The Importance of Being Active - with Aaron Alexander | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 90

Well, hello everyone. Dr. David Perlmutter here, and welcome to the program. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about getting exercise. Certainly aerobic exercise has its benefits. We've talked about that a lot. We know that flexibility is important, resistance exercise very important as well. But, you know, we don't really spend a lot of time talking about the positions and our postures in our day-to-day activities in terms of their importance. But it turns out that this is actually a very, very important topic. Let me read you a quote from the book that we're going to be looking into today. Here's the quote: The way you move— the way you move impacts every aspect of your life and can be leveraged To make you feel stronger, more confident, and at home in your body. Well, who wouldn't want to do that? The book we're going to be looking at today is called The Align Method by my good friend Aaron Alexander, and he is not just the author of this really terrific book, but he's also the founder of the whole idea of alignment as described by The Align Method. He is an accomplished, what we call, manual therapist. and a movement coach having more than 16 years of professional experience working with, hey, Hollywood A-listers, professional athletes, and a lot of other people as well. He has on his podcast interviewed more than 300 of the world's preeminent thought leaders looking at the physicality as well as the psychology of well-being, and these have appeared on the Align Podcast. I would urge you to take a look at that. It's really Full of a lot of good information. And again, it brings together a lot of different perspectives on ultimately man, how it manifests in terms of our health. He has contributed a lot to major media outlets ranging from Entrepreneur Magazine all the way to the perhaps other side of the scale, which is MindBodyGreen, and can typically be found somewhere in the Pacific Ocean Or in Venice Beach on the original Muscle Beach, probably where you'd expect to find him. Again, we'll be talking today about his new book, The Align Method. Let's jump right to it. Aaron, good to see you again, my friend.

I'm so grateful to be here, man. Thank you so much for making time.

I am really delighted that we had the chance, the 3 of us with Austin, our son, to Touch Bases Connect in LA. That was a lot of fun. Good to see you, and enjoy doing your podcast. That said, you got a great book here, and I'm a proud owner of it. I've really spent a lot of time with it, and we're going to jump right in. I want to say that for myself, I do a lot of exercise and stretching, yoga, but there was so much more that looks like from reading your book that I should be doing. And I'm not saying things I have to add to the program. I don't want people to feel burdened by the fact that you've got all this information, but it's really good information. It's about how we walk, how we sit, what is our position when we're driving a car, and ultimately how that plays out in our lives. There's a great quote in your book, and I mentioned it in the intro. I'm going to read it again. The way you move impacts every aspect of your life and can be leveraged to make you feel stronger, more confident, And at home in your body. So, um, the book begins with a little interesting description from you, uh, about a time when you weren't necessarily at home in your body. Can you tell us about that and what happened?

Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, I think it's still a journey and a process of really feeling spacious and at home in my body. I think that's a big part of the human experience. Uh, and so I started off in kind of an interesting place of becoming really obsessed with bodybuilding. And the story that I have around that is that it was almost like a compensation for feeling unstable or unsafe in my home. Just because my male figure, my father, he ended up having his own trauma and things to deal with and made him susceptible to becoming really highly addicted to crack cocaine was the specific thing. And, um, it was a really interesting miracle of an experience for me, uh, because it was the, the, I think the, the origin or the, the original impetus of starting to pay attention to this relationship of how, oh, my environment shifts and then I have this biological structural, uh, response. And, uh, you know, now here we are writing books about it. And as an addendum with that, Present day, my dad's doing really well and he's like in love and getting married and he's like, oh gosh, it's really beautiful. Um, you know, but yeah, I'm so immensely grateful for that experience because it was, it really was, I think, the seed of all of this.

I have to say that there's a, there are quite a few interviewers, interviewees that I come into contact with who have had similar issues in their past, you know, really demanding issues. I did a podcast recently with a young woman who, has a really robust presence on the internet, health-related, whose mother had committed suicide. And, you know, these events in life, no one is immune to them. And they are— they will shake you to your core. And what do you do with that? Yeah. Do you remain, in your case, perhaps, really obsessed with certain things, you know, your body morphology, as it were? Or do you take the lesson and Make the lemonade out of the lemon. So you obviously did the latter. And really, um, how did you learn all this stuff? Where did you go? What did you do to become so educated as it relates to body dynamics, if we can use that term?

