10-Second Breath Hack to Reset Your Body & Mind | Aaron Alexander : 1285

Ultraviolet light is good for you. Too much is bad for you, but none of it is terrible for you.

If you enter sunshine, it gives you a reason to look up. Your eyes are neurological. And so when you're taking in the horizon, the panoramic view, it's another tool like breath that hacks your system into more calm rest, digestive type state.

Knowing the nuances of movement and breath are fundamental if you want to live a long time.

We get applauded for getting a fancier car, for getting more muscles, for getting fancier clothes, getting a fancier watch. But it's not so often that we get applauded for like the inner parts because people, people don't really see that. The portion in the brain where breath is being processed, it's called the medulla oblongata. It's also where you are processing respiration. It's at the bottom most point of the brain stem. It's the literal bridge between your brain parts and your body parts.

You deal with super high performers. How do you deal with people who are not super high movement professionals? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Aaron, thanks for coming back on the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. In your home nonetheless. Yeah. Decided that through your, your gadgetry before this. That was a good time.

Yeah. Moving. Moving the podcast out of the in home studios means extra driving and I'm very lazy.

I get that.

Yeah, you're lazy too, right?

That's a part of my. So I moved to Miami like three months ago and I drive maybe twice a month or so. I live in, in South Beach.

Okay.

I have an electric bike that I use not even that often because my location of where I'm at, I'm in Sunset harbor area. Nothing that's relevant, but it's just everything is right beside everything else. And that is what you see in most of the blue zones as well. So. And speaking of longevity, I'm kind of accidentally like hacking longevity, I would say, just by moving to a place that's very walk centric.

It's funny, I'm calling it lazy, but what it means is you set yourself up to just waste less time on things that aren't good for you. Like driving all over the place, right?

Yeah, yeah. And you can even make driving better for you, I would say. But you know, there's like different things. Like if you're in the back of a Uber, for example, try maybe cross your legs would be an example.

Try to cross your legs.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's a lot.

You're not supposed to. It's a good thing.

Or that's good for you.

It's good for you.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Just getting like our legs are so darn far away from our hearts. Yes. If you're getting off of a flight and you have cankles, you have like edema, you have fluid buildup in your lower body, it's a real problem.

You know, just because people don't know how to buy compression pants.

Yeah, that would be a really great thing. That's actually, I, I believe that was. Is one of the oldest medical intervention interventions actually is compression as in like the Egyptian scroll, something the mummies were compressed. Okay, well that too. Yeah. The question's been used for a long time. Something that's interesting in relation to like more health related stuff. The lymphatic system, the highest concentration of lymphatic glands are in locations with high volume of movement in the body. So they're in the knee, back of the knee, pal area, in the groin, in the abdomen, in the shoulders, collarbone, neck, armpit. And so naturally, if you are a body like the blue zones, for example, which there's contention around blue zones and all that stuff as well. But, but whatever. Just you know, cultures that are walking around, it's a part of our heritage and a part of our genetics and a part of evolution to move in a, you know, an ambulatory fashion walking throughout the day. And what that does is it actually is circulating your lymphatic fluid among so many other things.

Right.

But it's engaging your waste management system just through passively taking a walk. Most of the health interventions that we really need are pretty darn affordable and pretty darn passive if you're living a lifestyle that's conducive for that.

It's amazing what some sunlight and a 20 minute walk in the morning will do.

It's huge. So big.

It's a little bit cheaper than rapamycin, which probably doesn't work anyway.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Who knows? I mean we'll find out later. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about the longevity? I mean your intention is 180, is that true?

That's at least 180. I just want to die at a time and buy a method of my choosing.

I am so excited. We're record for mine after this. I would like bookmark that. Yeah. So I want to go deeper into.

It and I'm, I, I'm not into not dying.

Yeah.

And because I've been in the longevity world for 25 years. And when I started out, people thought anyone into it was super crazy. I just learned from a bunch of people in their 80s. And my idea of never dying, it would be hell. Like when I'm done, I'm out. And no concern with that. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing. So we'll go deep on that.

Yeah.

But the other thing that would be kind of hellish would be I'm going to live forever, but my body hurts all the time and I just can't move around under my own power and my mind is fine. Like that would suck. And we've probably gone down different paths. I mean I started out in Silicon Valley, my brain matters most. And I also grew up duck footed. I've had arthritis in my knees when I was 14, diagnosed had three knee surgeries before I was 23. And so for me, functional movement has been one of the biggest challenges because I had Asperger's syndrome. Like my eyes didn't work right, my tongue didn't work right, my hearing didn't work right and I had to go through and reprogram those systems and I'm still working on it. Like the, the cross crawling thing that you do with people all the time for me is, was a huge challenge when I started doing it because my nervous system never learned. So you deal with super high performers. How do you deal with people who are, you know, maybe not super high movement professionals?

Well, I mean, so something we've transitioned recently. We're focusing a lot on breathing.

Yeah.

You know, and so breath I think is one of those things that's like breath is the bridge between the mind and the body. You can say that literally, you can say that figuratively, and you say it very literally. The portion in the brain where breath is being processed, it's called the medulla oblongata. Have you ever seen water boy? That is correct.

The medulla oblongata.

The medulla oblongata. That's why alligators get ornery. It's also where you are processing respiration. It's at the bottom most point of the brain stem. It's the literal bridge, your brain parts and your body parts. It's also the only place in your body that can be governed both somatically, I. E. Voluntarily, like moving the muscles, as well as autonomically or involuntarily, I. E. Body temperature, digestion, heart rate, stuff like that or heartbeat. And so it is the literal and figurative bridge between the mind and the body. And so a person that is having issues with their movement one of the first places. And this comes like a la Ida Rolf as well from Rolfing Structure integration. The first session in Rolfing, they would focus on restoring function of the diaphragm, rib cage restrictions and get into to breath. Because if the body can breathe well, then they can start to restore healthy tone of the muscles. If a person is bound up with their breath, maybe they're stuck in a chronic kind of like shallow breath or fast breath or they're stuck on an inhalation. All of that would be indicative that they are stuck in kind of more of like a fight flight or an anxiety inducing breathing pattern. So the first thing that I would look at with any person that I was working it with, whether it was a some big actor type person or an athlete person or just a normal, you know, anybody where, I mean, we're all normal and on. Right. That's something that I think having the opportunity to work with, you know, people you're exposed to, like billionaire folks and superstar celebrity folks and superstar athlete folks, they're all dealing with the same stuff. In fact, they're experiencing oftentimes even more, more weight of life than a lot of people that would be looking up to them. And so I think that's something. It's like we, we aspire to that, that place and it's like, like careful what you wish for I think sometimes as well. Wow.

