Stress, anxiety, overwhelm, fatigue, obesity, depression, and lifestyle illness. These are just a few of the many hallmarks of our modern, fast-paced, convenience focused world. And it really doesn't take a genius to see that what ails us is very much related to our disconnection, our divorce from the food that nourishes us, the movements that maintain us, and the natural rhythms of our bodies and the planet. So today, here to re-wild us, to reconnect us with that which is most essential, and also remind us that we don't live in nature, but in fact we are nature, is the barefoot, ultra running, un-schooling, lifestyle coach and legend himself, my friend Tony Riddle. I'm Tony Riddle and I'm known as the natural lifestylist. Returning for his second appearance on the podcast, his first being a little bit beyond three years ago.
That was RRP463 in case you missed it. So today we're gonna pick things up where we last left off. This is an old-school, no video, sorry guys, audio-only conversation that I convened during my recent visit to London. We cover Tony's various endurance feats and his training, his coaching philosophy and the principles that underscore his beautiful new book, "Be More Human," which is really this amazing bible for deconstructing the ways of living that aren't serving us, and reconnecting with new ways of living, ways that are more in sync with our human biology and allow us to thrive, to connect and really to meet our human potential. I always love spending time with Tony. This one is full of practical and actionable tools. Tools to re-wild, reboot. And I think you're really gonna dig it. So take those shoes off, ground yourself, hit that subscribe button, and enjoy. (mellow lo-fi music plays) Old-school. Yeah, man. On the road, No crew filming. No video. No distractions except the noise coming from Portobello Road, but you know.
The downstairs. It's okay, man. The ambiance. Yeah, man. Being here. Nice to be in your presence. Thank you for making the trip down from the countryside. Yeah.
To the big city. Over, I guess. It's an over trip. It's over. But thanks man. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. A lot has happened since we first met up at my house; I think it was almost exactly three years ago. It must be. Yeah. Yeah. You've done a lot of things since then. It was pre Land's End John O'Groats, wasn't it? I was about to run that length- Right, I think it right before that.
Mmm. Right before that. And were you still living in London at the time? Yeah, we were living, um- Up in Hampstead?
In Hampstead. Mm-hmm. And so I was choosing routes where it was just mind-numbing routes that you just go around places like Regent's Park and run round and round and round and round and round and round. Right.
You know? And I knew that, "oh well, when I finally go off on the road, it'll be like being unleashed." (Tony laughs) This is a great running city though. There's so many epic places to explore by foot. Yeah, it's like I talk about this with the nature immersion work that I work with clients and our bigger audience, right, through other forms of media in the book, right? But it's 3000 parks in London. Yeah. It's unbelievable how much greenery there is. 8.4 million trees. That's almost one tree per person in London to sit under and be.
What an environment, right? It's gotta be up there with the top cities in the world in terms of how they've mindfully created an urban landscape while incorporating natural environments into the experience. Yeah, it's labeled as a forest now, isn't it, really, London? Hmm. In terms of how many trees are available here. Parks, allotments, gardens. It's vast. Yeah, yeah. And yet you split the city, headed to the countryside to live on like a regenerative farm or- No, we went to, we went- Tell me about that. So it was like a big exodus out of London. So when London kind of went into lockdown, we were with, you know, four kids at that time. Mm-hmm. You know, what was then a… I think Lola must have been 10, Millie eight, Tallulah, three. And then the young bowman came in, you know? And we were in a two bedroom apartment in Hampstead with a terrace.
And it's great 'cause we are minimalists, right? And we live on the ground and our beds are just mattress toppers that we can roll up and put away. So it's not like we're struggling for real space. There was space there, but we only really had a terrace. And whereas when we lived in Hampstead, the beauty of Hampstead was Hampstead Heath- Mm-hmm. …and getting in the ponds and actually being really close to that. There's a woodland there, right? One of those big parks we're talking about there. When that was suddenly removed, it was like, "oh wow, well, what is London for us?" Right. Need to rethink this. You know? And the reason we, we were living in (indistinct) and we moved back to London, right? And the reason we moved back there, because I was looking to get this book out into the world, right? And Katarina was the one that said, "Look, I think we should go back to London, you know? I think that's where we need to be until we get the book done.
Then we look at moving." And then it was like, well the book's done pretty much so… and at the same time lockdown just hit and we were just… I guess everything was up in the air. Mm-hmm. And it was an opportunity then to really just tune in, well, where do we want to be? And so we thought about the South West, getting down to the South West coast. And yet I was just about to go and run the Three Peaks. And a friend of mine, Seth, who owns this retreat space that is the regenerative biodynamic farm and big retreat space, 42 acres, it's known as, but there's like 170 odd acres there.
He said, "Look, we're not using the space. Do you wanna come and stay for a weekend?" I said, "Just perfect timing Seth, because just about to go on this next adventure- Mm-hmm. …and explained this big endurance event. "I'm just about to go on with the whole family and when we get back we're looking at moving on. So we're looking at getting down to the South West, so maybe we can drop in on the way there." And he said, "I love talking to you Tony. Normally I speak to friends, it's like, 'What are you up to?' And it's, 'oh, I'm just about to go to this or do this event.' And it's like, 'yeah, I'm gonna go and crack the three peaks in London barefoot.' (Rich laughs) So come and stay.
We'd love to have you." So as soon as we arrived back, we were kind of done with London and we arrived at 42 acres, which was meant to be a weekend. Seth and his partner Renata were having a baby and they really liked having Katarina and the kids and myself around and were learning so much in that process. And Karina's got such amazing wisdom when it comes to, you know, parenting and that home lifestyle. Mm-hmm. She's like really refined it and like re-wilding parenting in a way. So it became this, "Well, how long would you like to stay for?" And I said, "Well, Katarina really loves to be here.
She's just growing so much since being on the land. How about we cap it at six months?" So we spent six months living on this huge estate with a small community 'cause there's still a community of people there that look after this retreat space. Huge lake, and we'd go from… you know, I could get up in the morning and just take a stroll to this big lake, sit, just be, no one around, all the way through the wind to like cracking the ice to sit in there. And just amazing experience. And it really highlighted, well, that's where we've really gotta get to. So if anything was a stepping stone in thinking that "this is where it's at- Mm-hmm. …this is where we want to kind of move towards," let's say, knowing it was capped at only six months where we were staying.
Six months came 'round and we still hadn't found a home. We were searching, but because of this big exodus, everyone wanted to leave London. Sure. It was an opportunity for people to work from home. Suddenly people were really questioning their lifestyles at that time, right? But it meant the housing market, there was nothing. And even if there was, like four kids, and it just, yeah, we couldn't find anything.
And our friends then at another retreat space called Broughton Sanctuary, it's in North Yorkshire, it's like a 3000 acre estate that they're re-wilding. So they've reforested like 1,000 acres at this estate. Wow. I contacted them, said, "Look, we're a bit homeless at the moment, do you think we can come and stay?" And he was like, "Well, how long?" (Rich laughs) I said, "Well, I don't know yet. We don't know, we're trying to find somewhere." The nomadic re-wilding guy- Yeah! …needs a roof over his head. And so we just, we rocked up and they were like, "Yeah, okay, you can stay." We moved about a bit on the land where we could stay. And just before leaving, we managed to find a house where we are now.
So it meant that there was something that within a period of time we could come back to. Mm-hmm. And we had somewhere to stay. Yeah. Which is quite remote where we are now. It's super quiet. But it's an extension of walking your talk, right? Like, everything that you're about indicates that this is the type of of environment that you would choose to live in and raise your children in. Yeah, I think originally, we left London, Katarina and I left London when Lola was a newborn, really. Like nine months I guess. And we were just assessing at that point, where would we want to be? And we moved out of London and then we moved into, well, first of all we went to my parents' and we were living with my parents for a period of time for six months.
Then we moved into Windsor and we lived in this lovely little community, like picket fences and cottages and a big willow tree in the square, no cars. But certain things weren't quite aligning. It was a community, but it wasn't aligned with say, our values, right? So food was at question and, you know, just certain behaviors were at question and weren't quite where we were and they were on a different path, you know? Yeah. It's no judgment of where people were, it was just their path, right? And so we at that point were like, "well, where do we want to be?" And then friends that I was with and bouncing in and out of London with were like, "You should come to Ibiza. Have a look at Ibiza." Yeah. So next thing we moved to Ibiza and that kind of was a transition. It never felt like it was gonna become home, but what it allowed us to do is pluck ourselves out of that community, immerse in a community that we're very much aligned.
You know, suddenly it was, you know, cacao ceremonies, voice-awakening work, and plant medicines- Yeah. …and ecstatic dance, and all this stuff. And being able to walk around butt naked and bare foot pretty much all day, right? (Rich laughs) And we had Lola, Millie, and Tallulah and we were pretty much naked the whole time. It would be, "come on kids, let's get to the beach." And the kids would just jump into a big old Cherokee at that stage.
Like battered up old thing that didn't really… no one cared really. And the kids were in the back of that, climbing all over the seats naked. And then you get to the beach naked, get back in the car naked, arrive back at the house naked. (Rich laughs) And that was life, right? But unfortunately, I was still having to fly in and out. So I'd have to come into London and then back out. Had it been now, everything would've been online. It would've been very different for me. I could have, you know, we would probably still be there, but there's this notion that the island's like an island of transformation. And when you're done, you're ready to leave, it kind of spits you out. Pushes you away. Yeah! It kind of felt that way. So we were coming back on Christmas, it's a bit repetitive now, but Katarina had said, "look, you know, I think we need to go back and you've given us an amazing time here.
It's been incredible, but it's your time now, let's get this book done." Mm-hmm. It was kind of… that was the push. Yeah, and to get a book out, you have to participate in the world. You can't opt out of modern western society and expect anybody to be interested in your book, right? So you have to remain in contact to some extent with London or urban centers in order to do that, which you did. But I think it brings up a central point that's at the core of all of your work, which is like, how do you live this more naturalistic lifestyle, more symbiotic with, you know, your natural biological rhythms and those of the planet while also, you know, existing in the world? Because I think a lot of people, it's easy to look at you and go, "oh, he's the barefoot freak and he doesn't have any furniture and his kids are running around naked and he's, you know, doing cacao ceremonies." Like, that's not my life.
Like, that's not… I don't… I have trouble like accessing, you know, what aspect of that is applicable to like how I'm living? And relatable, right? Unless I completely… Yeah, or relatable, right? Like, yeah, he's squatting, that's cool. Like am I gonna squat? I don't know, maybe, but how do I connect with this? And I think really the power of "Be More Human" is this edict that you repeat, you know, over the course of the many pages, which is like, this is not about like being a Luddite per se or opting out. It's about trying to, you know, find a rhythm that works for you where you can kind of take from this wisdom and build these habits and practices into your life without completely disrupting the way that you live. Yeah. I think, and again, it's walking that path and not just talking the path, right? So we… I think if it wasn't for lockdown, we'd have that really nice lifestyle in London, you know? Hampstead was- It's pretty great.
Oh man, we had this amazing life. And again, you could have that nature immersion and except, you know, and, and throughout the book I also put this, you know, we can't all live in nature, but it doesn't mean we can't live naturally and we should be able to get our needs met in every environment. That's the point. It's just more often than not, we, here in the re-wilding circles at least, it's like this demonizing kind of zoo, the human zoo. Actually, it's not about demonizing the city life. It's about just dismantling, deconstructing ways of living that aren't really serving us in those environments. And then reconnecting to ways of living that of course are more in sync with our human biology- Mm-hmm. …like how we can move within everyday spaces. You know, if we looked at re-wilding that way, in the sense that I do, it's like you can re-wild your movement, your gut, your sleep, you know, your everyday behaviors in those experiences.
And I think that for me has been the message, really. And then it's much more relatable. You know? I've lived in cities, I get it. And I also get what it is to be a papa to four kids and have businesses in London, you know? Sure. You know, and still manage to carve out time to become an endurance athlete. So I'm a hundred percent aligned, right? Yeah. I live it and I walk it, but also I have clients from all different backgrounds, all different demographics, right? From again, students through to billionaires. It's always the same message, right? My favorite is the example of the elder, um, he's an Indian gentleman, in the book and you kind of walk through like how you helped him transition his life and how he kind of lived it hour by hour as an urbanite.
Yeah. So there's- What was that guy's name? So there's Yehudi in the book. Are we discussing Yehudi in this? Yeah. Yehudi's a Jewish guy. Oh he's Jewish. Yeah. He was… basically brought natural birthing really into the U.K. So if anyone's re-wilding natural birth in the U.K., it's Yehudi. And he was ostracized at that time when he brought it in. You know, there's amazing stories from him. But he originally came to me wanting to learn how to walk, you know, and he was stooped like he was 72 at the time. So it was like what our template perhaps might have been of a 72 year old.
Right? Stooped and just wanting to learn, how humble just to come in and say, "I want to learn how to walk." So I said, "Okay, let's just hop you up on a treadmill. I'll record you." First stage is you need to see what it is to walk, what it, looks like, right? Where you're at. Otherwise you're just kind of this… there's incompetence there subconscious incompetence until you drag it out. And then he's like very aware that it's conscious incompetence. So he could see the stoop and it was like, okay, let's go through these processes. And so the start of it was getting him back on the ground, just interacting with the ground. So like when we saw this guy without furniture, Yehudi became the guy without certain parts of furniture in his home, but the age of 72. And I think the thing with age also, because we have more patience in a way, you know? Like he was really patient with it and could allow things to grow and open up and saw that it was a long game.
Mm-hmm. You know that's what he grasped from the very beginning. So I had him interacting with the ground and re-wilding his feet, then re-wilding his footwear. And there's amazing studies around there with footwear. you know, like Kris D'Aouût, University of Liverpool. 60% of foot strength is lost. Well, they put people back in barefoot shoes or walked around barefoot- it's Vivobarefoot in this case. Six months of transitioning back into barefoot footwear, they found a 60% increase in foot strength, a 40% increase in balance.
So for someone like Yehudi, it's like, wow, okay, not just improving is the way that he walks. It would be the way that he stands. Right. It'd be the way he squats or we could then ramp things up and get him into running. So then that became movement for him on the ground. So even his work set-up became a standing desk to squatting desks, you know. I mean incredible. And then we had a tray beneath him that would have stones in it so he could have his feet, rather than being on a flat linear surface- Right. Mm-hmm. He's now interacting with that kind of…
Those realms as well. Very nourishing. Yeah. And then eventually over time, come hanging practices, lifting practices. And then I discuss his commute in the book where, you know, he wakes up and first of all he's down to the next level of his house. He has a hang and then he answers his email standing then has his smoothie in the morning, then off he goes to the tube, he'd kiss his wife goodbye and off he went to the tube and this is up until I think 79 before he's retired, right? And he'd walk down the hill, get onto the tube, Golders Green at this time, and the doors would open.
People would automatically, because of his age, say, "would you like to sit down?" " No, no, no. It's okay." And he'd start hanging, right? Right. And I called it the… it's the "hang squat surf" on the tube train. The tube is the underground, right. And he'd hang between stops, right. So hanging on a train that's at up to 79 years of age- Uh-huh. …at this point. And then when the doors open, he would either stand or he'd squat. And then the train starts moving again; he'd then surf. So surfing is you're not allowed to hold anything, you're using those pads that he's re-wilded on his feet and his foundations to stand.
