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#34 Aaron Alexander | The Align Method
7 Plays2 years ago
Nose breathing only while working out and sleeping, taping your mouth, sitting on the floor: these are some of the concepts we get into and much more, in this the episode that challenged my way of viewing my health. I highly recommend you check out Aaron’s new updated extended version release of his book: The Align Method. I pride myself on my health, but he just expanded my view of it. I don’t say this lightly, there are some super sharp recommendations in this book. This is equally as true with his podcast: Align Podcast.
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AARON ALEXANDER:
⚡️ Book: https://www.alignpodcast.com/alignbook
⚡️ Podcast: https://www.alignpodcast.com/episodes
⚡️ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alignpodcast/
⚡️ Website: https://www.alignpodcast.com/
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SEBASTIAN ENGSTROM
Recommended
Transcript
Mouth Taping for Better Sleep
00:00:00
Speaker
My bedroom, I try to keep it dark. I tape my mouth at night. You do? No way. Yeah, of course. Of course. That's a big deal. Yeah. I mean, ideally, I would grow up in a way that I wouldn't breathe through my mouth while I sleep. But if you wake up in the morning, your mouth is dry. It would behoove you to do something about that. I raise the back of my bed up four or five inches. So my bed's actually tilted at like 15 or 20 degree
Introducing the Safina Podcast with Aaron Alexander
00:00:28
Speaker
angle.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to another show of the Safina podcast. I am your host, Sebastian Ingstrom. And today, Aaron Alexander joins me. He is the host of the Align podcast. He is the author of the just released extended revamped version of the Align Method.
Biohacking, High Performance, and Unexpected Insights
00:00:46
Speaker
So, we talk about biohacking, we talk about high performance, we talk about sleep, sitting, all kinds of stuff that you didn't expect normally from a health podcast. This is what he's all about. This is what the book is about. And that's why I am stoked to share this with you because I normally, when I see a health book, I'm like, ah, heard it, seen it, read about it. But he brings aspects that I did not expect out there in this world. Like the breathing is a big part. Like I started implementing no breathing, not working out. Maybe I'll take my mouth. We'll see if I do that when sleeping.
00:01:16
Speaker
So enjoy this podcast. If you like it, please do the good deed favor of the day. Five stars. That means the world helps us spread the message to more people. It takes five seconds. Hit a review. Even if you're on, let's say Spotify, Google, another platform, hit subscribe. Like, I mean, it means the world cause this helps us spread the message helps keep the podcast alive. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy this episode with Aaron Alexander.
00:01:46
Speaker
Aaron, amazing to have you here just to finish your book. And it couldn't be more suiting that you're sitting on your floor. You have some interesting things in your background. And that's, I mean, let's just start off with sitting on the floor.
Health Benefits of Sitting on the Ground
00:02:02
Speaker
Like how often do you do that? And how was it acclimating to it?
00:02:08
Speaker
Well, spending time on the ground is such a common thing. It's almost strange that it is a novel conversation. It's like drinking clean water.
00:02:23
Speaker
You're like, how long have you been drinking water without a bunch of pollutants in it? Like, tell me about that. Like, well, I've been trying to do it, you know, since I was a baby, you know, I was indoctrinated into a world with parents that have healthy hips and healthy needs and healthy ankles and healthy pelvic floor muscles and are just well circulated.
00:02:47
Speaker
You know, humans are like bags upon bags upon bags of hopefully well circulated water and diseases. Product of adhesion and dehydration and, um, you know, agglomeration and sticking binding of ourselves. Once we get sticky, our connective tissues start to stick upon themselves. Um, that can create a backup and create a dam. And when we have dammed up fluids in the body that can lead to, uh,
00:03:15
Speaker
you know, disease. And the process of getting up and down off of the ground is a really simple, like borderline effortless way to become a more well circulated human being.
00:03:30
Speaker
you know, and just naturally throughout the day, you're opening up range of motion through the toe hinge and the ankle joint and the knees and the hips and all the major joints in the body. And that's, you know, any culture that you go to that is, has not been like infected, I think you could say, or maybe just affected by a more institutionalized lifestyle, not to say that
00:03:59
Speaker
that it's a bad thing to grow up in a place where you're taught to sit in place, typically not getting education around mechanics and how to effectively sit in a way that does align and balance your spine and your central nervous system, that's your spine, your spinal cord. And you're kind of just slouching over and then you're shortening your vision to stare into a screen or maybe you're in
00:04:26
Speaker
side of a building where the next wall is maybe 10 to 15 feet away. So now you're shortening those muscles and
Nasal Breathing: Health Benefits and Practices
00:04:34
Speaker
around your eyes, ciliary muscles. So that body, it literally starts to contract at a physical, visual
00:04:47
Speaker
level. And then the correlates of that, of the way that that person feels, you know, they start to feel maybe like a little bit bound up, they don't necessarily know exactly why. Before that happens, you are going to be getting up and down off the ground regularly, you'd be reaching up over your head regularly, you're gonna be walking, you know, it's just gonna be like a part of your daily life. You ideally be breathing through your nose, you know, doing all these things that we outlined in the alignment method,
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, look, that's just the being down on the ground. That's just a natural part of being human being. If you go to cultures in Northern Africa or Eastern Mediterranean or Southeast Asia, these places have significantly less instance of osteoarthritis in the hips and the knees, less pelvic floor issues. And they just kept doing that. And they like they kept drinking water without pollutants in it, essentially.
