Episode 105 – Ido Portal on Body Movement Dynamics, Learning/Un-learning, Fear & more

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late to this party bring your web presence into harmony by upgrading to a dot yoga website and email address today welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital loads are in their full upright as you take your seat of consciousness

relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening I’m viewed sometimes as a very radical person because of the choices I’ve made in in that regard information becomes toxic just like any other substance just like I can kill you with water or with oxygen and all with squats or with human movement I can kill you with any substance with any prescription with any medium so why do you think information

is different like human movement as a concept is not understood as a concept by most people they they have other terms to define all kinds of human movements but they do not treat those different actions trends disciplines under one umbrella

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what’s up guys you are listening to the human experience and this is our episode with mr. yo portal if you have not heard about yo portal yet you’re going to love this episode this was in my top 10 episodes of all time I don’t say that lightly a hero has just this awareness of movement that I absolutely loved loved loved so I’m sure that you will enjoy this episode thank you so much for listening

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the human experience is in session my guest for today’s mr. IDO portal Ito it’s a pleasure sir welcome to hxp thank you very much for having me here so your profile has exploded and you’re becoming more and more famous I guess it to say can you just give us an idea of who you are for the people that don’t know who you are yet please I’m a guy who is obsessed with the movement a movement as a concept movement of the human body and

movement of other things and just a eternally curious and try to unfold and unpack it and share the temporary discoveries with the the people around me yeah I love that how does a person get into becoming a movement specialist I mean you started with capoeira at a very young age right not that young I started around 15 with capoeira and before that the Chinese traditional martial arts it’s a question I asked myself many times as well as I realized

my passion lies within movement how do you learn and study more about it and it was all kind of scattered and and it still is in many ways scattered pieces of information from a variety of fields each field using different terminology and different hierarchies and different systems and it took me a few decades to start to understand how little I understand and that’s that’s what I’ve been doing how do we understand the dynamics of a human body how do we

understand movement and our relationship to gravity I think we understand it very well actually but maybe not on a conscious level but our communication with gravity is really masterful if you look at the any person moving around moving about you can see that incredible a mastery of aligning the center of mass with the line of gravity starts in the first few years of our lives and by the time we are 10 years of age even before that we

are really quite proficient at it if we want to refine certain relationships whether it’s with gravity or other forces around us and we can shed awareness on it through and all kinds of practices and like somatic practices for example or within a specialized field there’s some discipline athletics or a martial arts or dance and they kind of enhance our capabilities and more specifically but the general public is masterful in its a connection with

gravity in many ways even though people are not moving very well in comparison with traditional cultures or with the elite athletes and they still can perform some incredible feats in day to day lives just living their lives that’s fascinating you called it a communication with gravity that we said it is a constant communication yeah it’s a dialogue with gravity can you explain a little bit further what do you mean by a communication with gravity how are you

communicating with the gravity you are constantly refining your your position your relationship with the gravity line it is not static although most people they don’t feel anymore the very refined movements that occur as we speak it’s occurring to you to me and we are a sack of liquid suspended by these contractions and relaxation and we are constantly falling and in regaining our balance and falling and regaining our balance and this whole thing is

occurring on this ya big rock spinning around and there there is other forces also operating on it’s not just gravity like Coriolis effect in other forces and we are often not sensing them very well just like the fish cannot see the water as the popular analogy he goes and then when we need to refine that connection we need to kind of disrupt this unconscious proficiency we kind of stop the whole process and sometimes they really disrupt some basic functions in

order to refine and then we have to put the whole thing together and go back into this unconscious blissful awareness and proficiency I love the way that you talk about this and the words that use to explain what we’re doing as we move and our communication with gravity as you say so you’re obsessed with this movement principle this idea of that we are moving constantly you studied capoeira and then you set off to find teachers

find people who could show you more right yeah yeah I was always looking for teachers even within capoeira or martial arts I was always valued experienced the collective knowledge in and also the emotional connection to a teacher this is something very dear and very close to me hmm okay so who is someone that you found that was one of the most interesting someone that occurs to you immediately without thinking I have a lot of big influences and my first

