Squatting In A California Backyard & Talking Family, Movement Mechanics, Ice Baths & More With Aaron Alexander.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, he's like, thank you. And that feeling washed over me. Okay, we're all interdependent humans. And then I turned around, just had to sprint back down to the coffee shop to make sure the bicycle was still there. It is a mountain that we climb with others. It's a mountain where we discover interdependence and community and human primal urge for connection and relationships.

What do you think has been most pivotal for you to start to recognize that?

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. So I was recently in Venice Beach, California, and I jetted up the road through Santa Monica to go visit my buddy Eric Aaron Alexander. He's quite an interesting character. He's got, like, biomats and bodywork tools littered all over his living room. This kind of, like, ghetto ice bath freezer in his backyard that you climb in there and shiver your ass off inside with a sauna across from that, a bunch of, like, bongo drums and musical instruments. It's kind of crazy. Not creepy, but crazy. And we recorded a podcast when I was there. We did breath work before the podcast on an ice plunge. And I think he may have been, like, shooting his bow back there somewhere at some point because there were arrows and bows and. Yeah, interesting guy. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com align, that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com A, L, I G N. That is where you can get all the show notes for everything that Aaron and I talk about, including his new book, which is actually really great. And it's kind of like a toolbox for realigning your body. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. It just came out. What kind of tea are we drinking? What is this?

This is some green tea from. You probably know the guy. Do you know Tea Dragon Ryan? Tea Garden call him Tea Dragon. That was incorrect.

Green tea makes me nauseous.

Oh, perfect.

Yeah, this will be a great podcast. Healer's tea Dragon Tea.

I'm glad that we're starting off what.

Makes this really good green tea?

You know, I would like to learn more about green tea. That's why I have you here as I ask you questions about things of that nature.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's the. The primary, most researched component is the egcg, the epigallo. Gimme catechins.

I feel like you're making that up like that.

It's. It's It's a long. I was, I was somewhat close. It's epigallo catechin something. EGCG is far easier, however, and that's, that's the, the potent antioxidant. But this stuff also has goji berry Schisandra, which is amazing. That's a really good adaptogen. Yeah. Chinese licorice root Schisandra. Also, I was having dinner with someone a couple weeks ago and they informed me that one of the best things you could do for your sperm and your fertility is to regularly consume Schisandra. So I suppose the opposite could be true as well. Probably the most potent contraceptive is to never take Schisandra.

I feel like that's going to be an ongoing thing. Like every six months to a year there's a new.

A new something that helps. Yep, yep. And great. Salt Lake trace minerals. Wow. It's kind of like east meets West. They got salt from Utah and green tea from Japan.

Yeah, we got the whole thing. So I'm going on.

Also known as honeymooners tea for those engaged in frequent sexual activity.

That's why I brought it out, man. Wow. Yep. How cool. We were just nude.

We were just. We were just admitting your heart. Your heart shaped cold pool plunge. That was. You know, I. I suppose since we video recorded it, that it's likely that folks listening in are going to somehow get their hands on that video that we did. But we did a breathe up before we got in the cold pool, and I'm glad we did that because a lot of people don't realize how much easier cold thermogenesis is after you've done that breathe up. And, you know, you were kind of the leader on that. But, you know, it was basically those 30 breaths. Those 30, kind of like. And then the finish with the exhale. The cool thing is the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. So you don't have that harsh mammalian dive reflex when you get in the cold pool and that sharp intake of breath. You know, when you get in, you feel as though you have this. This peace and calm, so you don't have that reaction to the cold. And then from a physiological standpoint, you get that nitric oxide release, which is why some people get a little bit lightheaded, you know, not only breathing off the CO2, but that opening up of all the blood vessels that if you're not careful, can actually cause you to pass out.

Yeah. And then with the nitric oxide release, the other thing that's interesting, that is just doing something as simple as Humming that's been shown. I think it's like 20 times. Increase the nitric oxide production in your bloodstream, and then beyond that is just generally breathing through your nose.

Yeah, yeah. Which is cool. All this stuff stacks because at the same time that you're doing humming or chanting or singing or even gargling, you activate the vagus nerve, you increase your vagal nerve tone, which further feeds into that parasympathetic activation. So it's. It's. It's almost as though you are inducing stress resilience before you get into something that is mildly stressful, like cold.

Yeah. It's amazing to me how many of these beneficial variables that we have access to that we just. We kind of completely bypass throughout the day. We kind of. It's almost like. Like, I think I personally feel like I'm almost can be addicted to the stress state. And then when we have those brief moments, typically someone you know, in this case, it's like, I usually start out making fun of it and, you know, being silly about it. Then afterwards, it's always like, wow, you know, I'm so glad that we did that.