00:05:45
Speaker
And it's not a weird, novel, impressive thing. It's just like, oh yeah, that's just what we do.
00:05:53
Speaker
I started getting back into that, like making that be like a regular part of my life, probably around like age, I don't know, 22 or something like that, moved to Hawaii when I was 18 and got into jujitsu, you know, and
Breathing Techniques and Personal Experiences
00:06:12
Speaker
like yoga, surfing, you know, so all that stuff, you're up and down off the ground all day.
00:06:18
Speaker
You know, so that's the simple practices like that, you know, that just naturally, organically, they're going to, you're going to be getting up on the ground, you know, if you're a dancer, you know, any of those things. And then your body typically is quite supple and works pretty well.
00:06:35
Speaker
Um, and then it's like, okay, how do we start to integrate that into maybe, you know, the way that I eat, you know, or the way that I work on the computer or the way that I, you know, just hang out at the house. It's really, I mean, it's so simple. I feel, I feel almost like asinine talking about it, but then along, then along, then along with that, it's like the fall risk is the number one leading cause of elderly needing assisted living. You know, so that's like,
00:07:01
Speaker
billions of dollars invested in healthcare for elderly over time. And just the sovereignty of feeling like, oh yeah, I feel sovereign in my body. I don't feel like I'm dependent on having a red button or having a phone nearby so I can call somebody because my body, there's certain ranges of motion that it just fails. I don't have access to anymore.
00:07:24
Speaker
in public Florida's function and just all of the itis that develops in our joints from a lack of full functional range of motion, that simple movement patterns such as effectively getting up and down off the ground. So there's a conversation about how do you do that effectively. It literally just stops it. It's just done. So it's like this seemingly asinine thing to be talking about has massive implications if you allow it to play out.
Standing Desks and Changing Positions for Health
00:07:52
Speaker
Most things that matter, I think, are that way. It's almost like, really? We're talking about breathing? You know, are we talking about spending time getting up and down off the ground regularly? Are we talking about walking? Like, really? Isn't there some complex acronyms or something we could be talking about or some supplement that we could inject into our ass? It's like, no, no, just get up and down off the ground, get sunlight, drink free. Somebody needs some water, have these relationships, have some level of purpose in your life. You know, walk.
00:08:21
Speaker
It's crazy. Tying that back into office culture, which is where I really started standing every single day. I'm at a standing desk right now. I'm about to implement more of the sitting. You've seen a boom with that with more modern workplaces.
00:08:43
Speaker
maybe it's coming in that you might be sitting on the ground more so what what's your how do you how do you do that personally do you stand at all and how do you implement that i personally find a surge of energy and clarity and focus and i find myself relaxing more and wanting to switch positions and having a harder time focusing but it could be i'm not used to being on the ground
00:09:04
Speaker
Oh, I don't, I mean, I just feel incredibly uncomfortable hunching over like an asshole in a chair all day. Right. Yeah. I just feel, I just feel like a, like a physical slob. Like I feel like my body is just like, right. So it's fine. Yeah. The standing part. Yeah.
00:09:23
Speaker
like a standing desk. Exactly. Yes. Oh, they're fine. And sitting on a chair is not bad. There's nothing wrong with sitting on a chair. A chair is great. A chair is a tool. It's how do you effectively be on that chair and how do you effectively create oscillations or getting outside of just the rut of being in the same position over and over again. So you can effectively be on a chair. If you're going to be on a chair for a while, it'll be important to
00:09:50
Speaker
Maybe get some compression socks could be a helpful thing. It'd be important to go through different ranges of motion while you're on the chair. Maybe let go of using a back rest all the time. Make sure your hips are up above the height of your knees. Position that chair or whatever your work environment is near a window so you can relax and open up the visual muscles. Go in and out between panoramic vision and myopic closed in focused vision on the screen.
00:10:19
Speaker
standing desks, you know, so there's no villains.
00:10:22
Speaker
No villains, you know, it's just, what do you want? Like that's the thing is first defining, okay, what is it that you want from yourself and your body? And, you know, how do you want to feel when you're 50, 70, 90, a hundred, whatever. And, and now tomorrow morning, you know, and then from there, reverse engineering, that felt sensation that you would, that you choose. Now we start to reverse engineer. Okay. What are the decisions that we make on a momentary basis to cultivate that?
00:10:51
Speaker
So sitting is fine. Just define what you want. Now we can go from there, but standing desks.
00:10:58
Speaker
They're fine too. Standing's another weird position to be in for a really long time. So if you stand for an excessive amount of time, it's the same conversation. Blood's going to be pulling up in your lower limbs. So you're going to start to develop that just this fluid buildup limb. It's like ankles and all that. Standing in place.
00:11:21
Speaker
is stressful on the body. And also, if you have any type of impingement in your lower back, you're probably going to be seeing excessive extension for a long time. So standing, the way to do that would be get yourself a little stool beside. So you're kind of essentially mimicking, like I'm on a little standing hike.