influenced by far is my mother who is still very influential on me and is one of my teachers and I’ve had also the honor and the pleasure to teach her some things as well later on and then my first martial arts teacher who davanon who for many many years was a major figure of inspiration and influenced me as a young kid and later my first cup with a teacher Paolo Kalima another big influence and then my second cup of a teacher who is like a very very

influential figure on me and Donna Valley mastery Donna Vavi and all of them are yeah big figures that have taught me and on and on and I can keep going I’ve learned so much from so many people something I’ve seen you say is you know you gain inspiration from small children and watching children move and I saw the an interview that you did and I saw it on the weekend and I remember going and visiting my nephew he’s like 2 or 3

years old and after I saw you speak about that I was watching him and his movement and he’s he’s he’s so active he’s always running around and jumping and playing and I noticed his parents tend to tell him to stop doing that and we get told not to move in certain ways as we grow older is this something that you find accurate yeah yeah hundred percent we try to control all kinds of factors and the risk and we’ve designed our lives around the concept of staying

alive and it be it has become very easy in many ways and part of it was to stop all kinds of moving parts moving parts that can create problems in the system and in the scenario of a family and very often the moving part is the child that that’s where the Machine can can produce some problems and so often you hear the fatigue and calcified parents kind of instruct you know perfectly intuitive and mobile warm capable body from moving

and just from lack of education of course and these are people who view their child is the most important thing to them but they’re just not not always aware how important it is to move to move a lot as a child and of course later on is well learned it’s a major problem so you know what can we do as adults to start to move more with our bodies and communicate better with with gravity not sure why you put so much focus on that connection with gravity as the

connection with gravity is maybe romantic for some people I don’t view it the connection to gravity is a major source of movement problems okay okay but very similar to breath teachers teachers who teach breathing and these days I don’t view it as it’s actually a good starting point for the process and my father was we will become 70 this year he never learned how to breathe from anyone you went through his life very capable and he’s still operating

very well actively moving around he never received instruction on how to breathe nor how to communicate with gravity right but there are definitely other concepts that are very important for us I usually start people on some very very basic folding and unfolding of the human body and this is a I think is a major issue people simply do not move in a full range of motion and their daily life are spent around some in-between position

which is mostly sitting these days sitting standing and lying down these are the three positions that most people spend their life in I start people with some squatting just them not squatting for reps and for strength training but just kind of folding the body down and resting in it deep knee bend as many traditional cultures am are using as a resting position as often as a working position and then another thing that I do is I like to start people with

hanging hanging from a suspension point and that house them to use gravity as that aligning force to open the structure since our daily lives are spent below eye level somewhere in front of you and slightly below people don’t really use their arms overhead and that creates a host of problems from you know shoulder problems and spine issues etc etc so these two things are something that they recommend people would start with hanging just relaxed

hanging from a bar spending some time there and then squatting in a resting position some people cannot even start with that and they need some regressions but that’s in and made kind of a main direction of development hmm okay so you know just for anyone who’s curious and and listening to us now how long should a person spend hanging if they’re beginning they’re starting out but I found very efficient would be to take a project and usually a period of the

months thirty days and take one of those things and kind of really drill it and then in terms of hanging I recommend people to hang a total of seven minutes a day for 30 days and that seven minutes is divided into many many small sections throughout the day of maybe 30 seconds 45 seconds or a minute and it can be even a partial hang we’re still the feet are lightly touching the floor or supporting some weight it can be from rings or from a bar or from any

suspension point even hanging putting your hands above your door and just kind of relaxing down just just like a cat stretches and just getting into the habit of passing through this position and of course I recommend them to get an anchor point a suspension point available to them so some of my students install it in their office or their house and when it’s there and you pass by it it’s much easier to start to apply the squat is easier usually for people

they can spend a little bit more time with it and that reccommend usually and 30 minutes a day for 30 days and that is done through sections of a minute 2 3 up to 5 minutes at a time and you do it while speaking on the phone while waiting for the tram or in front of the TV at night or just throughout the day just kind of fold the structure when you start it’s a little bit hard but after a week usually most people get into it then the

