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Editor credit: A big thank you to our editor Jakub Marzec (Kuba) for his work on this!
George Beesley: [00:00:45] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Call to Adventure podcast with me, George Beesley. I hope you're all good. We've got some great new adventures for you guys to join us on. One that I'm really pumped for and actually going on myself is the make me a mountainEER course out in the Pyrenees. I really love the Pyrenees because it has comparable peaks to the Alps. But without the crowds or the over the top pricing, it's a week long course with a World-Class Mountaineer and Everest guide giving you everything you need to open up the world of mountaineering. You'll be covering mountain safety, crevasse rescue, ice climbing. You'll spend a night in a mountain hut, anD even summit, a mountain. We've only got two trips available for this. Both are in Feb. There's three spaces left on the first day and four on the second. So if you want to become a mountaineer and get peak bagging book on sharpish. But now on to today's pod. So we've had some fascinating people on series one and two of the podcast, but this is definitely up there as one of my faves. Tony has a deep knowledge of health and well-being, and I love his approach of using nature and natural systems to improve our modern lives. We go deep into the importance of play and movement, the microbiome and digestion, sleep, cold exposure and even spirituality. So something a bit different. Frustratingly, though, there was a problem with the audio on Tony's side, our sound engineer, Kuba has done his best to rescue it. And it certainly gets better quality as it goes on. But I really think Tony shares so much gold in this that it's worth persevering. Many of you will be familiar with Tony. But for those who aren't. He spent nearly 20 years developing an approach to thriving in the modern world, looking at things like movement, environment, connexion and health more generally. He rose to prominence after running barefoot. Roughly 900 miles the length of Britain from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise awareness for issues relating to sustainability and for his next adventure. He'll be doing the Three Peaks Challenge, but barefoot. Well, he's climbing each of the mountains barefoot and then running in a pair of Vivos on the unnatural tarmac section between them. I love a good pair of Vivo's. I've got mine on right now and I've been wearing them for years. So if you haven't tried them out yet. Get yourself a pair. Get on the Vivo train. We do actually offer the Three Peaks Challenge as one of our trips, but haven't had anybody do it barefoot yet and wouldn't recommend you do so unless you've had as much training as Tony had. So head over to calltoAdventure.UK if you want to book on. Without further ado, here's today's guest, Tony Riddle. [00:03:27][162.0]
Tony Riddle: [00:03:28] Hey, George,. [00:03:28][0.1]
George Beesley: [00:03:29] Just before the show is quite interested, you said that your kids were you didn't say homeschooled. What was the phrase that used unschooling? [00:03:35][6.1]
Tony Riddle: [00:03:36] Homeschooling would be that you have a curriculum. [00:03:38][2.0]
Tony Riddle: [00:03:39] Okay. So followed a standard curriculum and you teach your kids, you know, in subjects that we would have probably within the school system. You just sit a home, whereas unschooling is a different approach where there is no real curriculum for us. It's about giving our children the opportunity to lead what it is they want to learn. And that way they can approach it with fully open eyes and an observant mind. So I'm really interested to really appreciate that. I'm not this is I pick up a new subject. It's really interesting to me. I will just suck in that information, become incredibly absorbent to it if it's something that may be of interest to me. I work so much harder at it and if I'm being force fed here, it will put some barriers up. And that might mean in a school environment. Let's say if there were only 20 to 30 kids in a class, some kids in the class might be having absorbent moments. Yes. And Masand really get this because they're really into one. They might really want to learn in that moment of time, but the rest, the kids might be going. What? I don't get this or that. And then Salerno's negative kind of emotions or connotations towards subjects. Can, can, can, can rise up. So for us, it was really just about creating an environment that is appropriate for our kids to just have these little moments. And part of that, you can find a Montessori method. You can find and sign a method. You can find it within forest school as of today. But really, it was just about helping them understand that learning doesn't have to be strict. It just can be almost like a permanent state, a place for them. It's very playful because that's the mindset that they approach learning with. [00:05:22][103.4]
George Beesley: [00:05:23] Sounds like a fantastic approach, a great way to learn to kind of personalise education, because the reason why we have it structured as it is now is because we're trying to send a load of kids through school with minimising the teachers. Right. Whereas with your approach, you can kind of tailor it to exactly what each child wants to do. But how do you ensure that they kind of cover. Everything that they need to says that they're kind of prepared for the the big white bad world when they when they grow up. [00:05:50][27.6]
George Beesley: [00:05:51] This is the interesting thing about how many years you served in education. I finished when I was 22. Actually, I stayed on four more. [00:05:58][6.1]
Tony Riddle: [00:05:58] Okay. You did some 16, 17 years in the scoring system. Yeah. And what they say is we retain about five percent of that. So that's like giving away 17 years of your life to prepare you for the big, bad world that you only have five percent to enter it with. Whereas really, our kids are learning skill sets and they're learning about fundamental needs and physical needs and social needs and spiritual needs. [00:06:23][25.5]
Tony Riddle: [00:06:24] They're learning about social interaction with all different age groups rather than just a single age group that they get to spend their whole life with. And they grow from year to year to year with the same age group. So they can communicate with any age. It's just a different way of preparing them, I guess, to the future. We also need to understand is what kind of future is it going to be in five, ten years time? And how on earth is the current schooling system gonna be preparing anyone for five to 10 years time? And it's really just teaching them skill sets of how to learn it's relevant. And this is what you need to learn. This is how you need to learn. This is giving them approach. I need to research something. I can find it here. And what you often find you, some universities lead and take on school kids without doing A-levels. Just interview alow. And from the studies that show things across the board, about 2000 kids that they followed then that went into education and employment and all of those kids that run the school said we thought we had a massive advantage when it came to uni just because that's what they do. That's what they used to. That's their form of study that we use. So it's just so different approach, really know. It's just some it's outside the norm, the social norm. But we have to understand that a lot of our schooling system was kind of adopted in a way to remove people from freethinking because the last thing we can have is a society full of freethinking individuals, whereas unschooling allows them to have that. So, yeah, just again, just a very different approach, not going to work for everybody because we're privileged enough to be able to do that. Not all families are. And some thought. There's certain things I would say. We can certainly be moving towards. And I think schools are starting to move in certain ways and do the bidding, the more progressive in the sense that getting kids out into nature. I think that's probably the first step that I can see happening already within a schooling system. [00:08:07][102.7]
[00:08:08] Yeah, I don't think you meet anybody now who says I think we're nailing it with the current education system. I have a lot of friends who are teachers. They are confined by the curriculum and even the whole kind of setup is pretty archaic. What we have now is optimised for preparing factory workers, right? Not clear yet. Obedient people who can do often repetitive tasks, whereas that's not what our economy really requires now, especially with more automation and machines kind of taking people's jobs, we need far less of that and to be more prepared for proper thinking and the kind of knowledge economy. So I think it's a great way to go. [00:08:47][39.1]
[00:08:47] Yeah. So that's kind of my approach to this. As I just look at it very differently. I think there's some great pioneers out. You know, Rich Tree to Learn was an incredible book again. [00:08:58][10.1]
[00:08:58] And that's John Grey and his studies of anthropology and anthropologists. Look at how education looks in nature, our kids, how childhood looks in nature, you know, and they ask 10 leading anthropologists and they come back and say, well, actually, kids in their earliest years infancy through to the fruits of the teenage years, 1960. They're in a state of play on anything, everything they need to learn about their adult world. They learn through play and through observing their adult child. No one teaches them. They're not taught by adults because that would be adult led. So everything I do is still child led, but they learn everything I need to learn. And it's a very sophisticated system. They can identify the plants they can attract. They understand the weights of the animals, the scent of the animal. They can make. They can build fire. They can build shelter. They can track. They can find water. Site, location, identify star Identica. You know, all that's in their navigation skills. Everything that we rely on, it's not their fault. They pretty much nailed it. Right. So, again, they learn it from playing. And once they've done it, that they're prepared for adult life already. That's incredible. That's an incredible message that they've discovered. Do you know for me that that's the way we look at it? It's just we need to understand what is kids of today observing in our behaviours that on allowing them to be wild, connected and powered beings. I see kids at very early age already rubbernecking, looking down at their phone, scrolling and walking along the street, you know, where are they learning that from? Again, you ask to be sure that I don't try. And I have clients coming in and they're berating about their kids on their smartphones, yet they have to be learning it from somewhere. And they also can't go out and buy one on their own. So it's just understanding that our behaviours, of course, are nurturing where everything is. So how do we make that information? They're observing and absorbing, more nourishing. That would enable them to thrive rather than sit down in conversations like we have to have and figure out how to thrive because they're all simmering away in a survival mode. [00:10:55][116.7]