And then it just becomes an opportunist. He's looking for more movement throughout the day. Mm-hmm. You know he doesn't have to find an hour to go and train somewhere. He's just had a 30 minute commute on the train training, hanging, squatting, standing, surfing. Which is like being on a power plate, right? Also choosing the stairs, not the escalator. And that's quite a phenomenal story, you know. It's very empowering 'cause we often look at it and think, "well, oh you know, it's too late for me" or you know, "I haven't got the time," you know? And there's a great example in that.
Mm-hmm. And he really shifted stuff within me. It was like, ah, there's a new template there for a 72, which was 79 who's now 81, you know? Mm-hmm. An 81 year old. Now he's in cold immersion. So I tell this in the book as well, right? I'll share this. He said he was terrified of the cold, I mean properly terrified. He was born stillborn and he's kind of… where he takes into from the deep work he's done. the layering that he's got to is that there was PTSD around cold because he was put on a cold slab, cold oxygen. And so whenever it was any discussions around even going out in the cold- terrified. Like where that thermogenic kind of loads of layers because he'd been conditioned to room temperature.
So we held a workshop, it was called "Move, Breathe, Chill" in the early days. It's now called the "100 Human Experience." But originally it was "Move, Breathe, Chill." Movement: playful movement. Breath work: like real conscious connected breath. And then into a freezer that I'd converted at my studio. The day before the workshop, he'd all agreed. Yehudi's like, "yeah I'm definitely coming, definitely coming" And then that night, an hour on a call with Yehudi, like just talking him through, "yeah you're gonna be fine, man." It was like, he jokes, like a podcast in itself, being on a call for an hour, just going through this process with him.
He arrived, actually living the closest to the studio where the practice is, he was the late one, you know, (indistinct). And once we got him through the breath, it's like, "who's going first?" "I'm going first." He was straight in. And we have images of him like this, like really mouth open roaring, you know? Primal roaring in the cold waters, like rite of passage at the age, I think he was 77 and rite of passage at the age of 77 dealing with that early trauma of cold. It was very evident in that moment. And then since then, he's been to either Hampstead Ponds or the River Lee. And it's been every day he goes into the River Lee- Wow. …or Hampstead Pond. Year round? All year round, man. Wow. All the way through the winter now. That's a major- A complete shift. … transformation. Yeah, and now 81, right? Suddenly you're 81 you originally wanted to learn how to walk again, and through that he went…
The reason he wanted to learn how to walk was, I discovered, that it was his dream for him and his wife Wendy to get to Everest Base Camp. So they walked Everest Base Camp for their 50th anniversary. Wow. That was why. And then since then it's been Mount Kenya, Atlas Mountain. It's been such… just incredible, right? Empowering. Yeah. At that stage, you know? Did you take blood markers also to kind of bear witness to any metabolic changes or any of that kind of stuff? No.
I didn't, I don't get involved with- It's not your thing, man. (Rich laughs) No. Right? (Tony laughs) He looks good, he's happier. He's getting into the cold, right? Yeah, it's like, he doesn't need to get involved with that. Now he's cruising up mountains! Just experiencing, I think, you know, we're at this point where we are really… I talk about this in- I have an online community- and it's like more information, more information, more information. And we are information rich and experience poor. It's like, how do I experience these things? What am I picking up on? What are my signals? It's like, for me, running now.
It's like all controlled through breathing and downregulation. The moment I sense something or like picking up on it. I even… someone's asking me about this, I'm tackling this path, it's called the South West Coastal Path. And to run it it's like a thousand Ks, all of this amazing coastline. But if you think of the way it's banked, it's like this, the camber of it, right? So, someone said, "yeah, but you know, if you think about it, you're running at this, you know- At an angle. … it's always gonna be the same gradient, the angle that you're running at. I was like, "yeah, I know, but that's okay." And they were like, "well how are you gonna deal with that?" So I just said, "you just bend one leg more than the other and then you're always running like this and you think about…
I always think about the legs being like two wheels, you know on these little scooter bikes where you have the two wheels? Yeah. If you lean to your right, this wheel becomes shorter. Yeah? Right. To the lean, right? So it's literally just doing that around the bend. So I pull this leg of the right side to move to my right and I pull this left leg more to my left and it works like a suspension system. So it's as if if you were going over terrain and if you went over a right bump, it's the right suspension that moves. Sure. So you are then… it's not felt elsewhere. So to go over the right bump, I just bend the right leg some more by pulling it and you start to think of the legs being like wheels going over this.
Yeah. So, essentially, developing a more robust mind-body connection so that you're in tune with how your body operates. 100%. And your point being that we abdicate so much control and decision-making to devices or experts, and all of that short circuits our own ability to be more interconnected and to listen more deeply to what our body is trying to tell us. Like, "oh, I don't need to feel that because this thing will tell me whether I am okay to work out today or not." Right? Yeah. So much better articulated than me at that Rich. I… yeah, 100%.
Again, I… innately wild, connected, empowered beings- I think it's all within us. You know? And I think the more convenient this stuff becomes, the more inconvenient it becomes over time. Yeah. Picking up this phone- I picked up my phone, I forget we're not on camera. (Rich chuckles) Yeah, we're not on video. So you know, in our words it's like- So all the off-camber stuff and all of that- Yeah! Like I think people get it. We'll figure it out, you know? But yeah, so imagine if you're running to your right, you pull up your right leg a bit more and it would be shorter on the ground It's a bit like if you were standing right now, standing up. This is a great example; I had a guy called Yanis come and see me, and he's an amputee.
And so standing through his two supports, you could see on the side where he's wearing a prosthetic limb, the limb slightly shorter and what it was doing is throwing out his pelvis slightly. Sure. So it'd be like running, if you were running and you were landing without that ability to understand shock absorption, you'd be driving one side of the pelvis up over time or hammering the knee over time or striking into the angle too much. So with him it was, okay, all I need you to do- just bend your right leg. So he bent his right leg and he just dropped his hips in rather than standing on a really strong straight, rigid leg, just bend the knee slightly.
And then took him through running and then barefoot running and then coached him into like technique of running. It was phenomenal. Mmm. He's now coaching, he's like this amazing coach in Mallorca and now has a natural movement studio over there and is teaching basically natural movement. We're in a practice which involves balancing, lifting, jumping, all of these practices. right? And it all came from that conversation of, "ah, okay, there's back pain there. The reason there's back pain… just bend the knee some more." So if you were standing and you were to put a block underneath your foot when you're standing, which would represent the bank where I'm running and it's dropping off into the sea and you just bend that knee some more, it would bring your pelvis into alignment.
And that's the way you look at running; it's as if you just bend one leg more than the other. They're both landing underneath you. Right. And this is the danger of not having your feet landing underneath you. If you're swinging your legs like a pendulum, which is more associated with walking, that leg will have to be straighter and out in front of you when it makes impact with the land.
Therefore you can't bend it. Mm-hmm. You try and keep the feet underneath you as if you're on this… like a unicycle, but it has two wheels, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No I get it. It will be interesting. So you're in the final throes of training for this upcoming adventure. I want to go through all the stuff that you've done since we first sat down, but, right now, you're getting ready to do this 2000 kilometer run- Yeah. …that you're gonna complete in 22 days. Yeah. This is what you're referring to? This south coast path? Or- Yeah, so it's known as the South West Coastal Path. I see. And it's just north of where we're living now. It's a place called Minehead. And you start in Minehead, which is Somerset, and then you run the coast of Somerset and then into Devon and then down to Cornwall, which is Land's End. Sure. Where I started Land's End John O'Groats. And then you get back and then you get into South Devon and you finish in Dorset, So 630 mile or 1000 K route.
Hmm. The record is 10 days, 12 hours and 18 minutes. So that's gonna be my attempt. As far as I can see, no one has ever turned around and run back again. So I'm actually gonna do an out-and-back. Right. On South West Coastal Path and attempt to get the record on the way out. And then in a true out-and-back sense would be then to get the record or under the record on the way back. (Tony chuckles) Yeah, well if nobody's done an out-and-back with it though, if you complete it, you at least get that F.K.T.
Yeah, exactly. That's a F.K.T in its own right. (Rich laughs) Yeah. That's exciting! And knowing that that pavement will have a consistent off-camber tilt to it the entire time 1000 kilometers running, where it's not, you know, it's not a flat surface. Exactly. It's what- That is a very unique chance. It's one thing to say, well I can run that distance for 10, 20, 30, 50 miles, but 1000 kilometers. Yeah, It's about a hundred Ks a day, right? Yeah.
So you could call that five half marathons or 10 10Ks, whatever you wanna call it, or 25 Ks per day. But they say it's one of the… it's the hardest trail in the U.K., so it has everything. So… we were out and decided that we'd go and we'd discover some of it last weekend. So off we went with our bell tent, put a bell tent up, the whole family, and Katarina and the kids would be on the beach and I'd run out and back so I could go to the beach and then meet them for lunch and then go off again.
Mmm. And so one route going from this place, this beach that we found called Perranporth going north to do 10K and then 10 K back was sand dunes. Right? Wow. So these massive sand dunes are going up and down 'cause the sea was in and then all of a sudden it's rock and then all of a sudden it's like steep climbs, 1,700 elevation just on that one little section and then it drops down, and then it's sand dunes again. And then all you have are these little signs every now and then. They're like acorns that show that it's the South West Coastal Path, but you're in the middle of sand dunes and when you're in sand dunes, like, people are always a little lost in sand dunes, anyway. So you have all these different paths going off all over the place. So the navigation stuff's pretty tough. And then coming back to Perranporth and then going out the other way, it's solid rocks and really high ascent elevation again. So on that route it's not just 1000K, it's all like that.
So there isn't a moment when it's not. So the elevation's a bit insane. There's four Everests in terms of elevation on that route of 1000. Wow. So it's 1000 Ks and four Everests, one way. So like 60,000 feet of gain. 115,000 feet. 115. Yeah, 'cause Everest is- 29. 29.032, right? Right. Wow. And are you gonna do this barefoot or with Vivos or some combination of those two like you did on the three peaks? Yeah, well I'm working with Vivo at the moment, so yeah, I'm not too sure how much I can actually put out there on this one.
So it's with a… I'm having my feet scanned and we're kind of having more bespoke footwear for Tony right now. Right, right. The special Tony edition. Yeah, man. Well my feet, yeah, they're quite wide. Yeah. They've basically, they've had this model of like, from normal to where it's supernatural and I've now kind of pushed the boundaries of where supernatural is. (Rich and Tony laugh) Yeah. So- Well at this point, with the amount of kilometers you've, you know, put on those bare feet of yours. Yeah. You know, I would imagine they've morphed in unusual ways. Well, it's the strength again, isn't it? You know, you think of that foundation, and you know, I've spoke about this before with you, but there's 26 bones, 33 articulations and it's you know, the accumulation, right, there's 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments, but 200,000 receptors in your feet, so it's in a foot. We're just talking in one foot. I mean, that's incredible, right? Mm-hmm. So yeah. Where can we take that, you know? Where can that go? And I'm really interested in the physiological adaptation.
I love all that. But where my mind's going now is more towards, well even the microbiome, right? Obviously not when you're living in London, it's like dysbiosis, right? Whereas you're back out in nature in the sand dunes or the beach or the trail and the roots and the rocks. And what do we get from that experience? And footwear's a modern phenomena, it would've been skins or something, right? Mm-hmm. Something would've protected us from thorn or whatever it is. But we still would've been having this amazing experience. The more natural underfoot, the more natural the experience and outcome, right? So I'm more interested in the, well the microbiome's one, but the neuroplasticity. What is it? You know, what is it that we're also losing from dumbing down the information? So if you went over that terrain in lots of cushion, you don't really notice the difference through your feet. What is sand, what is rock, what is mud? What is root systems? It's just all one thing 'cause it's just the inside of a shoe. And also the shoe is shoe-shaped, not foot-shaped.
So you're compromising even the shape that you would receive that information through. So I'm more interested now, I'd like to go into a study where we look at, perhaps, you know, what is that? Mmm. What is lost through that behavior? Mm-hmm. A bit like the picking up my iPhone again now, a bit like the convenience of this, what are we losing in that process through becoming more convenient, right? Right. Now the neuroplasticity, think of navigation, right? Sure. Following G maps versus actually navigation. It's that abdication because once you kind of inure yourself to Google maps, then you're not really paying attention to your environment because you already… you know you can just look there and it'll tell you where to go. Yeah. Like we all know what it was like as kids, you know, you either had to have a map or you had to figure it out, right? Yeah.
And so you kind of have to be a little bit more aware of what's going on around you, or you're gonna get lost and you don't have a cell phone to call anyone. Now all of that is taken care of, so we can just kind of bumble about, you know, without worrying about whether we're gonna run into any kind of trouble. And I think your point about neuroplasticity is super interesting. Like that signaling, you know, with all those nerve endings on the bottom of your foot, like what are those signals that are being sent to the brain and what are the pathways that are getting kind of reaffirmed or strengthened in, you know, in your brain as a result of that experience? Yeah, I think you- That's a cool idea. Yeah, like there's re-wilding the feet, but there's also rewiring, right? There's a rewiring that's happening there, right? Through different environments that become more and more nourishing. Right? What is it? What is, what is the difference between us? Mm-hmm. And it's never changing, right? You think of more naturally expression again, but you could take it beyond the feet and just think, it's in the book again, I have that inorganic consumption leads to inorganic behaviors and being, right.
So really, the more organic the consumption, the more organic the behavior in being. I'm not just talking what we consume as in what we eat. It's like thinking, well what am I absorbing from all of my senses? So even just wearing huge amounts of layers and not experiencing nature again through my skin or through my eyes and my ears or running with headphones in, what are you removing yourself from, right? And then the layers and the skin and the contact and what we inhale like, you know, even running through a forest, look at the amazing potency of a forest they're now linking to like phytoncides that are antibacterial, antifungal, right? And we're missing all of that. That's so valuable, right? For ourselves and our own senses, that's antibacterial and antifungal. But I had this profound thought the other day running through a forest and I was thinking it was almost like a farm really for trees, you know, where it's for softwoods which aren't native or indigenous to that land.
So what's the difference then for us, you know, as we go on this path of reforesting the globe, right? Because we feel like we have to reforest now, what are we losing in creating straight lines of trees and planting the same trees that perhaps aren't indigenous? You know? Because perhaps those trees and those ancient woodlands are there for that. You know, the being within that environment- Mm-hmm. … to inhale the properties that are specific in that environment for healing. You know, what are we, what are we losing in that? Mm-hmm. I don't know, I thought that was a profound thought the other day. Taking it beyond the- Yeah, well we're applying our matrix on top of nature rather than just allowing nature to, you know, do what it would do. Like it'll find its own way to optimize that environment- Yeah. …and thrive without our involvement. Yeah. So the difference between like purposefully reforesting or re-wilding an environment versus like allowing or just letting it be and letting it do whatever it wants to do. Yeah. It's the controlling within that again, right? Mm-hmm.