benefits just take over and then it’s easy to continue and benefits are just immense I’ve received without exaggeration thousands of thank-you letters thousands and thousands it’s like the two challenges combined they had more than 30,000 people participate from around the world and it’s nothing new it’s nothing that I invented it was just something that I brought to the awareness of the public once more repackaged and brought it again into the

trend somehow but I yeah I needed to do a lot of tricks a lot of backflips in order to get people’s attention to do those simple tasks okay you’ve worked with many different students from many different cultures and and I know that you travel quite often you do any of these movements sort of workshops where you invite people to come and and train with you is there a problem that you see most often with the students that you teach struggling with yeah I think there

is a major problem it’s not so so much of a physical problem um but it’s a more of a conceptual problem like human movement as a concept is not understood as a concept by most people they they have other terms to define all kinds of human movements but they do not treat those different actions trends disciplines under one umbrella that’s a major problem where things that you do with your body dynamically or otherwise because there is no other thing we are

where temporal beings will we live in time so even a static position is actually extremely dynamic anything that you do falls under this umbrella it can be sitting now talking to you and my spine is moving around my shoulders are setting and resetting I’m breathing I’m swallowing I’m creating sound by pushing air through vocal cords I am blinking and all of this is movement and movement is also the yoga class that you took yesterday and

movement is also fighting and in a movement is swimming and movement is anything really and and that is a concept that’s the most major problem that it’s still not perceived that way and hence people have a hard time to make connections cross connections to study it to embody it and to be and that’s that’s why we are moving so poorly and on the inside and on the outside and because movement is the only state of being there is nothing else in

this reality as we know it it is a moving one and then we are suffering that’s another component of our suffering and maybe one of the most major ones so I’ve seen you say that you know we suffer from we have too much information we’re always like being bombarded with social media or on our computers or on our phones how do you see this translating into movement if meaning if if someone is holding their phone looking at their phone all day how can

we sort of unlearn this habit that we’ve picked up that’s a that’s a very powerful question and it’s a very it’s a very good one and it’s something that I’ve been tossing and turning in my head for many many many years I’m viewed sometimes as a very radical person because of the choices I’ve made in in that regard I truly believe it is not anymore about acquisition of information and the trend to acquire more information is misguided

and hence I put my faith into other mediums of operation a concept that I use a lot is a bullshit detector a certain ability to discern pieces of information and also more importantly the ability to understand where you cannot perform this action alone you’re not knowledgeable enough to acquire knowledge so all you acquire is information and this only leads to further confusion you are polluting yourself information becomes toxic just

like any other substance just like I can kill you with water or with oxygen and all with squats or with human movement I can kill you with any substance with any prescription with any medium so why do you think information is different our explosion of free information available information and of course we like to talk about Internet and this explosion etc this creates a completely different needs in terms of how to be and how to

become the person that you wish to become part of my focus has been to to be very brave and strong in saying no to more information in not buying another book before I finish all the unread book on my bookshelf not to take another workshop from another Fed from another person and not to open my mind at times because the mind just like a parachute when opened too much will also not work there is a certain balance to strike and that doesn’t happen just from acquiring

information that requires action a lot more action that requires a bullshit detector that requires to discern information and wisdom nice joke I heard recently from a friend a John Kavanagh is a known figure in the world of MMA is an information is knowing that tomato is a fruit wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad I like it as a joke inand I said but I think it’s not so much of a joke but actually this is this is the state

of many people that they make a fruit salad with a tomato inside because their focus has been that this is a fruit it’s just a piece of information that further confused them hmm so this is a few thoughts about the process and there is so much to deny there is so much to limit and to say no to these words that are often only are portrayed in a negative way actually are extremely positive as well and they can produce a lot of positive trends in in

our lives and this is where I find the need to bring back some of those ways of conducting oneself and of course the the simpletons the oversimplify errs will take this and would make it black and white and would or would use the word but Mike the bad people I hope I am I make sense for the intelligent crowd that can understand the how this is so much needed in these days and of course black and white in the right quantities in the

right way yeah for sure I love that so much I’m gonna jump around a little bit just because I feel like the philosophy is as important as the actual practical understanding of actually doing it and learning about the movement in ways we can we can move you talk about becoming obsessed with what you’re doing you talk about upgrading your passion to obsession how does a person convert you know this sort of obsession into a passion when