Yeah. The same could be said of sunlight. Right. Like the growing body of research on sunlight. I was looking at one study today on insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation in response to sunlight and the shift in what would be called metabolic flexibility or substrate utilization, meaning that you would ideally want your cells to very efficiently shift from glucose utilization to fatty acid utilization in the same way that you would want your heart to be able to respond to cues from the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. That is the definition really, of increased heart rate variability or good vagal nerve tone is the ability of the heart to respond in very precise manner to input from sympathetic and parasympathetic and how that innervates the heart via the pacemaker of the heart, the sinoatrial node. And in the same way, you want your cells to be able to shift very efficiently from glucose to fatty acid utilization. Right. A lot of people think you should just be in a state of ketosis, pure fatty acid utilization, all the time, but that's not necessarily the case. Right. You want to shift from carbohydrate to fat utilization depending on whether you need to quickly burst or sprint or climb a flight of stairs to going back into fatty acid utilization when you're sitting at your desk, so to speak. Sunlight, though, is a cue for increasing that metabolic flexibility so you can increase your ability to be able to utilize these different substrates if you're getting light exposure. And of course there are tons of benefits that I'm sure people listening in have heard from the sun. From the vitamin D activation to the mild cellular resilience effect you get from the UVA and the UVB radiation to the nitric oxide to the activation of the. This is the reason a lot of people use those infrared light panels, the cytochrome C oxidase and mitochondria like you shift that into greater production of ATP in response to sunlight. So I mean, cold breathing sunlight, being outside barefoot, I mean all this stuff.

Just stacks, it's all free, it's all simple. Most of the stuff that's the most expensive, like Carl Jung talked about, retrogressions, is going to be the most sustainable and the most cost effective way to be healthier, to be more mindful, to be all things. When we seek out new advanced technology, typically it's more expensive and more short lived.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was in San Diego like two months ago and you know, these biohacking clinics are becoming more common. You know, they pop up and people put the cryotherapy and the sauna and the PEMF and all the fancy technologies, the negative ion structured water that you breathe. And I was in San Diego and this company reached out to me on Instagram and they're like, why don't you come over to our clinic this morning and you can do the pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, you know, and get the Schumann resonance from the earth, do the cryo, do the infrared and maybe we can get you in for a joov session where you're under the, under the lights and I'm reading this and I'm like, you know, four blocks from the beach, I'm like, actually I'm going to walk in my bare feet to the beach under the sunlight, jump in the cold water, chock full of negative ions and minerals, get out and walk back to my little condo I was staying in and get all that for free in a far more natural way. Not that biohacking technology should be dismissed, but those should be stacked on top of the natural living or used when you don't have access to that stuff, like whatever. You're in Las Vegas, you're going to be there for three days at a conference. Yeah, Go there with your grounding and earthing mat that you can sleep on and maybe a portable infrared light panel and you know, maybe a little portable PEMF unit and you'll use biohacking to simulate nature in an environment where you're not Going to get exposed to much nature. But you know, when you, when you get a chance to choose between nature or biohacking, I mean, nature is always usually a more prudent choice.

Well, I think it's the difference between a supplement and a whole food. You know, when you're biohacking some aspect of nature into some technology, it's like taking like pectin out of an apple.

Or carotene or it's like lycopene from a tomato. Yeah.

What we miss with that is the equation that you jump your biology into when you jump into the ocean is so much more complex than most of the specific isolates that we take out from that and plug into a wall.

It's the entourage effect. And of course that's most well known in the world of cannabis. Right. We know that all the constituents of the hemp plant put together are more beneficial than like a synthetic CBD extract that you might take to help you sleep. The exception that though would be when you do want the bullet train. You know, like, I don't, I guess I am gonna just like start shamelessly plugging. But you know, like if you look at something like the joov light, right, like these infrared light panels that you can spend 10 minutes in front of and get the equivalent of the infrared light that you would be need to be out in the sun for two hours to get, right. And maybe risk excess UVA radiation from the sun trying to get that big of a dose of infrared all at once. Well, arguably the biohacking technology actually is a hack. You're shortcutting your way to getting even more infrared than you might normally be able to get. The same could be said of like the, like the big, powerful, you know, high milligauss potential PEMF tables, right? The ones that, that produce a very high amount of that frequency, like 7.8 hertz that you'd get from the planet Earth, but they just concentrate in a very high dose. So you're almost amplifying the anti inflammatory effects of earthing or grounding, but in a faster manner. So I have nothing against better living through science about using even more powerful versions of what we might be able to get from nature, but return to that whole entourage effect, the idea of it being free, the idea of being more connected to the planet that we live upon. I still think that too many people put too much time into the biohacking technologies and not enough time into the nature technologies.

Yeah. What about meditation? How's that played a role in your wellness?

I don't meditate in the sense that I think a lot of people think of meditation that much. There are a few forms of meditation that I tend to do on a regular basis, such as one called eco meditation, designed by Dawson Church. I like it because it combines breathwork, in this case about six count in and six count out, with tapping. And so you're basically getting yourself into a state of mindfulness and loving kindness and then tapping when you're in that state. So that when you're out of that state simply by tapping, you can access it more quickly. And that practice also involves gratefulness. It involves sending beams of light and love out to the universe, but then into your body into areas that might be tense or might, you know, that feel like they might need a little bit of extra self love. I really like that one. You can google it. It's like a free MP3 you can download. And it just works for me because it stacks all these things at once. That one's called eco meditation. For a couple years I practiced TM after taking a TM course and didn't quite have the time to do the full 2 by 10 to 20 minutes a day and almost felt as though I was frustrating myself by not doing it with the frequency with which it's actually recommended. So I didn't stay on the the TM bandwagon, although I occasionally still do that. For example, you know, on a plane when I can't sleep. But I wanted to still relax my mind and just go into a mantra and stay there for a while.