Well, well said.

Yeah.

Nick Foles has been on the show and he talks about just the incredible amount of focus in his brain and physical performance. And so many of the top entrepreneur people started biohacking the second it came out. Like, oh my God, I need more mental, I need more physical. Because those are the hardest stressors out there where your brain's always on and you have to look and act a certain way. It's work.

I mean, well, what's nice about the breath is it brings you into attunement with yourself, with the people around you. It calms the nervous system. So something that is. And we can talk about movement things as well, but breathing is movement and it governs the way that you move. And there's. You can use breath to get strong understanding intra abdominal pressure and things of the sort, to create stability and stiffness as well as to be able to be fluid. You know, on your exhalation you are releasing tension in the body and when you're inhalation you're kind of tightening things up a little bit. You're getting a little bit stiffer. But yeah, the. If a person is feeling a little bit Stressed or anxious, a tool that would be really important for them to understand. Say you're an actor. You know, you're going in, you're. You're up on stage or auditioning or some of this sort of. Or maybe you're host a podcast, maybe you're getting anxious. Maybe you're about to interview somebody you're really nervous about or going on somebody's show that you're nervous about. By you emphasizing your exhalation, you are actually slowing down your heart rate. You are increasing tone of the vagus nerve. You're doing a thing. So thinking really quick, I'll try to make it as short as possible because I know we only have about an hour. When you are inhaling, your diaphragm is dropping, right? So you're creating this, this vacuum in the lungs. So air fills the lungs and you are increasing the volume of the thoracic cavity. So you're expanding the heart and all the blood vessels and all the tubes in there. And then you have a little pacemaker in there that's saying, oh, my God, everything's getting a lot bigger. We're going to speed things up. And that causes your part to start to beat faster. When you exhale, suddenly the di. The diaphragm is starting to come up. Everything compresses. And it's. You get a similar signal from that pacema saying, okay, let's slow things down a little bit, let's. And then what's happening simultaneously with that, you're active in more that parasympathetic tone. So anytime a person, just like a takeaway is if you are feeling a way, you can govern the way you're. That you feel immediately using your breath. It's the longest lever. It's the most efficient tool to govern the way that you feel in any situation. So working with an actor, working with an athlete, whatever. The thing is, there's probably going to be a time that you are really stressed out and nervous. What you want to do in that situation is extend your exhalation. You can start to play with breath holds as well. It's called sinus respiratory arrhythmia. Is that that pattern? I'm sure you are familiar with that. And so, yeah, you can govern your state in real time, in literally seconds, just by augmenting the way that you breathe. Exhale, calm your nervous system down, inhale, stimulate yourself. You want to do like a holotropic breath thing or something where you want to spin yourself up, go in a more stimulated state, focus on the inhalation start to speed that up. That will mimic something that you would be. That would be induced from, you know, either like a panic state or like an exhausted state. You're up on top of a mountain, you're in a fight, you're having sex, you know, some like crazy orgasmic, you know, whatever type thing. It's a right. That would be more of a stimulated state. So you can always regulate the way that you feel just through regulating your breath.

I love it that you brought that up. A major portion of heavily meditated. My new book.

I know.

Like, have we sent it to you? Did you get it?

Yeah, yeah, I read the breath part. Sweet.

Okay. I was going to give you an advanced copy, but we sent you PDF.

I read the PDF version, which is not as easy to read, but I did it. Well, thank you. Yeah.

And it. It's funny because people are meditating, but they're not necessarily learning how to breathe.

It's the fastest way to get you into meditation.

Yeah.

Meditating is so freaking hard. It's so hard. Yes. If you're busy and you're already jacked up on caffeine and nicotine and whatever and you're stressed out about taxes and rent and your girlfriend thing and boyfriend thing and you're like, okay, just sit down and just be with your feelings. Like it's hard. Yeah, A little breathe up. Emphasizing like something that would be really good, would be. Learning about humming is another really nice thing. Yeah. So you increase the production of. I see you have a book about nitric oxide over here. You increase your production of nitric oxide 16 fold through humming. You're liberating that nitric oxide through the nasal passages. You increase your nitric oxide production by about five to six times just through nasal breathing. And that would be something if you literally, if you're feeling like meditation is hard, why do you think people freaking ohm?

Yeah.

Like all of the eastern esoteric, metaphysical things that Western culture kind of poo poos on. It's pretty much mostly scientifically validated. We just haven't really done the work to do it. But if you're feeling like meditation is hard for you, start with some long exhalations, stack an ohm. If that's too metaphysical annuity for you, just hum. If that's too much for you, just sigh.

And honestly, if oming is too much for you, you should probably get a therapist.

Yeah, relax.

Who the heck cares? One of my favorite things. I didn't put this in the book. I will, I'll go in the cryotherapy chambers at upgrade labs or cold plunge. If I can't get to an upgrade labs. And as I'm doing the cold therapy, I will ohm or hum. And if I'm in a cold plunge, I'll put my face in the water so only my nose is out and just hum through my nose. And the combination of cold and humming is really epic because breathing out with a hum through the nose, that's a long out breath.

Yeah.

So you're getting that benefit and then you get the vibrational stuff and you're activating that.

You already talked about this a million times with the mammalian dive reflex by exposing your face as well. Which is. It's a funny thing as well. It's like the more. It's like the, you know, it's like the path through is, you know, how do they say that to the other side, you're through. How does it say that's like, you know, when something's hard, you know, trauma, relationship, fights, whatever. It's like through actually is the path to get to the other side.

Yeah.

You try to go around it usually ends up creating other stuff with the. There's a really poetic, beautiful, eloquent way to say that I did not do that. But people get it.

I think that the way through.

Yeah. You know what it is?

Yeah, it's something. It's like a Yoda thing.

Everybody listening knows what it is, Right?

Yeah. The comments will be.

But it's. But it's a similar thing. Like. Like just like dunk your face in there, get all the way in. It gets a lot easier.

The path around is through.