they’re learning about movement and ended in a discipline I can’t say I’m a good person to answer that question and I don’t like to to speak when I’m not feeling very confident about subjects and the reason is that I’ve never had the need to convert my passion to obsession it simply was there that state this is something that just kind of emanates from my my DNA from my skin is what it says this endless curiosity this a unquenchable thirst for understanding

the things that I’m I love and passionate about but one thing that I can I can provide is sometimes I see people holding back I see people that are passionate about something they realize that also balance is important and it’s and it’s so much it’s so true and to strike that balance and and they’re kind of trying to strike the balance a little bit too early and I like very much a book off skis and point of view on it and find some things that

you love and let it kill you but definitely I think a very important thing that sometimes I see is a lot people are being educated and being advised and to hold back yeah to be balanced tell and and and there is a lot in balance and it’s very important thing but I think without getting out of balance at times to be in balance all the time is can be very problematic you know I I want to talk about this idea of play and incorporating playfulness into

the things that we do every day and this is something that you advocate a lot you talk about playfulness and and becoming more playful how can we become more playful with the things that we we do yeah we need we need to understand it as a concept and then we need to take that concept extremely seriously which is a nice nice little paradox because our life depends on it we need to play as if our life depend on it that’s a that’s a

nice phrase for me Frank forensic another one is to never leave the playground this is something that needs to be understood this is something that needs to be highlighted we need to play and we will play with shell play then we are the homo Luden’s we are the plain human that’s the state of who we are and it’s interlaced into our evolution from a lot before human existence and Homo sapiens all animals play you can even look at it on a subatomic level the

particles play and they are moving in in a playful manner who are you to deny that to stop that who are us to kill play in a setting like prison or in a setting like work or in a setting like family or in a setting like military this is something that should be actually embraced and play is the way that we get strong plays the way that we develop our survival skills play is the way that we developed all skills that’s a a very primary state of humans

evolving it is not the only thing the reason is we have been transmitting knowledge we’ve been passing on pieces of information and that is also in the core of who we are we are collecting information and we’re passing it from father to son and those techniques and ways and systems and habits are extremely powerful and they are the other side and together with play and you get the complete picture I believe in the technical aspects and I believe

in acquisition of skills by using knowledge of our teachers and their teachers etc but on the other hand I believe in the need to create your own amalgam and the need to develop your own self knowledge and and that is done through primary through experience and play produces that experience everything you say is like poetic man I really love everything you’re saying I’ve seen you do this movement exercise where you’re balancing a tennis ball on your fingers

seems like such a simple idea just to hold a little ball on your fingers but you know it’s also very complex like after you’ve been doing it for more than five minutes or just a few minutes so I mean this integration of using something so simple like broom stick and let it fall and then catching it how do you come up with these different ideas I mean it’s so simple but so complicated as well sometimes it’s some people look at those

drills and tests and skills and they view them as ingenious and is it’s just so far from it there is really nothing new Under the Sun a lot of these drills and skills have been used in cultures in martial arts in indents in in theater in physical theater in all kinds of a atletic sand team sports for a long time we’ve been collecting this knowledge and what I did is I just shamelessly just took from anyone and everyone and then

played a lot with it myself practically I’m a practitioner and an abscessed practitioner and and by playing so much with these tasks I was able to find some nice twist to them my personal touch to them and then share them with people and have optimally those who are obsessed enough and devoted enough to develop their own versions and and ways to it that’s the process there are a few modes a few principles and kind of fundamentals that

are once you understand them you understand the nature of our communication with each other physically corporal communication or our communication with objects our communication with the floor our communication with the physical laws governing our existence our communication with our ideas and I’ve been devoting myself to research and understand these principles and because I developed a certain understanding of those principles I’m able to produce

from this basic understanding infinite amount of combinations and and tasks and drills and skills and which I’ve been doing for many years with my students but I’m frankly at a point where I don’t view there is a need of another you know drill or skill specifically or a new invention or I view that as another type of wanker II that goes on sometimes we need to go back to often to like very very important basics and to practice them to

