KETTLEBELL TRAINING FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH 🧘‍♂️...Discover the power of movement as medicine

But a kettlebell swing is not by any means the first place I would start someone. So oftentimes I've got to tell someone like, hey, this is where you are. Let's reestablish some good positioning. The number one thing, honestly, that as it relates to coaching movement in the gym and outside, you, you said it perfectly. So I would say micro movements create macro movements. Okay. The ability to just make these small fine tunements in awareness. Awareness is the biggest thing in and out of the gym that is going to create the prerequisites for change anywhere. So just having the awareness of holding yourself as if you want to think about, yes, you want to roll the shoulders back and down. You want to get, most importantly get as tall as you can as if someone was pulling a string from the crown of your head up right from the ceiling like a dancer might be. That is the type of posture we want to be in on a day to day basis. But also you take that posture and you can apply it to anything in the gym. So I would say awareness is the most important. And then depending on that posture, if we want to focus on the physical aspect, like you mentioned, you know, briefly, like just how someone's feeling.

Yes.

Will impact their posture. So honestly, there may be no amount of rows or static wall leans for the neck posture. If you're not dealing with some of the things in your life or not aware of them, it's going to be very. That are closing down your heart center. It's going to be hard to open up or at least maintain that position when you're unconscious. So I would say awareness as a whole, I would say looking at the emotional components and then from there it's really about opening up a lot of everything that's on the front of the body and, and starting to strengthen from an endurance perspective. Everything that's on the back. Okay. Because when you look at posture, you're looking at endurance muscles of the body. Long duration. We're meant to stand for hours on end. So if you just do five heavy rows, yes, that'll start strengthening the back. But you typically will not be able to maintain it unless you train for longer durations.

I just feel like pulling is such a important thing that honestly most people don't do. Like pulling develops all those like the posterior muscles that hold us upright. And gravity is always trying to beat us down. Like right now, if we were to not be aware, gravity would just put us on the ground, you know. And I think most people, because of the incessant monkey mind Life's responsibilities. Just things that are really loading them both emotionally and physically without knowing it, they can just maybe an inch or two slope forward. So doing this type of training, like, how does this emotionally impact people? Because I know physically, physically, we all want to look good because it's nice to look good. But from, like, a longevity and health standpoint, you know, how does this type of training impact people's emotional health?

What. What do they call it? The power posture. The power position. When you stand tall and you put your hands on your hip, like, just like that. Like, just.

Or like Jordan Peterson says, stand, stand up tall with your shoulders back. You know, it's in 12 rules for life. It's one of his postures. It's a reason it's in there. Right. He talks about it in his work.

I mean, what can you do from that posture? Not only does it truly embody, like a superhero type posture, so you can step into the identity of the person that you're trying to be, but also, too. I mean, one of the beautiful things that I admire and appreciate about you is we just did some. You created. You gave me an invitation to do seven minutes of your breathwork program, which was not only awesome, but also it allowed me to not only get more grounded, tune into my body, get more clear. And it's very hard when you look at posturally. So when you're in this exaggerated kyphotic position, when your rib cage collapses down here, it's very hard to get a full diaphragmatic breath.

Yeah.

So when you open up the body, you can actually get that full diaphragmatic breath. And that is one of the biggest, at least in my experience, anchors to being grounded, being more in your body, feeling more confident. And so whether it's from that identity, that power position of the person you want to be and step into, or simply just the biomechanics of getting a full breath, that'll change the game on someone's emotional. Just intelligence.

Yeah. And the way that they can fill. I learned from Dr. Belisa Vranich. She wrote breathing for warriors to breathe into the back of the kidneys. Actually, she calls it vertical breathing versus horizontal breathing. So most people breathe like this. Right. And then they're just tensioning their scalenes and they're more kyphotic and they're more forward flexed. So I'm curious to go through your program because I know that there's like a stretch protocol, but is there also breath awareness in the program as well? Like, how did you integrate that in There.