I think in large part, um, was just deep interest in repairing myself. Uh, you know, which I think most people that have something meaningful to say, that's the seed. It's like, I need, I need to figure this out. Um, or else, you know, the, the, the, what would come from that would be pretty much disaster. And so I ended up going through all sorts of different injuries, um, and like joint dislocations and chronic pain and a sensation of, uh, you could almost call it like, like anhedonia or like the sensation of disconnect where I almost didn't feel emotion for a period. It was very fascinating, uh, in retrospect looking back at it. And that led me, into, uh, the, the why in the road was one, you know, I was like reflecting for a timeframe of like ending my life and things, but it wasn't, I wasn't that close to that, but it was definitely like a regular reflection. And the why part with that was becoming more deeply interested in human psychology and just what's, what's the point of being here in the first place. And, uh, you know, so that went into personal training, but then the personal training got bigger into like, What is the— why are we in the gym in the first place? Like, what are we doing here? You know, it's not just that you do the exercise. It's like, what gives you that joie de vivre and that perception on life that wants you to— makes you get up in the morning and want to actually go and do fitness or go and treat yourself to healthy food or healthy relationships? Um, you know, so that led into going to University of Hawaii to study psychology and then ended up going to massage school from there and then rolfing school and then various different just vocational schools around manual therapy. And then getting into dance and martial arts and various different movement forms. Um, and now it's this big strange amalgamation of life experience and the last 5 years of doing the podcast and getting the opportunity to talk to people like you and, you know, all sorts of amazing humans, um, to have this really interesting kind of like full circle perspective, I think, on fitness that is, I think, not— it's not so common to see fitness from that lens of everything is associated. Yeah. Uh, more often we focus on fitness as like gym time. And I'm way more interested in fitness as like who you are as a person and how you inhabit yourself.

Well, I mean, to play on, uh, you know, follow up on what we were talking about, there's a great quote in your book. And I think you had mentioned before to me that, that some, you're attributing it to somebody else, that physical awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. Great words. But I think, you know, this, uh, this idea that we store our past traumatic experiences in our physical bodies, and we're always talking about, you know, what are the psychological changes that we experience, the engrams that are put down early in life, how do they influence us later in life? But there's a strong physicality to that experience as well that you bring out. And, you know, it wasn't lost on me moving through your book that, uh, It was a bit of a recurrent theme that we store our early life traumas in our physical beings, and they— these traumas really affect us, who we are physically. And then beyond that, how we carry ourselves helps to influence, for example, what we think about what we're saying. I think there was one description there about people who adopt a certain posture are either more or less likely to believe their own words in comparison to being in a different posture. Walk us through how important that is, how influential that is in terms of, you know, our day-to-day lives.

Yeah. Well, so just think about a time in your past or maybe present where you felt sad would be one potential emotion that we can feel. And you know, it's easy to think that that emotion manifests itself in between our ears. You're like, cool, I'm sad. I'm like sad in my, in my head. It's like my temporal lobe or my cerebral cortex. I think it's sad. And it's like, in order for you to actually truly experience an emotion, I get into the work of William James, who's like considered the father of modern psychology. And he's, his perspective on that was that we actually move ourselves into emotion. Uh, in the book we have a mindfulness chapter where we go the other end where we're looking more from the top down that, you know, our mind does move our body. But then the first chapter we go from the bottom up, like the body moves the mind. I think it toggles between the two because I think they're one and the same. Um, you know, but if you just think of a time that you felt sad or maybe shy or scared, uh, really like method act yourself into that state. If you do that, if you're a good actor, Then you will, your shoulders will shift and maybe the carriage of your chest and your breathing might change. If you're scared, it might go up more into this clavicular territory and start leaving that deep, low diaphragmatic breath and more kind of go into this fast, might come into your breath. You might have an emphasis on the inhalation, which activates more of that sympathetic side of the nervous system and a de-emphasis on that exhalation, which is more that Yeah. Oh, that calming side of the nervous system, that parasympathetic side. And so if you want to act yourself into a certain state, you will need to manually, mechanically move yourself into that state to truly feel it. And when we think of that from, you know, a perspective from like a neuro-linguistic programming, you know, NLP, where it's like if you can anchor yourself to certain states through something like, for example, sound or music, which we have a chapter in the book all about that as well, Uh, you know, before you, for you, you go on a public speaking thing or do a podcast or something that you really care about, you might put a certain song on that puts you into that state because you've anchored those. That collection of sounds is an indication to my physiology that it's time to go. Well, we do the exact same thing with our postural patterns. So when I put my shoulders down and my head goes forward and my, Knees drop in valgusly and my feet collapse and I have this collapse through the whole body. That's an indication that I'm defeated. I'm defending, I'm sad. I'm, well, I'm compressed and pulled down. The world is heavy. And so we've tied that in throughout at least our lifetime. I would suggest it's beyond our lifetime even. Um, and then the opposite is true with, you know, method act yourself into feeling confident. Feeling creative, feeling expansive, feeling strong, feeling like you're like, you know what? Like I don't have— there's no reason to be concerned about other people's judgment. I'm comfortable. I'm at home in my body. I feel home here. And if you can start to, uh, emanate that, all of a sudden you become magnetic because everybody wants to feel home. And so when you walk into someone's physical home and it's like, it's got this balance and feng shui and it feels spacious and light and expansive, Everyone goes, wow, it feels good. That's, that's your, that's your body. So we can start to play with those relationships.