really practice them and that’s something that is also happening sometimes I see people becoming addicted to the variation and the change em but they should just get a slap in the ass and and and go do some serious practice and that’s very similar in the field of meditation awareness a consciousness sometimes there is another trend earn another way in another breathing exercise another mantra and other stick and people just need to sit down and do

it and and and there is a point where we need to say just just do it you know we talked about the way that a child is moving do you think that there’s an aspect of fearlessness that comes with the child’s actions and also do you feel that there’s a point at which adults face the same amount of feared but they back off you know because they’ve learned to be afraid they’ve learned to be constricted in their movement yes it’s true that children experience less

fears there is always fear present fear is is a preserving entity fear and pain are very important input for us but it’s definitely less inhibited by it in the young years which completely transforms the way that our we move and communicate and our abilities capabilities and also oftentimes why we get injured stuck and Plateau but when where everything around you warns you what else can you become then if a fearful a entity and that that’s our

culture where we’re constantly we live in fear there is all these standards all the time we’re standardizing everything Europe incapable of Lee in your life we’ve become a very soft we’ve become very afraid and that of course inhibits us and creates a lot of problems for us what do you see happening physiologically when someone is showing a sign of when you’re doing a hanging exercise and someone is afraid what do you see happening with that

person well there is at first a focus shifted and so instead of like sensing what is actually occurring to you you are now creating a narrative of what you believe is occurring to you and that narrative becomes your reality you’re not open to see what is happening in your shoulder in your back to actually sense to shift your awareness to these areas and see what what actually occurs your focus is shifted not from sensing not from being aware but for

constructing a narrative full of fear and that later if they allowed would become your reality that narrative is stronger than what actually happened and so that’s that something very very common and it’s good that you gave that example it’s a it’s even on a simple level like that somebody comes in is like have some shoulder issues and let’s say maybe in pinch these shoulders or is some some inflammation and then you put him in a very soft hanging

exercise and you see that from the start there is a certain opinion that is there it’s like this is not good for me and instead of sensing what is occurring what is there it’s just blocking the whole process altogether and of course you can fight that and you can work with that and you can not allow that to take over etc that’s a major problem by the way with a lot of our Diagnostics we don’t realize sometimes that Diagnostics

are a surefire way to guarantee that the the narrative starts concern in that specific issue if some spontaneous cancerous activity happens in the body and you just go onto into your life the body oftentimes disappears removes it able to fight through it you will never know but if you go on a general checkup and something is there sometimes that process alone would lead to in some cases your death and of course ahead yeah I don’t give a

solution here I just point at the problem I don’t want to present it as a black and white thing don’t get diagnosed that’s of course it’s not simple as that and and oftentimes you would die without being diagnosed so it’s not a black and white theme but there is a lot of power to the placebo effect and the placebo effect works negatively not just positively psychosomatic diseases are extremely powerful and they kill a lot of people

all the time yeah so that’s the the root of fear and how fear is extremely powerful influencer on us I love that scene and from Apocalypto from Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto on fear the scene was the in the start of the movie they go out hunting and they meet these people all of a sudden they make these noise and they say who is there come step out and these people just appear and they just say we just want to pass through and we are on our way and he and

they asked them where are you going and said we we are going to find a better future in your eyes is just full of fear and trauma and you can see that something happened to those people they have left their place and they are looking for a place where they can live and then the scene ends and they they exchange a gift and they pass through and then when the tribe goes back to the village the father tells the son don’t tell the other people about these people

that we’ve met and he doesn’t seem to understand and then he says the worst thing that you can bring into our village is fear it’s worse than the actual incurrence and then later on he is slaughtered in front of his son’s eyes and he just gives him this free one last night so even in that moment like he will not experience fear he would not have it he can control just that he cannot control what happens to him but he can control the fact that he will not

give in to fear one of my favorite books and from June and there is also a beautiful quote on fear there you have to let it pass through you and you have to remain there and then you would look at the path as it moved through you and out of you and only you shall remain only you shall remain there so it’s something that is very close to my heart something that I’m researching a lot I’m am very fearful person and that’s that’s my experience with myself and I’ve been

