Reset Your Mind with Movement with Aaron Alexander & Jim Kwik

Thanks for joining us, buddy.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I appreciate it. We're doing this live right now to talk about a brain reset. You know, 2020 has been pretty difficult for, for a lot of people, whether we're talking about their mental health, their social health, their emotional health, their physical health maybe also as well. And sometimes we just need a reboot. And for those of you who are just joining us, I'm here with a good friend, my movement coach, Aaron Aaron Alexander. He's the author of The Align Method and also the Align Podcast, which we've done each other's shows numerous times. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, I wanted to bring some of my coaches and my mentors, people who have guided me through various times, you know, especially, you know, more difficult times. You know, I believe difficult times can define us, they could diminish us, or they could develop us. We ultimately decide. But when we're talking about this thing, in the past you and I have talked about things, and I will link also to various episodes that we've done. We've done everything from breathing to hanging to floor culture. I mean, we go deep in so many different things, you know. How are you doing this year?

I've been surprisingly great, which, yeah, I mean, I've found the last 9 months, you know, there's been lots of kind of strange, weary, anxiety-ridden moments, especially, you know, early on with the whole coronavirus stuff. But overall, the benefits that I've derived from it, one is we've been— we talked about before, like, I've reverted more to a minimalistic lifestyle.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so I sold most of the stuff that wasn't really necessary in my world, and I sublet my place in Santa Monica. And so I've kind of Going into a place where I just feel much lighter, at least from like a materialistic perspective. And also, it's presented the opportunity to reevaluate what actually freaking matters in my life. You know, so I think pre-corona, I was much more just driven towards more. You know, just more everything. Just, you know, say a thing, I wanted more of it. Throughout this, it's definitely— I've been— I think, realigned, you could say, towards the things that I care about most, which in large part is, you know, relationships and a deeper relationship with myself, with my family, with friends, and kind of the small group of people that are— will always be there.

Yeah.

You know, as opposed to so much putting into— so much emphasis into the more of community and everything, but more kind of focusing on, like, the parts that That really matter and evaluating what that means.

Well, let's talk about that. When we're talking about resetting ourselves, you know, our mindset, resetting, you know, ourselves, let's talk about how do you align your environment? How do you align your lifestyle so that you can move, so we can make progress? Yeah.

Well, first, I think something is like a key takeaway to tight point that people can tinker with. I like, as you know, I like giving people granular, step-by-step guidance on like, okay, you can actually do this thing.

Yeah.

And not have so much just meta, like, possibilities, but more like, just do this, you'll notice change immediately. And that's essentially what the Align Method book is all about, is, you know, all of those tools that we could put in between into one book. And one of the main ones that people, you know, we're, for the most part, Western culture is consumed by screen time. It's not a moralistic bad, good. It just is. The amount of time that we're spending on screens, like on average for people— Here we are now. Right, exactly. On average for people, I mean, I don't even know what it is, probably 5, 6 hours a day, probably even more than that depending upon who you are. What I think perhaps probably very few people realize or really ponder on is your eyes, they're a continuation of your central nervous system. So you might think of your central nervous system as being like, oh, it's like I learned about that in high school physiology. That was like your spine and your brain, and then you have the peripheral parts. It's kind of like these 2 separate units. But you're literally— your visual system, that's a continuation of that central channel.

Mm-hmm.

And when we are using our eyes, we're tuning our minds, you could say. We're tuning our autonomic nervous system. And when we're focused in with that myopic vision, it's putting us more into this executive function, you know, release the cortisol and the norepinephrine and kind of putting us into like, okay, like fight-flight, get after it. Again, no moralistic bad-good. Fight-flight sympathetic nervous system is awesome. You know, you want that when you wake up in the morning. You want that when there is a metaphoric lion in the room and you need to fight or flight or do whatever it is. So it's a really valuable system, but for the most part, we spend so much time kind of almost stuck in that overdrive type position, and it happens with the way that we use our eyes. We're focused in too much. When you go into the other side of that vision, the panoramic vision, like right now behind you, I have this view of the ocean, and the windows are open, I'm getting natural light coming in.

Mm-hmm.

