Written by Christopher Kelly
Oct. 7, 2016
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Christopher: Hello, and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by Aaron Alexander. Hi, Aaron.
Aaron: Hello, man. Thanks so much for having me on.
Christopher: It's my pleasure, absolutely my pleasure. Aaron is a Rolfer. How would you describe yourself? Why don't you introduce yourself so I don't mock it up?
Aaron: I went to the Rolf Institute which is one of the modalities of education that I got but I like structural integration because it's more of an umbrella word but the whole goal of my work is combining essentially physical therapy and manual therapy, hands on body work, to get people's joints in alignment, their tissue hydrated and organized and then educating them on what therapeutic movement looks like. So, if you can get to the point in your body that, the software system that you're running just runs cleanly that every time you walk you're actually rehydrating yourself as opposed to creating friction in the system.
So, getting people to a point in their body that their movement becomes therapeutic. That ends up looking like a combination of self-care practices, combination of sometimes hands on work if I'm with someone and then a lot of movement education.
Christopher: Well, that's why I want this podcast to be a really practical guide, a self-care guide for idiots like me that spend far too much time sat at their desk and then sat on a bicycle of some form and then maybe runners as well and perhaps swimmers, because I know there's lots of people like that that listen to this podcast. Before we get into that, I want you to talk about your background and why you chose to get into entrepreneurship is what you're doing. You didn't just go get a job with somebody else. You started your own practice. Can you talk about why you did that?
Aaron: Yeah. I was talking to someone about this yesterday in relation to just -- I think, for some people, it feels kind of impossible to be governed by someone else. And so I attempted to kind of fit myself into those moulds for enough time to eventually became clear that just didn't work so well for me. And so from there, it was really just out of necessity. It wasn't working to work in other places because I felt like my ideas were maybe a little bit different than the boss. It wasn't possible to do the other way.
Christopher: Okay. Interesting. And tell me about the podcast. So, I have been genuinely, really, really enjoying your podcast. I really mean that from the bottom of my heart. I listen to a lot of podcasts and they don't all stay in my list forever. People suggest things I should listen to and I maybe listen to one episode but that's about it. But your podcast I have really been enjoying. And I notice that many of the people that you interview are the people that I wouldn't bother asking because I think they're too busy.
I notice that there's -- It's a small world. So, some of the people that you've interviewed I know are the idols of other people that I've interviewed and have been maybe trained by them. I particularly enjoyed your interview with Dr. Stuart McGill on the back. I know from talking to a biomechanics friend, Nigel McHollan, who's been on my podcast before, what a pioneering guy he is. And then also your interview with Dr. Ellen Langer. It just totally blew me away. I'm like how am I only just finding out about this woman?
And so I'll leave it at that. You should go listen to Aaron's podcast, Interview with Aaron. And I just bought her audible book and I listened to the first ten minutes of it, I'm like, this woman is amazing. She was the first woman to make tenureship at Harvard and she's done 40 years of research. And somehow I'm only just finding out about her which I'm a little bit embarrassed by it. Yeah, absolutely amazing. Congratulations on that. That was fantastic interview.
Aaron: Thanks, man. Yeah, the podcast seriously changed my life in the last like -- I discovered probably two years ago and then I just decided to start my own two years ago as well. It's really just a product of finding, listening to a lot of podcasts and hearing interviews that I like and then contacting people. It's not rocket science. I think it's just having the balls to ask, really.
Christopher: Well, I definitely have the balls to ask but I wonder whether sometimes my pitches are good enough. So, you have like a moment where you think I know exactly what I'm going to say to that guy and he's going to say yes to being on my podcast. Did you ever have those moments and what do you put in the email requesting David Epstein to be on your podcast, for example?
Aaron: Yeah. I guess, it's a combination of, one, I got, I don't know if it was luck or what it was, but I managed to convince some pretty like big names to be on the podcast in the beginning and then it was just a continuation of leveraging those names, really. So, if you are fill-in-the-blank physio guy and I say, "Hey, I just had Dr. Stuart McGill on. We talked about this, this, and that. I'd love to further the conversation with you." People are usually like, it's like a pre-vet. It's like, "Great. Stu McGill is on there. Let's talk."
Christopher: Tim Noakes is on there. I'm in.
Aaron: Yeah, we're good. And so then from that, and being able to leverage the following of those people that have sometimes huge followership and then it's kind of like slowly integrating into the club of people kind of accepting like, well, this is cool. I want to keep participating and listening to this.
Christopher: Right. I recognize that strategy. I use something similar for the Keto Summit. When we started that, we knew that there was a couple of key people that we needed to be in and once we got the agreement of those people, asking other people became so, so much easier. And then four months later, I'm just finishing recording all of the interviews for that summit and now I get unsolicited emails from people who I sort of know saying, "Oh, you really must interview this person for the Keto Summit." Once that ball has momentum, you find that it just gets so much easier.
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Aaron: Yeah, as with anything. It's like if you enter into a situation with confidence, and confidence is a product of work, the people immediately recognize that. And so that's in relation to more like physical tangible things like body language. Say, if you enter into a room, before you enter into that room, you're already preparing yourself physically and mentally to enter that room with some momentum. And so that's analogous to contacting anybody in general, I think. That could be podcast. That could be relationships, whatever.
Christopher: And how often do you come away from an interview thinking, "I really need to act on this information and incorporate it into my practice." So, for example, Ellen's content when she talked about mindfulness, I thought -- and I think we already are to a certain extent. So, when I say mindfulness, this is something that Julie, my wife, taught me actually. Until I met her, I'd just been walking around in a haze of fog and not really paying too much attention to the way that I felt in response to things that I did especially eating food.
