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Living Shouldn't Hurt with Aaron Alexander

what if I told you that we are always under construction, are physical bodies are all what we're doing right now is setting us up for the body we will inhabit in the next moment? That is one of the philosophies of this week's guest here on the Chase drivers live show on Creativelive. The guest is Aaron alexander. Now if you're familiar with Aaron's work, you're going to be excited for this and if you're not familiar, I have to tell you, I think you're in for some new thinking. Aaron is a manual therapist, he's a movement coach, he's an author and the host of an amazing podcast I love called the Aligned podcast, Aaron takes practices from cultures all over the world. He's gathered these ideas and insights past podcast guests, his travel to understand that we have the ability to integrate movement into our daily lives even more so the healthiest populations in the world, they actually don't come from jim culture. So if you, you know, shudder at the thought of having to go to the gym thre...

e times a week for two hours at a time that actually you are right to be wary of that and in fact the healthiest cultures don't do that. They have movement infused into every aspect of their life and it's not as hard as you might think Aaron is an amazing guest, being a host of his own show, we have a really intimate conversation, he's super articulate and look if you don't have your health in this life, What do you have? Aaron is a master at helping us find that health find it in a way that is deeply resonant with me and I know it's going to resonate with you, so I'm gonna get out of the way, enjoy this week's show yours truly and Aaron alexander, mm hmm. We love you erin, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show. Thank you for making this happen man, I appreciate it. It's great to get to meet you. I've been engaging with your podcasts and your work. I really appreciate what you're doing. Well, thank you and the same is true in reverse. I've been engaging with yours which is one of the reasons I wanted you on the show. I confessed that just prior to us starting to record, we are recording with video and audio for those of you who are consuming on one or the other platform. Uh and I confessed that I have what I consider to be a posture problem, I don't know how it got it, I don't know where it's going. I know it needs work and part of your universe is well, you've got a new book that we're going to talk a little bit about about alignment and the alignment method. Um but your work encompasses just health and wellness generally, but I would invite you to early on here in the show, just give a short overview of how people ought to orient around you and your work, how you self describe, et cetera. Uh so the difference in the approach that I take on the podcast and in my book, the align method um and on social media, and just in general, like my stance in the world of this like movement, fitness wellness, mind, body conversation is that fitness is beyond just what you do inside of a gym or what you do in a yoga studio or a martial arts dojo, You know, when you're really actively paying attention to the way that you move or the way that you breathe, or maybe even the way that you think. But it's in fact every moment throughout the day there are all opportunities to engage with fitness. So it's not something that you Do. It's something that you are something that I've said probably 6000 times at this point. Um so I apologize for it's sounding a little road redundant in my own mind. Um you know, but that's I think that's the big difference is the awareness that your body is under construction 100% of the time, you know? So as we're sitting here, we have this this magical process called Macondo transaction, which is essentially your cell. We love a big word, big word around here. It's just the idea that your cells are responding to the pressures that you expose them to through your existence. So right now you are mechanical transducer, sing your ass and your back maybe your feet a little bit and as you as you press your body up against those spaces, you're creating a bit of an electrical charge around that space. And it's sending signals to the engineers, the cells within your body that either choose to break down tissue in that space or build it up. You know? So right now you're like this amazing piece of art, You're always an amazing piece of art. But you know, it's like you are are chiseling yourself out of out of marble, you're like a Michelangelo and you're not just Michelangelo and yourself when you're at the gym, but literally every, every step you take, every breath you you know, like it's all, it's all a part of it. It's all in a police song. Exactly. Well that's part of the, you know, part of what I love about this, this the work that I get to do in bringing, you know, the information, the heads and the minds and the hearts of the most creative and entrepreneurial people in the world is this idea of counter intuitive knowledge and part of one of the things that I wanted to celebrate with your work on the show today. Part of what I wanted to help teach the listeners and watchers is how to take an active role in what you talked about as a 24 7, lifelong always, you know, you're shaping your body not just at the gym. And one of the reasons I'm a fan of that is because it's obviously wickedly useful, right? Because we would all love to get the benefits of the gym without having to going to go. Or maybe not all of us that might be an overstatement, but many of us. Um, and the, the subtext here is that if you do not have your health, what do you have? We talked about building businesses and creative careers and transforming lives, but if you do not at a very fundamental level, if you do not have your health, then what have you got? So it's with that sort of backdrop in mind that I wanted to dive in and I'm going to, I'm going to cover a bunch of ground referencing your book and your podcast. Um, but specifically the principles that you shared with us in your sort of opening salvo there about how, um, how the body is a very dynamic organism and it's always under construction or reconstruction. And I thought one lens, they're doing this selfishly. Hey, I'm the host. So, um, no one can take my microwave. You can turn me off I guess. But I like to think of myself is okay, I am here. I am. I'm chase, I'm just the guy and life, you know, there's a, we all have different degrees of physical fitness and each of ours has ebbed and flowed over time from, you know, Children childhood to adulthood from, you know, the summer to the winter from, you know, on season, some sport to offseason. And so given that there's so many dynamic things that work, that we have work pressures, we have work stresses. I'm, I'm using myself as I'm, let's just pretend I'm any average listener, I have discovered now at this particular time in my life through a combination of elements I'm going to make these up. But I think anyone can insert their own in there and I'm finding myself in pain in a way that I have not been before. Let's just do the most basic, you know, look back, I have been a career photographer for 20 something years and what does the photographer do but holds a camera up to one's face holds like £15 in front of my head and if you were listening to the podcast, you can't see this. But I've got, so my neck is out in front of the rest of my body, which means my hips have to tilt a certain way in my neck etcetera. Also, I, I'm on the road a lot. I spent a lot of my time instead of in front of a big monitor that I have right now and all of my gear and my stand up desk. I spent a lot of time on my phone because I'm in the back of maneuver on an airplane or whatever and you know, this is another characteristic because I'm bent over, bent at the neck, looking down at my phone and then insert and number of other influences. And what I'm finding is my posture sucks. I'm six ft tall, asked him the other day how tall they thought I was, I was sitting down. They thought I was 58 or 59 just in their head. That's what they picked. So there's this stacking of um what I would just call problematic inputs. And here I am finding myself. For the first time in life, I consider myself a fit person. I'm in pain. I've got legit ongoing sort of pain in my neck. I feel it negatively impacting my life. It impacts the amount of work that I can do. The joy that I can have the movement that I would normally be doing as a part of my physical regimen where art I start if I'm leaning into Aaron's method help me. And by extension of course the listeners, because I'm making myself out to be the average joe or jane, where do I get started? Yeah. So the first thing, there's been extensive research around postural patterns and things that we would typically historically deemed to be problematic. Postural patterns being the primary cause of pain. And it's it's really fuzzy and blurry to suggest that, say, a forward head posture, maybe say a scapula winging or a dowager's hump or a high park infosys or Vegas knee or you know, any of that is a direct 1 to 1 association to this is causing the pain. I think pain is such a broad, complex subject and it's highly can be highly subjective and there is an aggregate of objective variables that exist and they can