00:11:39
Speaker
You know, so I raise my foot up, relax for a second, decompress the spine, you know, allow, allow a little bit of like, I'm just a little moment for decompression and then alternate sides, you know, going through that range of motion throughout the day. You put some stuff on the ground, you know, like as we're doing this, I have like balls and random random stuff around here. So I'll be kind of self soothing, you know, and doing a little myofascial release and
00:12:03
Speaker
rolling out my joints, my connective tissue. You want to keep the pool flowing. Remember, so here are these bags and bags and bags of water. And so each muscle, we define them as being these terms, bicep brachialis or vastus lateralis or whatever.
00:12:21
Speaker
Everybody has no idea what you're talking about. Your body's one interconnected unit. It's an integrated form. And each of those spaces that we call muscle bellies, they're bound by muscular septa. And then within that, there's a whole bunch of sliding surfaces that allow your body to move fluidly through space. And when you start to get gunked up in one specific
00:12:49
Speaker
position, especially if it's going to be like a, a position that wouldn't bear load. Well, you know, you call it like a dysfunctional position. Um, and you're practicing and rehearsing that position over and over and over again for hours.
00:13:02
Speaker
hours and months and years and decades. Like what would you expect to happen other than having some type of one on your nervous system is going to begin to not trust you so much because it doesn't want to blow out some joint. You know, so it'll start to shut down your potential access to power because throughout the day you can kind of have like a crimp in, you know, your, your, your main central channel, your spinal cord.
00:13:29
Speaker
know, so standing desk within that, that's just making sure that you're maintaining movement as you're, as you're in that position, same concepts, make sure your eyes are able to relax. Um, and understanding like the art of standing, you know, Tadasana is a fancy term for it means mountain pose and yoga. And I mean, you could write a book about Tadasana position, you know, so standing isn't just, it's not just like, uh,
00:13:54
Speaker
Standing isn't just standing. The same way walking isn't just walking or sitting isn't just sitting. There's art and science in the way that you do those things as well. But I would take, I'm just rambling on, I apologize, but I would take standing over sitting on a chair and then I would take sitting on the ground with a floor cushion and make it comfortable and nice and all that stuff over both of them by far. There's really no contest.
00:14:21
Speaker
So why are we going into this? Because we spend so much time working, literally. So that's why I wanted to start off with that. It might be a bit boring. It's like, wait, wait, what the hell are we doing? Talking about this topic going right off the bat, that stood out to me almost the most, because I feel versed in many of the other topics biohacking wise, but sitting and also the breathing part.
00:14:44
Speaker
one that really stood out the nasal breathing and especially and why I'm talking about these is like you said in the beginning if you implement these to it just a gradual level you start seeing significant changes in your life and it doesn't take that much to feel well and all the sudden you don't need whatever your pills or your your phone that much whatever there are gradual things that you can start building up when you become present of what you're doing and how you're doing them and
00:15:12
Speaker
And one of the big things for me, being very stressed and priding myself on being a high performer is constantly going into shallow breathing. Breathing up in my chest, not breathing with my nose and that leading to all kinds of symptoms, anxiousness, even IBS to a degree and all these other things. I'm like, how do I make this better?
00:15:35
Speaker
So my, what I found was Wim Hof breathing like five years ago. And I did that religiously every workday for five years in a row and eventually it started getting me into a fight or flight response. It was incredible at first. Like I saw things, there are visions, there are all these different feline animals connecting with that.
00:15:55
Speaker
It's been more of a spiritual animal to me since then. It's really connecting to that silent, masculine part that is powerful and can be aggressive, but I've been very kind, you can say, and people-pleasing, but very connecting to that strong, forceful feline energy. So in that way, it was very powerful, but it led me into a fight-or-flight response eventually. And then I got into different types of breathing.
Exploring Nasal Breathing with Patrick McKeown
00:16:20
Speaker
Meditation has been a path the entire way. What you're talking about
00:16:25
Speaker
It's not just something I can connect with. I do breathing, what we did here in the beginning, breathe in and out 10 times, say I love myself and I forgive myself almost every hour or an hour during the work day. But this, this is a game changer for me, the nasal breathing. And when you saying that, especially when you reference the Australian rugby team taping their mouths, I'm like, okay, this is hardcore shit. Do you mind going into a little bit more of that? I just listened to your podcast too with, uh, uh, Oh, what's his name again?
00:16:55
Speaker
Patrick McKeown. Yes. Yes, indeed. Fricking brilliant guy. How would you summarize your thoughts on breathing?
00:17:05
Speaker
Well, so first, I mean, there's a bunch of things there. One, I think the three main channels of points, one, breathing being outside of just the way that you, the obvious way that you're breathing, you know, through your nose or through your mouth and, you know, diaphragmatically, you know, engaging diaphragm to pull the lungs open to, you know, pull air into, into your lungs and then, you know, circulating through your body.
00:17:33
Speaker
That, that part is like the kind of the obvious.
00:17:38
Speaker
idea of breathing, but then thinking of cellular respiration. And so allowing your whole entire body to breathe through allowing it to move. And allowing it to start to open up some of those, like retirement, that he's dehydrated, bound up spaces. Your cells need to respirate, need to breathe, need to circulate.
