Exercising One Specific (Often Forgotten) Body Part Can Relieve Aching Tightness, Head-Splitting Migraines, Breathing Issues, and Poor Sleep Quality With Dr. Neel Bulchandani

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, so many people with adrenal issues, it's like they've been taking the supplements, almost dependent on them. And sometimes it's the kidney. The kidney's been out of alignment and the adrenal gland has come along for the ride. So that's one of the main ways that I help people out of adrenal fatigue is actually getting the kidney to be aligned because then they don't need the supplements as much. But also just kind of like the way that we can be pliable and resilient and receptive to change when it comes.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life?

Let's do this. Folks, you may have seen on Instagram, me interviewing Dr. Neil Bolchandani about this crazy method he has where he works on the inside of your mouth and your tongue and adjusts your body. Like, for example, he went inside my mouth yesterday, he did work on my jaw, and it gave me like 3 extra inches of mobility on my left leg. Just crazy stuff. I was so intrigued when I had him over to my house a few months ago, I decided to have him back for an official podcast. We are walking, as you may no doubt have already noticed, outside my home in Spokane, Washington. He came to visit and we're doing work together this weekend. He's showing me all his tricks and hacks and tactics. So his name is Neil Bolchandani. I'll link to his website if you guys want to check him out and learn more about him. Just go to bengreenfieldlife.com/drneel, like D-R-NEEL. It's N-E-E-L. So, bengreenfieldlife.com/drneel are where you can find the fancy, fancy show notes. So, we've already today had a pretty good morning. We did our cold plunge. We did stretching, BioCharger, PEMF, frisbee golf, smoothie.

Delicious smoothie.

And now, we're walking.

Yes.

So, I actually wanted to ask you this right off the bat, Neal, because you were telling me this when you were doing bodywork on me yesterday about this cool hack, pun intended I guess in this case, that you have for cold thermogenesis. Do you get into that?

Yeah. Well, it's— it's changed. Depending on what someone needs. So, in one sense, it's like an evolving hack. And, I mean, for me, it's like when I think of cold, I think, ooh, there's some energy on that that could feel shocking to a nervous system. And, I love the benefits of it, like getting in there and feeling that dopamine release and feelings.

That's why all the smart doctors tell you not to do it. That's sympathetic nervous system activation, baby.

Yeah.

You're going to die in a pile of low HRV goo, right?

Yeah. And, some of that mechanism is so good because we need that protection against when things are truly fatally or mortally injurious. But, when you develop the resilience of your nervous system and your gut, and for some who can get in there and do that, some people I think—

So, the right kidney for me, That's when I work on like the actual, not the correct kidney, but you mean the actual right kidney on the right side.

Exactly, the right side of the body. For most people, it's that right kidney on the right side of the body that could be slightly tense or misaligned. And so often, but it's really nice because even if you, if it's not that, it could be the diaphragm, which is really close to it. So pinch, you know, kind of like pinch your side, the QL muscle. On either side, but it's—

people might not know what you say, what you mean when you say QL.

The quadratus lumborum muscle. Okay. So it's, you know, under the last rib on the right side. If you just kind of pinch your side, to make it very general, and you do a stretch towards the left side, so you just open up the side, and it's kind of like a ballerina stretch. But basically, if you just massage or stretch in the area, and then you, you know, that can totally help your nervous system reset, take some of that stress off of the parasympathetic nervous system to allow it to do what it's designed to do, which is keep you mobile forward.

So, tell me the story about how you were with your kids in the river and you did this to yourself.

Yeah, exactly. I was in Bend, Oregon, and it was just like, less than a month ago. And, oh, you know, I was— I love the idea of getting in and getting into some colds. We're there with some family. Matthew Rollins, a great friend of mine, he, you know, he's like, yeah, just get in. And the kids were in, everybody was playing, and I'm like, well, I should, I should love it, right? Gonna be good. But as soon as I stepped in, my skin was like rigid, you know, shocking. And I, you know, by now I can tell, like, is that just something I need to push through? Yeah, no, this was like, no, because it just felt so shocking. And maybe I'm being dramatic to kind of like demonstrate, but all I know is that right kidney, when I freed it up, seconds later, the skin was like, ah, and the water felt so good. I mean, it was cold, but it felt so good. That's true.

What do you even mean when you say free up a kidney? Or before you said free up, you said align kidney. Yeah, what's that even mean?

So if I'm doing like bodywork on someone else, we're gonna get in and usually they're gonna be lying on their backs and, um, we're gonna feel like which way is that kidney misaligned. I get into the nuances because I see like really complex cases and some people have had bodywork, they've had a lot of different kinds of therapies, and it's that right kidney that could be misaligned in direction. So it could be too far forward, or it could be too far back, or it could be too far towards the middle, medial. So, but, you know, just kind of keep it simple. If, if it's tense, and not only the organ but the muscle and the fascia, the connective tissue that's connected to it, sometimes a simple massage, you know, on the actual organ can loosen it and then it can go into this.

Would be almost like where you could put both of your fists kind of back behind your back and feel like you'll sometimes do if your back is tight and just kind of rub and roll in that area with your fists. That type of thing.

Yeah, that could be good, but for somebody who has, uh, for a lot of people though, that's going to drive that kidney even further. So usually grabbing, um, under your rib on the front, the lowest rib Putting your hand there so you can kind of massage your belly and then going into laterally bending to the right, laterally bending to the left, even do some rotation. So that's why I say pinch your side because when you pinch your side, you've got your fingers on the front and your thumb in the back.

Fingers in the front, thumb in the back. Okay.

Yeah. So if you hug your side with your hand, You got your thumb in the back and your fingers on the front. Well, that's kind of a way to get the front and the back. And so then you can go into lateral flexion, bend to the right and left, rotate to left and the right while you're still kind of like holding your torso like— while you're holding. And often if you pinch, if you actually put pressure to try to bring your fingers and your thumb close together so that's pinching your side, then you actually hold that pressure. It's a myofascial release technique. You hold that pressure. And then, while you're doing the movements, you're allowing the movements to free up the adhesion versus grabbing and digging in harder because some people just can't take that pressure.

Right. You're using the movement of your body to self-massage. It's almost like if your knee hurts and you kind of grab your knee or pinch it with the foam roller and jack bend and extend your knee, you can kind of almost floss that area with movement. So, I could stand in front of my cold plunge. Let's say I'm feeling cold, I feel like maybe I've got too much sympathetic nervous system activation, I could grab the front of my torso with my 4 fingers, put my thumb in the back, and just start to do some hip circles and torso circles.

Exactly, yeah.

That's a good way. But, what I don't understand is why that works. What's going on with the whole kidney nervous system activation that would cause that to somehow warm up my body or cause me to not have something like a cold shock?

