30.520] And I really was taken down.
[00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:35.160] And I've been doing better and better, and it's been about six months, and I've gained a lot of strength.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:39.240] And I was weight training by myself because I was traveling.
[00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:43.080] And I was lifting these weights in a way that kind of tweaked my back a little bit.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:47.520] And I was really hurting, and I was a little nervous about that I do something wrong, that I screw it up.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:50.640] I was uncomfortable, but I decided I'm gonna go to the class and just do what I can do.
[00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:55.120] And I just did one class, and I was huffing and puffing and sweating.
[00:03:55.440 --> 00:04:07.280] And by using these sort of very weird movements that are like animal movements, crawling on the floor, crawling backwards, going on your side, stomach, stretching, it's like this kind of wild practice.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:08.880] In one class, my pain was gone.
[00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:12.800] And I was like, holy shit, it's powerful stuff.
[00:04:13.440 --> 00:04:14.960] Yeah, that's very rewarding to hear.
[00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:19.120] I want to sort of start out by talking about a little bit of your background because it's so interesting.
[00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:25.920] And, you know, you're not your typical yoga teacher who, you know, like our fitness trainer who kind of just went through the traditional route.
[00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:27.200] You had a kind of a crazy story.
[00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:40.000] You went from basically cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness through an incredible story that we can't really tell the whole thing because it takes hours.
[00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.560] And we were in Africa together and you told me the story.
[00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:45.920] It took hours to tell the story and it blew my mind.
[00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:57.360] But essentially, you know, I want you to sort of start by how you first injured yourself and then how you became like a drug smuggler and then how that led to you being in prison and then what you learned in prison.
[00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:03.120] So kind of take us through that story and what happened to you and how you came out the other side as a whole human being.
[00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:04.560] Yeah, I mean that's a big backdrop.
[00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:08.320] So, you know, first and foremost, movement is medicine.
[00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:11.200] It's a healer for the body, it's a healer from the mind.
[00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:16.480] And when I was growing up in my teenage years, I was a pro-skier.
[00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:18.800] I had an idyllic life.
[00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:20.000] I lived in the Alps.
[00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:25.120] I was on the international circuit and I broke my back in two places.
[00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:27.520] You fractured your vertebrae?
[00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:34.040] Yeah, I fractured L3 and L4, so compression fractures and completely herniated all the lumbar spine.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.160] That was the first injury.
[00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:39.080] Five years later, I broke T7 and T9 in a motocross accident.
[00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:43.320] So, you know, in my teenage years, in my early 20s, I smashed myself to pieces.
[00:05:43.480 --> 00:05:48.760] In the process of that, you know, I'd hit the self-destruct switch, I'd gotten into drug trafficking.
[00:05:49.080 --> 00:05:51.560] I found myself in South America.
[00:05:51.560 --> 00:05:56.680] I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine.
[00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:58.680] And I had a broken body and a broken mind.
[00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:00.040] And it was the template that I had.
[00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:04.440] I haven't had anybody on my podcast who's been in prison for 10 years.
[00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:09.880] Actually, of those 10 years that I spent in prison, I spent four years in isolation.
[00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:10.280] Wow.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:11.080] Which is another story.
[00:06:11.080 --> 00:06:21.080] That was a deep, deep, deep dive into myself, into practice, which is actually where a lot of the kind of benefits and a lot of the rewards that I get today for movement and meditative practices came from.
[00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:24.360] That's kind of how and why I developed primal moves.
[00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:26.680] I came out of prison in 2010 with a broken body.
[00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:28.760] You know, my spine looked like it had scoliosis.
[00:06:28.760 --> 00:06:30.360] I had total lumbar herniation.
[00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:32.200] I had degeneration of the discs.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:33.320] When you went into prison.
[00:06:33.320 --> 00:06:33.640] Yeah.
[00:06:33.640 --> 00:06:35.560] So when I came out, I was in a lot of pain.
[00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:40.520] And I spent years practicing with a chiropractor.
[00:06:40.520 --> 00:06:43.720] The kind of modern medicine were like, look, let's just open up your spine.
[00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:45.560] Let's put a big bolt in there.
[00:06:45.560 --> 00:06:50.360] Let's stitch the entire lumbar spine together and bolt it together.
[00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:52.520] And I was like, no way.
[00:06:52.520 --> 00:06:55.080] Like, there's no way we're going down that route just yet.
[00:06:55.080 --> 00:06:55.720] So I started to.
[00:06:55.800 --> 00:06:56.760] That's fair surgery.
[00:06:56.760 --> 00:06:57.960] That's what I just had, by the way.
[00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:00.520] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think yours was undeniable.
[00:07:00.520 --> 00:07:01.080] You had to have it.
[00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:01.480] I had that.
[00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:03.720] But I was still in that position of, you know, I was 40 years of age.
[00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:03.960] Yeah.
[00:07:03.960 --> 00:07:05.960] And I was like, I don't want to have a rod in my back.
[00:07:05.960 --> 00:07:14.560] So I went down the route of yoga, pilatis, elementary gymnastics training, and I tapped into lots of different modalities of movement.
[00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:16.400] And, you know, I just came out of prison as well.
[00:07:16.400 --> 00:07:18.720] Well, I developed a deep, deep yoga practice.
[00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:19.360] In prison.
[00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:19.760] In prison.
[00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:24.400] And that was what started the whole kind of journey into rehabilitation, like physical and mental.
[00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:26.720] My body was not in a good place when I was 40.
[00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.240] You know, I was in a lot of pain.
[00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:30.560] I had joint pain, my spine hurt.
[00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:37.760] You know, more often than not, I'd be two or three weeks lying down in my bed in the fetal position where the discs are just completely bulging.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.000] I had no spinal stability.
[00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:41.680] I had no joint stability.
[00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:48.640] So I basically went about restabilizing my joints through quadrupedal body weight movement.
[00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:50.880] Quadripedal movement.
[00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:51.760] Yeah, so my body weight.
[00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:56.000] Moving on all fours in a non-linear fashion.
[00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:11.600] So it'd be forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally, moving in multiple planes of direction, multiple joint action, but with my body weight, not creating any levers in the body, which would then create stress in the lumbar spine, which is what you've done.
[00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:18.480] You've picked up a weight in an awkward fashion, and that lever, you know, the weak part of the lever is the hinge, and that's what's happened.
[00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:19.360] You've just tweaked it.
[00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:22.720] So what I was looking at doing was restabilizing my body.
[00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:24.400] So I did it through this practice.
[00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:28.960] So it was through a damaged body that I developed primal moves.
[00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:34.240] And the story that I'm hearing from you today is a story that I've heard hundreds and hundreds of times.
[00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:47.760] People come to class and they've got stiff bodies, jammed up bodies, herniations in their lower back, destabilized joints, hypermobility, stiffness, and just basically, like degenerating bodies.
[00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:52.440] They come to class once, twice, three times, they get hooked, and they're going away happy humans.
[00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:52.600] Yeah.
[00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:54.000] And they're going away pain-free.
[00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:07.720] And then they take on and really then they start to embody the practice because not only do they get their physical youth back, but they actually start to like grow with that and really start to enjoy their body again and start doing things in their 40s and 50s that they thought they'd never ever be able to do again.
[00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:10.440] You said earlier you were in solitary confinement for four years.
[00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:12.520] I mean, that would drive most people insane.
[00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:14.520] I mean, you'll end up climbing the walls.
[00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:22.600] Yeah, and you know, there are practices like the dark retreats that Tibetans do where they go for months or longer in darkness and vipassanas.
[00:09:22.920 --> 00:09:25.560] Yeah, and but but you didn't choose this.
[00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:27.800] It chose me.
[00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:28.840] It chose you.
[00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:31.240] And four years is a hell of a long time.
[00:09:31.240 --> 00:09:31.560] Yeah.
[00:09:31.880 --> 00:09:32.600] It's a long time.
[00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:33.320] It's a long time.
[00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:34.600] And you were in a little cell?
[00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:37.880] Yep, I was in a cell, it was probably two meters by three meters.
[00:09:37.880 --> 00:09:42.520] It had a tiny little window at the top and grey concrete walls.
[00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:44.840] And you had to figure out how to move in that space?
[00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.400] So I had some books on yoga that I managed to get sent in.
[00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:49.160] So they let you have books in solitary.
[00:09:49.160 --> 00:09:49.800] So I could have books.
[00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:51.400] And I was in there like 22 hours a day.
[00:09:51.400 --> 00:09:53.560] So I did a lot of city practice.
[00:09:53.720 --> 00:09:57.160] I did a lot of kind of reflection, a lot of mind work.
[00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:06.120] I started to study the works of Raman Maharashi, which was about observing the mind and the ego, which I actually didn't even know we had one until I got into isolation.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:06.840] So this was really a good idea.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:08.040] You didn't know you had a mind and the ego?
[00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:11.400] I had no idea that we had a mind and an ego prior to going into prison.
[00:10:11.560 --> 00:10:19.960] You were just going through life like I was just completely numbed out and desensitized, going through life like a bullet, like a steam train, completely on a self-destruct mission.
[00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:27.160] So actually it was a really beautiful process of actually going into that space of, you know, I was a very grateful convict.
[00:10:27.160 --> 00:10:27.640] Yeah.
[00:10:27.640 --> 00:10:31.240] Albeit, you know, South American prisons are slightly rough.
[00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:31.560] Yeah.
[00:10:31.560 --> 00:10:34.200] And Argentina was not a pleasant place to be in prison.
[00:10:34.520 --> 00:10:38.120] It wasn't like where Martha Stewart went to prison, no, no, no, no, it was nothing like that.
[00:10:38.120 --> 00:10:43.800] The opportunities that I had to go into that isolated period for four years of my life was really quite profound.
[00:10:43.800 --> 00:10:48.960] And, you know, I got into the yoga practice, but it was static, so that was fine.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.840] It kept me moving, and I was basically practicing all day.
[00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:56.640] But when I got yoga postures, yeah, it was static, it was mat-based.
[00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:02.800] So when I got out of prison and I had a studio to move in, I thought, wow, let's try moving this across the floor.
[00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:10.080] So I was doing my sign salutations and the static poses, you know, and instead of just staying on the mat, I actually moved across the floor.
[00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:13.840] And then it was through the healing that started to come out of my body.
[00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:16.080] And then I started to practice with clients.
[00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:20.080] And through that, the practice built a small community in London.
[00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:28.400] And it was from this community and observing bodies that then I really started to systemize an entire method around it.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:34.400] And then you kind of found that yourself out of prison, but your body was still not great.
[00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:40.320] And then through these embodied practices that we know you've called primal moves, you've been able to sort of repair all that.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:43.920] So all the broken back, all the discriminations, all the pain.
[00:11:43.920 --> 00:11:45.440] Because you're like in your mid-50s now.
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:50.320] You're one of the strongest guys I've ever met, and you can do like a one-armed handstand and crazy shit.
[00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:51.520] Exactly.
[00:11:51.520 --> 00:11:53.200] And it is my absolute joy.
[00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:58.880] And you feel like that, sort of, that time in prison helped you sort of get grounded and present in yourself completely.
[00:11:59.120 --> 00:12:02.880] Kind of start to listen to what was happening because you didn't have a lot of distractions.
[00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:04.960] Pre-prison, I was totally distracted.
[00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:07.280] I was numbed down and I was desensitized.
[00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:19.840] Going into prison and going into isolation and going back into that space of stillness and started to embody myself, meaning I was able to actually feel and stop thinking.
[00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:25.520] You know, so instead of asking myself what I was thinking, I was asking myself, what am I feeling?
[00:12:25.520 --> 00:12:26.000] Yeah.
[00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:27.760] And that was a completely different outlook.
[00:12:27.760 --> 00:12:30.440] That was a completely different lens to look at my life through.
[00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:32.520] So, you know, how am I feeling in the morning?
[00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:33.960] How am I sleeping?
[00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:34.920] What do I feel like?
[00:12:34.920 --> 00:12:36.040] How's my cognition?
[00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:37.400] How's my memory?
[00:12:37.400 --> 00:12:38.440] How's my evacuation?
[00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:39.320] Do I have energy?
[00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:40.280] Am I recovered?
[00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:41.560] Am I feeling depressed?
[00:12:41.560 --> 00:12:43.800] So I was actually able to start feeling myself again.
[00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:57.640] And then I worked out that through embodying these practices, which was a lot of breath work and a lot of movement, you know, I was able to remove that kind of depressed feeling that came down into me.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:02.920] You know, anything that became stagnant, any stuck energies, I moved them through with practice.
[00:13:02.920 --> 00:13:07.640] It was through moving my body that I was able to free myself completely.
[00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:14.520] So not only did you kind of move your way out of physical pain, you were able to move your way out of emotional and mental pain.
[00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:15.000] Absolutely.
[00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:26.840] Because all the traumas that I had, you know, from 15 years of smuggling and breaking my body and being on that self-destructive path, I was actually able to go in there and start healing that in prison.
[00:13:26.840 --> 00:13:30.200] Through these practices, you know, I realized that I was so stuck.
[00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:31.960] I was so stuck in my head.
[00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:33.320] I was so rigid.
[00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:34.680] There was so much control.
[00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:37.080] There was so much manipulation going on up there.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:40.440] There was a lot of darkness that was going on in my life at the time.
[00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:41.640] And I had no idea.
[00:13:41.640 --> 00:13:42.680] Yeah, it was just your life.
[00:13:42.680 --> 00:13:43.800] That was basically what it was.
[00:13:43.800 --> 00:13:48.840] And then, as I started to work through my body, I started to work through the fascial system.
[00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:50.600] I started to work through the mind.
[00:13:50.600 --> 00:13:52.280] You know, I also broke down.
[00:13:52.280 --> 00:13:54.120] You know, I had mental breakdowns as well.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:56.280] I think three or four years into prison.
[00:13:56.280 --> 00:13:59.960] I'd been in isolation for about two years and it brought me to my knees.
[00:13:59.960 --> 00:14:01.960] You know, I had a complete emotional mental breakdown.
[00:14:02.040 --> 00:14:03.240] What did that look like?
[00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:04.200] What did that look like?
[00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:11.480] That looked like a baby crying on the floor, sobbing for about two weeks, completely broken and shaking.
[00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:13.640] You were kind of letting go of your old self.
[00:14:13.640 --> 00:14:16.320] My old self, I was having a total ego death.
[00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:17.360] I didn't even know it.
[00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:18.880] It completely crushed me.
[00:14:18.880 --> 00:14:20.320] It brought me to my knees.
[00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:24.320] I lay there crying and sobbing for about two weeks.
[00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:25.920] And where I was, there was no humanity.
[00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:28.480] There was no one coming around to check up on you and say, hey, how are you doing?
[00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:29.600] You want a hug?
[00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:30.720] Do you need something?
[00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:31.920] You need any help?
[00:14:31.920 --> 00:14:32.320] No.
[00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:33.840] The prison guards weren't doing that.
[00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:36.800] The prison guards in South America didn't even come and check.
[00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:38.240] They just came and checked for dead bodies.
[00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:39.760] They just want to give you your food and the thing.
[00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:41.280] They gave you a head count, that was it.
[00:14:41.280 --> 00:14:42.000] They didn't even feed you.
[00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:42.640] They didn't feed you.
[00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:42.880] No.
[00:14:42.880 --> 00:14:44.080] Well, how'd you get your food?
[00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:44.800] You had to get your food in.
[00:14:45.520 --> 00:14:51.040] Someone from the outside had to bring your food in for you and you'd have it in boxes and bags and you had to try and make it and cook it somehow.
[00:14:51.040 --> 00:14:51.280] Really?
[00:14:51.280 --> 00:14:51.920] So there was no food.
[00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:55.040] Malnutrition in the prisons was people dying of malnutrition.
[00:14:55.040 --> 00:14:55.600] It was terrible.
[00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:56.160] It was horrific.
[00:14:56.160 --> 00:14:57.120] It's like third world.
[00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:03.520] That's a powerful story because, you know, most of us are pretty locked into our psychological framework.
[00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:11.920] Our emotions are pretty sort of fixed in the way we relate to the world, to our experience, to relationships, to work, to family, to ourselves.
[00:15:11.920 --> 00:15:15.440] And those rigid patterns keep us from being free.
[00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:23.520] The constructs that we create in our head, which actually I realized post-prison that, you know, freedom is actually a state of mind.
[00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:29.040] Because I've met so many people that are actually in prison because they're just bound by their thoughts.
[00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:30.080] They're so rigid.
[00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:33.520] They've built so many constructs that actually they've stopped themselves from being free anymore.
[00:15:33.520 --> 00:15:35.520] And I didn't actually realize that until I got out of prison.
[00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:35.840] That's true.
[00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:39.440] You can be a billionaire and be still in the prison of your mind.
[00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:39.760] Exactly.
[00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:41.760] So I was euphorically year five in prison.
[00:15:41.760 --> 00:15:43.200] I was euphorically happy.
[00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:44.400] That's incredible.
[00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:45.040] Euphorically happy.
[00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:48.160] She went from like breaking completely down.
[00:15:48.160 --> 00:15:48.560] Yeah.
[00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:52.640] From having complete ego deaths, total mental, emotional breakdowns.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:59.120] Again, it was movement and meditation, breathwork of a daily practice that got me out of that.
[00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:02.520] But I went into states of absolute euphoric happiness.
[00:16:02.760 --> 00:16:09.880] Which I haven't actually achieved since being in prison because now I'm actually, you know, I'm back in the world and I've got distraction again.
[00:16:09.880 --> 00:16:10.600] Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:15.000] You know, I have a house, I have to pay rent, I have a business, I need to pay salaries.
[00:16:15.400 --> 00:16:17.720] You know, I have a lover.
[00:16:18.040 --> 00:16:19.480] So I have desires.
[00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:23.880] So I actually went into some really interesting states of being when I was in there.
[00:16:23.880 --> 00:16:27.000] Yeah, it's a sort of a gift in disguise, right?
[00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:27.480] Totally.
[00:16:27.560 --> 00:16:29.880] I mean, I had that now as a reference point to go back to.
[00:16:30.280 --> 00:16:37.640] So I've been there, I've understood that blissful state of nothingness, you know, when you absolutely own nothing, have nothing.
[00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:38.040] Yeah.
[00:16:38.040 --> 00:16:39.400] And you can be blissfully happy.
[00:16:39.400 --> 00:16:40.920] So I have experienced that.
[00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:54.360] Well, I'm curious about what happened in the process of the breakdown because you describe it almost as a physical experience, you know, laying on the floor, sobbing, and going through the somatic expression and discharge of all the emotion.
[00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:56.600] You know, talk therapy really doesn't do that.
[00:16:56.600 --> 00:16:57.160] No.
[00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:01.880] And for me, you know, I went through a lot of things in my life.
[00:17:01.880 --> 00:17:04.840] I've had many illnesses, many marriages.
[00:17:04.840 --> 00:17:11.720] Probably about five years ago, I found myself fairly, you know, sort of stuck in the prison of my own beliefs and mind.
[00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:21.880] And I knew intellectually what the issues were for my childhood and my mother, who was a child of deaf parents, and how that affected her and how that affected her parenting me.
[00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:27.320] And it's a long story, but I really did not know how to get rid of it.
[00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:38.920] And through a series of processes and things, I was able to kind of have this somatic experience where I just like literally broke down on the floor crying and crying for days, like a week.
[00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:40.200] Yeah, so you've had that breakdown.
[00:17:40.800 --> 00:17:43.560] And I, and I, and it was the weirdest thing.
[00:17:43.560 --> 00:17:44.760] I had the same experience after you.
[00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:54.640] I literally, after it was all free from that, I emerged and I felt euphoric, like high, like I just taken some like drugs, but like happy drugs.
[00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:55.440] I hear you.
[00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:57.760] And it was pretty remarkable.
[00:17:57.760 --> 00:18:01.440] And I just went around in this state for quite a while.
[00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:08.320] It's why I think being in your body is so important and why the work you do is so important because if we just stay in our heads, we'll never get there.
[00:18:08.320 --> 00:18:10.640] And you were forced into it unwillingly.
[00:18:11.040 --> 00:18:11.280] Exactly.
[00:18:11.360 --> 00:18:12.400] And I had no one to talk to.
[00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:12.720] Yeah.
[00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:14.080] So I couldn't do talk therapy.
[00:18:14.080 --> 00:18:14.480] Yeah.
[00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:16.400] So the only way that I knew was somatic work.
[00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:21.200] To release myself of pain, mental, emotional, and physical, all I could do was move.
[00:18:21.200 --> 00:18:23.120] And some days I woke up in pain.
[00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:27.200] My hips were hurting, my shoulders, but my pain, my head was in pain.
[00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:29.040] So I had no one actually there to talk to.
[00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:32.720] I had no one to intellectualize or compartmentalize it with.