That's a whole other conversation, what light does. But I'm able to relax my eyes and kind of take in— take in the whole room, you know, and not have this isolated shark-focused vision, but kind of come out into this expansive— just like I'm looking over the savanna.

Right.

So if you were a hunter-gatherer, or one of your ancestors, or anybody even today, and they were looking out across the savanna, or out through the woods, or out up into the sky, into the clouds, Like, what do you think their state would be?

Yeah.

Right? Like, what would it be?

I mean, it sounds very expansive. It sounds also that since they could take in more, they probably also feel more safe also.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah. So if you get up onto the top of a mountain, you get up to the top of a tree, you look at any hawk, hawk will go up on the highest point. My dad was a falconer growing up, and so that was something that you learned, is that when the hawk would come in and land on your arm, you'd put some like chicken guts or whatever you'd have in your hand Hawk would come out from the tree and you'd want to put your hand up above the height of your head because the hawk will come down to the highest point because it wants to feel safe.

Right.

It wants to be able to take in that full expansive view of everything around you.

There's no threats or—

Correct. And so what that you think like, oh yeah, cool, just hawk likes, hawk likes high stuff, period. You know, it's like, well, the hawk is massaging its nervous system Subconsciously, in a sense, to one just have the best angle to see prey, but also to to not feel like prey. You know, so when you put yourself into these these positions, we subconsciously actually end up moving ourselves into these various positions as a way of you could say downregulating our nervous system to rest and digest and calm and go into that parasympathetic state. And Western culture, the mold that we exist in. In large part, if we're just dust in the wind and allow ourselves to be malleable in the present Western model, it will end up kind of painting us into this corner of stress. Again, it's not a moralistic—

Right.

This is bad, this is good, I'm on a team, or anything like that. It just is. You think of your autonomic nervous system as this thing, it's like, oh, it's auto. I don't have any control. That's ridiculous. You've got all kinds of control. You have control of your autonomic nervous system based off of the temperature in the room, the music in the room, the air quality, the types of lights, the way you're using your eyes, touch. All of those immediately sends this signal into your whole physiology and you can start to kind of— it's like a rudder changing the direction of your boat, being your nervous system.

What would your recommendation be for people who are watching this on screens? Obviously, what options can they have to be able to have more input and influence on their autonomic system?

Well, because you're such a beautiful sight, they're probably going to be— it's going to be hard to take their eyes off of you. So I would say, like, take all of Jim in bites. So have a moment where you're looking at the screen and you're just like, cool, I'm gathering the information that I need.

Right.

And then it's like, cool, sweet. Do I really need to be focused in on this right now? If you've been focusing on stuff on screens all day long, my guess for the health of your nervous system, the answer is probably no. You probably don't really need to be looking at the screen right now. So you could take just little breaks, just like you would with breathing breaks. You take a little break and just come off of the screen for a moment and just, You can do it right now. Let's everybody do it.

Yeah.

If you're listening, watching, whatever, just take a moment. Whatever you were watching, whatever you're focusing on now, take a moment and just kind of take in the whole— relax the eyes a little bit, kind of almost like space out just a bit. And now as you're doing that, you're relaxing the vision. Notice if that creates any change in your felt state. You might feel a little bit calmer already. And then I'm a big fan, as you already know, and this is what the, you know, the Align Method book's all about, is stacking these variables on top of each other. So the next point that you could go to from this, if you want to calm the nervous system, our eyes are all— we're still in panoramic, we're still kind of spacing out a little bit. Next, you could emphasize the exhalation. So the exhalation is another— or the breath is another one of those toggles that you can switch into overdrive, you know, get stuff done mode. Great that we have that. And then you can also switch it back into downregulation, calm, rest, restore.

Mm-hmm.

So the way that we do that is through emphasizing more of this. Ah.

I think everyone should do this, because we're talking about resetting. We can reset with our eyes, and we can reset with our breath.

Correct. So it's another tool, you know, and so that's what I've found to be really interesting, because I spent, you know, 14 years or so working with clients doing, you know, movement stuff and personal training and, you know, fitness coaching and all that. And, you know, now it's been longer than that, but it's— it kind of started to shift beyond just the, the model of like, okay, how do we get a 6-pack? How do we get sweet lats and biceps and all that?