Yeah. And, you know, I can't help but think, oh, there's other nuances with some people. They're going to have different organs out of alignment. But if we're sticking with the kidney, which I think is good because in a lot of people that's an issue, well, one is because if that kidney is misaligned, that's regulating electrolyte balance, minerals, how they're distributing themselves to our body. It's also a big massive regulator of our blood filtration. But what I think is really helpful for me to explain and for me just in the beginning to understand this is that with the kidney in the Western world, we think, hey, there's the kidney. And then we're like, oh, yeah, the adrenal glands sit on top of it. But if we break down the word in kidney is renal, right? Yeah. That's the word. And the adrenal is—

Adrenal.

Adrenal is adding to the renal.

I'm looking an idiot because I've been through anatomy and physiology and Latin and everything. I've just never really thought about it that way. Okay. So, adrenalin, of course, it's kidney.

Yeah. So many people haven't. Honestly, I didn't even though I've been through 4,000 hours of chiropractic college and additional myofascial therapy training. But, it's like the kidney when we look at it as this not just an organ but the synergistic properties of the adrenal gland and the renal gland, That's why in the Eastern world they view them as one organism. So do I. It's like one system. So I often see— this is kind of, you know, rabbit trail— but so many people with adrenal issues, it's like they've been taking the supplements, almost dependent on them. And sometimes it's the kidney. The kidney's been out of alignment and the adrenal gland has come along for the ride. So that's one of the main ways that I help people out of adrenal fatigue is actually getting the kidney to be aligned because then they don't need the supplements as much. And I also can regulate their nervous systems. So I, I think you're— the answer to your question was, why does that work? Well, it's nervous system regulation. Because if we can get that nervous system to regulate and somebody can have that good balance between the parasympathetic and the sympathetic system, then our bodies can be resilient and shock doesn't affect us as much. We're supple to it, both, you know, an actual myofascially, but also just kind of the way that we can be pliable and resilient and receptive to change when it comes.

Right. And then, I can understand how sometimes people have neurological issues if one of, say, the vertebra is out of place, like you have a cervical spinal misalignment or something like that. But, with the kidney, how does it get out of place in the first place? Does that make sense? How do the kidneys just shift? Are they that pliable?

Yeah.

And, could it be an injury or a movement or a lifestyle practice or the way you're sitting at your desk or something like that that's gradually shifting the kidney in such a way that causes some type of nervous system maladaptation?

Yeah. I think one quite clear instance is some guys operating— I'm thinking of several people right now, but if you're operating this heavy machinery and it's unilateral, it's they're always on the right side or the left side, constantly having to—

I operate a lot of heavy machinery, by the way, it's called a keyboard, right?

And you— that's like micro stress. If you do it over and over and over and over and over again, you're going to be exacerbating that side and tightening it. So I think it's like the blunt force, that trauma, but also repetitive things over time can create these. But, um, and you know, I think of Some people have rib injuries where they've separated ribs or, you know, had, you know, somebody ran into them. Football players, good example. Totally. Kidneys can misalign that way. So it's like the myofascial system. Buckminster Fuller, he's probably the one who explained it the best.

He's an architect.

And in kind of—

Isn't he the guy with the whole like shape Buckminster Fuller-ine that they There's even that supplement people take, the Carbon 60 or the C60, that's named after or the shape of it is named after him, the Buckminster Fuller soccer ball hexagonal-like shape.

Yeah, totally.

I didn't know he was an architect.

It was named after him. So, he kind of came out of the human potential movement, Big Sur, Esalen Institute. And, one of the things that he did, he spoke on tensegrity. It's a concept that kind of talking about the way that our body has tension and integrity, and it's the fascial system that often is what provides that. So with organs, sometimes it's just you get into a movement and it's not even that much. It could be like a millimeter out of alignment, but that's, you know, for the body, that's all it needs to say, wait, hold up, and it disrupts that neural connection from, you know, brain to body, body to brain. And so, then it can disrupt that nervous system. So, I think there's a lot of pathways and ways it can happen.

Hmm, interesting. Alright. Well, we might have gotten a little bit ahead of ourselves because I think I told you this, I guess so many people that want to come to my house, show me their special unique flavor of bodywork or show me some magical rabbit that they pull out of a hat that fixes everything. And I'm super skeptical. So, you experienced this. I had you over but it was pretty much just like, "Hey, you're going to show up at this time." leave it this time. Show me what you do. I'm happy to at least check it out. And, when you left, I was like, "Holy cow, my whole body feels different. I slept like a baby. I took a giant dump the next morning. I had pain diminished in areas of my body that you just kind of started to work on." But, as you told me when you were leaving, it's like I needed a little bit more attention. So, I had you back this weekend not only to delve into more of what you do but also to record this podcast. And so I realized when he left, I'm like, oh, this guy's a unicorn. Like, more people in the world need to know about you. Sorry for making you blush. Oh, that's okay. And so where did you actually come from? Like, what's your story? Because you're not— I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not really normal when it comes to, you know, the average chiropractic doctor.

I mean, yeah, I think it's, uh, First of all, it's been really rich to be here. I knew you were a great cook, but man, you're like— No, no, absolutely. With the way you blend things.

I like to make meals for my friends and have a good time.

I just feel like I'm riding the enrichment of the senses from that and all the movement and all the things that we've done. So it's like where we're at right now is the present tense and gratitude. And I think I look back and, man, there's like so many places to start. But I think if we get kind of start at the end is that I, you know, I, when I became a chiropractor, it was no clue that I was going to do that. Um, and when, but I'll say like the apogee, the apex, or if you want to call it the event horizon, like the moment that really like so showed me of what I am to do and who I am was the, you know, it was connected to being a husband of Dawn, my amazing wife, but also that moment when we had our first baby, Serenity. And that was, you know, 8 years ago, and I had already been a chiropractor for, you know, at that point, 7 years, I think. And so she came into the world when she was born at home in a birth pool and came up out of that water, my wife held her, and it was 11 days later that we knew her name. We didn't know it right away. We just kind of wanted to wait and feel and sense. And we said, oh, she's so serene. And that was a beautiful, peaceful moment. And then, you know, kind of like, as I mentioned, to start at the end and then go back is she was born and then—

She didn't name her Mermaid because she was born in a birthing pool.

Ariel, that would have been fitting.

Fair enough.