[00:10:56] Yeah. The whole concept of play, I think, is really fascinating. And I was kind of really introduced to the idea of play and the importance of that, especially for movement a few years ago with Ben Matter. He takes a movement class, Upper Hampstead Heath, and that was the first time that I'd heard about play and the importance of that in adult life. And I. I ended up just kind of doing a bit of deep dive into it, and I came across another really interesting book called Player Away, which is by a guy who was an employee for Tim Ferriss. [00:11:25][29.6]
[00:11:26] And Tim's kind of known for burning the candle at both ends and having very high expectations and standards. And you can imagine working for him was fairly stressful. And this guy who'd kind of landed this dream job of learning from this guy, Tim Ferriss, who'd seen just incredibly successful in a lot of ways, starts to be crippled by anxiety and stress and depression and kind of a lot of the ailments that we see in in modern society now. And he explored all sorts of different avenues to try and deal with that, whether it's looking at kind of cold water exposure or journaling or mindfulness. And he said that everything was kind of helpful. But the thing that he really found that took the lid off the pressure cooker better than anything else was was play. And so he scheduled in to his kind of busy life time for unstructured play. So it wasn't allowed to be a kind of sport. It just it had to be something where points weren't capped and it wasn't about competition. And he credits that as the thing that really gave him the most benefit for kind of getting his life back. I thought that was a fascinating idea that you don't really hear much about as an adult. [00:12:35][69.3]
[00:12:37] He followed Professor Surete Brown's world. [00:12:39][2.1]
[00:12:39] You know, so he goes he's tried again. And then you look at the work place and he says the opposite does play, isn't work, it's suppression. [00:12:48][8.1]
[00:12:49] And so you've seen on Anthrax's play where he'd been to Ben Sorrowed Bank, as Ben was one of my coaches years ago. But if you go to class and you have human connexion, you have contact, you have communication, you have community living, Caesar. Now, you seem realised that there's also a ring of happy hormones, right? You go to Towson in there because you're making human contact, which embrace for a lot longer than you. You go beyond oxytocin, you get serotonin. You're doing all this outside more serotonin and you raise intensity and you get endorphins and a cabinet, you start to get so many happy hormones, start to engage in the active play. And also, you're unreasonable releasing kind of creativity. And what I find when I observe it, when we've put well down playing the kids is unstructured. We're just doing whatever. But we can also going to say it's a little more structured. We said, okay, you have to mimic an animal. We'll take on the animal being created again. And then if you go into the real drama of it and you act out role play like those tribes on discussing they being everything, you know, they feed the plants, rocks the animals, and you start to tap into the bigger picture is one consciousness of experience. What it used to be then then you could argue that then there's empathy, there's more compassion, and you remove the ego in the state of play as well. It's just yeah, to me, it takes my six monks or monks for well-being boxes because you're getting physical needs met through movement to play through connexions and contacts again if it's outdoors. And again, you get by and then you've got the social impact of it. And if he really raised the stakes, let me get a collective emotion kicking in and then you can look at certain rounds that you can be getting into as well. I think, you know, even the act of dance, if you've ever been to the club scene or want to raise awareness about Rosie, that's simply an act of play. You've got Collectors' emotions as huge amounts of people. We see that now. Once you remove the drugs and the clubbing aspect to it and you go into the morning Glory Villazon it. And then like morning raids that are organised for people to go and attend the get dressed up. [00:14:55][126.4]
[00:14:55] It's a former play that they're entering and it's the same stirring up of those same happy hormones. That's what they experience. So I think, yeah, there's a lot separate. [00:15:05][9.1]
[00:15:05] I think beyond policy, you get your sleep dry and your physical need has no food. And your there's so much movement that can be expressed within play. You really get to explore your physicality in it. [00:15:18][12.4]
[00:15:18] To me, again, it just it takes smoker Wellby wellbeing, both boxes and you get your physical search approach needs. Now we're in a place of wellbeing. If you don't get those needs met, we can be in a place of suffering. And then where do we go from there? Pacifiers and know who else that we have to use to remove the suffering. I think work play starts to get removed, you know, a very early age. I think partly that might be what we also go back to that same feeling KRI saw or early saw. [00:15:45][27.2]
[00:15:46] We have it. You know, you have this. You have to be in a castle. So you sit down and then the bell rings and you allow that play to go out and play. That's unstructured at an early age, right? Kids play it to whatever it is. There isn't so much a game of football at that stage. [00:16:00][14.6]
[00:16:01] You're going rugby or basketball or netball or hockey or any of those adult late sexualised thoughts we're just talking about play just random acts to play with her expression again and creativity then that. Play that you let out, four becomes a lunch break and then a kick of a ball or something. Players then removed and players entered into physical education. Physical education is no longer play, but it's it's something that sexualise. But again, you might not be having absorbent moment. The specialised subjects that they want you to learn within the school environment. So it's quite early. Play it straight and play. Then turns into this much more serious. And it's about reward and punishment in a way, no escape. I think it enables us to go back and it's like a rewilding behaviour for me or I like to call it Rich Olding. It's about going back and stripping back the layers of what has been domesticated, maybe out in the modern sorting environment. [00:17:00][59.9]
[00:17:01] I've never thought about ecstatic dance that kind of morning rave thing or that no drug or no booze rave thing as play before. But yeah, that completely makes sense. We ended up coming across this kind of really keen group of ecstatic dancers in California cycling around that the home of all things good and adult hippie fun. [00:17:24][22.3]
[00:17:24] And so and we were like very open minded and wants to give a go. And it was fantastic after I, you know, over my initial Britishness of standing there dancing Levere and if unusual and I tried it once in Nepal before, but there I didn't really know anyone and everyone was a lot older and whereas this was with my girlfriend and we're both not particularly like that, but it did just feel a little bit unusual at the Star. [00:17:49][25.1]
[00:17:50] But there was the good aspect of kind of letting go. And and a lot of people like it from the from the more mental side. But I also found that you very rarely move your body in that kind of unusual movement plane for that long, like kind of two or three hours of doing weird stuff with your arms and your back and everyone else is doing it so you can kind of get away with it. And I felt really kind of nourished at the join and kind of mobility level. The next day I was like, wow, I feel like I've had a two hour massage going on here. [00:18:22][32.1]
[00:18:22] Yeah, it's incredibly invigorating. You know, five rhythms if you have a little floggers. So I've heard of it, but I've never been. Now, finally, again, building up the news. [00:18:32][9.8]
[00:18:33] And you start with smaller moments and it grows and it grows and grows. And again, it's a form of expression and it's a form of play. Sort we're tapping into really I. A lot of work I do. I encourage of play. But again, the thing is, because I'm the observer and I'm also coaching it. So it led in when you're instructing people and it's only once you start once you get into the session, it's like thirty minutes in people. [00:19:00][26.5]
[00:19:00] Then Saqr soxer, you remove the tube train underground experience of not wanting to talk to people, to people actually fully connecting, fully embracing it and then being happier in each other's presence. [00:19:13][13.3]
[00:19:15] So there is that discomfort to begin with. You always observe. [00:19:19][3.8]
[00:19:20] And I think that that alone, I think, shows the level of suffering that we have. [00:19:26][5.7]
[00:19:26] The fact that we take so long to warm the human connexion, sometimes a little bit disturbing, that can only see how warm kids are. So, again, it's something that unravels along long way. Can I ask, did you go? Have you gone back to that kind of expression with the movement or do you felt that you experience it and then and then fell away? Or did you continue or did you try to find it elsewhere? [00:19:50][23.2]
[00:19:51] I've kind of kept the spirit of moving in a freer way, but that's honestly been me. I've had a lot of injuries, so it's mainly been that kind of aspect of it. I would be very open to going back to something like that. [00:20:04][13.3]
[00:20:04] I mean, now I'm living in kind of the countryside where there isn't really option for X ecstatic dance. As mayor, I'm not sure there'd be many takers in rural Shropshire. But, you know, May. Perhaps there would be. [00:20:20][15.3]
[00:20:20] I mean, the closest I've probably got is doing a lot of acro yoga, which is playful and involves touch. And it's. Yeah. It kind of removes the barriers from growing up. I'd already always played rugby and done kind of more competitive sports. [00:20:35][14.9]
[00:20:36] So it really is very different from that. And so it's something that you touched on before was the kind of lack of touch, like physical touch that we experience now in society. And that's kind of more and more worrying as we becoming increasingly isolated and something that I notice a lot. My girlfriend's from Sweden, so I go over there quite a lot and they are some of the one of the most individualist societies in the world. And like on the bus, for example, if you go on there, somebody will go. If there's one person on there, you must go and sit as far away from that person as you can. Otherwise, you're kind of a weirdo there. [00:21:09][33.8]
[00:21:10] And whilst in wet women in Central America and a lot of. Polling that we've done, it's very much the opposite. Or in India is a really good example, is lots of touching and there's so many people and even even touching strangers, like you'll have a few hair parts throughout the day. [00:21:25][15.5]
[00:21:26] And and now now with the kind of corporate culture of people worried about sexual harassment, which is a very real issue, but we kind of seem to have crossed over into dangerous territory of no handshaking or sometimes no hugging or sometimes there's more stipulations on removing us from kind of touch, which I guess maybe in the workplace, you could argue, is not a huge thing. But then a lot of people don't get it at any other times. And I think acro is kind of a really good way to to bridge that gap. [00:21:57][30.7]
[00:21:58] Yeah. [00:21:58][0.0]
