If you're trying to accomplish anything, you're going to have to work hard. You're going to try hard. You're going to strive. You've got to go for it.
You've got to win all those things. What if there's another way? We're going to take a look at that today on this episode of the movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a healthy strong body starting usually, you know, first as those things are our foundation. We're breaking down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or crossfit, hang out with you, get to whatever it is you'd like to do to do it enjoyably and efficiently, effectively.
Did I mention enjoyably? I know I did this trick question because look, if you're not having fun, do something that you are, because you're not going to keep it up. You're going to like it anyway. I'm Stephen Sashan from zerosues.com.
I am somehow the host of this thing. We call this the movement movement because it's zero issues and with a bunch of people we've had on this podcast and other people around the world, we're creating a movement and that we includes you. It's free. I'll tell you how it doesn't take any effort.
It's about natural movement. That is letting your body do what bodies are supposed to do, not getting in the way with things that are technological advancements that don't actually help. The way you can participate in the movement part is really easy. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
That's obviously our website. You'll find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with the podcast, all the places where you can like and share and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube to hear about upcoming episodes and subscribing. I mean, you know how it works. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and I'll get to do a share.
That's all that's what you do. Let us jump into today's something or other. We're going to have a fun chat. Greg, do me a favor.
Why don't you tell human beings who you are and what you're doing here? Yeah, Stephen. I am a software engineer. I'm an occasional dance teacher.
I used to be a researcher in the learning sciences. I'm really excited about two somatimodalities like this. There's a lot of them out there and most of them I'm pretty sure do great stuff. I'm particularly excited about Franklin Method and an exam technique.
So much so. I'm about to start an exam technique teacher training, which is going to keep me partially or partially at least occupied the next three years. And I'm just going to be excited about your podcast. Like the movement movement is a thing that I needed to kind of be dragged in kicking and screaming.
Why is that? What was the kicking and screaming part? Oh, so I used to be an excuse in my youth. I really enjoyed the technicality of it.
Like downhill flalom. One of them is supposed to be big and bulky and the other one left maybe, but I just enjoyed both of them because to do it a really good run, you have to just have a really good technique to be super precise and super focused and enjoy that. I didn't enjoy is that I had to have a really strong body to do it. Like having a strong body, no problem with that.
Doing the workouts to get a strong body. That's just boring and annoying and I didn't like it. And so I was never particularly good at ski racing. I put a lot of years and effort into it.
And so when I thought I was just really happy, yeah, normal workouts in the gym, normal going running in an evening or a morning before I was at school, all those things I can just do if I want to and not do if I don't want to. Then I found part of dancing and that kind of satisfied that need to move. But because part of dancing is about interacting with another person, so social part of dancing just go out to a party, go to a club, go dancing. I was kind of awkward at moving because I enjoyed the geeking out about it and how do you follow this magical thing.
But again, the actual training and kind of getting a strong balance body, I'm really happy to have that as a byproduct to whatever I do. I am not going to put in the hours to make it happen. And then I came into this dance training where the tagline was kind of trained like a professional dancer. So five days a week, for five days, eight hours a day, started eight in the morning, finished 10 o'clock at night, go sleep.
So hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm pausing again. So you start by saying in two different places, you just didn't want to put in the work as it were. But for a five day, five day a week, eight hour a day, putting in the work thing.
I know, right. It was kind of the promise that this would, I had friends who've done this kind of thing, this particular training with these particular teachers before, and she kept saying, Hey, Greg, you would love this. You would really love it. Well, I don't think I would though.
I was curious. And so the curiosity will get me there. And I wanted to see like what, what, what, what would this promise? And it's not too big of a thing.
It's just like five days. It's a little bit of money, but that's fine. Not like five days a week for some indefinite amount. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Okay. Just give five days. I just hold on some reason. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. And also eight hours a day movement training, you can't do that. I don't think for more than five days in a row, actually you need to turn it down to something that's sustainable. And maybe pro athletes do eight hours a day.
I don't really know. But yeah, there was some things happen there. The way that stuff that movement was being taught to the things I was taught kind of made my brain curious and curious enough that I overcome the desire to not really work too hard on things. And I'm super hard on stuff because that's still not who I am.
Like if I'm in the brain space, I'm like, this is the thing I'm focusing on. This is what I want to do. I'll do it and not count the hours. And as soon as I have to drag myself out to bed, I'll ask the couch or away from the computer or away from what it is.
I'm wanting to do. I don't have that. So I haven't found the thread to what you said though for coming to natural movement, kicking and screaming. Yeah.
And so that was kind of I was social dancing. It's about relating to another person. It's about being musical. It's about having fun.
And so there's a lot of very awkward social that's move us out there. But no one's professional at it. I mean, some people are, but most of the people, they're not professionals. They just have fun and they don't actually care.
It's the same thing you go out to a pub. Someone's telling a joke. They're not a professional comedian. And if they were a professional comedian, maybe they'll tell that joke ever so slightly better.
But they're probably really good at telling jokes. I'm the kind of person I go to a pub and the way I tell the joke, the punchline tends to fall a bit flat. That's fine. That happens and my friends presumably with it.
And so that was kind of the same thing. I was happy being a slightly awkward dancer who people enjoy dancing with. They enjoy hanging out with. But I wouldn't film myself and put it on the internet because it just looked silly almost.