So Ariel, she's a singer. She's a wonderful singer-songwriter, actually. So that's fitting. We knew she would be a singer. We knew she loved song. That kind of runs in our family too. But she was born and so born with a tongue tie. That's, you know, and I don't want to get into the weeds of that yet because I think you were asking more about where did this all start or where did I start. But I think—

Oh, I know a big part of it is the tongue tie because you did some crazy stuff to my tongue yesterday. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, freeing up the floor of the mouth under the tongue is sometimes an undersung hero, an unsung hero. And that's why I love talking about the floor of the mouth, because that tongue can move, but if it doesn't move well, it's often the floor, you know, these muscles under it that won't let it move. And so the tongue can get villainized, the floor of the mouth can get all this tension. So I'm talking about, you know, these areas that can loosen so the tongue can move more properly so that we can I want to breathe more properly. And for her, that's what it was. It was she couldn't—

so Serenity was born with a tongue tie. Yeah. If you really don't know what a tongue tie is, because for me it was a little foggy, certainly you kind of did some explanation. I even went through your tongue kind of like exercise program that you have on the internet, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes because it's super interesting. But what is a tongue tie?

Yeah, and the tongue tie is, you know, there's so many colleagues, you know, people who I collaborate with that have done forerunning work in this. It's decades old, and midwives of old used to, you know, address this issue and talk about it. So I'm not, you know, I'm not a pioneer in talking about the tongue tie. It's more of my floor of the mouth and how to free up tension there. But it's, you know, places like the Breathe Institute is a great place to know more about that, or Tongue Tie Life is a great website. So amazing. But when the tongue is tied, there is an inability for the tongue to move, you know, as properly as it should.

Yeah, but what's that mean, tied?

The frenum is the band of tissue that's right under the tongue. Okay. And that frenum is— some people who have an anterior tongue tie means that frenum runs all the way to the tip of the tongue, and that means the whole tongue is tied, so to speak. For you and for a lot of us.

So if a baby's born, that means like they can't move their tongue, they can't suckle properly or something like that?

Can't, can't get the tongue to the roof. Or if they're nursing, breastfeeding, they can't extract milk as properly. Um, so a lot of people—

Probably cause mouth breathing too.

Mouth—

because I read that whole book Jaws, that hidden epidemic, the story about, you know, mouth breathing and how, how, uh, bad it is for, for a lot of things. Sleep apnea, digestion of food, et cetera. But, in that book, I learned that the tongue is supposed to be suctioned up against the roof of the mouth in just normal day-to-day nasal breathing and posture. And so, that's basically what you're saying. It sounds like that's impossible to do if you're born with a tongue tie.

It's tough. Yeah, it's just way harder. And, there's so many other things that paint the picture here more fully. Because what, you know, are their palates too narrow? Because that's a problem. The tongue can move well, but if the tongue— the palate's too narrow, the tongue doesn't have a home. So that's a separate problem, but it's all connected. So it interrupts breathing, feeding, which is, you know, we're talking about nursing. But also, you know, along with that, there's this sort of pattern that the body tightens, contorts, and gets restricted where the throat bone, the hyoid, misaligns. And, you know, for all the speech language therapists or those who have been to those, it's like tireless work to try to help the chewing, swallowing, speaking, all these things that we take for granted. But yet, with some, connected to the tongue tie, but it's downstream separate issue, it could be that. It could be that the hyoid bone is too anterior on the right, which often accompanies a tongue tie.. And so sometimes that's a really difficult area to assess and release, but thankfully we have a lot more bodyworkers who are aware of that. And so with Serenity, you know, back to her, she had her, you know, she not only had her tongue tie, that's the frenum that's restricted, not allowing the tongue to lift up. And most of us don't have an anterior tongue tie. That's why this is like an underlooked at, has been for a long time issue. Most of us have what's been called a posterior tongue tie. Which actually were, you know, it's being renamed the mid-tongue tie, that when the frenulum under the tongue runs a little too far forward, but not to the tip, but it still is too rigid and it doesn't allow the back of the tongue to lift up, which is still so important to get proper suction for nasal breathing and also for, you know, latch, being able to extract milk, whether it's a breast or whether it's the bottle. You know, and that's what, you know, I think of all the moms and all the families that I've journeyed with because, you know, sometimes that mom's trying to breastfeed and it's so hard and they've been gaslit, pediatrician, by all the people. You know, it's just, you've been told it's not an issue. You've been told, you know, hey, it's, don't worry about it, your baby's gonna outgrow it. And it's like, no way, no way. Because even though—

That's part of what I've learned from you is adults grow up with all these tongue issues, even if they didn't have a tongue tie per se, which I didn't. But you're still finding all these issues in the tongue and the roof of the mouth and the jaw muscles, even in grown adults who may have been affected by this stuff since childhood.

Yeah, huge. And it's one of my biggest, like, convictions is to be there for families and also support them through that, because maybe their baby has had failure to thrive, and maybe they've been, you know, dealing with speech issues, or maybe they've been dealing with baby growing up, you know, is growing up and that older kid is having issues with cognition that could be related to this or issues with, you know, swallowing, chewing. And then adults have grown up without ever knowing that this is, you know, this is an issue. But I had a 76-year-old patient who was referred to me by a tongue-tie surgeon who I love collaborating with, Dr. Rachel Barnhart, and I collaborate with a lot of them. But, you know, he, his whole life he's had this issue because it all starts in utero. Starts in gestation, 4th, 5th week. And, you know, it's— I'll go back into that, but it's like, for him, this guy, he had TMJ.

He had jaw issues, and temporal mandibular jaw, like super tight jaw.

Yeah, super tight jaw. TMJ, TMJ, temporomandibular joint problems, and it was popping.

That's what TMJ, temporomandibular— I think I said jaw. It's temporomandibular joint syndrome. Correct.

Yeah. Exactly. And then D is the word, you know, when people say TMD, they're saying disorder. So they're more talking about what's the problem that's happening with the joint. Well, TMD, so that's the apple, you know, the kind of the appellation or the acronym.

Okay, got it.

But, you know, for him, he just knew I got the jaw that won't work well. And when I'm chewing, it hurts. Like, that's what drives a lot of people to get this figured out. And so he was referred to the dentist that I work with because she is an airway-trained and certified, you know, dentist who specializes in this, and she could see it clear as day. He had a significantly restricted and tethered tongue that was clear, and he had a lip tie, which is his upper lip was restricted as well. Lower lip was restricted as well because there are 7 fretta in the mouth. And, you know, if somebody has the upper lip or lower lip tie or tongue tie or upper cheeks, lower cheeks, that's all possible. Well, he had like 4 of them. So, it was actually through a lot of bodywork and shifting things that finally got the balance better so that his jaw would work so that he could chew all he wanted without having that pain. So, it affects people through the lifespan and some people just will never know that it's an issue, but it could be why they have tight traps or hamstrings that won't ever stretch or inner thigh muscles that won't ever—

Which I experienced yesterday as you worked on me. So, with Serenity, So she was born with this tongue tie, and that's what got you down this rabbit hole.