No, that's not it. It's something for. Through is easier. Do any of you guys know in here? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Nobody's. Whatever. It's fine.

Well, I wasn't gonna say anything. Aaron, I saw your mouth breathe.

Oh, sure. It can happen. I'm big mouth breather.

Do you feel embarrassed by this?

No, it's a part of my bro. I'm. I had a maxilla expander growing up. I had a, A. It was like a bell shaped upper upper palate, very like long adenoid face, constricted nasal passages. Lucky.

Growing up, you got that to expand your palate. I had to do that as an adult.

Yeah. No, thankfully I did.

Wow.

Yeah. I'm really grateful, Dennis. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I ended up having big jack. Like, like jacked. What was that called? Big space between my. My teeth. I like literally like fit a finger between my teeth. That braces the whole thing? No. Then they put them back together.

Okay.

Yeah. I grew up very maligned and now my, you know, the name, my brand and book and everything is aligned and podcast line, podcast, all that stuff. But I was very maligned throughout my life and I'm definitely still working on integrating. There's a lot of stuff I'm still working on. You know, I'm very in process I would say.

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It's fascinating that the alignment of your jaw profoundly affects how you stand, the straightness of your spine, all those things. I didn't know that, but I had a really serious. What do you call it? I guess that's an underbite. So my chin was way further back. And when I figured this out, this was maybe 15 years ago, one of the first 10 guests on the show was an expert from. His name was Dwight Jennings from Northern California in Alameda. And we spent two and a half years expanding my palate, bringing my jaw down, bringing it forward. And when that happened, it reduced the sympathetic activation from the trigeminal nerve.

Sure.

And the side effect of that was my posture got straighter. Like it completely changed my gait. It was pretty crazy. Do you ever do that when you're coaching people? Just look at like, oh my gosh, you know, your jaw's all screwed up.

So when you're moving, they'll do intra oral work, we'll do intranasal work. I don't do intra anal work. But they can be supportive for coccyx adjustments and things of the sort. Yeah, but it's opening up and expanding the, the cranial bones. And so you, you're the, the base of your nasal passage would be the, the roof of your mouth, your maxilla. And so if there's, and that's like you're familiar with mewing, I'd imagine, John, you. And that's a big part of that is, is pressure, creating upward pressure with your tongue up against the upper palate of the, against the maxilla. Because your tongue acts as a retainer for your, your face, for your jaw. And that's a part of, for me, I grew up for sure. Mouth breather. I tape my mouth now. I wrote a book about it, like six years. I wouldn't say I want mouth taping because other people are talking about it, but when I was writing about it in the Align method, I was definitely like, like edgy around this. Now, mouth taping is very, very normal.

Yeah. I've been doing it for many, many years now. Probably about this.

It's a great thing. Yeah. If you wake up with a dry mouth, just tape your mouth. It'll change your sleep dramatically. There's been a lot of. And I've, you know, I've had the opportunity to work with some of, literally the, you know, like the quint, like the greatest athletes on the planet in their sport. Not in every sport, obviously, but. But in a few. And that has been something that I've heard actually consistently with multiple people that are performing at the absolute highest level they could. That and this. There's one person in particular that he was. He was very. I was giving him, like, everything I got, like, all the different things. And the mouth taping was something I was imploring him to do, and he wouldn't do it. It was like, three months, I'm not going to do it. And then suddenly, once I stopped talking to him about. About it, he did it. And he said that was the thing that totally changes sleep completely.

It's a big deal. I. I travel with mouth tape. And the other thing that works for people is you just tell them that's not for you, and then they'll probably do it.

Sometimes I think it's like parenting, you know, it's like you provide. You need to provide options, you know, or like, Lord, like, lead a horse to water. But you can't be too forceful with it. And it's the same thing with communication on social media or podcast or anything. You know, I would much rather have a person, you know, I'd rather lead by example and just be so good at the thing that I'm claiming that people just ask questions as opposed to me being some. You know, just more talk and less do. Right. I think if you do enough and you're effective enough that suddenly people become curious, that's really the best thing. If someone can actually go out of their way to ask you questions, I think that's the best. When you're jamming stuff down people's throats, I think it just creates resistance.

I'm remembering years ago, they invited me to Google headquarters to give a talk to all the employees on site in Mountain View about human performance and all.

Yeah.

And there's a guy in that. I want to be a vegan food activist. What's your biggest piece of advice? And my advice was, shut up and eat. And he goes, what? And people are clapping.

Yeah.

And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you can't tell people what to do. You can show them that you got better results, and then when they ask, you've earned permission.

Yeah.

And I love your approach on that as well.

Like.

Well, what I'm doing works, and if I. If you're interested. But trying to just, like, beat people into it.

Yeah. If people aren't asking your opinion about a thing, it's probably an indication that. That maybe something else is your. Is your path for now. Like, keep chopping wood, and maybe eventually you'll get enough people that it's like. I think. I think feeling one purpose is one of those things that's incredibly valuable. I said a podcast recently with a woman named Martha Beck. She's like.

She's great.

Noted as, like, Oprah's something, some kind of therapist, something, what she did with Oprah. But one of the things that we talked about in that episode was how lying causes your body to reduce power. Kind of like muscle testing. Heck, yeah. You know, and so you can do that with muscle testing, you know, like, say, a lie, you know, have somebody pull against your arm, bicep curl, whatever. You're like, oh, wow. Like, when I'm saying something, I truly, wholeheartedly believe my nervous system engages. Like, I have access to more neural drive or motor recruitment or spirit or whatever. Kundalini. Like, my body turns on when I believe it, and when I say something I don't believe, my body starts to shut down. And it was an interesting conversation because it was. It was going into, like, what about a person? Like many people and maybe aspects of our lives were all kind of living a lie in some ways. We just haven't been really totally honest with ourselves about that, you know, But a person that's maybe living a life that's out of alignment with what feels like purpose to them, probably they would have a reduction in access to feeling, strength, and maybe they'd feel a little bit of a malaise, you know, and a little bit of like. And they're suddenly. They're reaching out for stimulants and supplements for all these different things. But perhaps there's like a deeper kind of psycho emotional, almost like spiritual aspect that's like pulling on the energy. Right. You know, so if I think that that's something. It's like finding your. Finding. Being honest with yourself, I think is a really important thing to finding health, you know, and accessing, like, strength and all that stuff. And really not sacrificing purpose or your values for money or safety. To be able, like, to be courageous enough to lean into that, I think is a really, really, really big deal. I don't know how I got on that, but something around purpose, I think that was very important.

