Lessons

Lesson Info

Behind the Scenes of The Tim Ferriss Show: Acroyoga

Jason. Welcome to the show. Thank you. What are we drinking here? What a great enjoyed the label. I enjoyed the label so much I have to share it with the world. It's Ah, duck Shit! Wu Long tea duck Shit Will long t It's true. What is the story behind the duck shit portion of that? Well, back in the day I hear in a region in China there was this amazing tea and it was so good that they had to play it down. So they called induction tea, and it was played down for however many centuries until it's been discovered. Isn't excellent. Tea is not that I got to say I'm enjoying the duck shit fragrance, long tea, and, uh, it is almost his odd sounding as our first encounter. And I remember the dinner at which we met. And this was in L. A probably Venice. Maybe Santa Monica, Santa Monica. And it was that whose home was audience. Dean's home. Dean and I was with my buddy Travis Borer, the ninja, the ninja, who is very much worth checking out for those people who have not seen him in action. Americ...

an Ninja Warrior and so on. And we were sitting somewhere close to each other. Maybe next to each other. We've captured a bunch of photographs of the day just running around doing crazy at the Santa Monica Green on elsewhere. And of course, you are the co founder of Acro Yoga. But I didn't have much in terms of exposure. Zakaria, what is Zakaria? You said I'll show you. And that led to an instagram photo that I posted Which Waas Justin something along the lines up. Just another Saturday night. Not sure how I ended up here and I was in reverse Bat position. Well done. You know, exactly that is what I used to call butter. Can I can asana But Hasina I'm not good with this such and such an us and a, uh, memorization of terms But the now what is what is that? How do you describe what that looks like? And maybe we'll do a quick demo on what that looks like. Well, basically, if you were a human bat and you were hanging upside down and you were holding your ankles, that's pretty much what it looks like. Spiderman? Yeah, Spider Man upside down monkey business or upset out with your feet together, sort of in a butterfly position. Exactly. And then the person who is supporting you, you the base, are on your back legs roughly straight up in the air in l base position and your feet would be basically right on top of my upper thighs, correct as those with shelves. And I remember being spun around. Felt like I was in a washing machine of sorts, which is actually term, of course, used in aggro. And it just blew my mind. Uh, what are the origins of AC Rio? How did it come to be? Well, you know, any time we talk about origins, there's my version of my experience of this story. There's the historical perspective. So what I'll do is all share from my perspective, what's and how This all came together. Basically, I had a lot of acrobatic experience. I started when I was 12 and I competed in sports acrobatics, which is basically like gymnastics and figure skating. Put together, it's a routine with partners music dance. So I competed in that for many years, found yoga in college and then ended up in San Francisco, where I met Jenny, the co founder, and Jenny had a background in the therapeutic flying. So what you were describing being upside down and being massaged? That's something that I learned from Jenny. She learned it from other people. So acro yoga to me was me and Jenny meeting and pretty much putting together our bag of tricks and that bag of tricks. So I will say it in terms of personal experience has been incredible because you have not just thesis of acrobatic. And this is a term that maybe you would not use, I don't know, but very kind of yang brand strength, athleticism, component, which is the the acrobatics. But then you have the very yin, very restorative therapeutic Thai massage. There's more to it, of course, but my hips after now, doing this reasonably consistently in particular the last two months. But for the last however long year plus yeah, yeah, you're plus good Lauren. I realized today that I've been a professional writer for 10 years, almost to the dot Wow, that explains the hair loss. I had a long fucking time, but the my hips, my knee issues, ankle flexibility, my progress from Grumpy Baby position for the Z. You know, you get all imagine you're laying on your back kind of holding on to your big toes and pulling your knees under into your armpits. Uh, historically very uncomfortable for me. Still not my favorite place to be, but much improved. And I feel years younger, athletically speaking mawr mobile than I was even when I was competing in wrestling interest. Uh, what, uh, what was the birth moment of acro yoga per se? Like when did that meeting turn into Akron, which is now practised by in how many countries would you say we have 55. I want encountered it recently. 55 countries that there are certified teachers, but it doesn't mean that the reach isn't bigger than that. But it's ah, it's definitely a global practice. At this point. The creation story is actually pretty magical. Uh, Jenny and I have been hearing about each other and we were training at the same circus center. She was doing contortion during the day. I was teaching trampling at night. So we kept orbiting around each other and had a lot of common friends, but just didn't meet, didn't meet when we finally, Mets. We got together at a party, and I immediately put her into a hand to hand where it's she's doing a hand stand on my hands and then she put me unfolded leaf, which is, you would say, the down dog of therapeutic flying. It's where my body's in a hanging, surrendered position. My head's in her belly and she's supporting my weight. And that was the first time as an acrobat that I felt what it was like to be inverted but not be engaged because acrobats are very controlling and controlled in their body. But to surrender It was amazing just those two poses. And then we were up until 5 a.m. Talking about this practice that would use all these different skill sets. And we saw how things like partner yoga would help people communicate and that the basic therapeutic flying that's not very advanced teaches people acrobatics in the software A. And we put really all the pieces together that night. So it came to get I mean, it was it was orbiting, orbiting, orbiting and then collision, collision and synthesis. Let's rewind just for a second to go back to the and I want to get the term right. The acrobatics. Well, this is sports exports, acrobatics, which I believe is also what Andre blundering us, a sports acrobat from Cirque du Soleil who I spent a bit of time with in Los Angeles when he was there, also did it. What are the categories? Because that you have what it's like. Two men, two women yet and then mixed gender. How does it work? It's the pairs. You have three different pairs. Men's pair, women's para mix pair. You have women's trio and you have men's for. That's the partner. Acrobatics and part of sports Acrobatics is also platform tumbling. This is when you have 100 foot long strip and people run full speed and crazy flipping and twisting. I saw a I think it was a quadruple back flip. Was Did you see? I think it was probably from your feet or Coach Summers Feats. Yeah, I've never seen a quad tumbled. I'd never even imagined it was possible. He did it easily, since, as nuts, uh, said the men's four. Let's talk about that because I think this is something people may have seen in performances in Vegas morning elsewhere very often by people from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union. What is that in men's four usually have two bases that are about the same height. Same build a middle, which is I would be a good size for a middling amends for I'm 591 then the Flyer vary in size is always the smallest one. And basically, if you know cheerleading basket tosses, that's they do A lot of tempo skills is what it's called where the Flyer does flips and twists and lands back on the basket and there to actually three different routines. There's a balance, a tempo and a combined balance. Routines in men's four is just a pyramid. It's no music. And it could be that the base is doing a back Ben for yogis and, er, Vidana Rocinha. And then the three people are standing on this guy's belly, and the guy on the top is doing a one arm handstand. Cray Cray. So this is Andrea. Yeah, that would be I don't know if he was a flyer here. He was a flat in the men's four men's pair. I don't remember. I'm almost positive events for you. Get corrected. Of course. Andri Bondarenko, Check him out on Instagram. It was such a nice guy, sweetheart of a guy and just a monster about certified us through the for those people who, as I didn't know, uh, basket case? No, not about stacking baskets like basket cases. Me basket toss. It sounds like something pornographic and it might be, but in this case, it's effectively. Is it further down? You hold your wrists, you hold your wrist and you're basically with other people weaving a human sample, human trampling with your four, huh? And it just blew my mind when I first saw at Cirque du Soleil, you were there when with Andre went behind the scenes, we saw them warming up. Yeah, and they're just getting launched 2025 feet and then landing on this human trampling that is effectively the size of the top of a stool. Yeah, it's just incredible. And I remember Andre never having tea, and he was talking about at some point on I'm going to paraphrase is obviously and maybe butcher it in the Ukraine when he went to some type of regional championship. They're a bunch of people warming up different teams. And one of the teens had a flyer who super aggressive and wanted to make an impression in everyone and tried something really outrageously hard. And it was a concrete floor, and he just took a headfirst spill on concrete floor. Those folks got carted out on, the competition continued, and that was his path on their all of their paths, out of sort of that world and into one of prosperity and of economic feasibility for careers. I heard a very similar story, and this is something that I see as the pitfall of acrobatics and potential pitfall. I trained in Bulgaria when I was 15 with the Bulgarian national team the year before we brought them to California, took him to Disneyland, blew their minds and learn from them. And I heard a few years after that that the men's four same thing wanted to intimidate the other men's four. So what I was describing to these four high pyramids. They're doing a four high one arm pyramid and they fell and the kid broke most of his bones. He didn't die, but it was the end of his career, and I think also for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. There were a number of Chinese gymnasts that died trying votes, trying to do these very difficult vaults. And, yeah, the dark side of acrobatics could be when your body is an obstacle to your goal. And this is where the yoga and the acrobatics can weave so intelligently the dynamic power of acrobatics. But the reality that you've got your body for your whole life and how do you make thes educated steps towards what you want? And this this comes back to the surrender component, which may sound very woo to some people listening. And that's OK because we're in San Francisco, So suck it up and Wu and take it. Uh, we're not gonna get too crazy. Maybe we will. But, uh, the flashing all over the place and this is a bit like momentum. But one of my other influences, this coach named Jersey Greg a wreck is the Polish Olympic weightlifting coach. I've mentioned a few times 62 leaner, stronger, more mobile than I am by many, many factors on. He's probably 1 35 1 40 can get on an Indo board like a Balance Board and hit a perfect snatch with a barbell loaded full of weight. Asked to the floor and then stand up and put it back on the floor. Just think with effectively, no warm up like Grant, he is just a extremely impressive athlete. His longevity is phenomenal and he said to me at one point, because my habit, of course, is push, push, push, break, you push. I know Stop everything for a while because I'm incapacitated Bush, Bush, Bush break And he said You have a Ferrari engine and paraphrasing here But he said, You have to remember you have a Ferrari engine in a Hyundai body like you're going to just blow yourself apart or it's your mind is willing, but your body is not adapted, so you need to not his words, Mind like chill the fuck out and play the long game, which