Exactly. Yeah, she, you know, was seeing like how hard it was for her to just get milk and how hard it was for my wife to be able to, you know, give her that milk. It was painful because it's, you know, when there's those issues, the baby will often clamp. And, and so, you know, mom's gonna have that really pain— painful, um, you know, irritation on the nipple from that. And then also with an improper lip seal, you know, you can just get all this air that escapes in. And so, you know, for Serenity, she was writhing because she had this like diaphragm that was misaligned, but also air just stuck in her belly. So, you know, I saw that and I was really thankful for all the bodywork that helped because, you know, It was like hours a day. It was helpful, but it was really thankful for the surgeon, the tongue-tie release provider that we went to at that time because it was a laser that released the tissues that allowed her tongue and lips to move more properly.

So, what you do doesn't get rid of the tongue-tie. A surgeon gets rid of the tongue-tie and then you start to do the therapeutic work after that.

Yeah, and it's a very delicate topic in some ways because what you just said, it hits the nail on the head. In no way am I ever removing the existence of a tie because we can't do that. The collagen fibers are different. Right.

You can't just take out a pair of kitchen shears and go to work.

Right, exactly. That's not my scope.

You don't do tongue ties and circumcisions.

Definitely no. But what I do is I work on fascia that's restricted because of those. Both of them. So often I've worked on, you know, babies post-circumcision to release.

You just said both of them. Are you referring to circumcision? Yes.

Really? Yeah. I mean, I work—

now tell me about both of them.

I don't work directly, you know, in terms of like, you know, on a boy in that area in the penis, but I do work on like the, you know, the inner thigh muscles can get really tight after circumcision, even tighter than they were.

You mean just because like nervous system hyperactivation? Nervous system hyperactivation, but also You know, it's actually stressful when you're born and the doctor cuts part of your dick off.

Well, shock, right? It ripples, it creates tightness elsewhere. So anyways, well, but that's, you know, that's a hard topic to talk about because a lot of parents are like, it's very controversial. So I, I, that's not a major thing. But with Serenity, I was driven by my desire as a husband of my wife and a dad to her and also a healer to help her. And there was the end to what I could do and the release provider in the Bay Area, Dr. Sherman Yazgi, he's amazing. He did this laser release and night and day difference and everything improved. So then I did an hour of bodywork after to help her versus 3 hours every night. So that's how, you know, both instrumental the bodywork part is to help the procedures go well, but also bodywork alone can't be the answer. It might mitigate or take care of symptoms for a while, or maybe forever. Yet at the same time, we're not changing structure. And that is what can happen, is you can have tongue-tie issues that feel better, symptoms go away through bodywork or through therapies, and then later in life the issue presents. But I'm also not a big fan of saying, hey, if it's there, cut it, you know, if it's there, release it, because that can be a camp that gets a little bit too intense for parents. Because sometimes the tongue-tie is not the root of all these issues. Or the issue that their little one's dealing with. It could be, but I do a deep dive and integrative assessment and work to find out because people come in for this now and I'm like, is that really what's going on? Or is it the sense sensory system that has issues? And we'll dive into that. But before that, I really knew I was really driven and called to help people with my hands. But it was after that that I really felt like, I love helping moms and babies through these issues. And then, helping them be able to do this breastfeeding, nursing more successfully and with ease. But then, I started to see babies, kids, adults. And so, to help them digest, eliminate, breathe, and move better, that's way more of what I saw.

I'll tell you, last few times you've worked on me, I've had a pretty giant dump in the toilet in the morning. Yeah. A little TMI there, but it is what it is. So, when you first reached out to me, I wasn't that interested, not that I'm not interested in babies and breastfeeding and tongue ties. I'm just like, "Yeah, it seems like kind of a pretty niche topic maybe to be on like a pregnancy podcast or something like that or pediatric podcast." But then, you came out and you worked on me and a ton of this stuff translates into adults as you just alluded to. And, Here's what I want to get into because here's what I don't understand. Like I said earlier on in the podcast, you did a bunch, like you put on gloves, thank you, and you did a bunch of work inside of my mouth. I can't say it was the most comfortable thing to have your fingers in my mouth and maybe later we'll talk about this and my nose also, but then stuff started happening lower down in my body. Like the mobility and the stiffness started to go away from you doing the work in the mouth. And I would love to hear you explain why that happens.

Yeah, I mean, it's like the— it goes back to embryology, but that's a fancy word for the study of the embryo, and that's even a fancy word for how do we How are we made? You know, thank God, God created us, but we're made and we form in our mothers, and we all came into the world that way. So we have that combined shared experience. And so many of the parts of our body, um, that form, and likewise that, you know, as we get a little older in the tummy, as we gestate, you know, when we go from that curled up to unfolding before we're born, some of those organs and tissues, they're all tight and they're all together. So when we kind of unfold and then we're born and we come into this world, la, the ties have been there since 4th, 5th week. So that means if we've made it to 40 weeks, that's 35 weeks that we've spent constricted and tight in these areas. And so there's, you know, yeah, Tom Myers is somebody who's talked about from deep before.

What's the name of his book? Fascial Anatomy Trains. Anatomy Trains, yeah.

And I love Anatomy Trains and I love, you know, I'm riding on the shoulders of giants like many people out there in the past. Dr. Soroush Zaghi is an ENT that I collaborate with out of the Breathe Institute. He's brilliant with his research. He's got 100 articles of research related to tongue-tie. And he's, I think he's brilliant in putting forth that research to support this is a problem and it's not just in birth, it can affect somebody through their whole life. But kind of a jump to, there's, you know, there's a lot of images that show like from the tongue to the toes, that's this fascia that's so tight and there's a lot of good people talking about it. So I'm a big fan of so many people out there that explain it, but it's, it's about that embryology. Because if we formed with these ties and these issues, well, our body doesn't know that it's not supposed to be tight. So kind of when we're born, it's all tight. Um, so we have that matrix, and I think it's like as you start to age or grow up, you know, you can kind of balance out some of these things. But, what I say is, for the thousands of patients that I've worked on and then I've been teaching birth workers and body workers and these methods, I see these 70+ points, like 70 points on the body that tend to contort, tighten.

Is this your plan? You've actually mapped out 70 points?

Yeah, I created this map based on what I've discovered and Printed that now?

Can I put it in the shownotes or is that kind of like the secret sauce?

No, there's a version of it that I have ready that you can give. It doesn't have all 70 points, but the only people—

Because that sounds exhausting. Is it kind of like the 80/20, like the most important ones?

Yeah, I've got the most important. And it's got maybe 10 of those.

Okay, I'll put it in the shownotes. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrNeal. If you send it to me as an image, I'll put it in there.

You got it.

Okay. So, these points.

