246: How Your Body Reflects Your Personality with Aaron Alexander

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. If it is your first time listening, Welcome. I am so grateful to have you here. And this is a wonderful conversation to get started with because this mind body connection is a huge part of the work that I do in Ayurveda, the world's oldest health system in the sister science of yoga, based on the mind body connection. And this conversation is with my dear friend Erin Alexander, all about really the science behind this and how we can see that our physical bodies are a representation of what is happening with our personalities. So just a little background on how Ayurveda sees this, that there are three doshas, three archetypes. And these archetypes exist in all people, all places, all things. And we're all a combination of all three. And these archetypes are vata, air, pitta, fire and kapha, earth. So those of us who are more airy, we have qualities of the air. So think cold, dry, fast moving, ever changing. So what that shows up like in the mind is someone who is creative and eccentric and big picture oriented and thinks outside the box and always coming up with new ideas. But the shadow side of, of that is maybe they overthink and overanalyze and get anxious and you know, all of those thoughts in their mind can circulate into a tornado and they can overthink things and that leads to insomnia. And then physically in the body, they tend to have cold, dry bodies, they tend to have a hard time holding onto body weight, they tend to again have qualities of the air, bloating, gas, constipation. And then somebody who has more pitta has qualities of the fire. So personality wise, they are someone who is ambitious and hard working and goal oriented and structured and knows what they want and is going to go get it. But the shadow side of that is sometimes life doesn't go your way and the things that you want don't go according to schedule. And that is when that pitta person can snap and become impatient and irritated and angry and frustrated. And then in the body that manifests as feeling hot, overheated, rashes, inflammation, hives, hyperacidity. So if you're experiencing pitta, those are the signals that are going to show up for you. And then the last dosha is kapha. So these are people who are grounded. Again, qualities of the earth. They are slow moving, they're habitual, they like the routine, they're Calm, grounded, peaceful, anchored. They. They give a lot to people, nurturing, mama bear energy. But the shadow side of that is sometimes they don't set boundaries. They don't stand up for what they really believe in. They think that, you know, it's going to be too hard for me to take my dreams off the ground or build a business or end this relationship and start a new one or whatever it is, so they can get stuck in old habits and things that are not serving their highest evolvement. And then physically, that manifests as feeling stuck in the body. So feeling like you're gaining weight, you're feeling tired, you're lethargic, you don't want to exercise, exercise, you don't want to try new things, you don't want to stimulate yourself. And it can also lead to issues in the throat chakra area. So phlegm, mucus, allergies, et cetera. So these are how the doshas show up and I wanted to give you that little recap. I've done tons of podcasts on ayurveda. I've written two books on it, Idiot's Guide to Ayurveda, and Eat Feel Fresh. On my website you can discover your dosha with my quiz iamsaharrose.com you will see the quiz right up there and you will discover your dosha and see what percentage of each of them you are and what you are in your mind and what you are in your body. And I give you videos according to your dosha. There's so much content there. My website is iamsaharose.com my books are there too. But I want to share this with you before this conversation because we actually talk about how the doshas are related to these archetypes that Aaron speaks about. So this is an awesome conversation because Aaron is someone that I love just geeking out with, especially on this mind body connection, because he's a Rolfer. So he comes from a body work perspective. And with his new book, the Align Method, he's done tons of research. And it's so awesome to see that, you know, the two worlds coming together, the ancient and the modern, are leading to the same things and the same realizations. And even with like modern sports, nutrition, et cetera, it still goes back to the same foundings that Ayurveda found thousands of years ago, which just shows that truth is universal and never changing. So this is a great conversation that.

We actually had in his sauna, which was a first.

I've never had a podcast episode in a sauna before. But it just shows the kind of person that he is. He's always, you know, improving his body and learning new ways to connect. And a huge thing we talked about in this podcast is the importance of sitting on the floor. Like, guys, if there's one thing you want to start doing and you want to tell your family, especially elder relatives, to do, is to sit on the floor. Because there's virtually no, you know, elderlies falling on the floor and breaking their hips in countries where people commonly sit on the floor, whereas here in the US and the Western world, it's the leading cause of injury. You know, my grandfather recently fell and had to go to the hospital and now has to, like, stay in a rehab. And this happens all the time. People falling and getting injured, people falling and dying. And if we sit on the floor, then if we fall, it's not a big deal because we know how to get back up from that position. But what happens is we stop sitting on the floor. We're always sitting in chairs, so our bodies are not used to sitting on floors anymore. And we become so afraid of falling because we feel like we won't be able to get up. And the truth is we might not be able to get up if we are always sitting in chairs. And that creates us becoming hunchbacked and our bones not getting used to sitting cross legged, et cetera. So one thing you want to take away from this podcast, sit on the floor, eat on the floor, have conversations on the floor, and if you're on a chair, like, put your legs up, sit in cross position, move your body around because that opens up your hips and it's going to prevent injury and it's going to keep you living longer. Like, guys, I can't even believe that this is not on the front page news. This is the most important piece of information out there. Sit on the floor. So we talk all about the stuff in this conversation. We go in, we dive deep, we keep it flowing. So without further ado, let's welcome Aaron Alexander to the Highest Self podcast. Are you calling in your spiritual soul sisters? I'm talking about those people that will support you on your journey towards becoming your highest self. Self. Well, doors are opening back up for Rose Gold Goddesses, my sacred sisterhood collective with community, content, events and so much more. We're going to be kicking it off with my absolutely free five day Rose Gold Goddess challenge, where we embody five goddess archetypes and then inviting you to join this community. So many people have met their best friends, business partners and healers that have supported them on their path. Because frankly, we can't do this alone. We need community. Think of this like your spiritual gym membership. We have my awaken your powers video in there, my talks at Google, discover your dharma course, and so much more available for you for a very low monthly cost. So if you want to join in on this and join us on the free rose gold goddess challenge, head over to rosegoldgoddesses.com again. That is rosegoldgoddesses.com and I am so excited to meet you in there. This episode is brought to you by four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is an incredible mushroom elixir company. I proudly drink their elixirs every single day. My favorite is their chai mix. It is insanely delicious. I quit chocolate cold turkey and what helped me was drinking this chai mix every day. And best of all, they use stevia to sweeten it. And there's no sugars like the chai lattes you'll find at Starbucks or wherever else. And the mushrooms are really good for balancing your hormones, helping heal adrenal fatigue, healing your body on an adaptogenic level. So adaptogens really kind of relate to what your body needs. So if you our high stress will bring you down. If you need more energy, it will bring you up. And that's what's so amazing about adaptogens. They adapt to your body. And mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms, have a lot of adaptogenic properties. So you can head over to their website, 4sigmatic.com F O U R S I G M A T-I C.com forward/sahara. I have a little shop up there with my favorite four Sigmatic products, so you can try it out. And you can also get 15% off any four sigmatic product using the code Sahara.

Welcome, Aaron, to the highest self podcast. It's so good to have you here.

Thank you for having me here in my sauna.

It is. I've never done this before. A podcast episode in Asana. This is definitely a first. I hope not a last. I hope all of the future guests I have have saunas that invite me to.

Yeah, it's a good habit.

It's really good multitasking.

I'm with that.

I agree. So the first question I'd love to ask you is, what makes you your highest self?

Well, so in the book, the last I think sentence or paragraph, I quote a guy called Anthony Taylor. Still. Andrew Taylor. Still. He's the founder of osteopathy. And the quote is that harmony exists where obstructions or harmony dwells where obstructions do not exist. And so I would say my highest self is always present. I just tend to have kind of like tendrils of bullshit that get in the way sometimes. So when I can forget about those tendrils of bullshit via things like dance, via things like breath, via sexuality, via peak experiences, via meditation, any of those moments. So my highest self is anything that moves away the obstructions.

Love that. And it's so. I mean, aligned. Alignment is also the name of your book and everything, but it's so aligned with everything that you're writing about and you're sharing about. Because we were naturally born with essentially these perfect bodies, these perfect vessels. And because of stress, because of cultural upbringing, because of the tools that we are told to sit in or work in, etc. We create these obstructions which later create obstructions in our minds. So can you speak a little bit to this mind, body, body, mind connection?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so one thing, it's interesting, I was thinking as we got in here we are. It's like why would you record a thing in a sauna? Why would you drink hot tea before you do that? We're always adapting and forming to our environment. So a fancy 50 cent term for be embodied cognition. So you are continually. There's various different research that shows, for example, you might have heard of this, like if you're holding a heavy clipboard, you will perceive the person that you're. If you're reading a resume from somebody, you'll perceive them as being. It's like a weightier, more prominent, powerful resume.

Or maybe like they have a lot of baggage. That's what I.

It could be that too. Yeah, but you're always depending on your.

Relationship too with heaviness.