[00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:42.000] But I understood, okay, these were the traumas, but the only way I could actually release myself from that was from basic breath work and movement.
[00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:49.760] And it was actually the movement, the somatic work that I was doing in the prison and just constantly working with my somatic nervous system that started to ease out.
[00:18:49.760 --> 00:18:52.160] It was agitating all this stuck energy.
[00:18:52.560 --> 00:18:57.920] It was agitating these traumas to move out of the somatic system, out of the fascicular system.
[00:18:57.920 --> 00:18:59.120] And it was freeing me up.
[00:18:59.120 --> 00:19:06.960] You know, don't get me wrong, some days I had to stand there in my room for maybe an hour having an internal fight with myself.
[00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.960] Because there was one part of me that wanted to lay down and just be depressed.
[00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:16.280] And there was another part of me that was like, no, you've got to do your practice because this pain you're feeling will move through your body.
[00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:16.600] Yeah.
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[00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.000] I would literally stand there and have a stand-up fight of myself for an hour.
[00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:42.160] And I would not move until I did my practice.
[00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:57.040] And the euphoric feeling that came through me as I started to move my body, even raising my hands above my head and touching the floor and synchronizing that with some breathing, the lightness came and it moved through me.
[00:21:57.040 --> 00:22:03.440] And I went through this for like a year, two years of this internal fight of to practice or not to practice.
[00:22:03.840 --> 00:22:14.800] You know, that's why now for me, I think one of the reasons that Primal Moves has become so successful is because of 15 years I've shown up every single day to practice.
[00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:16.720] You mean you don't feel like it, right?
[00:22:17.040 --> 00:22:20.960] Everyone comes down and they seem to be kind of leading through example and inspiration.
[00:22:21.040 --> 00:22:25.280] Like, hey, this guy's down there looking at a great concrete floor two, three hours a day and he's euphorically happy.
[00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:26.720] I'll try that.
[00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:34.000] I went through a different experience recently where I kind of went through this portal where I almost died and I had an infection in my back.
[00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:38.720] It led to an abscess and I had to have major surgery and I was in bed for six weeks.
[00:22:38.720 --> 00:22:40.400] I couldn't walk.
[00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:44.160] I lost 20 pounds, which I'm already pretty skinny.
[00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:48.640] I came out of that and I was really unable to move.
[00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:50.800] I couldn't tie my shoes.
[00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:53.600] I couldn't get up off the toilet by myself.
[00:22:53.600 --> 00:22:57.920] I couldn't do the most basic life things that you think getting dressed.
[00:22:58.240 --> 00:22:59.280] You take it for granted.
[00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:06.840] Yeah, I mean, and I recently saw my surgeon and he said, Most people at your stage are on a walker or maybe never get off a walker.
[00:23:06.840 --> 00:23:13.240] And I did what you did, no matter how bad I felt, or how depressed I was, or how broken I was.
[00:23:13.240 --> 00:23:18.520] I literally got up into the gym every day and worked with physical therapists and a trainer.
[00:23:18.520 --> 00:23:19.720] I started moving.
[00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:23.960] I'm not 100% back yet, but I'm out of pain.
[00:23:24.440 --> 00:23:24.920] Amazing.
[00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:25.800] I'm moving.
[00:23:25.800 --> 00:23:27.000] I'm doing your class.
[00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:30.280] No, I mean, I've seen MR asks of your spine.
[00:23:30.280 --> 00:23:31.000] It's incredible.
[00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:34.840] Yeah, I've got all the hardware in there, like a hardware store in there.
[00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:39.240] And, you know, I'm there with a bunch of 30-year-olds in the class, and I'm 65.
[00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:40.280] Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:23:40.280 --> 00:23:41.240] That's inspiring.
[00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:44.280] And it's just like your body has that capacity.
[00:23:44.280 --> 00:23:54.600] And what I really find interesting, and I wonder if you have any insight in this, is as I look around the world, and especially in America, so many people don't live in their body.
[00:23:54.600 --> 00:23:56.600] They are disconnected from their body.
[00:23:56.600 --> 00:24:04.520] And you can see their bodies become overweight, or they are hunched over, or you can see they don't move fluidly.
[00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:13.080] And it's interesting that people are kind of locked in this state of physical contraction and don't really even know it or aware of it.
[00:24:13.080 --> 00:24:17.480] And they don't realize that there's a way to the other side of that and actually getting free.
[00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:32.120] Because I think, you know, more and more, because we're so connected to our devices, we're so not having to move our bodies, we're just sort of out of this traditional way of living that we've done for hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:39.320] I think the question I have for you is: seeing what's happening in the world around this sort of disconnection from our bodies, how do we start to inch forward?
[00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:48.640] Because it feels like a big hurdle for a lot of people who aren't in their bodies, who aren't exercising regularly, who aren't moving regularly, to actually go from that to doing something.
[00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:50.000] Yeah, it's a big push.
[00:24:50.320 --> 00:24:51.520] I mean, this is mental.
[00:24:51.520 --> 00:24:52.400] You have to like, you have to.
[00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:55.040] No, it has to be a mindset.
[00:24:55.040 --> 00:24:59.120] You need to shift the perception of your mindset and make movement a lifestyle.
[00:24:59.120 --> 00:25:00.960] It has to become part of your life.
[00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:07.360] You know, I say to a lot of people here that have full-time jobs and they work that you need to actually book this session in and make it part of your life.
[00:25:07.360 --> 00:25:11.520] It needs to be embodied as a daily practice.
[00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:13.520] And they see the benefits from that.
[00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:17.360] And trying to create that shift of people where they actually think, yeah, you know what?
[00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:23.760] Just going to give myself one hour a day to go to class or to get on the mat or to go to the gym and do something.
[00:25:23.760 --> 00:25:25.600] Even go for a walk or a swim.
[00:25:25.600 --> 00:25:28.560] But suddenly just move your body because this is a hunter-gatherer body.
[00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:30.080] It needs to move.
[00:25:30.080 --> 00:25:32.000] It was designed and created to move.
[00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:34.160] And the more you move it, the better it feels.
[00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:35.760] And it will degenerate.
[00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:41.200] The body, if you sit in a chair all day, the body will just slowly degenerate quicker than you think.
[00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:41.760] That's true.
[00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:43.440] I mean, it doesn't discriminate.
[00:25:43.600 --> 00:25:45.440] The more you move it, the better it's going to feel.
[00:25:45.440 --> 00:25:51.520] I mean, I was in bed for six weeks and I never felt so debilitated.
[00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:52.720] Yeah, powerless, yeah.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:59.920] Powerless, but also just like my body lost all of its function and I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself.
[00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:01.440] I couldn't do the most simple life.
[00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:08.960] Well, I think because if you had that template, that framework of being healthy, because I could remember what it was like, but I was like, remember what it felt like.
[00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:12.240] So you had muscle memory to be like, hey, I want to go back to feeling like this.
[00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:13.680] I don't want to feel like I am now.
[00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:18.960] I mean, I was a yoga teacher in my 20s, and you know, we did seven hours of yoga a day for like a month.
[00:26:19.080 --> 00:26:20.480] Yeah, you get pretty flexible.
[00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:24.880] But even as kids, you know, growing up now, you know, it's not in the school curriculum.
[00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:26.240] There's no sport.
[00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:35.400] There's not a daily session of sport where they're encouraging children to move and be fit and be conscious and try and be embodied and do mindful practices.
[00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:37.880] You know, they're sat down in a chair and they're given a book.
[00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:38.600] And that's true.
[00:26:38.600 --> 00:26:55.800] And I think, you know, because we're so disconnected from our bodies, I think it also prevents us from being able to access a very powerful liberating force, which is using the body and the somatic practices, as you call them, to start to free up a lot of the stuck emotions and the beliefs and the fears.
[00:26:55.800 --> 00:27:02.600] And yes, sometimes, you know, talk therapy helps or coaching helps or those things can be helpful, or psychedelic medicine.
[00:27:02.600 --> 00:27:06.920] But I think, you know, movement as medicine, you said that right at the beginning, is powerful.
[00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:14.680] And a lot of people are into longevity and they want to take this vitamin or this drug or do this special thing or take a hyperbaric chamber or whatever.
[00:27:14.680 --> 00:27:16.920] They're trying to move.
[00:27:17.240 --> 00:27:18.440] For me, it's bypassing.
[00:27:18.760 --> 00:27:23.000] They're trying to hack their way to health by bypassing doing the hard work.
[00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:23.400] Yeah.
[00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:25.640] Which is actually to go into a class.
[00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:30.360] I mean, one of the beautiful things about Primal is a very community-driven brand.
[00:27:30.360 --> 00:27:32.920] So we have like a big group of people that move together.
[00:27:32.920 --> 00:27:34.760] And that's really beautiful and really inspiring.
[00:27:34.760 --> 00:27:37.160] You know, we sometimes have 80 people come into class.
[00:27:37.160 --> 00:27:38.920] I know it's pretty crowded this morning.
[00:27:39.240 --> 00:27:42.600] And that's so very beautiful because of, you know, you get this.
[00:27:42.600 --> 00:27:45.560] I could barely find a place on the hanging bar.
[00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:46.280] I'm going to go to the fly bar.
[00:27:46.920 --> 00:27:48.040] There's so many people there.
[00:27:48.040 --> 00:27:51.880] But, you know, just moving together as a group, it brings about exponential growth.
[00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:52.280] Yeah.
[00:27:52.280 --> 00:27:53.880] You know, it brings a flow state around.
[00:27:53.880 --> 00:27:54.600] It's inspiring.
[00:27:54.600 --> 00:27:58.120] You release oxytocins, you release serotonin and dopamine.
[00:27:58.120 --> 00:28:01.240] You get that happy drug feeling of just moving in a group.
[00:28:01.240 --> 00:28:01.640] Yeah.
[00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:08.120] You know, when you're doing a class which biomechanically works, not only do you feel emotionally good, but you feel bloody physically good as well.
[00:28:08.120 --> 00:28:08.520] Yeah.
[00:28:08.520 --> 00:28:10.840] You know, and that's what Primal essentially is.
[00:28:10.840 --> 00:28:15.200] Yeah, it's sort of like healing almost invisibly when you do it.
[00:28:14.760 --> 00:28:16.480] And you don't have to think about it.
[00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:28.800] And I think whether it's yoga, whether it's primal moves, or whether it's other forms of exercise, if people can get in their bodies, it's really the key to feeling good, to healing.
[00:28:28.800 --> 00:28:31.280] If I don't exercise for a few days, I start to feel cracky.
[00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:31.760] Cracky.
[00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:33.440] It's physical longevity.
[00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:35.840] People talk a lot about physical longevity these days.
[00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:37.520] Just move.
[00:28:37.840 --> 00:28:44.400] And so, are you familiar with the science around how this all works in terms of the somatic healing?
[00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:44.960] Of primal?
[00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:46.320] Of primal or just in general?
[00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:47.040] Yeah, I've studied it.
[00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:48.560] I've looked into it quite deeply.
[00:28:48.560 --> 00:28:51.360] So, can you tell us sort of about the science behind this?
[00:28:51.360 --> 00:29:00.800] Because I think people may not really be aware of what the sort of underlying principles are of why this works and how it works.
[00:29:00.800 --> 00:29:02.400] I've written a manual on this.
[00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:06.160] I wrote a 100-page manual on why primal moves works.
[00:29:06.560 --> 00:29:07.840] Where can people find that?
[00:29:07.840 --> 00:29:09.680] You have to do one of my teacher trainings to get that.
[00:29:09.680 --> 00:29:10.720] That's like my blueprint.
[00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:19.600] So it's a big topic, it's a big conversation about what it does, but it's actually starting to rebuild muscle mass.
[00:29:19.600 --> 00:29:22.160] It starts to restabilize your joints.
[00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:28.560] It starts to increase cognitive and behavioral patterns physically and mentally.
[00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:29.600] It's non-linear.
[00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:31.840] It starts to break down rigidity in the mind.
[00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:36.240] The fascial networks, it starts to move the fluids around in the fascial system.
[00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:37.920] The motion creates the lotion.
[00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:39.600] The body starts to move.
[00:29:39.600 --> 00:29:43.280] It starts to become lean and supple.
[00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:44.480] It becomes healthy.
[00:29:44.480 --> 00:29:46.640] The muscles are working properly.
[00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:49.200] You start to get bone density, muscle density again.
[00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:52.400] You know, you're working with neuronal and non-neuronal intelligence.
[00:29:52.400 --> 00:30:00.000] You know, the cells are working to release stem cells, creating stem cells, because of this micro-trauma in the body.
[00:30:00.440 --> 00:30:09.880] Every time you're moving across the floor, all the joints are creating what we call micro-micro-trauma, which then gives stem cell a job to actually start healing you again.
[00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:13.800] You know, if you don't do anything, stem cell doesn't work, doesn't need to, goes to sleep.
[00:30:13.800 --> 00:30:21.720] The more you work your body, the more stem cell has a job, so it starts to heal the body, starts to rejuvenate the muscles, the bones, the skin, the connective tissue.
[00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:26.280] You know, along with that, if you're also eating consciously as well, that for me is hacking.
[00:30:26.280 --> 00:30:27.240] That's biohacking.
[00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:29.080] Breathing, eating, moving.
[00:30:29.080 --> 00:30:32.200] I think the hurdle for a lot of people is just getting started, right?
[00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:36.200] So, how would you sort of advise people who want to get to class?
[00:30:36.200 --> 00:30:38.200] Well, not every town has primal moves yet.
[00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:41.960] Yeah, so we, well, we've got a digital space, so you can find it online.
[00:30:42.600 --> 00:30:43.720] Where do you find it online?
[00:30:43.720 --> 00:30:45.880] So, www.primalmoves.com.
[00:30:45.880 --> 00:30:53.320] So, we've got a plug-and-play really cheap subscription model, and on there, you've got probably like 150 sessions, and it's mat-based.
[00:30:53.320 --> 00:30:56.200] So, all you need is a mat and a small space.
[00:30:56.200 --> 00:30:59.000] You don't need to go to a gym, you don't need equipment.
[00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:04.040] You can literally just roll out your mat, open up your tablet, and you get visual.
[00:31:04.520 --> 00:31:06.360] You don't need a big floor space to do it.
[00:31:06.520 --> 00:31:08.200] So, I guide the sessions.
[00:31:08.200 --> 00:31:14.920] Actually, I built it in COVID because when the studios started to shut in COVID, everyone reached out to me and was like, Hey, how can we practice?
[00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:30.120] So, then I built this very simple plug-and-play digital space where people could just literally turn on the system and they could work through their body to have like full flow classes, or you can work on stabilizing your spine, opening your hips, strengthening your shoulders.
[00:31:30.120 --> 00:31:30.520] Amazing.
[00:31:30.520 --> 00:31:31.960] So, there's a lot of content on there.
[00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:33.400] That's definitely my future.
[00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:44.200] Yeah, and obviously, now what we're trying to do, you know, because there's so many people that have come into this community of Primal, that when they're going home to their cities throughout the States and Europe, they're actually wanting to open studios.
[00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:53.200] So, now we have a whole training program, and the idea is that over the next few years, we're going to be opening, you know, like mothership destination studios in the bigger cities.
[00:31:53.520 --> 00:31:53.920] That's great.
[00:31:53.920 --> 00:31:55.680] And if you don't live in one of those cities, you can do it online.
[00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:57.760] And I think I'm going to start doing that.
[00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:58.560] I miss it.
[00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:00.000] Like when I'm not here, I'm like, oh, I can't.
[00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:01.920] I mean, the sessions are like half an hour.
[00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:03.920] There's 10, 20, 30 minute sessions.
[00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:04.880] That's all you need.
[00:32:05.120 --> 00:32:06.720] Just a little bit every single day.
[00:32:06.720 --> 00:32:08.720] You just got to tap into the body every day.
[00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:10.480] And also, it gets you out of your head.
[00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:14.480] You know, for me, there's nothing more pleasurable than living in my body.
[00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:16.560] It's the most pleasurable place I can ever be.
[00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:18.560] Well, I think most people don't live in their body.
[00:32:18.560 --> 00:32:21.280] They don't pay attention to the signals that their body says.
[00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:24.160] They don't eat when they're hungry and not eating when they're not hungry.
[00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:25.760] They don't sleep when they're tired.
[00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:27.280] They push themselves.
[00:32:27.280 --> 00:32:31.040] People are in all sorts of strange disconnect from their physical body.
[00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:36.480] They're upregulated, they're anxious, they're living on sugar, their sleep patterns aren't good.
[00:32:37.040 --> 00:32:40.880] And you're very disciplined about your practices, right?
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:42.400] Really, yeah, it's a daily thing for me.
[00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:43.920] So, like, it's non-negotiable.
[00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.680] Tell us about your food patterns and your habits because it's different than most people.
[00:32:47.840 --> 00:32:49.200] So, I'm a very simple eater.
[00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:51.360] I'm 80% carnivore.
[00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:57.760] So, my main meat is red meat, and I'm super particular about how I source it.
[00:32:57.760 --> 00:33:00.160] So, I actually go to the farm myself.
[00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:02.080] I look at the cows.
[00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:08.480] I need to understand that the cow is walking around, eating grass under the sun, and does not go in the barn.
[00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:10.400] And that the way that the animal is killed is very special.
[00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:14.560] As you know, the whole food conversation is a big topic, is a big debate.
[00:33:14.560 --> 00:33:19.200] And getting well-sourced foods is a really hard thing to do these days.
[00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:27.040] You know, the soils are devitalized, they're demineralized, the foods are genetically modified, the animals are being injected with God knows what.
[00:33:27.040 --> 00:33:30.360] So, sourcing your food is a for me, it's a really important thing.
[00:33:30.360 --> 00:33:33.720] You know, what I believe that you know, what we eat is what we are.
[00:33:33.720 --> 00:33:38.280] You know, what's going in the soils and what's going in these animals is who our body becomes.
[00:33:38.680 --> 00:33:43.400] So, you know, my meat's grass-fed, grass-finished, and I eat a lot of it.
[00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:46.360] I don't eat many vegetables, I don't eat greens, I eat fruit.
[00:33:46.600 --> 00:33:50.520] But you're explaining to me why, because people are like, well, greens are good, or vegetables are good, so why do you feel?
[00:33:50.760 --> 00:33:52.840] I started to feel inflamed.
[00:33:52.840 --> 00:33:54.760] Because you were noticing what your body was feeling.
[00:33:54.760 --> 00:33:57.720] So, I was observing my gut, it didn't feel good.
[00:33:57.720 --> 00:34:10.520] When I eat greens, my gut started to feel almost a bit achy and I started to feel a little bit joint ache and a bit foggy in the head.
[00:34:10.520 --> 00:34:16.840] So, I'd go through long periods, say three to six months, of doing processes of elimination of foods that I would eat and wouldn't eat.
[00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:19.080] So, I stopped eating grains completely.
[00:34:19.720 --> 00:34:21.800] I eat very few carbs.
[00:34:22.280 --> 00:34:27.880] You know, every now and then I might go out and have some pasta or some rice, but you know, very seldom like once or twice a month.
[00:34:27.880 --> 00:34:30.680] I don't eat many sugars, hardly any.
[00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:33.400] I eat fruit and all the animals.
[00:34:33.400 --> 00:34:34.440] And potatoes.
[00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:35.400] Potatoes.
[00:34:35.640 --> 00:34:41.240] My classic meal would be a fillet steak, barely cooked, with lashings of ghee.
[00:34:41.560 --> 00:34:42.520] So, I eat a lot of ghee.
[00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:44.280] I eat a lot of fat and a lot of protein.
[00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:50.280] So, I'm essentially fueled by mitochondria, which is the cell's ability to produce energy as opposed to insulin.
[00:34:50.520 --> 00:34:53.240] So, my energy levels throughout the day are really well balanced.
[00:34:54.120 --> 00:34:57.720] I have two lattes and a pan of chocolate.
[00:34:57.720 --> 00:34:59.000] So, I keep it real.
[00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.920] I have like my percentage of diet, which is what I call my junk diet.
[00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:04.360] Yeah, yeah yeah well i keep it real.
[00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:08.120] You know, I have a pan of chocolate, I have a coffee, every now and then I might have an ice cream.
[00:35:08.360 --> 00:35:09.640] You know, I like to keep it real.