Beef points, they exist, they're there. And, yeah, but that's kind of like the what. That's the what that is going on in the body. And, more of your question was, yeah, why? Like, what is why? And, to me, actually, I'm one of the people, but I think the idea that I have and the theory that I have that I'm writing publications on right now about is One of the most significant things, if we look at, like, I'll just pick one thing in how we form, that's it. It's when the diaphragm forms, it's in the throat. And so many people are like, what? Wait, say that again. But when we're in utero, at 4 or 5 weeks in utero, that's where our mouth forms, pharyngeal arches. It's the same time that our diaphragm forms. And so we think about the diaphragm is in the belly, right? Yeah, that's where it is. Doesn't start there, it starts in our throat. And so embryologically, our diaphragm starts in the throat, but at 4 or 5 weeks, that's where it is. But then as you get to 6 weeks gestation, uh, for some people they're like, what does gestation mean? That just means like, you know, you gestate for 40 weeks on paper before you're born. So 4th, 5th week, diaphragm is in the throat. At the 6th week, the diaphragm descends to the chest in the thoracic area. And it's the 8th week gestation that the diaphragm descends to the belly. I have another great image that shows this whole stream and it's in the belly.

Okay. So, it would make sense then that if the diaphragm and the tongue and the roof of the mouth and the whole oral area is connected, that if you do work on the tongue and the roof of the mouth, like you do, that would probably affect things like organ innervation, esophagus, kidneys, etc. But my freaking leg was moving. Like, how does it keep on going farther down?

Well, that's the, you know, I could just sum it up and say fascia. And, you know, I think Anatomy Trains has been a great teacher to a lot of us. But even still, you know, my theory, my practice, my data is coming out more and more is we have to keep in mind there's, you know, we come from this place in utero and we're born with these restrictions. And so we, we have a different distribution of what's tight when we come into this world, which is what the 70 points show. But that part of that is the inner thigh muscles. It's, you know, the inner thigh muscles connect to the pubic bone. And then, the pubic bone has the abs coming and attaching to it. And then, the abs go up to the sternum. And then, you have fascia covering that that affects the throat. But, if we talk about the diaphragm, even though some people come into this world and they're breathing fine, well, that might be fine, that might be true, but that diaphragm is not only a breathing muscle, it's a digestive muscle. And it's made with two layers, and one of those muscles prevents reflux. That's what it's designed to do. So, some people have had reflux and they've had acid reflux and indigestion or spit up for babies, and it's because of that diaphragm.

But also, it might not be a bacterial imbalance, which can often be the case of acid reflux, but it can also be anatomical.

So many times people come in and we're adjusting the diaphragm to work better, but You know, there are other things that go on, but so much of the time it's, you know, the diaphragm is not moving well. But, you know, also if our breathing muscle isn't fully freely moving, well, the body is going to compensate around that and we're going to get movement where we can. But there are going to be areas that you can't get that wiggle room. And so, you know, kind of one of those areas would be the pelvic canal, like You know, the pelvis is, you know, our hips and just so many muscles that connect into that pubic bone. So the inner thigh muscles, you know, for most babies, if you're born with, you know, tongue-tie, narrow palate, those inner thigh muscles are so rigid. So babies are trying to move those. They don't know what they're supposed to do. So the moms and dads are taught to do the bicycle. And, you know, that's really good unless they have a tongue-tie. And then, that's kind of what I'm really getting out there is that when I get my map, these points, it'll show not only what's wrong but I want to give hope because it's the how. How can we work on the body and understand the body from this context so we can heal it? And, I think some of those points just give a clear way of navigating that.

Okay. So, little shift of direction here. You know, both me and another one of my friends who you worked on here at the house, uh, you, you basically did to me with your pinky what I've talked about on the show before, is like a balloon cranial adjustment, where a doctor will like put a balloon up the nose and kind of like inflate it, and almost like a chiropractic adjustment for the skull. But you just like put gloves on And with your pinky finger, I mean, I was hoping that you weren't going to like sneeze and, you know, slip. And then all of a sudden I'm going to lose, you know, forget 6th grade math because you, you know, poked a finger in my brain or whatever. Like it's kind of weird, but you could feel all sorts of stuff like moving and popping and cracking. Like when you adjusted my ear and all of a sudden like my hearing went clear as a bell, which is crazy. But the thing with the nose, tell me what's going on there. You heard my fat and he was like, I haven't— I don't remember the last time I could even breathe out my right nostril. All of a sudden he's breathing out his right nostril. So what are you doing with the nostrils?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things is like there's the— there's 4 phenotypes, so like categories of people that I see when they come into this world with airway issues, Hung Tai included. And one of those phenotypes is so many babies are born with a deviated septum. I mean, it's crazy. The right nostril. Out of that phenotype and that subcategory of who I see in those countless people, that right nostril, the bones in there, which are called concha or turbinates, they're too tight, they're narrow. So, they could be potentially shifted through intervention like nasal ballooning, which I love Jonathan DeLance. I have such a great respect for what he does.

Yeah, Dr. Jonathan DeLance, he's been on the show. Another guy who I've interviewed, Dr. Craig Bueller, Carlos always says he does it.

Right. And there's a few others out there who I love their work. You know, they do such amazing things with these ballooning techniques. And in some cases, they do what fingers cannot do. But in some cases, my pinky, the way I intuitively open up those, you know, concha to shift and align, it takes some really very like specific loosening. And, you know, because on the one hand, if you stick your pinky up the nose and you get those bones to shift and then that person can breathe more easily, it's like, that's it. That's what the goal is because that's the key of life. One of the keys of life is to be able to breathe. You know, Adam, you know, God breathed breath into Adam's nostrils.

I blow a lot of gunk out my nose, right? So, it's—

Oh, but yes, your friend is a good example of I could not release the nostrils on their own. It was going internally with the glove and massaging the soft palate with those muscular derivations on the same side. As I was doing the intranasal release that the nostril actually opened up. And so, that's a concept called fascial unwinding. But, another step is to say, "Yeah, but the muscle actually needed to be released in the mouth so that the nose could open up." Because a phrase that I'm used to saying and some of the people that I work with is the roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose. And if you think about how we're made, it's like—

roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose. Okay.

So, the back of the palate called the palatine bones and then deeper than that, the soft palate, those muscles, they're the bottom of the nasal canal. They actually— so, there's a very specific anatomical connection there. And so, with some people, it's the back of the palate that's too tight, misaligned, often because the tongue won't lift and move up there because it's been tied since in utero, that the, the, the palatine bones don't move, and then the nostrils just won't get air in. But, you know, some people, they can do mouth taping and it helps them greatly, and that's why I'm a big proponent of that. But as in the case of some of the people out there, it takes some layers to release not only the bones in the nose, the nostril, but It's also like the body's formed around that. So, yeah, you have to loosen up whatever it is in the body that's also associated with that because then you can prevent the body from just going right back in and misaligning it again, right?