So, I'd eat a big bowl of oatmeal and then feel like shit and I wasn't even connecting the dots. There was no mindfulness. And Ellen's work has shown just how important that is. And now it's something that we try and teach everybody and, in particular, I think that Julie is really good at trying to teach herself out of a job in that respect. Is that something that happens to you? Do you ever get out of an interview and think, "Wow, I really need to act on this information."
Aaron: Yeah, almost always whenever I had people on. When I'm after releasing an episode, I always re-listen to it just to make sure there's not like some dead air or something like that. I was like, "Oh, that's not good." But in doing that, I take notes on it. Not usually on the stuff that I say but the people have certain valuable information that it's one of the best gifts I could possibly imagine from like an intellectual perspective or just a life perspective in general, getting to be in kind of like a hub of receiving all this really great information.
But anybody has. You don't need to host a podcast. You get this because there's so much free information out there. College is just sitting there to be taken. You don't need to spend $100,000 in college anymore. It's still a valuable thing to do but all the information of the world, it's there. It's just a matter of recognizing like, okay, all I need to do is just press play. You get a notepad.
Christopher: Yeah. And I really recognize it. Some of the podcasts I listen to or some of the articles I read by people who are really, really brilliant, but it's obvious they're not paying attention to their peers in the field who are also synthesizing the same information. So, you hear them talk about something and you're like, "Oh, didn't you get the memo on that? Like we all figured out that was crap last year." And they haven't really realized. And it's because they're not reaching outside of their bubble and reading the blogs and listening to the podcasts and all of that good stuff.
Aaron: Yeah. I kind of relate everything back to the physical body because it's just what I'm paying attention to a lot. But that relates to physical limitation with your movement practice. When you do that same repetitive moment over and over again, it's just a product of lack of belief or lack of education on how to expand beyond the shell that you presently existed. So, it's like taking those moments you could say from a mental perspective or emotional or relationship or in the gym, really putting yourself into like how can I really observe my limitation? Do I even know what my physical limitations are?
And then have I kind of danced around that space and can I start to open up a little bit of space in my physical self? Put that to practice. Get into that point of pushing just enough beyond your limits that it's actually like hormesis. It's actually developmental. A lot of people are just stuck inside this one like rock for a reason when the deeper you go into it the harder it is to come out of it.
Christopher: Right. Yeah, well, let's talk about the physical body then. As soon as you say that, I'm reminded of your physical presence that I saw at the Ancestral Health Symposium in Boulder just a couple of months ago or maybe it was last month. Maybe I'll post a picture of Aaron in the show notes so you can see him. His shoulders are like the size of my head and there's veins popping out of them. He's quite a physical presence. I didn't actually meet you at AHS because I didn't realize who you were. We were introduced by Grace Liu after the conference. But why did you go to AHS and what were you teaching there?
Aaron: Well, I was teaching integration of functionality of movement into all aspects of life, a mouthful. But essentially, going beyond just what I do during my P90X workout or my whatever, Zumba, and saying like, okay, how did I get out of my car to go to Zumba? How did I get back into the car? How did I open the door? How do I chop my carrots? How do I feed my child? How do I occupy my body the other 95% of the day? And so, integrating essentially the question, breaking down the question of what is functionality of movement? Everybody is doing "functional movement." And it's like how many people really have like a good definition of what that looks like?
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So, essentially, just spreading kind of what Thomas Myers calls a kinesthetic intelligence to layman folks that are beyond just how do I do a bicep curl or a pull up or whatever but it's like how do I do everything? If you can get that, then you got some serious momentum. It's a product of working in my practice with folks. If they don't follow suit with kind of like the homework, which the homework should hopefully penetrate all aspects of their life, then I can tell immediately upon them coming back the next week or whatever that, oh, you either did really integrate this into your life or you didn't. It's very apparent. That's big and we're not talking about it enough.
Christopher: Right. And let's talk about some of the people that you see in person. So, being in Oregon, you must surely see, everybody you see must be active in some way and then tons of runners and cyclists and climbers. I don't know. Tell me about the people that you see.
Aaron: Everything from Olympic professional athletes to children and my oldest client in the last couple of months was 84 years old. So, really, it's recognizing that this is human movement thing. It's the same for everybody. The way that an Olympic dead lifter leans over and picks up 800 pounds off the ground is the same way that you or I lean over and pick up a pen up off the ground. It's just a matter of like recruitment of motor units. It's the being able to be fluid between if I'm coming down to pick this thing up, obviously, you're not going to explode up and do 800 pounds of force. But the function of the movement is the same. It's integrating that part.
Christopher: Okay. And so what are the things that you always see in cyclists? I'm a little bit selfish here and hone in on cyclists because, I think, we're particularly vulnerable to the types of problems you probably see all the time just with spending so much time at a desk, as I'm sure most people listening to this podcast do, but then also maybe further exacerbating that by spending more time in what is effectively a seated position when we're on the bike.
Aaron: Yeah. Yes, when you're in a seated position on a bike, I joke like the best way to ride a bike is like the least efficient way from a structural perspective. So, if you're riding a bike and you're exacerbating that hunched over, you call it forward head posture or upper-crossed syndrome, where you kind of have this turtle neck sticking out, you have this hyperkyphosis thing happening, you have like the sad puppy dog posture tilted pelvis every time. If your dog is sad you swat him with a newspaper or he knows you put him on the floor, immediately that pelvis will tuck underneath.