I'm I'm becoming better at. And part of what has aided that is the therapeutics and something as simple as you mentioned surrender. So in the type of training that I'm focusing on right now, actually, doing the gymnastic bodies work with Coach Summer, former national team coach for Men's in the US He was on podcasts as well. But that is not a surrender now type of training. And it can't be, I mean, to do it properly, and I really, really enjoy it. But if I'm doing that, say, two days of stretching two days of strength training per week, I might then be doing. And I have been doing acro on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for an hour to an hour, half in the mornings and the just the traction alone that you're able to get from the. And for those people running with help, traction is simply put in. Chiropractors may disagree with this, but let's just imagine you're in an inversion table and you get flipped to point where your head is below your feet and you feel your spine is being decompressed. Think of that as one form of traction. You can get traction on your risks, traction on your ankles. And so I thought, What might be fun? And this is gonna be a visual component will try to describe it. But you mentioned a couple of things you mentioned folded leave, and would you say that is a good place for people to start with acro. There are a lot of grip, good places to start therapeutic flying. What I like about it is it's very soft and gentle. If there's extreme mobility issues, I think there are other things that people can do to gain confidence and to learn how to communicate what they need, the way that we teach the practices based flyer spotter. So the spotter can not only keep it safe, but they can also make sure the base is in the correct alignment. So it's too hard to say that this poses is the exact place two starts. One place it is. It is when you say based flyer Sponder. That is simply to say that General, you're practicing in groups of three. Yes, right Uh, let's let's just show. And for those people who are listening to audio, I'm sure I mentioned in the intro, and I probably mentioned at the Outro. If not, you can check in the show notes for our workweek dot com for such podcast, but we're capturing this on video reminds. We'll do some stuff is well suited video, and we'll talk through it. But let's just go to this Matt here and, uh oh, wait. We gotta do the Dutch friends of Joe the, uh Yeah, This is so thin. The nightly and Mac. Then we bring the partner down. So apparently the Dutch acrobats get very upset. If you don't do that, I've got to a point where I'm like You know what? I've had enough of the Dutch. I love the kickboxing, Ernesto Boost. Love you. But from all the jiu jitsu, I'm just like Flop. If I've made a lot of enemies, that doesn't happen in Akron. So, uh, I am standing with my feet reasonably coast, your hips. I want to be able to touch my flyers feet. My feet are turned out just below the hip bones. I am standing straight up. It's almost as if you've seen the UFC. You're, like, open guard on your back. And this would be where I try to punch you, and then you kick me in the face. But that's not accurate. That's MME. All right. And then flyer fingers forward. Got it. You got the acronyms and everything. Just so people I learned. I'm I'm a young pattern just learning what I can And then so the most important thing is that you understand when to be water and when to be Earth and what parts of your body so I'm gonna be watery with my arms and really sturdy with my legs will take a deep breath on the exhale I received with everything And then I push up with the legs here. A lot of times, the flyer will want to put the hands down and practice their handstand training. That means their control. Fleek. Yeah, he fold their top, the top of their hands down the floor. So at this point, those people listening I am supported on Jason's feet. I'm completely upset. And I'm basically in a l straddle position for those of you know, anything about gymnastics. Um And so this is folded leaf, sometimes in hushed tones, jokingly referred to as a leaf blower. My God was gonna come out. I'm trying to help people of the images here. So this is Scarecrow Scarecrow. Basically, what I do is a bases. I try to let your body unwind pattern. So as I bounce and shake, a lot of times, our mind is connected to muscle groups and flexing them when they don't need to be. So the true therapist is gravity, which helps toe let your spine hang like a plumb line. And, uh and we showed, for instance, Uh, let's see here, Super Yogi. Sure. So, Tim Lex Traction. So what I can do is I can let my legs come off my 92 degree. His weight will start falling back. We'll take a deep breath together on the exhale my legs go back and they resist with the arms. It's okay. Two more inhale, exhale. I'm pushing the legs back and given resistance, we got a little restriction one more time. Inhale and exhale. And then where I love to go is to open up your triceps in your shoulders. So I'm going to place my hands under his elbows and he can bend the elbows and the needs of the same rates and keeping the elbows closer. Does that feel? Can your shoulder Yeah, I'm gonna be a little careful on the left. Had a reconstructed but yeah, this spiel and in general, where the body can be vulnerable in the flying is in the shoulders in the lower back, so communication is really important and just listening to your body. All good, All good, sweet side Bending is also a thing that can really help the health of lower back. And what's different with the therapeutic flying from yoga is your body doesn't have to be engaged. You're not using your muscles as the flyer, so you don't have to work up Hill. Basically, Uh, yeah, I'm on the basics of their Peter Flying and some people who heard a bunch of grunting and weird noises and just don't know what the hell is happening or people who might have seen the video I have actually, let's demonstrate one more thing, because I was in South America doing an immersive, which was a great experience, meaning a two week intensive of acro yoga training. First Week was dedicated to the acrobatics second week to the therapeutic flying a Thai massage, and I was visiting a friend of mine named Chris, who has developed some lower back hip issues from a lot of from a lot of sitting. He's he's a former high level athlete, and I gave him what is sometimes referred to an actor community as leg love, which is typically done for those of you who just saw her. I'll just describe it. So Jason's on his back, basing the supporting all of my weight on his legs, in effect, that can get tiring hen. And so, after you've received effectively massage being floated on someone's feet, you then help too, uh, released, released attention their legs and restore their legs a bit. Exactly. And so I did that to actually know my Alright, bring it. So it's podcast getting better and better. Yeah, So what I did for for Chris and this is something I've done for a number of people now And obviously consult your qualified Acura yoga professional. I'm no doctor. Don't play one on the Internet, but is So let's say we just came down Way came down and we're here there, a couple of very easy things you can dio. So just from this squat position, I'll get his leg straight, and I'll actually just hold his feet in between the crease of my leg and my upper body on, then lean backwards, some giving him traction at the hip and the lower back, even though I'm not holding on to anything so good on my ankles, too. Yeah, and a lot of traction on the ankles and extra irritation. Other things that are pretty easy to dio would include. You do a little bit more traction, so you step in and I'm just going to shake the legs, get them to relax a bit and then turn the feet in, put them behind my hips in lean back. And what's great about this poses the therapy decline is an external rotation. This is a counter posed internal rotation. So that's where some of the yoga intelligence starts. Sneaking in is how do you counter the muscles that you've been working? And for those people who are, say, cross fitters were afraid of seeming to crunchy to their buddies, whatever it might be, this is an excellent compliment. Teoh. Any type of Olympic lifting lifting that involves squatting. For sure, I found this to just be a huge performance enhancer. Having this done, just get you on my feet for one second in a bird. Sure, just to show what my theory is of why your hips are a lot more evolved now. Squatting flexibility. Look at this guy's it. It gets increased when you have 170 £ on top of you, so it doesn't just warm the body, but it lets us access new flexibility. That's one that you need to watch the video for. Yeah, if you want to see freakish hip mobility, have open hips. It's true. Open hips, good birthing hips. Then you should watch the video, so I'll just demonstrate a few more generous super simple that there are many, many options we could do. Open up the bus driver. This one's known as on. They all look really silly, and they are as profound, I think, for athletic performance or just general health, as they are in some cases, ridiculous looking another that I found just incredibly helpful. It's just swinging, so this type of movement and, uh, won't do too many more. Get fancy like the circle AIDS and stuff. But I'll show one more, and then we'll we'll get back to the interview. So in this position, feel free to correct me from messing this up, but you can you can effectively push down on the feet and get the hips off the ground. And then I used the hand or not to loosen up this entire lower leg and hip region and literally just doing those few things. Ah, uh, I was able to alleviate Chris's lower back pan significantly. I mean symptoms, you know, 40 50% decreased. And that is, in my experience, not just a Band Aid. It's not like you swallowed a bunch of ibuprofen with regular use. The effect seems to be very persistent. Yeah, my hips feel great. And it's like I never thought in my entire life I would ever say that, Uh, that makes me so happy. That is the goal of the practices that you can find a way to interact with acro yoga that will affirm who you are now and who you're gonna be for the rest of your life. And one of the really cool things that I've seen is acrobats, yogis and healers. All three lineages. People can do it until they're 90. 100 gymnasts. Not true. I have not seen 100 year old high level gymnasts just because it's very high impact. But there are styles of acrobatics, styles of yoga and styles of healing that are really affirming who you are. So you're not depleting yourself as you're learning. These cool things. Well, could Summer said I think it was. I know in the world of high level gymnastics, like I know a lot of stupid people, and I know a lot of old people. I don't know, a lot of stupid old people like you made it that look, uh, but speaking of some of some older folks, uh, you mentioned you mentioned me. Of course. A number of your teachers. Number of your influences. Uh, could you talk about Louis and your experience with your healing teacher and just give some contacts on who these people are? Sure. So Louis is a Chinese acrobatic master is a circus master. He traveled throughout the world back in the fifties. He was actually telling me a story about when he performed in Africa. And they had this act where you throw these big pots around pots land on your head, and the Africans carry things on their head. So they weren't impressed. They didn't clap. They had to take it out. So he's just a treasure trove of really amazing stories about circus. And he's been in the Bay area for quite some time now. I met him about 13 years ago. We have a little short story about this. I met him. I go into the circus center. You know, I competed high level acrobatics, but I hadn't trained high level in a while. And I see him training people in one arm, handstands and I, as a base. Never learned how to do a one on hand Stone on the ground by myself. So, like, Mr Louis, your look like such an amazing teacher. I would be so honored to work with you. I just did a yoga teacher. Training and yoga is a four letter word. I might as well just spit in his face so literally for the next three years, every day I would see him in the circus owner. Mr. Louis, I'd love to work with you. Oh, you have too much experience. You very old, my weight, different way. And when I speak with my pretend Chinese accent, it's so much love. It's still pretty good, I