I.

When I wake in the morning, I typically will be in bed for about five minutes just doing deep breathing, giving myself that affluence of time before I leap out of bed. Then I read something typically devotional or scriptural, and then gratitude journal. What am I grateful for today? What truth did I discover in today's reading? And who is one person who I can pray or help or serve this day? And for me, that breathwork and gratitude practice, when I first wake, it has the flavor of meditation. Like it leaves me with that same type of feeling as though I've meditated before. Every meal. I typically do about five to 10 deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth to activate the parasympathetic system in. In almost a. A brief mindfulness meditation snack. And then, and I realized that this is something that I think kind of annoys a lot of. A lot of meditation devotees. I consider my exercise to be moving meditation. Yeah, like if you, if you see me exercising, there is never Hard driving rock music in my, in my headphones, anything like, you know, occasionally an audiobook or a podcast. But my workout sessions are very focused around breath. They lead with prana. So I'm always focusing on the breathing in through the nose, usually out through slightly pursed lips, the same as when I'm walking. It's always moving meditation, typically with like a four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold. Or based on Patrick McCown's teachings in the Oxygen Advantage or Anders Olson's teachings in his book, I believe it's called the Power of Breath or the Power of air or something like that. 10 count in and a 20 count out. So I'm retaining oxygen and carbon dioxide simultaneously. And when I walk like that for 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 60 minutes, especially in the sand, on the beach, on a forest trail, to me it's, I mean, it's almost better than seated meditation. I feel more grounded when I do that. And in the workout sessions, when the going gets hard and when you're getting up towards your VO2 max, I will shift into breathing through the mouth sucking air. But then the trick is after that set's done, after that high intensity interval bout is done, I'll then return back into that nasal breathing. Very similar to the way that Paul Check teaches. For example, you know, you'll do a set of kettlebell swings and that would be the working out. And then you follow that up with the working in, which would be very slow, almost like Tai Chi esque body weight squats where you're just in flow breathing through your nose, focusing on reactivating the parasympathetic system. And then one other kind of cool way to do that related to the ice. And I do this with, with some of the folks that I coach, I call it the three by three. They'll do three minutes of some kind of like high intensity cardio, you know, like the aerodyne bike or you know, treadmill, rowing machine, whatever. And following those three minutes, they will then get into the cold deep nasal breathing box breathing activate the parasympathetic nervous system in the cold. And then out of the cold you go back into the high intensity interval training. So you're basically training sympathetic parasympathetic, you know, return to that idea of being metabolically flexible substrate utilization. You're again training yourself to be flexible with parasympathetic sympathetic activation.

Yeah, so I think so many of the practices that we do can. There's so much minutiae in, in them. Oftentimes and we can become consumed by the specific details. But I think, in large part, the details are valuable, but then also in large part, one of the. The greatest values is just that we're starting to pay attention, you know? So I found that with archery at this point, hunting soon, going to the archery range and paying attention first to the positioning of my feet. Okay, cool. My grounded through my feet. Okay, cool. And then drop the shoulders in. Okay. And then pull the elbow back and retract the scapula, you know? And then from there. Okay, cool. Now I got to get the. Get the sight. Now I got to. Okay, now breathe. Oh, I forgot my holding my breath. Okay, Emphasize breath out. Calm down. Okay. All right. That moment, it's really hard to be thinking about Bill's girlfriend. Whatever. The thing is, you can't.

And I'm excited for you, especially because I know you have a history of meditation and mindfulness and a great deal of body awareness. I'm excited to see how that manifests for you once you get out on your hunt, coming up in Maui, and you need to activate all of that that you've made automatic when there's an actual animal in front of you. And. And it's. You know, all of a sudden, there's an enormous responsibility. Right. There's a life on the line. There's. There's potential suffering for the animal on the line. There is from a deep, primal standpoint. Even though you probably have, like, a few canisters of protein powder at home and a few things you could. You could survive on for a little longer, there's, like, that idea of, oh, this is. This is my food. Like, I'm not gonna live to see another day unless I put this animal down and bring something home to the tribe, to the village to cook. And. And that sounds silly to a lot of people who say, oh, you know, we don't have to hunt for food. There's grocery stores everywhere. But for some reason, at least I've experienced, like, that same primal mechanism kicks in to where you're like, this is it. Do or die. Like, I. I have to survive to live another day, so I need to put this meat in the freezer.

Yeah, we all have that in us. There's a. Have you ever heard a book called Paradise Made in Hell? It's about, essentially, that. The value of natural disasters or people going through, like, times of war, 9, 11. Or these seemingly terrible things. They end up snapping us back into reality of, like, okay, you're my brother. Homeless guy on the street, or woman that I typically wouldn't talk to because she doesn't have enough Instagram followers or like, no, we're in this together. Yeah, you know?