You. You brought up sort of two aspects of honesty.

Yeah.

And one of them is integrity in your word. And that's kind of the Martha Beck side of things. Where are the words you're saying to yourself true and to others?

Yeah.

And I made a commitment Sometime, I'm guessing 12, 15 years ago, when I read the four agreements for the fifth time or something and read some research on this. The amount of wasted energy in your brain when you tell big lies and try and track them, or even the tiniest lie where you say, oh, I can't make it to the airport. You could make it if you just blew up your day. You know, there's truthfulness. And so I said, especially with kids, I'm just going to be 100% truthful in my word. Doesn't have to say everything. At least if I say it, it's true.

Yeah.

And the amount of neurological relaxation and the amount of extra energy in my life where I'm like, I'm doing my best to not lie to myself. I'm sure I deceive myself about some things I just don't know. So I might be saying something that's not true, but I don't know it's not true. And anything external and man, as a practice, it was really hard. Took a couple of years to say, not say things like, I need to go to the store. You know, I don't need to go to the store. Instacart could deliver it or I could just fast, like whatever the thing is, it wasn't true. And to just re examine that, it was a big shift neurologically for me.

Yeah. And what's beautiful about people, barring maybe some certain, like pathological conditions.

Yeah.

It's painful to lie. And it. There, there's a physiological symptomology of lying. And it's constriction. It's, you know, it's like eye contact is hardening. You'll notice breath rate will change. You notice the breath will start to go more into kind of a panicked place, I. E. He'll more vertically breathe. You'll breathe more up into your clavicles and your neck and your upper chest. You'll notice the tone of a person's voice will go higher. You'll notice the cadence of their language will start to go up. Everything goes.

Yeah, you start speaking from their upper throat instead of the.

And then, and then that ends up pushing the world away from that person. Because people are, you know, we're very binary in our seeking of safety. It's either safety or threat. And so when we experience a sensation of threat, we, we close down as well. So a person that's living some aspect, they're bound up in some kind of lie, maybe it's even a lie that they're not Actually even totally privy to. They just haven't really unpacked the layers of themselves yet. They haven't gotten to know themselves enough that oh my God, like a good chunk of my life I haven't been in alignment with myself. And you know, and then there's the more overt ways that a person might lie. All of that is physiological baggage and the body keeps a score, you know, and, and then when that body moves through the world, they'll wonder why things are being pushed away from them. And the reason they're being pushed away from them is because they're actually living a misaligned, inauthentic life. And when they can come into deeper levels of authenticity and you know, whatever path they choose with that, it could be therapy or it could be kind of a pasta meditation, it could be neurofeedback stuff. And four years is that it could be psychedelics and ayahuasca improve or you know, could be a relationship that really beats you up. It could be a near death experience that causes things to change like whatever the heck the thing is that brings a person into deeper alignment within themselves and deeper authenticity within themselves. Suddenly they can heal because the body is not under threat.

Yes.

And when the body's not under threat, then the body can go into a parasympathetic state that is rest, digest, heal, you know. And so the, the navigation of health and wellness, I think is a much broader psycho, emotional, spiritual conversation. And I think that that's the conversation. I think that's like now it feels to me like the zeitgeist of culture is becoming more open to compared to like, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago.

Yeah. When I started the biohacking movement, consciousness had been a major part of my practice. And I dropped little breadcrumbs, but I didn't feel like putting that out there because I thought earthing sunlight, you know, eating in a certain way, that was counterintuitive. I could talk about those and people would get immediate results. But if I would have said, oh, and at the same time you got to do a lot more of this deep trauma and consciousness work that I have done, I don't think people would have caught on. It was too much. And it feels like the conversation on longevity now it's a thing like it's real and it wasn't people 15 years.

I think people are hungry for God. I mean, I don't want to like speak project for other people, but I think that there's, there's been like, there's at one point, culture was very pro God. You know, no building could be taller than the height of the church. Right. And then for a while we got into more of like a Cartesian dualistic reality and a ton of reality. And it's like anything that's not measurable and manageable, if I can sit right here in my hand, like a marble that I'm holding, right. I don't trust it. I don't want to hear about it. If there hasn't been been a double blind trial, like, I don't care what you're saying, like, get out of here. Well, now I think that things move in. In. You know, it's like the pendulum swings. And my feeling is the reason that there's like an uprising of things like Burning man, you know, different festivals and things like that. And the fact that psychedelics are becoming more open, maybe not totally legalized, but there's definitely more research and people like Huberman are talking about it. And you know, that's like that was a big step. And you know, Huberman's a buddy as well. I've had get to have got to have this conversation various different ways. And that's something that he's was forever was very concerned to communicate about the fact that now he's able to go to the psychedelic conference and I think it was in Colorado last year was.

Was Maps Conference.

Yeah, yeah, Maps Conference. And he's like actually up on stage talking about psychedelics. A very big deal if you look at that as like the actual. The stew that we're in in culture right now.

Yeah, it wasn't sight for academics to do that not that long ago. And he came on on this show. You guys have been on this one together too before he had a podcast and I don't believe we talked about psychedelics. And the real.

He wouldn't have been forming. Yeah, yeah. He'd be very like, oh, there's a lot of good stuff. But they would have kind of like shuffled beside. Now it's becoming open. I think that's just a product of, you know, culture is just. I think I feel they're hungry for more, you know, and at some point it's like Alan Watts has a bit about, you know, we can confuse the menu for food, you know, but you're not actually going to get satiated by the menu.

Right.

You know, and a lot of the things that we really desire, really desire deep human connection. You know, we desire tribe. We want it. We want to feel really expressed. We want to feel seen. We Want to feel heard. And if we're living in more maybe just like superficial tangential, kind of surface level relationships and connections, it's, it's really challenging for the, the nervous system. You know, that's something that there's a, a book called Touch that I included in the Align method book from Tiffany Field. She's actually a Miami, a professor in Miami. And she. In that book. One of the things that I referenced was a study that they did with infants in incubators and they found that because previously the perspective would be like you don't want to touch them because you don't want them to get sick or any bacteria or whatever. And then they introduced, it was just 15 minutes of touch twice a day, a little baby massage to these premature babies. And they found that they ended up growing, it was like 2x faster than the ones that weren't massaged. And they ended up being released and they bitterness natively faster because they just get that like oh, okay, I'm safe. Like that's what we run on. Like we run on electrolytes and we run on molecular hydrogen, all that stuff. But like if you don't feel safe and loved and like seen and heard and fully express, expressed and feel safe to express yourself, just like a little boy or a little girl, like we're all just a bunch of adults or we're all bunch of, bunch of children wearing adult costumes.