[00:21:58] To again, if the place for me to play with the good way of reintroducing human connexion and contact, which is where we've gone. I think you're right to think it's a pendulum in a way. You know, it goes wrong. We hate we see extremes and we say and then eventually the pendulum swings back over and normalised somewhere in the middle, somehow talks and workshops in that corporate world. There was one. Sometime there and again, within that environment of human contact suggests that we need this is Virginia City's world of things. She's really revered family counsellor. And she has full hopes for survival, a hoax maintenance and, well, hoax gross. So you want to reach gross motives. So you helpful people and honest as well. You know, his depression and mental health issues and this myriad of different autoimmune diseases, we should all be looking at ways that we get our needs met. And know one of those will be human contact and connexion, because all happy hormones, it can be released. And so I want you to go around the house so people reading this talk. Hey, Todd, I know you can't do that. And then of other workplaces, they've been fine with it. So I guess it depends on what what what that corporate. Yeah. What they hate child department is what is allowed. [00:23:20][82.0]
[00:23:21] But there certainly I think we we need to be looking at more ways that people connecting than know me, if it can be brought in to play so that human resource teams on petrified of people going into a hug. [00:23:35][14.4]
[00:23:36] And that's one way of accessing it. [00:23:37][1.5]
[00:23:38] And what about digestion? So it's something that honestly, I, I don't really know that much about. I mean, there's been some really interesting stuff in the kind of microbiome space. But how how do you think about digestion and how it relates to health? [00:23:52][14.6]
[00:23:53] Well, it's everything. It's everything, isn't it? So if we went down the path of looking at bacteria versus cells, you know, we're apparently temp's and human. So for me, it's like you can have the best star in the world, the most nutrient dense star in the world. If you have a poor digestive system, the person with the exceptional digestive system, the poor quality food groups, would be more nourished. And yet we're so obsessed by the food groups that we pay more attention to that we're not really getting. That is, we need to be the digestion right in the digestion will then nourish themselves. I really look at three systems, so I kind of have a cellular system and I look at the microbiome and then I look at a dog show, which is kind of the energy types. So it's Trentham. So you had an incredibly stressful day. You go home with all that energy and you arrive home. And so like me, you've got four kids and the kids are going crazy. What we're doing is reacting off your weird energy for two and then you got food in front of you and you sit down and eat the food. What chance that you got of absorbing that food sounds the absorption going to be? Because one of the things that happens during stress is that triggers that sympathetic nervous system fight and flight response triggers digestion will be one of the first thing that gets cut off through that. And that means stomach acid enzyme that once sage of that digestive system be affected. So there's the microbiome that we talk about. We also need to look at the the stress of the human animal as well, trying to consume food. And so there's emotional eating, but it doesn't mean we're absorbing it. So I think a lot lot of people that come to me that a lot of the time they're actually overfed, but they're undernourished. So those protocols that I go through, which are not just sort in the microbiome now and looking at gut bacteria, but to then look at ways of regulating them, getting into more of a parasympathetic, say, pretty simple systems of breathing or mindfulness, even on the way home before they get in the door, especially before they sit down and approach a meal. So then it's breastwork to kind of down regulate the system, getting into the parasitic state, which means rest and digest, which means you then you can start producing digestive enzymes and you start sit down, regulate the whole system. You stand more chance then. Being the foods you're trying to get the nutrients to lease from those two groups, and then we can then look at the microbiome again and, you know, we just had another baby and we don't really appreciate so much as that first foundation of that baby's got is from the mother's bacteria. So Bo, our son, would have picked up Katharina's bacteria to start with some of the first step. And then there's properties in breast milk that will only see the by Tido bacterium of the baby's gone. There's no reason for the baby to have it other than the bacteria. So pregnancy. Going into pregnancy would be I my thing would be go and get a my volume or another microbiome test kit. Have your microbiome tested and then send the nine months that your carrying for organising your microbiome for the day that you're about to give birth. Because that's going to be the microbiome that your child is going to inherit in the world. [00:27:13][200.7]
[00:27:14] It's like coaching different ways. Microbiomes one way. Again, I use Kitco, my volume and my Vion means that you just you send off a source on it, comes back and gives you a whole readout, can be on your phone and it will tell you foods to take out things, to minimise food, to have every day and then super foods. [00:27:31][16.9]
[00:27:31] And then it'll give you a diversity report of your got to get to see what the community of your gut is and then you know, which probiotics you need to take for your own health because we're all different. And I think where we maybe go a little wrong is that we think of this diet works for this one that I read that in a book who I read that on Men's Health. [00:27:52][21.0]
[00:27:53] I had this. I've been advised this is what we need to get to. And understanding is what it is you need as an individual, because we're all individuals and we inherited what would be our mother's microbiome and then suddenly she'd have antibiotics, something she should totally try to rebuild it, which means, again, it's based on you as an individual. So you have an energy type of around the cells and you have your own microbiome. So for me, it's always about how do I get to a position where I understand that. So luckily, we're in this site where we have tech for that now, know we can go off and we can have microbiome resolves and we can go and see. You can go and have your 23A me or you can have your blood red. And again, get an understanding of what it is you need as an individual. [00:28:36][43.6]
[00:28:37] And then understanding that again, just everything I can do to bolster up that digestive system will be my first. I need to down regulate. That's one system. Then there's the microbiome system. How can I understand what's in that diversity? My God. What's the community of that? I can do it for this report. And then have an understanding of what foods you need as an individual to do with your energy types. There's oceans. Two doses are flu. I've made it work, which are Peter Barter KAFTA. So that's like Scio and a flip side. So those systems, you want them to be in balance. And if you're out of balance again, that means that the organism is going to be stressed. So there could be food groups that you're putting into that system that would trigger it, which would then mean that you're in a state of stress. You should respect the digestion, which would mean that then means the food you're eating aren't nourishing the cells being your 10 percent human. Hopefully, that explains went off in a bit of a tangent. But it's really looking at those three systems to me, including digestion. [00:29:41][63.4]
[00:29:42] I certainly am going to look to get myself one of those. I mean, personalised medicine is kind of just on the brink of taking off. And a lot of people seem to pooh pooh it for some reason. But I mean, most people are happy to believe that, you know. Well, we know that some people eat peanuts and it will kill them. And everyone's happy to kind of accept that. But then if you say people should look into a personalised diet, then it's often met with some resistance, which I find a little bit weird. [00:30:09][27.0]
[00:30:09] But after two and a half months of salmonella in Mexico and far too many courses of antibiotics are. I think that's something that is. Well, superimportant. Definitely going to look into that. And I haven't heard about kind of ordering your own analysis to see what what probiotics would suit you. [00:30:27][18.0]
[00:30:28] I just kind of take you. Yeah. [00:30:29][1.5]
[00:30:30] If you don't have a lot, of course, of antibiotics, Antarctic's means anti like. Right. And proboscis pro-life. So if you start thinking like that, I'm tempted. And I've just taken an ant like, what has that done to my 90 percent? So I've looked at it that way. And then to understand what is it I need. [00:30:47][17.3]
[00:30:48] Yeah, you need to have an understanding of the diversity of your gut because what's been left and why I've been taking some probiotics that you take, it only got like four strains in them. And then how much is that getting through? And so then that will be a compromise digestive system. And then we have other systems like look at work researching that, Bush's words. And some day I think I interviewed him for my podcast. I think, you know, he looks at the membrane of the gut as. So it's not just send the microbiome, then got the membrane of the gut, which really goes from the neighs nasal passage down to the colon, and then how that membrane can be affected through other properties that we're consuming and more of a process diet that say no preservatives. And also through pesticides and how that would affect because pesticides like things like Roundup. That's an antibiotic as well as like anti like just the same. So we're consuming that in a mono crop to or within certain food groups. What's that going to be doing to the microbiome? What's it going to be doing to the membrane of the gut? And then again, then we can end up with more, more allergies as we go. So that's much more sophisticated than that. But I bet if you've been taking like a large percentage, what takes my recommendation? Yes, certainly start with how do I rebuild the gut? Because you don't even understand what the starting point of that is. What's the foundation without. That's all guesswork. Know, it's I'll take this spray bottle hotel up probiotic, well, you might be creating further psychosis. You want a symbiotic relationship. But to solve that, you have to see what what is the very seed of that? How do I nourish that? What sorts of the beginning of it all? [00:32:25][96.8]
[00:32:25] I've come across a little bit of the research on it and kind of the importance of microbiome. And I was reading something that's relation to autism that they expect. It's kind of one of the lead suspects for something that may be a contributing factor to autism because of the kind of link between the microbiome and the brain that they thought was previously not quite as strong as it is. And on the back of that, I remember I know it was Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Bruce Ames, but somebody else as well is recommending VSL three, the probiotic. And I found that to be really, really good for kind of settling things down if people are interested in kind of all in one. [00:33:02][37.0]
[00:33:03] Yeah, I'm a big fan of VSL number three. I think it's really potent. The really strong strains. [00:33:08][4.8]