And I'd be embarrassed about it. And I didn't think I thought those people were graceful and they're not graceful. And there was no platform here to there. And then what this talk to me was two things.
One is there is a platform here to there. I'm really excited about that. And also that even me who's like kind of renounced running and draining the gym, I'm excited to be like, yeah, but actually this is how I live life to the full. I think your tagline.
I always kind of think, oh, this is the same tagline. It's always the same as more variations. And I think nobody know what this is something I really believe in. And so that now I wear barefoot shoes.
I have a couple of yours. I have a couple of Vivo barefoots. I do all through COVID. I did three times a week movement breaks over lunch time over Zoom with some friends and just whoever else was stuck at home and really needed that.
It's like tell 10 years ago me that I was going to do that and I wouldn't believe it. So I'm going to press you on this just because I'm having so curious. So it seems like we just made a jump between dancing on these other things you're doing and then getting into barefoot natural movement. I didn't hear where the gap was or where the original either objection or distrust or disbelief or whatever that was the king and screaming part.
I'm sorry. You can tell. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So there's a couple of parts to it. One is just the the self-efficacy, the growth mindset of it. I just didn't think that there was a path for me to kind of dokey not natural movie, not a good moving dancer to being a good dancer.
I thought it was such a path. It must involve really working hard and training your body and getting your body strong and stuff a little bit and doing all those things I didn't want to do. So what was the thing that I got a couple of questions to come from that. One is, well actually, I'll do this first.
So clearly you've described a number of things that explain how I set this up about working hard and striving, etc. Maybe there's another way and we're going to get into some specifics about that in a second. So I want to just leave with that. But the second question is what was the thing that made you want to try getting shoes from us or be over him ever else and getting that sort of natural motion starting feet first?
So I went to this camp the first time and the teachers there are two of people who have trained with in the 10 years that have since like at least five, 10 days a year. They're trained in Franklin Method as one of the modalities that they use. And what they kind of told me is you don't have to train super hard. You have to go find the movements of your body.
All that you know how to do or can access because we all have the same, the same bones, the same muscles. And the thing, the difference between me and you and why when I dance and it looks great and you dance and it looks awkward. Some of it's the training, but some of it is just letting my, all my joints move independently. Like you can make this movement with your arm where kind of my hand is waving across the screen and my arm and my wrist is not articulated.
Right. So your upper arm for people are watching. So your upper arm, you're basically making your upper arm a windshield, your wrist and hand aren't doing anything, your arm is just taking doing the motion. Yeah.
And then if I let all of the parts of my arm articulate, so the bones in the forearm are moving against each other, the wrist is moving, the fingers are moving, and not even doing anything purposeful. And I could probably then try to do something purposeful and artistic and emotional or something. But then I'm just doing the technical part, which is all these joints exist, all the joints are supposed to move, let's move them. And that goes down to the feet.
And it's something I probably, people have said many times on this podcast, but it's saying again, you have 26 bones in your foot, some number of joints. If those joints are there, that means that by mechanically they probably need to move. So what would happen suddenly if you had answer, who never moved any of the bones is worked, and suddenly started mobilizing that book, pulling on it, massaging it, touching it, walking in barefoot shoes the whole time, how suddenly would all the articulations in the feet translate all the way up the body into articulations and spine, articulations in the arms and articulations everywhere? Like if you get stuck one place in your feet, then everything else is going to get stuck.
Love it. And so, all right, so you mentioned the Franklin method, which is something we haven't talked about yet on the podcast. So why do you give me two favors? One, let people know or I'll let people know and you can elaborate on this.
This is not, as you mentioned, this is not something that you are a professional Franklin method teacher person, but something that you, and you're clearly one of these people, and trust me, I know them, because I am one who get into something and you get into something. So I get that, partly why we're here. So why don't you talk about just sort of how you felt it or what you discovered about it, what you've learned from it, and what you want to share about that. And we can give people, do you want to start by giving people a little taste of something or do you want to give an intro and then a little taste?
Let's do an intro and also then talk about that, as I'm technically briefly, and then do the movement thing and talk to both of them. Maybe what we might notice in that moment. I'm worried that when people hear that we're talking about Franklin method and Alexander technique, they're going to think we're talking about some workshop having to do with the musical Hamilton. It seems like these are names that we just don't hear very often anymore.
Anyway, please continue. So the thing that struck me in Franklin method is the teachers who, wonderful movers, wonderful teachers, I trust you, because also I paid my to be here for a week with you. Cool. And what they said is, you know Greg, you're sacred and you're pelvis, they're supposed to be able to move independently of each other.
Interesting. And like many people probably, if they've heard anything about the SI joint, is that it needs stabilizing, it needs to be solid and that there is no or very little movement in the SI joint that's supposed to be happening. And Franklin method is very much based on how the body actually moves. So it's supposed to be functional anatomy scientifically true.
And that's why I'm a little unsure about the whole world sometimes, like what is true, what is not true. So I certainly experienced my teachers, they're they come and their pelvis move independently to a small degree by the articulate. And I over the course of three to five years by the time it's actually took, because it's also involved unlocking the movement to my neck. If your neck is stuck, then you're going to suck because your whole spine has the chain going up and down.