So, that's an integrated pattern in our physical body and emotional body as being a depressed subservient position. So, if you just watch somebody walk in and say for, again, like a job interview, body language, and they're kind of hunched over and their shoulders there and their head is forward, you're like, "All right, I don't really like this guy. I don't want him on the team." And so it's recognizing. And then going beyond that, there's like Amy Cuddy's work and various studies in relation to saliva samples and being like the hero position versus like the hunched over position, being upright hands up over your head, that winning position that everyone takes on whether they're blind, deaf, dumb, whatever.
You win the same way, hands up. We did it. You open up the chest. You open the neck. You open up all your vital organs and you say, "I feel safe. I did it. I won. We're good." And that ends up increasing testosterone, decreasing cortisol, blah, blah, blah. The opposite happens with that defeated position, hunched over, exactly what I was describing the bike. So, if you're forcing yourself in to the mould that is the hyperkyphotic broken position and you don't take that off when you get done, you're asking for issues.
It's possible to take it off though. That's the thing. It's not just like if you touch a bike you have cancer. No. you need to recognize that you just work into this groove, into this mould. You could say I put a suit on. And every time you put that suit on, when you go to the bed, you take your suit off before you go to bed. But we don't do that with this connected tissue fascial suit. When we form our body to a certain position, it's almost like we're putting that costume on and we got to take it off.
Christopher: So, how do you take it off?
Aaron: Understanding what functionality of movement is. So, it's like if you're in that broken position as you're riding that bike or what have you, that's going to be stressful in your organs. All of a sudden you're starting to compress your pericardium and all your visceral tissues, organ tissue. You're kind of collapsing your pelvic floor. You're putting stress at the cervical vertebra. You're putting stress, all of these points. So, the way that you would take that off is don't do that. Something as simple as maybe getting home and swinging a kettlebell a few times.
So, coming down and really working on that hip hinge, really working on a really nice long neutral spine, really working, lengthening that neck. And then engaging that posterior chain in a different way that really comes into extension, really swinging that kettlebell forward, really activating that posterior chain, and coming up into a standing erect position, the opposite of what you've been doing on the bike for the last while. And the other thing is using foal rollers and balls and bands, and all that stuff as well.
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And then the art and science around using them is a whole another subject. But the big thing is recognize as soon as you get off that bike or that run or whatever it is, have some type of movement practice to reintegrate the parts. And swinging a kettlebell is one example. We could talk about more if you want.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. So, the kettlebell swing is something that I've struggled with a little bit. I was certainly doing it completely wrong for a quite a long time. And then I went to see StrongFirst instructor in Santa Cruz and it was kind of embarrassing actually when I saw him do a swing, I'm like, okay, this is completely different movement. And I realized what I was doing totally lacked explosive movement. It kind of reminded me.
I really, really struggled with that in general. I just don't have the coordination to do explosive movement. And every time I've gotten into a sport like snowboarding or kite boarding or wakeboarding, where there's like this explosive pop required to do anything, I've always really struggled. I noticed the same with the kettlebell. So, talk to me about how you do a good kettlebell swing?
Aaron: Yeah. So, firstly, as you're coming down, it's like finding your feet grounded on the floor, so keeping your feet facing either parallel, straight ahead, or maybe a slight angle out is okay. The reason you don't want to have a big super wide like externally rotated stance is then you're not able to wind up that hip. So, if you're already blown out in kind of like that duck foot position, you don't have any more space to take the slack out of that hip because you're already externally rotated. So, Kelly Starrett calls it torque in the hip, which I like that analogy.
So, starting off keeping your feet facing straight ahead and then imagine you're screwing your feet into the ground. So, imagine you have some dinner plates down there and you're screwing those feet in there.
Christopher: So, which way you're screwing it in? Is it like externally or--
Aaron: Externally, outside, yeah.
Christopher: Okay. So, I'm twisting my toes outwards.
Aaron: Yes, sir. And what you'll see with that, I mean, you can -- people listening now, if they're on their feet, just take a look down, bring your feet facing straight ahead and then immediately rotate your feet one time and then immediately rotate and go in with your knees and your feet. And what you'll see is, "Oh my god, I'm blowing out my arch support on my foot." You should have a beautiful tip of support, the medial arch and lower arch and the transverse arch, it should be poof. It should be this gorgeous tent. It's almost like it's analog to like kite surfing.
When you can keep the kite in that window and it's fully engaged, fully open, it's the same thing with your feet, man. It's the same thing with all of your joints. When you're in that pocket of the functionality, the wind is in the sail, and you can see that of immediately rotating that knee inside, you'll see you'll dump the foot in and you just have this flat foot. The navicular bone is kind of smashing down against the ground and it just doesn't look sexy. You don't need to know what the heck you're looking at. It doesn't look sexy.
And then if you rotate the knee outward, you have this athletic looking foot that's ready for battle. You don't need to know what functional is. You just can see that and say, "That person probably runs fast." So, starting off with the foot. So then the knee is either on top of the foot or a little bit wider. And then as you're coming down, you're hinging at the pelvis. And the analogy that I use sometimes that people find silly is imagine you have butt probes on your butt cheeks and you're exploring the world behind you.
So, if your knees are not able to go in front of the toes, if your knees drift out in front of the toes, you're putting stress on the knees where the stress should be in the most robust joint in your body, which is the hip hinge. So, you need to really engage, bring the glutes backward, behind you, butt probes are exploring the world behind you and your knees aren't drifting in front of the toes. And then from there, you're starting to be set up to swing the guy upwards.