think a lot of time in China. Oh, my God, this is Louie. And Louie has been a mentor in a lot of ways, and he has a lot of different techniques. He's right when he says that because he came from circus and I came from sports acrobatics. One day I go into the circus center and he's teaching a kid how to ride on a bicycle backwards by sitting on the handlebars like he knows so many random things. And recently, just this year, he has sigh, Attica and you got into a car accident and it got worse. And he's basically been out of commission now for quite a while, and I've been trying to connect him with one of my other master teachers. Who Scott Blossom, who's amazing. Chinese medicine doctor. Acupuncture Ire Veda, which is an Indian science of medicine. And he's also a shadow yoga teacher. And in the world, I think they're 20 certified shadow yoga instructors. That's a whole nother conversation, but he's basically a triple threat. Amazing human. And today, before this interview, I finally I went to Lily's house. I picked him up, I took him over to Scott's office and who he doesn't speak English very well, and I understand him and we have a good reports. It was really good to be there, and for about 6 to 8 minutes he was just reading his pulseless just feeling his hands. And from there he basically did. Needles did a lot of difference techniques, and before he got him on the table, I was in a moment where I just sat on the floor. When they were doing the pulses, I closed my eyes and I did a meta practice. Meta means loving kindness. This comes from Thai massage, Thai massages, an amazing practice that weaves spirituality and healing. So as I closed my eyes and then meditating, my heart's pumping, my hands were getting hot. I'm just basically cultivated all this G. And I didn't think I was gonna be able to lay hands on the yet all but then when you got him on the table is like Jason feel here. They put an elbow there. So I got to Do you know, I have two of my master's here and I get to give love basically to this man who, with his hands, has sculpted my handstand, my one arm handstand. So it was just a really cool thing to feel how acrobatics is really powerful, but nothing is more important than your health until you start losing your health and have these tools to help people feel better. There are very few things in life that I think are more noble to dedicate to than learning techniques to help people and, you know, metta loving kindness, compassion, meditation. These are things that are very easy for everyone on the planet to start practicing as soon as they build the desire. And I think human nature is such that we have the desire that we want to help people. We want to make people feel better. So, yeah, that was an amazing way to start my day to see these two masters come together. I've been very struck by a few things just related to what you just said. The first is that a lot of people come into healing happy history of being injured themselves warm, even injuring other people. A lot of judoka in Japan end up then going into bone setting or just eat a traditional. Let's just call it not traditional but Western medicine. And, uh, the second piece is that I was very surprised when I did the immersive. I hadn't had any riel in depth exposure to the therapeutic flying that, having been so aggressive in all of my individual sports to date, I've always since I was introduced to Akra been obsessed with the mawr dynamic, violent, perhaps fastest shiny objects. The shiny on Skaro. Yeah, which are life. Yeah, that's my story. My life. But, uh, that I was astonished to find that when I did the immersive, I was actually, in many ways, Mawr drawn to the therapeutics. Yeah, and I think that's because I've just overdeveloped or over focus on on the kind of hard driving aspect to such an extent that I don't have a rate limiter. It's like I have no on my like tachometer. I don't have any red zone. I didn't see it. It just blows apart. And that helps me to start to calibrate and pay more attention by paying attention to someone else's body. I feel like you learn to pay attention and listen to your own body for sure, especially if you have good guidance. That is a very strong principle from a lot of my teachers body comfortable. If you're not comfortable as a giver of healing arts, you're violating the first thing. So you actually get to be an unfortunately in English. There's not a good term for this selfish. And to be a good healer, you have to be very selfish. You have to really listen to who you are to where you are and from that place. If you really understand, you have the potential to give in a way that's not depleting given away. That's not gonna hurt you because that's gonna be a very short healing career. What, uh, is the handstand approach that you thought of this morning? You mentioned this and I said, Save it for the podcast. I don't want to hear about it. So tell us. Okay. A lot of people listening Ridge to enhance dance. Yeah, a lot of crap in hand stands out there. I've seen most of them in different shapes and forms. Well, this is where again I feel like the acrobatics in the yoga start to mix. I've been doing Shadow yoga for about six years now, and there are three. Prelude is one basil goul run is the bad guy. That man he doesn't run shadow yoga Sounds like something out of a Marvel Comics head of like the Avengers movie and of gender rennet is a Hungarian martial artists who came up. Yeah, there's darkness to it will come back to that I get so we'll dig into shadow, but, uh, please continue. Well, it came from my shadow practice this morning, so there's oppose where I'll just do it real quick. There's a sequence in one of the one of the poses is with the fingers interlaced. And so you're just describe your standing shoulder width apart roughly my hands flat on the floor with your fingers interlaced. Yep, And I would never think to do a handstand like this. And I was doing my practice this morning and my car. I wonder how hard that would be is really fucking hard. 30 years of acrobatic training. I've never seen anybody do that handstand. I'm sure it's been done, and I tagged a few people on Instagram this morning. Andrea's one of, um, Miguel hand balance. There was another and my third attempt. I figured a couple things out. Basically, if you let the pinky go wider and you have the thumb go wider, you have a big enough base and you got to start using the pinky and the thumb. But it was just, you know, as much as I feel like acrobatics is very fixed. Gymnastics is very fixed as long as the mind is not fixed. And if you have playfulness and you have a ritual of discovery, this practice keeps expanding. There's, uh, love the the cross pollination when you expose yourself to different physical disciplines so you have yoga way. Have acrobatics, then you have sports splits called sports acrobatics. Circus Olympic gymnastics for simplicity, statistic for fresh people really know? Sure. Okay, so very interrelated. But different disciplines break dancing. So, for instance, that position had right here reminds me of. I believe it's called a 2000 in break so well, you have a 1990 which is a one armed spinning handstand. Okay, which is generally on this portion of the palm, mechanically speaking, very soludo pirouette, even the way they go into it with right legs and then bring their lights together. But 2000 if you found somebody was very good at teaching or performing in 2000 and explaining it, they would probably have a lot to add to that conversation. So if any, uh, be boys out there, be girls. Want to add some commentary on how to do to thousands properly. Uh, you will assist me in at some point having too much to drink and injuring myself. So that is that I have to just ask, what on earth, the shadow yoga. Can you describe the Shirley's? I love describing this cause it's something. In my recent past, I'd say five years. It's a thing that's affected my life the most positively as a gymnast and acrobat, I would have lower back pain, you know, it would come and go, but it was. It was a constant teacher, and as soon as I found the shadow practice for over five years, I wouldn't say I've been back pain free. But if I wake up and I have back pain, I know if I do my practice and I do a number of things that are conducive to my health, I can clear it. So shadow yoga is gender. A Mattei's ah, martial artists. He was in the Army. I'm not sure which army. He's a certified badass, and he's such a deep yoga practitioner. I've actually never met him, but Scott, my teachers told me a lot of things. One of the things he did in a demo, is he? He took a deep breath and they sat. And then it took another deep breath and he sat and he looks at the big smiles like, Do you know what I did? I ate the breath and he starts laughing. Basically, he can just metabolize a breath. He doesn't need to exhale. He's a yoga master, full blown. And what he did is he studied in Poona From my anger, I am guards. One place. Okay. It is a place in India where I anger was a man who basically, other than Chris Macharia, the father of modern yoga, I would say I and guards one of the most influential people who has come to the practice of yoga. So he studied with Ionger for a number of years, and he also went to the south to study Ira Vedic medicine on in Carolina. They have temple dancers. Barton knocked him temple dancing. And they also have calorie martial artists and the martial artists and the temple dancers removing much more in circles. And he was watching them and he was learning ire Vedic science and he basically started defused all these things So if I were toe give ah couple sentence the elevator speech of what shadow yoga is. It's based in I en garde technique for the Asano's, and it's got a tight she feel, and there's definitely a lot of circular movements, so you start with warming up all the joints of the body. And he said, you know, paraphrased that the martial artists and the temple dancers for one year just did joint mobilization. And if you understand how to move all of your joints very intelligently, then the more complicated moves ride on the back of that intelligence. So it one of the things that make shadow yoga unique. As far as I have experienced yoga, they say, if you squeeze the mother the muscle, you block the prana, so if you're engaging your muscle, you're not letting the energy flow. So what you do is you try to have your muscles as soft as possible, and you really put your attention into the bone layer and you stack your body in ways that the bones are taking the weight. The muscles air soft, and you start circulating the energy through the body. Well, the bone stacking is pretty good. Pretty good Segway into all sorts of topics for people who want to learn more about shadow yoga. Is there a particular resource other than Google that you would suggest? It's Yeah, shadow yoga dot com. I believe they have a DVD. The unfortunate reality is, I think there are, like 20 certified teachers in the world, so he's very, very strict on certification. I mean, talk about Mr Miyagi. This guy is the definition of yoga. Mr Miyagi, Salty old dog like this. I know it's inevitable that well, I aspired to be a salty old dog myself, So I like hanging out with the can tankers. Opinionated but highly competent, salty old dogs. Here's a guy for you, although, yeah, he might not put up with me. That's that's a separate issue altogether. Bone stacking. Uh, let's talk about handstands for a second again on. I always messed this up. Is that a T B a t B? Look at me. Well, you also learned in Spanish that was eBay. EBay. That's right. That was the whole that whole thing in and of itself. I did my entire immersion in South American Spanish. There were a number of people translating for Hampel folks who only spoke English, but I found it more entertaining. Teoh. See how badly I could mangle things by running on the Spanish alone? So let's talk about a TV. Should we just do? Ah, little demo? Yeah, that means maybe I'll talk a little bit first painting analogy. So I like the analogy of bridges. So the alignment is basically a TV stands for what? Alignment, tightness and balance. So and I like it in that order because until the body gets aligned in the most efficient way possible, you are losing energy for every second you're attempting the handstand. So alignment is the holy Grail of all acrobatics. And what's great about these ideas? The ideas? A really simple. The practice is a pain in the ass. It takes sometimes decades