Oh, dude, you get me all excited, bro. You got me all excited. I mean, this is, this is a reflection of not only how I teach, but of my life. And so every single morning, there's every phase, you have a new morning routine that's under 10 minutes long that incorporates what I call a core temperature warmup. So warming up the fascia, warming up the nervous system, and then we move directly into a few mobility exercises, primarily focused on the spine. For me, the spine is priority over everything when it comes to training. Then from there, then we do typically between two to four breathing exercises and you're done. So breathing is incorporated even honestly, depending on where someone's at, like they don't have to do the entire workout program or whatever. If someone, and so many people have commented on this, just doing the ten minute morning routine. Change the game for someone. Change the game. So there's a morning routine again, there's individualized stretching, active meditations, and intelligently programmed kettlebell workouts for both level one beginner people who let's say either have zero kettlebell experience or resistance training experience, and then a level two, which is going to be more your intermediate, maybe with some fitness experience and or a little kettlebell experience. But they really want to take their performance, their athleticism to a whole nother level. That's what it's perfect for.

Okay, while you're watching this, just click a new window open or if you're in the car, just tell your wife or your husband, just go to wellnessforce.com kettlebell and you can learn about Mike's program right there. Oh yeah, I'm curious about from a emotional perspective again, I know we're talking about physical intelligence today, but so much of the request for the show, it's just like, how do I get out of stress? How do I get out of overwhelm? How do I get out of anxiety? How do I get rid of panic? And so I think about this concept of movement as medicine and what are the things that we can't see about movement and what is the medicine that we can't see about movement? What does that really mean? How are we healing ourselves through movement? But it's not just how big our biceps are or our body. Like what's the healing part of movement as medicine?

I mean, I mean there's so much there, but like one, one. I mean one of the biggest thing is movement is pumping movement. You're pumping the lymphatic system, but the other thing is you're pumping energy and stagnant Energy. And that's also why. And even, you know, I was just thinking when I was back at Saltara, which is an ayahuasca medicine center, you know, I brought a large group down there myself and Connor Moore and I didn't have anything to do with the medicine work other than, other than just bringing people down. But, but what I did contribute was movement workshops. So body weight from stretching to movement. And what I did is even though like we could look at the biomechanics of like a psoas stretch or whatever it is, or an Eldo, which is incredible, but when you look at movement via energy centers in the body, you know you can do. And that's what working in is. Essentially you're utilizing movement to create not only awareness, breath pumping and an like getting stagnant energy to move. And that is like when we're sitting down all day, like you're, you're A lot of times specifically if our posture is poor, you're physically and emotionally going to be more likely to be stagnant.

I just got a visual of like a dead end lake where all this sediment sits. It's kind of what happens in our body. Yeah. 100 a blood perspective. It's like our sediment gets stuck and then we emotionally are just bathing in our own.

Yeah, you're just recently.

It's not funny. But it is funny because it's like, well, here's how to fix it.

Well, think, dude. I love that. I mean, you got that stagnant lake versus a stream or a river. And that's why you don't want to be drinking even if it's clean, you know, if it's non, let's say contaminated, whatever water you don't want to be drinking out of a stagnant lake, but you can drink out of that mountain water, that Shasta water all day, bro. And that will energize, vitalize. So you know, you can take, you know, exercises. Any exercise. Any exercise is medicine, right? And I don't believe, and maybe people have heard this, but there really is no. With good technique or more or less, there's no bad exercise. There's only a wrongly prescribed exercise. Right. So if you understand some movement principles, any movement can be an energizing activity. So as an example, if you're to do a pushing exercise or a pressing exercise with the upper body, we can look at it from two perspectives. Pressing exercise for the upper body, you're going to get energy and flow to the chest, to the upper back. You're going to open up the heart center. The other thing too is you can look at it from, like, from the perspective if you really want to exercise your boundaries in life, you're having trouble saying no. Pushing away is exerting. That's. That's like your. Your. You're saying no to things. When you're pulling, you're opening, you're receiving. So you can look at it from that. And what I would encourage people to do with. With all their movement practice, whether it's training hard in the gym, which will be a little bit more challenging to do this, but when you're unloaded and your focus is energizing the body, put intention to it, make it be a ritual. So many things in my life now, I've got so much more rich from simply by adding an intention. Practice before. So again, if you're doing a body weight or even just an energy push, pushing forward, pulling back, you're exhaling, working with your breath, letting go of what you don't need right now, bringing in gratitude, bringing in what you want, energized, filling the body. You do that for literally, even if it's just one to five minutes. Yeah, game changer.