Because a lot of people get frustrated with mouth tape because they do it but they can't breathe through their nose. Exactly. And my wife also had a lot of nasal congestion issues. You didn't work on her, somebody else did a balloon adjustment on her, and same thing, all of a sudden her nasal congestion went away. I think that one of the issues though is I think if you were to Google nasal adjustment, you'd get a bunch of websites warning you against letting people put things up your nose to adjust. And yeah, I think people are very wary or skeptical of it in the same way people are skeptical of something like a coffee enema. It's just like— Exactly. Especially in westernized culture, we're taught that certain orifices are not meant to be messed around with or whatever. But for you with the pinky, you must have been nervous the first time. Did you practice on yourself or did you have like a nose dummy or? No, I don't actually want to do that.

It's so funny because in chiropractic college I was nervous because I really had it.

Picking your nose.

I just hadn't done anything like that. No, thankfully I did not practice at all on myself, but I just really let intuition Plus, I mean, I say intuition, but what— the way we trained in chiropractic college, if I just kind of like do a little snapshot, it wasn't just like learning about the muscles, learning about the bones, and that's really important. But I had some mentors who, they got a phone book and, you know, super thin pages on a phone book. Some of you, some of us are like, what's phone book?

Yeah, I was gonna say, like half the audience probably doesn't know what phone book is.

So it's super thin pages, you know, like the pages of a Bible or the pages of something else. Super thin. It's like, okay, so very ink.

It's the thing that you grab a receiver hanging by the doorway with a long curly cord attached to to come through and make a phone call before you—

what are those, Ben Greenfield?

I thought you were talking about your lockup.

Well, like, so the goal was how many hairs, um, how many pages can we put hair under so that my fingers can sense it, right? So we try to put like 100 pages. And then can I feel that through the paper? And then we started going—

Like Princess and the Pea in your fingers. Exactly.

Like, so with human hair, horse hair, so train the fingers to be able to perceive something so very specific and subtle. So I use those abilities like we get trained in, plus the kind of like super extra skills I was trained in, match with my intuition. So I don't get nervous. I just get really careful. Cautious. And I think it's really wise to tell people, don't let anybody, don't just let anybody do this. Make sure that they're—

And tell me if you're going to sneeze. Exactly. Did Ben ever like bite down on you or anything when you're working on inside the mouth? Because just, you know, for me, I'm very, I just kept thinking the whole time, man, don't sneeze, don't cough, be careful. His fingers are in your mouth. You ever had any accidents happen?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, definitely like it's overall, it's Things like that happen and people are okay. And she was like, I mean, meaning like, I'm okay, my fingers, I've trained my fingers to be tough. So I've trained my fingers, ankle, all those bite marks, all those bite tattoos.

So, you know, the digestion thing is interesting. You even told me, it's kind of funny, like you bring extra clothes sets for the babies that you work on because they'll like take a dump while you're working on them.

Exactly.

Yeah, I like filled the toilet bowl this morning after you worked on me. What's going on with the digestion piece? Is that like a detox reaction or when you're working inside the mouth, inside the nose, and then just so people don't misunderstand, you're not just doing that, you're a combination of a massage therapist and chiropractic doc. You're working down through the whole body and hitting the IT bands of the knees and you adjusted my toes and adjusted my fingers and my wrist and even my ears. But, the digestion piece is interesting. What's going on there?

I think digestion and absorption and elimination is such a Yeah, voluminous topic. And you, you know, you could— I'm just gonna pick the place that I have from that because I right now I'm thinking of all the people out there who have brilliant insight on this and coming in, coming at it from different perspectives, different practitioners, different— so, so I'm only gonna, you know, really talk about what I know and what I do. But like you said, um, kind of to paint the picture, my system is devised out of like a hybrid of chiropractic, osteopathy, physical therapy, myofunctional therapy, Not only that, but, you know, taking into consideration fascia with deep structural integration. And then I also include some of my work in somatic therapy, delving through emotions, energetic, you know, issues, and also taking into consideration that, like, you know, there are sometimes these nervous system issues coming from trauma. Somebody experiencing that, maybe they do or they don't know that they had trauma, but those things, those things all matter. So, all those things, you can sometimes trace them back to vagal nerve function. So, that's really relevant because the vagus nerve is the wanderer.

It starts a lot of cranial nerves that you must be hitting. And the vagus nerve, of course, innervates a lot of the digestive organs. So, you think there's a link there.

Huge connection there. And like you said, 12 cranial nerves, it's like So many of them are connected to the tongue, and then so many more are connected to different areas that release when we release the tongue and the floor of the mouth. And so then, if we take into consideration that, you know, often one of the other points on the map that I have is that almost always there are going to be restrictions on the ileocecal valve. It's the colon, right? The large intestine where the small and large intestine meet. And if that valve is—

by the way, I'll throw this in real quick explain that. Sure. Some dude on a podcast once told me that there's, there's a way you can, via a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, actually kind of like open the ileocecal valve. Oh yeah. And it involves placing a nicotine patch over your lower right abdomen, which obviously you're not going to do on an intern, right? Or on somebody who's sensitive to a stimulant like nicotine.

But I tried it a couple of times, and man, like, you got to have a toilet in your Yeah, and it's like really, you know, like these are the, you know, current contemporary understandings that give so many ways in to help these issues. But kind of one of the things that I'll say is that, well, yeah, but if there's a tongue tie and oral restriction or any palate narrowing or floor of the mouth tension, like that needs to be released in order for that valve to stay open or stay functioning. And so that's what I see with babies adults. Like, you know, how many adults have come in and they're like, constipated. I've been constipated for, you know, days, months, weeks, years. Yeah. And so, sometimes I can work on that all day and that valve won't open or they've done like a lot of different integrative therapies. But, we'll go work in the mouth and that sets a downstream effect that loosens not just the mouth, not just the diaphragm, and not just the vagal tone, but it loosens up the inner thigh muscles which are often associated with the tongue tie. And, that valve itself can loosen up so that again it doesn't just tighten right back up after we do work on it.

Yeah, yeah. It was interesting as I was telling you yesterday, I've been working with this dentist named Dr. Nico Loud down in Phoenix. And, she has a myotherapist named Kat who after Dr. Loud did a lot of dental aesthetic work on me has been sending me little videos. Like different jaw and tongue and breathing exercises and sounds that you make. And, you kind of have this similar idea but specific to the tongue that people, it's not like they would have to come have you work on them, they can actually do some of this tongue stuff themselves. How does that work?

Yeah. And, it's called Tongue Press. And, it's come out of years of work. And again, I will, you know, I give my hats off to Aniko and the CAD, and what they do is really special, and we need more. Great status, great American.

Oh, Trump impersonation, there you go.

You know, we get one of them. I love what they do, so it's kind of like, I walked in, I said, these are great status.