all stack up to eventually create in a person's inner experience to be somewhat of an alarm going off, you know? And so I would think of it from the lens if we were working together for example, or if you're reading the align method book or you know, any of that, I'd be coming to it from the lens of you know, what is your your stress bucket, which isn't a term that I came up with, but you know, looking at how is your sleep? How is your nutrition? How is your general management of your mind throughout the day? Are you overrun overrun with the same, the same repetitive thought that essentially is about like some version of doomsday that's particular to you um you know, and then including within that postural patterns, you know, and how are you moving and how are you not moving? You know? And so I think a big culprit and the movement conversation is, you know, like said it, tourism is killing you. It's the new cigarettes. It's like all the bad things in the world. But if you look at this is a little bit divergent from your question will come back to specifically like the, your experience with with pain and how we can address that, but a common culprit would be that that sedentary lifestyle. And when you look at cultures such as in Tanzania for example, hot seat people. There was some research from University of Southern California where researchers went out there and observed the amount of movement and the quality of movement. You know, the manner of movement of these people throughout the day. And what he found with the tribes people was that they were in resting positions that we commonly demonized as being like, you know, the end of the world for us there in these resting positions about similar time frames as industrialized cultures. So the average was 9.82 hours each day is like 9 to hours a day, which is pretty similar to most like you and I type people, the difference is the manner in which they are in these resting positions. So they're spending time kneeling there, spending time squatting there, spending time cross legged, maybe in a straddle position, you know, they're essentially moving like if you've ever been around a kid, do you have kids? I don't have kids. I am the uncle to many, but I love the way I love this concept and movement, looking at how kids move. I'm well aware of it. I think it's fascinating. Yeah, kids are teachers, you know, they they haven't been obstructed by the concept of who they think they are, who they think they're supposed to be. They haven't been institution institutionalized to carry out someone else's will ultimately. You know, I'm not getting, I don't want to get excessive like tinfoil hat, um, direction. I mean we can, but the, the, the concept of, of sitting down and hunching over into a chair wearing, you know, raised heeled shoes and then closing in the potential range of motion for your, your visual muscles, which is also associated with that stress bucket. Um, you know, and having, you know, typically carrying a backpack over one side trying to be cool. Maybe you hunch over a little bit for that u sag your pants. Like there's all these cultural cultural constructs that impact and imprint the way that a person moves from a young age. Now we impose a little bit of shame in there may be a lot of bit of shame in there wherever that came from. Maybe it's some puritan thing, maybe it's, you know, who cares where it came from, It's very common, you know? And so now maybe we're embarrassed to really show up and, and feel full, expressive, confident, upright, tall, like take up space, you know, so this comes into a very common conversation maybe especially like a tall, if like a girl is tall, they'll literally, she oftentimes shrink up because they don't, you know, they want to take up too much space, you know? And so it's such an interesting thing, just kind of conveying the idea that your, your movement is so much more than just the amount of kettlebells that you live for, the barbells or the type of pull ups that you do literally every thought that you make throughout the day, it has a, a physiological structural translation. So if you are afraid, you know, if you are really proud, if you are really sad, All of those emotions have direct 1-1 postural physiological expressions and translations. So I know he didn't answer anything there, but just kind of painting a little bit of a picture of like this pain and it's like we come from a mechanistic mindset broadly. So we of course think what's wrong in my car, it must be the carburetor. Let's change out a couple of nuts and washers and boom, we're done because I don't know, you are a complex system is supposed to be a complicated system, you know, complicated system, you change out that the nuts and the washers done complex system. It's like, oh boy, it thrives on variables. It's, it's, you know, it's kind of the opposite in that way. And so it's more of an orchestra. So it's like, okay, let's let's get, let's let's have all the musicians come together, let's have a conversation and start to create relationships. Yeah, I'm, I'm fascinated by that and I think one might, I'll take a liberty here and couch that is let's approach this holistically, it's not just that you work at a computer or it's not just that you're a photographer or it's not there's a holistic approach to your work and, you know, I I believe similarly, I'm also a huge mindset person and you know, uh friend Tony Robbins for example, talks about if you, you know, you sort of like you have to, you know, your physiology, you can change your mentality by changing your physiology. What is a confident, proud, excited, happy person, you know, Do they look, you know, hunched over and bent and and are they small and meek? Not normally. And if you, you know, stand up straight, put your shoulders back and, you know, open yourself up. I think there's a science of smiling, right? If you smile then you the the actual muscles of smiling will drive positive inputs into your psychology, etcetera. So if we can then say, you know, all right, um Mr alexander, you've got yourself a holistic approach to this. I want to get back to my question, which is cool, where do I start? Let's just, we can throw rocks at my heritage or my, you know, soccer and my soccer injuries or or my professional, my professional woes and to be, I want to I want to qualify this, my pain is pain with a small piece, like I'm just I have historically been a very fit, very active, like painfully active person. And so this new, this like, pain is it's bugging me a little bit in the back of my head, so there is some of the psychology at work, but knowing that you're going to try and think of us our bodies as a holistic dynamic mechanism. I still want to know where to start, yep. Um so where are you experiencing pain in particular? Not that it's completely relevant to this, where you're having the pain exactly like where we need to address, but where are you experiencing? Pain? Base of the skull from sort of top of the spine, down to mid back. Okay. How long has it been happening? Is there anything that actually exacerbates that particular? Is there a time of day? Is there an activity? Uh Usually in the afternoon I feel it more. I do find myself sitting in really poor conditions, just, you know, try and move, you know, especially when we started working at home, across the pandemic, I started moving my my workspace around because I felt re energized and I would move from the kitchen table to the couch to my stand up desk to move around a little bit and it has been noticed other people have noted, I gave you the example of my posture, just someone thought I was 559 or something the other day and I was basically been six ft since I was probably 17 years old and I am, I find myself not standing upright. So the combination of all these things, it's like, okay in the afternoons, especially recently and again, I just, I just had a eclipsed a particular birth age or a particular age that is making me reconsider like wait a minute. I want to defy this age and I want to, you know, age is a number, I want to be healthy. So it's, there's a bunch of thinking going on as well. Like how do I restart, recharge and realign. Yeah, I mean honestly I would seek out a practitioner, you know, I think seeing a really good physical therapist or a manual therapist or maybe a role for or maybe someone that's effective with Dry Needling and really understands kinesiology. Uh, and where the bits ought to be and I would be able to actually examine and take you through a full diagnostic and say, okay, when you put your arms up over your head, here's what's your scapula are doing. You know, when you are walking, here's your gait pattern, like I can actually be able to sit back and spend some time and see what's happening. Be able to adjust and then check to see if that makes a difference. Okay. Yes, No, okay if, yes, okay, let's keep going that direction. So the problem solving path of, of working with pain through that, the mechanistic lens, I think having a, um, a practitioner by your side is invaluable. Um, that being said, there are things that we can talk about in the conversation as far as like, like shotgun exercises or self care approaches that anybody can integrate in their life, something that would be supportive one would. So postural patterns, typically, most of the research would suggest the postural patterns