Yeah, it's that. That feeling of inter dependence that again, I realize I keep saying that people don't do enough of this and people don't do enough of that, but I think that feeling of interdependence, whether it's volunteering in your community or making yourself dependent on others by asking for help, is again, something that's oft neglected. I mean, I had this wonderful, wonderful feeling wash over me today. I. I told you, I stopped by the coffee shop on the way up here to grab a smoothie. And when I rode my bike in and docked at the coffee shop, there's a man in a wheelchair trying to get across the street. And I see him over there and we lock eyes, and he asked me if I could help him across the street. He said, can I have a push? So I started pushing him and across the street. So I'm pushing this guy in a wheelchair, and it's one of those homeless guys in Venice beach. And it looks like he's got all his world's belongings right there in the little. What do you call it? Almost like a bicycle basket for a wheelchair.

I don't know.

Wheelchair basket, whatever. You carry your stuff around. So I push him across the street, and he's like, can you push me up that hill? Because the street starts to go up. So I keep pushing him up the hill, and then there's a full another block. And at this point, I'm getting nervous because my bike is parked down at the coffee shop. My cell phone's just sitting in a basket in the back of the bike. I push him for a good, like, six minutes all the way to the Santa Monica beach. And then he's like, thank you. And that feeling washed over me. Okay, we're all interdependent humans. And then I turned around, just had to sprint back down to the coffee shop to make sure the bicycle was still there. But when you experience something like that, and this is the same reason I do that gratitude practice in the morning of who is one person I can pray for, help or serve today, you tap into that primal sense of us all being on this planet as a tribe and interdependent on each other. And in the same way that I think everyone should get sunlight or earthing or grounding or cold or heat or fresh air or any of these natural practices on a daily basis, I think everyone on a daily basis should Figure out some way to go out of their way and help someone or just be helped themselves. You know, be interdependent and express that vulnerability to others.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a. Listened to recordings, old recordings of Terence McKenna, and one of the things that he said that stood out was that culture is the main. The biggest separation between your own enlightenment, education and decency. So when we become. We have nationalism and the belief that our country is better than your country, my color is better than your color. Essentially what that does is it just puts you into this isolation, but being able to break outside of that, I think that's where all the juice is at.

Yeah. And related to that, C.S. lewis, and I'll completely bastardize this quote, but essentially he says in one of his books that we're all spirits, we're all souls at our core. And I really get this. When I gaze into someone's eyes, the windows to the soul, you make that connection and you realize, this is a spirit, this is a soul. This is more than a chunk of flesh and blood that I'm talking to. It's something that's far deeper, something that's even eternal. That spark of light inside of us, that is our ethereal being. And what C.S. lewis says is that we're all spirits or souls. And every single person is capable of being a horrible monster or a God or goddess walking upon this planet. Like, each one of us has that capability for our soul to go one way or the other. And so it's one of those situations in which you. You almost need to be cautious, careful, that you not only care for your soul, but you realize that you have potential to do great harm or potential to do very, very great good.

Yeah. I think people carry. I carry almost like a certain contraction or fear around the demon inside of me or the evil inside of me, or the potential to. I hear things of some serial killer or some rapist or some Hitler or whatever for that to exist in humanity. My belief is that that exists inside of me and it exists inside of you. And we push that down and kind of pretend that these things don't exist. And we shame ourselves for having genitals and shame. Like, we kind of put certain things in a box, you know, and then certain other things are acceptable.

Yep.

But I wonder if there's something to loving all of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's. And for me, coming from a Christian background, I think this is. This is something Paul says in the Bible about, you know, all of all of that evil and the people walking around who have twisted their soul or their spirit into becoming a monster. And you know, he basically says something like, you know, but for the grace of God, there go I. You know, it's. It's like, you know, we, we all have that potential and we should never, never take for granted the fact that, you know, we could, we could easily stray into that same kind of Hitler esque moment unless we're constantly careful, constantly watching ourselves, because that is kind of our, our bent in a way.

Yeah. My feeling is Hitler didn't want to be the Hitler that we know today when he was like six and playing baseball.

Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a big part of that is we tend to err towards what is societally acceptable. And you know, as happened in, in Germany, you know, if everybody else is doing it and it turns into the social norm, it becomes that much easier for us to do it.

Yeah.

To, to stray from that sense of what I really think think is almost like that inherent built in sense of what is right and wrong and that internal moral compass that I do think we have to instead kind of, kind of go almost more towards this epicurean approach of like, well, you know, there is no sense of universal morality. It's just like this is what gives me pleasure and this is what gives me pain. And if everybody's getting pleasure from this certain, you know, activity, then it must be right. It must be okay or justifiable.

Yeah. There's a guy, James Prescott, I mentioned in the book that I recently finished up and gets into war and societies and the amount of touch that they had growing up. And so he said with 80% accuracy he was able to connect how much war there would be within that society just based off of the amount of contact they had from their mother and.