And but this was new information to me and also conflicting information. And so what Franklin method says is, okay, so here's the bones you have, or the bones is the muscle, the fascia bones is easy because there's less of them. So let's start with the bones. Here's the internal movements that happen in the pelvis when you please actually get the dance term for just going into a partial squat.
When you play your pelvic floor act as a suspension and in order to the suspension to work, that means that your sit bones go apart to your tailbone goes away from the sit bone. So if you imagine a triangle between the bottom of your tail and your two sit bones, that's going to spread apart. And as you come back, it's going to narrow and that's part of using the pelvic floor as a widening thing like a ball gets wider when it bounces. And that's when people don't have that.
That's when suddenly any landing or jumping or pliying or move any kind of up and down movement or post-option movement goes into news goes into your back and those parts of the body aren't designed to shock absorbed. And so suddenly you take away the shock absorption that happens in your pelvis and it doesn't work. And same thing then from the pelvis, there's just even talking to bones. There's some spirals that go various directions down to foot.
There's some spirals happening amongst the bones in the foot. If the pelvis spirals are not working, then your foot spirals are not working. Your foot spirals are not working. Your pelvis is not working.
So you have that change on foot to pelvis that's involved in the shock absorption. And frankly, the method tells you cause there. So, because I want to, because this is, there's a lot in what you just said, and some of it's really hard to imagine or certainly feel if you haven't felt it. But what you just said with connecting, let's say the pelvis to the feet, I want to give people an easy thing to latch onto as a starting point.
And I was playing this just the other day. If you stand up and if you, if you're standing with your feet parallel facing forward, because you could have a parallel facing backward diving in and then you keep the ball of your foot and your heel planted. While you then squeeze your glutes, if you squeeze your glutes, that makes your femurs turn outward. So if you're looking from above your right femur, your thigh bone is going to go clockwise, your left one's going to go counterclockwise.
But again, with your feet planted, what happens, which really interesting is suddenly you get more of an arch in your foot. So that little spiral that you're referring to that starts from the glutes, aka around the pelvis, goes down through your legs into your feet. And interestingly, when you do this, if you do this, it also feels like your, while you have less of your foot on the ground, you feel more rooted to the ground. You feel more connected, more solid, because you just engaged your glutes.
Now ironically, you can do the same thing the other way around. You could do that with your feet, and then you'd feel it up in your glutes as well. And if you really want to have fun, do the opposite. Let your glutes relax and turn your, your femurs inward.
So don't try to see it, and it's really good to do this without making your knees point towards each other. But to see if you can do the opposite movement and you'll feel your feet flatten out, called pronation, not a bad thing. Part of the natural shock is the mechanism of the lower limbs. But you can feel that pronation when you let your femur turn in and that arch building up and technically a little bit of supination, the opposite pronation, but not really, as you engage the glutes and engage the feet when they're locked in the ground.
So let's just, I'm going to suggest that that's sort of a simple way of starting, and what you're talking about is it sounds like an elaboration of something like that. Did I get it right? Very much so. Yeah.
The only slight elaboration would be is when your glutes are squeezing, your pelvic floor is probably coming in as well. So your zip bones are coming in. And when your zip bones come in, your femur doesn't have to spiral out. It could count as a spiral.
And so there's some counter spiraling. The pelvis goes one way, the femur goes another way, the tibia goes one way, the feet goes another way, then the heel goes a third way. Well, and the end result is exactly what you described when the zip bones come together, the arch of the feet forms. And when the zip bones go apart to the arch of the foot down forms, and that's important to play.
And it's super, super important to walking. That sounds great. Okay, so from there, I'll be back up a little bit. So frankly, I'm guessing came from someone whose first or last name was Franklin.
Well, I guess I noticed how all the methods of it like that. Well, you know, no one's ever, I don't know that anyone's ever named some technique off their middle name. That would be a question. And then of course we have Bonnie Banger's co-in who named her technique by my intention, which just makes me love her because she didn't go and name her technique.
Yeah, this is going to sound totally silly and self-indulgent, but whenever people name a company after themselves, I find that very odd. Like anyway, that's all I'm sorry. Okay, so this time, his first or last name was Franklin. I'm assuming it's a guy.
Am I right? Yeah, his name is very Franklin. Of course, the guy. No, there's lots of things in his book as well, but nonetheless.
Yeah, so he was a dancer professional dancer. He realized coming after dance training. He was injured more than he felt would and that street to his normal. And he was like, you're doing this dancing.
It's supposed to be good for you. But I just spent five years training and dance and half my time. I spent with some kind of injury or other. What's even about that.
Another thing he noticed is his teachers would say Eric spine is crooked like a banana. What even how to expect to be a dancer? And he noticed the obvious that if you're thinking about just buying being crooked like a banana, that's not a very useful thought to go the other way. Yeah.
And so that's kind of a little bit trite and trivial, but yeah, the images that you hold about your body are going to mirror what you do with your body. What he found is that there's a lot of different cues and images that people use. And some of them are not anatomically correct, or only partially anatomically correct. Can you give me an example?
An example uses people always like to lengthen the spine. And you can keep the spine lengthening and that's probably a thing in my opinion. But if you turn your head, literally your spine is actually going to shorten a little bit. And if you twist in your whole spine, it is literally going to shorten a bit because that shortening allows space apparently for the spinal cord to not get she had or twisted or hurt in any way.