Yeah.

You know, and those deep intrinsic parts, I really truly emphatically believe that is the foundation for our health. And I think culture is starting to become a little bit more curious about that stuff.

Man. You nailed it. I, when I was a very young one of my grandmothers would take some extra time after she retired and she would just go hold orphan babies.

Oh wow.

And I remember being a, you know, atheistic, know it all 12 year old or whoever the heck I was like, what a, you know, what a dumb thing to. Why, why would you spend your time on that doing everything better to do.

Yeah.

And this is, you know, learning from your elders kind of wisdom. She was providing a really high return on investment gift by just letting these kids nervous system relax so they could go through an entire life with that versus with constant like almost invisible subliminal cravings for connection. So.

Yeah. It's always there.

Yeah. More touch is, is critical. And in my world, touch is a nutrient. Sunlight's a nutrient.

Yeah.

And so is food. And people who are touch starved, man, they're miserable people.

Yeah. It's a big deal. Yeah. I mean your skin's your largest organ.

Yeah.

Then anybody. It's a continuation of your brain.

Yeah. And cats don't count as touch.

Right.

Only dogs.

Well, you see how cats do that? Like cats. Cats. Cats will. Will. They're going through this like, proprioceptive experience. They'll kind of like mold their body and they'll kind of self massage their whole body up against a couch or up against you.

Yeah.

It's like they're expanding their own interoceptive experience of themselves. They're like imprinting their own internal body map of like, I'm here. If a person just. And it's. I think it's a very dangerous world where we get too indoctrinated into screen life because we really thrive on pheromones and we thrive on colors and we thrive on textures, and we thrive on all of those things that really, like, bring like the sensorial experience is what it brings us alive.

It does.

And you're not going to get a better sensorial experience than the things that have been happening for the last 10,000 years, man.

The whole conversation about pheromones. We know through research that when men are around women who ovulate and have pheromones from that, it changes our testosterone levels. Right. And if women are on pills that suppress ovulation, which 85 of women.

Yeah. Right.

Historically, I think it affects society in a way we're not aware of.

It confuses us. Yeah, for sure. And then you get off breath, birth control. And what do you do with your partner?

Yeah.

You're like, oh, crap. You were my birth control. I was hot for you with birth control. Now suddenly my Hermes are totally different.

Totally.

Yeah. And the structure of a woman's face changes as she's going through her. Her. Her cycle as well. And there's like subtle little cues that we like, we're animals. We're so funny. Like, we are so animals.

Here's a crazy one. During ovulation, less intelligent women's IQ goes up and more intelligent women's IQ goes down. Oh, I found a study on that years ago.

Why do you think? I mean, I. I could take some stabs. There's kind of maybe a little pun there. But how. Why do you think that is?

It's probably mother nature trying to make sure they get pregnant.

There's.

None of this is conscious. Right. It's. It's pretty crazy.

And when a woman's ovulating as well, she's going to go after a guy that has a chiseled chin line. And, you know, she looks A little bit more like renegade vibes that way.

Have a beard now.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But so she's going to go after a guy probably with like a higher likelihood of. Of pregnancy, like super fertile, you know, type. Type fella. And then when she's in the other stages, luteal, I presume, or follicular, she'd be after a guy that would be more like safe, you know, which it's. I'm going outside of my, you know, the things that I can, I can tell you about be more like breathing and movement related things. But I find that stuff interesting.

I do too. My first book was on fertility and there's some evidence behind these things.

Yeah.

So one of the hacks, I guess it ties in with breath work that I've mentioned, I don't know if I read about it, is you can get pheromones. So if you're a single guy, you can literally get a female pheromones and sprinkle around your house.

Oh, you do it like hunting deer. Yeah.

It's like now your body is like, oh, there must be fertile women around. So you get the hormonal response. Right. And it raises your testosterone.

Yeah.

Super crazy stuff. And if you do breath work, you breathe more of it. So there you go. We tied it back to motherboard.

Interesting. Come back breathing. So that's something that like. So women want to feel safe.

And do you think men do too?

Yes. But. But in relation to like pheromones and all that stuff, I can absolutely 100% guarantee a woman will be more attracted to a man who is slow and calm and stable.

Yep.

Than a man that is anxious and doused in deer piss or woman fireman. But deer pisses, what they do with hunting.

Yeah.

You know, so you put yourself in, in there. It's like attracting the, you know, whatever. And so. So the way that a man can do that, one, living a life in authenticity, living a life in integrity and knowing that at a core intrinsic level, there's something very different about a knowing than an acting. And a person can act themselves into knowing. And it takes time. But the fastest way I believe, in my experience and just witnessing this, of hacking, for lack of better words, yourself into a stable, calm, safe nervous system is your breath. If you're anxious here, up here, like you are unsafe, it's in that moment like you were projecting to the world like you are out of control. It's fine, you know, I am in control enough to feel safe within myself and maybe I can bring you back down but that's not what a woman wants. You know what a woman wants is she wants to feel like you can lead.

Yeah. And that you can be grounded and non reactive.

Yeah.

And there's two kinds of non reactivity. Right. There's the I felt pissed off, but I didn't act, which is out of congruence or a malaligned as. As you'd say.

Yeah.

And then there's I actually wasn't triggered and therefore I'm non reactive.

Yeah.

And if you're that then like, oh, okay. And they'll relax and frankly the reactive men will relax as well from that. Right. So if you can be the grounded person who's non reactive, it creates peace in the world around you.