Okay, I'll shut up now. Keep going, sorry.

No, hey, you take over, man. It's a good one because it's relevant, right? Politically, social commentary. Yeah, we can't get away from those. So, um, yeah, I mean, that's, uh, that's kind of the homage to myofunctional therapists. So I've got two courses. One is the tongue press for anybody with a tongue, and then the other one is for practitioners, for those like Kat and dentists that— who want to learn more about how, how can you understand the body and the floor of the mouth so that we can really open all this up on a sustained basis. But for people who just—

Yeah, like somebody sitting at home right now, they're listening to the podcast, maybe they're driving, they got a tongue in their mouth, tell them what they could do right now to just try a simple exercise.

There's an 8.5-minute daily routine in the course. So I will say if we can—

Give people a piece of that. Yeah, I know a lot of people try it.

Totally, totally, yeah. If we condense that into one, this is going to be really fun sounds you can make, like a donkey. Hee haw, hee haw. If you feel what happens with the back of your throat, the ha, right? If you ha, and then you feel like it's— if you say ha and you feel the back of your floor of your mouth, like inside your mouth, but the back, not your throat, and you feel that lower. Well, let gravity pull that down even more.

I'm like doing it silently while you're talking. Exactly.

Yeah. So that's one. Or some people like to say awesome, right? Just exaggerate the awesome.

Awesome. Awesome. California girl.

Awesome.

Don't say it like that, but yeah, you got to enunciate it, right?

So if you make those sounds, you're getting the floor of the mouth in the back to loosen. So make those sounds. But more specifically, if you get your tongue to lift and touch the roof of your mouth, and I often say people put the tip of their tongue up there and I'm like, no, no, the back of it. So they're like, how do I do that? Just close your eyes, close your mouth, try to get the back of the tongue up there to create suction. So you create a sound like this. Or I have a bionic tongue, so I can make super loud sounds like that.

Well, fine.

Yeah. Yeah. But you get your tongue suctioned to the roof of your mouth.

Right. Which is the whole basis of that book, Jaws, The Hidden Epidemic, or a big part of it.

And then if you do that, keep your tongue up there, And while keeping your tongue up there, open your mouth. It's a common myofunctional stretch. That's really good. And that's called cave or suction, lingual palatal suction. Now, if you can hold that for 3 minutes a day, you're on, you're on this, you're at the start.

I bought on the device, by the way, that, that kind of teaches you. There's a gal I interviewed from a website called Posture Pro. Yeah. And they have this thing you put in your mouth and it forces you to do nasal breathing and suction your tongue at the same time.

Yes.

And I actually dug that thing back out after I started working with you and Kat. It's out in the gym. I'll put it in now sometimes while I'm working out. So, the whole time working out, forcing me to nasal breathe and have my tongue suctioned. I forget what it's called, but I think it's the Breath Corrector. Yeah. I'll find it in the show notes, but like the Posture Pro Breath Corrector. But, it's crazy how it feels really weird to have your tongue suctioned up against the roof of your mouth if you've been a mouth breather for just kind of let your tongue just kind of like slouching, just like hanging limbo.

It's exactly. And, I think something that You know, people have been doing that. And then you can, you know, there's another appliance called the Upwalker, Dr. Sandra Kahn. And then there's like, you know, Upwalker is amazing. I can send you info on that. But I like, I know some amazing, brilliant innovators who've, you know, like, it's like 10 tools out there that exist for this. So, and I love those. But like, for some people, they're like, I don't, I don't have that tool. And you have all the technology you need inside your mouth to at least loosen this, not address it. And it's like, You know, so if you start with the tongue to the roof of the mouth, and then you also then just allow your head to, you know, bend to the left, bend to the right while you're keeping that suction, and then you tip your head back, and then you start to just go through your body, and you can feel it loosen your whole body, but you can also feel that start to loosen the floor of your mouth and your tongue more. So, for those like dancers or intuitive movers or those people who are just like foam rolling and stretching, I mean, if you just keep your tongue to the roof of your mouth and you open it up and get that cave or suction stretch where you're doing that, you're going to stretch the floor of your mouth. But keep it up while you fomo, while you do all those movements, because it'll really—

I'll tell you what, like, I don't believe her because I've been super geeked out on all this, like, since I did my last round of work with Dr. Nico Laude, where she really, like, did most of the bioesthetic work on my teeth, like, two 8-hour days. Yeah, in the Deadpool chair. And I came back and I was effed up. My jaw was tight. I didn't feel like I had control of my tongue. My teeth felt super weird when I was chewing. So, I've doubled down on jaw exercises, tongue exercises, nasal breathing, suctioning of the tongue, reread that book "Jaws," and I've been very consistent with mouth taping and with using devices like the one I just talked about. Dude, within— it took maybe 8 days after that dental work for my mouth to adapt. And now, I feel incredible. It's almost as though my lungs are more open. I can exercise at a harder intensity breathing through my nose. Mouth taping feels great. And, the chewing is incredible. My food's liquid pulp when I swallow it. I don't see undigested pieces of food in my stool. It's just crazy. How many downstream implications there are to this.

Yeah, it is. You paint the picture well. It's like, man, it's amazing to see how much it's helped you. And it's like that's really so pivotal because some people try to work hard at doing all these other things and we need to, but sometimes it's like, wow, so much starts in the mouth.

Yeah. Yeah. So I know not a lot of people do what you do. But I'm just curious, like, well, first of all, let's start here. Let's say somebody who's not a practitioner, you know, in the healthcare industry, etc., is listening in. How do they actually get work? Like, describe how your practice works because you came up here to see me. I know you travel, but then you have an office in a couple places in California. Just walk me through all that because I want people to be able to find you, first of all.

Yeah, and you know, the All the ways to find me, Dr. Neil Bolchandani on Instagram is like the main place that we put out videos.

Yeah, your name's a bitch to spell. We put that one in the show notes.

Exactly. So I think there's definitely people who, they need help and I can do a virtual consult from anywhere, wherever you're at.

If I do a virtual consult with me and like opening my mouth and stuff, can you tell us some of the things that are wrong?

Yeah, often I work with people. To be able to see, and I'll give them examples, and I'll show them areas on their body that I can tell are restricted, have them work on that, and then we can see the changes. And then I— but I'm kind of like really excited about the systems thinking approach because, you know, sometimes I'll see, oh yeah, that's where you need Kat, you know, you need a myofunctional therapist, um, in your case. Or, um, you know, there's many others that I work with that are, you know, brilliant myofunctional therapists that are What they do is so important. So that's why I'm so happy that she's with, you know, Nico and doing what you guys—

yeah, I'll link to Kat's website and Nico's website.