But it's that foundation that's crucially important that we end up -- If you're not dialing in these functional patterns into your lower body and your whole body and practicing that, you're practicing dysfunction. Just that you exercise is not good enough. From a metabolic perspective, you're going to burn fat and all that stuff you want to do but you are practicing, you're potentiating injury and pain and dysfunction and all the things that we don't want to do that. We just don't have enough education around how to avoid that, I think.
Christopher: And do you have any tips on how to get the explosive-ness into the movement or the pop? Do you know what I mean? That's what I was really lacking. My ability, I think, was pretty good. I could do a decent hip hinge. I could stand up against the wall and then go into a hip hinge position squat my weight down and my nose would rub along the wall and I wouldn't have any problems with that. I wouldn't fall backwards or anything. But still, I'm lacking that kind of real explosive kind of movement in the way up.
Aaron: Play with not just allowing yourself to drop down into the movement but really pull yourself, suck yourself into the movement. An easy example would be like a push up or squat, we're talking about. As you're coming down, by engaging that external rotation, or when you're freaking around like that, you start to engage your ability to eccentrically lower down with a little bit more engagement, I guess, you could say.
And so as you're coming down through that movement -- a push up is an easy one if you're on the ground right now. Just start off that push up position, externally rotate the hands and you'll see it's the same arch that we want to create in the foot. You're creating that in the hand. That's interesting. The hand is kind of analogous to the foot in a lot of ways as the shoulder girdle is analogous to the hip girdle.
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But as you're coming down, just imagine that you are actually pulling yourself down and you're sucking yourself down to the ground. And then from there, you're going to feel almost like you wound up a spring and the spring is ready to pop. But if you're just kind of like passably let yourself come down and say, "Okay, all systems go," it's not going to work. So, that immediately, anybody listening to that, I don't know what exact percentages, but I'd say probably maybe 20% more strength out of your lift just by really actively eccentrically loading the system, eccentrically being like a going down portion.
Christopher: You see, you just touched on the exact thing that I really struggle with in every single sport. So, in kite boarding, it's that moment where you send the kite -- So, you build pressure in the line. You edge your way from the wind and you build tension in the lines. You can build an awful lot of tension with a big nine, ten, 12, 13, 14, meter kite and then you release that suddenly and that's what sends you flying into the air. And it's almost the same with a bunny hop on a mountain bike.
You kind of have to, first of fall, put the pressure into the ground, build some tension, and then it releases suddenly. But what if you don't? I just don't seem to have the motor control to create that sudden tension and then release it quickly. Have you got any kind of routines or exercises or things I could think about that would help me get that kind of explosive moment going?
Aaron: Yeah. I mean, you look at like -- you mentioned Dave Epstein. I think I just released his episode.
Christopher: Yeah, you did. You did.
Aaron: We talked about, yeah, it was like Brazilian football players, football being soccer players, and I was like, "Wow, they're so good. They're so great." And their background, most of these people growing up in these countries, their background is with this sport called futsal. It's not necessarily exactly soccer. It's like a smaller ball. And these kids, they've just been integrating these movement patterns, this eye-hand coordination from a really young age. They don't realize that they're developing this phenomenal foundation to be really good athletes just by cultivating through this game that they're playing.
That's not this conscious I'm potentiating eccentric whatever. It's like, no, no, no. By finding something that you're actually enjoying, that's going to be, I think, the best route to do it. So, maybe something as simple as like jump rope. Maybe that's not the most fun thing in the world but at least there's some degree you get a feedback, which is a nice thing. We don't have enough feedback in most of our kind of like autonomous solo lonely workout missions. It's just me and the dumbbell.
If you're lifting that dumbbell up like a dummy, there's no feedback really until you have this chronic shoulder pain or what, you fill in the blank, x months later. But you don't have this immediate like, "Oh, I really crank that baseball out of the park. Oh, I jumped over the rope." Or, "Oh, the rope smacked me in the face." By integrating those parts with some type of feedback system, not only you're having fun, but you're also getting way, way better. You're having this immediate feedback.
I remember this is exactly what we're talking about in the Dave Epstein thing. That's one of the things he gets into his book Sports Gene. It's like we got to have that instant feedback versus the analogy that he used was like the annual report for how a worker is doing on the job. He's like that's ridiculous. Once a year or twice a year, whatever, you get a report like you suck or you're great, whatever, here's the things you need to improve. It's like we need something that's immediate. Oh, you did that. Oh, that didn't work out. You don't have that when you're by yourself with the headphones on and a dumbbell on your hand. You just don't.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I've got some ideas. I've been doing some box jumps onto some -- We cut some old trees down in our garden and the guy that cut them down left us these nice size logs that I can sort of stack up and do box jumps on. But I quickly realized that there was going to be some serious consequences at some point.
Aaron: And videotape yourself.
Christopher: Sorry?
Aaron: Videotape yourself.
Christopher: Okay.
Aaron: Become your coach. Get mirrors. We're really insecure about looking at ourselves in our culture because it denotes that you're egotistical or whatever. It's like, no. You're coaching yourself visually. That's like Moshé Feldenkrais and Alexander technique, and a lot of these body-based somatic therapies, they're derived from people, just weird dudes that were really into figuring out what's going on in this physical experience, spending time really watching, "Oh, that pattern. That doesn't look good. That's not right."
So, by the power of having a videotape of yourself, there's not a lot that beats it. And then beyond that, the next thing that really allows that to be powerful is knowing what you're looking at. You have some education and you got video of yourself, live feedback of like, "Oh, that looks horrible. Every time I jump up, every time I land, my knee drops immediately and putting all the stress on all the joints around the knee. I collapse the arch. I'm dumping any power I could have had on the hip. I go into that same position of the hyperkyphotic dumped over -- Kelly Starrett calls the sad rainbow, I think.