Yeah. And if you are in a reactive state, then you're going to be shunting blood out of the prefrontal cortex and you're going to go into a more primal, reactive, animalistic. You're just, just based off of reaction. At that point, you can't really respond in a way that has any clarity or any type of like observation of the situation. You're just, it's just knee jerk reactions. At that point you're probably back to being a 6 year old or an 11 year old or whenever mommy or daddy, you know, something happened and you're like right back there, but you're still wearing your adult costume and, and comma. The fastest way to bring yourself in as a tool to be able to bring yourself back into. Bringing blood back into the right places, you know, into the prefrontal cortex, into a place where you can actually start to maybe assess the situation a little bit would be one breath. Another one would be touch, you know, so that's an incredibly powerful thing like for relationships with yourself, with a partner, with, you know, anything actually having physical contact, you know, like, we can get so stuck in our heads and we just end up almost like disassociating ourselves from our. Like our body's just floating in space and we just end up having these minds conversations. It's not sexy. Like a mind conversation isn't sexy. It's not a turn on, you know, so the moment that you grab somebody's hand, you know, and you ask, you know, it's like, hey, is it okay if I just massage your hand for a second? You know, like, would that be okay? Okay, that's too much. Could I massage, you know, would it be okay to just put my hand on your knee? You know, or it'd be okay for us to just breathe together for a moment. Maybe we're not even physically touching each other. We're just starting to come into attunement with each other through the breath. And that might soften things a little bit, Right. Suddenly we're out of the reactive state a little bit. I'm not seeing you as a threat the way that I was. And now we can stack another lay on that. It's like, okay, would it be okay to put my. Would it be okay to massage your. Your foot for a second? Okay, massage your foot now. Suddenly that cortical energy is starting to go. Boo. It's like pouring like a faucet. Yeah. Into the body. And then suddenly it's like. I mean, I'm sure you've experienced that. Any person listening experience that. Like the mo. That's what I think. One of the most challenging things in, especially in like the world dating is bridging touch. And before you bridge touch, everything is. We're talking and it's stories and it's great, but there's like a special moment that's very exciting. Like dating is very exciting where suddenly we've bridged. It's like a spaceship lands and it's like, ah, okay, cool. And it could be massaging the hand. It could be. Maybe you take a dance class, but you're comfortable with that. And then suddenly you can start to have an embodied conversation, Right? And the body is very, very honest. The mind can lie. Words can lie. What cannot. It's very challenging to lie with is tone. It's very challenging to lie with body language. Like the body is. Is incredibly honest, which is why it's. It's in a lot of ways, I think, a safer way to communicate from. And you're always communicating from there, whether you realize it or not.

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You've shifted a huge amount energetically in the last five years.

Oh, cool. Thanks.

I don't think we'd have. It is. I don't think we'd have had this same kind of conversation, you know, five or eight years ago.

Yeah.

What did you do?

Probably relationships will be one thing, like getting in relationships, messing relationships up, making mistakes, a lot of therapy. And yeah, seeing the consequences of my actions, I think of like feeling like, oh man, like, wow, like I hurt somebody that I like, really care. I could become like emotional thinking about it or like even talking about it. And I think just life, you know, like, like life, what's convenient is wherever you're at in this moment is exactly where you're supposed to be and all that stuff because your historic self, like all of the, the patterns that you might hold, trauma, contractions, impressions, you know, however you want to call it. Samskara impression. That's like a vipassana language. When you go to vipassana, you have these samskaras that they like come up and it's like old holdings in the body.

The illusion.

Right? Yeah. So there's. So those impressions that we whole, we will end up seeking the exact like resonance that matches those contractions and traumas and impressions because we have a desire subconsciously to integrate and to become more whole. Like that's the meaning of health as whole wholeness. And so if there is some experience of like me maybe being, being able to express in a different way, I think a lot of it's probably just like messing things up and, and really trying to do better.

Now I'm not. This is not sitting in judgment at all. I'm just reflecting. So if, if I go back to like the very first times we met.

Yeah.

There was a little bit of anger in there that I'm not seeing now. A little bit of edginess and a little bit of ungroundedness.

Ungrounded for sure.

And yeah, I'm not seeing so much of those right now. So congrats on the work you've done. It. It shows up like it just in the way you're communicating just in your field.

Thanks man. Luckily with you as well. Oh, thank. We're all evolving together.

I've been through a little bit, that's for sure.

And what you've done with your physical body as well, it's really, it's really. I got to do a. Another body. We've done a few body work sessions or maybe maybe two, two or three, whatever. But we did a little short one before our last. I think our last podcast. Yeah. And it was really impressive to see. These are. I'm like a weirdo, you know, and I like obsess over like if you observe things most people I've things and I've like yeah, like, I mean it's a little creepy but I've like worked with thousands of people's connective tissues and to be able to actually. And that's something that. Why I like the body is because again the body is. Is so freaking honest. And so the tone of someone's nervous system, it's just, it's just, it is it like the way that someone's cadence of breath, all of that stuff like it's really who that person expresses as outside of their, you know, thirteen hundred dollar jacket or their shoes or their watch or the new car or the stories that they have or whatever. All that stuff is very superficial, which is fine, you know, but the body is just, it's just, it's very clear with the state of the person. And that was something that I was, I was genuinely very impressed. Was like I got to witness a shift in your body from working with you previously to now. So Whatever the heck you've been doing is really nice.

Well, I think getting some more sunshine was pretty important.

Oh, bro.

Just being. Being in Austin versus up in Canada is just. Just too dark for me. I think it was sucking the life out of me.

And if you enter sunshine, it gives you a reason to look up. And if you look up, you soften your nervous system. Your eyes are, you know, you already know. This is like they're. They're neurological. I would say everything is neurological tissue, but your eyes very clearly are. And so when you're taking in the. The horizon, the panoramic view, it's another tool like breath that hacks your system into more calm, rest, digestive type state. And when you're myopically focusing on things, then it will hype you up, which, again, there's nothing wrong with being activated or sympathetic, and there's nothing wrong with being parasympathetic or any of that. It's just being able to oscillate back and forth cleanly. As I did a podcast with Robert, Dr. Robert Sapolsky recently, why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers guy. And that was one of the things that, you know, he's brought to light. You know, it's like, why zebras don't get ulcers is because their nervous system is able to effectively oscillate in and out of fight, flight to calm, rest, digest. And humans, we have kind of. We're starting to kind of like paint ourselves into a corner a little bit with, you know, domesticating ourselves. And we're kind of like, outsourcing a lot of the movement that we would have and a lot of the things that we would naturally do in nature, we're kind of outsourcing that to tech. And the more that we do that, the more we start to detach from the internal mechanisms that. That turn our physiology. Mm. And then we start having to reach out for more and more and more. But really, it's just like, you know, relationships, authenticity, take yourself outside, you know, ex. Go through the bandwidth of emotions within yourself. Yeah, all of that, I think, is exercise as well. Being able to experience sadness and anger and rage and joy and all that stuff. It's like all of that is a form of. Of movement.