00:18:07
Speaker
outside of just your lungs being filled up with air. So I think broadening the conversation of what is breath to not just inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, mouth or nose, lungs and making that kind of be the operation. I'm really thinking like
00:18:26
Speaker
as you're taking a walk you know you're allowing yourselves to respirate as you're if you are standing and you're bringing one foot up another foot up and your foot up and you know or if you're sitting in a chair and kind of twisting yourself out and you're going to reach the back of the chair.
00:18:41
Speaker
one of those guys, you know, all of those positions are supportive for allowing you to respirator at a, you know, a cellular level. And then the other thing that would, in relation to what you're saying, and then we'll get into just like the breathing, the obvious breathing part, but what you're saying is that the concept or story or identity of being a high performer,
00:19:07
Speaker
I think that that in and of itself there can be a lot of contraction.
00:19:15
Speaker
in there, you know, and so if a person is kind of bound up in a story of contraction, you know, or approval. So that's like a really common thing and it's become popularized, you know, to like, Oh, I want to be like, I think I've probably been on podcasts called like the high performer podcast or, you know, whatever things of that sort. And just even that idea, it's like the concept of performing, like if that's like what a person identifies with that in and of itself goes
00:19:46
Speaker
it almost creates a separation with yourself. You know, so as opposed to just like a beer, you know, I just, I just, I've found a way to effort almost, it seems effortless in the way that I, you know, the story of I bees and one quantitatively, you can look at that and you say, wow,
00:20:11
Speaker
man, they won the gold medal or wow, they, you know, they did the 10 80 flip and the half pipe or wow. But in that, in that timeframe of person actually executing whatever things that would be deemed to be performance, the only way to arrive at that, that place of what would be seen almost like maybe flow state or almost seem like, wow, it's like a miracle that that person could perform in that way is to let go of the concept of performance.
00:20:41
Speaker
So it's kind of an interesting thing to have that be like our mantra or model or identity structure for ourselves. Like I'm a performer because there's always going to be, within that it's almost like the performance is some level of mask or maybe it could be perhaps like a lack of acceptance of self, like a deeper self.
00:21:05
Speaker
What if I'm a loser? As long as I'm attached to the concept of being a winner, then I'm in a highly vulnerable state. If you're attached to something happening to you that feels good, you're like, oh, wow. You get your validation points. You get your little neurochemical hits or whatever it may be. You temporarily feel good. As long as you're in that place, then
00:21:33
Speaker
inevitably the other side of that is going to come. You know, so I think that that's, that's an interesting construct in and of itself, just to be in a place of like, Oh, I'm a high performer. So I want it for you. Like, where do you, where do you feel like you've got the identity of, of being a high performer? Yeah, it elevated me to.
00:21:55
Speaker
Okay, so I got a refresh when I moved to the United States, and I now find myself, okay, this is a blank slate, I can start from scratch, and what do I get attention from? Where do I get this endorphin hits for me doing something that people show like, oh, whoa, what is that guy doing?
00:22:16
Speaker
So it was really the attention, which is a synonym for love. And I thought that, yeah, me being in a state, I felt more purpose. Like I felt like I was doing something with my life. I didn't feel before I'm like, kind of being an ambitious teenager. And all of a sudden I got this hit of, I'm verified for being someone or something and making a difference. And then I took it to the extreme.
00:22:42
Speaker
And I'm curious, too, this will lead into a question back. You hear this with, for example, Beyonce, she had an alter ego. I can't remember what she called herself. But now she merged that like she was Sasha, whatever she called herself on stage, this wild, fierce Amazon woman who is just out there super confident. And then she was more laid back, calm, thoughtful,
00:23:07
Speaker
off the stage and now she merged him she said and I heard several years back there was one guy specifically focused on it is essential to have these alter egos that you create that you create these masks so I'm gonna put a little bit of devil's advocate here and that you step into these these roles because they will elevate some part of you that you would not be able to access um in another way
00:23:32
Speaker
You can merge them. So they're tools. But anytime you say something like, I am a high performer, if that's ultimately what you entirely identify with, then that in and of itself, there's going to be a deeply held contraction and a waiting for approval. Because who exactly are you performing for? So if that's, yeah, I mean, that'd be very common.
00:24:01
Speaker
And so that's the thing. And then that comes into the breathing conversation. If there is a deeply held resistance or contraction or seeking of approval, baited breath waiting for someone to say that you're a good boy in whatever way that they say that, then that will be a deeply, perhaps subconscious, perhaps conscious, there's certainly levels of subconscious,
00:24:26
Speaker
even in the most like conscious fucking woke person, like they're there, the more conscious and woke they are, probably the deeper layers of.
00:24:35
Speaker
twists and turns and impingements and contractions and maybe self-denial, they're typically are going to be, because to really be in a place of like effortless action, you know, ooh way or whatever, you're not going to identify as being a really swell guy. You're not going to identify as being a really amazing performer. You know, it's, you're going to, you're going to just allow the performance to naturally
00:25:01
Speaker
manifest itself. And then when people applaud, you say, Oh, cool. Like, how lovely, you know, like, I received this, this is great. But I received this through you. This isn't about me. It's not 1000 people saying, Oh, we accept you. We love you. Oh, God, I'm accepted. I love. It's like, Oh, like, I accept you. I love you.