to get a straight handstand, but alignment is straight, straight, a strong. So if you learn how and our bodies are not made straight, our cells are circular, our bones or not, two by fours. So it's it's impossible task that we try to do to turn our bodies into these knifes that cut through grab what are some of the things that Louis says is like short expressions where people doing handstands well, So today his leg isn't working very well. One of his legs, He can't walk up the stairs very well. And I joked at him, I said, We your body's not one piece because he says a make body. One piece. One piece is he likes the body to be unified. And then I have a Russian coach, says Meg. Body one bone. Same saying. It's basically unifying the body. And that's the second part of the A TV. It's tightness, its integration. And if you see, for instance, for I know you've seen this. But for people listening or watching, if you see a photograph of a gymnast Mid air Maura diver, for that matter not relaxed like not look, look at how tight they are. They're usually like, yeah, like, and a cool experiments. For those of you at home that are interested, Aziz hard boiled an egg and take a raw egg. Try to spin them both, and I don't want to spoil it. Yeah, well, you can try that. That's also if you're an idiot like me, hard boil some and you forget which ones were wrong. Spin it and you'll see very quickly which ones are hard boiled because they'll fly off the counter. Probably, uh, another good Louis is, um and this is good for anyone to put in their back pocket. And I'm so happy that Coach Summers also agrees with me on this more extension. More extension M o extension, more extension. And what he's talking about there is. It comes back toe Newtonian physics, action reaction. The second Law of Motion. If you push into something, it pushes back. So as you pushed down into the floor, there's basically a rebound, and this rebound is what makes your handstand light. And that's what makes the body ah, lot more unified. Exactly soon it also if we're gonna look at sort of the hierarchy. And if you were to do one, and I'm not saying you have to choose one. But if someone wasn't if someone could not somehow wrap their head around the alignment piece, they didn't have somebody to help them. But I just said, Okay, you know what? Forget that More extension, like more what now? I'm just gonna say it helped me with my alignment folks on the extension because it took effectively one piece out of the puzzle because it locked it in place. Meaning who you know. And, uh but, of course, having someone to help with the alignment is is ah, a huge resource. But you're talking about bridges. Yes. So ah, bridge. Basically, it can be in the analogy of the body. The metal is the bone structure. So the first thing they do when they're building a bridge is they've got to get the pylons in place, and they have to get the metal in the right alignment. From there, they pour the cement in. The cement is basically your muscles and the muscles, just like the smith can harden onto those pieces of metal. So basically, you align the metal, you pour the concrete As the concrete hardens, it gets super stable. Haven't really figure out part of the analogy of the balance. Maybe has something to do with, you know, the cables, cables. Yeah, yeah, but at least the first to have a picture for you to think about. And there was a point in gymnastics history in the seventies where the Japanese gymnasts were dominant and They had a lot of techniques that none of the other world had seen yet. And one of my friends was very connected to that lineage. And he said that at the Olympics that a big interview with this guy like you have to tell us your secrets, how your gymnasts doing, they're just blowing us all away says It's two things strength and flexibility, and that has been much the end of the conversation. And there's actually 1/3 thing in my experience. It's technique, and my one of my definitions of technique is how skillfully use your strength and your flexibility. So if somebody doesn't have a lot of shoulder mobility, they're doing handstands if they want to get as much mobility as they can. So Coach Summer calls it, uh, compression strength. Well, he would. In this particular case, he would want, uh, I always dangerous speaking for Coach Summer, uh, one my favorite salty old dog so he can slap me on the Internet if if I get this wrong. But if I had to guess, I would say that he would argue that you shouldn't if you're going to practice handstands correctly, would want to get to the point where this type of shoulder flexion is comfortable not using a lot of muscle to get, I would agree, and if you don't have whatever flexibility you have, you want access it, so you want to eventually have a surplus of shoulder flexibility. I was born circa shoulders, so if you have a surplus of the shoulder flexibility, being vertical is very easy. That's what you want. But if you're stiff, you don't want to not get that one inch of flexibility utilized. So basically, the technique is using your strength and flexibility as skilfully as you can with what you have in one day. You can't get stronger or more flexible, but in one day you can affect your approach and affect how skillful you're cutting through gravity with the line of your body by finding these little hinges and taking as much of those hinges out. So let's, uh, what you think about doing a little devil. Yeah, all right. So let's look at a TV, and I'm thinking, what might make sense is, uh, I'll do it first. And suffice to say, I don't think I have great hands. Stents didn't agree. They're trending in the right direction they're getting. They're getting better, which is all I care about. I'm no Bondarenko at this point. Also, weigh £100 more. Uh, that's not sure, but I digress. Uh, all right, so so foundation. You wanna have your hand shoulder with so you can put the hands down and I'll just inspect your foundation. This is definitely where Louis will spend a lot of time. Ideally, your tenting said, this knuckle comes up on what that does That puts a vector to route the naughty knuckle. This is also very Spiderman like, So if you if you ever see a close up of Spiderman like this on a cover, he's tenting his fingers. It's hard to do without the ground. But in other words, if your fingers are completely flat on the ground, you're popping up with second knuckle exactly. Keeping the knuckle of the palm on the ground. Because if this pops up, what's it called? The naughty knuckled naughty knuckle, which is this index that constantly pops. Okay, so let's say your hands look great, right? And at the right distance apart so you can go up. However you like also fortune on the way up. Okay? And only have your head neutral. His head is down. I step in between the hands Hugus thighs and bring the ribs and domesticate Good. Are you breathing? Elbows in more elbow isn't. Yep. Good. Look down with your eyes. Fall toward your fingers a little bit. Fall towards right there. Right there. Yep. Bingo. Keep the hand strong. Keep the breath. Keep falling towards me. Yes, right there. Right there. How you feeling? Good. I can't come down. So, Theo, the what I'd love to see also is so if you could go been hands down and I'm not gonna do a great job of spotting. I'm working on that also. But I'd love for you to show some examples of common mistakes. Yeah, I love that. Well, I'm not gonna do The most common mistake is taking my hands wider than shoulder with. I wanna have a vertical lines. I'm not gonna compliment. Do you always do you personally point your middle fingers forward? I dio some people. Quite a few gymnasts do index, But you prefer middle finger. Well, and I don't believe in right and wrong until you define where you want to go? And what I teach is partner acrobatic handstands. So if you're practicing with hands turned out as a base, I'll have to have my hands turned in super awkward. So the techniques, right? Because we're gonna be we're gonna be here. So in fact, this is a This is hand and grip. It is Reverse. Hand a hand. You can practice with yourself. You can't practice hand a hand by yourself and hands pretty tough because you need a right hand with the right hand. And not many people have that. Yeah, but okay. So right. Train is you want to compete, so to speak. Exactly. Uh okay, so still so let you instead of placing into wide ready. So for those people wondering, that was a straddle straddle jump. Basically, look, it's from here. Now. If I were do just practice, Might my coaching here, huh? That's we have before anything, I'd bring the head down head down because then I have it more access to a straight line in my spine. You can turn one of your feet to the side. Yep. Hug around my thighs with one of your arms. Yep. Find my ribs with the other hand. I pull everything up in it. That's it. We're technical difficulties. Pinky is witness. Be. I could put your feet apart. You can also push me down strong from the thighs. I pushed me down. Push you down? No, not that way around. Got it? Got it. Push you down. Stronger. Way stronger. Way stronger. Yep. And I remember there was another. Now, I'm just gonna do some rotation stuff also doing. Yep, this kind of stuff. And then see tightness, balance. And then we can do just kind of a hop to Yep. All right, So now what other? Any you know, they come down or get still. Demo, What are some of the most common mistakes? I'd say elbows are one of the most yeah, bending the wrong way. Both so, saying a straight arm is a very un descriptive way to talk about how to position these bones. So when you're down here, basically you can spin the eyes of your elbow forward towards each other or back. And what you want to find in a handstand is the eyes of the elbows are squeezing towards each other. This gives you a lot of integrity in your hand stand, so I'd say elbows from there, probably the head being really far away because that also just leads to the cascade of hiking at the shoulders and then betting too much with lumbar trying to use the legs to correct. And then you're done. So bring the arms up. Was another good one. Beginner acrobatics Relax, huh? Yeah, intermediate. Advanced expert is when the shoulders touch the years. Can't get that you are getting better yet, but not quit. So if people get the shoulders and the ears even close to each other, the arms in a straight line that's gonna take care of a lot of the problems. You really shouldn't coach above the shoulders for the first several months. Shouldn't coach above the shoulders. There are a lot of misalignments. You mean just coaching from basically here to the fingertips. From here down is where most of the big problems come from. So if you're looking at why they are, chain probably has something to do with something that's happening from here down. So will you sit the males? I mean, there's a lot of magic in the hand in the foot placement. Yes. So paying attention to that pays dividends. And the, uh the next question I want to ask you Waas. Actually, one thing I wanted to just throw out there that I found helpful. And this was at a place called Athletic. Put around, uh, in the East Bay here in the Northern Cal serious place in Emeryville. That's right in every great place. And I took a handstand class ages ago. Uh, with teacher am Sam. Amazing teachers. Sam was amazing. And I remember what she had us do at one point, and it did. It was just such a simple idea. And it was this basically she had us traversing the room, going back and forth. I'm not gonna do it right now, but I'd like to walk. She had us in rows and going back and forth, and we were supposed to go up into handstand. Now it could be only 45 degrees. Like if you're a beginner, like don't tryto lest you topple over, Just go 40 degrees. And if if I went up with this leg, I would come down with this leg, so it's sort of like a scissor at the top and which you noticed is that people would go. They would walk like this and then they put their hands out kind of like Frankenstein on, then go into And she said, All right, let's try something different because people were flipping and flopping everywhere She said, I want you to do the same thing again, but instead of that, you're going to start with your arms, way up over your head, shoulders elevated. This doesn't move at all. And I want you to do the exact same thing all of a sudden. Just stability. 