[00:33:10] But it's saying, where do we go from there? You know, there's lots of talk. You know, you got symbiotic foods like sauerkraut, pickles and kimchi. And then other probiotic foods, prebiotic foods that are going to help know, nurture that as well. But, you know, if you start, then go down this path of understanding dosages or energy types. And then also I'm saying, what is in those colonies? You know, some some practitioners might advise you not to have cemented foods. So that's that's where you need to understand the balance of it all. And then once you have that as a foundation, then you can start to introduce more more food groups. So to solve it becomes much more individualised. And then as you start, create more more balance within that system, you should be able to eat more and more. I mean, I still mean natural foods. That's, you know, the other things we we say towards the processed food die. But, you know, it's it's just not natural for the digestive system to cope with either. [00:34:07][56.8]
[00:34:07] I really like how you kind of have a I hate this word, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Holistic approach to health where you kind of less like you mentioned, a lot of scientists and an M.D. and Western trained doctors, but also a little bit about the kind of Vedic medicine and how do you think people are often in one camp or the other? And I think I kind of miss out on taking the best bits from each of them and it kind of combined process. But how do you think about picking things from Eastern vs. Western kind of knowledge and wisdom? [00:34:42][35.1]
[00:34:43] I always have a template, which is nature. So I always turn to nature as a template. So even if I go to Ibota, I often think, well, that was a it was a basically and temp or rung on the ladder to understand rewilding again. So it time like how do I get people back to nature. [00:34:58][14.1]
[00:34:58] So let's say it might have been a system of domesticated farming, led to a myriad of disease, let's say. And then we turned to Aveda where they would learn to cook milk to a certain temperature and had scientists at meetings. It could be digested looking at soaking grains and things. So, again, we can help nurture or nourish the digestive system to speed up the process we get. We break down. Let's say it's grains that we can soak them. So we already start the process of digestion in that Soki method. For me, it's always about looking at nature as that template. Yeah, I might look at West, then I might look east and might we can make, but I always still look to nature. How's it look. How does that look in nature. Out of playlet. In nature. How to sleep. Looking nature. How to sude looking nature. How does digestion work in nature. Well, soudan digestion in nature starts from just simply foraging. So we're ready just by going out there in nature, picking, feeling, being at one with the senses alive, smelling and having worked with a mindfulness coach. They will put a raisin in your hand and you hold this raisin in your hand. You keep touching it and you move it around and keep moving again and you investigate a raisin. And this goes on for the last 30 minutes. And then suddenly you start to smell the roses. And you start salivating saliva and weight. And you finally get to meet. The ratings are the best rates you've ever eaten in your life. And to me, foraging is like that. You're out there. You'll pick your foraging. You know, you're out there experiencing everything about that kingdom. And you compare that to the compromise kind of Western approach to food, where you're going to supermarket, grab a pack sandwich, tear open and just trying to consume in a stressed out say. And that there you have kind of the understanding of digestion in a nutshell. So, again, just I just turned to nature. And how would that look like? What would that look like in nature? That might be some of the modern sleek studies. Oh, you've got it. You've got to have eight hours sleep a night. If you're not getting eight hours, you're you're prone to obesity, inflammation, diabetes, you know, a list again and chronic diseases. But again, I look to nature and there's a. Studies that people aren't getting eight hours sleep as Professor Siegel. University of California looked at three different geographic locations, three independent tribes, Namibia, Tanzania and Bolivia. Bolivia is more like an agricultural Hunter-Gatherer tribe. They study them over 1165 days. And there they actually have pretty much the same habits. And so they then look at the cancer with the heads of 33 members over 220 hours. They look at their sleep cycles and there's 220 hours. They're only able to sleep together for 18 minutes the rest of the time, the rock and down throughout the night. And it was the same with all the three tribes that they studied in Tanzania and Namibia and Bolivia is that they're up and down throughout the night, tending to the young, preparing their tools, weapons, looking after the fire they can afford for the fire to go out. So they have to rotate that way to look after it. And they definitely don't let go ABC and I don't know that I have diabetes and they don't. I now have a great deal of information. I incredible specimens. So that's nature vs. a laboratory study. And so if we then look at mimicking the environment of nature rather than a brightly lit laboratory experience, we are rigged up to stuff. And I've got E.M.S. kicking off with all these things that will be affecting my organism. We stripped back and go, okay, let's look at what we can be introducing into the home. I would go where you work with the lights and you reduce the blue and green station to light more and the tones in which would then be like fire light. You would then what else happens at night and temporally goes down to then a lot of the temperature. You also know that they're not consuming loads of weird toxic information before bed. There's no toxic news at 10:00 and there's no violent movies. It's just firefly and tribal communication, I guess. Right. Then I look at the air quality. And number four, you know, you can as you can see how some figure like an amazing sleep habitat. And then that then enables the habit to be formed within the habitat. And then you start to look at what what's affected by that. So we know through lighting studies, through luckily through the laboratory, not nature. But now back in the laboratory, we can see what happens when we start to bring blue light into that environment. And so blue light inhibits melatonin. And when we talk about blue light, we just talk about the sections of light. So in your smartphone, your Mac, we're all aware of that now. There's lots of Newtons, lots of science on that now. But also we try and neglecting the light bulbs that the average light bulb might be between, say, 600 lots and two thousand locks. And you only need somewhere between 50 and 60 light, 600 blocks to inhibit melatonin when you inhibit melatonin. It has many different processes and we just relate it to being a sleep hormone. But it's beyond that. But without this, the laboratory study, the Western stuff, we think women know this. Right. But by by understanding, we can say, okay, melatonin does. This is one of its main primary roles in the pot. This is how we transform unhealthy cells to healthy cells. So that's that's quite necessary role. I'd say melatonin has a then we can say, okay, grilling. Grilling is a two digestive hormones, screening and leptin. Right. The ghrelin would say your say my ghrelin. If it's not suppressed, I will still feel hungry. Leptin associating hormone tells me I've had enough and melatonin suppresses ghrelin and it picks up leptin, basically any melatonin to those roles. They need to start the R.K. So that's why Santoni, I might be hungry again. Right. So then you can understand obesity, more case obesity and creeping. It's also melatonin sites in the pancreas and you unsane insulin in the pancreas for sleep at night. OK. That can be the links to diabetes. You start to see it. But I think what's different is that the hunter gatherers who are being observed in those natural habitats using kind of the Western flossy, again, as we're we're seeing they're not sleeping. But what they do have is their melatonin still at its peak. And how do we know that? Can we go back to the laboratory? Right. So within the laboratory, we can see one study that was done with one, a warehouse, kind of simulated work experience, low to bright light going on right below the blue light and green lights bringing friction side. Then you have a simulated sleep room, darkened cell, and then you have assimilated nightshift workers. But wearing amber glasses that block the blue and green sections. So Chamber one, the simulated work experience with the bright lights when they tested for melatonin is no melatonin, but group B with a dark sleep room melatonin group C where an amber bias is also had. Tonin Stang's Group B. So there's some amazing stuff out there, it's just you have to have the right filter. And to me, that's kind of where I that's that's my field. That's what it is to me to explore being a natural lifestyle. This is how do I tend to throw that information for mates? You have to one that you have to have a template of nature to begin with. You know, because I was just lunacy. I just. And that's that's another problem. Again, I think it's going to arise because we're also wiping out natural beings. Because we have this understanding of the wildlife population. Right. Was in the last 50 years, 60 percent has been wiped out. But what about the wild humans? How many wild humans being wiped out in the last 50 years? And what comes of that is we don't men even have the template to observe the natural behaviours. We're just left with the laboratory. Experience it all. [00:43:01][483.4]
[00:43:02] Yeah. I guess nature has optimised us over 250000 years to survive. And so, look, Stein, that is probably going to be a pretty good place to start. I mean, admittedly, we do live a very different life than those hunter gatherers. So perhaps you can't be directly prescriptive. I mean, yeah, be really interesting to see the kind of sleep for somebody who's living a Western life, which might be. [00:43:27][25.0]
[00:43:28] Well, we all kind of know the template. Overstressed, overworked. Not much connexion then. A lot of time with a lot of pressure at work and then getting back. Maybe eight hours of sleep is best for them because they're living this very unnatural life or a life that we're not optimised for, for them. [00:43:44][16.3]
[00:43:44] But then to sleep, they use it's a symptom relief. [00:43:47][2.5]