There's a similar thing in like the embodied cognition realm of if you are holding an icy beverage while meeting somebody versus warming, holding like a warm cup of tea. Warm cup of tea will cause you to start to view the world around you as being more of a warmer, safe, cozier type place. So we're always being influenced by our environment. Then more apparently would be like the shape of your home. If all you have in your home to sit on is couches and chairs and you have the dinner room table and then you have the TV on the wall and then you get sit into your car and then you go and do weightlifting machines at the the gym where you're sitting down in that position, then you're in your cell phone, then you go to the office, the cubicle, you're in those walls you know, and it's like that same shape all day long. It starts to augment your perception of the world and obviously augment the structure of your body, which then there's all sorts of interesting, interesting research of how the structure of your body affects the way that you think and the way that you feel. So our environment, we're literally continually being formed by the shape of our environment. And our structural shape informs our thoughts and our feelings, and vice versa. Our thoughts and our feelings inform our structure. So if you go to Burning man, or you have some psychedelic thing, or have some near death experience or have some big relationship thing that may cause you to go back to your home and say, man, this place is too dark. I got to get rid of this couch. I got to change these paintings up. You know, I want to. I just want open space, you know. So did the open space change you or did your mental emotional state change that space so you could fit this new model of yourself inside of it? It's always. It's two ends of the same rope.

So true. And I mean, you know, just that picture you painted of the person who is sitting all throughout their house, in their car, in their office, sex, everything sitting, and then face forward, face looking down. And I just think of pretty much everyone I know, everyone in my family who lived their entire lives like that, who, like, I don't think even physically can sit on the floor at this point because their hips can't even open to that. So what does that do to the mind?

Well, I mean, you know this as well as anybody. And it seems like you're like in this journey with yourself presently of feeling. I could ask you just the same, like, how do you feel when you dance?

Yeah. Open, liberated, expanded.

Yeah. And your brain's not this isolated organ that's sitting inside this vacuum between your ears.

Right. I think we associate like that sitting as normal. So I should just feel normal, you know, and then that normal becomes numb, contracted, restricted. But that's our baseline.

That's your baseline? Yeah. So it's like there's like farm animals, chickens, when they're like farm raised or pasture raised sometimes what that can mean is that they have the option to go into the pasture and, you know, roam and all that stuff. But most of their life is actually inside this dark barn. And so when you open the door for them, they see the light and it's like scary. And they're like, oh, no, it's like, oh, yeah, the pasture. It's like, well, if you're so accustomed to A certain baseline of normal to feel something that's a little bit more of like a potent full experience can almost feel like too much. It's like when people get surgery to be able to hear again for the first time, their ears, their hearing will be so sensitive because they're not accustomed to actually perceiving sound. It's a similar thing when you take your shoes off for the first time. You know, like, I just got back from Maui. I was there for 10 days, and we roam around and, like, very rarely wore shoes. And during that time frame, you're stepping on roots and rocks and pavement and all this different stuff. But it takes time for your body to be able to actually perceive all of its senses. If it's accustomed to kind of wearing, like, cushions, patting yourself from actually feeling. Same thing with love, relationships, all that stuff.

Yeah, I was gonna say that's such a good metaphor of life, of just we're all those chickens in our coops. And the door, we see a glimpse of that wide open door of total freedom, Moksha. And we're like, I don't know, like, I'm just gonna stay where I am. And, you know, most of us, we go to the jungle, we go to this place of nature, and we're like, get me out of here. I need civilization.

I have my cell phone. Let me check my messages.

Exactly. I mean, and also how you were saying how you were walking barefoot in Maui. Like, I noticed this in myself. I want to walk barefoot. I try to go hiking barefoot. And my feet hurt so bad because it's not used to the rocks and the different textures, etc. And I'm like, wow, I've become so civilized that I can't deal with nature anymore. Anymore.

Yeah, yeah, your feet. So there's 7,000 nerve endings in each foot, and they're continually sending this whole cascade of information through the rest of your body telling you where you're at in space. There's an interesting study that was done. This is pretty contentious, but you look up in PubMed, look up high heels and schizophrenia. Just look those words up and you'll see the research around it. Potential correlation of people that are chronically stuck in that plantar flexed position and they're ungrounded all day long. So wearing high heels every now and again in the book, I'm like, you know, if you're wearing high heels for 45 minutes, an hour, an event, it's like, it's not a big deal. In fact, it's probably a hermetic stressor that your body's able to adapt to. But if your continual thing is, I always need to be this height that I'm actually not, and I always need to have my booty popping. And this is just who I am. You know, for you to go out of that, you're like, oh, I feel like you feel almost naked for a moment. And so a person that is in that situation where they're continually lifted off the ground, they're not able to take their ankle through that full range of motion that actually, again, your brain doesn't exist in a vacuum. So that plantar dorsiflexion of the ankle activates the dopaminergic circuits in the brain, so it activates your neurochemistry. Similar to the way that after you go do your booty twerk and dance class, you're like, damn, I feel good. Like, I don't know what it is, but I feel good is because you turned on all those little nooks and crannies of your. Your brain, of your nervous system. I think of your soul. You kind of knock off some of those obstructions so that all of a sudden that harmony can come through 100.

Sometimes I'm like, so worked up about something on social media or something in, like, the ethos, it doesn't even really exist. And. And then I, like, dance or do.

Something that's like totally in my body.

And then I'm like, why was I even worried about that thing? It's seems so minuscule because it just, like, taps you back into what actually is here and what is actually present.

Yeah, yeah, there's. And dance as well. There's a research from the Albert Einstein College. They found that dance was the most effective practice of all. That they did, like, crossword puzzles and they did, you know, like yoga and, you know, walking different stuff. They found dance to be the most effective with reducing any type of cognitive decline, preventing Alzheimer's and all that. Because it's such a complex. I think, like a computer program can crush most any human in chess. Like, they can figure that out. They can run the algorithms, you know. But we think of chess as being this really advanced high level. If you do chess, you must be really smart, right? But a computer program, it's really big deal. In fact, I don't think we've really quite nailed it yet. For a computer to be able to do what we just did with.

With the tea, right.

For you. Real pick that glass teapot up and pour it in and then bring it back to your lips and then Back down. That's like millions of bits of information happening there. It's like a miracle that we can do that, you know, and so take that into. Okay, cool. Well, that's. No, we don't really think of that as being a thing. But take that into dance now. Harmonizing yourself to music, now attuning to another human being at the same time. And all of a sudden you're getting touch involved as well. Which touch is literally. We have a whole chapter in the book of touch, essentially being a nutrient for your body. And so you see cultures that. There's a guy called James Prescott that studied various different cultures and the amount of touch that they had growing up from their mothers and their community in general. And then also their openness to sexuality as children and the cultures that were more open to sexuality and kids expressing themselves and having a pee pee and a wee wee and, you know, all that and actually touch being like a part of who they are. They're much less warlike. They have much less violence in their cultures. So you're literally. It's like from this. Is this gets weird. Hitler, he had. Have you ever heard about Hitler's penis?

No, I must be reading the word dogs. Hitler's penis dot com.

So I listened to. To the first, like, third of his autobiography and. Or biography, rather. And he grew up really with a lot of shame around sexuality. And I think it's called hyperspadia. I think we gotta look that up. But. But his urethra, his pee hole was kind of like shooting down instead of straight out. And there's like, suggestions that he was like, only had one testicle and he had, like, stuff like baggage around his parts. And he was really insecure to communicate with women. And there was like, apparently this one girl that he, like, was deeply in love with, but he never had the. I was gonna say balls, but it'd be rude, never had the ball to be able to actually communicate that to her. And then eventually, all of a sudden, that leads into resent.

Right.

You know, so if we don't feel loved and connected and touch is the fastest way to communicate to somebody that, I accept you, I love you, like you, like you're in the tribe. If you feel out of the tribe at like a deeper mammalian, reptilian type level, that's death, essentially. This is the fastest way we can communicate to each other that we love and accept is just through an embrace, through like a hand on the leg or on the shoulder, you know, anything.

Yeah. I mean, I think of African cultures that literally Wrap their babies around them and have their babies on them 24, seven. And they're dancing and they're, they're working in the village and they're doing all their thing and their babies are right there with them. And it kind of just shows like, you know, now it's almost like, oh, if you're a mother, like you do your motherhood things over there and it's like not integrated into your life and it's something you try to not even talk about. But in those other cultures it's. It's all connected and the kids are all playing with each other and they're like dancing and moving their pelvic floor and it's like not nothing to be ashamed of.

Yeah. And those patterns from a young age, like if you look at the standard child start off, you go through your developmental patterns and you start your. You roll over and then your belly and then you extend your spine and then you do this cross crawl pattern. Then you're squatting and then you're standing in perfect alignment with gravity. Then you fall and you come back and do it again. It's like amazing the amount of emotional, neurological and physical development happens with that. And then we put kids in western culture into child seats, which is back into the fetal position. They put them in strollers, back in the fetal position. Then we go into school and then we're hunched over over our desk and now we have screens, you know, and there's a lot of cool stuff that happens with that as well. Like being able to maybe go to Mars is like pretty cool. Being able to like press a button on my phone and then walk onto a plane and fly to Europe is like, is red. There's nothing like modern world is terrible. But within that it's really valuable to start to instill some of those more like ancestral principles into our daily lives because it is what your physiology and I think soul has been riding on since the beginning of you being. I mean I would imagine a single celled organism.