So you think that your spine should be linked should be getting longer as you're twisting, you're holding two country ideas in mind, one that should be getting longer. But you can also try to shorten your head and that's awkward, or you can let it shorten while turning your head and that's a little bit better. I'm playing with that right now. Like the idea of just sort of trying to feel, it doesn't feel like shortening, but feeling I'm turning my head.
And I definitely I don't feel like I'm getting shorter because God knows I don't need that. But but I definitely get the idea that if you try to lengthen, it's adding tension into that process. I mean, that's what I can feel. If I'm turning my head and I'm trying to simultaneously lengthen, I'm actually just creating tension in my neck.
That doesn't feel particularly helpful. And that's also a thing like if you're trying to do two slightly different things at once, it doesn't work so great. Got it. And so he got a bit annoyed about a lot of people making claims about how the body's supposed to move is actually not related to how the body is supposed to move in his and science of opinion and that little bit controversial.
I don't know if you've seen some people in France do these 3D visualizations of how the bones move in certain movements. It's really cool. It's this research lab in France that does modeling and they have some great explanations of how the foot is made like a foot is two arches one going this way one going this other way, and then you break those arches into different little bits of bone and boom you have a foot and same thing. We have to find a link for that name for that.
Yeah, I'll send it to you afterwards. The point with that is there's some things that kind of everyone agrees. And then there's other things where people either agree to disagree or vehemently disagree. So for example, good functional movements in the same reality joint is probably something you could start a whole bunch of arguments on the internet about.
Let's pause here for a sec. And let's give some people a little bit of an experience of this because it's a little heady at the moment. And we can do where people would kind of get it a bit more and move from there on a tended. Let's stand up.
Tricky for me to do that. I can do that. Okay, here we go. Okay.
We're working up our noses. And so what we're going to do is we're going to just move up on the tip of our toes and come back down again and do that a couple times and notice what we notice. Now some people are not standing up so you'll have to imagine doing this or you'll do it later when you can stand up. And then you can.
I often find frustrating during this podcast. I listen to it while walking. People are like, okay, now I've got places to be. Yeah.
We just raised up on to our toes a few times. Cool. So on a scale of like one to 10. How effortful did you how much effort did you have to put in to do that?
See now I have to remember because I wasn't paying attention to that. So I'm going to use my memory on a scale of one to 10. I'm going to give it a four. Okay.
And so now what we're going to do, we're going to imagine how we're sitting on them. So hopefully we know where our things are. Otherwise, at the bottom here, but the bony bits that stick out and we're going to imagine our heels and what we're going to do is we're going to imagine our heels swinging in as we come up. And we're going to imagine our sit bones narrowing closer together as we come up and that opposite as we go down.
As we come up, our seat bones narrow our heels swinging together and we come down our heels swinging out. I'll swing out. We come up as it's now together and we come down and I'll swing out. So go swing out.
Yes. And now the effort on that was like in the two and a half range. And here's where you can kind of experiment if you're not convinced about, okay, so should it bones come together in this movement? Should my heels also swing together to match the bones and we can try the opposite.
So let's try to get our sit bones to come out and our heels to come out as we come up. And I find this horrendously difficult because I don't have the muscles in my feet to do that kind of thing. I can do it. But now you know the effort on that is more in the five range and it just feels stupid.
Mm hmm. So that's a very, as far as I can tell because I haven't trained in it, but I've friends who've trained and they've given their practice lesson of this is how you teach it. And that was a very kind of standard. Here's how you teach in Prankham Method.
If we're going to take this further, what are people, we're going to learn some of these, let's call them natural movement patterns because that's what we were talking about before. And that's what this experience is. How does this then apply to these things that human beings are doing, whether it's walking, running, dancing, lifting weights, whatever you can think of from your experience? Mm hmm.
So one is you can just like train this thing and notice, oh, I'm having trouble when I have to put my ball on the foot. The ball on my foot on the ground. And there's a bunch of situations where we do that we do it while running or at least while parts are running. We do it while dancing.
And if you're stepping on the ball and letting that heel stay swung out, you're going to have to engage a whole bunch of muscles in your foot to do it. Whereas if you step on the ball and let the heel swing in, then you have, if you imagine, or your hand and you kind of it's floppy. And if I twist it, so like forming the arch in my hand by twisting, then all the bones are kind of solid against each other and it's that's floppy. And that's kind of part of what we're doing with the arch of our foot when we bring our heel in and out.
The slight supination of the front of the foot for that is what creates the arches, what makes the foot strong is what gives you a foot that you can lever on. And then the opposite is when you're landing on your foot and you need a flat foot, you need a foot that's malleable to adapt to the controls of whatever you're balancing on, then you want the opposite to happen. You want to move away from your lever foot. You want to go into your base foot and that involves the heel swinging out.
And if someone's heel is not used to moving because they live in shoe prisons or whatever else we want to run about, then they're going to find these two things difficult to do. People who live in heels are going to find it hard to let that heel correctly unspy on. And that's going to mean that the shock of shoulders and their pelvis is going to be hard. So what they can do is with the help of a front of the method teacher typically will do some other modality as far as I can tell.