Of where we would like… it's like rather like a board game in a way. I'll chuck in a bit of that and I'll throw in a bit of that and I move that over there and I'll play with that. Oh there we go. There is a little bit of human hubris that gets injected into that. I mean I'm sure there are ecosystems that are so decimated it requires some human intervention to like… how do we, you know, expedite the process of getting this back into a healthy state? Absolutely. Yeah, I have friends that are really heavily involved in re-wilding and regenerative processes now and it's come a long, long way.
Mm-hmm. It really has. There's planting methods, I think it's known as the Milwaukee Method now, and they kind of plant different groups of trees that, you know, become friends and it's not straight lines- Yeah. It's like that bringing back what would be the community or the friends of the trees. So that's fascinating. Yeah. Are you acquainted with Darin Olien? No. Have you met Darin? He's my buddy back home and you guys are very much on the same page.
He does lots of things. He has a podcast, but he does these segments on his show and he's writing a book about this on the subject of like fatal conveniences, like these things you were just referencing. Like all of these things that we do, these habits that we've adopted, that are part and parcel of just being in the modern world that we think are making our lives easier but are actually like, if you really deconstruct them, are not in our best interest. And you know, just to be kind of more mindful of the truth behind these things, whether it's chemicals we apply to our skin, or, you know, using Google maps instead of paying attention more. There are, you know, just an end endless laundry list of things that we really don't think twice about that perhaps require a second look.
And you're kind of the master, the zen master of all of these things. Well it's come around because I… we, unfortunately, it was my grandmother's funeral, but I had an uncle there. They came back to the house and we were discussing… he had to climb my parents' stairs to go to the toilet and he said, "oh it's so difficult getting up the stairs these days." And I started to unpack like what that means and well my mum calls them "bungalow legs." So bungalow legs are when you start living on a single story house; suddenly the stairs become challenging 'casue a single story house is called a bungalow here, right? So suddenly you develop bungalow legs so that to get up up the stairs is now a huge effort.
It's becoming inconvenient. Whereas living on one floor was convenient at one stage, right, for them. So for him it's become inconvenient. The stairs are now a struggle. And then we went right into then, well even thinking about food systems, right? What it would've been at some stage for us, right, to get food. If we went right back to hunter-gatherer foraging and then suddenly into farming and agriculture and it would've meant huge pulling and pushing and involvement still on the land. Not the same as what foraging or hunter-gatherer, but there's still huge physiological metabolic load for that, right? Versus now where we just…
I'm picking up a phone again. We just pull, pull. So we pull the screen down and we push a button- Mm-hmm. …right? That's getting food, right? So there's, again, that's hugely convenient, yes. But look at how disconnected we are from that system. That's just the physiological stuff, but think about how disconnected we are from actually the senses that neuroplasticity again, or opening up digestion, even. Like that old… I had guy called, what was it, Mindful Martin? He was on one of my very first retreats and Mindful Martin came and he had a raisin for each one of the attendees; and he puts a raisin in their hand.
Have you played this before? No. And you look at the raisin, you spend about an hour with this raisin, right, in your hand. And you're rolling the raisin around and the raisin before your very eyes just gets bigger, bigger, right? It's like just… and you're identifying all the wrinkles of your raisin, right? And looking at this thing as if it's like you've never seen a raisin before, but it goes on and on with like this process that he takes you through and you realize you're suddenly salivating, right? All your salivary enzymes are up, right? 'Cause your whole digestion is prepared for raisin, right? And then eventually he allows you to touch your lips with the raisin.
You touch your lips and, again, it's like, "oh my God, this raisin." And then, finally, when you put the raisin in your mouth, it's like the best raisin you've ever tasted, right? (Rich laughs) Yeah. So you bring that into like foraging, and foraging… I did a retreat at 42 acres- Mm-hmm. …where we were staying for a period of time. And Tasha is there, she's this amazing foraging coach and she pretty much lives on the land and… but can identify stuff but lives it. It's different to, "oh, these are the five things you can pick and these are five things you can't pick." She lives it, right, and breathes it and is so knowledgeable.
And so I took people on this adventure where I took them into the woods in like a line. Well firstly I stopped them at the entrance to the woods. And I said, "all right, okay. I need you to repeat these words: 'trust the process, respect the process, be patient whilst in the process'" And while you finally figure out this is whole process, you just be, and they're, "yeah, okay." So, right, "here's a blindfold. I'm gonna put your blindfold on." So they put the blindfold on and then I walked them in a chain and the person at the front is my friend Artur at this stage. And he has his eyes wide open, and he's now walking them into the forest and then around this lake. And then I position, I take one off the back and I put them into the forest beneath a tree. And one was particular, it was like in amongst these Bluebells and wild garlic. It was insane, like high definition for your eyes. "Sit," all right, next one, next one, next one, and then they had to practice 100 cycles of breath, like alternate nostrils for right and left hemispheres.
And then once you'd completed your hundred cycles, you'd take your blindfold off, and then I'd come back around. By the time I dropped everyone off around this lake, I was back to the start. And you just… like they're completely blown away by the senses have completely opened up through breath, being blindfolded and hearing nature and then suddenly seeing nature as if they were on psychedelics or something. It was like their first experiencing nature again, but fully plugged in. And then I'd have them then take in 10 things that they can find in the area to build something, a structure, some kind of… using their, I called it their imaginative architectural minds at that stage and to build something with intention. And that they could either… it's a gift to the forest or they could perhaps come back and that was where their place would be. And, then I… then we then finished that, walked them back, and met Tasha in the forest kitchen. And then she took everyone out to forage and their senses were completely open.
She says she never had a group that were that open before, like feeling everything, touching everything. Mmm. And whatever they picked then became part of the dinner in the evening for the forest kitchen. That was absorption. That was digestion. That was fully having a relationship to the food on their plate. You know? And compare that to, you know, again, it's in the book, right? But Maslow's hierarchy of needs is in there and understanding your fundamental needs like food, right? And if your fundamental need is one of the basic fundamental needs at the very bottom of the pyramid, right? And that would be getting a food need met, right? Right.
Versus we are on Portobello road right now and I've gotta get the tube and I'm gonna leg it into this convenience store here and tear in there, grab a sandwich that has a really long shelf life or something, you know? Not caring about the source that it comes from or any of that relationship; just tear it open and wolf it down as quickly as I can in an up-regulated state to get on the tube. And then, you know, being enthralled in the chaos of London, right? All up-regulated 'cause I've been rushing. Who gets their food need met right- Mm-hmm. … in that relationship because that's not absorbing that food, right? And it's where the food comes from.
So it's having a- even down to that level- having a better relationship with the food, you know? Mmm. Yeah, that's powerful. The heightened, you know, sensitivity to your environment that is so accessible through some pretty basic- Basic, yeah. …exercises. Free. And I couldn't help but think… yeah, free. (Tony chuckles) …truly available to all of us that can create that kind of shift. And then the neuroplasticity piece, right? Like I'm sure certain areas of your brain then light up. There are centers, yeah. Like that heightened… yeah like then to go forage in that heightened state, to be so much more aware of what's available to you is powerful. And then what is the shelf life of that? Because for someone like yourself, you live it, you've had these experiences, you've carried them into your life and you've built, you know, a life around those practices. I'm interested in whether, you know, those people who had that experience, when they go back to their life, do they find a way to build that in or does it kind of dissipate? And before you know it, they're kind of back to doing what they were doing.
Yeah. It's- That's the sort of flaw of the human. (Rich laughs) It's always giving them tools because I, you know, I have this… you know, I no longer call retreats, "retreats." I call them experiences because retreats would sense that, you know, retreating from something. Mm-hmm. And that's bad. This is good, right? But for me it's an experience and we gain something from an experience, right? And for some of the people there, it's just understanding there's a relationship with food, you know? So there's a sensitivity around your food.
That might just be preparing your meal or a number of meals per week. And then the other one was just to sit and be with the food you're about to eat or down-regulate with breath just before you're about to eat. They're, again, very simple practices that you can then offer. And then when we start to down-regulate and we start to take more time, we are no longer so chronophobic as well, right? That fear of time, "I've gotta get to this place" you know, and actually we carve out more time for ourselves because we start to feel so amazing within those practices themselves, right? It's like getting here; I could have easily, you know, jumped in a cab or got the tube, but it's like, no, you know, it's 30 minutes, it's an amazing walk, right? You know and for some of that, you know, if I think back to when I was, you know, I said when I arrived, it reminds me of my mid twenties to early thirties, I'd be in a cab, right? Yeah.
I'd probably be hammered in a cab. Yeah. You know, around this area. And it's equally understanding that we are all on this amazing path, right? And it's for some that have been on those experiences with me, for some it's just identifying that understanding of this is what it looks like in nature almost, and this is what it looks like in the human zone. How can I bring some of these practices into this everyday environment? And also, it can be just small steps, you know? If you think about going up a flight of steps, there's a step and then there's a flat part of the step and there's an up part of the step. So there's a small part of the experience and then you have to integrate it, right? So I make a step, integrate, then on the flat part, go up again, integrate, flat part, rather than seeing it as this huge incline. Mm-hmm. You know, because that's… you suddenly look at that and you're like, "oh my God, that's a huge step I've got to make." And the point being with these practices, it's not.
You know, it took minutes actually just to enter the woods with your eyes closed and it took minutes to actually to do 100 cycles of breath. You know, you could try just before every meal, even this practice, like inhale up through your nose, you don't even have to count because often counting gets in the way and there's a chemical metabolic cost for thinking; so just try and inhale for as long as you can into a relaxed belly. Start by relaxing your pelvic floor and your lower abdomen. Breathe in for as long as you can, now try and extend the exhale. And by extending the exhale, we get a lowering of heart rate and blood pressure. And six cycles of that is a minute. Just do that before eating. Mm-hmm. At least you're… then you're improving the absorption of the food. Mm-hmm. Because if we're not doing that, then what are we doing? It's just satisfying a want.
Whereas we need to think about more about needs. Food is a need, but I have to digest it to reach the need. Right? So how can I look at improving absorption? And I think, yeah, those practices might seem extreme, but it doesn't take a minute, you know? Right. Four seconds in, six seconds out, six cycles, one minute. Do that before you eat. Or, grace, sit with your family and just have grace, you know, before you eat. Right. Bring back those old practices, you know? Yeah, that is a means of down regulation, right- Yeah. …on some level to just bring a little conscious awareness into your daily experience and to, you know, mindfully engage with yourself to, you know, create an optimal state whether it's for eating or for walking into a stressful situation.
I mean, I think I wanna spend a little bit more time on downregulation. I think that's like a really powerful takeaway for people. Yeah. It was cool to see you demonstrate that in the documentary, like after a hard day on the three peaks run, to like lay on a bed and like prepare your body for a state of overnight repair, right? Yeah. Like to enter that phase of this extended endurance adventure with a conscious intention and a technique to kind of lure your physiology into a place where it can be receptive of that experience.
Yeah. It's restorative again, isn't it? Right? Yeah. You know, I think firstly describing upregulation and downregulation, right? So upregulation we could call fight and flight. You know, that fight and flight response or fight, flight, freeze, that we experience that's almost been normalized. Well, yeah. We're all in a chronic state of it. Yeah. So again, if we look to nature as an example, Bruce Parry is a great person to talk to because he spent so much time with independent tribes and he talks about the Penan and the (indistinct) tribes and how they're just in a frequency that you and I can only really achieve through meditation, right? They're in there tuned in, right? And they're in this perfect harmony the whole time through left and right massaging those hemispheres, and that's a real downregulation. They're in that and only when it becomes a threat or an acute… it becomes an acute response, fight and flight. It's acute. It's not meant to be this extend extended chronic stay.
So we, so they're in downregulation, say for their percentage, let's say it was a 90/10 or an 80/20 even, right? 80% downregulation in this rest and digest, moving through a landscape, being the landscape in that foraging state that I took people in blindfolded, that's them, right? That's where they're at. That's why I bring those practices in, 'cause it's so inspiring hearing that. And then 20% might be, "oh, I need to be in alert state" But even their alert state, I would say, is more of a positive alert state.
Mmm. It's like on, you know? Not anxious, but on. You know? Versus then it can be… we talk about the chronophobic kind of behavior of, let's talk about the underground, right? So behavior in the underground sometime when we lived in London. And people would go… I had one guy come tearing down the stairs and he hit the bottom of the stairs, and then he went to do like a turn to the left. But he did like a Scooby Doo of his legs and his legs carried on. (Rich laughs) And then, and then he just planted, that was it, face-planted on the deck and then got up, brushed himself, and then carried on running and the doors of the tube shut. And it went. And when I finally arrive at the platform and I look up, the next one's in two minutes, you know, because the tube trains are every two minutes, right? Right.
It's two minutes to the next one, right? So the induced state of panic for no real benefit, like there's no payoff for inducing that like state of fear and anxiety. Yeah and it starts like it… I mean there's stages to it. It's accumulative. And unless we find practices that enable us to step outside of it, this is by experiences or you could go on retreats, right? Or workshops- they enable us to get tools that we can then bring into those everyday environments, right? That can change our… maybe even our internal beliefs, but certainly allow us to step outside those everyday behaviors that perhaps aren't serving us. Right? And then to make real change, I can come back, "oh, suddenly…
Oh, how about this?" In the lyrics of my friend Nick Mulvey, "Happy is the man that breathes in the morning," right? So it could be, right, I just sit and I just do some breath work. In bed even, just opened my eyes instead of going, "right, there's my phone" and checking in, just check in with yourself. Just breathe for a moment. Downregulation. Start calm, you know? And then try and remain calm.
And I'd prefer even to rock up two minutes late for something calm than I would to be an upregulated mess, because it's about then who's receiving me- Right. …and what am I bringing into that environment? Yeah, what energy are you- You know? And then everyone else goes all upregulated. Right. Imagine, it'd like- You're not getting a good result out of that. No. It's like turning up for a meeting or imagine an interview or whatever it is and you're in that state. And I go for a lot of these practices with our kids because it's so important at a young age to learn this.
If I knew most of these modalities when I was a kid, I would've crushed it. You know? Instead I was a mess in all my exams, didn't come away with anything. And you know, it could just be a simple practice with kids. Imagine mock exams, Rich, were about, oh, you go through these practices as well as doing the exam so that you can remain calm in that situation.
Because, you know what? This exam's gonna… this might be how the rest of your life plays out in this moment, right? And for some it is, there's so much involved in their education that that's their careers and everything for the rest of their lives, but not being taught well, these are practices that will enable you to think smarter in that environment, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And behave differently within it, you know? So what would be one of those practices? I mean, you took us through the simplest of breath exercises, but I know you do a lot of stuff with like alternating nasal breaths. Like what would be one tool that you could give to people? I would work with those extended exhales, really. Like if you put your finger on your pulse when you inhale, you'll notice your pulse picks up and then as you exhale, you get a lowering of your pulse. So it's tuning to that lowering of the pulse.