[00:35:10.120 --> 00:36:47.560] But I know that 75-80% of what I eat is grass-fed animals, really well sourced and for me like you know to understand my markers i wake up in the morning and i i know feel you know how about how am i feeling how am i sleeping how's my recovery how's my mind is it foggy how's my gut how's my evacuation in my practice my physical practice you know how's my body recovering how am i training how's my energy levels 95 and they're good i just recently had my uh my bloods done and i had them them checked and they said wow your bloods are like that of a man 30 years ago yeah of a 30 year old man yeah like my my testosterone is up at a thousand yeah my hdl my ad ldo is really healthy uh my hemoglobin is good my minerals my vitamins are really high and they said to me this is incredible you don't eat vegetables do you take supplements no so i don't take supplements i avoid supplements at all costs i've started to take creatine just to see how it feels yeah for like cognition and recovery but i don't supplement i literally just source really good foods yeah train and breathe yeah and that for me is hacking i take a sauna four times a week and i get in the ice bath when i can but again it's more of a lifestyle as opposed to you know i i try and avoid supplements and i try and convert people onto healthy foods healthy living well you know it's interesting you know historically we never took supplements because we had a very nutrient-dense diet and if you look at hunter-gatherers diets and this has been well studied you know the the amount of vitamins minerals uh were extremely high compared to modern diets and they also had animals that were eating wild plants.
[00:36:47.560 --> 00:36:48.120] Exactly.
[00:36:48.120 --> 00:36:53.960] And those wild plants are full of not just vitamins and minerals, but also phytochemicals that are very healing.
[00:36:53.960 --> 00:37:04.760] And there's an amazing guy, I did a podcast with him, a couple of podcasts, because one of the most incredible people i've ever met, named Fred Provenza, who wrote a book called Nourishment about what we can learn from animals about how to eat.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:11.000] And what he said was he studied rangeland ecology and the relationship between plants and animals and the soil and nature.
[00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:25.960] He found that the animals would eat, you know, a few main like calorie crops or plants, but then they would sample up to 100 or more different plants that had different properties, the different minerals or different nutrients, and that the animals knew.
[00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:36.600] Like I've been in the Amazon, I remember seeing this side of this river, it was just clay, and the parrots just came like fly in flocks and were eating the minerals because they knew their body.
[00:37:36.600 --> 00:37:37.560] The soil, yeah.
[00:37:38.120 --> 00:37:39.320] We're so disconnected.
[00:37:39.320 --> 00:37:41.960] We don't think we need like Skittles, you know?
[00:37:41.960 --> 00:37:42.680] Like, oh, that looks good.
[00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:50.600] But the thing is, now you know, the food has lost its vitality, and so we have to overeat, over-consume to get all the minerals and vitamins that we need.
[00:37:50.600 --> 00:37:51.800] And now we're lacking.
[00:37:51.800 --> 00:37:52.280] Yeah.
[00:37:52.280 --> 00:38:00.040] Whereas, you know, if I eat three or four hundred grams of grass-fed, grass-finished fillet steak, it's so densely nutritious that actually that's all I need for the afternoon.
[00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:01.640] That and a few potatoes for flavor.
[00:38:01.640 --> 00:38:02.200] But that's it.
[00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:05.560] And a couple of big scoops of ghee, and I'm done.
[00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:06.840] I feel absolutely amazing.
[00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:20.920] And the meat you're eating, though, is different because it's animals who are eating wild plants and who are actually getting those phytochemicals in their meat and the nutrients in their meat and the fatty acids in their meat that are different.
[00:38:21.320 --> 00:38:24.040] And those actually have profound biological effects.
[00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:27.240] So it's not only what you eat, it's what you're eating at.
[00:38:27.560 --> 00:38:29.080] No, I'm really, I mean, I'm very careful.
[00:38:29.240 --> 00:38:33.480] If I go out to a restaurant, you know, I'm super careful about if I eat meat or not.
[00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:35.560] You know, I want to know that it's grass-fed.
[00:38:35.800 --> 00:38:38.760] You know, because if you eat industrial meat, you're going to get sick.
[00:38:38.760 --> 00:38:39.160] Yeah.
[00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:39.960] It's a fact.
[00:38:39.960 --> 00:38:41.400] You're going to get inflamed.
[00:38:41.400 --> 00:38:49.520] And, you know, I go through periods sometimes if I go away on holiday, I'll venture out and I'll eat vegetables and I get flatulence.
[00:38:44.680 --> 00:38:50.960] I get swelling in my gut.
[00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:52.560] I get bloating.
[00:38:52.560 --> 00:38:54.080] I get fogginess in the head.
[00:38:54.080 --> 00:38:55.040] I wake up in the morning.
[00:38:55.040 --> 00:38:56.400] I feel drowsy.
[00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:59.120] So I'm thinking, well, that can't be good.
[00:38:59.120 --> 00:39:21.840] Well, what's fascinating, Nick, is that you went from being this kind of broken guy who was dealing drugs and running cocaine between Argentina and the UK and eating McDonald's to being at 55 in a way that you really remade your whole self physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, from the ground up.
[00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:25.280] And most people don't have to go through what you went through to get there.
[00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:34.160] But what's so fascinating to me is that, you know, very few people pay attention to what's happening in their body in real time every day and then listen to it.
[00:39:34.160 --> 00:39:36.880] Now, I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your body.
[00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:38.640] It'll tell you exactly what's going on.
[00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:42.320] You're like, oh, I ate this and my stomach feels that.
[00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:45.920] Most people have no clue that what they eat affects how they feel.
[00:39:45.920 --> 00:39:51.040] When I was in prison as well, obviously I saw the effects of the human condition at its worst.
[00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:56.000] You know, not only for living and the way that humans were treating each other, but what they were eating.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:05.600] So I experienced such darkness that when I got out of prison, I was like, okay, I'm going to completely rewrite the story because I don't want to go there ever again.
[00:40:05.600 --> 00:40:08.240] You know, I completely rewrote my story.
[00:40:08.240 --> 00:40:09.920] And how old are you when you got out of prison?
[00:40:09.920 --> 00:40:10.560] 40.
[00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:11.040] 40.
[00:40:11.440 --> 00:40:13.360] So I've been going 15 years now, yeah.
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:13.760] Wow.
[00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:15.200] And I've never looked back once.
[00:40:15.200 --> 00:40:15.600] Wow.
[00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:18.720] I got out of prison and I think within six weeks I was coaching.
[00:40:18.840 --> 00:40:22.960] I never took back, I got out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
[00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:29.280] And I had to go home and live in my parents at the age of 40 with no money in the bedroom that I grew up in.
[00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:30.040] And that was tough.
[00:40:30.040 --> 00:40:31.480] I mean, imagine going back to your parents.
[00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:33.640] Well, you were, you know, a millionaire, right?
[00:40:34.040 --> 00:40:34.840] I was a multi-millionaire.
[00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:35.400] Mi-millionaire.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.120] I mean, I had everything.
[00:40:36.360 --> 00:40:42.440] I had cars, boats, cars, all the toys, I mean, houses, investments.
[00:40:42.680 --> 00:40:44.440] I was ahead of the game in my early 30s.
[00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:45.720] And I lost everything.
[00:40:45.880 --> 00:40:47.400] And that was a good process as well.
[00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:52.920] That was, you know, a big process around attachment because it was a tough call coming out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
[00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:59.240] And when you were in prison, did you have the sense that you were wanting to move into teaching what you learned there?
[00:40:59.240 --> 00:41:00.360] I didn't quite know.
[00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:03.960] I was on such a healing journey.
[00:41:04.280 --> 00:41:07.400] Everything was really about healing my body and my mind.
[00:41:07.400 --> 00:41:16.840] And I knew that there was going to be a big shift and a big change, but I didn't actually quite know what I was going to do because I never knew when I was going to get out of prison.
[00:41:17.080 --> 00:41:19.240] In South America, prisons stay there indefinitely.
[00:41:19.240 --> 00:41:19.560] Yeah.
[00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:21.400] Because the justice systems are so bad.
[00:41:21.400 --> 00:41:28.200] Early 2010, they came around to see me and they literally said to me one day, You've got five minutes to get your shit together.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:30.680] We're expelling you from the country.
[00:41:30.680 --> 00:41:35.880] And a bunch of guys came with machine guns and they shackled me to a van.
[00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:39.160] They took me to the airport and they put me on the back of a plane.
[00:41:39.160 --> 00:41:44.440] So my first experience was freedom was the back of a jumbo jet with 400 tourists.
[00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:50.200] Imagine I'd just been in this wild prison in South America where they're killing each other for fun.
[00:41:50.200 --> 00:41:55.080] I was shackled and as I got to the bottom of the stairs of the airplane, they unshackled me.
[00:41:55.080 --> 00:41:57.480] They took me to the top of the stairs.
[00:41:57.480 --> 00:42:05.000] The captain was there to meet me and he said to me, When you get to the UK, you'll be free to go.
[00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:05.560] Wow.
[00:42:05.560 --> 00:42:09.720] So I sat on the back of the plane for 12 hours and it was like a time warp.
[00:42:09.720 --> 00:42:17.280] And I'll tell you something very interesting: this was the first realization that I ever had of living in your body and in your head.
[00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:18.960] Because I sat at the back of the plane.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:20.160] I was like a Zen monk.
[00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:24.000] You know, I've just been in prison for six, seven years, isolation for four.
[00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:25.600] And I just sat still.
[00:42:25.600 --> 00:42:27.440] And I looked around me.
[00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:30.400] I was like, wow, these people don't stop fidgeting.
[00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:33.600] You know, they were playing with the in-house entertainment.
[00:42:33.600 --> 00:42:38.880] They kept opening and closing these poppers and doing these zips up, putting things in the overhead locker.
[00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:42.720] They had these new phones that had these screens on them and a thing called Facebook.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:45.920] And they were just like sitting there tapping and messaging away.
[00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:50.400] And I just thought to myself, oh my God, these people literally cannot stop fidgeting.
[00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:51.600] They're so anxious.
[00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:55.920] And I suddenly realized, wow, they're like totally in their heads and not in their bodies.
[00:42:56.240 --> 00:43:02.960] And this was the first understanding I actually had of observing that in real life.
[00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:05.040] You know, because in prison I couldn't observe that.
[00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:06.320] I could only observe myself.
[00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:14.400] And then when I arrived to Heathrow T5 the next day, I was sitting down and I went and bought myself a coffee.
[00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:16.800] It was the first thing I bought in seven years.
[00:43:16.800 --> 00:43:22.160] And I sat there and I asked myself, I was like, you know, what the hell are you going to go and do?
[00:43:22.160 --> 00:43:22.720] Yeah.
[00:43:22.720 --> 00:43:25.600] You know, you had this life as a smuggler, it's finished.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:34.320] You've just sat in prison and you've rehabilitated yourself and you have all this knowledge on yoga, but it's not that compartmentalized.
[00:43:34.640 --> 00:43:37.120] You've got nowhere to go and you've got no money.
[00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:40.560] And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I going to do?
[00:43:40.880 --> 00:43:49.840] And I heard this voice, it came through and it said that movement and meditative practices had such a profound impact on my life that it freed me from prison.
[00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:54.800] And if I could facilitate that into one person's life, then everything would be worthwhile.
[00:43:54.800 --> 00:43:58.080] And with that message, I got on the train.
[00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:03.560] I went home to my mum knowing I was going to be a facilitator of movement into people's lives.
[00:44:03.880 --> 00:44:09.320] And since that day, I've only ever focused on facilitating movement into one person's life.
[00:44:09.560 --> 00:44:13.080] And now we get like 25,000 people a year that come to the space in Ibiza.
[00:44:13.400 --> 00:44:16.440] And the same thing is now following through Europe and the States.
[00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:19.320] So that has been my, it's almost like I was given this mission.
[00:44:19.320 --> 00:44:19.640] Yeah.
[00:44:19.640 --> 00:44:20.680] And I've stuck to it.
[00:44:20.680 --> 00:44:33.960] I believe in it so much that I actually invested in the studio in Los Angeles because I think it's something that can help transform people and help them in a very sort of subtle, almost sneaky way get inside people.
[00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:34.520] Totally.
[00:44:34.520 --> 00:44:38.120] And helps them land in their physical body.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:42.680] And I come from a place of addictions, of alcoholism, and of trauma.
[00:44:42.680 --> 00:44:48.200] So I know that these practices have helped to cure me and shift that.
[00:44:48.200 --> 00:44:54.040] And through the studios, I work with a lot of people that have a lot of trauma, they work with a lot of addictions.
[00:44:54.040 --> 00:44:55.800] You know, I'm surrounded by them.
[00:44:55.800 --> 00:44:59.240] And they use this practice to help channel the behavior of their mind.
[00:44:59.320 --> 00:45:01.720] You know, and they say to me, this is really helping me.
[00:45:01.720 --> 00:45:02.120] Yeah.
[00:45:02.120 --> 00:45:05.000] You know, this is really helping me stay centered, grounded.
[00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:06.760] I'm learning to live in my body.
[00:45:06.760 --> 00:45:08.760] You know, I'm leaving the narcotics alone.
[00:45:08.760 --> 00:45:09.880] I've stopped drinking.
[00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:11.160] I've stopped smoking.
[00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:12.120] I'm getting healthy.
[00:45:12.120 --> 00:45:13.320] I'm getting straight.
[00:45:13.320 --> 00:45:16.520] So I know it works on so many subtle levels.
[00:45:19.080 --> 00:45:20.120] We've all been there.
[00:45:20.120 --> 00:45:30.680] You're on the go, starving, and your only options are ultra-processed snacks made from GMO corn, hydrogenated oils, and sometimes even mold-contaminated meat.
[00:45:30.680 --> 00:45:31.720] No thanks.
[00:45:31.720 --> 00:45:35.960] That's why I always keep Paleo Valley's 100% grass-fed beef sticks on hand.
[00:45:35.960 --> 00:45:37.960] These aren't your average meat sticks.
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[00:46:09.680 --> 00:46:11.600] So clearly, I'm not the only fan.
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[00:46:19.680 --> 00:46:24.640] Try them now at paleovalley.com/slash hymen and get 15% off your order today.
[00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:27.280] Let's talk hydration because most people are getting it wrong.
[00:46:27.280 --> 00:46:31.760] If you're feeling tired, foggy, crampy, or just off, it could be your electrolytes.
[00:46:31.760 --> 00:46:36.960] I see it all the time in my community, especially with folks who are active, eating clean, or doing intermittent fasting.
[00:46:36.960 --> 00:46:38.960] That's why I use and recommend Element.
[00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:42.880] Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix that skips all the junk.
[00:46:42.880 --> 00:46:45.760] No sugar, no food dyes, no artificial ingredients.
[00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:51.840] Just science-backed hydration with sodium levels that support optimal health, two to three times what current guidelines recommend.
[00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:57.120] It's a game changer for athletes, biohackers, busy parents, and anyone who wants to feel and function their best.
[00:46:57.120 --> 00:46:59.040] Even Navy SEALs and Olympians use it.
[00:46:59.040 --> 00:47:07.360] Right now, Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack of their most popular flavors: citrus salt, raspberry salt, watermelon salt, and orange salt, with any purchase.
[00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:09.440] That's eight single-serving packets for free.
[00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:13.440] Go to drinklement.com/slash hymen to claim your free sample pack with any order.
[00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:16.080] That's drink element.com/slash hymen.
[00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:29.600] Well, what's so interesting, Nick, is, and I'm sure you've heard this, but as I'm doing it, and I was there this morning, the movements are so foreign.
[00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:30.040] Yeah.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:31.640] Things that you normally don't do.
[00:47:31.800 --> 00:47:47.080] Like you're outstretched, you know, with your arms and you're kind of walking like with your feet and your hands on the floor with your body stretch out like Superman and it's like not easy or you're going backwards and doing strange things that you normally don't do.
[00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:50.920] In order to actually do them, you have to be so present and aware in your body.
[00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:51.400] Totally.
[00:47:51.400 --> 00:47:53.240] That all your thoughts kind of go away.
[00:47:53.320 --> 00:47:54.600] So like you're just there.
[00:47:54.600 --> 00:47:56.520] No, it brings a presence about.
[00:47:56.840 --> 00:48:03.880] Yeah, because yoga, like I can kind of get my mind sometimes to be still, but a lot of times it's drifting and I'm like in my head.
[00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:07.560] Yeah, because in yoga, you're kind of you're mat-based, you're static.
[00:48:07.560 --> 00:48:07.880] Yeah.
[00:48:07.880 --> 00:48:09.880] And they're asking you to be still.
[00:48:09.880 --> 00:48:11.400] You know, that's a hard thing.
[00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:11.880] Yeah.
[00:48:11.880 --> 00:48:14.760] You know, to sit and be still and not think is almost impossible.
[00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:16.920] So it's for me, it's like a moving meditation.
[00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:17.560] Exactly.
[00:48:17.560 --> 00:48:24.840] And that's exactly, you know, I came through a lot of practice of Ashtanga Yoga, which again is a very beautiful moving meditation.
[00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:31.240] I didn't find that it didn't functionally fit all the physical needs that I wanted, but it was a very beautiful practice.
[00:48:31.320 --> 00:48:34.360] I was really inspired from these practices.
[00:48:34.360 --> 00:48:43.240] So it was through the community and so many bodies that I was actually able to fully develop the system where it has now for so many people become a moving meditation.
[00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:44.680] The practice works physically.
[00:48:44.680 --> 00:48:47.000] That they understand and they know that, and I know that.
[00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:51.880] You know, I've seen so many benefits from thousands and thousands of people over 15 years.
[00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:54.600] But for me, it's now people say it's like they're checking.
[00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:56.680] It's like their daily place they come to.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:58.520] It's like their morning church session.
[00:48:58.520 --> 00:49:02.200] They just come in, they get in their bodies, and they sometimes they call it church.
[00:49:02.200 --> 00:49:03.400] It's like for me, it's a bit of a church, yeah.
[00:49:03.480 --> 00:49:04.440] Yeah, it's like a moving church.
[00:49:04.680 --> 00:49:11.880] It's a moving meditation, you know, it's so rewarding to see the effects that people receive from this.
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:13.000] Not just physically, but.
[00:49:13.240 --> 00:49:14.720] Mentally, emotionally.
[00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:15.520] Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:30.480] And it's a bridge into something deeper, you know, because then people actually learn to channel the behavior of their body, their mind becomes quiet, then they can go more into like CT practices, which is pretty difficult if you haven't learned to kind of control your body and your breath.
[00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:32.080] So then just try and sit.
[00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:36.800] It's almost impossible, you know, because you can be thinking about last night and tomorrow night and what you're going to buy and what you're going to eat.
[00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:38.800] You know, the mind is just like a constant monkey.
[00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:39.840] Yeah, it's like a monkey mind.
[00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
:48:43.240] So it was through the community and so many bodies that I was actually able to fully develop the system where it has now for so many people become a moving meditation.
[00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:44.680] The practice works physically.
[00:48:44.680 --> 00:48:47.000] That they understand and they know that, and I know that.
[00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:51.880] You know, I've seen so many benefits from thousands and thousands of people over 15 years.
[00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:54.600] But for me, it's now people say it's like they're checking.
[00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:56.680] It's like their daily place they come to.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:58.520] It's like their morning church session.
[00:48:58.520 --> 00:49:02.200] They just come in, they get in their bodies, and they sometimes they call it church.
[00:49:02.200 --> 00:49:03.400] It's like for me, it's a bit of a church, yeah.
[00:49:03.480 --> 00:49:04.440] Yeah, it's like a moving church.
[00:49:04.680 --> 00:49:11.880] It's a moving meditation, you know, it's so rewarding to see the effects that people receive from this.
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:13.000] Not just physically, but.
[00:49:13.240 --> 00:49:14.720] Mentally, emotionally.
[00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:15.520] Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:30.480] And it's a bridge into something deeper, you know, because then people actually learn to channel the behavior of their body, their mind becomes quiet, then they can go more into like CT practices, which is pretty difficult if you haven't learned to kind of control your body and your breath.
[00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:32.080] So then just try and sit.
[00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:36.800] It's almost impossible, you know, because you can be thinking about last night and tomorrow night and what you're going to buy and what you're going to eat.
[00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:38.800] You know, the mind is just like a constant monkey.
[00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:39.840] Yeah, it's like a monkey mind.
[00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:41.840] It's to channel the behavior, that's really hard.
[00:49:41.840 --> 00:49:45.200] So for me to channel it through movement is where it sits.
[00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:59.040] It's interesting because when I trained in yoga, which was 42 years ago, a while ago, before they had yoga mats and before they had Lululemon, we had like sweatpants and a towel, basically.
[00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:05.360] The practice was powerful because I was like 23 at the time and it was seven hours a day of yoga.
[00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:08.480] But the practice was called meditation in motion.
[00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:15.520] It was a Kripala yoga and basically it was a constant flow of movement and not just a static practice.
[00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:17.360] And it was very breath focused.
[00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:23.280] So it was like breath and movement and meditation, sort of all in one, which is kind of what Primal Moose is.
[00:50:23.600 --> 00:50:25.040] It's like breath and meditation.
[00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:26.800] It connects those three together.
[00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:32.240] And also, you know, in the classes, there is a bit of chit chat which creates that social interaction.
[00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:35.200] Was anybody else in prison doing this with you?
[00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:37.040] Were you able to sort of bring anybody else into it?
[00:50:37.520 --> 00:50:39.440] You're just a weird guy doing this stuff.