Skin to skin contact.

Yeah, yeah, there's other, there's there's other, you know, kind of completely other side of the spectrum. Research around the amount of contact in NBA teams in preseason, the teams that have the greatest contact butt slaps. Nice work. Fucking chest bumps like.

Yeah, yeah, man, we're together.

That cohesion and that attunement manifests itself into more victories.

So A, we should probably hold hands for the rest of this podcast.

Yeah, that's what they do all over the place. It's normal.

And then probably get oxytocin in the drinking water. You know, replace fluoride with oxytocin and the world will be happy.

We just biohacked touch.

I actually do, I do use, I use intranasal oxytocin sometimes it is a pretty amazing substance. It's the trustworthy hormone, that same that's released during breastfeeding or sex or hugging. And the problem with it of course is you actually wouldn't want a lot of that in your system if you're going to go negotiate to purchase a used car or something like that. Just because you become so trusting, so loving, so vulnerable.

So all the conversations of it's really helpful to love each other and connect and touch and you know, not be selfish and all that stuff. Why do you think it is that humanity, typically, at least like western post agriculture, humanity tends to veer towards autonomy and disconnection and my own and my bank account and all those things that the studies say that when you give somebody a dollar it feels better than getting a dollar, but nonetheless like this seems like the tendency is to go the other direction.

Yeah, the, the, the independence at the cost of interdependence, I don't know, but I suspect part of it is due to the idea that we can take a great amount of pride in being self made humans, self made men, self made women. We live in an era where you're taught from an early age that you can be whatever you want to be. And that through almost like this puritanical hard work mentality, that you can go it alone and be a lone wolf and still experience, or possibly experience a greater amount of success like you've made it, you've become whatever, a lone wolf warrior. For me, being homeschooled K through 12 and very self dependent, I think I err towards that even more than a lot of people just because I had to be completely independent all through education and very self reliant. And so I actually enjoy the solitude, working alone, the silence, being solo, being a lone wolf. And it's really only in the past several years and increasingly as my boys grow older and as I grow more connected to my family, that I realize the importance of this interdependence and the idea that independence, lone wolf success, despite often being a good way to make it in the world and to whatever, make a lot of money or be hyper productive, does not bring happiness, not as much as being with people and being dependent on others.

Yeah, it feels to me like the greatest currency any of us can possibly have. The only currency that's not going to go away is connections and relationships and doing good by others.

Yeah, it's the greatest emotion love is. I mean if you and I tell my children this, if you ever do not know what to do in any situation, whether an interpersonal conflict or an argument, or not knowing what to say to someone in a specific situation. You cover everything with love. Something as simple as I love you or figuring out a way you can care for someone, just anything like that. I mean, I've even had some conflicts with my wife before. We've gotten in arguments and we've had disagreements, and, you know, the. The only thing that seems to be able to just smooth things over at the time is to just like, you know, huge hug. This isn't worth it. I love you, you know, and all of a sudden, love just. Just like freaking melts away all the pain and all the conflict, and it's that simple. But that sometimes takes. It takes disillusion of the ego. It takes humbleness. It takes deciding that it's more worth it to simply say I love you and hug someone rather than to keep on figuring out a way to win the argument or to prove that you're right.

Yeah. What do you think that has been most pivotal for you to start to recognize that.

When it comes to love, for me, it's been my family, the realization that they're the most important thing to me. And it's impossible for me to stay close and connected to my family without the Greenfield home being absolutely filled with love. Eye gazing, snuggling, sexual connection with my wife, dates and time, mindful, devoted, focused time with my children. The amount of happiness and fulfillment that that brings, that. That pouring that amount of love into my home brings. That's where it started for me. And then from there, realizing that that same type of familial love that you give to your wife or your spouse or your children is the same type of love that you can take out into the world, into your career. Right? And I don't think I have even come close to bringing to the world. From stage, on my podcast, in my writings, in my interaction with people, I haven't come close to expressing the same amount of love in those scenarios as I do in the Greenfield home, you know, when I'm just there with my wife and my boys and I'm currently on almost like a quest to take that same love that I've experienced with my family and bring that forth into the rest life of my. The world. But for me, it had to start at home with my wife and with my boys. You know, the deep realization that it's love and connection with the family that kind of equips me and empowers me to go forth and bring that same love to the rest of the world. Because my MO for the longest time was like, you know, you have your family time, then you go out in the world and then you're that lone independent wolf, you know, who's, you know, all about business and, you know, and very didactic, you know, education, teaching others about fitness and health and nutrition, but with nowhere near the amount of love that's expressed on, like with the family, you know, on the home front. And I recently read a book, I believe it was called the Second Mountain or something like that. But it's about how we spend much of our lives climbing this first mountain. And career, success, finances, like making it almost from a business standpoint. And we reach the top of that first mountain in a very independent way. And when we get to the top of that first mountain, sometimes cancer or sickness or conflict or bankruptcy or something can throw us down from the top of that first mountain down into a valley. And that's sometimes what happens is we're down there in the valley, sometimes we're just still at the top of the first mountain and we get that realization that there's not as much fulfillment and happiness that we've gotten by climbing to the top of that first mountain as we anticipated or expected when we were climbing it. And at that point we realized there's a second mountain. And that second mountain is a mountain where the top of it is where true fulfillment lies. It is a mountain that we climb with others. It's a mountain where we discover interdependence and community and family. And some of those things we were talking about earlier, that deep human primal urge for connection and relationships. And that second mountain might be something completely different, like founding a charitable organization or taking your time that you spent on the business and focusing instead on music or art that touches other people's hearts or building a community or, you know, getting to know your neighbors better or whatever the case may be. But it's that second mountain that's the most important mountain. And I, I feel like, you know, for me, I'm kind of like, you know, 1/20 of the way up that second mountain after climbing that first mountain and realizing that there's a lot frickin more to life than, you know, what you experience at the top of that first mountain.