10. Next. Yeah, it was incredible. And that's basic tumbling. And that's lunge lever lunges. How I knew it as it's basically you make a straight line. You bring a leg up enough. Nothing hinges. Your body just falls forward. You hit that line and on the way out as well. So the ability to keep body again in one piece is what you're looking for. Yeah, Yeah. One boat, one bone. Uh, what other teachers or mentors have had a big impact on you? Dharma Mitre, Yoga. Klay has been an amazing teacher. He's a Brazilian yoga teacher. He was born and raised in Brazil and he came to New York and met his guru, Yoga Gupta in I want to say, the seventies, the mid seventies and out of everyone that I've met in the yoga world he is. He does the practice. He's super deep. He teaches psychic development techniques. He psychic development technique. Yeah, die a letter. I mean, is there are things that he learned from his guru. Um, the practice is a lot of visualization and breathing techniques, some humming sounds that unlock vibration in the head. And I was studying with him for a numb, trippy thing to do in a century deprivation tank, actually, which I experimented with. A. I bet that is a full, full blown psychedelic auditory experience without psychedelics. But that's maybe for a different podcast. You know, vibrations, vibration. There's a lot of ways toe unlock those things touching magic land exactly if you want to, which, by the way, was recommended me by a Russian medical massage expert, Onda. Not not in red Light district for relaxing hyper tonic forms. Uh, the original version plug in version. You could get at your friendly neighborhood sex store, uh, on high as it turns out, but so So that was that I know is that I'm gonna get my terms wrong here. Not Swami Guru. Now something. Gupta? Uh, yoga. Gupta. Yoga do? That was Are you referring? Teoh is guru his girl who's an Indian guy? Yeah, Yeah, it's basically a lot of really ancient knowledge that to some degree, a lot of the yoga knowledge is able to be accessed on the Web. You know, you can really look acrobatic. Still is not. It's still really hard to find any valuable, acrobatic written texts, but the really the thing that the valuable about yoga masters is they communicate things energetically. They This is a saying that comes from Dharma Mitre that came from his guru. Once blessed is a student that can copy the teacher physically, twice blessed is a student. You can copy them physically and mentally three times. Blessed is a student that can copy them physically, mentally and spiritually. And there was a day where the guru was gone and somebody said, When is he coming back? And Darma said, You know, started to move as the guru does and started toe speak with same tone of voice the guru will come back on May 31st 31 days in May. It's just together, and sure enough, he came back. So he's He's a teacher of these very mystical aspects of yoga, and at the same time he does all kinds of crazy, awesome, as awesome as opposes. He has a poster of 908 yoga postures. And so when I saw this poster, I was like, I have to meet this guy. And when I finally met him, the types of teachings were much mawr fulfilling and deep than physical poses. It was really philosophies on life the way that he interacts with world. I just watch how he eats a salad. He looks at every piece of food before he puts it in his mouth. The mindfulness practice and the compassion. So yeah, Dharma Mitre begin and he's 77 the same ages, Louis. The two of them haven't met, but I've got my 77 year old masters. Do you think they would love each other, kill each other? No, they would love each other. Sure. And I've seen Louis with a Thai massage master, and I was really interested to see how that would go. And, you know, it's kind of like in Star Wars return of the jet I when you've got the party at the end and you've got Anakin and Obi Wan and basically all the dead Jedi masters hanging out in spirit. When I see masters together, I swear that's what it seems like. These magical spirits are getting together and just celebrating life together. Uh, what are sub? Well, actually, before we get back to the acrobatics, I want to ask you about contemporary yoga as it were, just the state of yoga in the United States. Popular yoga. I was put off by yoga for a very, very long time. And maybe maybe this is gonna be like speaking out against church. I don't know. I don't want to create any problems, but I'm curious. What what are things that you see in the yoga world that drive you crazy? Well, yoga can be like from not pointing their when they do handstands. Course ticket. No, it's it's job security for me, the worst, they do a handstand, the more clients I'm gonna get. So I'm not upset of their handstand technique. That's actually great Um, I feel just like religion. Yoga can get very one. Wait, it's my way or the highway. This is the right way and everything else is wrong. That's challenging to me about some yoga systems and people. I also feel that there's a a ceiling on yoga, and the ceiling is. You have all this amazing knowledge and all this amazing practice. But how are you bringing that into the world? What happens when you're in traffic? How are you with your mom? Do you? Do you talk to your mom? Do you tell her the truth? You know, So I feel like acro. Yoga and acrobatics and other partner practices help to take that wisdom that people spend so long cultivating. And they give it life that give it access. Good put. You get to rehearse the human interaction element. It's like, Well, that's great that you're listening to a Dharma talk and sitting on the floor and doing your poses and listening to a speech about compassion. But like when you go to a restaurant like flip out at your server because they didn't get you water in two minutes instead of instead they're normal five or whatever it might be. I never really thought about that. But it does. The community aspect on the communal practice of Acker has been one of the things that is kept me with it, quite frankly, because in many worlds there is a high degree of scepticism or even aggression towards outsiders or visitors. Right? And you see this not always, but in, for instance, some not all Jiu jitsu schools. An exception would be something like Marcello Garcia Jetson in New York, where they're very welcoming, but they have a zero tolerance for bullshit, or much is more bullying. But in the acrid community, it's like wherever I land. If there is an acrid community, I have, it feels like to make it. Maybe this is just delusional, but like a built in group of friends and, uh, the fact that what it sounds like you were alluding to that the acro helps you to practice things that otherwise might be compartmentalized to bunch opposes by yourself on a yoga mat, right? And I think that that group practice or partner practice also has led Teoh. I don't have any involvement with the non acro yoga community, but a lot of the Akra folks do almost everything together. It's not just the yoga. It's like they have group meals, they cook, they do fundraisers, they help each other's companies. And that sort of tribal cohesion is something that I think. And this was driven home for me when I interviewed Sebastian. Younger on the podcast is something that I think we we need as kind of social creatures. But I could go go on and on, kind of try. I'm so happy you're going on and on and, you know, for you. When I first met you, I felt that I really hope that you actually step towards acro community cause I feel like people that are celebrities, celebrity status, people that are very good at what they dio. It's really hard for a lot of those people to really let their guard down and to feel accepted as the human they are versus the titles that they are. So the fact that you're reflecting this means that what we've done to build this community is working because everyone's a freak. Yeah, in so many ways. And what happens when you practice acro Yoga is you. You still are practicing yoga. You still are doing solo practices and your understanding where your blockages are. And if you're a big asshole, the community is a self regulating machine. If there's one person that keeps standing out in the community, they're going to get told from many different people. So we really hold a standard of evolution. And the way that we interact with each other gives us the potential to keep evolving in the direction that we want to as a community, which is the counterculture to the IPhones, to instagram to the Facebook. And I think those things are all amazing. I think it's really important that we learn how to use technology in a way that leverages more or connection to teach back to the duck Shitty. And I feel like there's a big hunger for really authentic, wholesome human connection, and I feel like that's what we offer. Uh, what, uh, what do you think about doing a little bit of I guess you could call it solar, acrobatic flying, acrobatic play. You basically flying or both Either ill thought fly. Okay. I've only been doing basing for the last couple of months. This ought to be entertaining. Uh, I'll be I'll be the spry Flyer. But I don't know what you think would be of interest of folks. What I will say, I'm just going to demo something really quick. I don't know which primary. All right, so what I'd encourage people to think about, Just so we have some shared vocabulary here is think of bending at the hips as pie king. All right, if you're like, this is very oversimplified, legs apart straddle. Okay, so this is going to be a very common position, and you can think of it just is like sitting down on the floor with your legs spread on back straight. This gives you a 90 degree angle here. This is shelving. It is gonna be used a lot in acrobatics. So just so I don't have to explain that when I'm upside down with that great description, I think we should play with corkscrews. Corkscrews? Okay. Even Corker's I based it. I don't know if I've flown it. Today is your lucky day. Today is my lucky day. Let's go star start. Yep. It's a hand handgrip. You know, these two fingers wrists? Basically, I want to keep the Armstrong and the legs receptive. And you can jump when you're ready. Let's dio up and down to straddle about a few times to calibrate. Sure, go the other side, The other side is this one. All right, Let's go. 1 82 from Plank. Uh, good Armstrong or switch the hands such again. Straddling. Go slow. I got you. Look atyou, twinkletoes. Thanks. Awesome. More time. Sure. Good. Armstrong. Billy down such hand, then the second strata wide. Nice and slow. Nice way. Gotta bust a hand. A hand We're here Hand a hand, Yeah, Straighten your arms Don't think about it Strong arms, even stronger elbows fall towards my feet Right there, Mr Tim Ferriss doing a hand hand apples in more arms and more yet Newton pushed down. Pushed out? Yes. Yeah, buddy, It was good to save the day. All right, you're fired now. Expanding. Try So trying to stop drinking gallons of cream every day. Take some. Take some weight off these thunder thighs. Those good? Your fat is my fit. Your fat is my fit. That's true. Uh, saying I was actually working with a flyer. Very, very gift flying. You've met Kipling? No, Kipp Lynn's Sag Miller at Kipling on all the social KPL I nn very gifted. And I said to her at one point, I said, Qinglin, you realize that this routine is starting to get easy. I need you to eat thistles. Gonna be progressive resistance for May. I need you to getting like, £10 a month for the next 3 to 5 months. Maybe she just get pregnant. Expensive way to train through, uh, a couple of questions for you want to talk about challenging times just getting out of some of the technical stuff. And I apologize for having a very flat hand and us thinking about having flown in a while. So one of things actually might as well explain this. So for here, figuring out you want explain it. Sure, so basically actually stand up for this one. So the way that humans connect is the hardest part in acrobatics. We have more bones in our hands and feet than the rest of our bodies, so find no these micro angles is It's like wine. It gets better with age and practice. So if we have a straight arm line, if we go really flat What that means is, it's like we're doing it on the ground and we feel a lot of compression in the wrists. If we go really steep, just like a steep angle will feel it in the thumb girdle. And we find that that Goldie locks Happy medium, little more flex. Yep. Little flatter. Good. And we lean into each other, and we really feel not only our body is one piece, but our collective arm line is one piece. It's that's where