And then you'll be a dentist teacher, that would be a plastic instructor, whatever. And that teacher will say, hey, let's put some functional movement back into the spiral topics. And then let's just go do the things that we want to do and see how that is. And generally people find that there's kind of a radical difference after having done this exercise standing up sitting down, you just go and do the thing you usually do.
And you're like, oh, that's different. And then you can, I've talked about this in a couple of ways with people in the past where a lot of what we're trying to do when it comes to natural movement, ironically, is let people, the phrase and the thing of us expand their movement vocabulary. There's movements that we just we habitually do. And because we're doing them visually, they're coming from the back of our brain or our brain stemlessly.
And we're really unaware of them. So now we're bringing awareness to either movements that we do habitually or new movements or not, let's not call them new movements movements that we're not habitually doing that may be more effortless, more natural, more in line with what bodies are made to do. And, you know, frankly, that is new to me, but I've done felt in Christ way in the past, I was something I was interested in for quite a while. I still love it, but I'm just not doing much with it.
But there was that phenomenon where you finding movement that is new to you, but not new to human bodies. And the experience is just like this amazing kind of aha moment that you feel through your entire body. And that's kind of what we're talking about here with just a different methodology where this idea of looking to see how the bones and joints naturally should function. And when you talk about bones versus sort of separate from joints and muscles, I think of a line from Joe Rogan, somebody asked him about, I think he was talking about boxing.
And he said, boxing is the art of using your muscles to throw your bones at people, which is a brilliant metaphor. So this is what we're talking about. And to the other point that's really interesting to me is based on what we led this conversation with that when you do this, it should feel like you're using less effort. And that's a great guide post.
It's, you know, when I say if you're not having fun, do something different so you are. It's another very or another thing when people are starting to learn, they're running or natural running. I go, this idea that you're supposed to get stronger. It's all about letting your calves get stronger.
That may happen, but the bigger thing is learning to relax more is learning to find a way to do less use less effort and then get things aligned properly is part of that. But just giving people a cue of how can you relax more? How can you do less? And what you're describing is a methodology for exploring doing less.
Very much so. And also using the full body potential, like you can power through everything with your muscles if you have strong muscles, but just the moments of the bones, the way that the fascia is going to communicate stuff up and down chains, it makes it less effortful. If you're doing it the right way in scare quotes. Here's a fun analogy for that one too.
So I did and I taught Tai Chi many years ago, and we did Tai Chi not just as like a thing that old people do to relax, but it was a fighting art was martial art. And one day I said to my teacher who was a very interesting cat. This is a guy who when I met him, he'd been doing Tai Chi for 22 years. He was 27 at the time.
Wow. Yeah, I got him in early. And I said, I get it. The whole thing about Tai Chi is a fighting art.
And the scene paradox about relaxation is that what you're trying to do is set up something that feels like a 2000 ton steel girder on a perfectly frictionless fulcrum. And what you do is you align your basically kind of lead people in with this frictionless moving thing, and then you align all your bones and joints and you put a stop on the pivot. And so the steel girder now stops and they go running into the steel girder. He goes, yeah, that's exactly it.
So what you said, it's like when you get everything aligned, it's super strong because of the alignment, not because of muscular effort. That doesn't mean there's no muscular effort. You need to use your muscles to stand up to sit to do whatever else. But this thing of being easy to move and then strong by alignment in the place where you'd be strong is one of my favorite sort of images as well.
Then Franklin method does imagery for other does imagery for fashion does imagery for muscle does imagery for organs, but the kind of basic level is the bones just because there's less of them. It's so much easier. I mean, it's already hard if I was to do the full bones spiral and I've never actually seen them a teacher do that class. It's just something I've learned over the whole thing.
You have a sit bone goes one way to see him goes another way to go another way to go another way to go another way to heal goes another way, even holding those five things in your mind as you're doing the movement. That's a lot. So imagine you're trying to image what your the different strands of your glutes are doing what your performance is doing, what your this that and the others doing. That's part of the reason why a lot of the so who wants to be controversial.
Everyone often says there's a queue that's often engage your whatever and like my whatever is so much more complicated than something you can switch off and I get that you think that it switched off at the moment and you would just like to be switched on. But the the the myriad of ways in which I could engage my glutes is such that working with let's let allow these bones to move in this way. And that's all the other thing that's found about bones and organs is that you can't explicitly move them. You can only move muscles to move them right or even for your organs mostly you can't even move muscles to move them.
But you can use you imagination about them and you can visualize it and image it and say okay so like my theme is to spiral out in this situation spiraling in some other situation. And then you let your body deal with exactly how the muscles should coordinate to make that happen because you can't possibly do that coordination. Very interesting. One of the things that I marvel at is how much of our movement is completely unconscious.
I mean you know you'll find yourself scratching your nose but you didn't think about doing that and yet you're able to do it. After starting zero issues I discovered something that really surprised me. There are probably a hundred ways maybe more to tie a pair of shoes. I never knew this I was assumed people did it the same way I did and then I seemed so many variations it's totally crazy.