[00:43:48] I mean, I have a business, an online business for kids, you know, long term podcasts like I'm doing now. I'm writing a book. I just did a big run. So I've got so much going on. And to someone observing it like God, God has taught us so much at the same time are supported by adopting ways, living more in sync with my human biology, which enables me to thrive whilst doing it. So rather than being a state stress and symptom, really permanent symptom relief. I go to the cause. So we can't say that, you know, we've evolved since twenty two thousand years because we have them. It's just our and our habitats. And the way that we're going to understand how to thrive in them is to look at more age and ways of living and trying to bring them in. So it could be quite some seemy to a chronic through a sedentary lifestyle. What do you do? You keep sitting down to keep applying the same thing, or do they go to see a myriad of different professionals pacifying symptom relief, or do you one day go, ah, okay, this is 100 different positions in nature that I could choose or those the chair holding all the chairs give me chronic back pain and sure, my posture I could do that. Or I could maybe when I'm at home, not in the office, because it might be a bit weird in the office when I'm at home, maybe I, I can get to the ground and maybe one of those Tosches will keep rewilding my posture because that's what happens in nature. And if I observe natural beings, they have the most incredible, strong, capable bodies. What is it they're doing now? Because we're both sapiens. We have the same structure. It's just the petri dish that we've been born into. Will the tribe of influence just hasn't empowered it. And that's my job. And that's why I wanted to demonstrate by running like nine or ten miles barefoot. Yes, totally extreme. Would I do it again? No, but it was just demonstrate this is human potential. This is our physicality. You know, and at the same time, I set up a family. I still run a business as sort of an online business again. So from the outside, it looks like I'm doing a lot. But again, it's about finding ways of living that are going to enable you to thrive. That's what we should be looking at. And for me, the answer is like, really, in looking to those cultures that we think are we've evolved since then. Because, again, when we talk about digestion, we talk about microbiome. What are we talking about? We're talking about rewilding the garden because we go and study the Hadza. They have like a third more bacteria than us. That's what's affecting us, is that it became the habitate of an oath against anguishes. Looks amazing because he things beyond the gut bacteria expect the microbiome is everywhere. So we're 83 percent of the UK live in urban environments. And we say 90 percent of our time indoors. So what is what is the microbiome that we're absorbing? We're breathing in. It's all around us. What are we touching? You know, firstly, it's all linear surfaces. So there's no neurolaw. There's no new information or sensory information going in there. So they may end up with sensory deprivation because they're always in the same box boxes. You get money box. They all in a box, in the same Lillia form of transport with the same air quality. And only when you go into nature do you get new sensory information. You're never second same stream twice. The leaves on the tree out here will be making micro, micro and micro adjustments. You'll never see the same Leece even. That's always sensory new sensory information, but it's also a new microbiome experience. So walking around in nature with your shoes off and getting your feet exposed, it means that you're actually getting a natural bacterial experience rather than an antibacterial experience in the zoo, you know. So, again, we've evolved, but we've adapted. Adapt. Adaptation is good or bad. So for me, it's always OK. How do I flip it? How do I look to that? Can we just again, just go to nature like s.m your time outdoors, just Konstantine percent outdoors and see what change that will make. That. Individual who gets home and needs a few hours sleep, and he's the eight hours. They all they get out of bed. Are they flying out of beds, you know, ready? Will they hit the snooze button? Because to me, if they're still getting antsy and they're still having the series on their still exhausted, then it would imply there are human in suffering. And no amount of sleep is going to remedy that. Only going directly to the cause of what it is creating the chronic fatigue in the first place, which is fundamentally not getting a physical, social, spiritual needs met elsewhere. So I would go there. And how do I understand what those needs are? Again, I look to nature to understand them. [00:48:24][276.8]
[00:48:25] Yeah. I think addressing the cause as opposed to the symptoms is it is an incredibly powerful way to think about it. I mean, we talked a lot about kind of things that people can do to start to address a lot of this stuff. [00:48:38][13.3]
[00:48:39] It's it's fantastic that I mean, you kind of work in this field and you you extremely well read on this kind of stuff. And you and you have a lot of time to be your kind of job is to think about this. I can see a very busy person who perhaps has a completely unrelated type of work, let's say a management consultant, and they think, you know what, I buy this hook, line and sinker. But I just don't really know where to start. What's the kind of in the way that I'd imagine they might approach? Kind of 80-20 analysis. OK. [00:49:10][30.6]
[00:49:10] One of the first things that I should do to give me the biggest returns and you've mentioned a law and that that last one, maybe the 10 percent time in nature is one of them. But what would be the kind of two or three things that you would immediately recommend to change just to get the ball rolling? [00:49:26][16.0]
[00:49:27] I've been pretty it's an incredible ourselves. I saw our coach. It might be students to billionaires. Okay, so from teenagers, four to eight year olds are being flown around by Private J. You know, it's just incredible. Coach, your experience of it, which also means being busy at the same time. But what I see is that the further away those individuals are getting those systems, social search needs met, the more suffering I see and the more unhappy they are. But the more lying those needs with nature, the happier and more successful those people become as human beings. Now, the way I always look at that is to say right to this, there's a social norm that we might look at, simple stuff like food, water, sleep, rest, and then there's a biological norm. So that's firstly just a freeze intro into what I'm about to say. You know, the first act of light and the last active life we could argue is the movement or bress. So the first place to make a start is usually breath look for people or movement. If you're in a sedentary lifestyle and you are in the office and eight in the morning to what can be some people late at night. If you're an entrepreneur and you're killing it like anyone suggest you should be, then you're probably more hours than that. So I would put things, simple things in my cheque, which just involves setting a timer at your desk and every twenty five minute thing time goes or you saw your chair. You hold the edge of your debts. You do one or two squats, knock them down. Allow your heels to pop up and just try and think about your posture and your lingo, a little meander and then come back, you see. Then off you go again. That's one thing. I will put a slot tutorial. I'll call you that. You can offer out to your listeners with a discount code or something. This is something that can be done for cheque and desk health. That's one thing. If their home, they get home and they do a Netflix change again, try and return to the ground rather than the chair. The movement is one thing. Then bress, first satellite and the last I would try and down regulate your system a little because the chances are you're probably anxious. I have anxiety, which is the feeling of, you know, that everything's up regulated and that's the stress that organisms have today generally. So we're seeing burn out in the full 40 year old, 30 votes. Now, even 20 year olds dispensed, opponents say are being regulated. So if I then look at Nazel breathing, that's one way of just going into it. Just tuning in your breath throughout the day. Simple inhale. You inhale just up through the nose rather than in through the nose into the nose. Sounds bit this up through the nose is inhaling, OK. So I would do this as long as you can inhale for. So it still feels relax and then and then a letting go outbreath. [00:52:28][181.7]
[00:52:32] And as long as you can exhale for simple so simple. But it's just about Damrey excessive parasympathetic form of breathing. It will help lower the heart rate. The blood pressure's that Paris instead it will drop you into that, you know, it'll get rest and digestive digestion area. That's the form of breathing. Use at your desk if you have to make a phone call when you perceive it is going to be stressful. Do your breath work beforehand. How this works is before my run, there's a bit of press around. I was about on Sky News, my first TV appearance on Sky and their studios just sat outside of put breathing app. I lincolnton that as well. It's by Eddie Stern. It's incredible. And you just got the breathing app on. It has a visual thing where will get bigger and large and then it will shrink back down again. And that's kind of the tempo of his breath. Or you can plug in headphones and give you a sound of an inhale and exhale. And I did that for a five minute round and I went on. I was so chilled. It was just I was super sure. Even the cable cable was presented and I was so relaxed to spend ages around you. And it just simply don't be a breath of going on. So you're smart. Your Sky News might be a phone call. It might be an email. It might be going into a meeting or let's say you have a job interview might say George is going to bring this big event. That's a stressful night argument with a girlfriend tossing and turning all night thinking about the interview. And you wake up and you think, well, I can't. I know you do it a bit, my bill some day. But Bressler said my breath a bit and not just cliffs processed stuff. And then I'll keep focussing on my breath as I go to the interview and you turn your outside the elevator waiting to go up on the guy next to us at exactly the same night. But he hasn't done his breastwork. He isn't down regulated, he's not regulated, and he's feeling anxiety. And both guys both go up and you shake hands with the person that could be your future employer. [00:54:25][113.0]
[00:54:26] Who do you think stands more chance? Is it the guy who's harm or goes unregulated? You know, just that's amazed. Bressler is an amazing tool to just keep things down, regulated and in cheque, which will help he rest calm and also help that all important thing, which is digestion, movement and breath. The key for me and then I guess it's I guess it's asleep again. But the sleep environment is changed. Environment. Flip it. So get the devices out of the room. Change the blue light. There's light bulbs you can get which around circadian. They can you can play with circadian lighting now. Really cheap, cheap scale is a zone or low and their remote control light bulb, you can put them in your bedside lamp. So, you know, 10:00 p.m. and Belitung don't want any bright blue lights in my room or huge lighting, which is Philips, which is again, that they do spotlight sports celebrating this. And again, that's an app that you can then control your lighting from from your phone and it can be on and it can do whatever turns light you want. So now I would go with movement bress and sleep. Really? And then, you know, for a moment, you can access other stuff like we discussed early and go into play, you know. But again, it takes a bit more work set because you have to find some way to play. So if you've got time to go to a Morning Glory war special thing, go and do that all morning. But movement throughout the day, I think is an important tool. And then breath, breath again, breath just a bit down regulating. And once you go down regulated, that same breath will help in that sleep habitat. So getting the breath going to down regulate the system before you sleep again. [00:56:11][105.6]