working very hard and I based my life in my fears I based my life in my difficulties not in my strengths as many people think it is because other practitioners in my field and in other in many fields that I’ve been part of like in martial arts in acrobatics I worked as an acrobat on stage these people are usually experiencing a little fear compared to other people and hence that’s why they gravitate towards this profession where I am on the other side

the truth is that I’ve I’m experiencing a lot of fear compared to others and I’ve always seen it I’ve always compared myself with other practitioners and I based myself in the need to not give in to that and to pass through that and only I shall remain and that’s something that they said that I’m still day in and day out working on and fighting through this strikes such a chord within me because something I was thinking on was you know

I am my biggest opponent and you know I am the biggest judge of my own character and Who I am what I’m doing and what I found is my own inner dialogue is so harsh worse than anyone would ever say to me like a you know loved one or someone who cared someone who is trying to give me advice you know like if I externalize this internal voice of you know like why the why the fuck did you do that like you know that that is a thinking if I make a

mistake or if there’s something wrong that I’m trying to correct like you know I’m so hard on myself and I realize you know the the biggest opponent that we have is when you look in a mirror and you see yourself that’s your biggest opponent is yourself how do we start to understand this better well first you you’ve covered a lot of road by realizing it even once in one’s life just that realization even once and that’s already a major milestone and

then there is a need of a constant reminder because the dynamics are such that you will focus elsewhere by the needs of reality around you you’re living your life so hence a small reminder for a certain period of time is needed and once you’ve done that second stage of a consistent reminder the third would be to change the behavior to change the knee-jerk reaction usually it happens already from the stage number two by realizing something you

immediately disrupt the process so for example I drove today with my bicycle and somebody wanted to cut in front of me and with a car and then dare to kind of honk at me and and I immediately my knee-jerk reaction was getting I got angry but the thing is sometimes I immediately realize oh now you’re gonna get angry and by having that fraction of a thought before or as I get angry it almost immediately undoes the thing and there is just an aftertaste of the anger

it’s very different than the anger itself there is some sensitivity needed to sense the difference and this is the start of the process the start of the change the way that we change things so for example you fail you disappoint yourself your knee-jerk reactions like why the fuck did you do that but by inserting another thought of like oh now you are going to be disappointed in yourself now you’re gonna be harsh on yourself that already starts the process

but there is a need to do that again and again and again and there is a certain period of time where you need to keep your focus on that process enough days should be accumulated with many things it’s not as long as we think it’s sometimes one month of playing that game but this one month most people never go through and hence they’re always at the mercy of their current makeup current instinctual and egotistical state and they find it

very hard to create changes but changes actually rather easy to do once you understand the mechanics of it there is a lot of work that’s done on this object my mother introduced me to to a lot of a very potent strategies there she’s she is a big believer in narrative vein therapy and the working with this narrative this story that we tell ourselves and that’s exactly what your what you’re describing is that narrative that negative narrative that you have

and with yourself that is an ever dynamic scene you can always change that it’s just it takes work and it takes a decision like I’ve had enough and I’m gonna focus here so many questions here and we have some some questions from some listeners I wanted to ask you about something that’s on your wall in your studio in tel-aviv it has written um isolation and then there’s a narrow integration and then to improvisation what does this mean it’s a

concept that I developed many years ago a few decades ago really it was first a very crude concept and then later on when sharing online name became another mode of my teaching I really kind of put it out there and I call it the road to mastery to mastery anything mastering ourselves mastering everything mastering every discipline any skill improvisation is also synonymous with the word life living life is improvisational capacity

we are improvising that’s the next word that comes out of my mouth right now I don’t know what it just erupt out and improv I’m actually perfectly capable machinery as it improvises in reality that’s what we are and hence that’s where we want to go with pretty much everything playing the violin boxing growing children anything but then there is also a need to resolve problems change trades a harness in and modify starter packs knee-jerk reactions

instincts reflexes absorb techniques become techniques and applied techniques that have been passed to us from prior generations and that’s done through the process of isolating these specific moments or or tasks or techniques or systems and then integrating them into bigger from atoms into molecules into bigger sections bigger sequences and finally the whole thing should arrive with improvisation and that’s what I try to teach my students everything that we