[00:50:39.440 --> 00:50:41.280] Yeah, I was kind of like the weird crank.
[00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:43.600] They looked at me like, this guy's lost it.
[00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:55.520] And actually, I mean, it was two or three years after being on the main wing in prison and just observing the human condition at its worst, that I actually took voluntary isolation because I wanted to be out of it.
[00:50:55.520 --> 00:50:55.920] Yeah.
[00:50:55.920 --> 00:51:02.200] You know, I was tired of so you weren't forced to be in no, I wanted to go into isolation because of the conditions were so bad.
[00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:05.400] The violence perpetrated between humans and human was horrific.
[00:51:05.720 --> 00:51:08.760] Worried about getting stabbed, stabbed, killed, over nothing.
[00:51:08.760 --> 00:51:09.800] No, life had no value.
[00:51:09.800 --> 00:51:11.160] And I thought, you know, I'm done with this.
[00:51:11.160 --> 00:51:15.400] I'd rather be on my own all day and checked out and tapping into something completely different.
[00:51:15.400 --> 00:51:17.960] You know, and I used it as I turned it into a little ashram.
[00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:19.960] Like a mini-cell ashram.
[00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:21.560] Literally, it was a four-year Vipassana.
[00:51:21.560 --> 00:51:22.840] That's crazy.
[00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:26.120] Yeah, I mean, said quickly, four years isn't that long.
[00:51:26.120 --> 00:51:35.480] But as you start going through the seasons, you start to realize that you go very deep and start peeling back a lot of the layers of the mind and you really get to know yourself.
[00:51:35.480 --> 00:51:41.160] I mean, they say, you know, you want to let a man know who he is, just put him in a room with his thoughts.
[00:51:41.160 --> 00:51:45.880] You know, it doesn't take long before the like the default mind, the superficial part of the mind disappears.
[00:51:46.280 --> 00:51:51.240] And then you start going really deep into your framework and your blueprint.
[00:51:51.240 --> 00:51:52.760] And you're able to sort of see that.
[00:51:52.760 --> 00:51:53.560] Very clearly.
[00:51:53.560 --> 00:51:55.080] It takes some time.
[00:51:55.080 --> 00:52:00.600] You know, eventually the mind will quieten down and your blueprint will come through.
[00:52:00.600 --> 00:52:02.680] Any issues will come through.
[00:52:02.680 --> 00:52:04.200] All your traumas, they will come through.
[00:52:04.200 --> 00:52:05.800] You will be confronted with yourself.
[00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:12.920] Yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, I decided to take a retreat and I went for a month in a cabin by myself in Vermont.
[00:52:12.920 --> 00:52:14.440] No moan, no computer.
[00:52:14.760 --> 00:52:15.080] Beautiful.
[00:52:15.400 --> 00:52:17.880] No journal, no books, just food.
[00:52:17.880 --> 00:52:18.600] Amazing.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:20.680] Me, nature, God.
[00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:22.680] They did have a wood fire at Saunder though.
[00:52:22.680 --> 00:52:23.240] I liked that.
[00:52:23.240 --> 00:52:24.120] And it was the winter.
[00:52:24.120 --> 00:52:25.560] It was in December.
[00:52:25.560 --> 00:52:29.000] But the first few weeks were a little challenging.
[00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:31.240] And then I got really high.
[00:52:31.240 --> 00:52:35.960] Like, like I got really happy, euphoric, and realized that I didn't need anything.
[00:52:35.960 --> 00:52:36.760] Yeah, less is more.
[00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:41.320] You know, if I had a place to sleep and had some food and some clothes to wear, that the rest is gravy.
[00:52:41.320 --> 00:52:41.560] Yeah.
[00:52:41.560 --> 00:52:41.960] You know?
[00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:42.200] Exactly.
[00:52:42.280 --> 00:52:46.000] You'd be surprised, you know, how quickly the distraction dies down.
[00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:49.120] All the cessations of thought, they eventually quieten down.
[00:52:44.680 --> 00:52:50.240] Well, most people can't do that.
[00:52:50.400 --> 00:52:59.600] So, how do people start to sort of break down those old stories and the beliefs and their ego and the things that keep them imprisoned?
[00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:03.520] Because I think people say, What's the meaning of life?
[00:53:03.520 --> 00:53:05.200] What's the purpose of life?
[00:53:05.200 --> 00:53:06.720] To me, it's getting free.
[00:53:06.720 --> 00:53:10.000] I mean, having an embodied practice to start with is a good place to go.
[00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.640] Having a physical practice, which is mindful, is definitely a good place to start.
[00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:18.880] Just starting to feel your body is a very good place to start.
[00:53:18.880 --> 00:53:20.800] Then you can start working on the other stuff.
[00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:26.080] But if you're just going to sit there in your head and try and intellectually work it all out, there's no somatic work being done there.
[00:53:26.240 --> 00:53:27.920] It's like doing your own talk therapy.
[00:53:28.080 --> 00:53:31.360] And you can talk yourself in and out of an empty cargo box all day long.
[00:53:31.680 --> 00:53:34.080] But you're still going to wake up the next day with the same shit.
[00:53:34.480 --> 00:53:35.200] Well, you can see it.
[00:53:35.200 --> 00:53:49.520] I mean, there's a book, The Body Keeps Score, and you can see how when you watch and observe people where their bodies are not free, where they're constricted or limited or just completely living outside of their body.
[00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:51.840] I mean, how does someone get to 300 pounds?
[00:53:52.080 --> 00:53:54.320] It's like by being very unconscious.
[00:53:54.320 --> 00:53:59.040] I mean, at what point do you not stop to look and be, okay, that's enough?
[00:53:59.040 --> 00:54:00.480] Well, it's just trauma usually.
[00:54:00.480 --> 00:54:01.120] It's pain.
[00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:03.920] It's feeding an emptiness.
[00:54:04.400 --> 00:54:06.560] There's all the psychological reasons.
[00:54:07.200 --> 00:54:15.440] But when you just start to do the simplest things to move, it's kind of a trapdoor to get to freedom.
[00:54:15.680 --> 00:54:19.760] It's like, you know, where's that sort of magic button you could push?
[00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:33.800] We can push a lot of places, but I think if more people lived in their bodies, inhabited their bodies, and were doing what you call embodied practices, which are not that hard to do, don't take that much time, it's really profound what happens.
[00:54:33.800 --> 00:54:37.240] And for me, I know it's the core to who I am.
[00:54:37.240 --> 00:54:43.400] If I don't move, I don't feel good and I don't feel like I'm alive and I don't feel like I'm free.
[00:54:43.400 --> 00:54:52.280] For me, being sick and not being able to get out of bed for six weeks and not being able to walk for months and you know, I was like on a cage for a long time.
[00:54:52.520 --> 00:54:53.720] It's amazing what you just did there.
[00:54:53.720 --> 00:54:55.240] I mean, yeah, just a few months.
[00:54:55.240 --> 00:55:03.720] Like, I just, you know, but the body has this incredible reparative body is one of the most amazing creations ever.
[00:55:03.720 --> 00:55:04.200] Yeah.
[00:55:04.200 --> 00:55:05.000] And then people don't realize.
[00:55:05.080 --> 00:55:05.720] So intelligent.
[00:55:05.720 --> 00:55:09.320] And so I've injured myself, or I've done this, or I've done that, so I can't do this, I can't do that.
[00:55:09.320 --> 00:55:11.640] And they start feeling all these limitations.
[00:55:12.120 --> 00:55:15.240] If I have an injury, I'm going to stop this or I'm going to stop that.
[00:55:15.320 --> 00:55:19.480] Instead of going, okay, how do I actually get to repair my system?
[00:55:19.480 --> 00:55:21.160] How do I get to heal those things?
[00:55:21.160 --> 00:55:25.400] And I was talking to a friend recently about the yoga teacher because he was a yoga teacher training with me.
[00:55:25.400 --> 00:55:43.880] The yoga teacher that taught us was a 65-year-old woman named Leela, a German woman, who was in a wheelchair, had massive back surgery, kind of like me, had spinal fusion, basically made herself completely like Gumby, which is flexible.
[00:55:43.880 --> 00:55:48.120] And as a yoga teacher, through the embodied practices that we're talking about, through breath and movement.
[00:55:48.440 --> 00:55:49.160] It's medicine.
[00:55:49.160 --> 00:55:50.200] It really is.
[00:55:50.200 --> 00:55:51.800] It has to be a non-negotiable.
[00:55:52.040 --> 00:55:59.240] And once you start tapping into it and realizing the benefits of really simple embodied movement practices, you won't turn back.
[00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:03.080] I think this whole idea of somatic medicine is kind of foreign to people.
[00:56:03.480 --> 00:56:27.520] We're used to therapy and talk therapy, but I found for my patients and for myself and for many, you know, you can talk all day long, but if you don't change this sort of meat suit that we're in into something that can be a transducer for understanding, for healing, for repair, you kind of become almost rigidified in these patterns.
[00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:46.160] I really encourage everybody listening to think about how they can, in their own life, start to inhabit their body as a way of not just getting fit or living a long time or for exercise, but as a way of starting to heal some of the psycho-emotional spiritual things that we all carry through life that we get stuck in.
[00:56:46.160 --> 00:56:50.560] It's a big step, you know, and also there's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well.
[00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:53.520] Because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
[00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:58.080] They think it's a place where they can reside that sometimes feels quite normal.
[00:56:58.080 --> 00:56:58.720] It's comfortable.
[00:56:58.720 --> 00:56:59.840] I mean, I used to live in pain.
[00:57:00.080 --> 00:57:03.040] I used to live in my trauma-based state of living.
[00:57:03.040 --> 00:57:05.760] That was my day-to-day way of living.
[00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:08.560] Numbed down, desensitized, and in pain.
[00:57:08.800 --> 00:57:09.600] And it felt good.
[00:57:09.600 --> 00:57:11.680] Sometimes I still go back there.
[00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:18.320] I can regress, I can relapse, and I can go into this place of traumatic pain, which feels normal to me.
[00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:21.600] But luckily, I've got tools, you know, where I can move that through.
[00:57:21.600 --> 00:57:32.800] So if someone's listening and they want to reset their nervous system and they want to begin to kind of start with some tools, if you feel anxious or stuck or disconnected, like where do people start?
[00:57:33.040 --> 00:57:37.120] What's the practice that you recommend just starting with in terms of reconnecting with your body?
[00:57:37.120 --> 00:57:45.200] I mean, if they have access to go to a local studio and do a movement, body weight movement-based class, it could be yoga, could be Pilates.
[00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:48.560] Any kind of movement-based practice is a great place to start.
[00:57:49.040 --> 00:57:50.320] That's the beginning.
[00:57:50.320 --> 00:57:53.600] And make it a practice, make it a daily practice.
[00:57:53.600 --> 00:57:56.160] And very quickly, you're going to see the benefits and the shifts.
[00:57:56.160 --> 00:57:59.480] So don't overthink it, but just start somewhere.
[00:57:59.480 --> 00:58:00.920] Yeah, people say to me, What do I do?
[00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:02.200] Might just show up to class.
[00:58:02.200 --> 00:58:03.800] Or go to primalmoves.com.
[00:58:04.120 --> 00:58:04.440] Yeah.
[00:58:04.760 --> 00:58:05.560] Exactly.
[00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:06.280] Just show up.
[00:58:06.680 --> 00:58:07.720] Just do that for yourself.
[00:58:07.720 --> 00:58:09.000] Give yourself that one thing.
[00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:09.960] Show up to class.
[00:58:09.960 --> 00:58:12.600] Show up for yourself once a day and do something.
[00:58:12.600 --> 00:58:14.360] And that will be a bridge into something different.
[00:58:14.360 --> 00:58:17.400] Like you say, you have 10-minute classes, 20-minute classes, 30-minute classes.
[00:58:17.560 --> 00:58:18.280] It's a start.
[00:58:18.840 --> 00:58:21.240] It gets you into the body, it gets you feeling.
[00:58:21.240 --> 00:58:23.800] The relationship to yourself will start to shift very quick.
[00:58:24.040 --> 00:58:30.840] But you know, sometimes I do see that even people like who do a lot of yoga, for example, they still can be rigid in their mind.
[00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:31.480] Yeah.
[00:58:31.480 --> 00:58:34.840] And so, can you kind of explain that in terms of why?
[00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:38.840] Yeah, because a lot of the yoga practices are quite dogmatic.
[00:58:38.840 --> 00:58:40.360] They're tradition-based.
[00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:50.440] So when I was building the primal system, I made sure that it was stripped back from any esoteric or traditional belief system.
[00:58:50.440 --> 00:58:53.240] We don't actually do any spiritual work in there as such.
[00:58:53.240 --> 00:58:55.560] I don't teach a belief system.
[00:58:55.560 --> 00:58:57.320] We're not teaching yoga or Buddhism.
[00:58:57.560 --> 00:59:03.400] We don't use any kind of lineage as such other than that of practice.
[00:59:03.400 --> 00:59:05.240] My lineage is just practice.
[00:59:05.240 --> 00:59:05.880] Just do it.
[00:59:05.880 --> 00:59:06.440] Just do it.
[00:59:06.440 --> 00:59:10.280] But we're not actually trying to share a belief system.
[00:59:10.600 --> 00:59:14.200] If someone wants to come to practice to have a belief system, that's fine.
[00:59:14.200 --> 00:59:17.000] But we're going to try and break that rigidity.
[00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:23.080] And a lot of times in yoga, there's a lot of lineages that are very traditional and they're taught through dogma.
[00:59:23.080 --> 00:59:29.080] So people again are getting stuck in rigid kind of thought patterns.
[00:59:29.080 --> 00:59:30.760] It has to be a certain way.
[00:59:30.760 --> 00:59:37.480] And that was another reason reason why I actually broke away from a lot of the kind of traditional yogic practices.
[00:59:37.520 --> 00:59:39.400] Yeah, yeah, I still do breath work.
[00:59:39.400 --> 00:59:41.400] If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
[00:59:41.400 --> 00:59:42.760] I go to primal every day.
[00:59:42.920 --> 00:59:44.640] If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
[00:59:44.640 --> 00:59:46.400] But it could just be a practice.
[00:59:44.440 --> 00:59:48.800] So we strip it back from anything esoteric.
[00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:56.000] And people really enjoy that because we're not trying to put our beliefs upon anyone in class.
[00:59:56.000 --> 00:59:57.920] And people really find that very refreshing.
[00:59:57.920 --> 00:59:58.720] It is refreshing, yeah.
[00:59:59.120 --> 01:00:01.120] You know, we're coming to do a practice, and that's it.
[01:00:01.120 --> 01:00:04.080] Showing up could be the spiritual part of it.
[01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:05.360] And it could be enough.
[01:00:05.360 --> 01:00:10.320] And also, the movements are so unique and different that you do.
[01:00:10.320 --> 01:00:17.360] And they're sometimes very physically challenging and hard that it seems to break a lot of the rigid patterns of thinking and being and moving.
[01:00:17.680 --> 01:00:18.560] It's an agitator.
[01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:20.240] Yeah, it definitely shakes things up.
[01:00:20.240 --> 01:00:20.720] Exactly.
[01:00:20.720 --> 01:00:21.520] When you agitate...
[01:00:21.760 --> 01:00:22.480] How do you do this?
[01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:24.000] And how do I make my body do this thing?
[01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:31.920] So, I mean, I sometimes get a lot of people asking me questions in class, and I can see that they're really stuck in their heads, and they put their hands on the floor and they can't move.
[01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:34.720] And I say to them, you're completely in your head.
[01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:36.080] Stop thinking.
[01:00:36.080 --> 01:00:37.040] Just move your body.
[01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:37.840] And I don't know how.
[01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:40.000] I said, just follow these people, just move that way.
[01:00:40.320 --> 01:00:42.800] And they start moving and I look back at me and they smile.
[01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:44.800] You know, I can see their body language.
[01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:47.040] They're overthinking how to move.
[01:00:47.040 --> 01:00:49.600] And the body actually knows how to move in that direction.
[01:00:49.840 --> 01:00:50.880] It's such an amazing thing.
[01:00:50.880 --> 01:00:52.960] So this has been an incredible conversation.
[01:00:52.960 --> 01:01:10.240] You've gone from being a guy with a broken body, with a broken life in prison, and have basically resurrected yourself completely and have transformed your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual self in a way that you're now sharing with people and inviting them in with you to try.
[01:01:10.240 --> 01:01:13.200] And it's so beautiful and it's so rare.
[01:01:13.200 --> 01:01:20.080] And I think you don't put yourself out there as a guru, as some guy who's got this the answer, but you just encourage people to just live in their body.
[01:01:20.240 --> 01:01:21.360] I'm a student like everyone else.
[01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:23.840] Just live in your body, which most of us don't.
[01:01:23.840 --> 01:01:26.960] Get connected to your body, which most of us aren't.
[01:01:26.960 --> 01:03:10.560] And to listen to your body, which most of us don't know how to do yeah and and when you start to do those simple things like if I if I eat something that isn't good for me I my body tells me like I feel it yeah you feel it and I'm like if I am in Europe and I'm eating at like 10 30 at night yeah I my body like no don't do that you know the invitation is really to start to listen like start to listen to your body and start to change the way you observe how you feel observe how you feel connect the dots between yeah wake up in the morning and sit on the edge of the bed don't look at your phone ask yourself you know before you open your apps that's telling you how you slept ask yourself how you slept yeah ask yourself how you're feeling yeah you know are you foggy how's your gut how's your recovery yeah how are you feeling yeah and then from that you can work out okay let's let's maybe shift some things today let's eat differently or eat earlier or change the way that i'm eating and change where that i'm moving it's such a simple invitation it's just you're inviting people just to listen very much so to be aware and i don't use any apps yeah for health data at all amazing nick what a journey you've been on uh what a gift you've given to the world i think everybody should check out primalmoose.com thanks mark they can find you on instagram at primal movesibiza primamuzibiza i b i z a and check out your studios whether they're coming around in america you're gonna be in los angeles you're gonna be in miami san francisco yeah when is austin opening because i live in austin we should be doing austin next year amazing great yeah in 26 so nick thanks so much for eating a real pleasure to show with you thank you if you love this do you have a question about my favorite books, supplements, or recipes, then sign up for my free marks picks newsletter at drhyman.com slash markspicks, where i'll share all of this information with you and so much more.
[01:03:10.560 --> 01:03:16.960] You'll get emails from me every Friday with recommendations on things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they can help you too.
[01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:18.560] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
[01:03:18.560 --> 01:03:19.840] We'll see you next week on The Dr.
[01:03:14.840 --> 01:03:20.640] Hyman Show.
[01:03:20.720 --> 01:03:24.000] Podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.
[01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:26.320] You can find me on all social media channels at Dr.
[01:03:26.320 --> 01:03:27.040] Mark Hyman.
[01:03:27.040 --> 01:03:27.600] Please reach out.
[01:03:27.600 --> 01:03:29.600] I'd love to hear your comments and questions.
[01:03:29.600 --> 01:03:31.920] Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr.
[01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:34.080] Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:03:34.080 --> 01:03:36.320] And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr.
[01:03:36.320 --> 01:03:39.520] MarkHyman for video versions of this podcast and more.
[01:03:39.520 --> 01:03:41.440] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
[01:03:41.440 --> 01:03:42.800] We'll see you next time on The Dr.
[01:03:42.800 --> 01:03:43.760] Hyman Show.
[01:03:43.760 --> 01:03:50.800] This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer.
[01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:53.680] This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.
[01:03:53.680 --> 01:03:57.520] Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.
[01:03:57.520 --> 01:04:04.560] This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
[01:04:04.560 --> 01:04:10.800] This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
[01:04:10.800 --> 01:04:15.200] If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
[01:04:15.200 --> 01:04:23.520] And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the ultrawellnesscenter at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.
[01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:31.520] It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
[01:04:31.520 --> 01:04:36.160] This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.
[01:04:36.160 --> 01:04:40.640] So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.
[01:04:40.640 --> 01:04:42.560] Thanks so much again for listening.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.000] Coming up on this episode of the Dr.
[00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:02.640] Hyman Show.
[00:00:02.800 --> 00:00:07.120] Went from cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness.
[00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:08.240] I smashed myself to pieces.
[00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:10.080] I'd gotten into drug trafficking.
[00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:12.160] I found myself in South America.
[00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:15.600] I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine.
[00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:17.280] And I had a broken body and a broken mind.
[00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:19.600] You had this life as a smuggler, it's finished.
[00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:22.080] And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I going to do?
[00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:27.440] And I heard this voice, it came through, and it said that I was going to be a facilitator of movement into people's lives.
[00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:31.600] So it was through a damaged body that I developed primal moves.
[00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:38.000] Nick Brewer is the founder of Primal Moves, fusing movement, breathwork, and trauma-informed awareness.