00:25:24
Speaker
And so if you can be in that kind of more circular place and not holding on to any of the baggage of people's applause or verification or validations or anything like that, that's like,
00:25:39
Speaker
really being in a, you know, like a truer expression of self. But if you are, so if you're identifying with one specific category, like I am a high performer, because that's, it feels good, you know, you're trying that on ultimately is all you're doing, you know, maybe you try that on for a month, a year, you know, maybe 10 years, maybe until you die, but you're trying that on.
00:26:04
Speaker
you know, and then behind that, it's like, okay, cool. I can put that down and say, Oh, I'm also a, you know, I'm a father, you know, or I'm a, I'm a crazy person, you know, I'm a, I'm a, you know, I'm, I'm a lunatic. I'm a loser. You know, I'm, you know, I'm all of the, I'm, I'm, I'm all of the things that I'm compassionate and caring. I'm a winner. Like I'm, I'm all of it.
00:26:29
Speaker
like, oh, I'm going to try that one on. And then you can flip through those and each of those becomes a little bit less sticky because you can acknowledge them for being like, like you mentioned, like the masks that they are. And then within that journey,
00:26:44
Speaker
that trickles back into the way that a person comes into like acceptance of self because now I accept all the different layers. I don't just accept one specific player and then that allows your autonomic nervous system and your respiratory system, cardiovascular system to be able to relax as it's in a place of acceptance of itself and acceptance of the world and acceptance of that terrible thing that happened.
00:27:11
Speaker
You know, because ultimately you're not bound to one specific story of how life is supposed to be or who you're supposed to be, which whoever the fuck made that story, who knows? Uh, but you're, you know, you're, you're open to the whole thing. And then it's like, Oh, okay. We're starting to breathe. So where are you at in your journey right now yourself? And what are the layers that are presenting themselves in your life? Well,
00:27:42
Speaker
I think it depends, you know, it depends who I'm with. When I'm in, if I'm in a space where people are very like spiritual, you know, kind of vibe, there's a lot of that in Austin, Texas, a lot of that in LA where I came from before that, you know, or my tendency is to kind of go into like devil's advocate direction. So when someone's, when someone's,
00:28:10
Speaker
really very much one thing. You know, like you started this conversation kind of getting into like self forgiveness and getting into, you know, self love and all of these things. When I hear a lot of that, I'm kind of like, well,
00:28:25
Speaker
also fuck all that, you know, and just like, because you can, you can keep digging into your own layers of trauma until the, like the proverbial cows come home. Like it never stops. You just keep digging and digging and digging and digging and digging and digging and digging, you know, and then, and if someone's, if I'm around someone, so then that part of me will come out.
00:28:52
Speaker
I'll be like, oh, let's just party. Like I don't even drink, but like, let's drink. Let's get drunk. If I could, we should get in a fist fight. Like we should, we should go that direction. No, it's too soft. You know, how do they react when, when you take their approach? I think it's typically good. Yeah. I think, I think naturally people want to be in a balanced place and typically when someone is very much in that, that like can feel kind of like,
00:29:23
Speaker
sometimes there can be a little bit of like a victim hoodness in that in the spaces where people are like really going into doing the work and you know my trauma and this and that and kind of like you know and then there can be kind of like a
00:29:38
Speaker
like a front of vulnerability, you know, because vulnerability is like, I've learned that the world applauds me when I appear to be vulnerable. And so then I'm leading with the story of what I deem to be vulnerability, when even still it's still a coat.
00:29:57
Speaker
You know, and so I think that people when they're in those, those places, and then there's the other side too. There's being big muscle, ego, machismo guy, there's all there's big money, Rolex guy, but there's all those things. But I think when we get outside of that, it's like, Oh, both of those are stories. The idea that I'm a mother, the idea that I'm a victim or the idea that I'm a winner, you know, that I'm the elite, I'm the, you know, 0.01% of the 1%.
00:30:24
Speaker
know, like all of these different ideas are just, they're just stories. And I think people like to have those stories kind of pulled away. Like it feels almost good in a way like, Oh,
00:30:38
Speaker
It's no one person's role or responsibility, and sometimes it can be downright rude, and it might be your own projection of your own bullshit. The other person could just be in their moment, and there's no inauthenticity in it at all.
00:30:56
Speaker
and you're projecting your own shit into that, and you're actually the one that's at fault. But when there is any level of kind of like game, I think people kind of, it feels, it can feel scary and uncomfortable, but also kind of good for the game to be transitioned, especially when a person is, I think, in like the, oh, you know, woe is me type place.