Exactly. So I want to talk about these archetypes you've created around how our body reflects our personality traits.

Yeah, well, so it broke down in the book. And so as we. Another fellow called Phil White, he was really impactful with helping co write and he co wrote with like Larry Hamilton and XPT and Kelly Starr and people. I don't know if you guys would. Pavel Tsutsulin. Anyways, he's been well steeped in this world for a really long time. So it's like beautiful having him part of it so we broke down. Essentially, when you walk around the world, you can see certain people have certain kind of postural tendencies. Tendencies. And what I have noticed and a lot of other people have noticed is those postural tendencies will oftentimes relate to their personality traits. You know, so when we're communicating, there's a guy called Albert Moravian that we reference in the book that was a UCLA professor. He came up with a 55, 38, 7 principle. 55% of our body language comes from. Our communication comes from body language. We're using our hands and gesticulations and shoulders and all that stuff. Think, like, if you're talking to somebody and their hips start facing the door, you know, or they're looking away from you, or they're looking down, you're like, what's going. Okay, this person obviously doesn't want to be here.

Right?

And no matter what they're saying, you're like, I'm just watching you, and this is what I'm hearing, you know? And then 38% was tonality, and then 7% was actual words. So if there's incongruence between what we're communicating with our tone, with our body language, 93% of the time, people will trust your tone and your body language. I think it's even higher than that. But it's fascinating to think it's like, wow, like in school we learn about grammar and vocabulary and subjunctive form and all these different, like, really gotta get that language right.

Leave the party. And you keep talking to them. Here's what to look out for.

Yeah, but at what point in school do we ever get any education of what your physical expression. What is that? What's the vocabulary translation for that?

None of that. Yeah.

And so what we do get is there's a guy, I'm kind of. This is a roundabout way of describing the postural archetypes, but they called. Marshall McLuhan came up thing called the Medium is the message, wrote a book called the Medium is the Massage. And essentially within that, he gets into how our. The medium in which we are learning has a greater impact than the information itself. So when you're in school, you think you're learning about geometry and Abe Lincoln and Hitler's penis and all this stuff. But in fact, the bigger lesson is the. What's the amount of contact you're having with the children in that class? What's the seats that you're sitting in? What's the screens that you're staring into? What's the shape of the backpack what's the shape of the bus at the end of your school career? You come out and like, cool, I got some information. But how was I shaped by that environment? The medium is the thing that's actually creating the biggest impact. And the shape of much of our environment is so depression is the number one leading cause of disability in the world. This is wild. It's, like, unbelievable. So it's supposed to happen by 2020.

Leading to physical disability.

Yeah, yeah. So that's like calling work. Like, I can't come to work. I'm depressed, need medication. I need to figure this out. The conversation that's very apparent and present with that is things like, oh, it's chemicals and it's diet and it's, you know, all these different things. But the maybe sunlight. I mean, all those are correct. The conversation that I don't see is the mechanical conversation of that you're practicing these postural tendencies of feeling a certain way all day long. So if you. From a young age. And this is the same thing with adolescent. Same thing like suicidal ideation is going through the roof with adolescence. I don't remember what the.

So maybe it's not just the video games, but it's how they're sitting when they're playing the video games.

The medium of the video game is you being in a dark room when you could be outside playing soccer and climbing trees and wrestling people. The medium is you sitting in a dark room, hunched over, staring into a.

Little screen with, like, anger filtering through.

You see, I would suggest that the actual information coming from the video game not suggest as though. I know, but I would just guess for the sake of, you know, just conversation, that it's more the shape of the. Of the play environment, you know? So I think if you did that same video game outside and you put the kid up standing upright, and they. You had them playing and wrestling and combating with their friends, and there was sun coming down and their shoes were off and they were grounded. My guess is it'd be like, oh, the video. And it's just a minor detail. But when you're in that dark room, then all of a sudden it's like it, like, amplifies whatever it is you're going.

Right. But I do think if you were in a dark room playing, like, chess would be a little bit different than, like, shooting civilians.

Yeah, you're probably right. I get it.

But I think that if you were actually like, even out there boxing people or wrestling people, that could be something really healthy for you and something that most People are lacking in. They're lacking in the actual warrior energy and they're taking this like, this, like, sideline view of being a warrior, which doesn't even show you, like, the teamwork that's needed in something like that.

Yeah, well, it's. It's immensely valuable to practice combat in quotations because you learn your body.

Right.

So from a young age, if you're wrestling and tussling around and you, you know, you jump into a big pile of leaves and you like, there's so much. Again, back to the. You know, one of the most complex equations is just for a human to pick up a kettle of tea and pour it into a cup. Take that into all of the other stuff I just mentioned. And your body is. You're learning how to, how to inhabit yourself.

Right. And you're learning the limits of like. Okay, I can't. It's too hot.

Right.

I can't hit this person too hard. They're crying.

Yeah. Now they hate me. Wow. Now I'm an outcast from the tribe because I didn't play. Right?

Yeah. Now with social media, I see people are changing. So mean. Because there's no feedback. I'm just saying this into this dark abyss and then I'm just like, in my own world, that you would never say that type of thing to someone in person.

No. Yeah. And so that's. There's a. With dogs, it's called the bite reflex.

Right.

So you want it. If a dog's gnawing and figuring out it's like you don't want it. Like, no, don't use your mouth.

Right. You have to be like, ow.

And show them, let them know, like, that was too much. They say, oh, okay. The dog doesn't want to hurt you.

And that's why dogs that are taken away from their moms below 8 weeks old don't have that. And that's why they turn into biters. Because the mom was never like, hey, back off. So they just don't know. Yeah, yeah.

We're running on old programs.

Yeah. Okay.

So the first archetype is this hunched over man named.

What's his. What do you call him?

Mopey.

Mopey, yeah.

Mr. Mopey or Mrs. Mopey.

He's just, you know, at his desk on his phone.

He's on his phone a lot. He's, you know, got the. It's called upper cross syndrome and like fancy speak, but the forward head posture, shoulders are rolled forward, spine's kind of hunchy, that, like, hyperkyphosis.

Type thing, which I think almost all of us have an element of that. I know I do.

It's abundant. Yeah. Again, because the medium that we inhabit is one of depression. And the literal definition of the word. I'm not saying that the way that you move just makes you depressed. I'm not. Not saying that, but I'm not. It's too big of a bold of a statement. Just like, that's it. But as far as. I mean, secretly my mind, I think that's a massive. No 100% is related, you know, but the. The literal definition of depress is to pull down. And our environment literally depresses us, you know, and so when you are, you know, all those things that we described essentially kind of causes the structure of the human body to kind of go into this, like, collapsive type state. And then there's all sorts of interesting research that. There's one particular study in San Francisco University. I promise not to be just overly quotatious and research based this whole time. We can talk about other things too. But it was interesting in that a study that was done there, they had two groups of students. In the one group, they put them in that mopey posture. And the other group, they put in what we would call the aligned postural architect. Upright, shoulders back, kind of like you just won an award, you feel good. It's easier for them to access more depressive memories when they're in that depressive posture. And when they're in more upright posture, it's easier for them to actually go back and recall times that they felt great. And so what that is, is. I mean, it could be many things, but one of the things that it is, there's a lot of levels to it, actually. But we're continually anchoring certain music, certain words, certain postural patterns to mental emotional states. So, you know, like Tony Robbins stuff.

Yeah, My brother just went. He was saying they have like their power pose.

Yeah. So he's like. He's like, what does he say? Show me your move. Show me your move. You know, before you walk on the calls and whatnot. I did a thing like six months ago. I was like, all right, show your move. So I like, hit my chest or whatever. So, like, so what he's intentionally doing, he does it for hours before. Okay, here we go. And it's like one in the morning. You're like, okay, we're walking fucking cold at one of the morning. Here we go. And Tony's like yelling at you, all right here, show me your move. Like, okay, coach, was that walk across the cold. And literally what he's doing in that five hour span as he's anchoring this postural pattern over and over, saying, okay, you are in this state right now. Now when you're in this state, you're gonna do this thing with your hand. You're gonna beat your chest like this three times and then you will start to have this like Pavlov's dog. The bell rings and all of a sudden the mouth salivates. So in this, the show me your move that we've been doing forever and ever is, oh man, my girlfriend broke up with me, I got fired. I, you know, something bummer, some bummer happened. And I go, my shoulders collapse, my head goes forward tone, my voice changes. So I'm anchoring that position into. Oh, I feel this way in this position, you know. Now I won.

We won, right?

You know, your, your eyes open up and your voice change, your shoulder comes back, your hands open up taller. You've anchored that position. I would say for, you know, I would suggest millions forever, but certainly at least in this lifetime.

And I think it's biological too.

That's what I'm saying. I think it's, I mean, I think as a single cell organism, right. If there's a loud clash, bang thing, the organ, it contracts, Right. If it opens up and there's sun and ocean water, it's like, oh, it's like safety.