do is like go through this pipeline I always my eye is on improvisation but I am often shifting into isolation or integration in order to not just rely on the act of play and you’ll get better yeah you’ll get better but you will never even scratch the surface of how much you can discover it’s not about being good or not good but it’s more about the discovery and the complexity if you wish to increase your complexity you have to use also isolation and

integration and not just improvisation and that that’s that the idea behind how I teach and that’s a concept that I created and share them and use with my students but it’s also I think has been around in many ways and understood by many people I never heard it in this way but I think people have been acting upon these great teachers and for a long time intuitively or maybe with different works so you mean that when you’re in the this

idea of playing then you’re you’re taking a moment to integrate the things that you’ve learned and not just yes I’m playing first I don’t always engage in play sometimes I need to drill I need to stop isolate the problem drill it and then go back into the improvisation which play is one mode of improvisation it’s not always about improvising in a jazz concert at as the moment and fault there comes a moment where you go back home and you

practice the most basic notes cleaning them up and then specific letters and n sequences and and melodies and in order to support your improvisation you don’t just improvise you don’t just improvise well you can as many try to do but I I believe it is not going very far in terms of complexity discovery and being and and it has been misleading people sometimes I see messages about you don’t need to isolate you don’t need just be

just just improvise just play nobody needs teachers we don’t need anything well I think it comes from people without skin in the game and I think it is I think it is not a very powerful mode of increasing one’s complexity and I think and I know the results are very poor in my eyes and I think that there is not a not much accountability there and that’s why you can make such claims by people who are they just wanted to release you to free you it’s because

it’s very anti totalitarian thing it’s releasing people you don’t need anyone just play just be so I believe in the mode of play in the need of it in the need to improvise but I also believe you should step out of the flow State you should step out of the the playful mode in order to improve the system it’s not just about driving all the time sometimes you need to put the gas in the in the car sometimes you need to fix the car change

the tires and these are modes of our being that are maybe they’re not as sexy not as inspiring but extremely important I wanted to ask you I I know you’ve been asked this many times so I wanted to just briefly ask you about Conor McGregor now I know you’ve been his movement coach since 2015 or so recently he had the fight with Floyd Mayweather why in your opinion did he lose why would anyone lose to to a person who has been perfecting their skills in a

specific discipline for their whole lives for 35 years and you step into that game and challenge yourself to an impossible lane or close to impossible task I think it’s very obvious it was a monumental task and then and I think Conor is a person that challenges himself pushes himself and with full belief in himself but there is something to be said also for the size of the task and and and the ability to perform it hmm okay fair enough you know we’ve got

a couple questions from some listeners Michael asks what activities or exercises do you recommend to increase general agility and speed I have a lot of trouble with I’m a very pragmatic person and I’m a very accurate person it sounds very positive but it has a lot of also negative connotations yes I don’t want to present it as such but my problem with such questions is that the terms being used like agility the and then dexterity things like that they

mean shit they these words have been abused and and used by so many people in so many different ways that I have no fucking idea what the listener asking me means and do you want to run faster and you cause the action of moving your feet and very quickly in between obstacles agility or is it catching a falling cup of coffee and that we call agility or is it or is it something else it’s it’s a I don’t want to contribute to due to the

misinformation when I answer something I answer out of a place of an understanding and that’s very important to me I don’t want to bullshit the listener or to come up with some half-assed and sir do these do that that’s not who I am okay I completely appreciate the honesty there Kathy asked how do you keep your movement fresh how do you keep learning more as you move forward how are you increasing your knowledge in in regards to movement it’s very simple I I don’t

get good at anything that I do and I’m I’m a beginner every week that’s that’s how I acquired the skill set and that I acquired and that’s how I continue to acquire more I actually am very poor at any specific skill that I can perform maybe some people a will not realize it like for example they would seem do a one-arm handstand and they would ask this is poor well compared to elite practitioners it is poor anything that I do is just on an okay level I have an