00:31:23
Speaker
and kind of getting into a, uh, uh, you know, switching gears into, you know, yes. And, you know, like let's party, you know, we can go that direction too. So when you take this a step further than, so beyond being the devil's advocate, who else is Aaron outside of that? Well,
00:31:56
Speaker
where Aaron is in the, in the, like the, I think, you know, I think I'm getting to know myself, you know, like I, I, I feel like moments of,
00:32:18
Speaker
feel like moments and, you know, say using meditation or maybe certain like breathwork things, or maybe just like, you know, general moments of
00:32:28
Speaker
bliss of sorts, you know, or psychedelic times or things of the sort. Um, you know, where there's like another gear, you know, feeling like, uh, just very safe, you know, and like a sensation like being connected to everything. And you know, that, that feels very true. Like it feels very like, ah, like that's like, that feels very like deeply true beyond words. And then, you know, there's the coming back into like the,
00:32:57
Speaker
the dualistic part, you know, and the identity and like the story and personality and hopes and desires and fears and, you know, all of that. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm just in process of finding deeper peace in that, in that gear, you know, and, and, you know, dropping, not dropping. I don't like the concept of dropping really, but creating more
00:33:29
Speaker
balance, accepting relationship with, you know, something like the sensations of contraction, you know, that I've, I've picked up along the way. Yeah. So I'm, I mean, Aaron is in process like this. So
00:33:50
Speaker
how do you and you can say this word is overused at times but integrate that when you have these deep experiences and you're still you're referencing to having a balance being and making things happen in this world how do you merge the two and how do you how do you I mean you're doing things in this world you're talking to significant people you release the significant book how do you merge the two into uh not just going too far into one side
00:34:17
Speaker
and have you, even if you had gone into one side too much, please speak to it. Oh, yeah, I mean, I probably go definitely too much into the separation side. For sure. I think I think it's important to look at to not judge anyone. I mean, probably, I'd say if people are listening to this for listening to you might, I don't know,
00:34:43
Speaker
you know, about what you do outside of this, but my sense that they probably have had like, unicity and quotation type experiences, I imagine, if they've arrived here. And, you know, there can become like an attachment to that, you know, and then like, the story of like, being a spiritual person, and, you know, Ram Dass has a bit where he talks about, you know, needing to, you know, you've been dropped into a human
00:35:07
Speaker
the human suit, you know, human incarnation, like take the human curriculum asshole. Like, what are you doing? Why are you trying to be so fucking spiritual? You know, and, and so I think that there's value in everything. There's value in all of it.
00:35:23
Speaker
So, that unicity part, just to kind of break it down a little bit more binary, say like unicity duality, unicity duality, I think it's like looking at perceiving that to be kind of like respiration. You know, you inhale, that activates more of that sympathetic, you know, getter done side of the nervous system, you exhale, activates more of that parasympathetic, rest, relax, you know, chill the freak out side of the nervous system.
00:35:48
Speaker
So I think that we have the healthiest mind body would be the body that oscillates freely in and out of unicity and duality and has certain anchor points throughout the day.
00:36:04
Speaker
You know, so maybe you meditate or maybe you go for a run. Maybe you go for a swim. Maybe you go for a surf. Maybe you have sex. Maybe you do some breath work, like whatever your thing is. Maybe you just chill. Maybe you just pay attention. Like maybe you wash dishes and you just notice the weight in your feet. You notice the temperature in your skin. You notice like ambient noises or sounds in your environment. And then you just have that moment of like,
00:36:32
Speaker
And that starts to make you feel maybe a little bit more rested or make you feel a little bit more creative or puts you more into that awareness of like, oh yeah, like truly everything is gonna be all right because like I can't fail. This is just a novel that's playing out. And whatever happens, it truly is perfect. Like I can absolutely identify like a hundred percent like, yeah, like this is,
00:37:00
Speaker
you know, cause I'm not ultimately maybe afraid of death because death also, it was a story. So if I'm concerned about losing this body or losing these friends or losing these, whatever, my car, you know, whatever stuff that I've accrued, I'm not worried today. I'm not attached, there's no stickiness around any of that. I could transition out of this thing and it would be, you know, there wouldn't be like a contraction around that. Having some moment where you can kind of start to dip into that space
00:37:30
Speaker
And then gather lessons that you get from that into a conversation with another person where we're truly are, you know, two separate minds kind of ping pong back and forth with each other. You know, we're integrating that into work with a book or integrating that work into whatever, whatever your work is or your life is.
00:37:47
Speaker
Um, you know, starting to reconstruct your personality with that awareness that, you know, the, the truth that you get maybe from whatever your, your spiritual and quotations practices, and then, um, you know, integrating that into your, your, your separate personality, you know, and then you get personality guy for a while and you might notice, Oh, now I feel
00:38:09
Speaker
triggered by this thing. This makes me pissed off. Now I feel really horny. Now I feel really greedy. Now I feel, you know, fuck that guy. He's an asshole. You know, Oh, you don't love me. I don't love you. You know, like whatever, you know, whatever your, your things are. And because you have the momentum for being in that spiritual practice place, you can kind of start to the same way that you're not identifying with any of the other stuff we were talking about in the spiritual realm.
00:38:38
Speaker
Um, you can say, oh, okay, interesting. Like I get this, this reaction in my stomach every time I, you know, whatever this person calls or something happens, this person cuts me off in traffic or whatever. Um, and I can say, ah, there, there's that thing.