are not, they're not a 1 to 1 connection to shoulders doing this. It means you're going to be in pain. If you were to look at M. R. I. S. Or X rays have a lot of people's spines or knees or shoulders. What you'd find is some people looks like a complete like, like mess, like there's no way that that knee should be functioning properly and they're completely fine. Same thing with this same thing with shoulders and then the inverse can be happening with someone who is in a lot of pain. You look at it like, well, the charts look pretty good, but what is consistently helpful is movement, you know, so if you are taking yourself through full ranges of motion, it acts as a really beautiful shotgun for just restoring your tissues back to a baseline of health. Uh and it's also it's telling your nervous system that, you know, you have something to show up for. I think one of the most challenging things for the human organism is to outsource the necessity for us to I need to show up. Like it's such an amazing thing that we've gotten to a point where we can literally lay some of us could lay on a couch trade Cryptocurrency, you know, and just have your blue lit screen phone in front of your face, which is inherently stressful to be in that position. Actually we can talk about the reasons why and have you know, food delivered to your face, you know, have whatever you need just delivered directly to your face. You know, if you pay enough they'll even feed you. And it's like, like I'm like, I'm so impressed and enamored by that like happy, like like good effort, human culture for us to have arrived at that point, but we really, we need, we need to move in order for ourselves and our nervous system to function optimally. So something that I would suggest and I would suggest just it's like a baseline, get things moving and just add this into your work life would be get a pull up bar in your a doorway that you commonly pass through. You got one now It's seven ft from where I'm standing right now. How how often do you use it? And what do you do? You typically just do like typical pull ups. So I, yeah, I just came off of a cycle in the fall spring, sorry summer, I did not continue it in the fall with any determination, but I did 50 push ups, 50 push ups, 50 sit ups every day. And So this, the concept of 50 pull ups a day. You know, people like, Oh that's a lot or 50 pull ups or pushups not enough. So regardless of the volume, just doing those exercise every day had a very transformative effect on my psychology, my body and the hanging thing was new. So I gotta pull up bar that actually could move around the house and it was crazy helpful. I would say that I had zero pain. And again, you're talking about someone who I was an outdoor action sports photographer for years. I've played Olympic development, soccer, so hyper, like, overactive my entire life. And yet I can still find myself slipping into periods of in activity. And I'm thinking about the people who would identify as less active than they desire, like how easy it was for me to work these aspects into my day. For example, the pull up bar that I'm pointing to, which is now seven ft from my head. Right? Yeah. So there's an interesting book outside of the one that I made. I have a chapter in the book all about the power of hanging. And but there's a book that I based a reasonable chunk of that chapter around was a book by a guy called Dr john Kirsch who wrote a book called shoulder pain question mark. And he was an orthopedic surgeon that found that he claims in the book that 99% of the patients that he would be treating with surgery for for some variety of shoulder and Benjamin syndrome. Um, we're healed, you know, relieved of their pain entirely. Just through going a basic, oh, there you go. You got what what, what was the, what was the surgery you had? It was a bank card procedure, a full rebuild of the Glenwood labrum suture anchors. It was from chronic dislocation from early football and later soccer injuries around around college, early sort of young pro, early late college university. Yeah, yeah. So so the, the human body through just if we were in a more like natural is a very relative word as well. You get like the naturalistic fallacy to think that everything you need to be natural is just like better and it's like what does natural mean in the first place? But if you are in a, a reality where you were maybe moved by the sun, you know, your set to a circadian rhythm, You got up with the sun, you kind of, and after that it was like red light and fires. You had varied contours of ground that your ankles and your, you know, your feet were exposed to which inevitably that will trickle up through the rest of your nervous system. Your body. Um, you know, you're reaching up overhead with some level of regularity, you're squatting up and down with some level of regularity. You're kneeling, you're maybe walking a little bit more, you're, the big thing is you're just exposed to nature, like nature nature heals, you know, it's, it's almost, we take a lot of these simple solutions to feel almost like trite or over simplistic. If something's too complicated, it's probably kind of stupid like, like, like we self organize very well if you place us into the proper environment, you know? And so my approach, working with with clients or or the book or the podcast or any of that is really kind of like, uh, are you familiar with Bruce Lipton? Have you ever done anything with him or biology? Biology of belief? He's fantastic. He was one of the primary, um, He spearheaded the concept of EPA genetics and he's been around forever and he's probably in his late 60s or 70s now. And so the concept of epigenetic that we don't just have this genetic disposition and you know, whatever your mom and dad what whatever they granted you like that's that's your cards, It's your genetics change based off of environmental conditions. And one of the things that he suggested to me in a, in a conversation that recorded with him was when working with cells in a Petri dish, if you want to change the the cell, whatever the consultation, whatever, whatever aspect of the cell you change the culture in the dish that the, that the cell resides in, you know, and so that pull up bar is a beautiful example and you had that experience of like I know that we still have the the next stuff so we can, we can keep on marching down the line here with with different solutions, but that's an environmental condition that you, you know, you just made a slight addition into your world that suddenly you're attracted, you're moved by the pull up bar being there. The other thing that I would recommend looking at what's happening in your neck outside of just exclusively being the next thing and looking at more globally like full body thing would be what's happening in the function of the range of motion in your ankles, What's happening in the range of motion in your hips, you know? So how are you, what's your range of motion like when you swat? Can you like do a deep squat? Is that comfortable for you? Yeah, I have, I would consider very deep, you know, I can do single pistol, single, like pistols with each leg. I can comfortably sit with my, you know, fully at the bottom of a squat in a, with my heels on the ground for more than 10 minutes. This is all, you know, dr kelly street stock mutual friends of ours, tears like all that. I'm pretty good at ankles, notoriously horrible. I have one that will lock up on me broken many times, you know, torn ligaments. Uh, you know, potentially He's certainly more than 20 times, maybe as many as 50 times. Like I got my ankles taped every day for six years throughout, you know, late high school, early college, so horrible ankle on one side that, you know, hasn't And again, for folks listening out there in the show right now, this is not about chase Jarvis injuries and what I'm hoping that you can put yourself whatever your little, you know, micro malady, maybe we're thinking about this all through the lens that Aaron's, you know, projecting movement and alignment as a vector for health. Yeah, these are all really common pattern. I mean, these are like patterns of modernity, a lack of ankle. Dorsey reflection is that's just a modern person sitting in a chair for a good chunk of their life, you know, any any kid Pre five years old has no problem with any of these positions. So, so, so literally in the fetal stages, you're coming out like on the edge of coming out in the third trimester coming out of of your mother, you start to develop these little facet joints on the edge of the tibia uh to be able to actually have this sliding pathway if you'd be able to go through a full deep squat. No, so your physiology, your like, your your innate physiology is like cool. Like the kid ready to squat, yep, ready, squat, okay, get him out, like, ready to go. And then we abandoned that, you know, and the squatting position. Not that I'm gonna make this be a whole conversation on championing squatting, but um you know, it literally just another example of how we we we so directly go against um our inherent, you know, native disposition, our, you know, our our inherent physiological patterns. A lot of modern culture has abandoned in those range of motions and even made it seem like, I don't know, like stupid or goofy or like, oh, you're like a hippie or you're like, oh, you're like a yoga