So even if you had someone that… you know, blood pressure, right? "Oh, I'm gonna go and have my blood pressure read." Go to the doctor's, blood pressure goes up for most people when they enter the doctor's, right? But if you had started extending your exhales, you'd have a different outcome. So think of it like that. I start to extend exhales. It's… whenever I've been on radio or it's been T.V. which was new for me. I used to sit and just put a breathing app on. I put this on now this is by Eddie Stern. Eddie Stern's like a Ashtanga teacher that put this free app out into the world. It's brilliant; it's genius. And it just has a sliding scale of… and you can set ratios on there. So this is like a four… (two low-pitched tones play) four seconds in, six seconds out. Mmm. And it just gives you that tone. It has a circle on that inflates and then closes back down again.
Right. And I have people working with that. And that app is called his name, Eddie Stern? It's just called… no, it's called "Breathing App." Oh, "Breathing App?" So it's just "Breathing App;" it's free. If you have trouble finding it, look up Eddie Stern. I think it was an Ashtanga teacher to like Madonna and people like that. But amazing he's put a free app out there, right? Yeah. And so it has this disc on it, so even if you are in a situation, it could be a quiet coach or something and you can't have the sound on, you just follow that inflated ball and it closes and opens and you just work with a breath to that and it's so hypnotic.
I get people who are having trouble sleeping, five minutes of that and they're done. Right. It's so quick to drop in and it's a tool that you can just carry in your pocket, right? And then eventually it gets to the point where you're just familiar with the breath, like the four seconds in, six seconds out, where to breathe through.
And, you know, there's a lot of people out there operating like the breathing police at the moment, right? "You need to breathe through your nose, breathe through your mouth." It's whatever is comfortable. So it could be… I prefer you to inhale up for through nose, it's this whole relationship with nitric oxide and what that does, it's a vasodilator and bronchodilator. So we know that with blood pressure and how we basically absorb oxygen, it's going to improve through that breath through the nose. It's also associated with parasympathetic rest than digest again, right? So, downregulation. And then you have these extended exhales and that could be out the nose or out the mouth, just (loud exhale) that's one way. So that's breath. Equally, it could be… there's one of those 3000 parks in London or one of those 8.4 million trees that is nearly enough for every person in London to sit under. The studies show just 20 minutes in nature is enough to lower heart rate and blood pressure.
Just 20 minutes. Mm-hmm. You know? Equally you can get that through staring at nature scenes like that on the wall with the trees there over your shoulder. Books with nature scenes, equally, they've been suggested that that will lower heart rate and blood pressure. So if even if it was at your desk, have something living on your desk that is, you know, within that urban linear box that we're in. Then just maybe, if you're walking anywhere, is to think, "one step, one breath" and start to slow the walk down, appreciate the walk, and even think about getting taller, you know, rather than shorter looking down at a screen, become taller- take in your environment and your settings.
What's the other new stuff that's coming through? The visual field work. So looking at the visual field- Mm-hmm. …opening up that panorama- Mm-hmm. …opening up the view, that's also associated with parasympathetics. So if you think of our screens being obviously the complete opposite of that, like a really focused-in, hyper-visual state, right? It's associated then with what would be a sympathetic state- Right. …this fight and flight. A wider… taking a wider gaze and a softer- Yeah, trying to soften your visual field- Yeah. …and wider. And especially if you're out in nature, like those guys that took those blindfolds off, like (Tony makes a whooshing sound) "wow, okay," and open up the visual field.
So if you think visual field breath work, nature, and then, you know, it's not enough even just to, you know, I did a piece on this the other day. Even with meditation breath work, we can often just get and sit like with the breath. I'm just gonna sit now and do some breath or meditation. But if your physical vessel is starved of movement and compromised and stiff and rigid, then really it's not the best vessel to receive that. I would look at kind of just some mobility practices as well that help, especially with that respiratory system. Think of where that is. "Oh it's the thoracic spine, can I do some mobility or ranges around that to open things up?" Hanging is brilliant for that, okay? 'Cause, again, it opens everything up. Enables that whole respiratory pathway to open up. And then, again, just look at moving throughout your day, like moving through a landscape and make it inconvenient. Make movement inconvenient. Look at your landscape, right? How do I get from there to there in the most inconvenient way? Mm-hmm. You know? I accept people in my online community, it's called "Nat Life Tribe," and I give them homework.
I meet them three times a week and I give them homework. We might finish on some simple like low-gait walking or crawling practices. And what your homework is, you have to hoover your whole apartment in a low-gait walk. So low-gait walk is like being on the ground almost, like real knees-over-toe work trying to remain upright as if you were down in a low squat with your heels up, but you could walk in that position, right? Right. Yeah? And so it's as if you're foraging off the ground like that, but now you are hoovering instead 'cause we no longer forage off the ground. And then others might be like crawling, right? Now you have to think of weird and wonderful ways to crawl around your apartment, because, again, it's hugely nourishing, right? Mm-hmm. And it's stuff that we've lost within this landscape. And the thing about this landscape, unfortunately, again, on that term of neuroplasticity, we are literally just moving from one linear box to another linear box on another linear street, right? With headphones in or heads down in phones.
So it's how can we nourish that within those urban environments? So again, it's, you know, it's not demonizing the city, but it's finding ways of living within it that are enhancing, you know? Right. And it does require you to kind of set aside your ego a little bit, I mean, you have all these videos of you like crawling around on the ground with your kids and like waving your arms, flapping your arms around and stuff like that.
Like, there's a little bit of shared DNA with Ito Portal and the work that he does, like bringing play into all of this. Yeah. Making it joyous and fun and not being so self-conscious like, you know, we're not gonna be able to go down on Portobello road and crawl around, you know, like, we might get arrested. I don't know. You probably do this or have done it. I don't… (Rich laughs) …you know. But I, you know, it's like people are gonna clam up. Like- Yeah. " I can't be that way in the world." Right? Yeah. Like, but how can we let go a little bit of that? I mean, you've got a quote something about like, "we have to become less ego-conscious and more eco-conscious and 'eco' being broadly defined as, you know, our physical vessels but also our environment in which we, you know, share. Yeah. So, it's disconnecting from the egosystem and reconnecting to our ecosystem.
Mmm. And there's practices in there that I call re-childing, right? So it's about taking people through a process so that they can remove all that armor and awkwardness that comes. You know, it's like when did adulthood, when did it become so serious? Right? When was that? What was the point? And I often talk about schooling 'cause we un-school and it's not, again, to demonize schooling, but it's to say, well, "what happens within that schooling environment?" Right? Whereas we are very playful. If I look at my youngest, he's like, just play the whole time. Right? He's even playing with his emotions when he let's rip and just, you know, starts tearing the house down or whatever he's doing. He's still playing; he's playing with emotions. And then Tallulah is like, she's our Boudica. She's like really wild and roaring and you know, she's full of energy.
But they're so playful, and so that's up until… Tallulah's now six. So she would be ready for school, right? Five or six. And then you enter that environment and then that play that you're allowed to play with all your emotions and your expressions is suddenly in a container, right? In a linear room- Mm-hmm. …all of a sudden. In a chair with a hierarchal system and suddenly you're no longer allowed to speak when you would normally just let rip and just let stuff go. So we all then get a bit locked up even in our throat chakras if you think about that from a very early age, right? So that's expression that goes, and then we are allowed out to play in an environment that is adult-led in a way, right? It's painted lines- Mm-hmm. …and stuff that we think they would want to play around on. Right, there's very specific parameters of what that play can and can't be. Yeah. And within health and safety, right? So it's not… this isn't… again, it's not the schooling, it's the systems that we've created over time, right? And then within that, you'll then return back to the classroom environment and then over time that play experience becomes lunch break, right? And then you have P.E.
And P.E. is then very specialized, less generalist, very… there is play within it, but it's specialist play. So it becomes a sport, right? And it's repetition and repetition of movement in a way. So my practice has been… we have these workshops now called the "100 Human Experience," and it starts with an opening circle, usually around a fire, and then we set intentions and we have people kind of intro'd within it and then I open up play. So it's, now the circle opens up, and I have people just meandering around in a circle and they walk around, they brush shoulders, and they make eye contact. Now, they bump shoulders and bump bums together and all of a sudden laughter comes immediately.
It's done. Right? Within five minutes, complete strangers suddenly just giggling away and then it continues, right, now you stop and you hold their shoulders, you look at them in the eyes, and then you carry on walking. And then eventually it's like, all right, you stop, make eye contact, really strong eye contact, then walk off again. Because if you'll notice here, very little eye contact will occur in where we are right now in London. You know? And then eventually those layers, those facades, that armor is broken down with 100 complete strangers.
Suddenly start working as one; that collective bonding starts to occur. And then I have them holding each other's shoulders and then yelling into each other's eyes, "you are loved." Right? And all of a sudden you can see people just cracking at that moment. Right? It's very emotional, even, just to have someone look at you in the eyes and say "you are loved!" And especially after you've dealt with getting the armor away that's broken through that allows that emotion.
And then it continues and it turns into this very playful… there's so much humor and belly laughter that is in that moment. And when we return back to the circle before going into the next practice which is usually breath, the sharing is always, you know- Sure. You know, "oh my God, it's as if I've just reentered back there and I can't believe that I gave all that away." Mm-hmm. You know? And that's re-childing just as that's re-wilding, but it's re-childing for me.
And you know, it's such a powerful, powerful practice almost beyond what the breath work and the ice bath is because you're stripping away many, many layers there. Mm-hmm. And going back into a playful state of mind It's like play isn't just play, it's a state of mind which then opens up new worlds. And we have people that… well we've all been stuck at some point, right? And we get stuck and we almost get stuck in a character and we can get stuck in a character of depression. I'm holding men's circles, and the amount of guys that come on those circles who are locked in with depression, right? And we go through the same practice, like really playful stuff, and it's a way all of a sudden of reconnecting with your imagination brain, let's say.
Right? And you can imagine yourself as a different being altogether. You can imagine yourself in a completely different position in life. You can imagine yourself as someone completely different to the person that's stuck right now. And they reawaken from that through acts of play. There's trauma work in play. It's fascinating when you go into it like as a modality for dealing with mental health issues, even, Right? Hmmm. And then we have to say, "well, where does that stuff enter? Oh, well, is it perhaps when I had my playful state of mind removed? Could it be that? That I no longer can imagine myself in these different worlds?" And well I think we talked about this on the last podcast; there's that… there's Peter Gray who wrote this book called "Free to Learn." Right? So I'm gonna mention it again 'cause I think it's really valuable, as he asked 10 leading anthropologists what play looks like in nature. And they look at three independent tribes, different geographic locations.
And first, the first thing they come back with, all of them, it's like they're the most well-adjusted, well-rounded individuals they've ever met, right- Mm-hmm. …are the children. Mm-hmm. And what does it look like? And they said, "well, from infancy through to teenage years, all the kids do is play." And they play at being everything within the environment so they play at the adults.
So imagine, through that experience, they have birth, they have death, they have all these different rites of passage that occur, but also they learn to track animals. They learn that stuff that I've taught people blindfolded to go into. They learn foraging skills, they can build shelters, they can track. So suddenly they enter adulthood. Is adulthood any different then? Isn't it not just the playful state of mind that they're achieving, they're managing to walk around with. It then brings Bruce Parry's work in where they're in this permanent state of meditation that you and I can only achieve. Is that possible for us then, you know, if you think about, if you've really unpacked it that way? So there's so much to that playful state of mind that we could open up and unpack.
Yeah. The level of layers, the extent to which we build these, you know, castles around our identities and our personas and the adherence to social constructs and rules, all of that calcifies our ability to just be who we are. And 'play,' by its own definition, requires a sort of transcendency of the logical, rational- Hmmm. …you know, like looping mind, right? It is a flow state of sorts in the sense that when you're playing, you're not really thinking about what you're doing, you're being, right? And when you're being, there isn't room for all of those narratives to get in the way. Right? But the more we erect these walls around ourselves, the more difficult it is to connect with that primal state of play because the ego intercedes and tells us like, "you'll look like an idiot if you do that." Hmm.
Or, you know, "what is somebody gonna say if you behave in this certain way?" And all of these things create a prison of our own making- Yeah. … that is driving… you know it's obviously more complicated than that, but you know, has to be on some level at the root of some of these, you know, depressive tendencies that we're seeing on the rise. Yeah, I, again, I think it goes back to imagining yourself in other realms, even. You know? And those kids in nature again, they're learning everything about their environment. I mean that's one consciousness, is it not? That's understanding real biodiversity, 'cause you've literally been everything within that habitat.
Right? And then versus like the men's circles that I'm holding, you know, in the U.K. it's like, what, the number one killer in men under the age of 50 is suicide. Right? So there's a… what's happening here? Right? Right and there's something uniquely British about not… you don't… men are not demonstrative in their emotions here by default. Right? Well, again, I think- There's a cultural norm around like- Think of how far we go back, though. It's like, where do we go? 'Cause if you think about the, say the Celt ancestors, they were, again, about being and being at one land and huge emotional stories and weaving folks taught stories and song.
And is it… it feels to me it's almost like when the written word come in almost. You know? It's like that… what war did we lose in those processes? But I think… 100% I think for the guys that I meet, sudden you get them in a circle and yet they're communicating all of a sudden. You create a ceremony and then it's as if it's so in our DNA to hold ceremony in circle. When you create it, men open up and start sharing.
Mmm. That is very different. You know? So I think it's within us, it's almost in those, what I call the like the primordial union or primordial databases within us. Right? There's something within our DNA that ceremony and circle enables us to tap into that, which is also again, a re-wilding, right? Mm-hmm. There's also letting stuff out. I have guys like allowing them to roar and shout and yell and express that suddenly they put a lid on that because they felt it was so inappropriate. That level of masculinity, letting that stuff out. Mm-hmm. And why do we need to let that out? Well, it's so it doesn't erupt in places where it is inappropriate. Right? So it's giving them a modality like, "work on this." Right. A healthy catharsis. Yeah! And one of the guys, he went into… he said he hadn't been able to go to his local shops, just couldn't get out to do it, just felt disconnected and a level of depression, of course. And then post-weekend, like 24 hours. 24 hour experience, right? Went into his local town, went into one of his local shops and they were, "ah, how are you, man?" He's like, "I'm great." "Well we haven't seen you in ages.
(Rich and Tony chuckle) Have you been on holiday?" He's like, "no." They said, "have you lost weight? There's something very different about you. You look… you look really… you look great! And he said, "yeah, I just went and spent 24 hours with this guy." (Rich laughs) You know? Right. Mixed play and unpacked it with them and it's just, again, it was a playing with experience.
I had them in deep play for work, like playing partner-partner work, forehead to forehead. When one moves, the other one has to mirror the movement. And I had them even sparring and play fighting and rolling around and playing with each other's weights. And again, things that we almost have lost like that level of expression or human contact. And I think partly like the three years we've had has meant a real disconnect from human contact. And I explained to one of the guys, like, "think about it like this." You wake up in the morning, get hit with early light immediately, right? Serotonin: one happy hormone.
Tick! Okay, he has a family. Okay, hugging. Go and hug your family. Oxytocin, another happy hormone, done! All right, now get out and move more. Okay, so then we have dopamine-seeking hormones associated with happiness. Done! Right now we have… let's maybe up the intensity of it and then we can bring endorphins in. And now, all of a sudden, right, we've got four happy hormones you can put in the happy hormone shaker. Give it a good shake and, bam, out you come! And you could see there was almost like, the guy's like, "yeah, but that sounds so simple!" (Tony chuckles) But it is! Take me behind the velvet rope, Tony.