Yeah, I feel like one of my biggest fears would be that I would die, leave this body before reaching the false summit of the first mountain. And at that point you essentially missed out on life.

Yeah, yeah, you did. And I guess, you know, the thing is, it's not like the first mountain is bad. The first mountain is Maslow's hierarchy.

Yeah, it's a lesson, right.

You have to get shelter and food and currency and to a certain extent the ability to be able to get by and survive before you're almost like fully equipped to climb that second mountain. I think that some people kind of climb the first and second mountain at the same time develop a business that's just extremely. Others facing and is doing a great deal of good in the world. And I think that that's a very fortunate place to be in. But I don't think people should beat themselves up for trying to make a career and get some money in their bank account and figure out a way to become somewhat financially independent before turning around and saying, okay, what's next? What's greater than this? Now that I'm set, now that I've put on my own oxygen mask, how can I then go forth and help others? So I don't think there's shame in that first mountain. I just think that you definitely shouldn't fool yourself into thinking that that's, that's the end all.

Yeah. Do you think perhaps isolating those two mountains, and I'm sure there's lots more mountains beyond that into their own separate buckets, do you think that is a western culture again, post agricultural age, technological age, like going into that, like, okay, in a more natural, in quotations, whatever the heck that means, hunter, gatherer, tribal, whatever society. Do you think that those buckets would naturally more converge?

It's possible that mountains might not be the best analogy. You know, perhaps a better analogy would be chapters in a book. Right? You, chapter one, you're, you're getting to know some of the characters and laying down the background scene and you know, the, the ordinary world. And in chapters, you know, 3 and 4 and 5, maybe there's a realization that there's more to life than this and there's that resistance to the call. If we're looking at the book as the classic hero's journey and then eventually a crossing of the threshold towards something greater, and you're progressing and progressing and progressing, and you're never reading a book like that. Whether any classic hero's journey, the wizard of Oz or the Disney movie Frozen, or, or the story of Rocky Balboa or any of these heroes journeys, you're never following a book or a storyline like that and thinking that what you've just read the chapter that you're in, the chapters that came before sucked. They were just all part of the hero's journey. They were all crucial in leading up to the ultimate climax. The battle, the fight for the elixir, the return with the elixir, and the eventual, you know, happy ever after story, you know, at the very end of the book. But, you know, if you look at it as kind of a chapter by chapter type of deal, you know, there's. There's no regrets about the chapters that came before. There's just the realization that, you know, if you truly want to live out the full hero's journey, you need to have your eyes set on continuing chapter by chapter towards the resolution of the book.

Yeah, yeah. And Joe Campbell's stuff, the same. One of the steps is that is the process of detribalization, which is the exact same thing that Terrence was saying. And lots of other people say, like, that's a crucial part in stepping outside. I wonder, with raising kids. Do you have any. Have you noticed the first instance of shame pop up with. With your kids? Like, you know, pre. When I am my mother and I am, you know, theory of mine, all that and the separation happened, I think it'd be hard to be ashamed of anything. But then there's a moment where, like, oh, my penis isn't big enough or my anus looks weird, or I'm not tall enough or too short or whatever.

I can't say I have, you know, our. Our house is from. From a shame standpoint, it's pretty hippy. Dippy. No, nobody's got their clothes on. You know, the mailman always has to knock on the door. Like, we're just, you know, the Greenfield boys just walk around naked and my boy sees. See me doing so many weird things, you know, whatever, with all the biohacks and infrared light panels and, you know, they'll come in to brush their teeth while dad's laying on the floor of the bathroom doing a coffee enema. Like, we're just.

There's.