Right. Like if you make yourself so small, like if you turn into that, like little, those animals. Yeah, exactly. You're going to be more safe. Whereas if you are taking up space, there's more of you to shoot, right?

Yep. Yep. There's also more of you to not be loved.

True. Yeah. And that's why so many people, especially girls, don't want to take up space.

Yep. Especially tall girls.

Yes.

So scoliosis is the most consistently will manifest itself with adolescent girls, you know. So what is scoliosis? It's a postural pattern that, it's called an idiopathic pattern. So we don't know what the exact reason for it is. So let's take guesses. One potential interesting guess could be obviously your pattern could, you know, form you in a certain or your pattern. Your environment can form you a certain way. But what do you do if you want to hide? You kind of wrinkle up and you kind of twist and you turn. If you put a camera on somebody that really doesn't want their picture taken.

Right.

You might go into a scoliotic pattern.

Right.

That's their postural body layers. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't look at me.

Yeah.

You know, and so they're maybe their neck twists over a little bit and it turns to the side and then there's. When you make that turn in your vertebra, if you turn left, then there'll be a right side bend, just like spinal dynamics, the way it works. And so if you do that kind of look away, twist, turn thing, now all of a sudden your hips raised up. Now all of a sudden one knee's collapsing in, one arch is collapsing it. You have this whole postural pattern. Then now, now you go to a physical therapist or a massage therapist or whatever, and they're like, oh man, you got flat feet. Or oh man, you got this knee ACL thing, whatever. And we're looking at that pattern as being purely anatomical, but perhaps there could have been some deeper, deeply tied, emotional biological connection there.

So true. I think most people just assumed, I always assumed, oh, scoliosis is something certain people are born with. Yeah, just like bunions and flat fleet. But now, as I'm learning, there's a lot of stuff that we can contribute or prevent. It's like, you know, you might have something you're more likely to have in your genetics, but that doesn't mean it's a guarantee.

No. Yeah. I mean, with anything, it's like Michael Phelps would probably be a pretty decent swimmer had he never practiced. Whereas, you know, somebody else, Chris Farley, would probably, like, wouldn't be as good if both of them never practiced. Michael Fox would still probably win.

Right.

You know, so there's like the perfect storm of like, well, his genetics are certainly going to that.

Right.

And that could be depression, that could be anxiety, that could be all sorts of things where like, like your genetics are kind of geared towards that, but that's not the end of the story. But if you put that naturally anxious person, which is another one of the post productives, into this anxiety inducing environment, they'll thrive in the sense of, you know, thriving anxiety.

So tell me about this next one, this anxiety one.

So an anxious person would be. Have you ever seen kids that they walk around their tiptoes? You ever seen that before?

No.

It's a thing. Yeah. People listen. I'm sure there's, there's at least a handful of people that seen kids that walk around. They're kind of like, it's almost like they're walking on like, like eggshells in the house. So they're not Stomping around like I own the place, like I feel woo, like I'm here. It's kind of this little, you know, and so a person that's in that situation, that's, that's an expression of the way that they feel in their environment. A person that's the anxious person is going to typically have like, their shoulders are kind of raised up and their, their tone of language might be a little bit quick. And they kind of make people feel a little bit anxious when they're around them. Their eyes are open, they're kind of ready for impact. They walk really quick. They're always trying to get stuff done. So they feed on stress. So they're like, they just give me, put me, put me to war, like give me all this, all the to do lists. I just want to get the to do lists. I want to just keep on building, building, building. And so the moment for that person, like meditation or passivity or nurturing, listening.

I think of like the New Yorker, you know, like someone in that city. Because you do have to move so fast and that can make you become very anxious.

Yeah. And so within that. So how that relates to like the book and kind of what's new about that perspective, we can start to nurture some of those personality types through movement. So a person that is more that anxious type, body type, slash mental, emotional type, something that could be interesting for them would be spend time in a warm bath, get a massage, lay off of caffeine, make sure that you're spending adequate time looking out into the distance, exercising your panoramic vision. Because you're eyes are directly tied to your autonomic nervous system. So when you're looking out into the distance, everybody listening can think about this right now. You can even just visualize it. Or if you have a distance, that's great, go for it. You can visualize looking out over an ocean. You see some seagulls, sun setting and some gentle waves coming in. You hear the clashing of the waves coming down. You will feel this sensation. Typically your breath pattern be like.

Wow.

So you take in that, that panoramic view literally tells your physiology that, okay, Sahara is safe. She's, she's resting and digesting right now. She's anchored that into her nervous system since probably the beginning of, well before the beginning of humanity. You know, like, okay, when I'm looking out over the tree line, just looking over, I'm like looking over the kingdom, I'm like, wow, man. Now the opposite of that would be, okay, I'm out In the woods and I'm pulling my bow back and I'm focusing all my energy right onto that one animal, or carrot or zucchini, whatever it is, you're focusing all your energy right into that one space. So now you're more into this sympathetic fight flight executive function, get shit done type place. Both equally valuable, but your vision, when it focuses in on something. You can see this with dogs. If a dog feels unsafe to be around. Have you ever seen a dog switch into being like, oh, they're angry. Or like, oh, like, don't pet the dog. Like, this is. This isn't a good time. What are you looking at? There's a lot. Yep. Their eyes. There's like the hair will change. There's all these certain things. It's like their head might stoop down a little bit and it's like, oh, interesting. But you can, if you, once people start, start watching this, watch as people with people as well. I lived in Hawaii for a while and their fighting is like a part of the culture in a way. It's not a good thing in my opinion. But like, it was a. I was there when I was young. I was there. I was like 18. And so it was a common thing. Like go to bars and be drunk and whatnot. And be like, oh, like the fight's gonna break out. And you could see with an angry, typically man, you can see that switch. And when that switch happens, it's right in their eyes. And all of a sudden, from being panoramic, taking the whole bar in, loving everybody touching, like, woo. Swinging your head around to hyper focus, hyper focused. So that hyper focus is everyone in.

The room can just like pick up on that energetic shift. Oh, man.

Yeah, we're all in one soup. It's all Rupert Sheldrake morphic resonance stuff. We're all floating around the soup together.

And that person almost seems like possessed at that moment.

Certainly he is. Yeah. He's possessed by millions of years of evolution.

Mm. It's so crazy. And speaking of that anxious type, what I just thought of is if you live in a big city that you live in a high rise, you probably have to kind of walk on your toes a little bit because there are people below you. So that's even training you to be quiet. Don't take up too much space. Like every day you're sitting in the subway, don't take too much space. You're in your cubicle, like, make sure your plant doesn't go to your neighbor's thing. And it's just like, you're just training yourself that you can only exist in this amount of space. And any more than that is too much and is going to get you in trouble 100%. So how do we work in big cities?

Spend time in big parks.

Yeah.

You know, find trees, take retreats. You know, get away. And be in places where you can be your fullest, weirdest, strangest self because you have no idea what you actually are for sure.

Sometimes they do these, like, you know, rituals, and it gets really weird, and I'm like, this feels. Feels so good. Like, what? I never get to do this.

Like your soul is speaking. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, I just want to go, right.

Like, where did that come from?

Right? We're so civilized.

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So I've been listening to Ram Dass and one of the things that he mentioned in one of his discourses that I found really interesting and great was that who we think we are is highly vulnerable and who we actually are is invulnerable. So the deeper, truer us, there's no reason to have any tendrils of fear or any feelings of like insecurity or shame or anything around that part. But the tendency is for us to kind of hang on those, those parts of, you know, I think I am my house and I think I am my clothes and I think I'm my watch and I think I am my car, and I think I am my work, and I think I am the stock market and the housing market. And all of those. All of those kind of superficial indicators of how well we're doing can be taken away at any time. And so if we're putting all of our self worth into those things that aren't actually that deeper river that's circulating through all of us and interconnecting all of us, it's a very vulnerable place to live at. And so the more time that a person can spend bathing in that river of connection, the more invulnerable and content and satisfied and safe and held and supported they can feel in the world. And, yeah, it's fascinating how our environments, I think, can really can impact all that.

Yeah. And I think it shows how we're just borrowing these anxious, these different archetypes. We're just borrowing these based off of how our bodies, how our lives have positioned us. But they're not who we truly are.

No. Yeah. They're not who we truly are. Yeah. So there's. There's the other one where I in large part came from. And the postural archetype that I borrowed was expressing to the world that I am big and strong and in control and a man. And all of that, like, I still have. I go in and out of wavering of like, am I a man? Like, what does that mean exactly? You know, like, there's certain cultures where there's this very apparent rite of passage, whether you putting your, you know, hands inside of a glove full of fire ants or whatever makes you mad or not, I'm not sure, but I mean, there's like lots of different rites of passages, but in our culture, culture is pretty vacant with some indicator, kind of like moving forth into this. This role that you can take as, you know, manhood or womanhood. And, you know, so growing up, I tied on muscles and supplements and working out and grew my beard out and got a leather jacket and like, put all these superficial indicators that I was in control and strong, but underneath all of that, I actually felt scared and ashamed to be in my skin or to be in a room. And I would just, instead of actually nurturing that deeper part to make that feel invulnerable and safe and connected, I would just keep on adding on these superficial indicators that I'm awesome.