You know? Come on. It's so- It's that thing, there's an adage in recovery that's similar. Like when you've been sober for a while and you, you know, you're in this 12-step community, at some point you reach this rubicon where you're like, "yeah, I get it, man, but like, what's the next thing? Like, what's the next… I've done all that stuff, but I'm still struggling with this. Tell me the secret that you haven't told me yet." It's like, "no, it's just back to these principles." Mmm. You just need to practice them a little bit more. Like, the human mind wants to find… and you see it like played out on social media, Like what's the one thing that, you know, nobody's telling you? And the truth is, everything that you are is about this. Like, it is… there is no secret. It's these very basic things that we've always known that we need to find a way to return to. And the process of returning to them involves unlearning so much of what, you know, we've been indoctrinated in and opening ourselves up in a childlike way- Hmmm.
…to these, you know, innate pulls that we all have that connect us as humans. Whether it's the campfire or the breath exercise or hugging your family members or like, you know, embracing the day by, you know, acknowledging the sunlight into your eyes upon awakening. Like, all of these things are so crucial and fundamental, and yet in this age of reason and enlightenment, we dismiss them as trivial because we exist and value our identity from a perspective of, you know, what is going on in between our ears- Mmm. … the intellectualization of everything. And this is like a thing I have with Julie. She's, you know, more… you know… on the polarity of human experiences, I would place her, you know, much closer to you. And because of my upbringing, my default setting is to pivot back to that intellectualization of everything. And I've grown a lot and become much more open to different experiences or we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
But, when stressed, I will revert, you know? And then she's like, "what do you-" (Rich laughs) And it's hard. It's hard, man. You know, it's like those… because I can see, you know, there's wisdom in both of these things. They have to coexist on some level, right? 100%. Yeah, man. And finding that right balance for me of being open to what I know and to new experiences and also, you know, relying on the intellect when appropriate, is like this dance that I'm… I'm always in this… it's not a war, it's more like a relationship. Yeah. Well there's symbiosis in that, right? Mm-hmm. Isn't there? Sure. I think, you know, as I said at the beginning of the conversation, there is this information-rich and experienced pull moment and it's just being mindful. Like, is there values or is there a philosophy in there somewhere within us, right? That we can go…
Well the information at least I'm gathering, is just… like for me, I have this physical, social, spiritual understanding, Right? Within physical self, I know there's movement and play and sleep and rest and how I eat and digest and sunlight and water, right? And sex, right? Okay. So the information I'm going to gather, I'm gonna go and put this, but what I'm gonna do now that I have all the information, I'm going to implement it and action it and experience it rather than get lost in this information the whole time.
It's a bit like studying, right? Sure. You can go from school to college, university, and then post-grad stuff and then keep going, keep going, keep going. 'Cause actually the big wide world of when you finally you have to go and implement that stuff can be quite scary. So sometimes it's easier to remain in education and also it sometimes helps feed the ego of "when I do get involved in a conversation, I can articulate that conversation well and I have enough information behind me to prove that I'm an intellect." Right? So there's… or there might be a frustrated academic underneath it, right? That needs to learn. And I very much went into information, information, information. And then I go, right, okay, experience, experience, experience, experience. And I think that's a healthy balance. It's like go and actually practice it.
Give it time, you know, give it the Yehudi time, right? Know that this stuff's always gonna be here. Mm-hmm. We are so abundant of information, but if we don't go and experience it… you know? Right. And, well, wisdom is birthed out of- Yes. …the experience of that information, right? Yeah. Like putting that information into action from that, you know, is what arises with like, we have too much information right now. Not enough wisdom. If you want the wisdom, you've gotta apply the information and experience it.
Yeah. 'Cause, again, it's actioning is the growth, right? So it's… growth happens in action, right? Let's go and really experience this stuff. And in that, you also find perhaps what it is for Rich, what it is for Tony to experience it, right? So we get our own unique interpretation. So it's not just our own unique interpretation, it's also our unique way of it processing and then perhaps expressing, right? Mm-hmm. So what has the universe uniquely assigned for you and uniquely assigned for me? It's completely different. And the more and more I get to experience and be, the more I get to fully tune into what that is.
Right? Mm-hmm. And to fully express what it is through me, you know? Mm-hmm. Rather than maybe through the voice of another, you know? Right. Yeah and I think in that place you can find a deeper reservoir of empathy and non-judgment of others. Yeah. There's a funny one around judgment 'cause I've, you know, in this, in my kind of online community, a few of them in there are thinking what others think of them, this judgment, you know? It could be about the playful work or hanging even on the tube, or it could be anything within their environment, right? And then it's, you know, "I feel that people may be judging me." And then you realize that, well it's judgment.
You are judging them for judging you. Hmmm. So judgment is the tier, right? That's where we need to do the work, right? (Tony and Rich laugh) You know? Yeah. The meta-judgment. Yeah! You know? That's going on. The bigger picture of judgment- what is that? How dare you judge me judging you judging me judging you? Judging you. Right. Yeah. You know, that's there all right. So, the book is organized under these four principles, all Rs, you know: reboot, reconnect, re-wild, and then refine.
We've talked a little bit about unlearning- Mmm. …talked a little bit about reconnecting, re-wilding. What else can be said about this, you know, process of understanding these pillars? Well I think I look at rebooting, it's almost like this… there's a lot of practice in there for rebooting, right? Even that, the breath that we've discussed is an opportunity to just have a reboot in a moment. You know? Right, like big reboots. Like full life reboots. Like macro and micro. All the way down to mini, yeah. So it can… like, for me, it's a very interesting period. 'Cause a lot of my stuff went online and so I… there's been an adjustment within that that had to happen within our environment.
So when I have a studio that's set up, and if I'm say, mentoring someone, it's now more often than not, it's online and sometimes you are receiving, you know, all kinds of information, right? And some of it's like, it's a lot in there to process. And if I left that student, just opened up the door, and walked into the house, my family are them receiving that as well. So for me it's, you know, there's a reboot there. "Okay, I'll just stop at the door, take a breath, long exhale, okay, walk out." And then the next door I open, take a breath, long exhale, walk in.
You know, so just breathing. Just imagine you had like a crazy day at the office and then a crazy commute home and you're carrying all that stuff and then you arrive at the door and you open up the door and you walk in with all that stuff and you have kids- Right. It all adds up- …and the kid's dying to meet papa at that moment. And it seems like a lifetime. And then all of a sudden you've brought all this, this kind of…
You could call it toxic, right, information in the house. So that can be a reboot on a micro level, right? A bigger reboot might be, "okay, I'm gonna go and, you know, I might get into an ice bath at home." We have a couple of setups. I have a barrel and have a big dip tank there. And so that's, that's maybe on a bigger level of that. Or you could go even higher than that and I might go to psychedelics or something, you know, to have a real kind of reboot.
Reconnecting that's, for me, is mainly around reconnecting to the fact that we are nature and not separate of it- It's interconnected. Us and nature, we are one in that sense. So I think there's the spending more time in those organic situations to become more of an organic being and to have more organic behaviors in those environments. Everyday environments. The more and more nature immersion, the more natural the outcome will be, I would say. And then trying to bring as much of that then into your everyday environment. So there's maybe that reconnection starts off with yourself and then perhaps then it moves out and "oh, okay, maybe I might want to be doing more around the environment or environmental issues that are going on in the world.
But it starts, I think, with the human within that conversation of biodiversity, we have to reconnect to the fact that we are nature and then we realize we're sitting around this huge table of interdependence with the plants, the rocks, and the animals and it's all one thing, right? And rather than seeing we're separate of it or controlling of it. Re-wilding is that state; it's getting back to that position of, well again, what is it to move through a landscape, to be the landscape, to inhale the landscape. Not just reconnecting to the fact we are it, it's re-wilding all the behaviors within it, you know? And then refinement is, you know, even when you think you've absolutely nailed it, is to keep going back and keep going back and keep going back to refine things. Mm-hmm. 'Cause there's so much value in that refinement. But more often than not, I think along all of those journeys is to go in with complete compassion for yourself and others, right? So there's a guy on one of our last "100 Human Experiences." He comes in and he delivers a practice on alignment.
So he had everyone sitting in a circle on our bums, you know, long sits, your legs are straight out in front of you, but you're sitting upright, all barefoot. So there's like like a hundred people in a circle with their feet altogether, it looks amazing. We got a fire pit in the middle. Love that. Just that alone- (Rich laughs) I was done at that point. Yeah, like- Don't need an alignment circle! Yeah, there's no video, but like, Tony's lit up like a Christmas tree- (Tony laughs) …just imagining that like this is your dharma and your heaven spot- Oh, man. …like a campfire and a lot of bare feet pointed in your direction. (Rich laughs) Yeah and just doing deep work together, you know, and going through that reboot, reconnect, re-wild. Yeah. This is the experience, and he really brought something that was quite special and it drove something within me.
So there's… he would ask questions like, it would be about alignment, it might be. You know, we did a lot of voice-awakening work, you know how I was saying at some stage we've all been told like- Mm-hmm. …from the moment you're born, right? You come out making all this noise in the world. "Ahhh!" And then everyone's like, "shh, shh, shh, shh, shh." Don't speak unless spoken to. Trying to keep you quiet! Or the "children should be seen, not heard" kind of behavior comes in and then you sit in a classroom where you have to put your hand up to even speak.
So the suppression of that- And mistakes of what you're gonna say- Yeah. …are heightened. So then we could say rebooting. Rebooting would be a voice-awakening practice to reconnect to the fact that I have this natural voice and then we re-wild the voice, you know? And then there's refinement within that, even looking into that level. So within that circle it's like, well who… we have a voice-awakening coach prior to that; Her name's Kate Lister. She is phenomenal. So she gets everyone playing with their voice and you get people that come up and they're like a bit awkward, you know? And, one guy, on the last…
What was his name? I won't mention his name, actually. So he was a 55 year old dude and he said, "Oh Tony, when you asked me to come up speak at the very beginning, I was so nervous." And we actually unpacked it and went right back. And it was school assembly- Mmm. …where the trauma came in.
So the school assembly was, oh, he has to come out to the front stage and talk to a whole tribe of people that he probably hasn't, you know, he's only met a few of them that have become his mates. And he now has to speak in front of that whole audience, which some might excel at immediately, but if you haven't been given the tools and the modalities to be able to go up there, a bit like walking into the exam doing breath before that, then that's traumatic.
Mm-hmm. It's not… so his PTSD was in there, right? So whenever he has to stand up, he's like, (Tony mimics stifled speech) Right. He can't speak. So we gave him like voice-awakening work. So then you sit in the circle and it would be, Chris would say, in this giant foot circle of 100 humans in L-sits around a fire. He would say, "so if anyone of you came here today, you know, maybe you had difficulty speaking your truth. If you felt that you've now worked through that and we've processed that, do you think you can make a step forward?" And they do like a… I called it the Angela Riddle, which my mum, she used to do these bum exercises, in that L-sit position and try and move around the lounge like that. Mm-hmm. So like hip hinging for a bum. And so it was like this bum shuffle, you'd make a bum shuffle forward or you'd make a bum shuffle back and he had these whole series of questions, but you went through all the chakras this way, right? It's fascinating, right? And then eventually you had people forward, people back, all around this circle.
So they're no longer in this really organized circle, it's very fragmented, right, in that sense. But they're all moving towards the fire. So they all have this purpose of getting to the fire, this path. And that was the thing about the path. Look around you, look, we're all walking towards the same direction, but we're all at different stages, you know? So we're all basically being asked of different things and different processes and we're all at different stages in life, but ultimately we're all on the same path.
Mm-hmm. And then he said, "now just reach over. Maybe that person in front of you can just about reach them with your toe, but reach and touch them. The person behind you reach them with your fingers. And now can you see that we're all connected?" You know, on that path. Yeah. It was so powerful. Beautiful. You know? Yeah. Obviously all of this is very holistic and on some level, individualistic. These practices and modalities and lifestyle habits are all about integrating mind, body, spirit, et cetera.
The reductive human wants to say, "Tony, just give me the three things, like what do I, you know, what's the most important practice? Or should I do breath or should I do meditation? Or is it important that I do the cold immersion?" Like that's the human animal. Yeah, yeah. Right? This is a matrix of, you know, countless practices, some small, some big, all of which you're free to experiment with. Mmm. All of which you can find, you know, in Tony's work and in his book, et cetera. And I'm sure you get this question a lot, especially you're doing media around the book- Yeah. … like "what are the three things that I should be doing that I'm not doing?" Or you know, on some level, it's about communicating these ideas in a way that's digestible and practical for somebody who's trying to understand where you're coming from.
Well, again, Nick Mulvey's lyrics always come to mind for me- "Happy is the man who breathes in the morning." It's not enough just to breathe in the morning. So we need movement and we need to kind of wake up that physicality, right? And get into the vessel, get grounded, I would say. So, move! Move more. You know? And move in ways that you can't really recognize as exercise in a sense. That might mean sitting less on the couch, you know? Watching Netflix whilst being on the floor.
Play with different sitting positions. If you're on Zoom, maybe turn that hour long zoom session into an hour mobility session. You know, there's some ground sitting positions in the book, right? That you can play with. There's six in there. I have tutorials and things like that you can have a look at, but have a little play. And if you have kids, just observe the kids on the ground, how they move. And they're your best teachers. Like, "oh okay, I can do that, I can do that, I can't do that." Just play with it, and you'll find that the more and more you play around on the ground, the softer and more mobile you'll become over time. So what might start off as stiff, you know, you'll get signals to say, "that's enough now, I need to move." So, Rich, I might be kneeling. "It's a little bit of a needle there; it's a bit tender. Okay, move. Next thing, next movement." And the more you move and the more… then you go back to it.
So you stretch the discomfort over time rather than sitting in discomfort for too long, getting an emotional response and then going, "no, I can't hack this anymore. It doesn't work," just play with the edges of discomfort and comfort until you can push the boundaries in that, until eventually, like me, sitting becomes more uncomfortable for me than actually being on the ground. I much prefer being on the ground and it's assisted so much with my endurance work. I think in the documentary there's a…
The "One Man Two Feet, Three Peaks.," I've just run up Snowdon and back down again and then completed two marathons after that. And there's a whole elevation of like 7,400 that day. And we get back to a campsite and I'm now kneeling on the ground eating food with my kids, you know? And that mobility stuff on the ground enables me to then stand up and move again. Mm-hmm. If I went to sitting, I'd get so locked up in hips and ankles and everything else. So just try and, yeah, think about nourishing movement and the movement will enable other practices. Breath: great, easy, simple breathing practices. You know, it's free. Movement is free on the ground. Don't need a gym membership for that. Don't need to exercise; working from home anyway.
Just improve that space. Create a space where you can move to begin with I guess. Right? So that's that. I would then look at, right, the voice work. If you have trouble speaking or articulating, breathing helps because then you can remain calm when that upregulated voice comes in. You can breathe that. But also opening this stuff up, I'd get a cushion and like scream and yell into the cushion and let stuff out. Just really have a practice of that. It doesn't have to be with the voice coach in a big 100 human circle It can just be in your apartment with a pillow. Mm-hmm. If things get too much for you and you feel like you have to let go, it's much better to let go than screw the lid even tighter.