You just fall into that collapsed position. Because it's what you practice. So, it's not until you get into a point where you practice functionality of movement so much that when you go into those like fight-flight moments that you'll actually take on those roles. It's like a folding of a paper.
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If you fold a paper in a certain way -- I wish I had a paper here. But if you fold a paper, you make a crease in that paper. Every time you do anything with that paper, you flat them down--
Christopher: Yeah, it wants to go that way. I get it.
Aaron: And so what we're doing is we're practicing folding our physical papers in a dysfunctional position and then any time you do freaking anything, you fall in that dysfunctional spot. And then we call that lumbar disease or hip disease or just sore back, whatever.
Christopher: Okay. And then could you look at a video of someone online? Could you coach someone online by looking at these videos?
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, of course. As can we coach ourselves, yeah.
Christopher: Excellent. And do you see people? Do you take clients remotely?
Aaron: I have only because people are really adamant about it happening. We could do it but no, not usually. I like being able to -- I want to be in the room with somebody. So, I do enough work in the realm of being in the computer and on the podcast, which I absolutely love. But, yeah, I don't really feel the need to do that unless they're paying me a lot. I'd rather just see somebody personally.
Christopher: Yeah, I know. That makes a lot of sense, obviously. Okay, so let's talk about the computer then because this is something that I've also really struggle with and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. How do you survive spending so much time at a computer? Just a little bit of context. I do have a standing desk and I'm actually stood up right now recording this podcast but that's only because I'm on my best behavior and I'm about to interview someone that takes their physical form very seriously. And I do have a tendency to just want to sit down all the time. So, what advice do you give to people for surviving working at a computer?
Aaron: Same conversation as how to get outside of the box of running or biking or whatever. We think that because we're really active in a certain direction that we're -- It's like, man, I move all the time. I was like, "Well, you move the same pattern over and over again a thousand times each day." That's still sedentary on a global physical level. So, we take that same thinking into sitting at a computer. Just because you're standing -- standing is not much different than sitting.
Christopher: It doesn't help me. When I do too much standing, I run into some of the same problems I do too much sitting.
Aaron: The same situation is going to happen. So, when you're sitting, sitting is an art. That's a lotus position in yoga. Standing, that's an art. Tadasana in yoga. If you're able to align all those parts, one of the easiest things you can do is just drive weight down through your head or through your shoulders. If you can feel that have somebody come up behind you and do it. And if you can feel your body buckle at any point, you're in trouble. You're practicing pain.
So, it's sorting yourself out from feet to head but if your hands are over your head then it becomes hands to feet or feet to hands. If you can sort that up, stack all those blocks up all the way through the system, then you are practicing functionality. You're being therapeutic in your body. Just by breathing, just by walking, just by sitting, just by engaging in your life, it's therapeutic movement. So, with that, it's like, okay, how do we get there? That's another conversation. But for starters, that's just in relation to like the way that you are practicing standing and sitting is the most important.
But then beyond that, play with putting the computer on the ground, be on your belly. And then if you're in that position, putting your elbows down, kind of like a sphinx position, and then you're going to have your elbows at your side. You don't need to follow any of this. This is just one kind of like -- This is definitely going to be okay. But having long neck, don't crunch that cervical vertebra territory, make sure your neck [0:28:18] [Indiscernible]. Make sure you're not going into what you call like a hyperlordosis or you're bending the crap out of your, cranking the crap out of your lower back.
The lower back is kind of where we end up borrowing from because we don't have enough mobility for our thoracic spine. Thoracic spine is not mobile enough because we're stuck looking at the computers all the time and seeing cars and all that. So, really, focusing on making sure you're not bending the lumbar spine too much and see if you can start the conversation of creating a little bit of be called spinal extension, or coming up into that sphinx position. I think that's right, sphinx. Does that makes sense?
Christopher: Yeah. That absolutely makes sense.
Aaron: Yeah. So, coming up and starting to arch that thoracic spine a little bit and now you're in your computer practicing therapeutic movement. Then from there you can go into like criss-cross applesauce or lotus position if you got it. The most people, 99% of people are going to raise their butt up and they're sitting in a cross-legged position, making sure that your sit bones or your ischial tuberosities -- I feel like I'm talking too much. I apologize. I'll wrap this up. But your ischial tuberosities are driving down into the floor.
Imagine it's like sockets going into a wall. If you have a bent broken sideways twisted turned outlet as you're pushing that in, the male end of it, it's not going to go into the hole. So, as you're coming down, you want to make sure it spreads your butt cheeks open, get those, really find the sit bones, find the ischial tuberosities, and feel them. You want to be sitting on the front edge of those guys. Any time you take a yoga class or anything, if there's anybody that really knows what they're about, they'll break this down for you, hopefully. And if they don't, get the heck out of that class. It's not where you want to be. So, that's another position. Then from there, you can go to standing. Then from there, have a sit. Make sure you're sitting on the edge of the chair, really driving your sit bones into that position.
Christopher: Okay.
[0:30:00]
Aaron: And then sitting up.
Christopher: Yeah, yeah, that's an obvious one. I have a pomodoro alarm that goes off every 25 minutes at least so I don't sit for any longer than that. That's been really helpful. Explain to me what criss-cross applesauce is. I haven't heard that before.
Aaron: Most people don't -- Like a true lotus position, you're bringing one foot up beside the hip and the other one. So few people have that. I don't have that. But what most people, probably what most people have is ability just to get Indian style criss-cross applesauce, whatever, legs crossed position. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Christopher: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about now.