Right.

And so that is the swole archetype in the book. So this, the swole person. Swole is like actually word and Webster's dictionary, I found out it's just like the dude or chick at the gym that's like, shoulders back, pumped up, may or may not be on steroids and just like, like, you know, kind of waddling around. That person could be totally well adjusted, beautiful, sweet. You know, it's just because the person's muscular doesn't not doesn't mean that much. It's more, why are they muscular? So that's always an interesting question. And it's the same thing with a person that's really bendy, which is another one of the archetypes, you know, why are they so bendy? Why do they have an aversion from weightlifting or manual labor or maybe showing up on time, you know, having that.

So me.

Yeah, yeah, it's me too. I have parts. So I'm kind of like swole from insecurities and then packing on to show people that I actually, you know, have it together through, you know, movement muscles. But then the bendy thing, I'm also quite flexible and it's the same thing. I have like the, like the la kind of disease of like showing up five minutes late and all that stuff. And that's one of those.

Tell me more about these bendy people.

So bendy people, they have an affinity towards dance, especially of the ecstatic variety.

Yes.

They are typically going to be pretty good with creativity, you know, so they're really good with bending outside of the linearity of a box and seeing the world with this different vantage point. And when they go home, they want to stretch themselves out of that linearity and they want to get in all the twists and the turns and they want to wiggle and shake and they want to bah.

This is the story of my life.

Yeah, that's great. And what they could really use, probably the story of your husband, is a rock and an anchor and a support and a container, you know, so it's like Shiva shakti, all that stuff. Like, you need to have that. You call it masculine, feminine, you can call it bendy swole or bendy aligned, whatever you wanted to call it. We just need to have that balance between both. And we can balance from within with ourselves through doing certain movement practices or thought practices or environmental changes that will cause us to be a little bit more balanced.

Yeah, these actually all remind me of the doshas because this bendy archetype is very vata in the way that it's flexible. It's thinking outside the box. It's always moving it, you know, I mean, even vata's Physically have more air in their joints, which makes their joints more flexible but also more likely to become misaligned. So they're more likely to have like, you know, bowleggedness or this like weird like variation in their body that they perpetually can make worse and worse and worse by like over stretching and like, you know, overworking that thing. So mind personality is, is very vata with the bendy, whereas the swell is very pitta. It's very, you know, someone that likes to go to the gym, I can tell instantly they're, they're goal oriented or hard working. They, they want to set something on their, their to do list and stick to it. And that's essentially what you're doing when you're gaining muscle. You have your plan and by week eight, I'm going to be here. Like people who do fitness competitions. So pitta. And they tend to be those kind of people in their lives and their businesses and their relationships, et cetera. The anxious one is also kind of vata because a lot of vata people can be very like heady and like timid and fast. It's kind of like a more of a shadow side of vata. And then the, the first one, the hunched over one, depressed, mopey is a bit of kapha of like, I don't deserve to be here, I should not take up too much space. And then that leading to you getting more sedentary, more suppressed, which makes you more depressed.

But being a nurturer, probably, and being.

A nurturer because you're overcompensating of like, I don't feel worthy. So let me do everything, take care.

Of you so that you'll love me.

Exactly.

That's my. So I do that as well. So I originally came from mopi and then that was so like in school I wanted to go out of my way to show teachers that I didn't really care unless I really liked the teacher, you know, I wanted to show. And the reason that I wanted to show people that I didn't care was that I was actually insecure with my result not being good enough. And so if I let you know from the get go that by the way, I don't really care, it means that whatever I do isn't my highest expression. So therefore I'm safe, you know. And so what I would do in that. So I kind of locked myself in that, that place of like perfectionism. And then I would wrap this layer of swall around that through doing a bunch of imbalanced bodybuilding exercises. And a bunch of supplements that I didn't need. Had terrible gas all the time and all, you know, all the things. There's just like this big awkward strapped up body of just like slabs of muscle. And underneath that was this scared boy that wanted to be touched and loved and nurtured and supported and connected to the tribe. But when he walked into a room, he didn't, he felt kind of out of place and he didn't really know how to connect with people. And so he works really hard or she works really hard to do all of these superficial validators. Money, muscles, car, you know, just whatever the thing is that a person does. Could be nurturing, could be being a good yogi, could be being a good spiritual person. You know, if I'm so spiritual, then people will love me. You know, people will see me at this, as this like I'll have like a, like a halo around my head and they'll just really think that I'm like this enlightened being and then they'll love me. Muscles is just one of the many potential mediums or tools for me and my in my path thus far to kind of be loved.

Right.

Totally.

That makes so much sense. And I saw, I went in the bendy shadow side, like I was so like went to Bali and India just to do yoga. And like all I did was a stretch, stretch, stretch and read my yogic texts and think I was like, you know, enlightened at that point. And then what I realized, like that shadow side of the bendiness is not sticking to one thing, having all of these different ideas and none of them following through. And also something I was seeing a lot, especially in spiritual communities is this like lack of boundaries or almost feeling guilty about having boundaries which a lot of people would misuse. So they would be like, oh, if you don't want to like cuddle with me, that means you're closed off. So especially a lot of women would be like, oh, well, to show that I'm open, I should like cuddle with this stranger or be okay with these things that I'm not okay with because that's the test of my bendiness. So you see a lot of that abuse happening in the bendy community.

Yeah. So you can start to nurture those things through spending time just to go back to like the physical metaphors. Bendy person, it could be valuable for them to learn more boundaries by spending time in. One of the suggestions would be like do manual labor or do some, start some like weightlifting or something like that. So you spend Time under tension and you can feel that you're holding, going through that full range of motion. It's so hard. I want to put the weight down, but I'm not going to. I'm going to go all the way through the rep. Okay. And then your body goes through that hermetic stressor and it builds back up and it self organizes and then you walk away from that. You feel a little bit more strong and empowered and in your body. The next time that someone says, hey, I think you should, you know, sleep with me or something like that, you're like, I'm so empowered and in my body that I know that I don't need any acceptance or love from you. So I don't need to give this up right now because I actually feel quite more stacked and aligned and connected. But if you're a person that's open, that's like where, you know, parasites are able to access now broken system, that's when parasites can come in if you're a system. And this gets into. There's actually been other research around people in prison that are there for some violent crimes. And they, the researchers asked these various different criminals, you know, it's kind of a funny word of the people that went to jail for this, who would they mug in the street? And what they found, the people they would mug in the street, it wasn't because they were a man or a woman or black or Asian or whatever. It was the actual, the quality of their movement. So they moved with wholeness and they felt they seemed integrated and connected and strong and like they had direction in their life and they knew where they were going. The person, the parasite in this case, the person that comes and leeches your wallet off of you or sex or you know, whatever time or whatever it may be, they're like, oh, like that person's too in themselves for me to be able to get my claws in to leech, so I'm not going to try. So our movement goes so much deeper than just biceps are sweet and you know, chicks dig abs or something like that. It's literally an expression of who you are and the way that others perceive you. So the long term effects of paying attention to the way that you inhabit yourself in this present moment, you know, it's incalculable and invaluable and it's, it goes so much deeper than what we could possibly imagine 100%.

I mean even if you think about, people often get mugged or something when they're just like, like on their phone or like looking for their keys or in this state of like vulnerability and not being present and not looking around. Like when you're in a parking lot at night, it's just not the time to be on your phone, like be present. Look around you. Because if there is that parasite, they would know, like you're cognizant and you will see them coming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's just you're always. And so more. A primary component of what the book represents is that, you know, your whole entire day is an opportunity for you to work on yourself, all the different layers of self, whatever that means to you, you know, so when you are walking down the street, you can start to pay attention to the way that the weight of your steps on the ground, you can pay attention to the gait. How's this hip extend? How's the. Do the glutes come on? Do they not come on? How's my. You can imagine there's a string at the back of my head kind of pulling me up towards the sky and I'm feeling like long and wow. All of a sudden I'm starting to feel confident as I'm walking. And it's interesting how that there's lots of research that shows that when we are paying attention to our surroundings, there's one specific one we mentioned in the book of people just paying attention to their experience washing dishes. So they had one group pay attention to like, okay, I want you to notice like the temperature of the water. I want you to notice the light shimmering off of, of the bubbles. And I want you to notice the density of the plates. And I want you to the air in the room and all that. And the people that would do that, they'd end up one. They end up having more joy in the dishwashing experience. It didn't feel like work. They also had more creativity. So all of a sudden their mind starts opening up and they start to almost like grow into that experience as opposed to the person that's kind of myopically focused on just scrubbing the dish and whatever. And they're thinking about the stress of the past or thinking about the future. And they're totally missing the magic of that present moment, you know, so at any time your movement is just a vehicle into really whatever you want, wherever you want to go. Like how you do anything is how you do everything, you know? So movement can be a vehicle towards deeper spiritual connection. It can be a vehicle towards financial well being. It could be a vehicle towards better relationships and all of those Other things will feed back into the physical vehicle.