One part of— and that last description was really, um, that was really interesting stuff. I really was enjoying that. Before I get to my next question, I'm just thinking that, you know, um, we have these engrams laid down in our brains from early life experiences and We can call them up via, via rather positioning our bodies in ways that emulate the body position during those when those engrams were encoded. We don't we're not consciously aware of those engrams. Nonetheless, they influence us quite dramatically in terms of emotionality that may be tied into something that triggered the engram—a voice, a smell. Something that you may see. There was some really interesting description in the book about the relationship between muscle and positioning and our hormonal system. And specifically, let's talk about these individually. Let's talk about testosterone and then cortisol individually, how muscle activation and positioning might influence levels, for example, of these important hormones. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So some of the research that we had in there was really popular research from Amy Cuddy, who is a professor at Harvard, and she has the 2nd most popular TED Talk in history as of now. Uh, and it's all about these, these power poses. So in the book we refer to it as like the aligned standing position or the aligned archetype, uh, which is upright. Essentially we just described being confident. What she found was that people, they would do saliva samples, And they found that people just being in those positions for just a couple of minutes would actually change their levels of testosterone. Testosterone would increase when they're in this strong, confident position. And then the cortisol, a commonly known stress hormone, would end up decreasing because again, we're tying back into that anchored state of like feeling pretty good. So your hormones follow suit with that. Right. Then the inverse would happen when we go into what in the book we refer to as the mopey archetype. And then all the archetypes, we tie personality traits and then how we can start to work with that body from beyond just an exercise perspective, but also lifestyle perspective. Uh, and she would find the inverse would happen when they go into that collapsed position. Since then, there's been various research like refuting her and then she comes back refuting it. Um, what's really hard to refute is is that your physical postural patterns alter the way that you think and the way that you feel and the way that you show up in the world. Um, so that's—

Wait, wait, wait, let me slow you down. You need to say that again. The way that you feel, the way that you think, and the way that you show up in the world based on how you choose to hold your body.

That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So, so every time, and that gets back to what you started off with, which is, We're sending messages to ourselves of who we are. When you look into your cabinet, looking at it from a grain brain perspective, or a nutritional perspective, you open up your fridge, you say, oh, I'm a kale kind of guy, and I'm organic meats, and organic this and that. Wow, it's bright colors. This is who I am. I'm healthy. It's organized. I look at my house, like, yeah, I'm an organized person. I'm an upright, citizen in this world. Same thing happens when you look at your postural patterns. When you get up in the morning and go and look at yourself in the mirror, there's a moment where you're like, this is who I am. Well, it's the same thing happens even without the mirror. You know, it's something in the book we say is that your cells don't have eyes, but they can feel you. So they know where you're at. And there's a, you know, a fancy term called mechanotransduction, which is The chemical stimuli that manifests as a product of your physical movement. So as you're going through and moving and twisting and turning and pulling and compressing and opening those tissues in your body, there's a whole cascade of chemicals that end up being released through that system to kind of follow suit with what you're doing. So the analogy that we use in there, and I'll wrap this up, is kind of thinking of your tissue almost as though like a pizza maker. So if a pizza maker is throwing dough, they're not going to just kind of squeeze and compress one side of the dough and forget about the whole rest of the pie. They're going to go through and they're going to pull and twist and knead and turn and open. And that's how you have healthy dough. It's like very similar with the way that you have healthy tissue and neurological tissue as well, because movement's all tied into your brain function.