Very, very well said. I'm optimistic that with that mindset, that technology can accelerate the signal that needs to go into the body for us to have those states or for us to have the movement, and we can use technology to short circuit and to go around and to bypass and that's not going to lead us down a good path. And I'm thinking, all right, so let's say we do want to go to Mars. We don't yet know how to build an environment that'll keep people healthy for nine months.

Yeah.

And we're going to have to acknowledge truth, which means ultraviolet light is good for you. Too much is bad for you, but none of it is terrible for you.

Sure.

And we're cutting that off. So as we design environments for ourselves using technology, understanding and acknowledging the inherent value of nature and either bringing that in or making sure that we have access to nature.

Yeah, those.

It's non negotiable for us to be happy.

Yeah.

Right. And I mean, there's some really sick stuff going on in a feedlot. They put VR goggles on cows so that they would see a field with grass and their milk production goes up.

Wow.

So maybe they're less stressed or it's.

Not going to be the same as her generally farmed cow that's actually has a cow girlfriend. Like the real thing. But maybe a little better than what they were in before. Or maybe a lot better. But still not going to be the same.

It's still not.

Okay.

I would say let's put the cows in the sunshine with proper food because then. Well, the cow itself, isn't it crazy?

Yeah. Where does that happening?

I don't remember where, but I read about this because I read all the neurological stuff.

Wow.

This is so powerful. And you know, what does that mean for us? That maybe if you are locked in a cubicle, a picture of the sun will affect you.

Yeah. There's been research around that. There's research on that gallbladder surgery specifically with people that had either like pictures of nature would be. They would have, I think, less necessity for painkillers and I think they're released sooner as well. But a window ideally is the best. Yeah. But if you don't have anything literally just. Just like. And it's. And again, once again it comes back to just how beautiful the human is. That even us seeing a picture of a mountain range or a waterfall, it's like. It's like Avatar. You're like, like home. It like reminds you of your family.

Totally.

Because that's where you come from, man. Like that's what we are. Yes.

It's how it works. And just acknowledging that as being as scientific as anything else, that's how we, you know, we create calm children. That's how we create higher performance, kinder human beings.

Yeah. Is through that yeah. Nature tunes the nervous system. Yeah. Very organically and naturally and very cost effectively. Yeah.

I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier about a thing that lets you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

Mewing.

Mewing.

Yeah.

Well, a substantial number of people can't do it because they have a tongue tie.

Oh, yeah, sure.

And this is where that little web that connects your tongue to the bottom of your mouth, it's overgrown, so you cannot put your tongue on the palate of your mouth. And I have that. I didn't know it.

Wow.

So all the time. I've been in yoga classes all the time. I've done all these meditation things for years. Put your tongue on the palate.

Okay.

I did, but I wasn't, because I couldn't. And. Oh, sometime during the pandemic, I had the surgery which. Where they just go. And they cut that thing. And I had to do a bunch of tongue exercises in order to recondition my tongue. And for a little while, I was sort of lifting because I didn't know where my tongue was because it could. It went places. Like, I can touch the back of my palate.

What?

And it changed my posture. It. It changed the tone of my fascia because the palate controls so much. And these things are invisible. But this should be common knowledge.

In anatomy trains, they call that, like anatomy translators, they call it the deep front line. So the tongue is going to be. Is going to be tied or integrated into the connective tissue in the throat and even down into the pericardium, connectors around the heart that connects in the diaphragm, that connects into the iliopsoas and hip flexors. And, like, if you're, like, tense in these places, any, like, psoas, diaphragm, you know, heart, throat, tongue, all of that. You think of the body as, like, a fancy, unnecessary term for. Is called tensegrity, this term from Buckminster Fuller. But you could think it as, like, you're wearing, like, a wetsuit. It's not just one wetsuit. You're kind of like wearing a wetsuit on a wetsuit and a wetsuit. And if I were to pull. Or just maybe a shirt would be an easier analogy. So I'm wearing a shirt right now. If I pull on. And we're talking about the deep front line. So if I pull on my. The front of my shirt here, it's not just. It could be, maybe I got a boob job. Maybe, you know, maybe I had some type of surgery. Maybe I've Just had postural patterns. I've been like, forward head posture all my life. You know, maybe I had some type of. I played ice hockey, which I did. And I had a big hip check on my ribs, which I did. And that caused kind of a little bit of a. Almost like a contusion and a misalignment. And my body starts working around that. So if I pull on that one portion of the shirt, it doesn't just stop. It doesn't exist in a vacuum, so it pulls through the entirety of that shirt. And so working with something like the tongue and tongue exercises or opening up tissue around the throat or the hips or pelvic floor or any of that stuff, it has global implications for the whole system, which is a really big deal, and kind of like takes a second to get your mind around. Around it. And then once you have the experience, like you did, you're like, oh, okay, cool. Like, well, that's. That's true. That's just the way that. That. That works. The body is the whole. The sum is greater. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Like, it's all working together.

Do you ever recommend tongue exercises for clients?

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we will do some things depending upon, like when we're working. If I'm working down through the throat, for example, I'll have them actually reach the tongue out as hard as. As far as they can. And I'll simultaneously be called a pin and stretch. So I'm working down around the front of the throat. Or depending upon different places, I'll have them reach the tongue out as far as they can to the left. Sometimes we'll disentangle the relationship. The eyes of the tongue. So reach the tongue left. Reach the eyes to the right.

Oh, yeah.

You know, so it's just starting to disentangle some of those relationships in the face. But the. The most regular thing that I would do, which is very helpful, is as we're working with some of the connective tissue around the neck, we'd also be working with the tongue. So the main thing is like. Like stretching the tongue out. Some people do. I don't do this. Maybe I'd be open to doing this, but there's like, tongue pulling and some stuff that's a little bit more aggressive. I haven't done that with a client or anything, but it could be something to explore and check out.