understanding of it I can perform it and but then I can do many many such things I can orient myself in all kinds of disciplines and fields and and just be mediocre or or or even sometimes below or sometimes a little bit above but never really go to excellence and by making that choice I’m able to every week learn new skills and acquire new skills I’m the jack of all trades and master of none and but being that I’ve mastered being the jack of all trades and that’s

the other side of the sentence where they forgot it and when they they coined the phrase jack of all trades is a master of being a jack of all trades he’s not the master of none that’s where I put my focus on and that’s what I enjoy I love that and I’m fully aware of the the pros and the cons and I continue to make that choice on a daily basis yeah you know I’d really like to just close with how can we bring the mind into more integration more connectedness

with with the body this is why we have mindfulness practices and like these meditation classes that people are teaching it seems we’re very disconnected from ourselves we do all these things and can you can you talk on that a little bit please I think what is valuable and what I try to provide to many of my students through moments that cannot be verbalized inside that’s something that I I do a lot with people I just put them in in scenarios in environment where

verbalization the internal monologue that goes on or a dialogue if you want to call it it goes silent it has no use because those moments are too fast or too scary or too embodying and too powerful to use your words and then what comes around is sensations emotions much more primal sets of an eternal experience and that starts to connect us back to our movement and and to our experience of and this magnificent tool a tool of mass construction is my good

friend the Rasmus Olmec and calls it the body is not there to be understood he says it is there to be experienced it is there to dive into it is it’s a tool of mass construction it’s a weapon originally that is this thing it’s a weapon we need to survive and life its life life lives on life so hence we are actually a weapon but we are doing it and how do we destroy by constructing ourselves by increasing in complexity acquiring more symbols by

accumulating the invisible look that we are ms Hofstadter recalls it this thing is should be respected and the way that we experience our body has stopped as somewhat disrupted this relationship we are going very cerebral but that’s ending very poorly for almost all of us we are becoming more depressed more disconnected and equation of information the working within your cerebrum it doesn’t work it actually doesn’t work people people need more

things we just like we cannot stop eating we can’t stop moving and that’s all something so important and then important for me to mention is the other side that movement is not a technology for pure awareness movement should be supported by an internal practice of stillness or shall we say relative stillness a meditative practice of sore the reason is because it makes the internal dialog less active and bubbles up to the level and motions and

sensations it is actually a technology of anti meditation not a technology of meditation is often portrayed by people with commercial interests like I’m gonna do my one-arm handstand and sell my hence the hand balancing workshops and tell you I’m standing one arm one hand in the future one hands in the past and I’m here in the middle just being for debts that’s total dishonesty about the process of acquiring a one-armed handstand and doing a one on handstand

because when I’m doing a one on instant I think about the grocery list I think about whatever and the reason that I can perform the one-armed handstand is because I reached such an optimization of the process that I can actually drift off so it’s a technology of anti meditation the better you are at the skill the further it moves you away from using that skill as a tool of awareness that’s why for thousands of thousands of years we’ve been using the act of

sitting to meditate the simplest the most basic position that’s why a high percentage of all yoga positions are geared toward external rotation of the legs why why don’t we see so many positions in asanas geared towards internal rotation of the legs because it’s it prepares you for one asana there is only one asana that meditation that sitting practice that that practice of quietness and should be instilled next to the movement practice

the movement practice which is very convenient for me to portray it as the ultimate and it should be supported by no movement practice as well well I you know it’s such a pleasure to to listen to you speak about these things and i truly appreciate you making the time for this interview and to spread this information as knowledge where can people find her work where can people get to your website is there like a YouTube channel that you guys have

started or where are you gonna be next for your next workshop just put my name on Google they these days it’s ridiculous sometimes people ask you for but it’s just a door portal I do Pio are tal you’ll find it I’m sure no need to mention any websites or whatever and if you are truly interested in what I have to offer I’m sure you have all that you need to find us and communicate with us and and if we can help and assist in the

journey it would be a great pleasure love it man you know hang tight for me and let me just do this close I just wanna talk to you for a couple minutes guys you’ve been listening to the human experience my name is Xavier katana my guest IDO portal just a fascinating interview thank you guys so much for listening I’ve got a flight to catch I’m gonna get out of here but we will see you next week