Well, it's, Directly related. I mean, cortisol, when it is acutely or persistently lower level elevated, is really kind of devastating for the brain. It threatens neuroplasticity, so our ability to make new connections. It threatens the growth of new brain cells. But in a new context, we have discovered that cortisol actually threatens our connection between the prefrontal cortex, the good decision maker, And the area called the amygdala, which is involved in more impulsivity. So I just published a blog on yoga, for example, and how it's beneficial for the brain. And I think this is certainly one mechanism. I would say reduction of inflammation might well be the other, both acting in a very similar way. But it really gives another tool to all of our viewers in terms of the tool to accomplish the task of lowering that stress hormone. Yeah. Cortisol, and that is the adoption of, you know, the poses that you are describing in the book. My 2 favorites were Warrior 1 and Warrior 2 before I read your book, and now I know there's a lot more to do. But to me, those were power poses, especially the beginning of those poses, and then the stretch once you lean over and raise your arm up to the sky and all that. But I think just the fact that you are doing something, feeling constructive and positive, goes a long way as well. But Yeah. I want to just emphasize that so much of what your book is doing, though it's not necessarily always in the text correlated, is working on some major mechanisms to reduce inflammation and reduce cortisol, both of which build a better brain, which fosters then better decision-making so that you'll continue to do these exercises, eat better foods, pay attention to your sleep, reduce your stress, all the things that we know are good for us. Interesting that we can demonstrate through the way we hold ourselves what we think of ourselves. There is an interesting description in the book about— I think it was people who were convicted of violent crimes were able to pick out the vulnerable people from a crowd, and they all agreed who was vulnerable within a few seconds. Based on how these people walk, for example.

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's as we're going through and all of the relations of activating the amygdala and increasing stress hormones and all of that, these postural ties are connected to that and that will create this whole sequelae of issues because if you're in that contracted, compressed defensive state, then you make more reactionary decisions on a momentary level. Uh, and then people are also perceiving that from you, which kind of depends, you know, you might be more anxious with your body type, which is another one of the archetypes, which will kind of send, because we're always attuning and connecting to each other to create rapport, that will kind of create this almost cloud of anxiety in the room. You know, if you're in that more defensive or defeated place, you're more open to parasites, you know, parasites in the form, in this case of people trying to steal energy from you in the form of like—

Well, that is really super interesting. In other words, I would say that we pick up then subliminal inferences that people are fearful and vulnerable, and people take advantage of that to— Yep. I'm just going to say, maybe to manipulate somebody, not necessarily to physically accost them and steal their wallet, but to manipulate them. Yet, if you hold your head high, force yourself to adopt a, let's say, a more a power position, powerful position, empowered position, I think the world around you picks up on that and perhaps might be less likely to think that you can be taken advantage of.

Completely. And so that's just the, you know, so I'm intentionally using the language of parasite because that's like the symptom, the outward expression of someone stealing from you, stealing energy from you. And if you put yourself in that place, it's like, like looking at an animal in nature, If there's a strong, robust mountain lion or human, or, you know, as a pack of humans, you know, group of people, an ant bear or mountain lion, whatever it may be, doesn't really want to mess with that because they don't want to injure themselves in the process of gathering energy. So if you go through and you're like, man, I just feel good, I'm resourced, and you move in that way, people identify with that and they say, oh, I want to be on his team. I don't want to take from that person. I want to be on their team because they're a well-resourced, structured human being. Then it's like, man, I don't get it. Why? It's like things just go my way. What is the deal? And why do things always happen in threes? It's like when it rains, it pours. It's like, well, maybe it rained, you stubbed your toe, you lost your wallet, you lost your phone, and then, oh, you go into that reactionary collapsed victim state. And now all of a sudden, All the parasites come because it's like, okay, now's the time to attack. And so if we can maintain that, like the, the, I mean, the, this idea is much bigger than the way that you do bicep curls and the way that you do pull-ups. Um, and, comma, the way that you do those movements will actually develop your structure, which then develops your personality and then develops your outlook on the world, other people's perception of you, and your, Very interesting.

Well, this is what we describe as being a feed-forward cycle. The more you make good food choices, the less inflammation you have. The less inflammation you have, the more good food choices you will make. So this is the same thing. It's saying to yourself, I'm going to read your book, and I'm going to do what he says, and that's going to feed forward into doing more things that are constructive and good Good for me, and the world will respond differently to me if I align myself, if I hold myself, comport myself in a certain way. Mm-hmm. It's really amazing. In the world of academia, there's sort of a sense that, well, there's exercise. Yeah, either it's resistance exercise, stretching, or aerobic, but then all the great— the important stuff is the nutrition and the biochemistry. And what you've really taught us is that this is absolutely the third leg of the stool here. This is as important influencing our chemistry, influencing what goes on upstairs. So it's really super important stuff. And, uh, it's a great book. I appreciate it.