Tongue pulling is incredible. You get a washcloth or something and.

A piece of gauze, and you just.

Pull on your tongue for 30 seconds. That was the weirdest thing. But I did that as part of my rehab. And it does some kind of weird neurological.

It's all fascia, it's all connective tissue, and it's also tied. Going into. It's Steven Porges, the polyvagal theory guy, in the podcast recently as well. That was like a big deal for me because he's somebody I've looked up to for the last year. And that was one of the things if a person's in. They call it ventral vagal tone. So ventral, like front of the body. That is an indication that they're calm, you know. And so if a person's in ventral vagal, that would be like your. The nerves that innervate the front, like animating part of the body. Your eyes and your. Your. The tone of your voice and like the tongue, the way that you communicate. They are active, they're supple, they are toned, they're healthy. They're able to express. If you go into a dorsal vagal response, dorsals, like the back, then you'll have an inhibition of those muscles and the innervation of the activation of the stuff in the front, like, where you see the world and you connect and. And, you know, you engage with people around you, those will start to become inhibited.

Wow.

And so if you experience. I'm sure you've experienced this. I've experienced this may, where it's like, God, I just can't, like, I'm just feel like. I'm like, almost like disconnected from myself. Like sometimes I'm so good, you know, I just feel like, wow. Like, it's like I'm on, you know, and I'm like. I'm like, expressing, and I'm like, Jim Carrey. I'm like, wow. I'm like, so animated. And it's like, yeah, you feel safe, you know, and you feel. You feel safe enough to play and express. Like your genius is coming out. And when you feel unsafe, right. The turtle shell comes on, the dorsal bagel comes on, and you start to go into that space and you start to kind of like, disconnect from those. Those parts that would be engaging in social engagement. Which is the fastest way to get your nervous system into a safe place is social engagement in the form of, like, unstructured play.

Wow. I love it that you brought Stephen Porges up.

He's.

He's done so much to inform the world about the role of trauma in the body.

Yeah, he's a gangster. He's good. And he's very humble, too. The whole time I was trying to bliss milk up his ass. And he's just like, whatever.

Yeah, totally.

He's like, I think you're great. I'm like, no, man, you're great.

Yeah, you don't get it.

It's kind of hilarious.

You're right. And some of that, that knowledge that, that you're not crazy when you have a certain response comes from his teachings. And like, I learned a while ago, like, I've always had massive problems with eye teaming because of Asperger's as a kid. So my eyes didn't line up. I did a whole podcast recently with Bryce Applebaum on that. So I corrected that years ago and just did some more remedial work on it. But I figured out that if I was looking up into the left, that the strength of my left shoulder would just go away. Like, I, I couldn't hold a five pound dumbbell, but I, I could if I looked over there. Like, what? So you tap and activate and do a bunch of stuff. So these things, I think are happening a lot of the time with people and they have no idea why some part of the body's disconnecting.

Yeah.

Any thoughts on that? Do you see that in athletes?

Yeah, for sure. Eye exercise is so important. Like, you can, I mean, you can do that just something with yourself. Now you can put your, your hands on the back of the, the, your skull. It's called the sub occipital ridge. Yeah. And just place your, your hands back on this. This is actually a really great place to massage. If you're not really great with massage. You want to give somebody a little head massage. Just put your hands back into this space and just slowly traction. Open up that space a little bit. Like to the sides. To the sides, but more up.

Okay.

Like decompressing, because a lot of people get like, crunch back in there. So you could do attraction. That's a nice thing. But just put your hands back there and then just look up with your eyes and then look down and then look up, then look down and look up and look down. You feel those muscles activating back there? A little bit. Up. Down. Up. Yep. Down, up. Yeah. So your eyes are like reins pulling your body. So your eyes aren't just, just for vision. I mean, vision is the main sense that's guiding where we go. So if you look at an athlete looking down at something, it's like you point your eyes to where the body goes. Yeah. And so if there are a person that's chronically, say, looking down and right or down and left to A cell phone all day long. Like what happens with your bicep? If you are doing a specific bicep exercise, that's maybe you're going 13 degrees range of motion, and that's the only motion that you possibly do.

Wow.

Right. So you start to limit the range of motion of the eyes. Eyes are guiding the whole body.

Wow.

And so starting to open up and disentangle the relationship of the eyes is a really, really potent path to increasing athleticism and obviously, like hand, eye corporation coordination, you know, things like headaches and, you know, there's. There's a lot tied into the eyes.

So.

Cool.

I love it.

Yeah.

Well, Aaron, we're up on the end of the show and. Yes, sir, thank you for coming in all the way from Miami now instead of across town. Yeah. Your podcast is align podcast podcast.com.

Yeah.

And yeah, I'm going to be on your show in about two more minutes here.

Is it okay if I share about the breathing program, please? We have. So we have the. If people are interested in breathing and we can put together some type of like discount link or something. But we give.

I appreciate the discount for people.

Yeah. But we give a free week of the first. The first week is free. Okay, cool. So people have interest in exploring that. It's broken down very simply. The first section of the first week is all mechanics. Okay. I think it's an absolute crime. It's unbelievable. People are not taught how to breathe. So things like, where should my ribs be? Where should my pelvis be? How do I open up my nasal passages? Why does it even matter to nasal breathe in the first place? The second week is all about how to calm the nervous system. Very easy, very effective. The last week is all about how to stimulate the nervous system.

Cool.

And then there's a brief section. Anatomy, physiology. There's like a little quiz at the end. You get a little certificate. But the first week is free. If people are interested that, it's alignpodcast.com breathe.

Okay. And use code Dave. And he'll give you something special there.

Yeah, we'll put Dave in there. So, people, I'll suggest that to my team. So Dave will be a thing for a discount on that after the first free week.

Okay.

And that's the thing I'm the most excited about. I'm like, I've become. I've been leading breath work all around. Well, the country, but Miami specifically. I've been leading like two to three breath work classes a week. It's been a really good time. And I'm just like seeing people open up in a way that I haven't seen before. So I think that to be able to spread the message of how to breathe and how to use it to regulate the way that we feel, I think it's just I'm very excited about. So yeah, that's alignpodcast.com breathe and then align Podcast. Sweet. Whatever. Aaron Alexander on Instagram is all things.

And thanks for the discount for listeners.

Yes, thank you so much.

See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

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