You know? Be playful. You know, can you just look at maybe what's an adult version of the play stuff that we can think of? Dance, you know? Put music on and play your physicality. Dance, draw the curtains if it… you know, no one's looking then. (Rich chuckles) Right. Do you know what I mean? (Tony chuckles) Just have a proper dance, even- But I see myself- Yeah! I'm embarrassed of myself. But you can start with shakes. Like you can even start with simple shakes on the spot. Boom, boom, boom, boom, and find that. And you suddenly start to find, "ah, there's play in that, there's movement in that." And start to let that go.
'Cause the rigid forms start to break down after a while and that's not woo-woo, again, because there's so many studies around this kind of tremor work and trauma-releasing work and through vibrations and shaking and that's all there, right? So stuff gets locked up in the body and that rigidity gets locked up. And then, where I'd really go, and I think this is probably the really important one to unpack because we all do lots of this and that's the sleep.
Mm-hmm. Right? But it's not the sleep, it's the environment of which we sleep, right? Mm-hmm. And going back to that inorganic consumption leads to inorganic behaviors and beings is the one thing, really, that it's not so free to begin with, but it's very freeing over time, is to look at the environment in which you sleep that you spend a third of your life in and try and make it as organic as possible. So that might mean switching out the soft furnishings and the fabrics and even the paints, go to clay paints. And just…
But over time, bit by bit by bit. That might mean my budget only allows a pillow case this month. Just choose a pillow case. It's one pillow case; it's an improvement. It's an organic pillow case, right? And just think about that expression then is, that's what I'm inhaling, that experience, for eight hours. Clean up the air- it could mean air purifiers, right? Systems like that. If you're in like Portobello road like we are now, you are not gonna open a window and sleep like that, right? Mm-hmm. So you need to think, right? But I've trapped that in this space. So we know the air quality in here is just as disturbing as it is outside, right? Then you can think, well lighting, right? "How do I get my lighting back to how it would be in nature?" So it's less like daytime light, it's more like nighttime. That's what we call biological darkness. We unpacked a fair bit of that on the first pod, right- Yeah. …around melatonin? But we now know that melatonin heals oxidative stress. It's an antioxidant, antiviral work.
It contributes towards digestion, immune anti-cancer properties. It's vast, right? Way beyond. And some of those studies around diabetes, even, they're suggesting through one journal that it's like after a number of months of supplementing on melatonin, the change within insulin- they're no longer diabetics. Hmm. Like, it's vast man. Mm-hmm. And so I think we've just, with the anti-obesity, anti-cancer properties around melatonin, that's lighting. So where we could go in the bedroom is then think, "all right, can I switch my lighting over time to be amber tones?" And to begin with, it depends on budget. That might mean a glass jar with a tea light in it.
Right. You know? Or it might mean a bit more budget amber glasses. And the other big thing, within that environment, then is to think firelight, right? So firelight and information around the fire. So if you were in your… in the tribe, let's say, and there's one study that we've talked about in the past, which Professor Siegel, University of California: three independent tribes and not one of them sleeps for eight hours. It's between 5.7 and 7.1 hours. But what's different? There's the temperature. So thermogenic… the temperature. Again, there's lighting and there's also, there's stuff that happens around the fire.
So that's the communication and what we're absorbing. So when we say inorganic consumption, that also means what you're possibly absorbing through your phone at night. And not just the lighting, 'cause we can get past that by wearing amber glasses and we can think, "yes, okay, I can still sit up scrolling 'cause I've got my amber glasses on." It's actually what you're consuming. So if it's like murder, thriller intense stuff, is that conducive with sleep? No. Mm-hmm. So I would go… well try and keep the tech out of the bedroom and think, you know, the bedroom's for bedrooming, right? Sleeping, sex, whatever it is. But try and keep the work and stuff out of there. If you work from home and it has to be, that's the only room that you can work in, then try and really disconnect from it.
Change something within it to make it more of a ceremony for when you do go to sleep. But yeah, definitely be mindful of the information that you receive before sleep. Yeah. 'Cause that will also play out. So that guy that was running for the tube that morning, it didn't start when he woke up. You know? Sure. It starts really from when we go to sleep. Sure. Yeah, I think that… I mean look, obviously, the more you align your biological system with the circadian rhythms of the planet- Yeah. …the more you know attuned you're going to be and the more likely it is that you're gonna have a restful night of sleep. I think so much of what people consider to be sleep disorders are really just ruminations of the mind.
Like they haven't moved enough to kind of activate the appropriate hormone balance over the course of the day. And I count myself guilty of this. Like I'll live in my head and I'll be looping some narrative of some problem that I have with somebody or, you know, some resentment that I have, something like that and I can't shut it off. Right? I cannot. Like every time I try to move my thinking gently towards something more downregulatory, if I'm not being super aware, it'll snap back to that narrative. Yeah, yeah. And it's like paying attention to that has been amazing. But when I'm in that state, it is an upregulated state and it makes restful sleep close to impossible. It keeps me up at late, et cetera. And I think this is a really common thing and people are like taking sleep medication because they believe they have a sleep disorder, but it's not a sleep disorder.
No. It's an anxiety of the mind. Upregulation again, right? Yeah. Upegulation versus down regulation. You know, I've had, you know, a number of people come that perceive themselves as insomniac again, but you know, firstly it's the environment, the habits within the habitat before sleep, that's one. And then it's putting practices in place that enable you to get to downregulation. So if you, rather than allowing the mind to go back, it's not enough to just downregulate and breathe.
I'd use stuff like that breathing app- Mm-hmm. …because you just focus in on it. Right. It's a bit like counting sheep, but you're guiding it through breath and you go deep with that and it doesn't take long. It does mean taking a device in, but you can do all that on flight mode and turn the screen off. Mm-hmm. And that's a powerful tool, right? Right. I don't want to make this about me, but I can't like have you here and not like at least solicit your input on like my chronic lower back problem. (Tony and Rich laugh) I've talked too much about it on the podcast, so I don't want to linger on it too much. No, go ahead man, It's your time, isn't it? But I…
You know, yeah, it's really prevented me from being as active and as mobile and as agile as I would like to be. And I've been on this, you know, learning curve, this education about all the… it's very complicated. Like all the different things that could have probably did contribute to this condition and that are exacerbating and perpetuating it from, you know, stored emotional trauma all the way to, you know, glutes that won't fire. You know, like very basic things to more kind of ephemeral things and trying to kind of settle on a modality of healing. And kind of where I'm at with it right now, is a combination of multiple things, but a lot of it has to do with natural movement and trying to get muscles that have never fired to start activating and then, slowly, through natural posture and movement, trying to strengthen these underutilized muscles and, you know, basically shift my pelvic posture into better alignment so that, you know, the movements that I want engage in aren't causing me pain.
Yeah. Okay, so if I observe you when you're sitting- Yeah. So your right shoulder and right side flexors are quite dominant and then your head hinges to your left. Yes, always. Okay. My head is always going to the left. And then even the way that you communicate about your back, immediately your shoulders end up right around your ears. (Rich chuckles) There's an immediate response of this stress that's there.
Right? So there's obviously emotional tiers to it, right? Layer to it. I would go… well if we're talking about natural movement and movement, what have we be just been doing for, we've been here a while now, right? Mm-hmm. We've just been sitting, right? And sitting, again, is not a natural form, right? So if we just took natural movement back to its real basics and just said, "okay, I need to be performing on the ground in order to heal and reconnect, reboot, re-wild, refine those joint actions and the more aligned my joint actions are, the more appropriate the joint actions are, the more stable that my pelvis and my lower back can be.
Right? Yeah. Every time I sit, I then compromise that, right? Mm-hmm. I go against the way that the joint actions, every joint action, is compromised through sitting. Right? We talk about hip flexes and glutes. Glutes- the reason we have to switch our glutes on is because they're so stagnant when we see it. Right? Whereas if you squat, you don't have that relationship, right? And you're always experiencing your body weight in the same areas of your feet for when you stand up.
You could say it's an endurance event, just squatting and standing, right, alone. Look to (indistinct) again, thousands and thousands of years have been living the same lifestyle. They're just as sedentary as we are, right? They spend 10.5 hours sitting, right? They just… it's this notion that they're always busy and active and hunting. No, they spend 10 and a half hours sitting- Right.
…just their 10 and a half hours are on the ground sitting. And every ground rest position is, we could call, like a prerequisite for something that has to be involved, engaged into how we stand, then how we walk, and how we run. So when we just go to one sitting form in a chair, which isn't conducive with standing up, there's little wonder why we have chronic back conditions, neck conditions, even knee conditions.
'Cause we are no longer taking the knee, even, into the depths of range that it needs. Yeah? Yeah. So it's then not about the… not about… it's basically quick fixes of further distractions from the truth. And the truth is we just don't move enough, right? And we sit for long periods of time, but in inappropriate shapes, which then create symptoms. And then we are trying to then search a symptom relief. So we go and see this specialist, this specialist, this specialist, but we haven't changed the behavior.
Right. You know, so I would go to the… I deal with the cause level for me personally, that's where I've always gone with back's and knee injuries, it's to get the optimal or natural ranges back into them. Right? Right. So that would begin- And still- Go ahead. You still have… 'cause you're still having symptom relief like you go and see this person, this person, but then what are you doing with that? Otherwise it's more information. Right? Yeah. And what I need to do is then flip the experience and say, "well what's the natural sitting positions? Right? Let's just keep doing this stuff 'cause the symptom stuff's working for me right now. It really helps to go and see this practitioner. Sometimes that's just an emotional hug. Right? That's what that becomes. Because it's chronic, it's sometimes… it's no longer existing where it did.
Right? Sometimes there's even a blockade and we hold onto it for a bit longer and we have to find a way of mechanism releasing it but then keep going back into this. Like trigger point work is fantastic but it's not fantastic on its own 'cause you have to go back and see the trigger point specialist again. Have a trigger point specialist and then go and change up your movement and make your movement as organic as possible. So I would go try and flip, even to start with, 'casue it seems so extreme to think, "oh, I'm gonna suddenly go and sit on the floor for 10 and a half hours." Just do segments of it.
Mm-hmm. And bring more of it into your every day, you know? Yeah. Otherwise it's seated posture that affects the way that the hip joints behave, affects the way the pelvis behaves 'cause you've created like counter-mutation with the pelvis, compromises the S.I. joints. Abs are off right now; I have to work really hard to remain upright. Mid back and shoulders can pop up. Right? There's so much that happens just from sitting and the more compliant the chair, the more stiff we become in it and the more awkward the positions we get into.
Right? Right. Whereas if you sit on a really hard seat, suddenly you are actually more aware. If you sit on a really hard floor, you'll be more aware. Sit on a really cushioned floor. You have… it's a bit more sympathetic to play with, so that's sometimes nicer. Then you can use supports and bolsters and things to help. So if you're sitting cross-legged, maybe to start if it's too intense, put bolster underneath your butt. If you are sitting in a squat and you can't get down there 'cause your ankles aren't quite flexible enough, put a little wedge behind your heels and allow your pelvis to relax in those sitting positions. 'Cause often there's tension there as well. So like relaxing the pelvic floor really helps. Think lower abdomen, let that stuff go. And then look at the behaviors of the joints. Right? How do I mobilize the ankle more? How can I mobilize my hip more? And the more mobile the hip, the more stable the knee.
The more stable the knee, the more mobile the hip. The more mobile the hip, the more stable the pelvis and the lumbar. And think about that, even that joint-by-joint approach. I mean if you apply that joint-by-joint approach to how we're sitting now… yeah. Right. Where's the ankle mobility? Where's the hip mobility and where's the knee stability? So unfortunately it has to be lumbar, pelvis, and then the mid-back. And we all know what the couching, slouching, surfing, swiping type of posture looks like.
Mm-hmm. It's really evident in that thoracic spine gets a real kyphosis going. Right? And the head position ends up more forward. And the problem with that then, again, is that when you do go to walk, we are no longer aligned. The head isn't up, the chest isn't up, the pelvis and all those three aren't stacked appropriately. The head's a huge weight. The more forward it is of that base of support, the longer you have to stride. The longer your levers, the more forces you have to deal. You're tall, right? So you have to do even more work, right? Because of the length of your levers. And I often discuss this with parents with kids and if you don't keep these modalities of movement alive and you go into a school environment and you don't keep the movement modalities alive as a parent outside of that.
Right? Like parkour's great for that and free running is great for that 'cause they're really expressing their physicality and it's very natural. That when you get to a certain age, teenage years, you're suddenly having massive growth spurts. And whereas if you were divorced from movement and you suddenly weren't moving around how nature intended and suddenly you have a growth spurt, it's like baby giraffes walking around- Right. …with no idea how to move their limbs anymore. Whereas if you carried on moving naturally throughout your day, like punctuated and amongst your day, "I'm gonna just sit more on the ground or I'm gonna hang or do this," suddenly those growth spurts aren't so alarming because you've created a micro kind of adjustment as you've addressed it.
Mmm. So I'd really think about, it's the everyday stuff. It's the environment stuff. What can you take control of in your everyday habitat? In your everyday environment? 'Cause otherwise all of that work is just, it's literally symptom relief and you really need to get to the cause of it, you know? Yeah. Cause we might be going, "oh, running's the cause" or "cycling on the bike's the cause. I would say it's the stuff that you've been doing for 10 and a half hours a day that isn't natural- Right. …that then you go and try and run with and try and cycle with- Yeah. …that then compromises that chain. Yeah. I mean I think I shared this last time, like, my kind of default is, you know, sitting doing like this. Yeah. Or at a desk preparing to do something like this and then popping up and immediately going and working out and then when I'm done, just sitting back down again. Yeah. Yeah. So you then what you said, it's like, okay, so let's just look at getting from the chair that you've been in for hours to going straight to exercise.
That's like going, all right, here's the jelly in a real liquid form and I pour it into the mold, right? That's you working out now, the liquid. 'Cause you become super loose when you've worked out and then you put that and then you sit down, that's the jelly in the mold. And then I set it like that.
Mm-hmm. You know, without doing the mobility work, the deep ranges. Whenever I'm even out on a run, I get down into deep squats and I get down into low-gait walks. You know? Like mid run, you'll just drop- Somewhere in there and I'll rest in it, like a rest on the run. And then I go off again. You know? And then when I get back I'm straight into deep squats. I don't have to do all the mobility work, you know, 'cause the squat is enough. Mm-hmm. It puts all the dorsiflexion in, all the stuff with the lower extremities, drops the hips in. It's amazing just to get to a resting squat and try and keep going back to that and keep reinforcing it. Yeah. And you don't… no extra weight or anything like that? Just full body movements. For you, I wouldn't worry about weight at this time because structure can't handle its own weight right now.