Well there's a similar thing there's all these ways of moving again we typically just don't have the vocabulary because no one ever gave us that opportunity I have this theory that in order to graduate high school or college or university wherever you're going that you need to be able to do something like a cartwheel or a round off or you know something that demonstrates that you've learned how to move your body in some way that we're not wired for or I mean we can do them but we can do it. We're not it's not like an evolutionary thing to be able to do a cartwheel. It's like when someone says to me well we didn't evolve to run on hard surfaces. Well actually the surfaces we evolved on were often hard packed mud which is as hard as concrete.
We didn't evolve to do double backflips either but I can do one so you know just expanding the vocabulary I keep saying that over and over on this call obviously but that's the part that I find really compelling. This is kind of fun way to bring this in with. Can we think of one other thing that people experience. Let's do that with the same movement but having the one that you might notice and say about it.
Before we do that say something about what Alexander technique is again another dude. This one lived quite a while ago. He was born in the late 1800s. He developed a technique somewhere around 1890 and then was teaching it and earning a living from teaching it for quite a while.
It was only in the 1930s that people said hey this thing we would like teachers as well you should train us to teach it and so I don't know if it never cost his mind but there's something about marketing because he never quite had to do. That means it's a lifetime's work that is completely right angles to what everyone else has ever been doing in a certain sense but also very much into everything that we've been doing. We've been doing in various mathic modalities since the 1950s or whenever the short description is that it's a method for noticing and unlearning our habits. Like that.
I'm sure you're mentioning all this movement we do subconsciously. Some of the subconscious movement we do is great and some of it is just us getting our own way. Well this I'm sure has nothing to do that I was an architect but I love unlearning habits. I've been on a kick for the last couple months to put my pants on with the other leg first.
So I noticed that I was left leg first and now I've been trying to remember to do right leg first every time and I'm going to keep doing it until I can't remember which one I prefer. Nice. I'll come back to that. Okay.
And what's your experience as a practitioner as someone who's been exploring these things of the relationship between Alexander and Franklin. So I was having a technique is harder to print down. So it's less obvious what it is you can buy the book but you can buy the book. It's my tiny self the use of itself and it is very very hard to read if you don't know what you're getting yourself into.
So I would probably not recommend reading this book. Although it's one enough why not. And so I kept meeting it like my partner did a semester in college of a technique. A couple of teachers that I had as an teachers or trained in an exam technique and still couldn't quite pin down which part of the teaching they were doing was an exam technique and what it was.
And so when I moved to Edinburgh as a kind of permanent place for a few years, about four or five years ago I thought I'm going to find myself an exam technique teacher. I'm going to find out what this thing is about. And after the first session I think I was very lucky in finding my teacher we're very well suited to each other and he's very good at adapting I think to different people. It's easy for me to think teachers everyone like you teach me by nothing that's the case.
After that first session I went walking was something this whole new experience of walking I was probably walking maybe the same but I was feeling how my body was moving through space differently. I was feeling how I had more attention and more freedom in my head to kind of smell the flowers and watch the bird fly by I had a coffee afterwards and I still remember not literally but I can remember that I remember the taste of that coffee something I never tasted coffee before. And so like really this way of finding new new experiences by letting go of some of our habits that we have this allows to find something instead of replacing one habit of walking with my head into my phone with my head into my head into my phone. So you walk differently.
So it's interesting we're in a way coming at movement from let's say similar directions different angles. So, I'm learning a habit one way of unlearning habit is discovering a new thing that you didn't have in your vocabulary. And another way is sort of forgetting something that you've been doing so either one of those can really open up so what's the experience you want to share this more Alexander ask. So same thing we're going to stand up and we're going to move up on the tip of our toes.
Hold on I'm still arranging standing up. Okay. I'm going to do what we do it and I'm going to watch you what we do it. Okay.
And what I want you to notice is my shoulders. Okay. Am I doing something with my shoulders. Well, that's an interesting question because I would say simultaneously that you're not doing something but something is happening.
So what it looked like is as you were coming up your shoulders were coming back and down a little bit. Now something angle because I'm you know for the cameras now pointing up your nose. But that's what it looked like for my end. And part of that is what you're doing is moving from something that's very stable and easy.
So standing on the ground to up on your tips your toes a little bit more challenging. As soon as you do something a little bit more challenging whatever that a little bit more is compared to baseline. You're going to engage kind of the habits that you use for doing challenging things. And so my habit for doing challenging things at the moment is like for 10 years I haven't believed in pull your shoulders back because it's a really bullshit cue.
But still I have this pull your shoulders back habit in my body and as soon as I do something difficult I'm going to be either like raising my shoulders like this or putting my shoulders back like this in an effort to be nice upright posture. And that's how you do bounce right. And so what I suggest is what the techniques suggest is that you notice that you're doing those things and you just say no to them. So the first part is the noticing which I imagine probably needs another set of eyes because we're so used to it.
That's really helpful. That's why I think one of the couple of reasons why I'm technically is often taught one on one with another teacher is that teacher has the eyes to notice the things that you don't notice anymore and conversely can reassure you like if you're standing upright I'm just going diagonally and pulling my shoulders back and pushing my chest I think this is standing upright and this feels normal to me. So if we go into a new organization of upright which is maybe more like this, I'm not necessarily less upright to an outside observer but to my inside observer it feels like I'm kind of leaning forwards. You need someone to reassure you.
Yeah I know right now it feels really new. This is a new experience. Congratulations you've had a new experience for yourself. That's what this is all about.