the money is. Calibrate that you want to do a quick calibration. Just like it. Like, Sure you got a base. You gotta earn your paycheck. I'm gonna not drop this, uh, very him, like right on my front teeth. That great. Okay, So what's great about this is there's not a lot of risk involved, as I just bring my feet up a little bit testing the water. If that goes well, a little more advance could be a tuck. That goes well. You can baby hand a hand. Arms more forward. Forward. Keep coming Right there. Better quality group is nice. Steepness. Nice getting there. Yeah. So the testing here and picking your feet off the ground on. You can also do little movements just to help activate the stabilizers in the shoulder on what's what's cool about the way that we train with humans is there's no machine in a gym that can teach you how to unify your body. There's no machine that can teach you how to have a really strong line because it takes human chaos to create the stability to match that chaos. There's, uh, rig that I'm pretty sure I came up with, but who knows? Sarabyn Rig. Uh, well, actually, Hold said work. So the way that I put together. So I was chatting with with Coach Summer, who helped me set up this incredible rings contraption that we were talking a little bit about, which includes some of the 50 50 you call the dream Machine. So imagine you have a God for the dream machine. It's incredible. So imagine you have a harness around your waist looks something like a rock climbing harness. This one's from Sam. I think it is, and a lot of salmon this episode, and you clipped that to a cable that then goes up over pulley and then down to the rings on, and that allows you to work with effectively half of your body weight. Let's just call it, and therefore you can progress and movements that you might not be able to even attempt safely, such as a cross or a Maltese or ah, Victorian Vic or any number of things back leverage. But let's just say that's too intense, right, because right now I have media up come politis in both elbows. I also have severely inflamed right elbow Birsa's electron bursa on the right side and putting aside all the weird drugs and injections and so on that we might explore. Gonna put that aside. Footnote for a future upset on the the device that Coach Summer help me to install involves power levers. So power levers and I'll put out some photos and videos of this. Some point for people. Check out our awesome. So now it's in combination with the 50 50 on. You'll see some people mimic this by using straps, or they'll they'll fuss with the rings in such a way that the rings are effectively mid right form. Uh, and the power lever looks like a Robocop glove already like it. Yeah, and it's it's made out of metal, and there's a strap that goes around the forum, and on top of the forearm you have basically a uniform ridge of Let's just call it 1/2 inch that goes down to the top of the hand and then perpendicular lee of these holes drilled. Let's just call it holes that go from the elbow to the fist. Now what is this like to do? It allows you to take off the rings and then clip in the ring strap at your elbow. Now the point of support is closer to the fulcrum of the shoulder, so it's even easier, much, much easier. But over time, you can then just move it out one notch in a time or two notches at a time. And that's a little off topic related handstands. But it's just been incredible boon for training. Yeah, especially if you're let's just say you're trying to attempt a movement like a proper ring dip with ah support position at the top with your hands really externally rotated surprisingly hard to do. There are people who do 2030 dips who cannot do to proper gymnastics rhythms, so if you could only dio two or three, you're doing a max effort Set effectively makes it hard to get the the skill practice of that movement so you could use something like 50 50 to allow you to dio. Maybe it's 10 15 total Read, write 20 and a skin out in a workout. The handstand rig that was trying to figure out came out of a problem. And the problem. Waas If I were kicking up to a wall or facing a wall and then losing my balance and coming out of it even worse, exactly night, my total time in the handstand position for practicing the alignment, tightness and balance was really minimal. It was kind of like surfing where it's like, OK, I want to get it surfing, meaning standing on the bar, the board and carving. But 99% of time spent paddling means yeah, swimming and paddling, and that's fine. It's part of the sport. But what if you could use a wave pool? Or what If you could use wake surfing suddenly you're able to really accelerate your progress. It's a very interesting ways. And so the we were chatting a little bit earlier. I didn't tell you about the Rigby you're like doesn't involve just touching your toes on something. Which is what What coach summer calls a Chinese handstand. So you're underneath the bar of sometimes you're just touching with the tippy tippy tips of your toes, which requires you to maintain a lot of extension, right? The issue, though, that I would have with that as a novice is that if I lose Theis extension for a split second trouble, Yeah, I'm gonna fall one where they're already going away. And then I have to get away. I have to get the hell back up there, right, which is very, very nuanced. So what I realized is that I've have a squat rack, It's a rogue rack. And there's a dip attachment that goes on this side. And the dip attachment is Let's just call it. It's literally about this big. What I'm doing for this, people can't see me in my arms are bent 90 degrees elbows with sides and my hands are straight out kind of like a Lego figure. And, uh, it Z roughly this big And what I realized is the actual grips were big enough for an Olympic weight plate. Uh, what's collar? And I had some Thera bands so I could put 1/3 band around the very end and then lock them on with collars. Okay, I could kick up, get my feet inside, and then that allows me to be that one bone one body and use my wrists and my shoulders to correct as I get fatigued. Of course. Um, going to make mistakes. I'm gonna start correcting by hiking and doing all these bad things that I'll get chastised for later by cooked summer in some hilarious emails that I hope to publish at some point. But then you just the Summer Diaries this summer Tyre is the notebook featuring summer. It impairs, uh, you just tuck down and then you're out. Uh, and it's just been an incredible accelerator in terms of getting just mileage in in that proper position, right, Because this doesn't surprise me because in the year plus that I've known you, you've asked me so many seemingly gentle questions that have rocked my world. And one of them that you asked recently was, Is there a sequence that basically puts together all of the important poses in Akron yoga, and I don't have, you know, Bolero. You know that the classical song to is the one that's playing Dudley Moore? Yes, and also Cave Man, but basically the guy that wrote that I think It's Rebel. He wrote that to educate people in all the different pieces of the orchestra also starts with violin and viola, and it's actually a beautiful song. But I thought, Okay, I have to make this sequence that basically strings together every pose that I can think of in Akron yoga I want to put bolero in the background just is it is a very educational thing. It is going to be beautiful. It's not about the sequence, and basically what I've done is I've made these grids with front plank, reverse front plank, back blank, all these different things on one column and then all at the top. And then I cross reference, What is it like to go from a throne to reverse front plank? Is it beginner, intermediate, advanced expert or not possible? So basically, what I want to do is go in the lab, which is with me and a friend, and just do all these different transitions and then basically try to get a unified field theory of acro yoga. Basically, So Einstein's one of my heroes, and he worked on this most of the end of his life. He was trying Teoh, see how the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, gravity and electromagnetism were all related. And I feel like something that I want to do with acro yoga in my life is to keep pulling out these equations, pulling out these similarities between the seemingly unrelated things that once you cracked the code. And this is very Tim Ferriss because you asked the question Once you crack the code, if I can come up with the five minute sequence that has all of these very important basic moves, that's what unlocks the human potential for very complicated flying transitions. So, yeah, and also prevented and also provides well, number one. I can't wait to try it. Number two. It also provides motivation for this student. And I think that, uh, if you look at, for instance, and this is part of where the thinking came from because my frustration was born of and frustration, I think in many cases a good thing. It just it's just gives you an itch that needs to be scratched. Need to figure out how to scratch it. And in this particular case, uh, in any physical practice that is not regulated in some way by high stakes competition, which has its own can filtering and self selection. But it's totally different because let's say you're in China. You're putting the other national gymnastics team. You don't care if you completely destroyed athletes to find the one who can tolerate just unhuman amount of workload and have that Chinese train. Exactly. And it's also how I mean a lot of military trained dogs, for instance, like they don't care if 99 of the dogs get completely messed up. As long as they find the one that's going to save 100 lives in the field, whatever might be, I should say they don't care, but it's just unfortunate common side effect. But when you're dealing with recreational practitioners and you don't have, say, a national championship in that vetting process like anyone who wants to participate can participate, I think it's more akin in some ways to like child's martial arts. And so how do you keep kids interested in martial arts? You have belts. How do you get the belt? You have a kata. You have a set form that, at least in theory, incorporates all of the requisite skills that would represent that level of competence or master. And another analogy would be skiing slopes. So you have three green circle. The the I guess the Blue Square might get this wrong and then black diamond that those are based on the characteristics of the slope. The steepness thing. The terrain features moguls. Well, why would it be possible? And this would also help the business or the organization of accurate ago from a turn from him in terms of retention. If people want to get to the next belt, I e. Master the next five minutes sequence. It's not only it's it's ah, mutually beneficial construct because it keeps the students motivated and it keeps the entire ecosystem thriving. Right? And so I remember thinking myself, if you look at whether it's jiu jitsu or those or judo or accurate ago, it's very common. You go into a class and it's whatever the teacher might want to work on that day or whatever occurred to them on Dr Over. Maybe it's something they want to practice themselves on, and there's a lot of benefit to that. But at least for a like O C D perfectionist idiot like myself, I need to know where you're going, where I'm aiming. Yeah, and the so the idea of sequences really fun, That's what. As you know, I've been working on for the last eight weeks. Your cell on ended up getting the entire sequence, except for one which everybody had trouble with, even teachers. So don't feel that badly about it. The London spin. Yeah, that's our motherfucker, But, I mean, I was able to were able to do it 80% of time, but it's it ain't pretty, but the rest of it, it's just it was really fantastic to have. This is something that Josh Wait Skin has been on the podcasts of the inspiration for the book, and the movie is searching for Bobby Fischer, considered a chess prodigy. But I don't think that applies, even though he has incredible talents he can take. His learning system is approaching, apply to just about anything jujitsu, his first black bolt under Marcela Garcia is like the Michael Jordan of judges. 