Right. So why add more to it? Right. So I would start to look at the foundations of that structure. What are the movements that I can be doing throughout the day that will just help reinforce my competency of moving my levers around and being stable enough for those levers to move from? Right? Mm-hmm. And then add more weight. Yeah. But you have to get, you know, you have to get that framework and the foundations of that framework super strong. It's interesting to reflect back on my life as you're sharing this and to recall…
My preferred… my preferred posture for sitting was a squat. Like I had incredibly flexible hips and I could sit in a frog-like position, you know, with, you know, my butt almost on the ground and my knees up high and all of that and, you know, eat food or do whatever I did as a young child and maintained a high degree of flexibility as a young athlete, as a swimmer. But through running and these other things that I've done, I've lost so much of that flexibility. I still have it in my shoulders, but really in my hips, hamstrings, glutes, all of that. Like, you know, I used to be able to just, no problem, put both palms on the ground without bending my knees. Now, I would have to really like work up to that. Like, so much of that now has just gotten really jacked up and- Yeah. …you know? Just how and why? I guess through my lifestyle habits and perhaps through… but you know, but it's all…
I know that it's reversible if I give it the intentionality that it deserves. Yeah. Again, it's going back to what's… What are the habits that led to it? So if the preferred sitting position is there, okay, let's start trying to work back to that preferred sitting position because there's so much value in that preferred sitting position. Not just flexibility, it's strength to be able to hold it. Right? Mm-hmm. You have to have strength to hold those shapes. Whereas you could say, right, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna work in the gym and do all this mobility, I'm gonna do all this, and then I'm gonna go sit down again. And then, well, but we haven't learned anything. We're going back to the same environment, which is the chair.
Right? I, through working more online and suddenly mentoring and meetings and God knows what else erupted in the last three years for me. The book coming out and then working the documentary, it meant so much more screen time for me. And yet, I've got all of it on the ground. But the thing I'd notice is, through my own practice, when I'd be coaching people, movement practice coaching, I'd spend much more time crawling. I'd spend much more time in low-gait walks to the point it would like repetitions and hours of it something like four to five hours of moving around on the ground. I divorced myself from a part of that. Hmm. Mm-hmm. I've had to work to get it back in because that was a new phase for me, you know? And whereas I thought, "ah, the running's enough and this stuff I'm doing and this is enough." And still coaching and mentoring or still teaching my online community like three sessions a week is still not enough, really, because it's the everyday movements that count.
It's throughout the day. Right. And when you deescalated that, what were the differences that you noticed? I noticed it when I kind of went back into, right, I'm now gonna run this South West Coastal Path. I just- Didn't quite feel as stable? …I didn't quite feel as strong, or, say, competent. I'd just call it competent, really. There's a level of competency that goes. So I've now… that's the part I have to edit. Right? Okay, (Tony mutters and mumbles to himself) and then put that back in again.
Right. You know? So what is it in the everyday life of Rich? What can I edit? I take it out and I go and work on that part and then I put it back in again. Yeah. You know? It's so funny, like the solution to becoming more competent in order to tackle this massive endurance challenge isn't more running, it's more crawling around on the ground for you. Yeah. More low gait-walk and jumping, like jumping from great heights to lower.
'Cause then that's plyometrics, right? And how quickly, once I've landed, how quickly can I get off? Because there's, you know, it's 115,000 feet elevation over those 10 days. That means there's eight Everests, really, if I'm turning around and running back. Yeah. In elevation. So not only is that running up, it's running down and dealing with the forces that are on the way down.
Mm-hmm. And there's elements when I do have to crawl. Right? But there's, how much can I put through that physicality that enabled me at some stage in my evolution to be upright that enabled me to run? And in nowhere in that evolution was there ever a chair. Right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know? So if you wanna become really, again, strong in that physicality, I think we have to just… it's not, again, it's not… I was about to say, "sit less, move more." It's not. It's sit less in the chair. You know? Because when you sit less in a chair, you'll move more anyway.
Right. Yeah. And not just squatting either. Like a multiplicity of different postures and- Yeah, there's so many. Like the beauty of having- Like the microbiome: the more diverse, the better. Diversity! Yeah. So the more diversity of movements and positions that you can- But think biodiversity. Again, I think, you know, rather than… 'cause diversity, it could be like I'm sitting in a chair and I just move a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. It's actually getting it back to the most organic example of that on the ground. You know? So how could I up it even being in my apartment on the linear surface? "Oh, I go to the park and I play with different rest positions while I'm on the ground there reading a book. Yeah. And then you've got microbiome, you've got undulating surfaces, you've got other things that deal with, and that's, again, neuroplasticity.
Each one of those movement patterns that we are working on the ground with, also, there's a neuromuscular conversation there. Mm-hmm. You know, rather than, again being in a chair where we disconnect from that physical vessel, we become divorced from it. And with that we can find ourselves in weird and wonderful ways and hours have passed. Right? I'm slouching now, right? All my systems are off, my abs are completely collapsed, my back's rounded. And then how would I get up from here? I'd stand up with this same shape. Right? Mm-hmm. So, well what do we do then, Tony, if we're sitting for, you know, these periods of time and like Rich gets up and you and you want to, from your sitting, for as you go, and then train. I would at least get out of the chair, like hold the back of the chair. I call it a "posture squat." And just allow your heels to pop up and drop into a squat.
A few little bounces, stand up, do a few of those- Mm-hmm. …and then walk off. So- Why is having the heel elevated so important? I've heard you talk about that a lot. Well, because again, you can focus on posture. You can start to think about keeping the chest up and the head up then. Whereas if you were to get straight out of the chair and squat down when you've been locked up in the ankles and the hips more often than not the back ends up really rounded within that conversation.
So it helps with the… that's why I call it a "posture squat." Yeah. It helps enhance the posture. Yeah. Keeps the head up and the chest up. For some, it's the fact that the ankle is… there isn't enough dorsiflexion in the ankle anyway to achieve the squat. So then what happens is we try and achieve a flatfooted squat. We end up over-pronated in the ankle, the knees, and the hips. And that, again, isn't the best foundation for standing, walking, running, or jumping or balancing.
Yeah. So in that case, I would then put a wedge behind the heel and there's… you can buy cork wedges for squatting now. So you have a thick edge and it works its way down to a thin edge. And so to start, you could go all right, set a timer… you know, Portal's kind of 30 minute squat challenge, right? Put the thick raise behind the heel 30 minutes a day for a number of days, right? Can I start to bring my heel down to the thinner edge over time and then eventually on the thin edge and then eventually to the ground? But that's step by step by step by step. Allowing that physiology and the mind to make the micro adjustments that are needed.
Otherwise we go straight into it. Force the angle into a position, the knee into a position, hip into a position. Do that for 30 days. Or do the squat challenge for 30 days. And then what have you learned from that? You've learned to create a really unstable foundation, really, for how you stand. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I've become hyper aware of that I've noticed more and more as I'm paying more attention to what's going on in my lower back, et cetera, is a loss of balance.
Like a lack of balance that I used to have. Like if I stand on one foot… like I used to be able to do all kinds of crazy yoga postures and, you know, balanced exercises. And recently, I was like, "wow, I can't even hold my posture stable on one leg, let alone like lift the other leg or do anything compound." Like just basic stuff. Like putting on a sock while I'm standing on the other foot, I find myself teetering and I'm thinking, is this because I'm getting older? No! It's because you've lost that foundation of stability and sort of dispersed strength in all the right places to hold your body upwardly stable. Yeah. So, I could go, "what would the reboot be for that?" There's a guy called Tom I'm working with, he's like 77. He plays a lot of tennis, And we've been working on footwork and balance techniques rather than tennis because ultimately that is what he needs- Yeah. …to play tennis, right? Otherwise just relying on whipping his arm out and not getting to the ball in time or creating an injury through that.
And it starts off being barefoot again, lifting your head, your chest and your pelvis, everything is stacked and being barefoot. The reason barefoot is that's your foundation again. You make a reconnection to that. So he starts just eyes closed and feeling into the big toes, the smaller toes, the big pads behind them that we call the ball of the foot, then the outer edge and then the heel. 'Cause you can't… the arch isn't tangible, right? Because there's no… you can't experience gravity through an arch. Mm-hmm. Well your lateral arch you can, sorry, but think about the pads where you're making contact to the ground and really tune into them, right? Heighten your awareness of them. And you take your visual state out so it enhances your proprioceptive state and your vestibular, your inner ear, within that communication, which is like your somato system. So that's based on visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive.
And you keep tuning in, keep tuning in, keep tuning in, and start to then move segments. So you try and work like a… imagine like a broom handle from the top to your ankle. And rather than moving with your head, you move the whole pole like a metronome needle and that's you. But keeping your awareness in the base of support, the feet, the whole time and work with that and then try and draw a circle around that base of the support without creating any breaks in that pole. So the pelvis doesn't hinge or the back doesn't hinge or the neck. Hmmm. It's one long thing working like this. Yeah? No camera here, you guys. So you have to kind of work with me. So it's like a pole being held from the top and the bottom. The bottom is the anchor. When you grab the pole from the top being your head and you draw a circle. That's the first stage and work on that. And that'll start to bring your segments or you're understanding how to move your segments around your base of support.
Then I would go have your feet a little wider and then work foe like tick-tocking. So as you go over all your segments with your head and your chest, over your left side, you think about lightening your right side and increasing your perception of your left foot, those pads. And then you take your head and your chest and your pelvis right over to your right side, lift your left foot. Mm-hmm. And then eventually you go all the way over and stack all your segments and then lift the leg up and then you go back over and you lift- Right. And so Tony's sort of teetering back and forth based upon which leg the weight's on Yeah. And you're organizing all of those segments above your base of support. And you really keep tuning, do not lose perception of the base of support. What can happen is we get so lost in the action of like what I'm doing with the leg that we take full focus away from what we're using to balance on, which is the base of support, our foot.
And then you can go from, right now I'm on one leg and then start to think about, "right, can I draw a circle with this left leg?" Right? Whilst keeping my perception on here. So the key then is to keep your awareness but also be able to draw a circle with this leg. Mm-hmm. Like just from the hip, not not your whole body, or not from the foot alone or the knee. It's from the hip to the ankle. Proximal being the hip and the distal point being the foot. And you draw a circle, say 10 one way 10 the other. Switch your weight over; 10 one 10 the other.
And that's the first stage. That will make a huge shift already to your balance, right? Mm-hmm. Getting away from shoes that are narrow in the toe box, that compromise those 26 bones, 33 joints, and 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments and the proprioceptive feedback they give. Getting away from cushioning because the cushioning also dumbs down the awareness. So that study is really important. That one I mentioned earlier, Professor Kris D'Aouût from the University of Liverpool, that returning back to Vivobarefoot shoes, all being barefoot for six months, was a 60% increase in foot strength, but also 40% increase in balance. So that was without doing the drills. You know, I'm giving you some exercises to go with it. So the environment would be the foot. This is like the practices to add to that new environment being nature or footwear that's wide enough to enable your feet to perform like feet. For some that conversation's really hard because they've become so desensitized to an environment. The foot is quite rigid on another hard surface. So what could we do? I would maybe work on softer surfaces to begin with.
And then over time the the feet will start to open up and behave. And then, with that balancing work, then try hops. So draw a line on the floor and once you're on one foot, try and hop from one side to the other all the way along the line and then hop back again. But do it in the like the running shape. You know what I say about running, so the head is up- Mm-hmm. …the chest is up, and the ankles pulled underneath you of the opposite leg.
Mm-hmm. Have your hands up and just go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then back again. Mm-hmm. Yeah? And then change legs. Ding, ding, ding, ding. You only need like the length of this room. Or it could just be to begin with a meter at a time, right? And then change legs. Hop, hop, hop. And then change legs.
Hop, hop, hop. And then work with both feet together. Hop, hop, hop, hop. Yeah. And play with kind of the elasticity and the ground reaction work within that. And that will reinforce when I need to be on and when I need to be off. So you start to get those natural responses to when the glutes need to be on: when I land. Yeah, and the glutes need to be on when I balance, so you can bring all that work in. Mm-hmm. Then there's heckling, Heckling, you can work with another person with it or you can play with yourself with this, right? So you keep that same segments aligned with the head up and the chest up, head, chest, pelvis, stacked above your base of support. Tune into the big toe, the smaller toes, the heel, try and think two thirds of your weight being forward, only a third remaining in the heel with the other leg that's now off the ground that we've managed to draw circles with and everything else.
Use that leg to try and throw you off balance. So kick it around, thrash it around, whatever it is. And don't worry about what head and chest is doing. The objective though is not to put that foot down. And even if that means hopping or jumping around the room to try and get stable again, do that. And that is also a re-childing practice. Mm-hmm. You could say that's like dance, you know? To start with. And you're literally just trying to use the leg to throw off you balance, you know? And can you keep tuned into the foot that keeps stabilizing you? Right. So the foot that's stabilizing you is doing everything that it can to just hold you upright, right? Yeah. So you're activating all these weird pathways and muscles that generally aren't triggered. Yeah. And I would go into, eventually, the language being that not seeing the foot as separate or outside of you.
So you are the foot. You know? You are the foot. (Tony chuckles) That's… I think that might be the title of this podcast. (Tony and Rich laugh) Yeah! Some of this stuff we covered, well sort of, for people that are new and didn't listen to our first podcast, we went into a lot of… we spent a lot of time on your backstory in that one. But one thing we did do was after we recorded the podcast, you took me through some technique work and we kind of ran back and forth on my pool deck and we filmed that and made a video of that- Yeah. …which we'll link up in the show notes there. But a lot of that had to do with thinking about, you know, lifting the foot, lifting the leg, as opposed to overthinking where you're placing the foot. Right? Yeah. It's like a pop up. Yeah, rather than a push down. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So maybe explain that a little bit. Yeah and I've refined this somewhat now- Oh, you have? …'cause I've been…
Yeah, what was that, three years ago? Three years ago, I've had a lot of miles of refinement and really going deep into kind of the you the softening or I really like introducing the language of like "leaving no trace." You know? Like leaving the least amount of impact on the Earth. Right. And part of that being like when your foot lands, like how quickly can you lift it back up? Like how gently can you…
And when your barefoot, you're very hyper aware of how- Yeah. 'Cause I have a very heavy foot. And that was one of the things you were pointing out like, man, you're just like pounding it, like you're landing so hard. Yeah. Whereas trying to imagine you're almost like stealh-like, so going back to that head, chest, pelvis is to try and think about keeping all those segments upright. Visual field, open up your visual field so you see everything rather than hyper focus on one little, one area. So if you imagine you are looking down right now as if you're looking at your screen, I can only see really to that glass. The rest of it's a blur. So when I'm running, I have that amount of time to react by the time I get to the glass. Whereas now I'm looking at the guitar over there, right? I'm looking out the window almost. I still see all of this. I can see the glass, I can see everything.
So I have all this time to be really proactive rather than reactive. Right? And my movement brain will make all those calculations. That's how sophisticated it can go, right? Visual field opens up, nasal breathing will help you be more relaxed. Visual field will help you be more relaxed while you're out there running. So that's less tension. We become more efficient. Right? More efficient and also minimize the risk of injury 'cause we're not tense. Keep the head up, the chest up, the pelvis stacked. Think about getting your feet off the ground. But it's not like you are just pulling them up 'cause that would mean kicking your legs that back behind you almost. Think almost like, they're- You're riding a bike. …they're like…. yeah, like a unicycle. so on a cyclic pattern. And because there's a trajectory to the leg, so by the time you've pulled it, you've already moved forward. You know? So you have to think it's like an arc, right? But only pull the leg as if it's going underneath your hip.