And so someone kind of helped you not freak out because then of course the next thing you do when you freak out is go back to where you were before. Well I find it fascinating how our identity is so tightly wrapped up with certain movement patterns unconsciously and unconsciously it's the conscious version is how someone's 50 yards away they take two steps and we recognize them. I mean assuming we know who they are and it's just they're so common and again we don't experience them we don't feel it because we just habituate to things that are familiar. So that's super interesting.
So then when you change them following that idea you suddenly have this identity threat. It's as if you're a Democrat and you say hey you should vote Republican or Republican you say hey you should vote Democrat. The idea that maybe that party is better language values is really really scary if part of your self identity is that you vote for this political party. And it's not just because it's everything that you might strongly believe about the world and how you move tends to be something you strongly believe.
I wonder how much of it is related to some kind of familial tribal thing like how we often move the way our parents do at least one of our parents does and so I have a suspicion I don't know that I haven't read anything about this be curious if anyone's written about it. If anyone knows let me know that we adopt movement patterns to fit in. And so there's a threat if we don't fit in because there's a time where you don't fit in you know you get eaten and that's problematic. So some of this is so deeply ingrained into your point about the relationship between the movement pattern and even something as silly sounding as whether you vote Democrat or Republican.
Our beliefs are also so tightly held to who we think we are that when you challenge someone's belief they act often like you're trying to kill them or their family or both. So all these what so intriguing to me about all these what we talked about Franklin method Alexander technique beliefs all of this and identity it's just how these are all like this giant Venn diagram and in the center of the diagram is this thing called you that is very malleable really, but we're not. It's evolutionarily not advantageous to be malleable because that takes effort that takes thinking that takes rewiring your brain, which could make it so that the saber tooth bunny can catch you before you catch it. And that's part of what I find so fun about this whole exploration about natural movement because it's not just about running barefoot or whatever it's this whole body, mind, self phenomenon that plays into it.
My God look here's the self version. There are a lot of people who love the idea of walking around barefoot but they would never do it in public because of who people would think they are. And I remember though my version is I'm walking to the office one day, summer day I've got a pair of cargo shorts on a bear feet my hair was even bigger than it is today. I'm wearing a ratty zero she's t-shirt unlike the nice ones I'm wearing today and I catch myself in the reflection of the window of our office and I stopped at my track someone.
Oh, I'm that guy. And I'm okay being that guy but I just never thought about being that guy and people see me as that guy so which is fine I don't really care I don't know who these people are I'll never see them again. But anyway, that's what we're what we've been talking about through this whole thing over the last you know 50 minutes or so which I find fun I need to bring this into for a landing is there anything that we missed that you want to share to give people some idea or inspiration about how to explore these things. So I asked me 10 minutes ago was what was what did we more or different one of the ideas the fundamental ideas of Alexander described was what he calls psychophysical unity.
And there's very many ways you could work through that my way of working through it is to say that although we can think of ourselves as a mind and a body that way of compartmentalizing ourselves into two parts generally is not a useful one. Boy that is we have lived as a Cartesian society for a long time and that's for that's essentially everyone to say it that way so a Descartes I think they're for you and that was sort of the beginning of the whole idea of the separation of mind and body as a concept. And then it grew from there for right expanded on that and it has stayed pretty much part of our cultural identity if you will especially the West mind and body are two separate things. The idea of somehow bridging that gap or not having that belief or seeing ourselves without that concept is literally inconceivable.
And that's what I think teachers bring as I understand is a kind of new experience of being ourselves and so that new experience where often one of the things people say is instead of consciously breathing imagine you're being breathed. And I've had a couple of examples where I feel like I'm being thought that's not a comfortable thing like I would like to control my thoughts that my thoughts I want to be in charge of them. I haven't had that feeling of being in charge of my thoughts for a very long time. And in fact the phenomenon of trying to remember something and not being able to and that pops into your mind sometime later.
Most people find that either they're non plus by it or somewhat comforting it's like oh my subconscious is working on it. I find it very very uncomfortable because what the hell was going on that I mean that quote I had nothing to do with and there it is it sort of just lands in my mind. In fact I mean way back when that phenomenon would have been described as the gods speaking to you which seems just as logical or just as a viable way of describing that experience as quote subcom. One is all internal the other is seemingly external but what the hell I mean how do I know I mean I don't believe it's an external thing I don't believe the gods are planning ideas in my head.
But we all have times where it felt like that something that shows up in your mind fully formed and it's like what the where did that come from. And that's an amazing thing or my favorite version of that that everyone can do right now is imagine talking to someone and as soon as we do this you can do it and take it something you've always wanted to say to somebody and just start saying it like out loud. And you'll notice that you don't know where the sentence is going to end when you start it but it gets there and you're not making it get there something lets it get there which if you extrapolate from that you know means that we have no free will but that's a whole other kind of thing. So that's a really beautiful idea though of using Alexander technique and I can imagine Franklin as well because of what it can bring to the expansion of the vocabulary where you can't get this very different sense of who and how you are where you are.
And more of a verb than a noun. Although maybe one of the. I don't know how to play on word quips that I often don't like but one of them is we are human beings not human doing. Yeah that's got a little pat that's kind of hallmark card.