Love that. So well said. So one thing that I really want to talk to you about that is so easy for everyone to implement is this concept of sitting on the floor.

Oh, good.

And how we need more of that. So can you tell us a little bit about benefits of sitting on the floor and how we can just sneak in more of that in our days?

Yeah, yeah. So being on the floor is first of all, once again, it's like where we came from as human animals, since the beginning of humanity and well before that, we've been going all the way up and down to. To work or to maybe since we are more like human, like washing clothes or gathering water. And that's that system. It's almost like an inboard tuning system for your body. Like, think of like when you turn your computer off, there's all sorts of like little like file cleanup devices software going on in the background. You don't realize it, right? But you put the computer down and it's going through. It's like, oh, we don't need that file. We don't need that file. It's kind of like, oh, cool. You open the computer back up, it's like, I'm refreshed and ready to go. Totally you. In the book, we call them postural archetypes of repose, which I actually got that from another book called Muscles and Meridians, that guy called Philip Beach. But these postural archetypes of repose are essentially the other side of the coin of your fitness or your active, your yang existence. You know, so the yin aspect of yo being, you know, how, like, how well do you do passivity and that yin and that rest. Restorative aspect and the quality of your positions is a primary tool for getting the most out of that. That passive time. So just like going down through the full range of motion down on the ground. 1. Cultures that do that, they have minimal to no incidents of osteoarthritis of the hips. They have really low incidence of that in the knees. Pelvic floor dysfunction is much less fall risk just is not even a thing. So culturally, if you look around and just think about like with your parents.

Yeah, my grandma, like falls all the time. It's always like a huge thing.

It's a huge thing.

Yeah.

You know, so if your grandma was from Thailand and she fell, it wouldn't be a thing because it would be cultural.

Elderly still sit on the floor.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So culture is like, so like Northern Africa, Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia. Was the main places that I saw. It's like the actual research, like, following these places. They're regularly eating on the ground or, you know, toileting on the ground or sleeping on low beds. And the belief that your body just all of a sudden starts going down in this downward spiral of dis. Ease and discomfort and malaise and all those things is. That's a. You're observing a culture that's being formed into that position. But if you observe another culture in another container, you're like, oh, no, no. The body can be bouncy and jubilant and vibrant and loving and connected until it dies.

Right.

This is the belief system that. Okay, I'm 60 years old, so that means that I should probably start thinking about maybe getting a cane, you know, and I got to be careful about the ground, you know, and I don't want to lift weights because that's. My bones can't take it anymore. Anymore.

Exactly.

That seed of that belief system of weakness will all of a sudden manifest that because you're always creating your reality, you know, so the fall risk thing is such a huge deal. If you give a shit about your parents, if you give a shit about your grandparents, if you should about yourself, your friends, like, think of me or you or your mom, your dad, or, you know, anybody that you care about. Imagine one of us falling down in our house, and now we need, like, a button to press to get help, or we need to have our phone nearby, like, oh, I can't leave the couch with them because if I fall, I could literally, like, die in the corner.

And they become so afraid of falling that they hunch over and hunch over that their backs get formed into this hunch.

Yeah. And then you're like, yep. See, that's what happens.

Exactly.

Yeah. You're like, it's a part of aging.

Exactly.

Yeah. So we can change that stuff. So a really simple thing. And so that's like the fire and brimstone. More like Catholic, you know, like, you're going to go to hell type thing. Type perspective on why we should spend more time on the ground. There's other reasons as well. It's just good for your circulation. It's good for you right now by you spending time on the ground and checking your Instagram notifications while, you know, sitting on a floor cushion or checking your email or something like that, or drinking. Eating breakfast or drinking tea. You're not just investing in insurance for 60 years. You're literally circulating all of that lymphatic fluid out of the Legs moving, all that blood and interstitial fluid, all that stuff you're starting to turn your mind on, you're starting to heal your, your hips, heal your knees. So you're. It's a long term and short.

Or is it like cross legged specific pose.

So in the book, in the floor sitting chapter, so that's one of the five movement principles that we break down in there. We break down pretty much all of the positions that a person would need. So it's like we have like the 90, 90 position is an example where essentially both legs are kind of in like a 90 degree angle. Sukhasana is a great one or easy situation. Squatting into a deep squat, laying on your belly, laying on your side. So it's essentially just like yoga poses. But a lot of yoga. Yoga, the whole asana practice is essentially for people that are meditating and they're like, wow, we can't just sit in the same position all the time, meditate. We need to kind of wiggle our hips a little bit, get things circulating, get kind of the wiggles out of us so we can go deeper into a contemplative practice. But during that time, the beginnings of yoga, people naturally would have been doing all those positions anyway.

Right.

You know, it's just a part of our ancestry.

Right? Yeah. And you're working on the fields back then and you're just so much more active. Whereas even like I feel like modern yoga, what we do now kind of needs to change according to how we are sitting. Because there's a lot of forward folding. I feel like I'm always forward folding. I feel like what I really need more is more back bends.

Totally. Yeah. Back activation.

Exactly.

Less protraction, less pushing down on the ground. Like you don't need to do that many down dogs.

Down dogs. I think there's over down dogs.

It's not. Yeah, it's not, it's not necessary, you know, so something that would be really valuable is get like a yoga swing in your house and spend some time hanging from it, spend some time reaching up, laying underneath the yoga swing or any kind of bar, tree branch, whatever it is, and you know, pull yourself so you're starting to turn that back. There's not a lot of pulling in yoga as well. There's not a, a lot of. And I'm technically a yoga. Well, whatever. I have my 200 hour thing and I practice yoga, you know, regularly. And I'm like a big fan of yoga. I think it's great. And I think there's A lot of deficits. If that's all you're doing, it doesn't dance. Yoga doesn't dance you.

Right.

You know, so you don't have that partner coordination connection.

Still very linear focus.

Still very linear focus. Yeah. It's not very dynamic. It is internally dynamic, which is kind of the point of it. And again, yoga asana is one of the eight limbs. So there's like a lot more to yoga than, you know, yoga means yoke or use or connection union. So the meaning of yoga is essentially what this whole conversation has been about. And then we focus on the asana aspect of it. But if your yoga is just that asana, you may get more yoga out of taking a tango class or something, because you get that yoke, yuj, union, connection with another human being, and you start to synchronize your movement with them and you start to maybe express some vulnerability because you're not really sure about your dance moves or whatever. And then you break those walls down and you're like doing the shit out of some yoga. Compared to going into a dark room, stretching yourself out, making sure that nobody can see you, and then walking out and keeping. Then you put your phone back into your cell phone, you walk out the door and get in your car 100%.

So. So agreed. I actually find that I can't sit on chairs. Like, I physically can't do it. Like, if I'm flying, my leg is like on top of the person in front of me's chair. I'm like sitting squatting on it. What do you recommend for travel?

So there's a whole chapter in the book about how to align your travel. And in there, one thing would be bring a jacket or always have a. I'd say have a water bottle here. So always keep a water bottle with you. That way you can reshape the shape of your seats that are typically like a bucket type seat, which are rolling you into that same depressed forward folded position. There's nothing wrong with a forward fold, right? Again, it's like. It's a yoga pose. Four fold. I like. Four is great. Do four folds a lot. They're awesome. But you can think of it as like a nutrient, you know? So forward fold was like a zucchini. You're like one zucchini. Awesome. You know, okay, today I had. I had nine zucchinis. Like, that's good. I mean, it's. You're getting to be a lot of zucchinis, but, you know, but it's like, okay, Today I've had 250zucchinis. And that's been my diet for the last 25 years. You're like, why are you so many zucchinis?

Yeah. On the plane, they kept feeding me zucchinis. It's hard to feed anything else. Yeah.

And so what you could do instead of eating all of the zucchinis all the time is throw in a pear and an apple and a banana, you know? And so in this case, augmenting your seating position so it's just a different. A different fruit, you know? So in this case, it'd be putting that bottle or jacket or pillow or something like that behind your thoracic spine space behind your heart, and that will take up that little space in the seat. So it's not a bucket anymore.

So you're not talking about your lumbar. You're actually talking about your upper back.

Correct. Yeah. So that way it's. So if you're putting in the lumbar, a lot of people are already excessively in lumbar lordosis, and they're already kind of. They have, like, too much wiggle room in that area, and so you could put it down there as well. It depends on the shape of the spine, really, and the shape of the seat. But for the most part, it would be of greater value for you to put the bottle or the jacket a little bit higher on your spine and then bring your butt all the way into the corner of the seat. So now you kind of have, like, this little, like, hip hinge thing type happening. And then you could even, like, put the seatbelt around your hips at that point. So you're kind of keeping yourself in that neutral position. Not like you're not gonna be, like, going way forward. It really depends on the shape of the seat.

You're, like, fully stretching. I want to see how you travel. I just want to watch you on an airport.