There's a great guy for this, his name's Nicholas Romanov. He has the "Pose Method," right? So all that pulling mechanics is in there. So if you… he did a great book on the "Pose Method" of triathlon, right? That's a brilliant book to unpack 'cause there's cycling in there, swimming in there, and there's running in there- Hmmm. …and it's in a much simpler format. Whereas I've studied like a level three in Pose and also one of the only six people on the planet to teach pose movement. Right? But there's… in the textbook version, it can overwhelm a little bit. It stimulates the intellectual mind. But when you go out and experience it, it's a little different.
So you play with just, yeah, pulling the leg and that gets the hamstrings involved. Not so much about picking the knees up and driving through the knees. You'll think about your hamstrings. And the hamstrings are huge pulling muscles. So if you think of the bicep, if you pull your bicep right now and you flex your arm to do that, that's a bicep. Well you have a bicep for (indistinct) as well. It's like a huge hamstring- Mm-hmm. …that we pull. So you get used to the pulling cycles and then when you're going over terrain, rather than even any thought of putting your foot down, forget that. Just think about getting off the ground. And the lighter you get the better because it just gets softer and softer and softer. And that's in that pulling cycle, it's refining the pulling cycle. There is a cadence to that where we have to observe somewhere between 176 and 182 beats per minute.
And I often work with breath with this. I kind of breathe in tempos now. I'm working on refining that. So there's (Tony inhales four times ) four little intakes and then (Tony exhales four times) four outtakes. Mm-hmm. Or, (Tony inhales and exhales steadily and repeatedly) And I match that to my tempo pulling. Mmm. So it's like pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. And- So the breath is totally in sync with your running cadence.
Yeah. Yeah. And then you don't have to get so… more often than not we're over-breathing. So it's like, you don't need to breathe that hard. Right? You can soften the breath. But I really feel that, yeah, softening the knees a little bit, thinking about being upright, really tall. I have this language of leading with the heart and then your feet follow.
So by that, I mean your actual sternum, your chest plate, think about that actually being a lead segment. So it's prowed of your face. It's actually further forward than your actual head. And that huge weight being your ribcage and your pelvis, you'll be amazed at how we can- Mm-hmm. …almost think like a piece of cellophane in front of you. Like a huge piece of clING film like that. And you're literally falling into that with your chest- Mm-hmm. … and just keep picking your feet up and those feet will stay underneath you. And what I'm discovering out on that path, the South West Coastal Path, by keeping the feet underneath you, they're just shock absorbers. It's like having these incredible shock absorbers underneath you, which you can't find when you're having this huge pendulum effect and landing on your heel.
There's huge kind of forces you're dealing with there, like landing on a rigid pin, you know, whereas allow yourself to land underneath you and it's much softer and that cyclic action will come through with it. That video was good though. We covered a fair bit of that. I think that's worth going back to. I think so. I mean, what you just described is a little bit different 'cause, I mean, I haven't gone back and watched it in a very long time, but I do recall something about like, you know, the lifting part. Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, in a nuanced way, you're letting go of some of that and focused on just the light touch of the feet and… I mean I do remember the leading with the heart part. Yeah. And the sort of leaning forward aspect of it. Yeah. And for people that are listening to this, and you're new to Tony and you're thinking like, well you know, the whole barefoot thing is, you know, bollocks, you know? (Rich laughs) I mean like, we went out and ran in Malibu State Park, Malibu Creek State Park, running over all kinds of gravel, small boulders, you know- Roots.
…all kinds of thorns and roots. And it was a, you know, varied terrain. I couldn't imagine doing that barefoot. And it was a marvel to like, watch you, you know, dance over that terrain and crush it and do it joyfully. Not like, "oh, this is hurting, but I'm gonna like get through it." And then watching the "One Man, Two Feet, Three Peaks" documentary, you know, some of those ascents and descents, I mean under like wet, sharp boulders, you know, a lot of like technical… like much more technical as you, you know, get above the treeline and are approximating these summits. Mmm. And to see you do that barefoot, like it's really quite something. Well, I think there's something to observe in that as well. Like on the first… I went up the day before as well. I did like a practice kind of just to (indistinct) Mm-hmm. …said I'm just gonna go and run up there just to see how it feels. So I did… it was like, I did the four peaks really.
So I did- Yeah. …but it had snowed- Yeah, you set out in the… like you went out and kind of did it the day before, like I was like, only you would do that. So it did snow though the day before and it was like quick up and down. 147 I think. And- It's like a thousand meters plus- It's 2000 something, that one. …in elevation. Oh, is it? And then… so that's the first ascent and then down. Which I was… the camera crew, right on the day going off, they were just like, "we had no idea he was gonna tackle it like this." So they then had to position like another guy at midway points, so they could capture the content as they had aspirations- they thought they were going to run with me, I think. And then… so tour up. And then on the way down of that first day, it was really busy. And so I had to swerve to miss some people.
And even if you were in footwear, this would've happened, right? I just hit something, really full on. Broke a toe. And then, it wasn't until we returned back to where base camp was at that moment where I could then get some plant-based gains on board at that point. And then just get off again, back out. I was just like, "ah, okay, feet don't feel that great." And then we noticed, I had a…
There was a blood blister that had formed, so I'd obviously already made adjustments getting down because I'd broken a toe. Mm-hmm. The adrenaline and everything of running down on that first day, didn't really pay much attention to it. And then went out and did two marathons after that. It was like a 52-miler after that and then returned back to base camp. And it was really evident like, you could even see, it was like a white marker, like I'd been wearing a ring around my toe and then a purple end to it and a purple part behind it.
And then went on to the next one, the next one. Then Scafell, Scafell was next. That's like… so Snowdon is the highest Welsh peak, and then the English highest peak is Scafell, and then there's Ben Nevis to finish, which is Scotland. And the English one, Scafell, it's like boulder fields, like huge, sharp boulders everywhere. And I, from that first one, I think just… I lost a lot of the elasticity in that there's, as I said, I think there's a 7,400 elevation on the first day that then crept into the next two days and getting the mileage in and then doing two marathons, Two marathons and then onto the next mountain.
Mm-hmm. There was rigidity in those legs and there was stiffness in the feet. So it then became, like, when people say about taking up barefoot, that was the example I could give. It's like I'd lost the compliance and my own compliance and my own softness and my own elasticity. And I'd become hitting hard on hard. So it suddenly became like, "ooh!" Every rock hurt on that next one.
And then after Scafell was out the way, it was almost like the midpoint. It was like the one in the middle that had to be the one that cracked Tony. And it was… and I had to endure that. I had to go through it. It was almost, that was the rite of passage on that event. And then I found that elasticity back in… on the beginning of Ben Nevis. And then Ben Nevis, we had severe weather came in. Mm-hmm. My intention with that was to… I could have done it… Basically, we could have broke it, the fastest known time, we could have done it a day earlier.
But, at base camp where we were in Scotland, we arrived back and the film crew were there. And they're like, "Tony, how's that and what's happening tomorrow?" And I said, "oh, you know, I think we're gonna… I think we should go up with… let's not go back out now. What we'll do is… I wanna go out with Katarina and the kids and we go tomorrow morning. 'Cause I think it'd be much nicer to make that memory with the kids." And he said, "well, what about the record?" And I was like, "oh, screw the record. Let's just… it'd be amazing to have that memory. Let's go up with Katarina and the kids." And so we left it. And so instead of going out that day, it was like the next day.
And yet, severe weather came in. So we then had, I think it was -4° and 50 mile per hour winds that came in. So there was no Katarina and the kids going out that day. Mm-hmm. But it did mean enduring that when we were up there. And, again, that cold gets in and you then create, again, what feels like hard on hard with the feet. Yeah. So as romantic as the idea is, there's that… you can see why through humanity we developed skins and we developed something that would protect us from those environments. Yeah. And that's just a layer, back then. It wasn't aesthetics and it wasn't cushioning and it wasn't of an unnatural shape. It was something that was from the earth, let's say. Right? Right. And the lesson, from that, for the average person who's contemplating getting into the barefoot thing is patience. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I think that the kind of learning curve, the arc towards competency is much longer than people realize.
100%. Yeah. I mean, I've found myself… like I get enamored with it and I do it for a while and then I end up, you know, defaulting back. And I don't think I've ever stuck with it long enough to really have the dividends pay off. Yeah. Of being… 'cause I haven't been fully invested in it. Again, I would go into, you know, what is it that we're trying to achieve from it? And, you know, what's the purpose and why am I doing it? And for me now, it's on that… it's really beyond the physiological, as I said earlier, I think there's that whole neuroplasticity there, there's the microbiome that's involved in it and just interacting with different environments that, again, we can have that conversation that we are nature not separate of it, right? Right. Rather than this, I'm wearing a huge piece of rubber and I'm disconnected.
I'm gonna go around stamping my print on the earth, right? It's like, "oh, okay, how can I be 'leave no trace?'" It's the bigger picture kind of that, isn't it? "Leave no trace;" at least leave the least amount of impact- Mmm. …on the planet, right? Not just when you're running. But yeah, I just think it's… it's that relationship that we can have through running, you know? But yeah, it ticks multiple boxes. But I guess the more and more gadgetry we involve ourselves in the more and more, you know, heart rate monitors and phones and G.P.S., how much of that, how much are we losing? Right? Yeah.
You know, and you might start off with just, even if it means a walk in the park, just go and investigate that. How's it feel to take your shoes off? You know, there's that school group I took out and they gave us the real… you know, because there's no adult mask and all that, "oh, I wonder what people think of me." But we… they often invited me to take kids out to this place called Virginia Water. It's very near to where we lived in Windsor. They're called "Busy Buttons." They're like an un-schooling group, creative group. "Tony, do you think you can take the kids out re-wilding?" I said, "oh, kids don't need re-wilding." "But, you know, we'd really like you to-" "ah okay, let's go." (Rich laughs) And we went on this coach, and we arrive at this place in Virginia Water and all the kids get off and they're super excited.
And we go and we walk out into this… over a bridge and into a meadow. And firstly I sit all the kids around and get them all in a circle and I say, "okay, just sit and tune in for a bit." I even brought my adult coaching into that stage. "Just have a think, what can you hear?" You know, "if you close your eyes, really tune in, what can you hear?" You know, and us, we'd be looking for the bumblebee or the bird or the sound of a leaf or the blade of a grass.
And they were like "a lion, I can hear a lion!" (Rich and Tony laugh) You know? Yeah. And it's like, this is brilliant. That imagination. Yeah, that's what where it's at. Right? Right. So then the next thing's like, okay, so I looked at Lau and Louella who was there with "Busy Buttons." and I said, "oh, okay, let's just get them up." So then the kids are up, "so let's try this, just take your shoes and your socks off." "What?" And I said, "yeah, just take your shoes and socks off." "Yeah, but… we're not meant to have our feet out." And so that was, "well kids do need re-wilding." Right? Because we've basically put this on them, right? Already. And so once they got their shoes and socks off, it was the most remarkable scene. It's like embedded in me now. So they… shoes and socks came off and like literally the moment they put them down and their feet were down, they were off.
And they were running around like absolute lunatics, screaming, yelling "the lion." They were doing all of that. Completely freedom. It's like, that's what it is. That's where it's at. But we've again created the, "oh, I wonder what people might think of me- Mm-hmm. …if I do this and do that." So, you know, the conversation earlier about that. So the guys said, Lau and Louella, "what should we do with them?" (Rich and Tony chuckle) And I was like, "we're not gonna to do anything! Stop." Right? Get out of the way. Yeah! Just step out the way. Mm-hmm.
You know? Yeah. Well I think that's a… I mean that's profound on so many levels and I think that's kind of a good way to- yeah, man. …end this dude. I mean, just to cogitate on that, like how can we have more of that in our lives? Yeah. Right? Invite more of that in. Bring more lion in. Yeah, yeah, man. More lions. Yeah. More roaring. (Rich laughs) More barefoot roaring. More roaring, okay! We're gonna go wander the streets of London and we're gonna roar, barefoot. Yeah. Is that what we gonna do now? Yeah? Yeah, let's go do. We can do that. I'd love that! (Rich laughs) Cool! So Tony's book, of course, once again, "Be More Human;" I'll link it up in the show notes and the documentary, "One Man, Two Feet, Three Peaks" is on YouTube now. Right? Yeah, it's on YouTube. And you can like watch it for free. You can! If you want to support Tony though, you can find it on… I think it's on Vimeo also.
No, it's free on Vimeo as well now. Oh, is it free on Vimeo now? Yeah, yeah, we're putting it… it's just rolling. Yeah, there you go, dude. And are you gonna film this next adventure? I think we'll do it differently; I've been speaking to the guys. It'd be really nice to create almost like a diary format. So they're gonna meet me at certain stages and then I can bring in the charities as well- Mm-hmm.
…of what we're raising funds for and- What are… you wanna shout out those organizations? Well, there's Ju/'hoan San in Namibia, so we're getting behind the kind of… this community there about protecting their lands and their rights through sandal-making as well. They making barefoot sandals, which is rather fabulous. And then there's Sônia Guajajara. There we go. Hmmm. I did say that right. Have you heard of her? Mm-mm. So there's a documentary that's been built through Earth Rise and she is an indigenous, she's a Brazilian indigenous environmentalist activist who is a politician as well. And so she's running an election, so she could be the first kind of- Wow. …Brazilian indigenous leader, let's say. And so the documentary is being built and I'll be raising funds towards that documentary. Right. That will help amplify that voice again.
Oh, cool. Yeah. Nice man. In the meantime, is there a place that is best for us to follow this adventure? Are you gonna… is there gonna be some kind of live streaming thing or just your Instagram? Yeah. As I was saying, we're gonna build like a diary, so I've got guys that are gonna come out and meet me and they're bringing… it's Chris and Will… And Will will edit on the day. Mm-hmm. So rather than being with me for 22 days, they'll kind of just- Right. So it'll be like kind of a vloggy, vlog type thing? Yeah. We can do like 90 second reels I think- Right. …we're putting out there. And that will then include like interviews with people along the way, along the route, and also through those organizations, we can get little interviews going and we can edit those in. It'd be a really nice way of doing it. Oh, cool. And then perhaps there is a way of kind of amalgamate… putting that together that will create a mini doc, I guess. Yeah.
You know? Nice. Yeah, man. So the best place to check all that out- Instagram… Instagram @thenaturallifestylist. And also Vivo, they're behind it so they're… I'm sponsored through Vivo, so they will be… I have no doubt there'll be enough stuff going around on their channels too. Yeah, good. Yeah, man. Cool. All right, well, to be continued. Yeah. Great to be back! If you find yourself in Los Angeles, so- It was good, man. Yeah, man, I love that. All right, love you brother. I'm here to support you in any way I can. Thanks, man. I just, I love the mission that you're on. I think it's really important. And you're just a beautiful guy, man. Oh, thank you. And I think what you're doing is a great service. So I appreciate you. From one beautiful guy to another, man, that's awesome, thank you. Right on, man. Peace. Thanks. (Rich whispering) Plants! Barefoot! That's a big one. (busy, bright alternative rock music plays) (music fades out).