[00:56:12] Something I found really useful was using pairing the kind of pomodoro technique, which is the setting the a timer for 25 minutes. [00:56:20][7.9]
[00:56:21] And that's just from a productivity point of view. And then having a five or 10 minute break, doing something active and kind of just got into a really good habit of doing that. Now I extend mine to 50 minutes and then do ten minutes of of movement during that break. And I find I'm a lot more productive at all that all my kind of old injuries are kept at bay. And I feel much better in myself. And the thing that I used for the ten minutes off is the gymnastic body's subscription. And they have a section on there called Ristau. So if people are looking for something. OK, well, what what should actually be doing? I haven't got time to be thinking about this. Or just get you've you've kind of done the research. What should I go for? Something that I really recommend after having a bit of a look around is that and they have a ten minute video of each section of your body and throughout the day. I tried to hit all of them. There's one for HEPS one. One for the thoracic. One for the ankle and knee mobility. And I find that's a great way to make sure that you're still moving enough throughout the day, but still having enough time to kind of get dental work done. So yeah, that's kind of my my two cents on it. Have you worked much with cold exposure. [00:57:32][71.2]
[00:57:33] I do, yeah. I use a lot of cold. I do pretty much. [00:57:36][2.8]
[00:57:36] I mean the cold pretty much every day. So I even go to the ponds in Hempstead which now now are cold enough. They weren't quite too few weeks. And I also have a freezer set up at my studio, so. So that's permanently ready to do an ice bath that when I use it ice a lot in the recovery on my Raan, I look at it differently again. I would look at this, the ice half-light, the form of anxiety that people experience and how do I then down regulate in the cold. So looking at cold as a stress and then how do I get down regulated within that environment to be more calm? And then you can then understand. Are these the tools I could be using them when life is getting unacceptance and so on? I don't use Windhorst method of breathing anymore, though. I found that it felt like more than regulating alert former breathing. That doesn't just doesn't work for me. [00:58:31][55.0]
[00:58:32] And I found that I was then going through a different breathing method of longer exhale and AKAM that in breaths and remaining calm meant that I entered the ice more calmly and I went from doing three or four minutes in the ice to ten minutes. So it just changed things for me. It's a slightly longer process, I might say. Ten minutes. Inhale through the nose and exhaling. But again, I've heard the same thing with others that we meet up. And we were doing a Sunday meet up on my shoulder and getting the ice, the group of us and the same thing. We just put a breathing mist breathing out. We've been working, we've put it on loudspeaker and found that with that breathing and being in the ice, the people just remain super calm. [00:59:13][41.3]
[00:59:14] And it's even new new people that rocking up. You know, we're getting them in there for five minutes. The colours change the rhythm again. Yes. So I work with cold exposure, both to play the different kinds of cold and different water life experiences upon the ice laughs. And again, I find the sea very different. I think the three very different experiences. And again, if you really observe your behaviour in them, know you can learn a lot from the cold. I think it's very powerful. [00:59:40][26.8]
[00:59:41] And how would you recommend people take their first steps into cold exposure? Because not everybody likes the idea of jumping in super cold water. What's a good many progression for people to explore? [00:59:53][11.6]
[00:59:54] Well, I take classes to kind of remove the term object jumping. So I think you have to kind of get a bit of a Brax breath practise going to begin with. [01:00:03][8.8]
[01:00:03] Learn how down regulate your system first and just remain calm and be good folks. I didn't go to the cold shower thing. I just didn't do that. Some felt to me it would make more sense to just work with high water mark solely on then. And that's the way I'll take people through it as well. [01:00:21][17.6]
[01:00:21] Rather than suggest I'll go and do, you know, coach out to this amount of time what you can do that you can salt warm with the shower and you can turn cold and spend a bit time doing that. I think this time it's like they run a cold bath and just, you know, work with breaths and then get in the bar and then just try and get to. You'd be amazed. This is interesting. Two minute markers will be found working with any number of people now. And we always say, OK. Look at their face. The faces change. And it's the two minutes. And then suddenly it's. This is great. I mean, now. And then you can happily bring that to three, five minutes. But I don't think cold shower prepares you for that so much. I think cold immersing in cold water prepares you for being immersed in cold water. So that's that's the way I look at it. [01:01:07][46.2]
[01:01:08] But I yeah, I think I just get to a cold plunge, go to a workshop. I think the workshop experience is very different to try to tackle this on your own. Again, it goes into that what we were discussing earlier about the forms of play or collective emotions. I think workshops are key for that. I'm doing one with the one on the 14th of December with Arthur Pauling's. We did a workshop together. We've done a few to that. He came out and joined me from my run as well. [01:01:34][25.9]
[01:01:34] That's a workshop that's dedicated to play breth work and cold immersion. The three pillars of that. And for me, I think that's a much better introduction to it, where, again, you're with others, so you just build this collective emotion. You'll be amazed. [01:01:51][16.2]
[01:01:51] I had someone that was petrified that she Petch like, there's no way you get me in a cold shower with cold baths. And it took weeks, weeks of conversation and coaching to get in to the workshop. Yeah. Trauma around cold. It went back into childbirths. But through the workshop experience, the breathless and everyone being together, they they did it. They overcome their trauma and that's it. [01:02:12][21.0]
[01:02:13] I don't think they'd be able to do that outside the workshop where they proved they couldn't. So, like anything, you know, so you went to banks last at one or the other practise. You went to actually have the class experience. It gives you the tools to go away with and then practise. And also, you kind of you've broken the fear and it's all there. [01:02:30][17.4]
[01:02:31] There's there's that sense of camaraderie that you get with other people and you kind of do things that you wouldn't feel comfortable doing alone. I remember even just the ice baths after a rugby sale when I was training with uni there. That's the kind of thing that this was before Wim Hof was popular here or any of that kind of stuff. You wouldn't really recall anybody jumping into voluntarily spending that long in in in the ice. But because there's 20 other of your mates doing it with you, then then it kind of becomes you're all bound around this thing that you kind of don't want to do, but know that it's really good for you. And it and it ended up being this kind of great, great experience that everybody loved to hate. Yeah, I see. [01:03:13][42.4]
[01:03:13] I see, I. I mean, Podemos is like the modern day Monteith's. But today's day of a rite of passage, some kind of life passes for people. [01:03:24][10.2]
[01:03:25] And I think it's important Tortola and you can just see it when we take people through the different beings and they come out, they've overcome something. Maybe it's their own. You know, I wrote about this yesterday in a class I Sparkle's Florida, a micro hit some adversity and you get to overcome adversity breastwork again to get you in. There is the macro scale to deal with that micro adversity. [01:03:48][23.6]
[01:03:49] Yeah, that post-traumatic growth is kind of concept is getting a lot of our time now. And I think it's a fantastic one and something that you really get when you go on kind of adventures. And that's, I guess, what this all relates to that that workshop sounds amazing, by the way. That sounds right up my street and definitely gonna have to cheque that out. [01:04:05][15.7]
[01:04:05] Sounds awesome to be the 14th of December one. And it's in London. [01:04:08][3.3]
[01:04:09] Sounds good. There you go, guys. So get yourselves there. So let's talk one kind of last thing before move on from health was from a coaching perspective. [01:04:20][10.9]
[01:04:20] I'd be really interested to hear thoughts on this. Some people are very good at taking care of the health of those around them, but not very good at taking care of themselves. [01:04:32][11.6]
[01:04:33] And it can be hard to kind of inspire that same sense of care in themselves as they have for others. I guess it's kind of self-selecting the people that you received your coaching anyway. They've in some ways said I would like help with something and I've taken an action to do it, but you must still encounter it a little bit. And how do you think about that? And what do you think we could do to try and get people to care about themselves a little bit more and take the time and put the effort in to make them the best version of themselves? [01:05:03][30.1]
[01:05:04] You know, this is so coaches themselves, I see are quite aligned with what they're coaching that as well. So I don't think we can afford to be a hypocrite as a coach. I don't think we can afford is not practise what we preach. [01:05:17][12.8]
[01:05:17] I did it many years ago and it led to me basically just having a piece on a religion, lecturing a load of personal trainers about how are you living a certain way. [01:05:30][12.4]
[01:05:30] And yet I was basically running a gym business that was eating my soul and I was spending 16 hours a day there and just. Keep something afloat that was more ego driven, but I wasn't living it. I wasn't being authentic. And so for me, what came out of that was that I had 100 percent practise what I preach tolerance and live it. So I think that then meant I had much more success with my clients. So if you're not having success to your clients, maybe your clients are highlighting something within you, within your own practise that maybe you're not being the authentic version of you like. Children observe through observation. We're all children in that sense. So I think you have to cliche. But we have to be the change we want to see in the world. So you have to say you have to be aligned with exactly what it is you expect from your clients. And then you get to see more and more of the result probably. [01:06:29][59.3]
[01:06:30] And then also having more compassion because we're all walking around with the first template of our life. Anyway. All right. So what we've inherited in those early years, that petri dish is literally the tapes, the environment. That's where you are today. So for some men, they might be there might be a real mix mash up of emotions that have been stirred up in those early eight years. [01:06:52][21.5]