But I think what with, with, uh, kind of the deep dive in that brief time we can do virtually, I can see like, what do you need, who do you need, and, and what order do you need that in? Because I work with a lot of surgeons and therapists and coordinating care to make sure things go well. But that's just like a virtual way people from anywhere can you know, get help. Um, and then I, you know, my main practice is in Redding.

And Redding, that's like Northern Cal, right?

No, Cal. Yeah, up at the top, 3 hours north of San Francisco, an hour and a half south of Oregon, where my wife Dawn and I have our 3 beautiful kids. And, and that's such a, you know, central place. And so, you know, for me, that's my Redding.

You got an LA too?

Yeah, Redding's the main practice. Um, and then I travel to the Bay Area once a month to work. And then I also now have started going about every other month to Los Angeles to see patients there. So, those are the main 3 areas. This is a very unusual thing of coming out here, but obviously, yeah, it's a business.

I don't know, that'd be a little exhausting, not quite scalable. So, the practitioner piece. Yeah. I have a lot of doctors and physical therapists and folks in the healthcare industry who listen to my show. What if they want to learn what you do? Like, do you actually teach people?

Yeah, I have, you know, I have some amazing body workers and these, you know, chiropractors, osteopaths, physical therapists, massage therapists that are all tuning into an online course that I have called Flora of the Mouth Interconnectivity Unveiled. And it's a 6-week class where it unveils a paradigm of understanding the body according to the airway map. And, and actually, all the students in the class have 70 points. I've only released it to them so far. So they're actually— well, if you take my course, you're going to get all 70 points before I even unveil it to the world. But it's, it's, uh, that course is huge because it really gives a way of understanding the body, and I go through ways how you can work on the body. Um, so that's really good. But, um, I think there's some people who are just like, yeah, that doesn't cut it, we need to come. So I've had people come from, you know, different, different places, different states to come train and practice. They can shadow me, and then I could do some demo where I show them how to care for the people that I'm taking care of.

All I want Gina to teach me how to do is stick my finger up my friends' noses when they're congested and just fix that. Trust me, trust me, I'm a doctor.

Oh, with the pinkies.

Double pinkies.

Well lubed. Well lubed. And also make sure if you use the pinky for the nose, don't use the pinky for the mouth. That's like a That's a no-no.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

Wow. Yeah, so I train people who come, but I also have the online course, which is way more like, you know, in terms of approachable for people to get what I do. And I have more coming out that's going to unpack more of that paradigm on how the floor of the mouth works so that it's really good because it's not like you have to be someone who works in the mouth to benefit from the knowledge and the application. Some people who are, you know, massage therapists working on that right psoas that will never loosen, well, it's the mouth, and here's how you can unlock it.

But then, so you go both ways, like, could you work on the psoas and somebody sees an impact on their mouth?

Yeah, for sure. There's like all the 70 points, and you don't have to know all of them, but most of them are— it's, I call it bi-directional, two-way street. So you can work on an area in the body and you can see the change in the mouth.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. All right, so Well, we're getting towards the end of the show here, but I'm just curious for you, you know, the Greenfield compound is, uh, it's a place where a lot of people from the local community come and hang out for dinner parties. And, you know, people come in from around like you and do a podcast and hang out for a couple of days. What's something you've learned since you've been here in terms of, you know, the inside life of me that surprised you? Because I always love to hear, not narcissistically, but sometimes somebody shows up and it's way different than what they expected. Like I had one guy show up, he's like, I thought everything was going to be super neat and organized. There's like dirty goats and chickens all over the place and you're playing country music and the Zen Dens, just, you know, it's not like you stepped on a spaceship, like the organization, the whitewashed walls or anything like that. It's kind of rugged. But that was one comment somebody gave. But what's your overall impression?

Oh, you know, this is— I'll start with legacy. I was so impressed and like really just love how you have taken so much time and you and Jess and your kids and you've taken so much time to not only build the Ben Greenfield life and all the things that you do, but it's so based on like the culture of your family, the values you have, connection, worship. It's like, so, so I, even though I knew that, it's a different thing to come and, and just to see like how, how important not only like your family is and legacy is. And so for me, I have to say, that's my—

we were talking about in the car, I've got my logo everywhere, the pepper grinder. That's it. Ball paddles, throw pillow. Yeah, we're We're proud of our family branding.

So I'm proud of that. And I'm also, I mean, I'm impressed by that, but I'm also, my, the most, my why is my wife, my kids, like the connection we have. And like, so it just reminded me of how, you know, that's something that drives me every day is like, how can I be a better husband? How can I be a better parent? And it's for Serenity, me and my wife, Dawn, Serenity, Cypress. Yeah, this is that for our kids.

It's kind of like as UPS driver.

Oh yeah, so I was gonna say, my goal is not to be this person who travels all over and who does all this stuff. It's like, I love that, but I'm at the phase where I want to like really impart what I know to the myofunctional therapists and the dentists and the body workers so that they can all progress and do this work. And really, I just want to build a more connected life with my wife and my kids so that we can do what we want, you know, in terms of like— and my wife is working on her PhD and she's doing massive things in the space of, you know, ending social harm and all that. So she can be and we can be doing what we do and helping inform people.

So I love that. So that's a Manson question, uh, one of those books, like, what's the one thing you'd suffer for? It's one of the most powerful questions you ask yourself. What's the one thing you'd suffer for? I For me, it's my family, right? That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what gets me worked out. That's what gets me doing a lot of what I do is I'd suffer for basically my family and my faith. And that's my big why. So anyways, we're about on time, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to take all of Neil's stuff if you're listening in. If you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/drneil, like D-R-Neil, Not only am I going to link to all this stuff, but I have videos where you can see him working on me and show some of the cool tactics he does. I'll show you his airflow chart, pretty much anything that came up during today's show. I'll put juicy, juicy stuff in the show. So, check those out, bengreenfieldlife.com/drneal. And, what do you think, man? I guess we're going to go do some more bodywork.

I think so. One more thing I want to say is I like— you met my brother Arun. He was out. Oh, yeah. He's a breathworker who was trained with Wim Hof, but he's really about mysticism, metabolism. And so, like, I have a lot of people who come to me and they want more the Christocentric, how to understand God, but also just how to understand our metabolism and our bodies. Like, I really want to— in breathwork. So a nod to my brother Arun, just seek him out. And our family is, like, so important to me. So I just love and am so thankful. And I see that in your family, knowing, you know, your dad and and your brother. So, it's pretty—

Awesome. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you around. I'm looking forward to jamming and getting to know you a little more. Alright, folks. Thanks for listening in. Show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrNeal, D-R-N-E-E-L. Till next time, have an incredible week and thanks for going on a walk with us.

Do you want free access to comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting-edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life, and a whole lot more, check out BenGreenfieldLife.com. It's all there, BenGreenfieldLife.com.

See you over there.

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