person. If you're like in a natural human resting position, you're just squatting while you're waiting for a bus or something like that. People are like, oh wow, like what's with that guy? You know, so to be stranger to be weird in a culture that is, you know, it seems like statistically each year were becoming more and more addicted to opiates, various, you know, various degrees, whether it's pharmaceuticals or um, you know, anti psychotic medication or anti anxiety medication or, you know, self harm. People like wanting to hurt themselves. You know, it's like when you're living in a culture where statistically it seems like those trends are continually going in that direction to be okay with being different and being weird. I think that's a big step, you know, a person squatting, for example, like that's the way that the human organism defecates when you go through it if you cannot deep squat, like what is more foundational to your health, to be able to take a dump, you know, So when you go into a deep squat position, it literally elongates your rectum, it reduces called the rectal angle, the pupil wrecked Alice muscle that wraps around that, it relaxes, allows your poop chute to get spaciousness enough and long enough for you to actually have a proper poo, you know, so we've just taken that off of the table is like, oh no that's you know, some brutal tribal is stick stuff, you know, just squat to take a pill. That's crazy. You know, you got to go to africa the toilets or holes in the ground, you know, they're like animals, animals and so and here we are. It's the healthiest. Yeah. That now they're developing tools to elevate the bathroom floor called potty squat ease and things like that that we're introducing into the Western culture to try and mimic those movements. Yeah. So all that all, that's not me taking a shot at modern culture or romanticizing anything like older than now, it's just suggesting saying, well a lot of these things that we have done for millennia that we've, you know, kind of denied ourselves of either intentionally or unintentionally, they're really easy to reintegrate back into your life and they act as distressing systems, you know? And so when you are going into a deep squat position naturally, you're taking your ankles through a deeper range of motion. You know, you're opening up the muscles and around your your pelvic floor. Um you're elongating and decompressing your lower back and you're taking your spine through that that, you know, full spinal flexion and then you come back into you know the more extension. So it's like a it's like a little mini massage for your whole entire body. Something that I would suggest for you. Getting back to the original question of like okay this is great, my freaking neck hurts. Um you know I would start looking at what are your uh your respiratory patterns, how do you breathe? You know? So every time you take a breath that breath is a is a expansion and a contraction. You know that's if you pay a massage therapist to work on your tissues, they're probably gonna do some variety of expanding or contracting, compressing some tissues and then then that will lead to an expansion response. Now a new fluid comes back into that space every time you breathe, that's what you're doing. You know? So I would have you laid down your back is just something that could be nice for you to do. Um I would put a little pillow back behind your your sub occipital ridge space just to kind of raise your neck up. Or you can maybe put like a little ball back there or something like that if you wanna be a little bit more aggressive. So you're elongating that space. You might have chronic tension, especially in that that cervical spine area and then also follow that. It might be in your lower back. You know it's really common with many people and then put your feet up on it's called an active rest position. We have this in the book and you know, a ton more exercises of people, but put your feet up on a, the edge of a couch, you know, or if you have, like, if you're fancy, you have like a yoga swing at your house someplace, I think that'd be great for you to have something that I don't know, whatever. Yeah, you're crazy, you're crazy, I think get a yoga swing man, I think that's a really cool thing to have your reference tim Ferriss he's a fan of acro yoga and things, you know? And so that's that's having something like that in your life. Once again, it's just adding a visual cue, so that now, suddenly, oh, I'm I'm compelled to get into the yoga swing, heard about this crazy podcast and I flipped myself upside down and I decompress my whole entire spine, I open up my hips, I open up my ad doctors, they do, you know, it's just this natural therapeutic movement That it's not a thing. I drive and hunch myself into a car for 30 minutes to arrive at some person's office, this is being implemented, you know, 1 to 5 times a day, because I just walked past it that times a month, times a year, you know, times a decade, it adds up, you know, when you, you know, so, so laying laying down on your back, prop your head up a little bit, so you're not in that kind of like crunched, cervical neck position, raise your feet up so that your sacrum is kind of almost like it's its traction would be the term like it's almost like lifted off the ground so your hips are almost like on the edge of dangling, like maybe just a centimeter off of the ground or so relax into that position, bring your hands onto the sides of your ribs, you know, specifically on the sides. A lot of times in yoga classes we hear about like belly breathing. So you have a bunch of people just dissed ending their bellies, trying to be spiritual with their breath but still not actually engaging that diaphragm to be able to get that full full expansion of the lungs. So bring your hands on the side of the ribs and just take a few knows breaths really emphasize the exhalation. Yes, So you could do maybe a version of box breathing, you know, do four seconds in hold for four seconds. I would extend the exhalation, maybe do exhale for eight seconds, six seconds and go through six rounds of that and just have a moment and see what that does to your autonomic nervous system. Because if you're having pain, especially chronic pain um in your body like that, there's, there's probably some level of stress component within that and again, mechanical stress is a part of that conversation, but it's not the absolute, you know? So in that practice of just laying down, taking a moment to observe your breath, start to engage that diaphragm in a different way. Start to engage that the the entirety of your of your your torso and your respiratory capacity uh you know and just have a have a moment to have a little decompression and and and check in with your breath. And I think you'd be my guess because you seem like a really sensitive person. My guess is you would be surprised with the impact of something as simple as that, You know, and if six breaths if you're willing to do six breaths, you know, try it for 10 and start to implement that if it if it helps say cool I'm going to do that you know whatever every day before a call. You know I just introduced that into my thing. So yeah, I think so. Let's put my problems on pause here and that's open to dialogue a little bit more generally with your philosophies, you know, you know, let's for a second, go to align method which is your book um again highly recommended. I wouldn't have anybody on the podcast, his book I or work I didn't recommend but the Aligned Method, a modern movement guide for a stronger body sharper mind and a stress proof life. So I think my guess is that applies to about everyone who's listening and the thing that I gravitated towards with your work in particular as as you just talked about, there's like all these, whether it's environmental cues, just the concept of movement as a methodology to protect and strengthen against the, you know, the trials of everyday life, whether that's hanging, whether that's breathing, um, can you talk a little bit how the work that you advocate for your life's work is different than someone who's like right now, there's maybe something like, oh, I'm, you know, I work on my breathing every day because I practice transit on meditation and I do that once a day or someone else is saying like, oh yeah, I go to the yoga studio three times a week and you know, I consider myself relatively healthy. How would you orient the listeners around what, how your universe is different than those other simple examples that I give, well, you know, I have a lot of appreciation, respect for anybody that's trying, you know, and and and investing themselves in their work and are making mistakes and are, you know, like pushing the ball forward, you know? And so I think, you know, the thing to do from a branding lenses to, you know, really set yourself apart, You know, make sure everyone knows how what I'm doing is different. And this is the path, you know, But I think that whatever resonates with a person, like we just need to start the conversation, you know, And so there's a lot of paths leading up to the top of the mountain and a person can think that their path is the superior path because it works for them. But I think ultimately whether breath work is what engages you with having a deeper relationship with your with your body and that spills out in