Mm-hmm.

How do we lose a bunch of weight or gain a bunch of weight or any of those goals? And got more into like, how do we Start to seamlessly integrate the concept of fitness into who you are all throughout the day, as opposed to being something that— it's like something I put— I compartmentalize into this little container that I do 45 minutes, 3 days a week.

Yeah.

You know, and if you can start to take some of these basic principles, acknowledging that, okay, the way that I breathe, that's a branch of my fitness.

Right.

The way that I look and use my eyes, another branch of my fitness. The way that I gesticulate and move my hands and communicate. You know, I go to Italy, everyone's like, ah, da, da, da, da, like they're fitnessing themselves all day long just through their communication patterns. You know, so they're literally tuning their nervous system just through the manner in which they use their hands and their feet and their facial expressions just to hail a cab. We can start to take those principles into our lives and then fitness doesn't need to stop. It truly is the fountain of youth. If you can start to tap into these principles and make them who you are as opposed to a thing that you do, you will be forever vital and then you'll transition out of this body.

Sign me up. Well, when people are thinking about— for a lot of people in 2020, it was very stressful with their looking at the news on their screens, and then their breath pattern changes when they're in stress.

Certainly.

What's that about?

One-to-one relationship, because we attach to certain spokes. Someone jumped on the nutrition spoke, or someone jumped on the fitness spoke, or Cold plunge or breathwork or, you know, God, you know, whatever the thing is that— or religion, whatever the thing is that makes— lights them up, makes them feel like, wow, like this is it. But in fact, you can't— you know, we're like a— if you're familiar with Buckminster Fuller, he created these things called tensegrity structures. What a tensegrity structure is essentially is if you pull on any one part of a tensegrity structure, the whole system goes, whoa, and forms with it. So you can't affect any part of Jim without affecting every part of Jim and Jim's relationships and the manner in which he lives in his home and his business.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, so if we impact any part, it goes through the whole. So if I impact my vision, then that impacts my breath, it impacts the way that I produce neurochemicals and hormones, and, you know, and if I take some hormone supplement, It impacts my breath, it impacts my vision. So how many people have been in a relationship with somebody, you know, me with a, you know, in my instance, with a woman, then she gets on birth control or off birth control and all of a sudden everything changes? It's like a different personality can even come out. They can move differently, they can express differently. So we pulled on the hormone lever and all of a sudden they start to kind of walk and conversate and think differently. So you could also pull on, you know, let's maybe do some breath practice or maybe do some hip mobility work, you know, or open up our spine, and then that will start to impact the way that you communicate, which, you know, it just trickles through the rest of your life.

So is there, if we were to offer everybody a 3rd lever besides the digital component and breath, Like if we're going to deregulate that, that their nervous system to help them to have to do this reset.

Yeah.

So, you know, they're aligning their, their sight, they're aligning their breath. What would be a good third one?

Body language. And so, so acknowledging that your physical body, we communicate, uh, what is it, 35, 35, 38, 55, 7. Principle is an idea that came up in the '60s around the way that we communicate.

7% words.

7% is the actual words coming out of our face, then 38% is the tonality of our voice. So if I talk kind of slow, a little bit deeper, a little bit calmer, like you can Feel a difference.

Yeah.

If I'm da da da da da da da, it might feel like oh man, I'm I'm giving out all this great information. It's wow! I'm like so much was packed into that. You know, but it's like yeah, but we all feel uncomfortable.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I wasn't really able to absorb it because it was kind of contracting me. You know, so pausing is such a powerful tool in communication. You know, and then these the the fifty-five is is the our our body language and that it's. It stems more into, you know, it's even subtle things like the dilation of your pupils and, you know, or your cheeks blushing and all these subtle subconscious things that we're always picking up on but we might not realize it consciously. The majority of our communication is through body language, you know, and so something you could start to pay attention to with the way that you exist in yourself and communicate in your life is just doing a little audit. Noticing, are my shoulders creeping up to my ears? Are they rolled forward? Am I chronically sitting at the coffee shop and kind of practicing this hunched over? I saw our camera guy just change his position.

Mm-hmm.