[01:06:52] Food is a classic example of human connexion is a classic example. Their template for play, their template for movement. So I guess you have to kind of understand their templates as well. What was going on in the first years kind of had an understanding that had more compassion, were in the way uncoachable to maybe find what it is that they need and not about what they want, because lots of different needs. That one is fundamentally they need and you might need food, for instance. [01:07:22][29.2]
[01:07:22] Is a tie so tough on the people because we have so much light went on my run when I was complete days, I felt completely broken. Oh my God. I could feel at least pacifies of food groups. I was thinking about that were coming into my early years that my parents maybe use as pacifiers. [01:07:39][17.0]
[01:07:41] So let's say, George, your strolling on the road with your parents, your five year old George, now and then you fall over and you bang, bang your elbow. And your parents, instead of giving you a hug, they decide to stop crying. They give you a cookie. Your cookie isn't a cookie anymore. Your cookie is something else. It's something that maybe is attached to love or connexion with the hug that you made needed. So this is stuff that we don't quite understand, just that other people don't understand that they don't. Our relationship to it, because it happens so early when they're not being conscious and subconscious is playing out. That cookie is playing out, you know. So that's why we find ourselves might be doing this. Somebody eating their son might be having sex. He can't understand why you're doing it. And the coach isn't gonna understand it until they start to really go into unravelling of those early years. And then finally, a bit more compassion, as I say, within it. [01:08:35][54.6]
[01:08:36] So I think first, A.J., have to kind of you have to be living it to be able to teach it. I'm a big believer in that now. I used to be involved with coaches that were not known. Who'd you go in school? You go and see you go and see Michael Johnson for running advice. Would you go and see Michael Johnson's coach? Well, if Michael Johnson was running coaches is out there running and actually living it. Then I'll go and see him for information. No, I think I think we have to actually experience the knowledge and the experiences that that gives the wisdom. [01:09:04][28.1]
[01:09:04] I think in the coaching for others successfully, I think they on board and then fully understand what what was it that caused the realisation for you to change from being in that business where you're running that chairman for 16 hours a day? Was it a sudden epiphany? [01:09:19][14.8]
[01:09:20] Always a kind of collective series of moments then that would go way back into the earliest years again and observations playing out or stuff playing out. My dad had a business that he worked incredibly hard for, just gave his life to basically just everything went into it. And we all kind of were just a by-product that were a symptom of it, if you like. And so that was ingrained in me somewhat. So I say in this business, just holding on to something, holding on something. [01:09:49][28.8]
[01:09:49] And then I still had a young family. I had all this stuck around me that I was using all the pacifiers, exactly what my dad had been doing. Some drink was in there and other stuff was in there. And it was just this one day, one day, and sending them a tube train blasting past the building shook the whole building. And I had this on my go on record. That was the start of it. But there's a threshold, I guess it's accumulation. So I know this formerly shore may soon add on to what is the breakdown, breakthrough moment. And some people that might not happen to, you know, they could go through their life having this next trauma that trauma might not catch in this lifetime and others it might happen, which we're now experiencing that kind of burnout, breakdown, breakthrough moment. It's happening to people far earlier. But for me, it was my late 30s. It just highlights. It highlighted a lot for me. [01:10:39][49.6]
[01:10:40] I just want to kind of switch gears a little bit and just talk a little bit kind of tangentially, but still related to your life philosophy, then away from the kind of health stuff. I think it's all related. But you talk quite a lot about it. What does it mean to you to be spiritual? [01:10:54][14.6]
[01:10:56] It's where only one thing. So the one ness that I mean was several ceremonies. So it's a bit different way to explain it and put it into context. But it's understanding. It's all one thing. We're not separate of nature. We are nature. And so going back to that, just simple things around the coaching, looking to ways and living that more to think about human biology. Because the closer I can get that, the closer I can get. So understanding that I am part of it. So even back to the run was about raising awareness to sustainability in the environment. But that's because although that running I was I see as a spiritual practise, not just the physical practise. Some people just say it is cardiovascular. And I see it as a way tunie into something much deeper. I go barefoot running because I can make a connexion to the earth, which means that's a spiritual practise. [01:11:44][47.8]
[01:11:45] I do BRESSLER because it helps me tune into a frequency that I think is more aligned, my spiritual being, than the domesticated being that we've become such a thing. The more I can access those those ways of living and living again, the more I can understand that where we are one. [01:12:02][16.6]
[01:12:03] We are one consciousness. And even down to that coaching practise that we were just discussing there, that those currents probably showing you something within yourself that you need to do deep work within you. So it's reflections there as well. And I think there's no everybody is exactly where they need to be at any given time. And that's how precise I think this form of universe is when you really tune into. I've many occasions on the run, which were just so profound. You know, I went through these days feeling what procrastination was. So I sit in the car at the start of the day and we get there really early. And James Joyce, who's helping me, an amazing guy, a videographer, photographer. Spent a lot of time driving as well and dropped me off at locations never to be known to do the run the belt. He's looking at me. She's. No, again. Well, it's now half hour. So when he hasn't left yet another, I'm not ready yet. I have to have this. Then eventually I'd go off and that might be half an hour to an hour of procrastination and then I an side to just surrender to it. And just then there is no procrastination. I'll just leave. I know mentally that's being present. Feels right now it's time to go. Every time that I went through this, what we see when we're disconnected, I'd say control by timing was that I would meet someone that that had I not left at that moment in time, they wouldn't have been there. But yet they had a they had a need to be that over there for a reason because it assisted me at something. And there was a there was another occasion when the happy pair, David and Steven, had flown over to to run with me and to support me. And they were late. So I'd already run 20 miles. And then they arrived and we we were running along the canal, going into market. Drayton and James, who's filming. He has their drone in slowing their drone filming to be content for documentary making plans. We're running along and then we get to the bridge where we think is the stop point, just that stop. James, where are you? On two bridges up. Can I can I come? I can't pick you up here. You have to carry on running. It's like another mile and a half. Just uncertain. What's another? A mile and a half, you know. Off we go. And we're running. And then suddenly, like two hundred metres from the bridge where James is waiting, this couple are running towards us. And the names of John and Holly and John and Holly are so pleased to meet me. You will be running around two hours to try and find you. We couldn't find you. But we were we were running when we found the camera up on a bridge. And it was James's camera. James had left his camera on a bridge. And James is off flying back to find his camera. And that's where they met. Anyways, we're standing at the end and we're discussing what just happened. And we'll build a better band to get my Instagram self is the stuff of social media, as one does. And John and I have given John and Holly a hug before they went. And this boat appears to be underneath a bridge and the bridge has no sixty-nine on it. And then whenever one leaves. Well, Joe can get in the car and drive off. Don't think anything more of it. Holleyman writes me an email the next day to just say, I know you're into all this woo woo stuff. So I just want to highlight something that happened about the day and just explain that you're not doing this on your own. And so help yourself is a bigger essentially a bigger purpose to this. She said my my mother was dying of a brain tumour. We saw a shaman on the sun. Simon said that what spiritual guide was a heron and a bird heron. So she said, whenever we see a heron, we pay close attention. And said on that day, we just about to give up. We just run for two hours to try and find. You just don't give up on a heron. Flew up past the bridge. So he ran up onto the bridge and we found James's camera and that brought us to you. We will end standing there. And my mum and dad went on their first day in market greatness. That seat bricks that we ran to the bridge was 69. Her mum was born in 1969 and her mom's name was Wendy and her friends courting her. Wendy Woo. And the boat that came through the bridge was called Wendy. So how do you explain that? We call it coincidence. [01:16:22][259.2]
[01:16:23] We're just saying yes to such instances. I don't think I've seen that when women really just are so tuned in to that event. And what was happening, they were out there on my own to say day by day, just Nazel ring tuning into the environment and going deep, dark spaces at times because I was in pain, you know, and I just thought to see so much that I was there. [01:16:43][19.3]
[01:16:43] Another day was running along and it was day I got injured and I had to take a day out. And that was day twenty seven. I couldn't run. So it's really tuning in. Do not breathless and trying to get my perception on healing rather than being the victim. Oh no, I can't run. It's more about I know I need to heal and I just hold out in cold ice on my on my ankle cause I know Frank who sprained. And they need to hot and then breath work and rest and sleep good food. And then so I could go and run. I ran the next day. I did 30 miles in the penultimate day, day 47. I had to take my tibia and fibula together because my I had an upper ankle sprain. Would be impossible and run 4000 miles and off I went on the road and suddenly I felt goose bumps. Load me and my granddad was next to me. It's like running with me. And I was having this internal dialogue with my granddad about it. So you didn't think we were gonna make it easy for you to do? You have to work for this. You would take an easy route out just thinking you can do 30 miles a day, but it doesn't mean it's not going to come about rewards. And I looked up and the most insane rainbow was just popping up next to me out of the sea, you know, and it was just that. And then that day, I got to say probably about four or five rainbows I saw that day on that forty seven miler that just carried me through the whole day. And that's and then I had fifty miles to do the next day and then I was done. But that again, just that for me is just tuning into the frequency and understand we're all part of the same thing we call one bit. And I think the deeper you connect to it, which part of rewilding for me is that rewilding, reconnecting? I think the more you get presented with, the more it presents itself. And then again, I think what grows in that is that compassion and empathy, because you are that person just as much. Why are you here? [01:18:39][116.6]