your relationship with other people and maybe into your business and you know, or maybe that's crossfit or maybe that's dancing whatever. Maybe I think there's a lot of different paths. Um my intention with the align method, you know, and working with with with clients and the general broader conversation I'm really interested in is instead of simply reducing down these specific aspects of ourselves. So breath is one of the the toggles or tools that humans have the opportunity to engage with to change their state. A long exhalation will put you in a more calm, A parasympathetic, rest relaxed type place. Yeah, a few take a breath in through your mouth like that. So you're surprised that's teeing you up for that, you know, that that sympathetic response and so that's beautiful. So we have the option of the opportunity to engage with our breath anyway that we choose because we understand the basic user's manual and how to how to pull the toggles, you know, so our visual system when it's a very similar system, these are all integrated systems when you are looking up at something Myopically up close, you're focused in. All right, that's going to cue your nervous system to be in that more executive function gets stuff done. You know, there's a potential threat. We need to either fight or flight or you know, sort this out when you allow your eyes, your visual system to go into that panoramic view. Take the whole the entirety of the, of the picture in the savanna, whatever you're looking at or just that you're just spacing out in the room. It sends a signal to your autonomic nervous system that okay chases chases chilling. There's clearly no reason to be, you know, to boost up norepinephrine and cortisol or any of these stress hormones because if we were in that state, Chase would be focused in on a single threat. Yeah. So acknowledging and understanding say, okay, when I'm working out in the gym, I can leverage these these sensual systems in my body the same way that I would leverage leverage these mechanical principles. You know, so the next level within that, you know, I mean everything temperature regulation. All of these are part of fitness and movement. You know, and then the one that most people are the more common conversation would be, you know, that the very obvious like mechanical engineering, you know, hip hinging and neutral spine and things of that sort. So what I really care about and what would separate the align method would be providing a comprehensive, simple digestible guide for people to understand how to drive their body effectively. You know, because we get that with a car. You know, you go through getting her learner's permit, you have a person drive beside you, you parallel park, you you know, you read books for a while, you take classes about it and it just blows my mind that we don't have that in most modern school systems, we never really get the user's manual on how to drive the body. So that's it. I love it, I love it. And you know, if I'm open to the, to the book right now and you know, early on you talk about the different architects, archetypal Yeah, postural archetypes and with you know like the mopey would be how I would consider, you know what I think of myself as having poor posture, but you know there's you know anxious which is head down, there's uh ah swole, which is like all puffed, puffed up like bodybuilder type, There's bendy where you see people that are kind of like New Delhi um and aligned, which is um the what one would envision as I think just align your spine is aligned, your shoulders are back, your, you know, your hips, knees, shoulders are supporting one another adequately etcetera. And the it's it's dramatic when you think about how like most bodies can flop into those those different, you know archetypes and part of this, you know, your your methodology is oriented towards you know, having visual cues in your universe, this idea of movement as you know, lifestyle as there's a quote in the second chapter, the George Bernard shaw quote, we don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing. If we if we just think about the archetypes, the, you know, the cues in your system describe for us, what if you could um map onto someone's life, what the day might look like because this is a good way, I think to bring your philosophy to life, what do you think if you could, if someone is being treated by you, there are a patient, what is an example of, you know, walk us through what what how you would coach their life to be and you can take a you know, real or fictitious person. I just want to help under help those listeners understand, I guess your overall lens and what what what what's possible. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think again, seeking for things that are set this approach apart from a more common model would be thinking about, you know, first, how do you want to feel? You know, so the way that I want to feel might be different. I mean, it's probably different than the way that you want to feel compared to somebody else, you know? So I think starting off and just really defining where is it that I want to go, You know, and I think that we were quick to apply moralistic judgments of like, oh that diet is bad or that diet is good or that fitness regimen is good or bad, you know, I like for something to be good or bad, you first have to define the out the intended outcome and then is that taking us further away or closer to the intended outcome, which ultimately is subjective vitality, energy, lust for life connectedness to their environment? Um you know, the ability to express oneself. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um well, so if it was, if it was that type of person that is like expression and such, um the big thing that I would be saying is is starting to incorporate activities that are coordination based, you know, and outside, as much as as much as you comfortably can, you know, and allowing yourself to, when you're just outside in nature, you know, you were worth solving thousands of problems per minute, you know, as you're just riding a bike down a path, you're running all of these equations, you know, determined, determining when is this person gonna be in this place? Like the algorithms, there's a, you know, so you're just running through these systems, you know, and it's like that's really what engages the body, you know, and so many great thinkers historically have come from a place of like, oh, you know, I get my best ideas when I'm in the bathtub or when I'm sailing or when I'm taking a walk, you know, it's it's literally, it's it's it's, it enlivens our minds, you know, and enlivens our our humanity lines are not just our our cells and our, you know, our our our neuro muscular system are muscular skeletal system. No, but the way that we think it informs the way we think, you know, so starting off would be getting a regular sleep schedule is a big thing. So most research would suggest that, you know, ideally you're getting up and you're watching the sunrise, you know, when you're exposing your eyes to the sun and getting that infrared light um at those early hours that's gonna be really supportive. But the big thing is that you're, you are, I mean, that's amazing if if you're doing that, but maybe some people cannot do that because of work or whatever it may be, or you live in Seattle. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, so and so and so yes, in that case, you could get lights to replicate that. Um, and introduce those into your house, you know, so Andrew Huberman, He's he helped with the vision chapter in the book, I'm very thankful for that. Um and one of the things that he does is he incorporates, he has some type of light that because he wakes up before the sun, you know, and so he his sunrise essentially is that light that he exposes his eyes too, but having consistency of sleep patterns is going to be a massive thing you know? So getting your circadian rhythms down so that each day you know there's some level of dependability in your life you know? So from a hormonal level they really thrive on dependability you know? So it's kind of like a relationship, it's like you have a relationship with yourself you know? So the starting point I would say is coming to that place of um you know treating in the in the book, I reference a buddy of mine called Colin Wilson, he plays, he retired now but he played ice hockey for the colorado avalanche. And um one of the things he said to me well we are just on a sauna session or like passively like throwaway statement was that that sleep is a weapon and it like it was like from like like that's it you know so really looking at sleep as you know you're wearing your P. J. S and it's like this soft yin like candles like no no sleep is a weapon, you know? So leveraging that and really being intentional about that I think is going to be primary and then from there nature as a weapon, you know, so spending time outside getting enough vitamin D. For example, you know or or allowing your body to be able to create enough vitamin D. And acknowledging and recognizing that your your muscles, you know reframing the concept of muscles is just being these pulley systems you know but think of them as like endocrine glands, you know, as you are pumping and pushing and pulling and extending and contracting, you are engaging your physiology to be