So what I'm doing right now, I bring my feet up on the seat a lot. I'll get up. So in the book, we recommend, for every hour, give yourself five minutes. So if you couldn't get up for two hours, give yourself 10 minutes at least. So it's like road trips and all that stuff. But, yeah, every hour. Ish or so. For every hour, give yourself five minutes. And so get up and take a walk down the hallways and do some lunges and go meet the flight attendant. They're usually quite nice. Sometimes not. But, you know, it's a great opportunity. While you're meeting the flight attendants, notice the color of their eyes. You know, like, actually ask them how they're doing. Like, really connect with them as opposed to them just being like, you're, you know, whatever. Just this person you're never going to see again.

Right.

So realizing that every moment in that instance, this is kind of going a little bit out there, but that instance is a moment to connect with another human being in a compassionate way, which is actually very healing for you, for your body, you know? So that little juice, up you went. You went back to the back of the plane, you squatted, you lunged, you compassioned, and then you came back and you restructured your seat a little bit.

You touch everyone's arm when you walk by.

Well, so that's what it gets. Correct. Yeah. So that's. That's nice. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, maybe if you're like, amma or something, maybe that would be valuable. If you're not an amma level, maybe don't touch everyone.

Yeah, but there's a line to hug me in the back. I'll let. Yeah, I'm sure people in that flight would just be down, going, I just need to get out of here. I'll hug you. Sure. Yeah.

Well, people are weird. Like, the more I teach workshops and go into taking people through. So the original meaning of weird as an old English word, that's W Y R D. It's like vir. And I may be missing the beard, but I'm just kind of saying in German accent for no reason, I don't the W Y R D. And what it means is fate. And the original meaning is to be in control of one's fate. So if you're in a culture, you know, like Joe Campbell talks about detribalizing yourself, you need to get out of your culture to see how strange your culture really is. Because we think of wherever you come from as normal. Yeah. But if you can go out of that, you know, and there's. You're with a pack of sheep, and they're all, you know, walking together, and they don't really see around, and they're just kind of doing whatever the next sheep does, and they're kind of inside of that to be the weird person. Especially in the culture, like, Western culture, where statistically things are kind of going in, like, funny directions. Weird is actually the person that's in control of their fate. They're saying, listen, I don't want to be in the middle of all of these sheep and just bumping. I'll just. Wherever the ass of this next fluffy thing in front of me goes, I'LL just do that. Oh, fuck, there's a cliff right there. Well, whatever. At least I'm going with them. But the weird sheep, the black sheep, they're like, I don't want to just follow this sheep's ass in front of me my whole life. I'm going to take control of my fate.

I wonder what that flight attendant is doing.

I'm gonna go touch the flight attendant. So what I notice with teaching workshops and getting people into beforehand, I'm always anxious before I do any kind of, like, public, almost anything, because I like, you know, I care about what people think. And so I go, oh, I don't think they're gonna like this. And I think it's gonna be too much. And what if somebody doesn't. They feel uncomfortable. It's all. It's gonna be like this awkward moment. They're just quiet, and they're like, why is this person asking me to do this?

Right?

But what I've found is that typically the things that I find to be, like, the weirdest people really get into, you know, people are just looking for permission from somebody a little bit weirder than them.

Absolutely.

To be like, oh, you can do that? We can. Really? Okay, all right, cool. Let's do it. You know, and then all of a sudden, all the sheep gather together. Like, whatever it is, we're doing it together.

We're just waiting for that one person to essentially give us permission.

Give us permission.

You know, we see they did it in their head, didn't explode. So I guess it's okay for me to do it.

It's okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that could be something as like. Like a dance party. You know, it takes. Typically, there's one person that's, like, the most daring.

Right.

They're the weirdest.

You know, I feel like at Layla's. That was me. You, Layla, Christine.

Oh, yeah, we were playing. I think that if you're the person that is. There's something that feels true to you in the moment, and you are too afraid to express that, but you're willing to be that. That weird person to do it. I. Without a doubt. I think you are a revolutionary.

Yeah.

You're a trailblazer. And you're potentially saving people's lives.

Yes.

By potentially, I mean, absolutely. Maybe not 100% of the time, but.

In general, but no, you really are. Like, I remember, I like, I go to these dance classes, tour classes, belly dance classes, but I never posted. Posted it online. And I was with my friend Paul Fishman, who's this just like, fabulous, man. And he was just so excited about the video. He did not do a great job, but he put it on his Instagram, and I was like, you can. You can do that. Like, that's okay. And that gave me permission to start sharing. And then from me, sharing, I get so many people every day who are sharing themselves, like, dancing, like, sexually or sensually, and, like, not being afraid of that anymore. So it's just like, someone giving me permission for me to give someone else who they're probably giving someone else. And it just, like, creates this, like, beautiful web of people being themselves.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy that we have parts of our body that we're okay with showing or touching or talking about or even thinking about. But in reality, if you were, like, able to go into people's minds and check out what they're thinking, for the most part, it would be a lot of, like, sex, and it'd be a lot of, like, ways to find safety and ways to find community. And this is pretty much what a lot of people are going to be thinking about. Yeah, exactly. You know, and so. But. But culturally, there's certain. Only certain things that you can express when we are not able to express things. Like, I think sexuality is a very obvious one. Death is also a weird subject. Kind of just don't really talk about it. Like, what is death? Like, I don't worry about it. We'll figure about it later, you know, but in a culture that celebrates sexuality, in a culture that celebrates death, in a culture that celebrates every square centimeter aspect of your unit, if there's any part of that that you have some kernel of shame around, that will be contraction. And where there's contraction, that's essentially a dam. And where there's a dam in the human biology, that's, you know, the beginning of disease.

And this is what Tantra is all about. Like, anything that you're ashamed of, anything that society tells you is, like, not worthy of talking about. Go into that. So death, they literally meditate on dead bodies, the agori javas and sexuality and feces. Like, like anything that's, like, weird and out there, they're like, that's your spiritual practice.

Totally. Yeah. Until you can love every square centimeter, like I already said, of your humanity and everyone else's humanity, I think you'll be, to some degree, trapped. The moment that you can love every aspect. The moment. That doesn't mean that you need to put up with every aspect.

Right.

You know, and it's like in. I did a Vipassana meditation thing. It was like a 10 day sit deal.

Yeah, like I'm always like, I can't sit for that long.

Oh, believe me, I was. If anybody that couldn't sit for that long, I was like as wiggly as anybody.

Right.

But I learned, you know, and that was the biggest thing is I realized that and I'm still learning.

So did you go on walks or you actually sat down for 10 hours?

You walk in between. So it's not a 10 hour sit, it's one hour. Sits every essentially like hour on the hour, but. But it's sometimes more than that. So it's like you start off at 4:30 in the morning and there's an option to get before. But I think I was always gonna. I'm pretty sure 4:30 is when I started. And there's a guy that walks around, he's got this little gong thing. And then you get up and you watch the sunrise. Ish. But the meditation starts before the sunrise and then you'll do an hour sit and then anywhere between like, you know, two hour breaks to like 30 minute breaks, depending on what's going on. And it's just these hour long sits essentially over and over again for 10 days. And during that time. Oh, there's something else interesting that I want to talk about. But the, in relation to what you just said with the Vipassana and the Wiggly sits, something that I've learned about myself is a part of my Wiggles. And now I see this in other people. I may or may not be accurate with it, but I was wiggling around pieces of discomfort in myself. Not just physical, I think also deeper than that, you know. And so the moments like eye contact with an intimate partner, you know, could be like an interesting thing for some people or eye contact in general, you know, in those moments where it's like, oh, it's like too much. You're like, okay, I'm gonna wiggle and turn and twist and go out and okay, I'm running, I'm gonna run. I'm running.

Right.

You know, and so a person that has full access to all of the Wiggles and they can sprint and they can run and they can climb and they can dance and they can, yeah, they can sit, you know, and really just whatever it is, like I can just be with this for hours, right? Like that's some Jedi shit.

And that's really creating the duality between yourself because I'm like you. I'm someone who, I'm always like, what I think I'M going to have this conversation. I'm like, I don't need to sit and meditate. Like, dance is my meditation. I walk outside, I journal. I do all these things and it's like, you know, I don't need to sit. But really, it was my resistance to sitting. It was my resistance to, you know, just that discomfort of there are other things I should do or I should be active or, you know, whatever it is. And I think because in our society we're always like, sitting is the devil. Like, do not sit. Like that has been ingrained in a lot of our heads, that we're like, oh, if I have a spare couple minutes, I should be like, moving. But that can even make you resistant to. Because, like, sitting is ancient. Not sitting in chairs, but sitting on floors and meditation. So that's what I've been doing for the past, like, couple months. And it's been really profound because now I can actually, like, do it. Whereas before the. I would have a battle with myself over do I really need to be doing this or not? And like coming up with every really good excuse as to why I don't.

Yeah. One of the goals of the book is to bring sexy back to sittings, particularly on the floor, you know, so James Levine is a great guy that I reference in there. He's like the leading researcher of sedentary ness. Sedentary lifestyle, how that affects us. And one of like the popular quotes that he has is sitting is the new smoking.

Right.

But like so many things, it's like, well, that's not a complete idea. Sitting in chairs, sitting. And how do you sit in the chair?

Right.