6 time world champion. Just There's no close second place, and he's also applying it to a number of other fields. Tai Chi's applied it to now surfing, and he would call learning the macro from the micro. Right? So oh, I like that a lot, right? So, like, for instance, and you can learn a lot about someone's body or and it's just like having them doing a TV drill. Sure on. And if you want to learn, let's say how someone is in language. Well, you could just offer them two pages of dialogue that included idiomatic jokes, humor. That's a high bar like You can figure out a lot by seeing how they interact with foreign foreign language humor and an acro like the corkscrew. That's a really good diagnostic tool. You have to do a lot in the corpse. We have to have a lot of appropriate cept of ability, and the thing that's unique with acro yoga is you've got to people or three people. So it's it's also one of my definitions of an advanced practitioner is somebody that can have a success with anybody. And my first master teacher ever saw is a Bulgarian guy named Dimitar Men chef. And he would literally pick up a six year old kid, hold him in his hands, chuck him up in the air and do this thing called a dislocate, push him to a high hand in hand and hold them in a one armed handstand. And I saw this when I was 12. 13 and I was like, Yeah, I want to get that good. And the ability to really support any different person and a lot of dislocate sounds terrible. Is that Is that what you come here? And they jumped through? That'll in locate? That's in looking. Yeah. Okay. So dislocates the other way dislocates the other way where the arms air here and they go like that. Oh, yeah. You gotta have some ability that I work on the We're never doing that. You can base it, You'll never find it. I don't say never that often. I'm happy to save my shoulders. They had a serious left shoulder arm has pins in and I don't need more of those. The second say I was going to say that the I really implore people and you confined. I'm sure Synopsys of this online, but get a hold of the metal learning section of wire shot because it talks about how to work on one skill to develop in such a way that transfers to many other skills. For instance, if we're looking at sequencing and roles switching, I think this is really helpful for any type of partner practice and in the world of tango. And as in Argentina, I learned the female role before I learned the mills seems really weird, but working with the least amount, these incredible world class dancer learning the femoral because we had to, we didn't have enough women in the class. That's how it came about. It was like a when Buenos Itis was being populated by immigrants like the dude would dance with one another, and it's like a This isn't just for the Castro. This, this is actually is a functional purpose here, and after learning the female role, it made it infinitely easier for me to learn Male role now in acro. It's not a strictly male female thing is we just saw, but very often because men are sometimes or often bigger than the women they end of basic, and they're just not very flexible. Oftentimes you are, but guys like I have strong likes. I'll just hold you in my legs on and the, uh, even though I'm kind of chunky by accurate standards, a za flyer like I try to fly whenever possible, when there's someone like you or just invents or Daniel Scott or some of these guys are just incredibly solid bases. I want to fly because it helps my ability to base it also one step further and just understanding his compassion. If you're always basing and you're saying to the Flyers, why are you so scared? And then you fly like, Oh my God, she is scared or vice versa. If you're the flyer and you base a little bit, you're like, Why you so wobbly? And then you try like, Oh, I understand why you're waddling. That's a large hole in South America. There's this 11 woman, very nice, very super flexi flyer. Who was? I take it that this is a common term bossy flyer, just like berating the shit out of every other bass, and it was just like Okay, what do you trying your hand at like let you try? You try to base. I think that was a humble pie and that, like that, remedy the situation pretty quickly. And it's not that one is harder than the other there at at any respectable level, they're both. They involve enough complexity of physical demand to be to be a humdinger, I think, and I'm very humbling. But the I really the sea for people who are listening or watching. It's like we've talked about the acrobatic flying we've talked about therapeutic flying. The most interesting is not treating those two separate practices. But in the case of for instance, when I'm practicing now doing, say, 45 minutes of acrobatic and then 15 minutes for therapeutic and it's for me, it's like having its two extra days of recovery. And it was reminiscent in a way to what I used to experience when I was training at this place called Fair Tex here in San Francisco, from my tie and the tie trainers would do, I mean very rough but nonetheless therapeutic Thai massage, just like wall ish. I mean, technically, they were tired they're massaging, But they were They would walk on you, right? And before and after. And I was just part of the warm up Cool that. And, uh, this just reminded me that that self care what people might dismiss if they're kind of hard edged males, especially as too soft and new agey whatever is actually a performance enhancer for the heart aspects, Uh, in part for sure. And this is the term hatha yoga. A lot of people here it it means sun and moon Hakkasan thought Azmoun So a lot of the physical practices of yoga is about getting the masculine and the feminine energy to balance. So if you are on either side of the spectrum, we we were all on one side of the other. Unless we're super balanced between strength and flexibility, some people naturally are more strong. Some people, naturally, are more flexible wherever you are as an athlete, as an acrobat and even as a yogi, my belief is that you want to get towards that 50 50. So somebody like you is not gonna expand their acro yoga or the yoga practice as intelligently until you get more mobility. And so being able to put in thes therapeutic poses at the end of a practice. It's not just to make your body feel better in that moment. It's to set you up better for your next practice, because if you're building strength and you're not building range of motion, you're basically making a time bomb. And when things go off, then you really need some deep healing. So if you do, you know homeopathic doses of healing along the way, unwinding attention that you built up in your practice. It's just intelligent training. The Princess Bride method I. O Kane Powder Exactly. Did you put it in a dread pirate Roberts training curriculum? Unconceivable Exactly. And, uh, the the simplest, perhaps incentive that I had very early on. Two. Basic. So I was like I was watching and I'm like, That's cool. I think that'd be really helpful for ju jitsu, and in fact, I mean a lot. There's a fear. I've seen a fair amount across over people who want who are who have good, uh, robbery guards are are really effective basis, and if they want to improve one or the other, there is symbiotic, right? But what I realized very quickly after my first. Her second attempt goes like It looks cool. The flying looks like a little bit more fun, but I'm too chunky and the base it looks like a lot of work. But then I did it and what I realized Waas when we're sitting down like this. So I had developed some back and hip issues. We're sitting like this a lot, and I'm sure Kelly Starrett, PT extraordinary could comment on this more intelligently. But you're effectively pushing the head of your femur forward. You're sitting down. Your femur is getting set or or pressured in an unnatural direction. Overspend prince time. When I land my back put my legs straight up in the air and support weight. I'm receding the femur in the proper place. Exactly. And it's, uh, that alone. I feel like just basing someone, even if it was just basing someone enfolded leaf or bird, which we did. You know, Jack, I'm flying kind of thing earlier for a few minutes at the end of the day is just incredibly beneficial. Uh, let me ask some rapid fire questions. The usual cell when you think of the word successful uh, who is the first person who comes to mind or people? It's I gotta I gotta tie um, Gandhi super successful and Einstein and from very different spectrums of humanity. And they actually met in South America while they're both alive. I would have loved to been the fly on the wall for that one. Um, what I see in Einstein that I really appreciate is he had all the proof he needed to just keep moving forward with the way that that people understood the world. And he basically stopped listening to everybody. He really went inside. He thought about things. He worked them out. And he changed the world just from his mind and the ability to be self reliant to believe in yourself and to change the world because of how brilliant you are and how open your mind is like That's That's a high bar. And, you know, I've read Mawr about his life, and he writes about love beautifully and some of his quotes one of my favorite quotes of hiss. I'm not going to say it right, because it's in German. Hey says I like to cut wood because I can see the fruits of my labor. Just a lot of really simple things, like a much as he was, you know, in the Stars is very pragmatic. And Gandhi similarly, he didn't see the world in the box that he was born into. And when I see people that really don't take the world as it's being presented and they have a vision of how things can be and just that resolve, I feel like both of them were so committed to their vision and had so much resolve in both of them change the world in such big ways. So that's, Ah, big definition of success for me. And I want to highlight something you just said, because the ability of I sent to comment on beauty is something that I think or to speak on The qualitative aspects of life with the thes razor sharp perception of a trained scientist is something that's under appreciated, I think, by people who might be inclined to be scientists very clinical and dry. Richard Feinman, another great example physicist. But the nominal teacher Surely you must be joking. Mr. Feinman is one of my sort of favorite books of all time D Do you have any particular books you've gifted Most other people? The prophet, The prophet? Yeah, the prophet did. These are These are lessons from Jesus. No, he's a Lebanese guy. I don't remember exactly his name. It's with the K first with the K last name with the G. I cannot pronounce it. He's actually yeah, and it's basically he says, he's he's this guy who is speaking to a crowd, and somebody in the crowd will say, Speak to us of pain and he'll say, Pain is the blah, blah, blah, blah. Speak to me of love. Speak to me of being a father. And there's a state I love, really. The hairs were standing up as I as I think about it, I love really accurate condensed shocked, the field energy field statements, something that you can read in a few minutes or you can read for your whole life. So the Dow teaching it would be a close second, and I feel like they have similar things where there's so much energy in each passage that you can sit down and speed read it. But the depth of these ideas in these concepts that's actually the book that I have on my traveling alter reality was travel. So I have the Dow teaching and often times I'll just before meditation, opening up randomly to a page and read about something, and then just have that be what I steep in. As I said. So I have to ask because you just reminded me of it. You are constantly traveling. I have a very nomadic existence now, very I am fully know fully. What what belongings do you travel with? We'll have a rolling suitcase, a backpack and a ukulele. Um, in the backpack. I have my computer, a bunch of notes that are going to turn into a book sometime, probably this year on it's really Dana section in this acro yoga battery of the stuff. Um, I have my alter items in my backpack here in your old red, uh, different things from different places, things that I've been gifted from students, rocks. Um, got it. Some earrings from a girl that I'm her godfather. Um, I've got a Mexican flag. The boxes actually from Lebanon as I was born in Mexico. But I have Lebanese heritage, so it's just a lot of momentos that remind me. It's photos as well. A photo of Dharma Mitre Have a photo of myself when I was in China competing at world Championships when I was 16 and it just things that feel important to me that keep me grounded. So, in a sense, would you say