There's not a lot of. Of, I guess, potential for shame in the Greenfield house. And so, no, I haven't seen that yet. But one practice that I think has been really beneficial for connectedness, not just with my wife and I, but also with my children and I has been that eye gazing that I talked about earlier. Right. Just, you know, when I can take river or I can take Terran and embrace them, you know, as usually. Usually this is as we're about to go to sleep, like before bed, when I'm in there, I've read them a story or played them the guitar or the ukulele and this is a practice that I've only adopted for the past year. But you look at your child in the eyes, and it's one of those zero judgment zones. And sometimes I'll just be like, sorry to freak you out here, but I'll just be going like this, just, like, caressing their hair, looking deep into their eyes, and they'll reach up and start to caress my hair. And you're just making this deep soul connection. And for me, it's like I see a different part of my child every time. Like the shape of their nose has changed or the. The turn of their lips, or I'll see, you know. You know, a little. A glimpse of, you know, the shape of my wife's eyes and their eyes. Or, you know, sometimes I'll look at their fingers and think about how their hands kind of look like my hands looked when. When I was 11 years old. And I think that that's a big part of it, too, is when you have that kind of a deep connection every day with. With your parent or with your child. I think it's harder to feel that shame because there's just that deep, vulnerable, open acceptance when you're right there looking into each other's eyes, you know, the same could be said for sex. I think one of the most powerful things that my wife and I have adopted as part of our sexual relationship is that same type of eye gazing, that deep spiritual connection, that foregoing of almost like the mutual masturbation that I think a lot of. A lot of sex really is for a lot of people. I mean, you rub, you're rubbing your genitals together until something explodes or something cool happens, and that's sex, right? And then you roll over and go to sleep or whatever the case may be. And I think that deep acceptance during sex as well, that deep spiritual connection is also very important with your lover.

It's interesting with you. It seems almost like you're, you know, like you're the father and you're taking care of your kids, but it almost feels as though your kids are. You could look at it from another lens and see they're here for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's really. It's. It's a. It's a great and powerful responsibility, you know, bringing another human being into the world. But it really is just. Just almost like a selfish standpoint, one of the best things you can do for yourself. I mean, not. Not only spiritually, that feeling of responsibility and that interdependence that arises when you have a child, their Interdependence on you, your interdependence on them. But just from a pure logistical standpoint. It was when I had kids that I established a trust, began to build a legacy, began to think more about the future, about my home, my castle, you know, where our roots were going to be, where we were going to live. You know, the connections to family, the living will, the testament, you know, all these things. You know, family traditions. Well, shit. What is our family tradition for Christmas? What is our family tradition for Thanksgiving? Like, how are we going to, you know, begin to build this greenfield name Greenfield traditions, Greenfield family that will hopefully go on for generations and generations, be able to help the world. It reminds me of this quote that I heard a couple of weeks ago that just really struck me. It gave me pause. It was this. You're not raising your children, you're raising your grandchildren. When you think about everything that you do with your kids, whether or not you have your phone out at the dinner table or when you're out on a date with your children, or do you have story time at night, do you play music at night, do you have a gratitude practice in the morning? Do you have a specific tradition on Christmas or on Thanksgiving? Do you have a time of the month when you might go and deliver meals on wheels or help someone or bring a bottle of wine up to the neighbors? These are the things that your children are going to be teaching to their grandchildren. And if your family practice is watching Netflix while everyone's got a tray, you know, and eating dinner, you know, in front of the TV and everyone's got their phone out, you know, when you're at the restaurant and, you know, Christmas arrives and you just kind of, you know, casually figure out if you're going to go here, are you going to go there? Like, there's no real tradition on Christmas Eve, or, you know, there's. Everybody just kind of like, hits the sack at the end of the night. There's no end cap on the day of gratitude or storytelling or music or anything like that. That's exactly what your kids are going to do with their kids and their kids with their kids. So what you do now with your children sets up just a generational butterfly effect for what's going to happen on down the line. And that's a great and powerful responsibility, realizing you're not changing. It's hard on a Thursday night when dinner rolls around to be thinking about that. Take out the gratitude journals and have a moment of parasympathetic stuff. Silence over the food and Have a wonderful chat at dinner and push the chairs away and you know, everybody cleans up the kitchen together and you go upstairs and maybe have a little story time, play some music, do the eye gazing and the snuggling, you know, all of that gets instilled into your children and carries on to the future generation. So it's a great and powerful responsibility to be able to build that and you know, it stacks, you know, just that stuff. Simple practice one night of the week and the next night of the week, you know, it, it, it's going to streamline down to future generations.

Yeah. I think if it's like you can't, at some point you have to pay the responsibilities like you have to invest and do the thing and you can temporarily push things off and kind of spend on credit, but at some point you're just squishing the toothpaste around, all of a sudden you have this backfill on the other end. You'll have to pay bigger at some point. Point, you know. So I think like the way that we started the conversation is how can we effectively integrate all of these health inducing variables so that I just have this well being sandwich that I'm moving through the world with. You know, I think that that's like the more that we can do that, the happier life that we will have in the future and then the less likely we are to have, you know, lots of, lots of debt.