producing, you know, the neurochemistry that makes you feel well, you know, so however that happens for you follow the field, if you love running, you know running can be rough one from a hormonal perspective, you know, long long distance running could be kind of challenging, so I would maybe if there was, if there was any kind of issues that I would say looking into like maybe like sprint training or like interval training is going to be you know, pretty pretty good approach um but whatever makes you feel alive, make sure that you make that be a primary focus in your life, so whatever, if that's rollerblading, if that's dancing, if that's Taibo, you know, like whatever, the thing that just lights you up because what lights me up absolutely, it's gonna be different than somebody else and I would say, you know, open up your life, open up your schedule to to find that, you know, because going back to the George Bernard shaw quote, like it's when you stop playing, like that's when your body starts to, you know, it starts to collapse, you know, because if we're not playing here like what are we doing here, you know? And so start to implement that idea that you know of that concept of play that you get in your movement practice throughout the day, you know, and implement that play into your relationships. So when you're talking with someone, say, I'm at the gym, you know, whether you're whether you're in an office space or whether you're doing a podcast with somebody, like ideally this conversation between you and I it's like this kind of form of dance or this form of play. And if at the end of that, we both had that that mutual experience of play, that was a good conversation, you know, if it's something that's things like, oh, we're kind of like, I'm here, you know, selling a book, you know, and you're over here selling sponsorships on your podcast, you're just going to kind of grind through this, nobody gives a ship, like nobody wants to hear that and you can tell to you can, you know, so and so we're so enamored by play, you know? And there's there's a guy from uh, what's his name? Jacques who's like, one of the leading researchers in the field of play is notorious for tickling rats. Have you ever heard, like, seem like rats being tickled? That's kind of creepy. Uh so, so he's he defined like, like a whole separate network in the brain that's that's committed to play. You know? It's it's like, it's it's a it's a part of our humanity, you know, and and some of the research that he did with rats specifically was founded if small rats are wrestling with Biggest rats, the bigger rats will allow the smaller rats to win about 30% of the time. And the reason for that is, is because they want to play this infinite game. So I think that integrating that concept, infusing that concept into the way that you live your life, um you know, that's going to, that's going to pay dividends, you know, and that's going to keep you youthful deep into your life. And I think that we're continually, because we come from a more kind of mechanistic mindset maybe since, I don't know, like Newtonian physics or something like there was a, there has been a transition where we kind of, typically we're in this reductionist mechanistic mindset, so we're saying, okay, do this, do this, do this, do this. Um, but I think that if we can infuse that the overarching philosophy of, you know, like following your bliss, like joseph Campbell, you know, and allow that to fit to your specific scenario. Um I think that's that's huge. And I think that's when we get into some of like, the french paradox were like, they're eating to gets there smoking cigarettes, you know, like they're drinking wine all day, why are they so much healthier than us? Like, I'm orthorexia, like I should be amazing. It's like, okay, there's something else. Yeah, you know? And so I think that that now I'm a huge fan of what you're saying right now, specifically you this idea that play is something that we have to reward ourselves if we do enough hard work, right? That in order to get some outcome, the irony is that it's actually the other way around, right? If you play then you're going to work smarter, work better, you're going to be um, I think, you know, all of the physiological and emotional benefits you talked about with player that we can use the french as an example of, and that's actually the thing that delivers the results rather than the other way around the fact that, you know, that creative studios sometimes will create a culture of just joy and connection and belonging, because you're in this process of of like playing, people look at the work that the designers do as they're just goofing around, I'm over here, I'm I'm in the growth team and I'm over here crunching data And trying to find the 1% that does X or Y. Look at those folks over there in the design studio there, you know, they've got a dart board and they're throwing darts at the campaigns that they like the most on the bulletin board. And but the irony, that's right. The irony is that there's this um, you know, this concept, this connection or to go back to the the shock quote, you know, it's not really that you stop playing when you get older, you get old, when you stop playing. Yeah. And and and and it's acknowledging that, you know, the stories that we tell ourselves, and there was, you know, a handful of stories that I heard you speak about in relation to your own body. You're saying that your how did you call your ankle? You said it's like some version of it, it's jacked up or it's shitty, you're like, it's gotta shitty ankle, you know, it's just, yeah, it's a hamburger. Yeah, right. You know, and so it's, you know, be careful with the stories that we rehearse. And so, so, so that's an important thing is to, you know, how many people Go through this existential crisis if I'm I'm 40, what does this mean? I'm 50, and what does this mean? I'm you know, I've we we put ourselves into a double bind of having these expectations of who we think we're supposed to be, and then that can end up translating into a, you know, a musculoskeletal pattern, you know, and and, you know, in the book I referenced William James a lot is known as the father of modern psychology, and he was one of the the primary voices and the conversation of looking at sensation and experience an emotion from a lens of bottom up as opposed to top down, it's a bottom up being like, body up into the, into the mind and top down being mined down in the body, which, again, mind, body like your body doesn't know these terms. These again, are made up made up terms, the concept of a mind and a body we made that up, you know? So, first it's like acknowledging that, you know, but one of things that he suggested reference in the book is when you, you know, if you, I think the reference he used was if you see a bear in the woods, you know, because he was, you know, from X amount of 100 100 years ago, because if you see a bear, um he would suggest that your body moves you into a sensation of fear as opposed to the concept that the bear invokes, you know, some new neuronal pathways in the brain and then that is the primary which even still the neural pathways will be a form of movement. You're still moved, right, there's no sensation without movement. So you're defining, it's just it's just moving the bar of your specific definition of movement. But ultimately, for you to experience it is movement. And so when you are having, when you're going through some scenario, whatever the thing may be, you know, you can start to tap into a lot of different levers, like that's the big thing that like the metaphor that I probably use more than is necessary, like, we have these toggles and we have these levers that we can pull on, you know, to change our state to use, like Tony Robbins talk, but most of us don't, we just don't we're blind to seeing the levers on the wall or you know, or or on on our body. And so when we are moving throughout our days it's like I think that in the book I have a I kind of do a breakdown, an exercise of breaking down the way that you would want to feel and then visualizing yourself in that state and specifically visualizing uh from a a postural from a movement pattern lens. Like how does what's the shape of your body when you're in that state? And it's such an interesting thing if you think that you take a moment was like yeah what does contentment or satisfaction or like love? Like what is what's the postural expression of love, you know, and be able to give yourself a moment and start to feel into that and then you know, test it out, go into your next business meeting or your next conversation or conversation with your son or daughter or wife or girlfriend, you know, and and move into the conversation with that lens and just see what happens. Yeah, it's incredible to me how the mind, body connection. It takes me to a piece really early maybe back in the intro of the book three principles that you call into awareness, one that you have no idea the depth of your physical capacities or your resilience, 999% of the population has never come up against the edge of those things so you knowing knowing your true depth breadth what's possible for your physical capabilities. Most people don't know too that it is the natural state of a human to be pain free and three that your body is actually designed to function over a lifetime That could easily eclipse 100 years. So these are not sort of like suppositions this is this is this is fact right? Most people don't know the definition of the depth of their possibility. Humans are meant to be pain free and your body is an incredible mechanism that's meant to carry around for more than 100 years. If you just focus on those three things and you take a series of what I would consider simple, not easy but simple steps like you can actually start to understand and experience the fundamentals that you pointed to. I also wanna so go ahead and comment on that Aaron if you want. Well I mean it's just coming back to the the stories that we tell ourselves, you know starting starting to adjust tinker with the narrative that you ascribe to with doing hard things you know and so if you can get like I have some friends, I don't do you know the seek discomfort people um are or any of those guys, I feel like they're in your wheelhouse. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes there is the youtube channel, they got like a big Youtube channel is super great but they're, they're brand is called seek discomfort and you know, that's the thing is, is if you can start to change that narrative uh where the things that make you uncomfortable, that's you've actually shifted it, that's where you that's where you derive the juice from. It's like when I'm uncomfortable, I know that that's, it means that I'm in the right spot, it means that there's a reward on the other side of that, you know, so you're like, Pavlov's dog, classical conditioning yourself into a ha, I'm in that uncomfortable, but that discomfort again and eventually becomes like whack a mole, you know, as opposed to being in a place that through this, this process of human evolution, we've done such a good job at avoiding discomfort. That where it's like, oh crap, like we needed some of it, like we like we did, we were too effective. Yeah, the cold plunge is a great example, right? You, you know, vim Hof has endorsed your book, I've got a cold plunge here at my home and, and I'm in it every morning and there's not one morning, I'm like, you know what, it's gonna be so fun, but as soon as you're in there, you're like, I do this for a reason, this actually does feel good and, and and this, you know, getting comfortable getting comfortable being uncomfortable or if you've ever been, you know, you go speaking of creature comforts, you're camping and you realize it takes you like 25 minutes, 30 minutes to make a cup of coffee, you know, you get, and then the coffee or the food or the meal tastes somehow better than what you're thinking hard to make. What did you do? You moved yourself into that coffee, right? So I have this amazing coffee machine in my kitchen where it literally, I press a button and there's coffee beans in it and it goes espresso, it does the whole things and I just walk away and come back and like bam like coffee, caffeine straight to the face. You know? And I take it, I always feel like fine after drinking it, you know, but I didn't move myself into the coffee, You know? So any for like your whole history forever, you know, until like the very like if it was modernity, you know, or you can say like the agrarian age since we started farming is like 10,000 years. So the history of the human organism that would be, if it was a roll of toilet paper, that would be like a little tiny itty bitty sliver of your human, you're human experience on this timeline, This linear timeline, You know? And so during that forever, essentially, uh, if you wanted to do a thing, you moved yourself into the thing, it's, it's, it's like the coding that we run on, you know? And so when you're out there camping and you know, all that. the thing that I wanted to say that I was excited about was uh starting to as far as actual tools that people can do that matter is starting to position your activities ah and your your friendships, you know, in your business relationships and like all the things also around joy play movement, nature, like take the medicine, you know, like there's like there's we have this this cabinet that pretty much unanimously every expert would, would agree is like, yep, it's always good for you and start to infuse that into your activities with other people. And ultimately, I think that that tribal connection, that friendship, that relationship, you know, there's like the, The statistic or the concept that loneliness is worse than smoking 18 cigarettes a day. And it's like, you know, it's just massive killer. It's this down regulator of the human soul, you know, and then you can extrapolate out and you know, what is soul maybe souls, you know, associated with our immune function, associated with our lymphatic flow and our cardiovascular function, all those things. I think if you feel like, you know, if you if you what David Goggins says like I took his soul, you know, that feeling of I'm a loser right? That that soul like you take that that has physiological translations, you know, and and uh you know, I think that having that human connection, I don't think I know that having that human connection is um, you know, it's it's invaluable, you know, So starting again, positioning our lives around what what brings me closer into contributing to something meaningful and what brings me closer into spending time with people that I love about and care about nurturing those relationships, creating anchors in my life, you know? And so that's support, right? So we talked about finding a neutral spine and finding inter abdominal pressure and finding, you know, you know, reducing flat, you know, like if you got like a flaccid joint, relax hyper laxity, it's like too much looseness, it's unstable, it's out of control. And so those are postural expressions for a felt state. If you feel unstable, you feel out of control, you feel like chaos, you know, how does that translate in the body? Anyway, so that was that was a long time. This is this is why I like your work because I think it demonstrates the interconnectedness to and this lack of like it's not necessarily sort of cause and effect. Um which is a, you know, reasonable jumping point to talk about. You know, the way you organized the book has a lot to do with, we've we've danced across a myriad of them. But um, you know, this idea in part one welcoming one to one's body, this understanding of, you know, where you fit, How do you sort of self diagnosed? That's the postural stuff we talked about as an example, not all encompassing, but as an example, the second part of the book, the daily movements you've already spoken about, you know, hip hinging and breathing and hanging. These are examples of things that are available to everyone. Um to that we haven't covered walking and floor sitting. We did in a way because you mentioned, you know, how do you join your work? Things with things that people pretty much universally agree are good for you. Like walking? Walking meetings are incredible. I started doing this about six or seven years ago and uh you know, I love it. If you can um take a walk with a colleague for work. Yes idea. It it seems more valuable than just the meeting clearly. Alright. But and it causes you it causes you to think differently, you know? So as you're out there taking that walk, if you want to have creative ideas, you know, writing well, we'll get to the things that will be very short, you know? But the way that you move that the reason some of the research that's been done around this is specifically with cursive handwriting. And the suggestion is that upon writing in cursive, because we're going through these flowy movements with our wrists, it can be supportive with supporting creativity. And so as we're so that's just a science sometimes it's funny where we're trying to create these isolated reductions essentially, but you just if you get done with a dance class, you know, and how does your mind feel? You know, it doesn't we don't need to always have, like, okay, here's the it's like just go do like, like tell me how you feel, you know, it's probably way easier for you to walk up to that person that would have made you nervous before because you're in your body, you know, and you went to this time and you're expressing and all of a sudden you're on your drive home, you have all these new ideas, you know, you needed to take yourself through those, those those motions in order to kind of get the gears turning the floor setting stuff is gets, it's kind of like, you know, that's like we were talking about before with the Tanzania cultures in the world that spend time, you know, with their hips down below the height of their knees, which we've we've kind of, we've we've transitioned away from that as modern culture. You know, we spend the entirety of our day sitting in some version of hips at nine degrees ankles, 90 degrees, nine degrees, usually kind of slouched over that position. If you were to look at any animal in nature. If they were in that, you know, you remove the computer, remove the cell phone, you would look at that animal and you would assume because that's the way that we're conveying information to each other through body language and voice tonality and the pacing of our language, you know, but there's, you know, millions of bits of information, visual cues that we're sending back and forth to each other, you know, that sometimes we can get