Aaron: I was just being silly with crisscross applesauce. But, yeah, it's like Indian position. But making it really crucially important that as you're in that position, the same concept when you're driving that weight from your head down to your feet, if you're standing. Now, you need to drive that weight from your head down into your sit bones. So, your sit bones end up becoming your feet. And if you're not really driving and you can't stack 100, 200 pounds on your shoulders and just feel like it's like quite comfortable, then you're probably compensating and you're probably [0:31:02] [Indiscernible] in that sad puppy dog position.
It shouldn't be work to sit in that position. If it is, keep raising your butt up until it's not. Keep raising your body. Sometimes I raise it up crazy high with people to the point that it's almost like they're sitting in a chair with their legs slightly crossed. But that's what some people need. Because they just lack so much mobility in their hips or their adductors. They just aren't able to take on that position. But by taking on that position, by starting that process, that's the beginning of the path. But you don't ever get anywhere if you don't start the journey. And that's most people, by sitting in that normal dysfunctional crappy bus seat position all day long, you haven't even begun yet.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I've got a chair that I find very helpful and it's made by a woman called Esther Gokhale. Have you heard of Esther Gokhale?
Aaron: Yes. She's sweet. I've had her on the show. Me, I dig her.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I first found out about her in the Ancestral Health Symposium, actually, in 2014, I want to say. I bought her office chair and the seat, it sort of tips slightly forward and then the backrest has these stretch seat knobs that allow you to sort of gently extend your spine. I find that really ,really helpful for alleviating kind of lower back pain that I have a tendency towards anyway with spending so much time on the bike.
Aaron: Right, yeah. And you can do that. Pain is an interesting huge, huge subject. So, to say like you'll relieve your lower back pain by mobilizing your thoracic spine. It isn't always true. Sometimes it is. But as you're doing that, you're thinking about creating some mobilization through the thoracic spine as to alleviate that outsourcing of movement into your lumbar. So, the lumbar is kind of, for most people, kind of hypermobile place.
And so if you're not able to get enough extension to that thoracic spine, every time, for example, you raise your arm up over your head to reach up and grab some bleach out of the cabinet, very likely you're going to compromise and break in that lumbar space and then that's unnecessary stress potentially. Potentially, it's the pain or not. There's a lot of people in really deplorable positions in their body and it's numb. They don't feel it. Pain is a big subject. But in general, finding that functionality for all your joints will lead to betterment in everything and likely the pain will go away.
Christopher: And do you think it's important to be straight, like organized straight? So, that's something else that I really, really struggle with. I always want to be very lopsided, like even on this fancy Esther Gokhale chair, that I'll kind of sit with one leg up and one leg down. And I'm sure if I was to look at myself in a video or mirror or whatever, that I would be really, really crooked. And I'm pretty sure this is manifesting itself in sort of muscle pain that happens just above my right butt cheek.
And then interestingly, it maybe a coincidence, but when I look at the titanium rails on my saddle, titanium is quite soft metal that's quite malleable, it's like obvious that the right side of the saddle when I look from the back is squashed down like that leg is slightly shorter but I know that it's not because I've been to see a biomechanics expert and he's measured the length of my legs and it's not like the bones are different or anything. It's like a totally functional thing. So, do you know what I'm talking about? Do you see that as a problem generally or is it my special flower here?
Aaron: It's so hard to tell without actually having somebody in front of you and working with them and seeing their gait and all that. But in general, asymmetricality, that's part of nature. Your liver is much bigger than your stomach and your heart is not exactly center of the chest.
Christopher: We are asymmetrical.
Aaron: The left frontal lobe of the brain comes out a little bit more and the back portion goes back a little bit more. So, it's almost like a spiral. These spirals are ubiquitous throughout nature. So, to become consumed in 'I need to be perfectly linear and symmetrical all the time', that's crazy. But it just depends on what that -- maybe that compensation or that asymmetry is serving you for now and maybe forever or maybe it's not. There's so many variables. There's no way to say like this is what's going on with the titanium seat. It's not. You can't just--
Christopher: It's not necessarily a problem.
Aaron: It's not -- Yeah, I can say that it's not necessarily a problem, for sure. Say, if you did have a lightweight discrepancy, for example, then having a little bit of lateral tilt in your pelvis would make a lot of sense. Having a little bit of scoliosis would make a lot of sense, right? It's are you operating functionality within your asymmetricality? I think that's how you say that word right? asymmetricality?
[0:35:11]
Christopher: You just made up a word there.
Aaron: But it's a matter of are you operating functionally within that space? Because sometimes you can force someone to remove some type of compensatory pattern and then they're in horrible excruciating pain afterwards because that pattern, they've been leaning up against that for a long time. So, the process, generally speaking, it's going to be a slow process of changing that and sometimes, it's most of the times it is helpful and sometime it's not. It depends on what's the reason, what's the underlying source.
Christopher: Right. Okay. So, the problem may be my OCD nature. And I see in my daughter as well. She's got a real thing for closing doors and having everything straight and organized and it has to be in such a certain way. And it's more of a tendency. Something is going on inside your head rather than something that really needs fixing.
Aaron: Sometimes, yeah. And then there's a lot of -- I was reading recently in relation to like people with bipolar disorder and you're seeing a lot of disorganization in their life and a lot of kind of like bipolar tendencies in general. Your personality matches your physical structure. I see this with everybody that I work with. I'm like completely under the illusion that my physical body, my physical tissue is a manifestation of what I'm thinking, feeling and interacting in my environment.