and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I was gonna ask, What is the function of the altar? But is it your mobile sense of home? I mean, is that effectively what it is? Yeah, yeah, end to a large degree because of my life in lifestyle. My home is my community, and I have friends all over the world that if I if and when it's a win, it's on it. If when I stopped traveling full time, I'm gonna not have that part of my life anymore. So to be able to go to Germany and hang out Julian Pascal and their daughter, Leah, who I loved to death, and I've seen the baby since it was in the belly and done acrobatics with them for many, many years. That's really what home is. But having the alter, the unpacking, the altar ritual is just you know, like when I was a kid, I had Star Wars, toys and games, and I would love to set up my Star Wars stuff. It's the same thing where it's like, This is my magic kit. This is what makes me feel like a kid. It makes me feel excited. I put a candle on it a lot of times when I'm meditating. It's just it's It's my happy place, my traveling happy place. What else do I have? Some throwing knives? Any particular type of? Really Nobody. I've had many types throwing. Knives are easy to lose. So pretty much every time I roll through Sacramento, there's a place that I know that has. Um so that's where my ammunition there is it. Like what? Wild sports. Wild sports Growing up, they've got guns, they've got worms and they've got throwing knives. So you're ready for this up The apocalypse? You never know. Have you ever been stopped in customs with what? I haven't that the knives were lifted out of my bag in Panama when I went to a little bit meeting. Probably borrowed, permanently borrowed. Yes, when I was in Bali, like I don't know if you've been, you know, the You know, if you have drugs, we're gonna kill you. Yeah, well, never think on the customs form is Do you have anything with pointing any pointy objects? And I was like, I really don't want to give him up. So I smelled it in some throwing knives to Bali. Said it out loud. The Balinese, uh, police might hunt me down with Balinese massage or on their way. So there's a huge budget. This allegation. Yeah, I'm a neighbor's neighbor is not the biggest threat out there. Uh, anything else that comes to mind, Frisbee I'm a Frisbee golf for So I'll sell photo that. Yeah, I love for his big off its basically. I love training in many different ways and hand eye coordination. Dont go to Frisbee. Frisbee. All I got to be disc, golf disc golf for you. It's not a sport at the past time. I correct people when they get really serious because they're people that have caddies or people that have, like for real, Those people think it's a sport. It's a past time, no matter how hard you work at it. It's a piece of plastic and you're throwing it around? Um, I like, uh, there's one called the rock. That's a mid range diskettes. Very even flying. Not super good with distance. And the T bird is my go to driver. Wow. So, I mean, it really is like having a set of clubs. Yeah, I got your nine iron. You got your pitching wedge, and the discs fly differently. First of all, you have to get a repeatable swing before you have any success. Just like golf. But once you have a repeatable swing, you can feel the nuance of this one fades left. This one fades, right? This one goes straight. So is there anything you've anything that you've learned in acro that is translated to helping the the Frisbee goal for vice person? Mm. Well, I mean, I think every practice that I do, they are relatable. How How? Well, I can listen to you with the podcast. How well I can do any number of things. It's all sensitivity, confidence, clarity, repeatability. So I'm always training and I'm always playing and playing in training for me. I figured out a way for them to be synonymous, so I don't work hard at things I do things that I'm passionate about, and I love what I do. So that's everything is related. Uh, what is now? This is funny question, uh, coming up on your very minimalist kit that you travel with. But what is the purchase of $100 or less that has had the biggest positive impact on your life in the last memorable space? Yeah, We've already got its the Frisbees for Frisbees. And I was hanging out with my two brothers and my dad. We decided, drive up the coast and the three brothers, me and my two brothers, We've played Frisbee golf for our whole lives. We love it. My dad, not so much, but we got a bunch of disks. And then we went really high up on highway one and threw them out of the ocean. And my older brother doesn't like putting plastic in the ocean, But toe watch disc fly for, like, you know, about a minute. It's magical. And it's in yoga. There's this philosophy sua I call it, you know, fuck it. Whatever. Let let go Someone when I throw discs off of I've thrown it off much pichu, I threw it off. Cici Need said they did not like it in Chichen Itza. But I like to throw Frisbees off of really high objects. And when I'm in those very ceremonial places like Mantra PCI was like, What am I? What am I releasing? So, uh, it's an intentional act, like burning something on a piece of paper in the exams of fire. Yeah, but then you get to watch it fly. Then you get to watch it fly. Uh, what do you believe that other people think is insane that you can trust people you can trust a lot of people that you don't have to live in fear of strangers. I strangers or just people you haven't flown yet. And I've been all over the world. My mom was not happy when I was gonna go to the Middle East for the first time. And I was actually in Boston about to lead a teacher training. And this is when the Boston Marathon bomber happened. And I had students that were on lock down for 24 hours. And I got on the phone to my mom like, Look, Mom, you think Israel's dangerous? I'm in Boston like you cannot. You cannot hide from danger. But I don't think that's a reason to not trust people. I'm a very trusting person. I've traveled the world in some very sketchy places, and I've never had anything bad happen to me. And I assume the best in people. I assume that I can trust them until they prove me wrong. And I think a lot of people think that's crazy. But when you do this practice enough trusting is like a muscle that you flex. And it doesn't mean that I'm a cowboy with it, like I have really good credit assessment. You know, I can tell. Is this person trustworthy for this engagement I'm about toe have. But just in general, having an open mind, having an open heart, believing that people have good intentions, how much of that do you think is bad things not happening to you vs seeing things in the most positive light because you had your throwing knives lifted like shit happens. Yeah, imagine. Yeah, well, one of the one of the things that happened to me that was really amazing was I had all of my objects liberated from me. I was living in a van in San Francisco and I had my 30th birthday, but basically I didn't want to work in restaurants like I'm a Yogi. I'm gonna do this. I don't care how hard it is. I love this boom. So I was living in my van my 30th birthday. My friend throws me a party and that night I got a book on Buddhism. The case of coconuts hung out with my friends. The next day my vans gone, my homes gone, everything is gone. So I go crack a coconut, start reading about Buddhism, cause what else am I gonna dio on? Page four is talking about homelessness and wandering. I'm like, That's what I'm going to dio. And that started my nomadic traveling. And if I stayed in San Francisco and tried to make it is yoga teacher acro yoga wouldn't be a worldwide practice. So the ability to let go of what's not working and really assess what is working and what can I be excited about? It's true. It's not that bad. Things don't happen to me. I don't label a lot of things Good, bad. Can I evolve from this? What do I want. Now, where is my center now? And this is all from yoga. Well, not all my parents, a lot of other things. But yoga is the daily practice that helps me bring this wisdom into action steps in my life. So you mentioned something that I've never heard you talk about. We've never talked about before, but the restaurants and the decision fucking I'm gonna do this full time, walk me through like, the 24 hours that led to that decision because at the time was did you realize it was financially feasible or was it just a Hail Mary? This is what I'm meant to do. Walk, Walk me through, like, 24 hours before you're like, All right, I'm pulling the trigger. This is what I'm doing. Well, I made up my resume for restaurants, and I was living in San Francisco. We had a rent controlled house that three yogis were living in because the people that had the rent control left town and, you know, I was like, I was dirtbag in it. But at that point, all I needed was yoga and food. Like I didn't need money. I didn't have other ambitions I wasn't traveling the world. So if I had enough money to take yoga classes and to eat well, that's all I needed. When I got to that point of, Do I get a job or do I really dedicate to the yoga thing? It really wasn't a choice. It was It was such a big thing that happened in my life when yoga really hit me over the head. This is all I want to do. And if I do these other things, I'm not being true to the practices that I've been learning about, like this is this is time for me to really dedicate to this and my mom had a van and she was she didn't need it. I'm like, huh? I've never thought I would live in a van. But San Francisco waas and still is super competitive with yoga and yoga. Teachers are some of the most underpaid people on the planet because they have the potential to really bring a lot of beauty to people's lives. And, you know, they get paid $3200 a class depend on what city you're in. So if I didn't live in the van there really weren't a lot of other solutions I saw. And until the van was liberated, then it's all the other solutions and living on the road. Actually, you know, you're never, never really successful. At least I haven't been in the cities where you start things. It's, you know, you go further away from where things started and you're more luxurious and more exotic. San Francisco is still a difficult city to fill a room for me. So if I would have kept hitting my head against that wall, I wouldn't be here. The practice wouldn't be here, so I love it. I love that. So we're gonna wrap up with just just a few last questions. Uh, suppose this is as good a place as any to ask if you had a billboard could put anything on it. What? Would you put a play Plame or play? Yeah. I feel like people are so serious. And it doesn't take much for people. Teoh drop back into the wisdom of a child like playfulness. So I think that that's if I had to prescribe to things to improve health and happiness in the world. It's movement and play those two things because you know you can't really play without moving, so they're kind of intertwined. But if you're just moving and you're not enjoying yourself as your mood, if you're on a treadmill, treadmills kill your spirit. I mean, not there are reasons in times to do treadmills, but if that is your only way off moving your body, you're selling yourself short. There are way cooler ways to move your body way, more fun things. And I just happen to have the good fortune toe learn a lot of these really cool things. And yeah, so play awesome. Uh, Jason, where can people find you online? What we'd like them to check out acro yoga dot org's is the websites, and there are free learning opportunities. Acro Yoga International is the name of the company that I run. And on YouTube you can go there and see a bunch of free videos that get you started. Is the handle on you two at Korea International OK, Makary again, It will put all this in the show notes spoke so you can find everything else. Uh, anything on associate like dimension instagram, Twitter, Facebook were use all acro yoga It's all Jason Nemer, So Jason Nemer dot com Jason Nemer on instagram I try to keep it simple because I like toe keep things simple. Awesome. So much fun. Always great to hang right on on, uh, more flying in basing in the future. What a weird grip are useful. Good stuff. Thank you, Tim. Thanks. And everybody listening. And everybody watching is always you can find the show notes at four hour workweek dot com forward slash podcasts I love linked everything that we talked about And until next time, Thank you for listening. And thank you for watching something off.