I mean I get it and I'm all for it but I don't think it's a little bit just a little blib because I can make the argument that it's the other way around that we're just human doing words verbs. We're breathed we're thought we're moved we're you know any of those which is actually and more I would argue that would argue I would say for fun of it that we're all those things sometimes we're being sometimes we're moving sometimes we're doing sometimes we're I don't like it when people usify the idea of what we all these just a thing to push I think people who are doing too much and then when you're like always doing always doing and then suddenly there's always everything in and saying let it be done and so instead of do the breathing like the breathing be done. Breathing is an easy one though because 99.9% of the time it's just done and we're completely unaware of it we're not doing anything about it and to use that metaphor for the rest of our life I think it's a little that can be problematic you know we've been building a business we're doing a lot. I'm going to be in it a lot that's you know there's things that have to get done I can see behind the screen we're having this conversation I got 50 emails that I'm going okay.
I got to deal with those and I can't just now granted if I pay attention the way I'm responding to them is more letting it happen or it's happening despite or parallel to me doing it so it's it's it's complicated. Something for you to try when when answering those emails yeah I find my data computer I often have emails to have to deal with and I do this. I'm not touching forward that kind of you know collapsing into that that focusing in intensity and so it's it's psychophysical exam I say it's both a mental act and a physical act that the coordinate together and what if you just said no to the physical act of it. Okay I'm going to answer those emails with just as much intensity and fight and doing but I'm not I'm just going to let my head go upwards.
I'm going to let my shoulders just sit quietly and that takes away none of my power of doing an agency in the world but it just means I don't have to hurt myself while I'm doing the doing. I think that's a great one to sort of leave people with that experiment that idea because we all spend a lot of time staring at our screens and leaning over and doing whatever and and it can and I can imagine in fact I literally did imagine that it could almost feel threatening to the to think about doing it without that physical effort and this is coming back to where we started. What's it like to do all these things without the striding without the effort without all the hard work and because of just how that raps and with our identity it can that could be threatening and so look for one email just give yourself you know one maybe two just experiment you don't need to live this way just try and see what happens. I'm not telling you should be different that you need to go away it's just a way of it's just for fun just to see what you discover that would be my recommendation.
I always say as a dance teacher I'm here to make people become more themselves and so I'm not trying to make them someone else someone they're not nice that's what's really great about both our exam technique and frankly method. They're both invitations to become more of yourself instead of invitations to completely change who you are because you are not good enough. That's a whole other time we can take it. When someone says I'm trying to be more myself I'm going guess what that's you you just don't like it so you'd rather be something else.
Yeah, well that's the thing is let's get to at least not arguing with it or not thinking that it's proof of some problem or demonstration that there's something wrong or missing or lacking almost everything I've ever found where people wish they were somehow different is actually a function of being a living human being. All human beings have that same urge that same thought that same whatever so clearly it's a feature not a bug and if you start there then you're not a problem you're not a self improvement project you're not a problem. You're not a problem fixed you're an exploration. Yeah, and that's also when you're working with someone you don't want to work with someone who thinks that they're your coach to a self improvement project.
That's not. No, no, no, there's nothing less fun than than someone well you know look here's the way you make a book what a money you convince people that you are in fact someone who can see them as a self improvement project and you promise them that they'll get to the end of the project and they'll have a whole new self improved home in their mind and body and that's how you make a lot of money because we we're continually looking for things that are potentially wrong to fix because that's how we evolved. It's just that's not the only way to live anyway we don't want to talk around for ages. Great.
First I just want to thank you. It's been a real pleasure and and while you know many times there are people who I talk to who are teaching something or whatever and they say here's my website to find out what more about what I'm doing. You're talking about some other things but I can imagine some people would want to explore with you and talk more about your journey and what you found. So if people want to get in contact with you share that but also anything any specific links you have or websites in your mind for people to find out more about Alex and her technique or Franklin method and again we'll put those in the show notes but in other words, how can you close this out with the people getting in touch with you and getting up more about what you've been talking about.
Cool. I have a blog with some explorations of how I explored some of the Franklin method books so that's Greg.github.io. Oh wait hold on so you got a slow mo and spell it for humans. Yeah so Greg is my name G-R-E-G-D-Y-K-E and dot github G-I-T-H-U-V dot I-O.
Really? And I also have a podcast which is called Walk to Work because I used to do it when in the before times when we actually used to have to travel to work and I really enjoyed walking to do it and that you can find I think just by searching Walk to work in your podcast thing and you'll find some information about Franklin method. I don't know the technique and that will kind of guide you through to Google those things find a practitioner in your area. Try to know those practitioners because some of them we didn't get into that but some people you just don't drive with because they don't explain things in ways that make sense to you so you find someone else who does.
Yeah that's a big one. There are very few people who have the skills to meet everyone that they encounter where they are and so find the one who works for you. That's a good one. Well so Greg, again, total treat.
Thank you so much and everyone else. Thank you for joining us and again just a reminder head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find out more previous episodes, place to engage with us, how to share and like and leave comments. If you have any suggestions people that you want to have on the podcast or you think I should chat with people who might talk to me who think I have my head completely on my butt. I'm okay.
If someone says I have cranial reorientation syndrome, not a big deal, but then you can drop me an email. Move at JoinTheMovementMovement.com. But of course most importantly go out, have fun and live life feet first.