So just that instance of paying attention, saying like, oh, where's my body at? Immediately everybody in the room goes, oh shit, you're right. Damn, I've just been caving over. And like, what does that position mean? What that position means, if you were just an animal in nature, you know, you didn't know what a cell phone was or a computer was or operating a camera and all these fancy technological things, you just saw that animal just moving through nature in that position, you'd say, oh, that animal is sick. You'd say that animal is afraid.

Mm-hmm.

You'd say that animal is defeated. You'd say that animal is defending. You know, one of those. Is that position. And then, so okay, let's see the other animal that's moving. Shoulders are back, their organs are open, their lungs are expanded, their breath is in the diaphragm, the abdomen, low back, and they're just this— it's almost like they're floating as they're walking, like there's a lightness to their movement. What's your sense of that animal? You're like, oh wow, that animal's winning.

Yeah.

I want to— I don't know what's going on, but I feel like it would be wise if I was on that animal's team, you know, because wherever they're going or wherever they came from, it seems like it's to the benefit of their biology, you know. It seems like they could probably build some shelter and they could probably protect the tribe and they could probably problem-solve because they have that spaciousness and that ease in the way that they live, you know. So you can start to just do a simple check, go through You know, and, you know, where are my shoulders? What's the shape of my spine? Am I kind of hunched over right now? Do I have this forward head posture stuff going on?

Mm-hmm.

You know, where's the location of my knees in relation to my feet? Are my knees kind of collapsing into that valgus position? You know, just going through checking, how's my feet feel on the ground? You know, how's my— that relationship knees to feet? How's the relationship hips to knees to feet? How's the relationship up through my spine? How's my breath? Where are my shoulders? Are my hands contracted? What's my face like? Do I got resting bitch face going on? Do I feel relaxed and calm? Where's my breath? Am I breathing through the nose? Am I mouth breathing?

Hmm.

Are my eyes squinting and contracting? You know, all of those, all of those. If you just— people just do that now, and I guarantee it will change your state. It might increase the likelihood of you getting that job that you want. It might increase the likelihood of being attracted to a potential partner. You know, and ultimately, you know, you're your best partner. And so if you feel good in that relationship in your physical home, then, you know, life gets better. There's nothing magic about that. There's nothing some snake oil sales thing. It's free. It's just bring some attention into this and, you know, see what happens.

Everyone who's watching this right now, we're talking about resetting. You know, you can reset your brain, your business, you can reset your life by resetting these 3 things.

That's it.

You know, exactly how you look at something, you can reset your breathing, you could reset and check in with your body, your physiology, and you reset your life that way.

That's correct.

Everyone who's watching this live in our private Facebook group, which we have like 100,000 people, Or if they're watching this on Zoom, what can they— let's ask them a question so they can post it in the comments. What's one thing that you want them to engage with or share?

I would say, when was the last time you took an eye break?

When is the last time that you took an eye break?

Yeah, hopefully it was in the last 20 minutes.

And maybe they can even listen to this with their eyes closed.

Yeah, that's whatever.

And as they're breathing and checking with their posture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that would be a great, a great starting point.

So put that in the comments and also share this as we're going live right now. Share this and get more of your friends to be able to join us. And Aaron, I'm so glad that, that you joined us today.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Aaron Alexander, how do people find out more about, about your, your work?

Well, so yeah, if you found value in these 3 basic principles. There's about 16 more in the Align Method book, you know, so that was the intention with writing the book, was really to make it be simple, easy, effective, the things that we— it would have been lovely if we had learned in elementary school and middle school and high school, but it's just not a part of the programming.

Yeah.

You know, so I took what I never learned when I was obsessing over bodybuilding and personal training and all that as a kid You know, and what I would have loved to have had, I put all that into this. You know, and then there's the Align Method online program as well, if people are interested in going into more of like a living video version of that. And all that stuff can be found at alignpodcast.com. And then we just finished a conversation on the Align Podcast that whenever you put this out, I'll co-release that because that conversation was lovely.

Amazing.

So we'll co-release that.

All right, Aaron, stay tuned for our next guest. I want to thank everyone for joining us for this big mental reboot, this brain reset, and stay tuned.

Thanks so much, man.

Hi, Kwik Brain, it's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe Subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing, because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.