[00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:40.480] He turned a prison sentence into a blueprint for freedom.
[00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.320] Reconnecting people to their bodies.
[00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:43.440] And out of pain.
[00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:44.640] People say, What's the meaning of life?
[00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:45.920] What's the purpose of life?
[00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:47.120] To me, it's getting free.
[00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:51.760] There's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
[00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:53.360] They think it's a place where they can reside.
[00:00:53.360 --> 00:00:54.160] It's comfortable.
[00:00:54.160 --> 00:00:56.080] So many people don't live in their body.
[00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:58.880] They are disconnected from their body.
[00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:10.320] As part of my recovery from back surgery, I've been using the red light therapy panel from Bond Charge, and it's become a consistent part of my wellness routine.
[00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:18.960] What I love about red and near-infrared light is how researchers are exploring their effects on things like tissue repair, circulation, and even supporting our mitochondria.
[00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:24.400] I use the panel at home to help unwind after physical therapy or to support recovery after exercise or travel.
[00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:32.800] It's easy to integrate just a few minutes a day, no complicated setup, and I personally found it helpful for managing occasional discomfort and supporting overall resilience.
[00:01:32.800 --> 00:01:38.960] If you're looking for a simple research-informed tool to support your recovery or performance goals, this is one I recommend exploring.
[00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:42.640] Visit Bondcharge.com and use code DRMARC for 15% off.
[00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:45.920] That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com.
[00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:47.520] Code D-R-Mark.
[00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:53.440] Trust me when I say that I've tried a lot of supplements over the years, but there are just a few that I cannot travel without.
[00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:55.440] And one of them is Mitopure by Timeline.
[00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:59.360] It contains urolithin A, a powerful compound that supports your mitochondria.
[00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:03.400] The tiny power plants in your cells that drive energy, metabolism, and healthy aging.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:05.880] I take it as part of my Young Forever longevity shake.
[00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:06.440] Why?
[00:02:06.440 --> 00:02:12.200] Because it helps clear out old, dysfunctional mitochondria and helps your body build new, more efficient ones.
[00:02:12.200 --> 00:02:17.880] That means better energy, better muscle function, better brain health, all the things that start to slow down as we age.
[00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:22.040] And now, Timeline has made it even easier to take with sugar-free strawberry gummies.
[00:02:22.040 --> 00:02:25.560] Two a day gives you the full, clinically effective dose.
[00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.200] They taste great and they're part of my daily routine.
[00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:29.240] No skipping.
[00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:32.040] Timeline is offering my listeners a special discount.
[00:02:32.040 --> 00:02:37.880] Just go to timeline.com/slash DRHyman and give yourselves the support they deserve.
[00:02:38.200 --> 00:02:39.560] Nick, welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:39.560 --> 00:02:41.240] So great to have you on today.
[00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:41.800] Thanks, Bob.
[00:02:41.800 --> 00:02:42.600] Thanks for hosting me.
[00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:43.560] I'm a big fan of yours.
[00:02:43.720 --> 00:02:44.440] Oh, Ditto.
[00:02:44.440 --> 00:02:48.600] I mean, here we are in Ibiza in your house or Ibiza, as they say in Spain.
[00:02:48.600 --> 00:02:59.960] This morning, I just came from one of your classes called Timo Moves, which we're going to talk about, which is a powerful way of rehabilitating the body, of gaining strength, of healing injury.
[00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:01.800] And I've known you for years.
[00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:05.640] I've come to your class for years, but I don't think the world really knows about you very much.
[00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:11.640] And I don't think the world knows about this practice that you developed that is quite powerful.
[00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:17.320] And for me, it looks deceptively easy, but it's actually quite hard.
[00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:27.160] And I want to sort of start off by kind of talking about something that just happened to me, which is I'm rehabilitating for my own back surgery.
[00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:28.840] And I've shared a little bit about that.
[00:03:28.840 --> 00:03:30.520] And I really was taken down.
[00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:35.160] And I've been doing better and better, and it's been about six months, and I've gained a lot of strength.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:39.240] And I was weight training by myself because I was traveling.
[00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:43.080] And I was lifting these weights in a way that kind of tweaked my back a little bit.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:47.520] And I was really hurting, and I was a little nervous about that I do something wrong, that I screw it up.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:50.640] I was uncomfortable, but I decided I'm gonna go to the class and just do what I can do.
[00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:55.120] And I just did one class, and I was huffing and puffing and sweating.
[00:03:55.440 --> 00:04:07.280] And by using these sort of very weird movements that are like animal movements, crawling on the floor, crawling backwards, going on your side, stomach, stretching, it's like this kind of wild practice.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:08.880] In one class, my pain was gone.
[00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:12.800] And I was like, holy shit, it's powerful stuff.
[00:04:13.440 --> 00:04:14.960] Yeah, that's very rewarding to hear.
[00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:19.120] I want to sort of start out by talking about a little bit of your background because it's so interesting.
[00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:25.920] And, you know, you're not your typical yoga teacher who, you know, like our fitness trainer who kind of just went through the traditional route.
[00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:27.200] You had a kind of a crazy story.
[00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:40.000] You went from basically cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness through an incredible story that we can't really tell the whole thing because it takes hours.
[00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.560] And we were in Africa together and you told me the story.
[00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:45.920] It took hours to tell the story and it blew my mind.
[00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:57.360] But essentially, you know, I want you to sort of start by how you first injured yourself and then how you became like a drug smuggler and then how that led to you being in prison and then what you learned in prison.
[00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:03.120] So kind of take us through that story and what happened to you and how you came out the other side as a whole human being.
[00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:04.560] Yeah, I mean that's a big backdrop.
[00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:08.320] So, you know, first and foremost, movement is medicine.
[00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:11.200] It's a healer for the body, it's a healer from the mind.
[00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:16.480] And when I was growing up in my teenage years, I was a pro-skier.
[00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:18.800] I had an idyllic life.
[00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:20.000] I lived in the Alps.
[00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:25.120] I was on the international circuit and I broke my back in two places.
[00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:27.520] You fractured your vertebrae?
[00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:34.040] Yeah, I fractured L3 and L4, so compression fractures and completely herniated all the lumbar spine.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.160] That was the first injury.
[00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:39.080] Five years later, I broke T7 and T9 in a motocross accident.
[00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:43.320] So, you know, in my teenage years, in my early 20s, I smashed myself to pieces.
[00:05:43.480 --> 00:05:48.760] In the process of that, you know, I'd hit the self-destruct switch, I'd gotten into drug trafficking.
[00:05:49.080 --> 00:05:51.560] I found myself in South America.
[00:05:51.560 --> 00:05:56.680] I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine.
[00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:58.680] And I had a broken body and a broken mind.
[00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:00.040] And it was the template that I had.
[00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:04.440] I haven't had anybody on my podcast who's been in prison for 10 years.
[00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:09.880] Actually, of those 10 years that I spent in prison, I spent four years in isolation.
[00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:10.280] Wow.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:11.080] Which is another story.
[00:06:11.080 --> 00:06:21.080] That was a deep, deep, deep dive into myself, into practice, which is actually where a lot of the kind of benefits and a lot of the rewards that I get today for movement and meditative practices came from.
[00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:24.360] That's kind of how and why I developed primal moves.
[00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:26.680] I came out of prison in 2010 with a broken body.
[00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:28.760] You know, my spine looked like it had scoliosis.
[00:06:28.760 --> 00:06:30.360] I had total lumbar herniation.
[00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:32.200] I had degeneration of the discs.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:33.320] When you went into prison.
[00:06:33.320 --> 00:06:33.640] Yeah.
[00:06:33.640 --> 00:06:35.560] So when I came out, I was in a lot of pain.
[00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:40.520] And I spent years practicing with a chiropractor.
[00:06:40.520 --> 00:06:43.720] The kind of modern medicine were like, look, let's just open up your spine.
[00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:45.560] Let's put a big bolt in there.
[00:06:45.560 --> 00:06:50.360] Let's stitch the entire lumbar spine together and bolt it together.
[00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:52.520] And I was like, no way.
[00:06:52.520 --> 00:06:55.080] Like, there's no way we're going down that route just yet.
[00:06:55.080 --> 00:06:55.720] So I started to.
[00:06:55.800 --> 00:06:56.760] That's fair surgery.
[00:06:56.760 --> 00:06:57.960] That's what I just had, by the way.
[00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:00.520] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think yours was undeniable.
[00:07:00.520 --> 00:07:01.080] You had to have it.
[00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:01.480] I had that.
[00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:03.720] But I was still in that position of, you know, I was 40 years of age.
[00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:03.960] Yeah.
[00:07:03.960 --> 00:07:05.960] And I was like, I don't want to have a rod in my back.
[00:07:05.960 --> 00:07:14.560] So I went down the route of yoga, pilatis, elementary gymnastics training, and I tapped into lots of different modalities of movement.
[00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:16.400] And, you know, I just came out of prison as well.
[00:07:16.400 --> 00:07:18.720] Well, I developed a deep, deep yoga practice.
[00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:19.360] In prison.
[00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:19.760] In prison.
[00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:24.400] And that was what started the whole kind of journey into rehabilitation, like physical and mental.
[00:07:24.560 --> 00:07:26.720] My body was not in a good place when I was 40.
[00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.240] You know, I was in a lot of pain.
[00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:30.560] I had joint pain, my spine hurt.
[00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:37.760] You know, more often than not, I'd be two or three weeks lying down in my bed in the fetal position where the discs are just completely bulging.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.000] I had no spinal stability.
[00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:41.680] I had no joint stability.
[00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:48.640] So I basically went about restabilizing my joints through quadrupedal body weight movement.
[00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:50.880] Quadripedal movement.
[00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:51.760] Yeah, so my body weight.
[00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:56.000] Moving on all fours in a non-linear fashion.
[00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:11.600] So it'd be forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally, moving in multiple planes of direction, multiple joint action, but with my body weight, not creating any levers in the body, which would then create stress in the lumbar spine, which is what you've done.
[00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:18.480] You've picked up a weight in an awkward fashion, and that lever, you know, the weak part of the lever is the hinge, and that's what's happened.
[00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:19.360] You've just tweaked it.
[00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:22.720] So what I was looking at doing was restabilizing my body.
[00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:24.400] So I did it through this practice.
[00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:28.960] So it was through a damaged body that I developed primal moves.
[00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:34.240] And the story that I'm hearing from you today is a story that I've heard hundreds and hundreds of times.
[00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:47.760] People come to class and they've got stiff bodies, jammed up bodies, herniations in their lower back, destabilized joints, hypermobility, stiffness, and just basically, like degenerating bodies.
[00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:52.440] They come to class once, twice, three times, they get hooked, and they're going away happy humans.
[00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:52.600] Yeah.
[00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:54.000] And they're going away pain-free.
[00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:07.720] And then they take on and really then they start to embody the practice because not only do they get their physical youth back, but they actually start to like grow with that and really start to enjoy their body again and start doing things in their 40s and 50s that they thought they'd never ever be able to do again.
[00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:10.440] You said earlier you were in solitary confinement for four years.
[00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:12.520] I mean, that would drive most people insane.
[00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:14.520] I mean, you'll end up climbing the walls.
[00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:22.600] Yeah, and you know, there are practices like the dark retreats that Tibetans do where they go for months or longer in darkness and vipassanas.
[00:09:22.920 --> 00:09:25.560] Yeah, and but but you didn't choose this.
[00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:27.800] It chose me.
[00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:28.840] It chose you.
[00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:31.240] And four years is a hell of a long time.
[00:09:31.240 --> 00:09:31.560] Yeah.
[00:09:31.880 --> 00:09:32.600] It's a long time.
[00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:33.320] It's a long time.
[00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:34.600] And you were in a little cell?
[00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:37.880] Yep, I was in a cell, it was probably two meters by three meters.
[00:09:37.880 --> 00:09:42.520] It had a tiny little window at the top and grey concrete walls.
[00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:44.840] And you had to figure out how to move in that space?
[00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.400] So I had some books on yoga that I managed to get sent in.
[00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:49.160] So they let you have books in solitary.
[00:09:49.160 --> 00:09:49.800] So I could have books.
[00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:51.400] And I was in there like 22 hours a day.
[00:09:51.400 --> 00:09:53.560] So I did a lot of city practice.
[00:09:53.720 --> 00:09:57.160] I did a lot of kind of reflection, a lot of mind work.
[00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:06.120] I started to study the works of Raman Maharashi, which was about observing the mind and the ego, which I actually didn't even know we had one until I got into isolation.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:06.840] So this was really a good idea.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:08.040] You didn't know you had a mind and the ego?
[00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:11.400] I had no idea that we had a mind and an ego prior to going into prison.
[00:10:11.560 --> 00:10:19.960] You were just going through life like I was just completely numbed out and desensitized, going through life like a bullet, like a steam train, completely on a self-destruct mission.
[00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:27.160] So actually it was a really beautiful process of actually going into that space of, you know, I was a very grateful convict.
[00:10:27.160 --> 00:10:27.640] Yeah.
[00:10:27.640 --> 00:10:31.240] Albeit, you know, South American prisons are slightly rough.
[00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:31.560] Yeah.
[00:10:31.560 --> 00:10:34.200] And Argentina was not a pleasant place to be in prison.
[00:10:34.520 --> 00:10:38.120] It wasn't like where Martha Stewart went to prison, no, no, no, no, it was nothing like that.
[00:10:38.120 --> 00:10:43.800] The opportunities that I had to go into that isolated period for four years of my life was really quite profound.
[00:10:43.800 --> 00:10:48.960] And, you know, I got into the yoga practice, but it was static, so that was fine.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.840] It kept me moving, and I was basically practicing all day.
[00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:56.640] But when I got yoga postures, yeah, it was static, it was mat-based.
[00:10:56.640 --> 00:11:02.800] So when I got out of prison and I had a studio to move in, I thought, wow, let's try moving this across the floor.
[00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:10.080] So I was doing my sign salutations and the static poses, you know, and instead of just staying on the mat, I actually moved across the floor.
[00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:13.840] And then it was through the healing that started to come out of my body.
[00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:16.080] And then I started to practice with clients.
[00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:20.080] And through that, the practice built a small community in London.
[00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:28.400] And it was from this community and observing bodies that then I really started to systemize an entire method around it.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:34.400] And then you kind of found that yourself out of prison, but your body was still not great.
[00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:40.320] And then through these embodied practices that we know you've called primal moves, you've been able to sort of repair all that.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:43.920] So all the broken back, all the discriminations, all the pain.
[00:11:43.920 --> 00:11:45.440] Because you're like in your mid-50s now.
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:50.320] You're one of the strongest guys I've ever met, and you can do like a one-armed handstand and crazy shit.
[00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:51.520] Exactly.
[00:11:51.520 --> 00:11:53.200] And it is my absolute joy.
[00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:58.880] And you feel like that, sort of, that time in prison helped you sort of get grounded and present in yourself completely.
[00:11:59.120 --> 00:12:02.880] Kind of start to listen to what was happening because you didn't have a lot of distractions.
[00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:04.960] Pre-prison, I was totally distracted.
[00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:07.280] I was numbed down and I was desensitized.
[00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:19.840] Going into prison and going into isolation and going back into that space of stillness and started to embody myself, meaning I was able to actually feel and stop thinking.
[00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:25.520] You know, so instead of asking myself what I was thinking, I was asking myself, what am I feeling?
[00:12:25.520 --> 00:12:26.000] Yeah.
[00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:27.760] And that was a completely different outlook.
[00:12:27.760 --> 00:12:30.440] That was a completely different lens to look at my life through.
[00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:32.520] So, you know, how am I feeling in the morning?
[00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:33.960] How am I sleeping?
[00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:34.920] What do I feel like?
[00:12:34.920 --> 00:12:36.040] How's my cognition?
[00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:37.400] How's my memory?
[00:12:37.400 --> 00:12:38.440] How's my evacuation?
[00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:39.320] Do I have energy?
[00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:40.280] Am I recovered?
[00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:41.560] Am I feeling depressed?
[00:12:41.560 --> 00:12:43.800] So I was actually able to start feeling myself again.
[00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:57.640] And then I worked out that through embodying these practices, which was a lot of breath work and a lot of movement, you know, I was able to remove that kind of depressed feeling that came down into me.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:02.920] You know, anything that became stagnant, any stuck energies, I moved them through with practice.
[00:13:02.920 --> 00:13:07.640] It was through moving my body that I was able to free myself completely.
[00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:14.520] So not only did you kind of move your way out of physical pain, you were able to move your way out of emotional and mental pain.
[00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:15.000] Absolutely.
[00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:26.840] Because all the traumas that I had, you know, from 15 years of smuggling and breaking my body and being on that self-destructive path, I was actually able to go in there and start healing that in prison.
[00:13:26.840 --> 00:13:30.200] Through these practices, you know, I realized that I was so stuck.
[00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:31.960] I was so stuck in my head.
[00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:33.320] I was so rigid.
[00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:34.680] There was so much control.
[00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:37.080] There was so much manipulation going on up there.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:40.440] There was a lot of darkness that was going on in my life at the time.
[00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:41.640] And I had no idea.
[00:13:41.640 --> 00:13:42.680] Yeah, it was just your life.
[00:13:42.680 --> 00:13:43.800] That was basically what it was.
[00:13:43.800 --> 00:13:48.840] And then, as I started to work through my body, I started to work through the fascial system.
[00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:50.600] I started to work through the mind.
[00:13:50.600 --> 00:13:52.280] You know, I also broke down.
[00:13:52.280 --> 00:13:54.120] You know, I had mental breakdowns as well.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:56.280] I think three or four years into prison.
[00:13:56.280 --> 00:13:59.960] I'd been in isolation for about two years and it brought me to my knees.
[00:13:59.960 --> 00:14:01.960] You know, I had a complete emotional mental breakdown.
[00:14:02.040 --> 00:14:03.240] What did that look like?
[00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:04.200] What did that look like?
[00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:11.480] That looked like a baby crying on the floor, sobbing for about two weeks, completely broken and shaking.
[00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:13.640] You were kind of letting go of your old self.
[00:14:13.640 --> 00:14:16.320] My old self, I was having a total ego death.
[00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:17.360] I didn't even know it.
[00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:18.880] It completely crushed me.
[00:14:18.880 --> 00:14:20.320] It brought me to my knees.
[00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:24.320] I lay there crying and sobbing for about two weeks.
[00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:25.920] And where I was, there was no humanity.
[00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:28.480] There was no one coming around to check up on you and say, hey, how are you doing?
[00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:29.600] You want a hug?
[00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:30.720] Do you need something?
[00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:31.920] You need any help?
[00:14:31.920 --> 00:14:32.320] No.
[00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:33.840] The prison guards weren't doing that.
[00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:36.800] The prison guards in South America didn't even come and check.
[00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:38.240] They just came and checked for dead bodies.
[00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:39.760] They just want to give you your food and the thing.
[00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:41.280] They gave you a head count, that was it.
[00:14:41.280 --> 00:14:42.000] They didn't even feed you.
[00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:42.640] They didn't feed you.
[00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:42.880] No.
[00:14:42.880 --> 00:14:44.080] Well, how'd you get your food?
[00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:44.800] You had to get your food in.
[00:14:45.520 --> 00:14:51.040] Someone from the outside had to bring your food in for you and you'd have it in boxes and bags and you had to try and make it and cook it somehow.
[00:14:51.040 --> 00:14:51.280] Really?
[00:14:51.280 --> 00:14:51.920] So there was no food.
[00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:55.040] Malnutrition in the prisons was people dying of malnutrition.
[00:14:55.040 --> 00:14:55.600] It was terrible.
[00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:56.160] It was horrific.
[00:14:56.160 --> 00:14:57.120] It's like third world.
[00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:03.520] That's a powerful story because, you know, most of us are pretty locked into our psychological framework.
[00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:11.920] Our emotions are pretty sort of fixed in the way we relate to the world, to our experience, to relationships, to work, to family, to ourselves.
[00:15:11.920 --> 00:15:15.440] And those rigid patterns keep us from being free.
[00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:23.520] The constructs that we create in our head, which actually I realized post-prison that, you know, freedom is actually a state of mind.
[00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:29.040] Because I've met so many people that are actually in prison because they're just bound by their thoughts.
[00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:30.080] They're so rigid.
[00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:33.520] They've built so many constructs that actually they've stopped themselves from being free anymore.
[00:15:33.520 --> 00:15:35.520] And I didn't actually realize that until I got out of prison.
[00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:35.840] That's true.
[00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:39.440] You can be a billionaire and be still in the prison of your mind.
[00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:39.760] Exactly.
[00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:41.760] So I was euphorically year five in prison.
[00:15:41.760 --> 00:15:43.200] I was euphorically happy.
[00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:44.400] That's incredible.
[00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:45.040] Euphorically happy.
[00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:48.160] She went from like breaking completely down.
[00:15:48.160 --> 00:15:48.560] Yeah.