Yeah. The other thing I would encourage to people who are listening is if you have an exercise habit or you have a meditation habit or a breath work habit or a cold pool habit or a sauna habit or any of these things that you kind of use to keep you sane during the day to, you know, to tweak your biology to maintain your health. I was once reading in a, in a magazine, it was a triathlon magazine about being an invisible exerciser. You get up at 4am, you just get all this shit done so that you can be present for your family later on in the day. But I kind of think it's the opposite. I think as much as you can include if you have children, your children and those type of habits. And I do this with my kids sometimes, so I'm going to do a 30 minute sauna session. They'll come in for the first five or ten minutes, sit, meditate. Alright guys, you're good. You know, go, go do your thing or I'll go jump in the cold pool and they'll come in and jump in with me and they might, you know, stay In a minute. And I'm swimming around in there for five minutes. But just these brief exposures for your offspring to be able to get a flavor of these habits that you're using to make your lives better, your life better, that keeps them from whatever, you know, turning 18, going to college, gaining weight on beer and pizza, having no clue how to be mindful or meditate, starting their job, climbing that first mountain, rinsing, washing, repeating and re. Experiencing the errors that you might have gone through. And then when they're 35, they discover intermittent fasting and meditation and sauna and breath work and cold. But returning to that, you're raising your grandchildren, not your children. They might not teach that to their kids because you didn't teach it to them. So the more you can expose your kids to this kind of stuff early on in life, the better.

Yeah, we'll wrap this up. One thing that's just popping up is there's a guy called Albert Morabian came up with this thing called the5538.7 principle. He's a UCLA professor. And essentially what it was is that 55% of our communication was based off of body language. We move and 38 was tonality. And then 7% was the actual words that we're saying. That's based. If there is some type of incongruency there, you know, so if I say something when my body says something else, 93% of the time you're like, no, I don't think that's. That's right. And I think it's the same thing with when you're spending time with your family or any relationship. Like your kids. My sense is they probably don't give that many shits what you say. You know, it's more like actually being with you. What's your level of compassion and empathy and listening and what do you actually do? And then the other thing that pops up is I think it's really valuable to have momentum going into a connection with somebody so you can't just be a jerk off for the whole day and eating the wrong food and thinking about the wrong things and looking at the wrong things and, you know, and then all of a sudden, shove, okay, it's family time. You know, it's like your kids are sensitive, sensitive beings and they're picking up on you from before right now.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah. The power of demonstration and practicing what you preach, especially when it comes to parenting, cannot be undervalued. I mean, and I parent with this love and logic philosophy where you don't tell your kids what to do. You educate them on the consequences of their decisions and then let them make the decision. And. But you must, in order for that type of parenting to be successful, demonstrate in your day to day habits what the right decisions actually are. Right. So it's never like, you know, whatever. River Taren, go take your vitamin D supplement. Right. It's like dad just gets up in the morning, I take my vitamin D and usually I do it when they're sitting there at the breakfast nuke table and they can see me doing what I'm doing. And the same can be said for eating habits. Right. Like if you tell them that gluten is bad for them, but then the whole family goes out to the steakhouse and you're punishing four slices of that sourdough bread they bring out, then that sends a message to your kids. So that's again, having children really makes you step up your game big time.

Thanks for doing this.

Thanks for having me on, man.

I appreciate our conversations.

Yeah, it's always good to do the breathwork and the ice before beforehand to put you in a good place.

And then for folks listening, we'll have the, the video of Breathwork Ice and maybe we'll put some kind of like tutorial instructional thing on.

Yeah.

How to make that shit happen.

We'll photoshop away all the shrinkage that occurs in the ice bath.

Oh yeah, right. That was my first nude ice bath. Pre podcast.

Yeah. You stepped up blur as much as possible now as we, as we were talking about earlier, I think before we started recording, you'll need to blur at least. Least down to my kneecaps. That's right. I'm sure.

No, that's right.

Yeah. There's a lot of blurring.

Yeah, it's going to be big blurry. Yeah, it's going to be very expensive. Where should people go from here? Where's the best direction?

Got a new book, BoundlessBook.com and I've been working on that thing for like three years. It's finally out, it's ready and it's just like a massive tome for all things body mind spirit optimization. So a lot in there and I'm super proud of it. And I guess that'd be my only ask is people go check out the book. So tell people about Aaron Alexander and where they can get more of you.

Yeah. So have the Align Method is coming out December 24th and so I don't know when we're gonna publish this.

The Align Method is the book that's the book.

Yeah, yeah, it's coming up. So that's been. I co wrote that with Phil White who he's done stuff with Kelly Starrett and Andy galpin and Brian McKenzie and Laird Hamilton and all sorts of great folks. Each chapter I had reviewed from the world leading expert on whatever the thing is breaking down the way that sight affects your physiology and sound and body language and touch and all the things that we kind of briefly touched on this conversation. So that's@thealignedbook.com is the pre sale and then Instagram handle is aligned podcast. And this will go up on the aligned podcast as well.

Yeah, the alignbook.com and I did thumb through it, you guys, and it's, it's, it's good photos, exercises, practical, which I like.

It's all practical, essentially. It's, it's written for a like the Instagram Instagram age, you know, so it's, it's written in like breaths so you can take information in and then you can kind of. There's a moment, then you go to the next heading and there's like humor and philosophy and mechanics.

Did you get like butt implants or calf implants since it's Instagram age?

Not on this one, but yeah, I think on the next one I'll probably have to step up my game.

Just go full on Kardashian. Yeah, Good man.

I think I'm ready.

All right, cool. Thanks, man.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.