If you go into it depressed position, you can't really feel that feeling without taking it on physically. And it's the same thing with the blind people. Naturally, we've integrated these patterns to represent our physical emotion, our mental emotion. I feel like it's inseparable. I think that if you have some type of OCD in your day to day life, very likely that's going to manifest in your physical tissue as well.
Christopher: Okay, interesting. Interesting. What other exercises or drills, or whatever you want to call them, do you recommend to your clients? I know that each person is an individual but what other things that you -- Is there anything you find yourself repeating? Like, oh god, I need to write this down on a book or a video training course or something because I'm so bored of saying this to all these bloody runners and cyclists and swimmers? Is there anything else? Any other movements that you'd recommend?
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, there's loads. I am working on an A to Z video course guide on how to integrate these patterns into your life. I'm still on the process of filming all that stuff right now. I'm also looking for a publisher for a book in relation to this same subject. And the connections between our emotional self and our physical self. There's no dualism. It's not line Descartes' separation between the parts. It's a lot easier. This is the [0:37:31] [Indiscernible] conversation. We broke this down. It makes it a lot easier when you don't have a mind and body. You just have a mind body.
When you bring those together, all of a sudden, life makes a lot more sense. But with that, it's like one of the things I see a lot with people, or a tangible practice that people are going to tinker with, is as you're sitting down in a chair playing with, recognizing that's not just, oh, I got to sit down on this chair and fill out this paper work, whatever. It's, "Oh no, yippee, I have a moment of exercising, practicing a squat position."
As you're coming down and sitting into that chair, the same rules apply as before, what we talked about, and then you're coming down. Don't collapse into the chair like a tired slob. Come down. And you don't even need the chair because you could go down to a full squat like the rest of the world and be able to sit comfortably butt to grass in that position. So, coming down to a chair, it's not just collapsing experience. So, literally, every time you come down it's like a little squat.
And just coming down and kind of like slowly imagine you're landing a spaceship on the moon. You wouldn't just crash down against it. You're slowly grazing your butt against the chair. Another big thing is just starting to recognize the amount of toe hinge that people get. So, as you're walking, if for just as a fun experiment, a lot of people are really sucked up in their hips because they're in that chronic sitting position, flexion of the hip position. So, as you're walking, just something to tinker with, is recognizing how far back is your back foot on each step, and playing with making sure that your big toe is the last thing to come in contact with the ground, and really tinkering with adding a little bit more hip extension every time you walk.
And what that is is going to be kind of like a little massage or compression around all that tissue through the anterior front part of your abdomen and your hip, et cetera, et cetera. So, every time you step, if you're kind of opening up your viscera, your organs, or your enteric system, $.50 word for saying, your organ business, it ends up being like a little miniature massage for your organ, for you hip, and start slowly [0:39:31] [Audio Glitch] like those two things, paying attention to how much toe hinge you're getting, how long that big toe is hanging out on the floor. That's going to start opening up the hips, massaging the organs, and then tinkering with how you're sitting down. And there's a million dollars. But that would go too long.
Christopher: Well, give me one more. We talked about the kettlebell swing, externally rotating your feet. We talked about -- Is this similar to what Esther Gokhale calls glide walking? Is that the same? Ever looked at that?
Aaron: Probably. I don't remember exactly what glide walking is right now but, yeah, I'm sure.
[0:40:01]
Esther and I teach really similar things of walking. I mean, if you look in nature, you don't see -- Like zebras all pretty much run the same. It's not until you get into this hyper analytical kind of mutated human species that it's like, "Well, you can run all sorts of different ways." It's like there pretty much is an optimal most efficient way to run. But most of us, if you look at a high percentage of the world, when they're going for a run, their heel is breaking.
It's like, oh, every time you're coming down you're just creating this bang and this friction coming at back against you. It's like, okay, we need to sort that out. One of the best ways to sort that out really quickly is go for a brief run barefoot on a hard surface. Have you run barefoot on some cement [0:40:43] [Indiscernible] rocks or anything? You will learn real quick how to run at least better than you did before. Because you're not -- You need to be light. You need to be graceful. You need to be up on the balls of your feet as you're running if you're in that place. It's not until you wear, you got big thick soles of shoes that you're able to actually go into that inefficient position. You're outsourcing your movement to the shoe as opposed to getting into the actual mechanic of your body.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I think I did a little barefoot clinic with Dr. Mark Cucuzzella. Am I saying that name right?
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, I saw him there.
Christopher: Yeah. We did this. We took our shoes off and we just did a little running drill with no shoes on. And it's really small. I guess, the idea is you can't really hurt yourself when you're going really, really slowly, right? So, anyone who's trying out some speed and power to it, that you had a potential for injury. This is something, I think, everyone can do. Just take their shoes off and just try running barefoot just like slowly and carefully.
Aaron: Yeah, but the most insidious injury or the chronic injury, and that's running. Running has one of those highest injury rates of any sport out there and it's because of that insidiousness of that slow gradual breakdown. So, if you are walking or running -- Running just kind of essentially raises the ante. It's like a great cook has an analogy of like when you add weight to a pattern, all of a sudden we're doing the same pattern with dumbbells, it's like analogous to pressing save on a word file.
It's like if you don't have any weight, you're kind of -- the degree of concentration that your body ends up taking along, kind of like the memory takes on with it, is a little bit less. But long term, with volume, it does has all the same effects. So, all that subtle inflammation that's happening throughout the joints, eventually, it becomes big inflammation. Eventually it becomes, fill in the blanks, surgery. If we can nip that stuff in the bud at early on or any point really, and just slowly guide the ship into a more functional direction, then you are going to be winning in way, way more ways than just running.