I really appreciate you. Yeah. The, the, just a little add-on with that. I would suggest that our nutritional decisions, which you've already kind of touched on this, but our nutritional decisions are are in large part based around our level of self-worth and our identity. So the story that we tell about ourselves. So what we're saying now, and you were starting to, I think we all get it at this point, we're kind of painting our story throughout our movements during the day. And so you can kind of think of like, I think an interesting perspective on your momentary movement decisions is think of life as more like a dance. You know, and think of language as more like songs. So right now there's all sorts of things. You know, there's the research that we have in the book of Albert Mehrabian and the UCLA professor from the '70s came up with the 55-38-7 principle. So 55% of our communication comes from body language. 38 is the tonality of our voice. And then the 7, little 7% is the actual words that we're speaking. So throughout the day we can kind of tune our nervous systems and I would suggest even tune our Our identity structure, who we think we are, uh, based off of our momentary movement decisions. And then that will take you out. If we go in more like that aligned archetype, um, out of that reactionary state, uh, which all of a sudden, you know, when we are stressed out, when we're underslept, when we're in that kind of reactionary place I'm describing, that's when you reach out for the cake. That's when you reach out for the, oh, it's midnight. I know I shouldn't eat, but Man, I really love a Snickers bar right now. I'm really amazed.

I totally get it. We just published our book, Brain Wash, and it is a total review of exactly what you're talking about, how lack of adequate sleep, eating a pro-inflammatory diet, not exercising, involving yourself with stress, all of those things lock us into an impulsive decision-making model. Yeah. That relates to then the foods we eat. We do eat the wrong foods. We do make bad lifestyle choices when we are locked into amygdala-based, impulsive, self-centered behavior, only thinking about momentary gratification, as opposed to locking into the prefrontal cortex that is the adult in the room, allows us to be more empathetic and compassionate and think about the future consequences. of all of our decisions, not just what we eat, but how we invest our money, how we care for other people, how we even care for the planet. So, what a great day for me to realize another entry point here. This is so exciting.

I really appreciate that. Yeah. When you are in that place of being— so, I think the interesting thing is oftentimes we, in conversations like this, we end up attacking modern culture. And it's like, oh, we need to romanticize hunter-gatherers and developing countries and all this. It's like, it's everything's okay except for us. It's like, we're great as well. And underneath all of this stuff, like we really, modern culture really is at a structurally, which that's tied to everything else, disadvantage, uh, because our work is kind of going into computers and into Cell phones and sitting and hunching over into these postural positions. And we, through just a little bit of know-how, which we break down in the book, obviously, uh, we can start to be smarter than this collapsed structural mold. And it's not complicated. You know, all the principles that we have in there, it's like I use the analogy of a, of a golfer swinging a, uh, at a golf ball and the clubface, when it first contacts that ball, if it's off even a millimeter, you won't notice the shift in the first 20, 30, 40 yards. But then after 80 yards, 100 yards, 140 yards, you're like, oh, like that's where that ball lands. No.

So it's a great analogy. You know, it's been said that, uh, sitting is the new smoking.

Yeah.

And, uh, for our viewers, I would, uh, I urge you to look back at the podcast we did with Kelly Starrett, who actually wrote your foreword in your book, I believe.

Yeah, he's a bud.

Also, very, very empowering information. Well, let me thank you for your time today, and thanks for all this information for our viewers. It's really very, very important. I mean, to think that we can just gain such advantage by paying attention to our body positioning. Boy, you make it really easy. There was a great quote that you said that it's not going to be easy. It takes a little— aspects of the program that did not seem normal or comfortable. I wrote that down because— Okay. I don't want to say no pain, no gain, but it'd be easy to sit on the couch all day. It takes a little bit of work to use the tension band that you provide, or that's available. Give me that website again for the band.

Yeah, so it's on AlignBand.com is where you get the instructional videos, which is all free, and then you can find it on my website AlignPodcast.com or Amazon. It's out there in the world.

Great, and with any luck at all, what you just said is going to appear on the bottom of the screen, hint hint, digitally. All right, my friend, hope to see you soon. All the best, and thank you again.

Thanks. Yeah, and I would recommend people jump over and check out my My conversation that I released with you on Align Podcast. Uh, we just released it like a couple of weeks ago and I've had, um, just so many people saying how moving it was to them because, uh, we got into things that I wasn't anticipating us getting into, but I really appreciated your vulnerability. And it was like, it was such a—

Well, you know, it's, uh, I'm in the meaning part of life now.

Yeah. I think I am too.

Who shouldn't be in the meaning part of life? Yeah, right. All right, all the best.

Thank you.

Well, wasn't that some really heartfelt information, some very good information? You know, all about how we carry ourselves, how we think about our movement, our positioning, and how we can accentuate the good parts of that and really get more from our bodies than perhaps we may be getting now. So again, the Align Method, Aaron Alexander, terrific guy. Hope you enjoyed the program. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter, and we'll see you back here real soon. Bye for now.