You know, are you. You can still cross your legs up on the chair. You could throw some compression socks on to help with circulation. You could. Well, I mean, those are, those are two starting points. Or. But the big thing is sitting. Well, what if I sit on the ground like we've done forever, you know, Then it's like, oh, yeah, no, that's a super restorative practice.

So you don't think we all need standing desks?

I think they're fine. It's just standing, you know, or Tadasana Mountain pose. It's another position and it's a complex position, you know, so the quality that you stand is of greater value. Yeah, well, that's fine. You want to lean. Look at a horse. They'll go foot to foot, you know, so you can, so you can do that. And as you're doing that, you're milking your sacroiliac joint. You're getting movement in those hips. It's natural and great. You can put a step like a. Put a rock under your foot or put a bar or something like that, maybe a swinging bar in front so you can take your spine out of that. Chronic overextension. Bring a foot up for a second. That relaxes the back. It circulates fluids. Your body needs to do that little step pattern. If you're standing in place like that, then fluid is just pulling up in your lower compartments. You don't have a heart in your toes to pump it back up, up, especially with lymph, you know, so what you need is you need to circulate that stuff. So doing those little, like, marches and stuff and balancing on something. But if you're sitting on the ground, which is the way that, you know, all of the cultures for the last. Ever since the beginning of chairs have eaten, for example, it's better for digestion because you have. You're not pulling up all that vital blood and fluid that could be in your digestive organs. Instead, it's. It's pulled up down your lower compartments, and your body's like, dude, I'm trying to digest. What are you doing? Like, get resources. All hands on deck into my belly, please. So if you sit down on the ground, all of a sudden your body's a more effective pump for fluid, you know, and then every time you need to get back up from that, there's the obvious thing that you're, you know, you're going to, like, be developing your booty muscles, and you're taking your joints through a full range of motion, which is very healing. But it's also acts like, is a pump, you know, so think of your body as literally. It's like a. It's like a pond, you know, so in that pond, you know, called Sahara Rose, she needs a certain size pump to circulate all of her fluid, and she also needs to make sure that pump is going to all the nooks and crannies of herself. If there's any part within Sahara Rose that's not getting pumped with regularity, that's a potential liability for disease and shame.

So if someone works at an, like, a regular office that has, like, cubicles or a table, what can they do?

Spend time on the ground, ideally. If that's not an option, ideally, get a big chair so you can treat the chair a little bit more like. Like the ground. Just get your legs up off the ground.

What about those bouncy balls?

They're fine. You're Gonna be integrating more movement in your life in that way. That's cool.

Should we avoid backrests?

No, no, you don't need to avoid backrests. It's. What's the shape of the backrest forming your spine into, you know, so ideally, when you're sitting, you're putting yourself into a position where you're on the front edge of the sit bones, called the ischial tuberosities. And when you're on that. So you can reach down underneath your butt cheeks right now and feel the bones underneath your butt. And you want to be just, like, right. Like, middle front of those guys. And if you do that, it will put your sacrum and your pelvis. Yeah, grab the butt. Sahara's grabbing her butt cheeks right now. It's very great. So grab those ischial tuberosities and then pull them straight back. Not so much like you're pulling your butt open, but more straight back. And as you do that, now all of a sudden, you're putting your pelvis and your sacrum into a more opportune position for balance.

So I feel like if I'm, like, sitting like this with, like, perfect posture, like, it feels, like, forced. I feel like I don't feel comfortable. Does it just become comfortable over time?

Well, it's not perfect posture yet. So there's. There's. There's still things. So, one, there's a lot of extension happening right now. So ideally, you can. Here, get on the edge here. Little bit more. Yep. Perfect. And so this is kind of a bummer because it kind of shapes us to go backward a little bit. But that's better, actually, from this position. Yes. Now you're on the edge of the seat. My guess is this is more comfortable from looking at you.

Yeah.

All right. Yeah. So from this, now, you're able to relax into your body. And so a test that people can play with is have a friend come up to you as you're in your position. And we have this all broken down in the book, obviously, but get into that position, get on the front edge of the seat, get weight supported down through your feet, and have a friend come up and say, hey, can you just, like, push down on my shoulders for a second? And if you push that weight down through both shoulders and it feels, like, easy for you to support. Like, right now, I'm pushing down into Sahara's shoulders, and I can push straight into her pelvis, into her hips, and it feels like.

Yeah, it feels.

It feels effortless. It's a massage. Right. But if you collapse forward and I push down. Now all of a sudden you have to support yourself. If you overextend and I push forward. Now of a sudden you have to. You have to grab through the.

I feel like a lot of girls do this though.

Overarching.

Yeah.

So it's all social construct. So you're learning that I want to be a sexually desirable human, and so I'm gonna, you know, do that like Brazilian booty pop.

Right.

So that cultural indoctrination forms your physical structure. You could learn in another culture.

This is gonna be your new archetype, the Brazilian booty.

Booty pop. Yeah, exactly. Brazilian booty pop would be more like a bendy person.

Right.

They're bending to the cultural wishes and desires, but as is the other ones, really. I mean, culture is always affecting us. Terence McKenna, famous psychonaut guy, he said culture paraphrase something along the lines of culture isn't your friend. Culture is here for culture. Culture isn't here for the individual.

So true.

You know, and so at the individual level, sometimes that might be. Think of yourself as like a skin cell. You know, sometimes skin cells get. Get scuffed off and it's like, oh, it's just a skin cell, no big deal. But the grander human, the Sahara, you know, the culture of Sahara, she's like, okay, well, we're. The culture of Sahara is still going forward, so it's okay. But at the individual level, sometimes I think the human being can be kind of like that scuffed off skin cell where it's like, ah, let them kind of.

Yeah.

Kind of fall off.

Absolutely. And we have to reclaim that.

Reclaim that you're not just a scuffed off skin cell. You could do better.

Yes. Ah, so good. Well, so many good tidbits. And it's a really interesting perspective to come at all of this from that body perspective. I feel like it's one that's not talked about that much. And I think it's the most important, especially as we're progressing more and more about spirituality, metaphysics, and all of these things. It's like, how do we actually ground this down into the physical body? And. And I think that's the next layer of things. So thank you so much for being like, pave pather. I don't even know what the word is. Trailblazer.

Trailblazer. Pave pather. How would you say that?

Paving the path. But thank you so much for being a trailblazer and showing us that the way that we sit in our physical bodies can be Everything to our spiritual evolution.

Yeah. Or at least it's a big part, you know. And your spiritual evolution will spill back into all of it. I don't think there's any one thing that is the most important. I feel like they're all of great value and for some people if you kind of massage in the physical part that will spill into their spiritual part more. For some other people it would make more sense to focus on, oh, I want you to do on Kundalini breathwork and pranayama and I want you to be doing, you know, these essential oils and all that stuff and that will spill back into the way that they occupy themselves. I don't think there's any one. But it depends on the individual what will resonate with them most because it's all just a bunch of spokes tied up to the same hub of your. You miss.

Yeah, wherever we start, we're all getting.

To the same place or we already are in the same place exactly.

We're just remembering where. Can listeners connect with you, find your book, listen to your podcast?

Yeah, so I mean the book would be on the alignbook.com it's before December 24, 2019 and then there's some bonuses that go along with it. Then if it's after Christmas Eve then you know, anywhere books are Amazon, bookstores, Princeton, no, whatever. And then my existence is. You just type aligned podcasts into the Internet. You'll find Instagram is where I'm most active presently. And then I obviously host the podcast with the beautiful Sahara Rose as well. It's been on there and be on again whenever the heck your book comes out.

Yes, for sure. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this great information with us.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Oh my goddess. How important is it to sit on the floor? I can't get over it. I'm literally texting everyone I know, especially the older people in my family, my parents in laws, aunts, uncles, like please guys, just on the floor. It's going to prevent all of us from dealing with the heartache that will happen when you get injured. Because you know when someone gets injured, that's everyone else that is taking care of them and that is hurt in the process too. So let's all just take that responsibility.

To sit on the floor.

Take care of our bodies, take care of our hip health and that's going to help us living longer, healthier and happier lives. So check out Aaron's new book, the Align Method. Lots of great exercises to connect to your body and he's just a chalk full of wisdom. So we are going to be getting started on a free five day Rose Gold Goddess challenge where we are embodying the five goddess archetypes. This is an absolutely free challenge where we're going to be stepping into our creative Saraswati and our wild Kali and our powerful Durga and so much more. And we're going to be opening doors back up for Rose Gold Goddesses, the sacred sisterhood collective all about becoming your highest self. So if you want to join in with us, head over to rosegoldgoddesses.com you can put your email right there. We'll send you the five day challenge and tell you when we're opening doors back up. And I'm so excited to meet you in there. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you loved it, I would love if you could leave me a review in the iTunes store. And as a free gift, I will share with you the first half of my unreleased book, Eat Right for your mind body type. Simply email a screenshot of your review over to SaharaetFeelFresh.com again, Sahara S A H A R AatFeelFresh.com and I will send you over the first half of my unreleased book, Eat Right for your mind body type. Thank you and namaste.

That.