This comes into your overall attitude with yourself, your feeling of like strength and power in your body. When you're going to your job interview, when you're hanging out with your kids, if you're in pain or you got ice on your back, if you don't think that affects you in emotional level you are so disassociated from yourself.
Christopher: Yeah, no, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I can tell that with people that we work with. I know someone's feeling better when in the follow up call they're starting to crack jokes. And so recently we started using this video conferencing software called Zoom and so I can actually look somebody in the eye now and that's made such a difference. I've been able to connect with people and talk to them in a different way.
And, yeah, when you can see it in their eyes, when they're starting to smile and starting to crack jokes when someone's feeling better, it's because whatever is going on inside of their body, their fatigue or their GI complaints or whatever it was, are starting to resolve it. That just has this tremendous effect over your outlook and your positivity.
Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. And then looking at that from, again, the perspective of it's not just physical mechanics. That's a really dogmatic approach. It's like, "Well, it's all about the dead lift. It's all about the squats." If you dead lift 600 pounds and then you go home and still feel like killing yourself, did that really matter? It's bigger than just the amount of weight that you're putting up or the amount of repetitions or whatever it is. There's also the genuine joy of living your movement. And if you can get into that, I think, again, education is really helpful with that.
If you look up at the stars and you just see polka dots in the sky, it's like, "Yeah, whatever, the dot's great." But if you look up the stars and you've studied astronomy and all this different -- you studied the constellations, you have a totally different perception of that experience. It's getting really intrigued and involved with your movement. It makes it more fun.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. [0:44:16] [Indiscernible] all over again, isn't it? Talk to me about foam rollers. Are there any particular types that you like or do you think it's something that everybody should be doing or cyclist in particular or runners in particular or swimmers in particular?
Aaron: Yeah, I think it's right. I sell self-care kit things, what I call at my website. And so it's a foam roller and it's hollow, has front lids, has a couple different sizes myofascial release balls, band with a door anchor in it. And I'm not overly exaggerating trying to sell it. I'm just breaking down. It has all those things. Because they're all helpful and they all served different purposes. So, a foam roller is not going to do the same job that lacrosse ball would do. A ball is going to be better with differentiating or separating your shearing tissue. So, when you're getting into those tissue fibers, those muscle bellies or the muscular receptor which also happens to be where a lot of--
[0:45:01]
If you've seen acupuncture, you're going to end up poking you in that muscle receptor space as well because there's more [0:45:05] [Indiscernible] receptors in such more ways to kind of like govern what's happening in the tissue. But if you get a ball in between those and separate those tissues, that's going to help to really create some glide between those tissue layers. Whereas the foam roller is not going to be so good because it will just slash all of those layers together. Foam roller is going to be good for leveraging open a joint.
So, if you're laying down on your belly and you want to open up your hip flexors, you can throw a foam roller right at that, just below the bone on your pelvis called the ASIS, anterior superior iliac spine. So, if you put the foam roller right below that and you're really working to leverage open that hip and you're engaging the glutes and you're helping create that open there, that's a great usage of a foam roller. But it's not going to be the same if you want to differentiate tissues.
Having a little bit of -- it's with anything. It's like if you give someone that has, contractor a tool box, they're going to be able to do really great stuff with it. But if you've never seen tools in your life, you don't know anything about building, again very hard. It's not so much like this is the best foam roller. This is the best ball. The front of a truck or a rock or anything can be a really good tool for someone that has kinesthetic intelligence or awareness in their body.
Christopher: So, how do we get that intelligence then? If you got a manual to go with the self care kit?
Aaron: Yeah, I do. So, that comes with a video guide and all that stuff. Yeah, so breaking down each one. How to break down using a band, how to break down using balls, how to break down using the foam rollers, specifically what the purpose of them is and/or are. And it all relates back to videos. It's just a lot easier to do a two-minute video than it is to explain.
Christopher: Oh, yeah, sure. Well, this has been great. I'm all over it, the self-care kit. The people that I've been interviewing over the past few months, I've been integrating at least one thing from every single interview and nothing but good things have come into my life since I've been doing that. I have a road fitness tune up bar on the end of my shed now. I went on to Craigslist and I bought a cheap Olympic bar for $100. I've been doing dead lifts and squats now. And I've been doing box jumps as well.
And this is all the kind of stuff that I picked up from the podcast. It's all been really helpful. So, yeah, I'll get myself one of those self-care kits and watch the videos. I will, of course, link to that in the show notes. Cool. Is there anything else you want people to know about, Aaron?
Aaron: No, nothing in particular. I thought that was great. I think if people check out the podcast, I really appreciate that. And you have been on. Are we going to release these episodes in the same time frame?
Christopher: Yeah, we should do in unison. Yeah, of course, I forgot about that, that we recorded another interview together. And I will, of course, link to that in the show notes for this episode. And maybe if this one comes out first, then maybe I'll have to update this show notes and make sure the link is there. But I will do that.
Aaron: When do you releases? I do Mondays.
Christopher: It's a little bit random for me. It's like whenever they're ready. Roughly, weekly, but there's no particular--
Aaron: Maybe we'll try to get it out -- I do Monday mornings. If we can do that, that'd be great. If not, no worries.
Christopher: Excellent. This has been really helpful. Thank you, Aaron. I really appreciate. Aligntherapy.com. Yeah, this has been great. Thank you.
Aaron: Yeah. Thanks so much. I'll see you soon.
Christopher: Cheers.
Aaron: Ciao.
[0:47:58] End of Audio
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