[00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:52.640] From having complete ego deaths, total mental, emotional breakdowns.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:59.120] Again, it was movement and meditation, breathwork of a daily practice that got me out of that.
[00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:02.520] But I went into states of absolute euphoric happiness.
[00:16:02.760 --> 00:16:09.880] Which I haven't actually achieved since being in prison because now I'm actually, you know, I'm back in the world and I've got distraction again.
[00:16:09.880 --> 00:16:10.600] Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:15.000] You know, I have a house, I have to pay rent, I have a business, I need to pay salaries.
[00:16:15.400 --> 00:16:17.720] You know, I have a lover.
[00:16:18.040 --> 00:16:19.480] So I have desires.
[00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:23.880] So I actually went into some really interesting states of being when I was in there.
[00:16:23.880 --> 00:16:27.000] Yeah, it's a sort of a gift in disguise, right?
[00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:27.480] Totally.
[00:16:27.560 --> 00:16:29.880] I mean, I had that now as a reference point to go back to.
[00:16:30.280 --> 00:16:37.640] So I've been there, I've understood that blissful state of nothingness, you know, when you absolutely own nothing, have nothing.
[00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:38.040] Yeah.
[00:16:38.040 --> 00:16:39.400] And you can be blissfully happy.
[00:16:39.400 --> 00:16:40.920] So I have experienced that.
[00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:54.360] Well, I'm curious about what happened in the process of the breakdown because you describe it almost as a physical experience, you know, laying on the floor, sobbing, and going through the somatic expression and discharge of all the emotion.
[00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:56.600] You know, talk therapy really doesn't do that.
[00:16:56.600 --> 00:16:57.160] No.
[00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:01.880] And for me, you know, I went through a lot of things in my life.
[00:17:01.880 --> 00:17:04.840] I've had many illnesses, many marriages.
[00:17:04.840 --> 00:17:11.720] Probably about five years ago, I found myself fairly, you know, sort of stuck in the prison of my own beliefs and mind.
[00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:21.880] And I knew intellectually what the issues were for my childhood and my mother, who was a child of deaf parents, and how that affected her and how that affected her parenting me.
[00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:27.320] And it's a long story, but I really did not know how to get rid of it.
[00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:38.920] And through a series of processes and things, I was able to kind of have this somatic experience where I just like literally broke down on the floor crying and crying for days, like a week.
[00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:40.200] Yeah, so you've had that breakdown.
[00:17:40.800 --> 00:17:43.560] And I, and I, and it was the weirdest thing.
[00:17:43.560 --> 00:17:44.760] I had the same experience after you.
[00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:54.640] I literally, after it was all free from that, I emerged and I felt euphoric, like high, like I just taken some like drugs, but like happy drugs.
[00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:55.440] I hear you.
[00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:57.760] And it was pretty remarkable.
[00:17:57.760 --> 00:18:01.440] And I just went around in this state for quite a while.
[00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:08.320] It's why I think being in your body is so important and why the work you do is so important because if we just stay in our heads, we'll never get there.
[00:18:08.320 --> 00:18:10.640] And you were forced into it unwillingly.
[00:18:11.040 --> 00:18:11.280] Exactly.
[00:18:11.360 --> 00:18:12.400] And I had no one to talk to.
[00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:12.720] Yeah.
[00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:14.080] So I couldn't do talk therapy.
[00:18:14.080 --> 00:18:14.480] Yeah.
[00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:16.400] So the only way that I knew was somatic work.
[00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:21.200] To release myself of pain, mental, emotional, and physical, all I could do was move.
[00:18:21.200 --> 00:18:23.120] And some days I woke up in pain.
[00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:27.200] My hips were hurting, my shoulders, but my pain, my head was in pain.
[00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:29.040] So I had no one actually there to talk to.
[00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:32.720] I had no one to intellectualize or compartmentalize it with.
[00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:42.000] But I understood, okay, these were the traumas, but the only way I could actually release myself from that was from basic breath work and movement.
[00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:49.760] And it was actually the movement, the somatic work that I was doing in the prison and just constantly working with my somatic nervous system that started to ease out.
[00:18:49.760 --> 00:18:52.160] It was agitating all this stuck energy.
[00:18:52.560 --> 00:18:57.920] It was agitating these traumas to move out of the somatic system, out of the fascicular system.
[00:18:57.920 --> 00:18:59.120] And it was freeing me up.
[00:18:59.120 --> 00:19:06.960] You know, don't get me wrong, some days I had to stand there in my room for maybe an hour having an internal fight with myself.
[00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.960] Because there was one part of me that wanted to lay down and just be depressed.
[00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:16.280] And there was another part of me that was like, no, you've got to do your practice because this pain you're feeling will move through your body.
[00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:16.600] Yeah.
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[00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.000] I would literally stand there and have a stand-up fight of myself for an hour.
[00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:42.160] And I would not move until I did my practice.
[00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:57.040] And the euphoric feeling that came through me as I started to move my body, even raising my hands above my head and touching the floor and synchronizing that with some breathing, the lightness came and it moved through me.
[00:21:57.040 --> 00:22:03.440] And I went through this for like a year, two years of this internal fight of to practice or not to practice.
[00:22:03.840 --> 00:22:14.800] You know, that's why now for me, I think one of the reasons that Primal Moves has become so successful is because of 15 years I've shown up every single day to practice.
[00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:16.720] You mean you don't feel like it, right?
[00:22:17.040 --> 00:22:20.960] Everyone comes down and they seem to be kind of leading through example and inspiration.
[00:22:21.040 --> 00:22:25.280] Like, hey, this guy's down there looking at a great concrete floor two, three hours a day and he's euphorically happy.
[00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:26.720] I'll try that.
[00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:34.000] I went through a different experience recently where I kind of went through this portal where I almost died and I had an infection in my back.
[00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:38.720] It led to an abscess and I had to have major surgery and I was in bed for six weeks.
[00:22:38.720 --> 00:22:40.400] I couldn't walk.
[00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:44.160] I lost 20 pounds, which I'm already pretty skinny.
[00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:48.640] I came out of that and I was really unable to move.
[00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:50.800] I couldn't tie my shoes.
[00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:53.600] I couldn't get up off the toilet by myself.
[00:22:53.600 --> 00:22:57.920] I couldn't do the most basic life things that you think getting dressed.
[00:22:58.240 --> 00:22:59.280] You take it for granted.
[00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:06.840] Yeah, I mean, and I recently saw my surgeon and he said, Most people at your stage are on a walker or maybe never get off a walker.
[00:23:06.840 --> 00:23:13.240] And I did what you did, no matter how bad I felt, or how depressed I was, or how broken I was.
[00:23:13.240 --> 00:23:18.520] I literally got up into the gym every day and worked with physical therapists and a trainer.
[00:23:18.520 --> 00:23:19.720] I started moving.
[00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:23.960] I'm not 100% back yet, but I'm out of pain.
[00:23:24.440 --> 00:23:24.920] Amazing.
[00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:25.800] I'm moving.
[00:23:25.800 --> 00:23:27.000] I'm doing your class.
[00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:30.280] No, I mean, I've seen MR asks of your spine.
[00:23:30.280 --> 00:23:31.000] It's incredible.
[00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:34.840] Yeah, I've got all the hardware in there, like a hardware store in there.
[00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:39.240] And, you know, I'm there with a bunch of 30-year-olds in the class, and I'm 65.
[00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:40.280] Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:23:40.280 --> 00:23:41.240] That's inspiring.
[00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:44.280] And it's just like your body has that capacity.
[00:23:44.280 --> 00:23:54.600] And what I really find interesting, and I wonder if you have any insight in this, is as I look around the world, and especially in America, so many people don't live in their body.
[00:23:54.600 --> 00:23:56.600] They are disconnected from their body.
[00:23:56.600 --> 00:24:04.520] And you can see their bodies become overweight, or they are hunched over, or you can see they don't move fluidly.
[00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:13.080] And it's interesting that people are kind of locked in this state of physical contraction and don't really even know it or aware of it.
[00:24:13.080 --> 00:24:17.480] And they don't realize that there's a way to the other side of that and actually getting free.
[00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:32.120] Because I think, you know, more and more, because we're so connected to our devices, we're so not having to move our bodies, we're just sort of out of this traditional way of living that we've done for hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:39.320] I think the question I have for you is: seeing what's happening in the world around this sort of disconnection from our bodies, how do we start to inch forward?
[00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:48.640] Because it feels like a big hurdle for a lot of people who aren't in their bodies, who aren't exercising regularly, who aren't moving regularly, to actually go from that to doing something.
[00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:50.000] Yeah, it's a big push.
[00:24:50.320 --> 00:24:51.520] I mean, this is mental.
[00:24:51.520 --> 00:24:52.400] You have to like, you have to.
[00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:55.040] No, it has to be a mindset.
[00:24:55.040 --> 00:24:59.120] You need to shift the perception of your mindset and make movement a lifestyle.
[00:24:59.120 --> 00:25:00.960] It has to become part of your life.
[00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:07.360] You know, I say to a lot of people here that have full-time jobs and they work that you need to actually book this session in and make it part of your life.
[00:25:07.360 --> 00:25:11.520] It needs to be embodied as a daily practice.
[00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:13.520] And they see the benefits from that.
[00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:17.360] And trying to create that shift of people where they actually think, yeah, you know what?
[00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:23.760] Just going to give myself one hour a day to go to class or to get on the mat or to go to the gym and do something.
[00:25:23.760 --> 00:25:25.600] Even go for a walk or a swim.
[00:25:25.600 --> 00:25:28.560] But suddenly just move your body because this is a hunter-gatherer body.
[00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:30.080] It needs to move.
[00:25:30.080 --> 00:25:32.000] It was designed and created to move.
[00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:34.160] And the more you move it, the better it feels.
[00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:35.760] And it will degenerate.
[00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:41.200] The body, if you sit in a chair all day, the body will just slowly degenerate quicker than you think.
[00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:41.760] That's true.
[00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:43.440] I mean, it doesn't discriminate.
[00:25:43.600 --> 00:25:45.440] The more you move it, the better it's going to feel.
[00:25:45.440 --> 00:25:51.520] I mean, I was in bed for six weeks and I never felt so debilitated.
[00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:52.720] Yeah, powerless, yeah.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:59.920] Powerless, but also just like my body lost all of its function and I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself.
[00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:01.440] I couldn't do the most simple life.
[00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:08.960] Well, I think because if you had that template, that framework of being healthy, because I could remember what it was like, but I was like, remember what it felt like.
[00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:12.240] So you had muscle memory to be like, hey, I want to go back to feeling like this.
[00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:13.680] I don't want to feel like I am now.
[00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:18.960] I mean, I was a yoga teacher in my 20s, and you know, we did seven hours of yoga a day for like a month.
[00:26:19.080 --> 00:26:20.480] Yeah, you get pretty flexible.
[00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:24.880] But even as kids, you know, growing up now, you know, it's not in the school curriculum.
[00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:26.240] There's no sport.
[00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:35.400] There's not a daily session of sport where they're encouraging children to move and be fit and be conscious and try and be embodied and do mindful practices.
[00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:37.880] You know, they're sat down in a chair and they're given a book.
[00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:38.600] And that's true.
[00:26:38.600 --> 00:26:55.800] And I think, you know, because we're so disconnected from our bodies, I think it also prevents us from being able to access a very powerful liberating force, which is using the body and the somatic practices, as you call them, to start to free up a lot of the stuck emotions and the beliefs and the fears.
[00:26:55.800 --> 00:27:02.600] And yes, sometimes, you know, talk therapy helps or coaching helps or those things can be helpful, or psychedelic medicine.
[00:27:02.600 --> 00:27:06.920] But I think, you know, movement as medicine, you said that right at the beginning, is powerful.
[00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:14.680] And a lot of people are into longevity and they want to take this vitamin or this drug or do this special thing or take a hyperbaric chamber or whatever.
[00:27:14.680 --> 00:27:16.920] They're trying to move.
[00:27:17.240 --> 00:27:18.440] For me, it's bypassing.
[00:27:18.760 --> 00:27:23.000] They're trying to hack their way to health by bypassing doing the hard work.
[00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:23.400] Yeah.
[00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:25.640] Which is actually to go into a class.
[00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:30.360] I mean, one of the beautiful things about Primal is a very community-driven brand.
[00:27:30.360 --> 00:27:32.920] So we have like a big group of people that move together.
[00:27:32.920 --> 00:27:34.760] And that's really beautiful and really inspiring.
[00:27:34.760 --> 00:27:37.160] You know, we sometimes have 80 people come into class.
[00:27:37.160 --> 00:27:38.920] I know it's pretty crowded this morning.
[00:27:39.240 --> 00:27:42.600] And that's so very beautiful because of, you know, you get this.
[00:27:42.600 --> 00:27:45.560] I could barely find a place on the hanging bar.
[00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:46.280] I'm going to go to the fly bar.
[00:27:46.920 --> 00:27:48.040] There's so many people there.
[00:27:48.040 --> 00:27:51.880] But, you know, just moving together as a group, it brings about exponential growth.
[00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:52.280] Yeah.
[00:27:52.280 --> 00:27:53.880] You know, it brings a flow state around.
[00:27:53.880 --> 00:27:54.600] It's inspiring.
[00:27:54.600 --> 00:27:58.120] You release oxytocins, you release serotonin and dopamine.
[00:27:58.120 --> 00:28:01.240] You get that happy drug feeling of just moving in a group.
[00:28:01.240 --> 00:28:01.640] Yeah.
[00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:08.120] You know, when you're doing a class which biomechanically works, not only do you feel emotionally good, but you feel bloody physically good as well.
[00:28:08.120 --> 00:28:08.520] Yeah.
[00:28:08.520 --> 00:28:10.840] You know, and that's what Primal essentially is.
[00:28:10.840 --> 00:28:15.200] Yeah, it's sort of like healing almost invisibly when you do it.
[00:28:14.760 --> 00:28:16.480] And you don't have to think about it.
[00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:28.800] And I think whether it's yoga, whether it's primal moves, or whether it's other forms of exercise, if people can get in their bodies, it's really the key to feeling good, to healing.
[00:28:28.800 --> 00:28:31.280] If I don't exercise for a few days, I start to feel cracky.
[00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:31.760] Cracky.
[00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:33.440] It's physical longevity.
[00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:35.840] People talk a lot about physical longevity these days.
[00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:37.520] Just move.
[00:28:37.840 --> 00:28:44.400] And so, are you familiar with the science around how this all works in terms of the somatic healing?
[00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:44.960] Of primal?
[00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:46.320] Of primal or just in general?
[00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:47.040] Yeah, I've studied it.
[00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:48.560] I've looked into it quite deeply.
[00:28:48.560 --> 00:28:51.360] So, can you tell us sort of about the science behind this?
[00:28:51.360 --> 00:29:00.800] Because I think people may not really be aware of what the sort of underlying principles are of why this works and how it works.
[00:29:00.800 --> 00:29:02.400] I've written a manual on this.
[00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:06.160] I wrote a 100-page manual on why primal moves works.
[00:29:06.560 --> 00:29:07.840] Where can people find that?
[00:29:07.840 --> 00:29:09.680] You have to do one of my teacher trainings to get that.
[00:29:09.680 --> 00:29:10.720] That's like my blueprint.
[00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:19.600] So it's a big topic, it's a big conversation about what it does, but it's actually starting to rebuild muscle mass.
[00:29:19.600 --> 00:29:22.160] It starts to restabilize your joints.
[00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:28.560] It starts to increase cognitive and behavioral patterns physically and mentally.
[00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:29.600] It's non-linear.
[00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:31.840] It starts to break down rigidity in the mind.
[00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:36.240] The fascial networks, it starts to move the fluids around in the fascial system.
[00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:37.920] The motion creates the lotion.
[00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:39.600] The body starts to move.
[00:29:39.600 --> 00:29:43.280] It starts to become lean and supple.
[00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:44.480] It becomes healthy.
[00:29:44.480 --> 00:29:46.640] The muscles are working properly.
[00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:49.200] You start to get bone density, muscle density again.
[00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:52.400] You know, you're working with neuronal and non-neuronal intelligence.
[00:29:52.400 --> 00:30:00.000] You know, the cells are working to release stem cells, creating stem cells, because of this micro-trauma in the body.
[00:30:00.440 --> 00:30:09.880] Every time you're moving across the floor, all the joints are creating what we call micro-micro-trauma, which then gives stem cell a job to actually start healing you again.
[00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:13.800] You know, if you don't do anything, stem cell doesn't work, doesn't need to, goes to sleep.
[00:30:13.800 --> 00:30:21.720] The more you work your body, the more stem cell has a job, so it starts to heal the body, starts to rejuvenate the muscles, the bones, the skin, the connective tissue.
[00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:26.280] You know, along with that, if you're also eating consciously as well, that for me is hacking.
[00:30:26.280 --> 00:30:27.240] That's biohacking.
[00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:29.080] Breathing, eating, moving.
[00:30:29.080 --> 00:30:32.200] I think the hurdle for a lot of people is just getting started, right?
[00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:36.200] So, how would you sort of advise people who want to get to class?
[00:30:36.200 --> 00:30:38.200] Well, not every town has primal moves yet.
[00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:41.960] Yeah, so we, well, we've got a digital space, so you can find it online.
[00:30:42.600 --> 00:30:43.720] Where do you find it online?
[00:30:43.720 --> 00:30:45.880] So, www.primalmoves.com.
[00:30:45.880 --> 00:30:53.320] So, we've got a plug-and-play really cheap subscription model, and on there, you've got probably like 150 sessions, and it's mat-based.
[00:30:53.320 --> 00:30:56.200] So, all you need is a mat and a small space.
[00:30:56.200 --> 00:30:59.000] You don't need to go to a gym, you don't need equipment.
[00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:04.040] You can literally just roll out your mat, open up your tablet, and you get visual.
[00:31:04.520 --> 00:31:06.360] You don't need a big floor space to do it.
[00:31:06.520 --> 00:31:08.200] So, I guide the sessions.
[00:31:08.200 --> 00:31:14.920] Actually, I built it in COVID because when the studios started to shut in COVID, everyone reached out to me and was like, Hey, how can we practice?
[00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:30.120] So, then I built this very simple plug-and-play digital space where people could just literally turn on the system and they could work through their body to have like full flow classes, or you can work on stabilizing your spine, opening your hips, strengthening your shoulders.
[00:31:30.120 --> 00:31:30.520] Amazing.
[00:31:30.520 --> 00:31:31.960] So, there's a lot of content on there.
[00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:33.400] That's definitely my future.
[00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:44.200] Yeah, and obviously, now what we're trying to do, you know, because there's so many people that have come into this community of Primal, that when they're going home to their cities throughout the States and Europe, they're actually wanting to open studios.
[00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:53.200] So, now we have a whole training program, and the idea is that over the next few years, we're going to be opening, you know, like mothership destination studios in the bigger cities.
[00:31:53.520 --> 00:31:53.920] That's great.
[00:31:53.920 --> 00:31:55.680] And if you don't live in one of those cities, you can do it online.
[00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:57.760] And I think I'm going to start doing that.
[00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:58.560] I miss it.
[00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:00.000] Like when I'm not here, I'm like, oh, I can't.
[00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:01.920] I mean, the sessions are like half an hour.
[00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:03.920] There's 10, 20, 30 minute sessions.
[00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:04.880] That's all you need.
[00:32:05.120 --> 00:32:06.720] Just a little bit every single day.
[00:32:06.720 --> 00:32:08.720] You just got to tap into the body every day.
[00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:10.480] And also, it gets you out of your head.
[00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:14.480] You know, for me, there's nothing more pleasurable than living in my body.
[00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:16.560] It's the most pleasurable place I can ever be.
[00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:18.560] Well, I think most people don't live in their body.
[00:32:18.560 --> 00:32:21.280] They don't pay attention to the signals that their body says.
[00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:24.160] They don't eat when they're hungry and not eating when they're not hungry.
[00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:25.760] They don't sleep when they're tired.
[00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:27.280] They push themselves.
[00:32:27.280 --> 00:32:31.040] People are in all sorts of strange disconnect from their physical body.
[00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:36.480] They're upregulated, they're anxious, they're living on sugar, their sleep patterns aren't good.
[00:32:37.040 --> 00:32:40.880] And you're very disciplined about your practices, right?
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:42.400] Really, yeah, it's a daily thing for me.
[00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:43.920] So, like, it's non-negotiable.
[00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.680] Tell us about your food patterns and your habits because it's different than most people.
[00:32:47.840 --> 00:32:49.200] So, I'm a very simple eater.
[00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:51.360] I'm 80% carnivore.
[00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:57.760] So, my main meat is red meat, and I'm super particular about how I source it.
[00:32:57.760 --> 00:33:00.160] So, I actually go to the farm myself.
[00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:02.080] I look at the cows.