[01:18:40] I really like that and that kind of approach that you mentioned, that it's kind of made me think of the phrase this many reached the top of the mountain. And just thinking about spirituality, I think there's lots of different ways to have experiences that make you think about things like that. And for me, it's been learning about mindfulness, but also just even that's, I think, a fantastic way to remove you from the kind of busy the quick flow of everyday life where you kind of never really take time out to think about the nature of reality or consciousness or anything like that. And I found some Harris's book really useful on that. And it's an app waking up to that was one thing that I thought was really, really fantastic for kind of making you take the time to think about those type of things. But I also experienced it just on our bike trip when we were in often very remote wilderness. And and especially if I was just kind of by myself in a moment where I was in that flow state where it was technical riding to the point where I couldn't think about anything else. But it wasn't so difficult that I felt overwhelmed and I would have these experiences where after I would ride, it was kind of similar to a drug infused state where I felt very like I belonged to where I was. And I'd heard people use the language to say, like, you kind of felt like everything was right or you were in the right place. But but I'd never really experienced it before. And I thought that was a really profound experience. That was that was really hard to verbalise in the time that I that that I noticed it most was was doing ayahuasca in the jungle in Bolivia. I mean, that's like the ultimate way to make you experience that or the kind of sublime of nature that I was just describing that the transcendentalists were after, just kind of that they had their epiphanies through a realisation of of nature. Or you can have it with kind of in a week Eastern way with with mindfulness. But it might be a slower burn, whereas ayahuasca will get you there pretty quickly and make you think about things in a different way. It was a weird and wonderful and kind of scary and epic in the true sense experience. But that made all the language around spirituality make a lot more sense to me because it's very, very hard to verbalise what it is that you feel because it's a feeling. And then we use words to try and express that. And it's very, very difficult, I think, for somebody who hasn't had that experience to relate to it. Because if you say I felt like everything was one, that doesn't really mean anything. If you haven't felt like it sounds a bit woo woo. But if you've really felt it then and somebody else has felt it, then you are able to connect over that. [01:21:38][178.0]
[01:21:39] Yeah, I think the problem lies in the moment we add language to it is no longer a spiritual experience. [01:21:45][5.5]
[01:21:46] So it's like you do a ceremony. I say you do. And I have ceremony and the locals start finally discuss what is sort of the ego kicking in, trying to, you know, put some kind of story or twist on it and really wish should just be going away from the ceremony, completely integrating it. You know, for me, with the ice ceremonies that I've done so many ceremonies. It's only recently I did a a plant. So it's like an African plant. So it was very different because it was it wasn't the it wasn't about sending saying going up and getting his mays's searched, experiencing profound messages and stuff about going is in and grounding, almost as if it's your subconscious thought that all those really early traumas just become visible, that you could you could rather than intellectualise the story that it occurred that you think it happened to you. You actually got to see the incident somewhere locked away in subconscious. It was there. And you you can visualise it and you can see it and you could say goodbye to it. And that to me was quite profound because it meant that now I actually let go of stuff that I think could still even have the potency to guide even a ceremony. I think, though, those early traumas a little serious. They stop us from accessing so much. I think that like on the run, for instance, just when I say accepting and surrendering to the process and becoming one to some, it's whew. What I mean is I'm just in a complete flow, say, of absorption. And I think have there still been trauma that I have worked through? Taking away from the trauma would still be direct in the event some way. And by that I mean. Okay, so one incident that came up within this ceremony was I like my parents. [01:23:34][107.7]
[01:23:35] My grandparents gave my. Parents, a house. But they didn't give them that. Oh, it's yours. Here's the deal. It was just, oh, it's yours. So there was never this confirmation that the D to say it was theirs. [01:23:49][13.9]
[01:23:50] And my mom, as it wasn't her parents, my dad's parents was always, I say, traumatised by this, thinking, well, we don't actually own the house since then. All the language around. It's not as it's art. [01:24:00][10.8]
[01:24:01] And then I grew up with that. And then there was one particular occasion where they had a massive, huge layout in the living room. And I was sitting at top of the stairs. And I must be in this seeing it in this ceremony for about three and a half, I guess. And I remember from the ceremony that Roud erupted, I was crying and then the door opened instead of them saying, I ran and I ran into my bedroom. So it was never resolved for me. [01:24:27][25.4]
[01:24:28] And I had this little feeling every now and then of, oh, my God, seemed really good right now. They could be taken in a moment. But the rug would be sweet beneath me, some beneath me. And I, I feel that can kind of be guiding us even in the spiritual experience. I think it's very important that we go and do the work. So we talk about I was the ceremonies and it's become like a spiritual K or when almost to go and try it. And there was a lot such that I think years ago when we used to have this sector in the way that if I would find you. I couldn't come and find you, you know, rather than you go in search of it. If it's meant to be, it would happen. And I think that related to the original ceremonies where those shamans would be the ones that take the medicine, where they would pick the people, who they would, but that would be taking the medicine and they would then come back with the messages for the try. Right. What they were receiving, because we're all receiving in that sense. Whereas I think now you've got people that are maybe going into that without doing the work beforehand. And as much as I like the idea of this immediate awakening, some people just aren't prepared for that. It can take a lot of unravelling after that. So I think for me, it's connected with other ways. Think again. I think breath is a great portal between physical and feeling of oneness. I think you can achieve it through different forms of breath, like transformational breath or inspirational breaths. They're great tools for that. They're also great tools. Releasing the trauma that can be the intellectual they can be suppressing within that physical self, let's say. And yeah, I think that's even true play. You can access that feeling of oneness. You know, so as much I am on big on celebrator examinees are great and they have their place. My own life still now this there's even an order to it. Let go and do go and do the work. So just go and rush in. You know, you might have an amazing person. But I've, I've seen people being they've been in a mess for a long time after the ceremony because it's highlighted trauma for them. Stuff that they were suffering from. And then it's almost like they were happier beforehand. You know, little fake spirituality is a thing for you and happiness, but actually, it's not. [01:26:40][132.3]
[01:26:40] That it can be way you can. It can be. Highlighting or you may feel completely out of tune with the frequency that's around around you. [01:26:51][10.2]
[01:26:51] Yeah, I think that's great advice there. It's very in vogue now, especially in the last few years. I was kind of lucky enough to be in the jungle seven or eight years ago when it was becoming more popular and mainstream. But it wasn't the same as it is now, where there's this kind of vibrant cottage industry of shamans or, well, people willing to take money off people to guide them through a ceremony that they that they don't necessarily they aren't necessarily doing for the reasons that you'd want them to be doing it. And that's certainly not to say don't do it, but it's kind of hard to do around sometimes a little bit willy nilly now, I guess. And it will certainly unscrew your marbles. So don't just do it because it kind of seems like a interesting experience or because you've heard a lot about it. Don't not do it, but just be kind of ready for it, I guess. Echoing your point, it's a very profound experience and will certainly change you. So you've just got to be ready for that. As with any strong psychedelics. Tony, thank you so much for your time. It's been amazing to chat to just hear your thoughts on all this interesting stuff. Where can people find out a bit more about you? Tony was kind of the best place for them to follow up. [01:28:04][72.9]
[01:28:06] Here's goes that sale again haha. So you can go to instagram. I posted all content on there on my blog. And so if you wanna hear about workshops, retreats and things like that, you can find out through Instagram. Ywhole dayou can also head to TonyRiddle.com and then Vimeo as well. So I've got area for people that maybe sitting for the whole day is a squat tutorial on. There's a barefoot running tutorial on this stuff for rewilding feet as well, being the foundation of that whole superstructure. That's the stuff. Yeah. [01:28:39][33.2]
George Beesley: [01:28:39] Great stuff. Loads good content. Thank you so much, Tony. It's been a pleasire. Brilliant. [01:28:43][4.0]
George Beesley: [01:28:44] Thank you so much for coming on. And everybody, thank you for tuning in. Until next time. Thanks for listening. [01:28:49][5.4]
George Beesley: [01:28:54] So that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Head over to call to adventure. That's 'to' CalltoAdventure.UK for show notes and more about this episode. You'll also find lots of other free content there, things like how to guides and gear reviews, everything to get you out on your next adventure. We've also got loads of adventures for you to join us on in the U.K. and abroad. We've got things like climbing, hiking, mountaineering, surfing while swimming, ski, touring, and we're adding new ones all the time. So do take a peek. Each booking helps us fund our green mission and all international trips ARE carbon offset. Please do rate and review the show. If you're enjoying it. It helps get more people engaged with the outdoors and onboard with protecting wild places. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
August 28, 2020
August 28, 2020
August 28, 2020
August 28, 2020
August 28, 2020