caught up in the words, but I think that, you know that the deeper meaning is, is, you know, that body language and the tone. Um, if you were to see an animal in nature in that position, you would assume that animal is sick, right? You assume that animal is sad, you assume that animal just lost their mother or something and be like, oh, like what's just take a still frame picture, you know, chase Jarvis, got the camera out, boom, got the photo, you know, it had no concept of computers or cell phones, you see what's happening with that person, what's their state, you say, okay, sick or sad, you know, and so we do that throughout the day for so much uh, you know, the implications of that, I think that, you know, you could kind of extrapolate your own ideas about it. But what you can see from a muscular skeletal perspective, at least with his cultures such as Northern africa, southeastern Asia, um, Eastern Mediterranean specifically to places have been studied with this, spend a lot of time in floor seated positions in general. There's other factors in here as well, but they have minimal to no instance of arthritis. Osteoarthritis of the hips of the knees, pelvic floor dysfunction is diminished. Uh, you know, the adult diaper industry is slowly exceeding that of the baby diaper industry in the United States. So you get to a certain age and it's like I just start, you know pick your pants, you know it's just what you do, it's like that's that once again there's a movement conversation in all of this and when we when we strip ourselves of these these natural healing mechanisms, movement mechanisms that allow ourselves to restore to full function um then of course there's gonna be a cost to that, you know, so there's and so something that we can do is just start to make it easy and accessible for you and your family and your friends to just get down to that range of motion to get down to the ground so get a really comfortable rug in your house, maybe get some Moroccan poufs or some floor cushions. Um You know I have a couch here, I have a T. V. I have like my place looks pretty normal ish. Um You know but I have I'm sitting on the ground right now. You wouldn't have known that unless you saw me like get up But this whole entire time I'm in a 90 90 position with my legs, I was in a straddle position before I was in a cross legged position. You know, so I'm like I've been yoga in this whole entire time, You know and my my computers is there's a window right here, there's a river about 130 ft away so I can see I'm looking into the trees. Um I can't see the water, but you know, I know it's there, which makes me feel good, you know, I'm getting natural sunlight coming in here. So I'm in my my I'm in captivity, but I'm augmenting the captivity. It's kind of like, like have you heard the experiment rat park that was done in british Columbia? You heard this? So the old, the old, the old idea of, you know, if you give a rat cocaine water, you know, give them cocaine then they're just going to ruin their lives and just become you know, abusive cocaine addicts and they're just gonna stew and die and just keep on sucking on that cocaine feeder. Uh that's ridiculous. Like if you if you give a a rat purpose and you give them play and you give them a rat girlfriend and you give them, you know, they called it, this was done I think in the seventies or eighties ah if you, I'm trying to think that his last name was alexander, I don't remember the researchers first name but they called it Rat park, you know, and they made this great like you know rat lifestyle and they gave rat all the cocaine at once and the rats like not that into cocaine actually, you know like every now and again have a bump, you know, but it was not wrecking my life, that one that's amazing, you know, and so and so nothing enough good stuff in there. Yeah, enough good stuff in your life. You make you make choices that you make, you make you make better choices, you know? And so that would be it's just I mean fall risk, that's the number one leading reason for elderly, you know, our parents needing to enter into some assisted living facility, you know, and it's like that in love itself is just such an astounding concept that we are, we're choosing, you know, consciously or unconsciously to just let that piece of ourselves go. There's nothing inherently human about not being able to get up and down off of the ground. If you are doing that with any level of regularity through your life, which any natural human like you know, in in any any natural environment would be doing with regularity. It doesn't just one day like go away and so that in and of itself, you know, I would think would be enough. But then there's, you know, the benefits of lymphatic circulation and blood circulation and general mobility of all of your joints and just tissue health, you know, pelvic floor dysfunction per mentioned osteoarthritis. Like it does all the things, you know, that's most healthy mediums or practices or choices that we make. They're almost always shotguns. Like there's not a lot of things in the human complex body as opposed to the the complicated body, you know, in a, in a car, you can get a paint job or you can, you know, change the, the, you know, the oil actually would affect a lot of things, you know, but you can change specific parts and it just affects that place. Most of the things that make a person happy, healthy whole, they're pretty much, you know, they they pull all the levers at one time and by shotgun, just so people understand, but by shotgun, you mean they have a lot of effect right there. They they're not a laser beam which has a very narrow effect. And to me that's part of the challenge with modern, say farm farm pharmaceuticals, right? And an aspirin would not pass when an aspirin today would not pass the FDA because it's too general. It helps to many. It is to too many different activators versus the drug has to be, you know, inhibit this particular protein from binding to this thing which has this particular outcome and it's not approved if it's not narrow enough. Yeah, this, I just, I don't want to blow smoke, but I love your approach to, you know, the human condition movement, the environment, that your ability to control our environment and how that shapes our mind and our body. Um, I know we covered a lot of ground because your work is very broad and comprehensive things like, you know, aligning your home for health and creativity with these visual cues and you know, hanging bars and this is, it's also available to everyone and then you hear stats like you just shared the number one reason people go into homes because they can't get up off the floor that they fell down to. We can we can do better, we can align our office for healthier, you know, healthier work experience, We can shift and better and better and better business, better outcomes. There's no, once, once again the shotgun thing, it's not like, okay, I'm just gonna be healthier and just gonna be, you know, have less inflammation and be more creative and you know, feel more generally just like awake and having a lot of e I'm doing, I'm just exclusively do that. And then my work is going to suffer. It's like, no, that's what makes you magnetic. That's what makes people want to work with you. That's why it's so on point. And I want to thank you for your work again for those uh those folks at home align method, where would you steer people? Obviously the book, the podcast, I don't know if you want to add any additional color. Yeah. What's the best place for people to, you know, be in touch with you and your work? Well, I mean, I think most people probably grab their cell phones and go to instagram typically um you know, so all of my stuff is at a line podcast. Uh you know, instagram's line podcast podcast called line podcast. If you're open to, I'd love to have you on the podcast at some point, no hard feelings. Oh good, committing, committing here on in front of You know, thousands of people. Yeah, I love it. Let's do that. Um, so uh and then the book, the aligned method that is, it's an expanded, revised version that comes out January 11 And uh yeah, so you can pre order that if that's before January 11 and if not ideally you walk to your book store to grab it uh if if you are going to get on amazon, maybe do it on a laptop like outside it would be great. Take your sunglasses off. So you're getting a full spectrum light into your eyeballs. That's my suggestion. Now you have, your thinking is simple and profound and that's a very difficult combination that I really respect and admire. Um this community will rush out and take care of advance purchasing your book and comes out in january. We're dropping it before then around your pub week to help with that. Thanks for the work that you do Aaron, I'm happy to be on the podcast. We'll flip that around and maybe even syndicated back to this listening audience. Um thank you for the work that you bring to the world And again, I just folks, the book is is outstanding and you really enjoy the podcast if you've enjoyed any component of what we talked about today, making your work place better, your home better and overall your life better through movement and alignment, erin, thank you for joining us on the show. You've been an amazing guest. And until next time everybody out there in the world, we bid you all adieu, mm hmm, mm hmm.