[00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:08.480] I need to understand that the cow is walking around, eating grass under the sun, and does not go in the barn.
[00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:10.400] And that the way that the animal is killed is very special.
[00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:14.560] As you know, the whole food conversation is a big topic, is a big debate.
[00:33:14.560 --> 00:33:19.200] And getting well-sourced foods is a really hard thing to do these days.
[00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:27.040] You know, the soils are devitalized, they're demineralized, the foods are genetically modified, the animals are being injected with God knows what.
[00:33:27.040 --> 00:33:30.360] So, sourcing your food is a for me, it's a really important thing.
[00:33:30.360 --> 00:33:33.720] You know, what I believe that you know, what we eat is what we are.
[00:33:33.720 --> 00:33:38.280] You know, what's going in the soils and what's going in these animals is who our body becomes.
[00:33:38.680 --> 00:33:43.400] So, you know, my meat's grass-fed, grass-finished, and I eat a lot of it.
[00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:46.360] I don't eat many vegetables, I don't eat greens, I eat fruit.
[00:33:46.600 --> 00:33:50.520] But you're explaining to me why, because people are like, well, greens are good, or vegetables are good, so why do you feel?
[00:33:50.760 --> 00:33:52.840] I started to feel inflamed.
[00:33:52.840 --> 00:33:54.760] Because you were noticing what your body was feeling.
[00:33:54.760 --> 00:33:57.720] So, I was observing my gut, it didn't feel good.
[00:33:57.720 --> 00:34:10.520] When I eat greens, my gut started to feel almost a bit achy and I started to feel a little bit joint ache and a bit foggy in the head.
[00:34:10.520 --> 00:34:16.840] So, I'd go through long periods, say three to six months, of doing processes of elimination of foods that I would eat and wouldn't eat.
[00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:19.080] So, I stopped eating grains completely.
[00:34:19.720 --> 00:34:21.800] I eat very few carbs.
[00:34:22.280 --> 00:34:27.880] You know, every now and then I might go out and have some pasta or some rice, but you know, very seldom like once or twice a month.
[00:34:27.880 --> 00:34:30.680] I don't eat many sugars, hardly any.
[00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:33.400] I eat fruit and all the animals.
[00:34:33.400 --> 00:34:34.440] And potatoes.
[00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:35.400] Potatoes.
[00:34:35.640 --> 00:34:41.240] My classic meal would be a fillet steak, barely cooked, with lashings of ghee.
[00:34:41.560 --> 00:34:42.520] So, I eat a lot of ghee.
[00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:44.280] I eat a lot of fat and a lot of protein.
[00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:50.280] So, I'm essentially fueled by mitochondria, which is the cell's ability to produce energy as opposed to insulin.
[00:34:50.520 --> 00:34:53.240] So, my energy levels throughout the day are really well balanced.
[00:34:54.120 --> 00:34:57.720] I have two lattes and a pan of chocolate.
[00:34:57.720 --> 00:34:59.000] So, I keep it real.
[00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.920] I have like my percentage of diet, which is what I call my junk diet.
[00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:04.360] Yeah, yeah yeah well i keep it real.
[00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:08.120] You know, I have a pan of chocolate, I have a coffee, every now and then I might have an ice cream.
[00:35:08.360 --> 00:35:09.640] You know, I like to keep it real.
[00:35:10.120 --> 00:36:47.560] But I know that 75-80% of what I eat is grass-fed animals, really well sourced and for me like you know to understand my markers i wake up in the morning and i i know feel you know how about how am i feeling how am i sleeping how's my recovery how's my mind is it foggy how's my gut how's my evacuation in my practice my physical practice you know how's my body recovering how am i training how's my energy levels 95 and they're good i just recently had my uh my bloods done and i had them them checked and they said wow your bloods are like that of a man 30 years ago yeah of a 30 year old man yeah like my my testosterone is up at a thousand yeah my hdl my ad ldo is really healthy uh my hemoglobin is good my minerals my vitamins are really high and they said to me this is incredible you don't eat vegetables do you take supplements no so i don't take supplements i avoid supplements at all costs i've started to take creatine just to see how it feels yeah for like cognition and recovery but i don't supplement i literally just source really good foods yeah train and breathe yeah and that for me is hacking i take a sauna four times a week and i get in the ice bath when i can but again it's more of a lifestyle as opposed to you know i i try and avoid supplements and i try and convert people onto healthy foods healthy living well you know it's interesting you know historically we never took supplements because we had a very nutrient-dense diet and if you look at hunter-gatherers diets and this has been well studied you know the the amount of vitamins minerals uh were extremely high compared to modern diets and they also had animals that were eating wild plants.
[00:36:47.560 --> 00:36:48.120] Exactly.
[00:36:48.120 --> 00:36:53.960] And those wild plants are full of not just vitamins and minerals, but also phytochemicals that are very healing.
[00:36:53.960 --> 00:37:04.760] And there's an amazing guy, I did a podcast with him, a couple of podcasts, because one of the most incredible people i've ever met, named Fred Provenza, who wrote a book called Nourishment about what we can learn from animals about how to eat.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:11.000] And what he said was he studied rangeland ecology and the relationship between plants and animals and the soil and nature.
[00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:25.960] He found that the animals would eat, you know, a few main like calorie crops or plants, but then they would sample up to 100 or more different plants that had different properties, the different minerals or different nutrients, and that the animals knew.
[00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:36.600] Like I've been in the Amazon, I remember seeing this side of this river, it was just clay, and the parrots just came like fly in flocks and were eating the minerals because they knew their body.
[00:37:36.600 --> 00:37:37.560] The soil, yeah.
[00:37:38.120 --> 00:37:39.320] We're so disconnected.
[00:37:39.320 --> 00:37:41.960] We don't think we need like Skittles, you know?
[00:37:41.960 --> 00:37:42.680] Like, oh, that looks good.
[00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:50.600] But the thing is, now you know, the food has lost its vitality, and so we have to overeat, over-consume to get all the minerals and vitamins that we need.
[00:37:50.600 --> 00:37:51.800] And now we're lacking.
[00:37:51.800 --> 00:37:52.280] Yeah.
[00:37:52.280 --> 00:38:00.040] Whereas, you know, if I eat three or four hundred grams of grass-fed, grass-finished fillet steak, it's so densely nutritious that actually that's all I need for the afternoon.
[00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:01.640] That and a few potatoes for flavor.
[00:38:01.640 --> 00:38:02.200] But that's it.
[00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:05.560] And a couple of big scoops of ghee, and I'm done.
[00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:06.840] I feel absolutely amazing.
[00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:20.920] And the meat you're eating, though, is different because it's animals who are eating wild plants and who are actually getting those phytochemicals in their meat and the nutrients in their meat and the fatty acids in their meat that are different.
[00:38:21.320 --> 00:38:24.040] And those actually have profound biological effects.
[00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:27.240] So it's not only what you eat, it's what you're eating at.
[00:38:27.560 --> 00:38:29.080] No, I'm really, I mean, I'm very careful.
[00:38:29.240 --> 00:38:33.480] If I go out to a restaurant, you know, I'm super careful about if I eat meat or not.
[00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:35.560] You know, I want to know that it's grass-fed.
[00:38:35.800 --> 00:38:38.760] You know, because if you eat industrial meat, you're going to get sick.
[00:38:38.760 --> 00:38:39.160] Yeah.
[00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:39.960] It's a fact.
[00:38:39.960 --> 00:38:41.400] You're going to get inflamed.
[00:38:41.400 --> 00:38:49.520] And, you know, I go through periods sometimes if I go away on holiday, I'll venture out and I'll eat vegetables and I get flatulence.
[00:38:44.680 --> 00:38:50.960] I get swelling in my gut.
[00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:52.560] I get bloating.
[00:38:52.560 --> 00:38:54.080] I get fogginess in the head.
[00:38:54.080 --> 00:38:55.040] I wake up in the morning.
[00:38:55.040 --> 00:38:56.400] I feel drowsy.
[00:38:57.360 --> 00:38:59.120] So I'm thinking, well, that can't be good.
[00:38:59.120 --> 00:39:21.840] Well, what's fascinating, Nick, is that you went from being this kind of broken guy who was dealing drugs and running cocaine between Argentina and the UK and eating McDonald's to being at 55 in a way that you really remade your whole self physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, from the ground up.
[00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:25.280] And most people don't have to go through what you went through to get there.
[00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:34.160] But what's so fascinating to me is that, you know, very few people pay attention to what's happening in their body in real time every day and then listen to it.
[00:39:34.160 --> 00:39:36.880] Now, I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your body.
[00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:38.640] It'll tell you exactly what's going on.
[00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:42.320] You're like, oh, I ate this and my stomach feels that.
[00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:45.920] Most people have no clue that what they eat affects how they feel.
[00:39:45.920 --> 00:39:51.040] When I was in prison as well, obviously I saw the effects of the human condition at its worst.
[00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:56.000] You know, not only for living and the way that humans were treating each other, but what they were eating.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:05.600] So I experienced such darkness that when I got out of prison, I was like, okay, I'm going to completely rewrite the story because I don't want to go there ever again.
[00:40:05.600 --> 00:40:08.240] You know, I completely rewrote my story.
[00:40:08.240 --> 00:40:09.920] And how old are you when you got out of prison?
[00:40:09.920 --> 00:40:10.560] 40.
[00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:11.040] 40.
[00:40:11.440 --> 00:40:13.360] So I've been going 15 years now, yeah.
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:13.760] Wow.
[00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:15.200] And I've never looked back once.
[00:40:15.200 --> 00:40:15.600] Wow.
[00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:18.720] I got out of prison and I think within six weeks I was coaching.
[00:40:18.840 --> 00:40:22.960] I never took back, I got out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
[00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:29.280] And I had to go home and live in my parents at the age of 40 with no money in the bedroom that I grew up in.
[00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:30.040] And that was tough.
[00:40:30.040 --> 00:40:31.480] I mean, imagine going back to your parents.
[00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:33.640] Well, you were, you know, a millionaire, right?
[00:40:34.040 --> 00:40:34.840] I was a multi-millionaire.
[00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:35.400] Mi-millionaire.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.120] I mean, I had everything.
[00:40:36.360 --> 00:40:42.440] I had cars, boats, cars, all the toys, I mean, houses, investments.
[00:40:42.680 --> 00:40:44.440] I was ahead of the game in my early 30s.
[00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:45.720] And I lost everything.
[00:40:45.880 --> 00:40:47.400] And that was a good process as well.
[00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:52.920] That was, you know, a big process around attachment because it was a tough call coming out of prison with $80 in my back pocket.
[00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:59.240] And when you were in prison, did you have the sense that you were wanting to move into teaching what you learned there?
[00:40:59.240 --> 00:41:00.360] I didn't quite know.
[00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:03.960] I was on such a healing journey.
[00:41:04.280 --> 00:41:07.400] Everything was really about healing my body and my mind.
[00:41:07.400 --> 00:41:16.840] And I knew that there was going to be a big shift and a big change, but I didn't actually quite know what I was going to do because I never knew when I was going to get out of prison.
[00:41:17.080 --> 00:41:19.240] In South America, prisons stay there indefinitely.
[00:41:19.240 --> 00:41:19.560] Yeah.
[00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:21.400] Because the justice systems are so bad.
[00:41:21.400 --> 00:41:28.200] Early 2010, they came around to see me and they literally said to me one day, You've got five minutes to get your shit together.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:30.680] We're expelling you from the country.
[00:41:30.680 --> 00:41:35.880] And a bunch of guys came with machine guns and they shackled me to a van.
[00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:39.160] They took me to the airport and they put me on the back of a plane.
[00:41:39.160 --> 00:41:44.440] So my first experience was freedom was the back of a jumbo jet with 400 tourists.
[00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:50.200] Imagine I'd just been in this wild prison in South America where they're killing each other for fun.
[00:41:50.200 --> 00:41:55.080] I was shackled and as I got to the bottom of the stairs of the airplane, they unshackled me.
[00:41:55.080 --> 00:41:57.480] They took me to the top of the stairs.
[00:41:57.480 --> 00:42:05.000] The captain was there to meet me and he said to me, When you get to the UK, you'll be free to go.
[00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:05.560] Wow.
[00:42:05.560 --> 00:42:09.720] So I sat on the back of the plane for 12 hours and it was like a time warp.
[00:42:09.720 --> 00:42:17.280] And I'll tell you something very interesting: this was the first realization that I ever had of living in your body and in your head.
[00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:18.960] Because I sat at the back of the plane.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:20.160] I was like a Zen monk.
[00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:24.000] You know, I've just been in prison for six, seven years, isolation for four.
[00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:25.600] And I just sat still.
[00:42:25.600 --> 00:42:27.440] And I looked around me.
[00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:30.400] I was like, wow, these people don't stop fidgeting.
[00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:33.600] You know, they were playing with the in-house entertainment.
[00:42:33.600 --> 00:42:38.880] They kept opening and closing these poppers and doing these zips up, putting things in the overhead locker.
[00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:42.720] They had these new phones that had these screens on them and a thing called Facebook.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:45.920] And they were just like sitting there tapping and messaging away.
[00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:50.400] And I just thought to myself, oh my God, these people literally cannot stop fidgeting.
[00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:51.600] They're so anxious.
[00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:55.920] And I suddenly realized, wow, they're like totally in their heads and not in their bodies.
[00:42:56.240 --> 00:43:02.960] And this was the first understanding I actually had of observing that in real life.
[00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:05.040] You know, because in prison I couldn't observe that.
[00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:06.320] I could only observe myself.
[00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:14.400] And then when I arrived to Heathrow T5 the next day, I was sitting down and I went and bought myself a coffee.
[00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:16.800] It was the first thing I bought in seven years.
[00:43:16.800 --> 00:43:22.160] And I sat there and I asked myself, I was like, you know, what the hell are you going to go and do?
[00:43:22.160 --> 00:43:22.720] Yeah.
[00:43:22.720 --> 00:43:25.600] You know, you had this life as a smuggler, it's finished.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:34.320] You've just sat in prison and you've rehabilitated yourself and you have all this knowledge on yoga, but it's not that compartmentalized.
[00:43:34.640 --> 00:43:37.120] You've got nowhere to go and you've got no money.
[00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:40.560] And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I going to do?
[00:43:40.880 --> 00:43:49.840] And I heard this voice, it came through and it said that movement and meditative practices had such a profound impact on my life that it freed me from prison.
[00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:54.800] And if I could facilitate that into one person's life, then everything would be worthwhile.
[00:43:54.800 --> 00:43:58.080] And with that message, I got on the train.
[00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:03.560] I went home to my mum knowing I was going to be a facilitator of movement into people's lives.
[00:44:03.880 --> 00:44:09.320] And since that day, I've only ever focused on facilitating movement into one person's life.
[00:44:09.560 --> 00:44:13.080] And now we get like 25,000 people a year that come to the space in Ibiza.
[00:44:13.400 --> 00:44:16.440] And the same thing is now following through Europe and the States.
[00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:19.320] So that has been my, it's almost like I was given this mission.
[00:44:19.320 --> 00:44:19.640] Yeah.
[00:44:19.640 --> 00:44:20.680] And I've stuck to it.
[00:44:20.680 --> 00:44:33.960] I believe in it so much that I actually invested in the studio in Los Angeles because I think it's something that can help transform people and help them in a very sort of subtle, almost sneaky way get inside people.
[00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:34.520] Totally.
[00:44:34.520 --> 00:44:38.120] And helps them land in their physical body.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:42.680] And I come from a place of addictions, of alcoholism, and of trauma.
[00:44:42.680 --> 00:44:48.200] So I know that these practices have helped to cure me and shift that.
[00:44:48.200 --> 00:44:54.040] And through the studios, I work with a lot of people that have a lot of trauma, they work with a lot of addictions.
[00:44:54.040 --> 00:44:55.800] You know, I'm surrounded by them.
[00:44:55.800 --> 00:44:59.240] And they use this practice to help channel the behavior of their mind.
[00:44:59.320 --> 00:45:01.720] You know, and they say to me, this is really helping me.
[00:45:01.720 --> 00:45:02.120] Yeah.
[00:45:02.120 --> 00:45:05.000] You know, this is really helping me stay centered, grounded.
[00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:06.760] I'm learning to live in my body.
[00:45:06.760 --> 00:45:08.760] You know, I'm leaving the narcotics alone.
[00:45:08.760 --> 00:45:09.880] I've stopped drinking.
[00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:11.160] I've stopped smoking.
[00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:12.120] I'm getting healthy.
[00:45:12.120 --> 00:45:13.320] I'm getting straight.
[00:45:13.320 --> 00:45:16.520] So I know it works on so many subtle levels.
[00:45:19.080 --> 00:45:20.120] We've all been there.
[00:45:20.120 --> 00:45:30.680] You're on the go, starving, and your only options are ultra-processed snacks made from GMO corn, hydrogenated oils, and sometimes even mold-contaminated meat.
[00:45:30.680 --> 00:45:31.720] No thanks.
[00:45:31.720 --> 00:45:35.960] That's why I always keep Paleo Valley's 100% grass-fed beef sticks on hand.
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[00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:09.680] And they've already sold over 35 million sticks.
[00:46:09.680 --> 00:46:11.600] So clearly, I'm not the only fan.
[00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:19.680] Whether you're traveling, packing a lunchbox, or need a quick protein hit between meetings, Paleo Valley's beef sticks are the cleanest, most sustainable snack you can reach for.
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[00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:27.280] Let's talk hydration because most people are getting it wrong.
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[00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:29.600] Well, what's so interesting, Nick, is, and I'm sure you've heard this, but as I'm doing it, and I was there this morning, the movements are so foreign.
[00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:30.040] Yeah.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:31.640] Things that you normally don't do.
[00:47:31.800 --> 00:47:47.080] Like you're outstretched, you know, with your arms and you're kind of walking like with your feet and your hands on the floor with your body stretch out like Superman and it's like not easy or you're going backwards and doing strange things that you normally don't do.
[00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:50.920] In order to actually do them, you have to be so present and aware in your body.
[00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:51.400] Totally.
[00:47:51.400 --> 00:47:53.240] That all your thoughts kind of go away.
[00:47:53.320 --> 00:47:54.600] So like you're just there.
[00:47:54.600 --> 00:47:56.520] No, it brings a presence about.
[00:47:56.840 --> 00:48:03.880] Yeah, because yoga, like I can kind of get my mind sometimes to be still, but a lot of times it's drifting and I'm like in my head.
[00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:07.560] Yeah, because in yoga, you're kind of you're mat-based, you're static.
[00:48:07.560 --> 00:48:07.880] Yeah.
[00:48:07.880 --> 00:48:09.880] And they're asking you to be still.
[00:48:09.880 --> 00:48:11.400] You know, that's a hard thing.
[00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:11.880] Yeah.
[00:48:11.880 --> 00:48:14.760] You know, to sit and be still and not think is almost impossible.
[00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:16.920] So it's for me, it's like a moving meditation.
[00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:17.560] Exactly.
[00:48:17.560 --> 00:48:24.840] And that's exactly, you know, I came through a lot of practice of Ashtanga Yoga, which again is a very beautiful moving meditation.
[00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:31.240] I didn't find that it didn't functionally fit all the physical needs that I wanted, but it was a very beautiful practice.
[00:48:31.320 --> 00:48:34.360] I was really inspired from these practices.
[00:48:34.360 --> 00:48:43.240] So it was through the community and so many bodies that I was actually able to fully develop the system where it has now for so many people become a moving meditation.
[00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:44.680] The practice works physically.
[00:48:44.680 --> 00:48:47.000] That they understand and they know that, and I know that.
[00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:51.880] You know, I've seen so many benefits from thousands and thousands of people over 15 years.
[00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:54.600] But for me, it's now people say it's like they're checking.
[00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:56.680] It's like their daily place they come to.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:58.520] It's like their morning church session.
[00:48:58.520 --> 00:49:02.200] They just come in, they get in their bodies, and they sometimes they call it church.
[00:49:02.200 --> 00:49:03.400] It's like for me, it's a bit of a church, yeah.
[00:49:03.480 --> 00:49:04.440] Yeah, it's like a moving church.
[00:49:04.680 --> 00:49:11.880] It's a moving meditation, you know, it's so rewarding to see the effects that people receive from this.
[00:49:11.880 --> 00:49:13.000] Not just physically, but.
[00:49:13.240 --> 00:49:14.720] Mentally, emotionally.
[00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:15.520] Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:30.480] And it's a bridge into something deeper, you know, because then people actually learn to channel the behavior of their body, their mind becomes quiet, then they can go more into like CT practices, which is pretty difficult if you haven't learned to kind of control your body and your breath.
[00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:32.080] So then just try and sit.
[00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:36.800] It's almost impossible, you know, because you can be thinking about last night and tomorrow night and what you're going to buy and what you're going to eat.
[00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:38.800] You know, the mind is just like a constant monkey.