00:38:55
Speaker
Great. Love it. Accept it. It's fantastic. See what the deeper lessons are within that, as opposed to just trying to push it off to the side. Like, don't like that. Like, cut it out, drop it. You know, say, like, oh, no, like, invite it.
00:39:12
Speaker
say, wow, why do I have this IBS right now? Why do I feel inflamed right now? Why do I have back pain every time I go to my office and I sit in that chair? Is it just the chair or is there some other kind of thing happening here? So starting to actually enjoy those moments of tension and inviting them in to see what they're actually suggesting.
00:39:40
Speaker
I think that that opens up another level of information and availability for growth, because now, as opposed to these things just being weights, these reoccurring goblins underneath your bed that you're trying to keep pushing underneath, it allows you to actually address those things. And then on the other side of that is more cycles of that. You just keep on going through cycles of that.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah. So what does a day look like? Because you're going into some deep concepts. What does a day look like for you a regular day? Because there are many practices and there are many concepts that you've spoken about. And there's so many different topics that we can't even discuss during this podcast. It's in the book. But what is what is a regular day for you look like so you can incorporate what you're speaking to? Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, try to pay attention to maintaining some level of consistency around sleep. Sleep's a big thing. My bedroom, you know, try to keep it dark. I tape my mouth at night. You do? No way. Yeah, of course. Of course. That's a big deal. Yeah. I mean, ideally, I would grow up in a
00:40:54
Speaker
in a way that I wouldn't breathe through my mouth while I sleep. But if you wake up in the morning, your mouth is dry, it would behoove you to do something about that. So taping your mouth is a really easy solution. I just get some of that, like the surgical, whatever tape you get, like a Rite Aid or CVS or something. And it's kind of like water resistant.
00:41:16
Speaker
And yeah, so tape them out while I'm sleeping. And there's, you know, a long list of reasons of why that's supportive. You could, you know, it's all in, I think chapter, I don't know what chapter eight or something like that in the Lion Method book, or your list of podcasts with Patrick McEwen or Wim Hof or well, Patrick McEwen would be better. And just trying to maintain, you know,
00:41:38
Speaker
pretty decent consistency around sleep. So try to be in bed, like going to sleep around 11 or so. And I usually get up around like seven. Um, I raised the back of my bed up. So my bed's actually tilted at like, uh, I don't know, probably like a 15 or 20 degree angle or so. So it's raised up like, like, like four or five inches. How so? Uh, just the backs. I just got a bunch of books in the back of the bed. Yeah. What's the benefit? Yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
The suggestion is it's helpful with circulation of fluid in the brain. So it's helpful with the glymphatic system. So that can be an interesting thing for some people. Try it. See how it works for you.
00:42:21
Speaker
And then the other thing is side sleeping is suggested to be supportive of that as well. Most of the research has been done with mice, so there hasn't been much research in the support of the glymphatic system with side sleeping with humans, but that's kind of an interesting thing.
00:42:38
Speaker
Um, and then getting up, I try to expose my eyes to light, like, um, like immediately upon getting up, you know, so Andrew Huberman is a great resource. He helped with the vision chapter in the limeth book. Um, you see, he'd be a great resource to give deep print all of that, but it kind of like sets your circadian rhythm and that infrared light in the morning. It's just very supportive for kind of like shooting your neurochemistry and your hope, you know, your endocrinology and everything. Uh, go for a walk, you know, like get outside, kind of like have a moment being with that.
00:43:06
Speaker
And then, um, try to get some fitness in the morning of some sort. Yeah. So do like some kind of like workout type thing. Try to postpone coffee for, you know, whatever, 45 minutes, hour or so. Uh, but love coffee, put like protein and some fat and stuff in there. So you work out early mornings. That's your preference.
00:43:25
Speaker
like early mornings, but typically around like, like after an hour of getting up or so. So I like to have the morning to kind of have like a bit of a container for, you know, other stuff, you know, whatever, whatever I feel like in that, in that morning, but typically it's like some kind of like little meditation thing, just getting outside, chilling, listening to music, kind of just like, you know, not having much interruptions. And then that transitions into exercise.
00:43:48
Speaker
And then the day is typically midday is when I have scheduling kind of like podcasts like this now or anything that would be like deemed like work in quotations is typically between the hours of like 11 to like four. And then the evening I keep that as a container as well. So I typically don't
00:44:07
Speaker
don't schedule much stuff that would be in a category of like work, unless it's like something that just is fun. So they enjoy doing after four. So the nights are open to, I go to a place I do cold, plunge and sauna. I'll do like a few rounds of that. I've been doing that for the last month.
00:44:23
Speaker
So the big thing would be like morning time as a container, midday is like work availability, and then evening time as a container, and then maintaining consistency with sleep. And yeah, those would be the main things. There's like, like maintaining like chapters throughout the day, I think is the thing that's important. And then also having, you know,
00:44:42
Speaker
those anchor points, you know, coming back to some, something that brings you back to like, you know, yourself. You know, so if you're always just buzzed up throughout the day of like errands and getting stuff done, I think it's very important to, you can have set anchor points, like bigger anchor points. We kind of take them home and do a five minute meditation or something like that. I'm just going to breathe, you know, but you could also start to ideally integrate that into the way that you inhabit yourself throughout the day.