[00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:39.840] Yeah, it's like a monkey mind.
[00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:41.840] It's to channel the behavior, that's really hard.
[00:49:41.840 --> 00:49:45.200] So for me to channel it through movement is where it sits.
[00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:59.040] It's interesting because when I trained in yoga, which was 42 years ago, a while ago, before they had yoga mats and before they had Lululemon, we had like sweatpants and a towel, basically.
[00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:05.360] The practice was powerful because I was like 23 at the time and it was seven hours a day of yoga.
[00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:08.480] But the practice was called meditation in motion.
[00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:15.520] It was a Kripala yoga and basically it was a constant flow of movement and not just a static practice.
[00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:17.360] And it was very breath focused.
[00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:23.280] So it was like breath and movement and meditation, sort of all in one, which is kind of what Primal Moose is.
[00:50:23.600 --> 00:50:25.040] It's like breath and meditation.
[00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:26.800] It connects those three together.
[00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:32.240] And also, you know, in the classes, there is a bit of chit chat which creates that social interaction.
[00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:35.200] Was anybody else in prison doing this with you?
[00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:37.040] Were you able to sort of bring anybody else into it?
[00:50:37.520 --> 00:50:39.440] You're just a weird guy doing this stuff.
[00:50:39.440 --> 00:50:41.280] Yeah, I was kind of like the weird crank.
[00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:43.600] They looked at me like, this guy's lost it.
[00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:55.520] And actually, I mean, it was two or three years after being on the main wing in prison and just observing the human condition at its worst, that I actually took voluntary isolation because I wanted to be out of it.
[00:50:55.520 --> 00:50:55.920] Yeah.
[00:50:55.920 --> 00:51:02.200] You know, I was tired of so you weren't forced to be in no, I wanted to go into isolation because of the conditions were so bad.
[00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:05.400] The violence perpetrated between humans and human was horrific.
[00:51:05.720 --> 00:51:08.760] Worried about getting stabbed, stabbed, killed, over nothing.
[00:51:08.760 --> 00:51:09.800] No, life had no value.
[00:51:09.800 --> 00:51:11.160] And I thought, you know, I'm done with this.
[00:51:11.160 --> 00:51:15.400] I'd rather be on my own all day and checked out and tapping into something completely different.
[00:51:15.400 --> 00:51:17.960] You know, and I used it as I turned it into a little ashram.
[00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:19.960] Like a mini-cell ashram.
[00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:21.560] Literally, it was a four-year Vipassana.
[00:51:21.560 --> 00:51:22.840] That's crazy.
[00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:26.120] Yeah, I mean, said quickly, four years isn't that long.
[00:51:26.120 --> 00:51:35.480] But as you start going through the seasons, you start to realize that you go very deep and start peeling back a lot of the layers of the mind and you really get to know yourself.
[00:51:35.480 --> 00:51:41.160] I mean, they say, you know, you want to let a man know who he is, just put him in a room with his thoughts.
[00:51:41.160 --> 00:51:45.880] You know, it doesn't take long before the like the default mind, the superficial part of the mind disappears.
[00:51:46.280 --> 00:51:51.240] And then you start going really deep into your framework and your blueprint.
[00:51:51.240 --> 00:51:52.760] And you're able to sort of see that.
[00:51:52.760 --> 00:51:53.560] Very clearly.
[00:51:53.560 --> 00:51:55.080] It takes some time.
[00:51:55.080 --> 00:52:00.600] You know, eventually the mind will quieten down and your blueprint will come through.
[00:52:00.600 --> 00:52:02.680] Any issues will come through.
[00:52:02.680 --> 00:52:04.200] All your traumas, they will come through.
[00:52:04.200 --> 00:52:05.800] You will be confronted with yourself.
[00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:12.920] Yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, I decided to take a retreat and I went for a month in a cabin by myself in Vermont.
[00:52:12.920 --> 00:52:14.440] No moan, no computer.
[00:52:14.760 --> 00:52:15.080] Beautiful.
[00:52:15.400 --> 00:52:17.880] No journal, no books, just food.
[00:52:17.880 --> 00:52:18.600] Amazing.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:20.680] Me, nature, God.
[00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:22.680] They did have a wood fire at Saunder though.
[00:52:22.680 --> 00:52:23.240] I liked that.
[00:52:23.240 --> 00:52:24.120] And it was the winter.
[00:52:24.120 --> 00:52:25.560] It was in December.
[00:52:25.560 --> 00:52:29.000] But the first few weeks were a little challenging.
[00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:31.240] And then I got really high.
[00:52:31.240 --> 00:52:35.960] Like, like I got really happy, euphoric, and realized that I didn't need anything.
[00:52:35.960 --> 00:52:36.760] Yeah, less is more.
[00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:41.320] You know, if I had a place to sleep and had some food and some clothes to wear, that the rest is gravy.
[00:52:41.320 --> 00:52:41.560] Yeah.
[00:52:41.560 --> 00:52:41.960] You know?
[00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:42.200] Exactly.
[00:52:42.280 --> 00:52:46.000] You'd be surprised, you know, how quickly the distraction dies down.
[00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:49.120] All the cessations of thought, they eventually quieten down.
[00:52:44.680 --> 00:52:50.240] Well, most people can't do that.
[00:52:50.400 --> 00:52:59.600] So, how do people start to sort of break down those old stories and the beliefs and their ego and the things that keep them imprisoned?
[00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:03.520] Because I think people say, What's the meaning of life?
[00:53:03.520 --> 00:53:05.200] What's the purpose of life?
[00:53:05.200 --> 00:53:06.720] To me, it's getting free.
[00:53:06.720 --> 00:53:10.000] I mean, having an embodied practice to start with is a good place to go.
[00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.640] Having a physical practice, which is mindful, is definitely a good place to start.
[00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:18.880] Just starting to feel your body is a very good place to start.
[00:53:18.880 --> 00:53:20.800] Then you can start working on the other stuff.
[00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:26.080] But if you're just going to sit there in your head and try and intellectually work it all out, there's no somatic work being done there.
[00:53:26.240 --> 00:53:27.920] It's like doing your own talk therapy.
[00:53:28.080 --> 00:53:31.360] And you can talk yourself in and out of an empty cargo box all day long.
[00:53:31.680 --> 00:53:34.080] But you're still going to wake up the next day with the same shit.
[00:53:34.480 --> 00:53:35.200] Well, you can see it.
[00:53:35.200 --> 00:53:49.520] I mean, there's a book, The Body Keeps Score, and you can see how when you watch and observe people where their bodies are not free, where they're constricted or limited or just completely living outside of their body.
[00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:51.840] I mean, how does someone get to 300 pounds?
[00:53:52.080 --> 00:53:54.320] It's like by being very unconscious.
[00:53:54.320 --> 00:53:59.040] I mean, at what point do you not stop to look and be, okay, that's enough?
[00:53:59.040 --> 00:54:00.480] Well, it's just trauma usually.
[00:54:00.480 --> 00:54:01.120] It's pain.
[00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:03.920] It's feeding an emptiness.
[00:54:04.400 --> 00:54:06.560] There's all the psychological reasons.
[00:54:07.200 --> 00:54:15.440] But when you just start to do the simplest things to move, it's kind of a trapdoor to get to freedom.
[00:54:15.680 --> 00:54:19.760] It's like, you know, where's that sort of magic button you could push?
[00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:33.800] We can push a lot of places, but I think if more people lived in their bodies, inhabited their bodies, and were doing what you call embodied practices, which are not that hard to do, don't take that much time, it's really profound what happens.
[00:54:33.800 --> 00:54:37.240] And for me, I know it's the core to who I am.
[00:54:37.240 --> 00:54:43.400] If I don't move, I don't feel good and I don't feel like I'm alive and I don't feel like I'm free.
[00:54:43.400 --> 00:54:52.280] For me, being sick and not being able to get out of bed for six weeks and not being able to walk for months and you know, I was like on a cage for a long time.
[00:54:52.520 --> 00:54:53.720] It's amazing what you just did there.
[00:54:53.720 --> 00:54:55.240] I mean, yeah, just a few months.
[00:54:55.240 --> 00:55:03.720] Like, I just, you know, but the body has this incredible reparative body is one of the most amazing creations ever.
[00:55:03.720 --> 00:55:04.200] Yeah.
[00:55:04.200 --> 00:55:05.000] And then people don't realize.
[00:55:05.080 --> 00:55:05.720] So intelligent.
[00:55:05.720 --> 00:55:09.320] And so I've injured myself, or I've done this, or I've done that, so I can't do this, I can't do that.
[00:55:09.320 --> 00:55:11.640] And they start feeling all these limitations.
[00:55:12.120 --> 00:55:15.240] If I have an injury, I'm going to stop this or I'm going to stop that.
[00:55:15.320 --> 00:55:19.480] Instead of going, okay, how do I actually get to repair my system?
[00:55:19.480 --> 00:55:21.160] How do I get to heal those things?
[00:55:21.160 --> 00:55:25.400] And I was talking to a friend recently about the yoga teacher because he was a yoga teacher training with me.
[00:55:25.400 --> 00:55:43.880] The yoga teacher that taught us was a 65-year-old woman named Leela, a German woman, who was in a wheelchair, had massive back surgery, kind of like me, had spinal fusion, basically made herself completely like Gumby, which is flexible.
[00:55:43.880 --> 00:55:48.120] And as a yoga teacher, through the embodied practices that we're talking about, through breath and movement.
[00:55:48.440 --> 00:55:49.160] It's medicine.
[00:55:49.160 --> 00:55:50.200] It really is.
[00:55:50.200 --> 00:55:51.800] It has to be a non-negotiable.
[00:55:52.040 --> 00:55:59.240] And once you start tapping into it and realizing the benefits of really simple embodied movement practices, you won't turn back.
[00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:03.080] I think this whole idea of somatic medicine is kind of foreign to people.
[00:56:03.480 --> 00:56:27.520] We're used to therapy and talk therapy, but I found for my patients and for myself and for many, you know, you can talk all day long, but if you don't change this sort of meat suit that we're in into something that can be a transducer for understanding, for healing, for repair, you kind of become almost rigidified in these patterns.
[00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:46.160] I really encourage everybody listening to think about how they can, in their own life, start to inhabit their body as a way of not just getting fit or living a long time or for exercise, but as a way of starting to heal some of the psycho-emotional spiritual things that we all carry through life that we get stuck in.
[00:56:46.160 --> 00:56:50.560] It's a big step, you know, and also there's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well.
[00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:53.520] Because people are actually quite happy living in pain.
[00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:58.080] They think it's a place where they can reside that sometimes feels quite normal.
[00:56:58.080 --> 00:56:58.720] It's comfortable.
[00:56:58.720 --> 00:56:59.840] I mean, I used to live in pain.
[00:57:00.080 --> 00:57:03.040] I used to live in my trauma-based state of living.
[00:57:03.040 --> 00:57:05.760] That was my day-to-day way of living.
[00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:08.560] Numbed down, desensitized, and in pain.
[00:57:08.800 --> 00:57:09.600] And it felt good.
[00:57:09.600 --> 00:57:11.680] Sometimes I still go back there.
[00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:18.320] I can regress, I can relapse, and I can go into this place of traumatic pain, which feels normal to me.
[00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:21.600] But luckily, I've got tools, you know, where I can move that through.
[00:57:21.600 --> 00:57:32.800] So if someone's listening and they want to reset their nervous system and they want to begin to kind of start with some tools, if you feel anxious or stuck or disconnected, like where do people start?
[00:57:33.040 --> 00:57:37.120] What's the practice that you recommend just starting with in terms of reconnecting with your body?
[00:57:37.120 --> 00:57:45.200] I mean, if they have access to go to a local studio and do a movement, body weight movement-based class, it could be yoga, could be Pilates.
[00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:48.560] Any kind of movement-based practice is a great place to start.
[00:57:49.040 --> 00:57:50.320] That's the beginning.
[00:57:50.320 --> 00:57:53.600] And make it a practice, make it a daily practice.
[00:57:53.600 --> 00:57:56.160] And very quickly, you're going to see the benefits and the shifts.
[00:57:56.160 --> 00:57:59.480] So don't overthink it, but just start somewhere.
[00:57:59.480 --> 00:58:00.920] Yeah, people say to me, What do I do?
[00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:02.200] Might just show up to class.
[00:58:02.200 --> 00:58:03.800] Or go to primalmoves.com.
[00:58:04.120 --> 00:58:04.440] Yeah.
[00:58:04.760 --> 00:58:05.560] Exactly.
[00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:06.280] Just show up.
[00:58:06.680 --> 00:58:07.720] Just do that for yourself.
[00:58:07.720 --> 00:58:09.000] Give yourself that one thing.
[00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:09.960] Show up to class.
[00:58:09.960 --> 00:58:12.600] Show up for yourself once a day and do something.
[00:58:12.600 --> 00:58:14.360] And that will be a bridge into something different.
[00:58:14.360 --> 00:58:17.400] Like you say, you have 10-minute classes, 20-minute classes, 30-minute classes.
[00:58:17.560 --> 00:58:18.280] It's a start.
[00:58:18.840 --> 00:58:21.240] It gets you into the body, it gets you feeling.
[00:58:21.240 --> 00:58:23.800] The relationship to yourself will start to shift very quick.
[00:58:24.040 --> 00:58:30.840] But you know, sometimes I do see that even people like who do a lot of yoga, for example, they still can be rigid in their mind.
[00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:31.480] Yeah.
[00:58:31.480 --> 00:58:34.840] And so, can you kind of explain that in terms of why?
[00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:38.840] Yeah, because a lot of the yoga practices are quite dogmatic.
[00:58:38.840 --> 00:58:40.360] They're tradition-based.
[00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:50.440] So when I was building the primal system, I made sure that it was stripped back from any esoteric or traditional belief system.
[00:58:50.440 --> 00:58:53.240] We don't actually do any spiritual work in there as such.
[00:58:53.240 --> 00:58:55.560] I don't teach a belief system.
[00:58:55.560 --> 00:58:57.320] We're not teaching yoga or Buddhism.
[00:58:57.560 --> 00:59:03.400] We don't use any kind of lineage as such other than that of practice.
[00:59:03.400 --> 00:59:05.240] My lineage is just practice.
[00:59:05.240 --> 00:59:05.880] Just do it.
[00:59:05.880 --> 00:59:06.440] Just do it.
[00:59:06.440 --> 00:59:10.280] But we're not actually trying to share a belief system.
[00:59:10.600 --> 00:59:14.200] If someone wants to come to practice to have a belief system, that's fine.
[00:59:14.200 --> 00:59:17.000] But we're going to try and break that rigidity.
[00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:23.080] And a lot of times in yoga, there's a lot of lineages that are very traditional and they're taught through dogma.
[00:59:23.080 --> 00:59:29.080] So people again are getting stuck in rigid kind of thought patterns.
[00:59:29.080 --> 00:59:30.760] It has to be a certain way.
[00:59:30.760 --> 00:59:37.480] And that was another reason reason why I actually broke away from a lot of the kind of traditional yogic practices.
[00:59:37.520 --> 00:59:39.400] Yeah, yeah, I still do breath work.
[00:59:39.400 --> 00:59:41.400] If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
[00:59:41.400 --> 00:59:42.760] I go to primal every day.
[00:59:42.920 --> 00:59:44.640] If you want to call that spiritual, that's fine.
[00:59:44.640 --> 00:59:46.400] But it could just be a practice.
[00:59:44.440 --> 00:59:48.800] So we strip it back from anything esoteric.
[00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:56.000] And people really enjoy that because we're not trying to put our beliefs upon anyone in class.
[00:59:56.000 --> 00:59:57.920] And people really find that very refreshing.
[00:59:57.920 --> 00:59:58.720] It is refreshing, yeah.
[00:59:59.120 --> 01:00:01.120] You know, we're coming to do a practice, and that's it.
[01:00:01.120 --> 01:00:04.080] Showing up could be the spiritual part of it.
[01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:05.360] And it could be enough.
[01:00:05.360 --> 01:00:10.320] And also, the movements are so unique and different that you do.
[01:00:10.320 --> 01:00:17.360] And they're sometimes very physically challenging and hard that it seems to break a lot of the rigid patterns of thinking and being and moving.
[01:00:17.680 --> 01:00:18.560] It's an agitator.
[01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:20.240] Yeah, it definitely shakes things up.
[01:00:20.240 --> 01:00:20.720] Exactly.
[01:00:20.720 --> 01:00:21.520] When you agitate...
[01:00:21.760 --> 01:00:22.480] How do you do this?
[01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:24.000] And how do I make my body do this thing?
[01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:31.920] So, I mean, I sometimes get a lot of people asking me questions in class, and I can see that they're really stuck in their heads, and they put their hands on the floor and they can't move.
[01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:34.720] And I say to them, you're completely in your head.
[01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:36.080] Stop thinking.
[01:00:36.080 --> 01:00:37.040] Just move your body.
[01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:37.840] And I don't know how.
[01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:40.000] I said, just follow these people, just move that way.
[01:00:40.320 --> 01:00:42.800] And they start moving and I look back at me and they smile.
[01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:44.800] You know, I can see their body language.
[01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:47.040] They're overthinking how to move.
[01:00:47.040 --> 01:00:49.600] And the body actually knows how to move in that direction.
[01:00:49.840 --> 01:00:50.880] It's such an amazing thing.
[01:00:50.880 --> 01:00:52.960] So this has been an incredible conversation.
[01:00:52.960 --> 01:01:10.240] You've gone from being a guy with a broken body, with a broken life in prison, and have basically resurrected yourself completely and have transformed your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual self in a way that you're now sharing with people and inviting them in with you to try.
[01:01:10.240 --> 01:01:13.200] And it's so beautiful and it's so rare.
[01:01:13.200 --> 01:01:20.080] And I think you don't put yourself out there as a guru, as some guy who's got this the answer, but you just encourage people to just live in their body.
[01:01:20.240 --> 01:01:21.360] I'm a student like everyone else.
[01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:23.840] Just live in your body, which most of us don't.
[01:01:23.840 --> 01:01:26.960] Get connected to your body, which most of us aren't.
[01:01:26.960 --> 01:03:10.560] And to listen to your body, which most of us don't know how to do yeah and and when you start to do those simple things like if I if I eat something that isn't good for me I my body tells me like I feel it yeah you feel it and I'm like if I am in Europe and I'm eating at like 10 30 at night yeah I my body like no don't do that you know the invitation is really to start to listen like start to listen to your body and start to change the way you observe how you feel observe how you feel connect the dots between yeah wake up in the morning and sit on the edge of the bed don't look at your phone ask yourself you know before you open your apps that's telling you how you slept ask yourself how you slept yeah ask yourself how you're feeling yeah you know are you foggy how's your gut how's your recovery yeah how are you feeling yeah and then from that you can work out okay let's let's maybe shift some things today let's eat differently or eat earlier or change the way that i'm eating and change where that i'm moving it's such a simple invitation it's just you're inviting people just to listen very much so to be aware and i don't use any apps yeah for health data at all amazing nick what a journey you've been on uh what a gift you've given to the world i think everybody should check out primalmoose.com thanks mark they can find you on instagram at primal movesibiza primamuzibiza i b i z a and check out your studios whether they're coming around in america you're gonna be in los angeles you're gonna be in miami san francisco yeah when is austin opening because i live in austin we should be doing austin next year amazing great yeah in 26 so nick thanks so much for eating a real pleasure to show with you thank you if you love this do you have a question about my favorite books, supplements, or recipes, then sign up for my free marks picks newsletter at drhyman.com slash markspicks, where i'll share all of this information with you and so much more.
[01:03:10.560 --> 01:03:16.960] You'll get emails from me every Friday with recommendations on things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they can help you too.
[01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:18.560] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
[01:03:18.560 --> 01:03:19.840] We'll see you next week on The Dr.
[01:03:14.840 --> 01:03:20.640] Hyman Show.
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[01:03:26.320 --> 01:03:27.040] Mark Hyman.
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[01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:34.080] Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts.
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[01:03:36.320 --> 01:03:39.520] MarkHyman for video versions of this podcast and more.
[01:03:39.520 --> 01:03:41.440] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
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[01:03:42.800 --> 01:03:43.760] Hyman Show.
[01:03:43.760 --> 01:03:50.800] This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer.
[01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:53.680] This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.
[01:03:53.680 --> 01:03:57.520] Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.
[01:03:57.520 --> 01:04:04.560] This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
[01:04:04.560 --> 01:04:10.800] This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
[01:04:10.800 --> 01:04:15.200] If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
[01:04:15.200 --> 01:04:23.520] And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the ultrawellnesscenter at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.
[01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:31.520] It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
[01:04:31.520 --> 01:04:36.160] This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.
[01:04:36.160 --> 01:04:40.640] So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.
[01:04:40.640 --> 01:04:42.560] Thanks so much again for listening.