00:45:12
Speaker
And that's really what the Align Method book is. You know, it's like a user's manual to educate people on how to integrate the concepts that you've learned from fitness or sport or breath work or mindfulness or whatever.
The Align Method Book: Fitness and Mindfulness
00:45:27
Speaker
How do you start to make that who you are as opposed to a thing that you do? And obviously I'm really namored by
00:45:34
Speaker
I don't know, like philosophy. I think it's really interesting. Like what the hell we're doing here in the first place? Like why are you moving? Why are you working out? You know, is this just like a virtue signaling game that you're doing? That's great if it is, but like let's investigate like why that is.
00:45:53
Speaker
Um, and then from there, you know, is it, is it maybe, is it available for us to find even deeper meaning or purpose and why we're going to the gym in the first place or why we're sitting on the ground, you know, mobilizing our hips and our joints or why we're eating what we're eating. You know, it's like the question of why is very interesting to me.
00:46:11
Speaker
So, uh, let's, uh, wrap it up with a few flavors of Aaron, uh, the rapid fire questions. What type of work as do you do right now? You've got very skilled at gymnastics and that's very alive for me, calisthenics, but what, what, what work as you do currently? I don't think I'm that skilled at gymnastics or calisthenics, but I'm, you know, I'm like a novice of a lot of things.
00:46:33
Speaker
Um, so I, um, you know, I think I'm kind of like a, a generalist term, which I think humans in general are generalists, you know, so we get mired. Yeah. I mean, you, if you put me in most physical scenarios, um, I'm like a B minus or a C plus or something, you know, there's not, there's not many things that there's not many things that I'm like, Oh, you know, I'm pretty good with,
00:47:03
Speaker
I have pretty decent body awareness. And so I think that that's something that I find really interesting. So just maintaining a sensation of feeling like a student and enjoying that experience. So I'm always trained with different people and I am typically
00:47:22
Speaker
really excited to just see what people are doing, you know, so if I'm training with, you know, whoever it on it, or, you know, you know, whatever it may be. I live in Austin, so I live like I train it that on it, Jim out here. You know, I'll just take on whatever people are doing, you know, and try something, you know, cool, we're doing like maces, or we're doing calisthenics, or we're doing
00:47:43
Speaker
you know, whatever the thing is. So that's something that I enjoy is being a novice. I'm boxing right now. So that's something that I'm really engaged with and really dig, like the dance and the art and the science and we call it the sweet science of boxing, like the coordination of your whole body to be able to create power.
00:48:00
Speaker
Uh, at an end point being, you know, your fist is just so cool. I mean, it's like an endless education and that, uh, I do some kettlebell stuff. You know, I do. It's really like, like a lot of different cross training and novelty. I've gone through different chapters with training right now that the thing that I'm the most excited about is kind of like powerlifting calisthenics and boxing.
00:48:24
Speaker
Nice. So quick answers to the last one. Let's just squeeze them. So food, what do you eat? How often? I try to eat typically a fast earlier in the day. I just did a podcast with Dr. Stacy. It's okay if we go a little bit over one. I just did a podcast with Dr. Stacy Sims. She's like preeminent researcher, scientist of
00:48:50
Speaker
the difference between men and women, particularly around the menstrual cycle of women and how that affects their nutritional needs and fitness approaches and things of the sort. So I think there's a lot of like conflated information. I know there's a lot of conflated information of how men and women should be eating and performing or performing in the sense of just like doing the training. And so I like a fast earlier on in the day.
00:49:18
Speaker
And then I'll typically won't eat anything until I train. And so if I don't train, there's a good chance that I just won't eat until dinner. And so I'll typically run two meals a day. First meal is pretty light ish. It's typically protein and fat based kind of keep myself in a little bit more of like a, you know, upright, uplifted, energetic,
00:49:43
Speaker
type direction, and then I will save the carbohydrates for the evening. I'm not excessively dogmatic or robotic or like quantified self with any of this stuff, but it's kind of more like a feel thing. I'm totally open to eating breakfast for a few days and seeing how that goes, but generally speaking, my approach is
00:50:08
Speaker
not a lot of calories early in the morning. The calories that I do eat would be from protein or fat, lightish lunch, again, most of protein fat stuff. So like a pokeball or something like that would be a great example. And then evening, all the sweet potatoes and
00:50:23
Speaker
yams and just, you know, veggies and meat, uh, love organ meats. You know, I think it's very important to be eating. If you're going to, I don't know, eat food in general, I think eating nose to tail is important. Uh, if you are, you know, vegan or vegetarian or something of the sort, I think that's fine. I know people that are successful with that. It's just way simpler to eat nose to tail. Uh,
00:50:49
Speaker
You know, you can survive quite fine just exclusively eating nose to tail. Um, it reacts kind of funny with some people's bodies, but generally speaking, like your, your body will do pretty good for a while. Just eating the entirety of an animal. Um, and this is just a general shotgun. I think it's, that's, that's a really beautiful thing, especially if you're like, if you're like a pregnant woman or you're training really hard or something that's sort of, I think it becomes kind of a no brainer.
00:51:18
Speaker
And yeah, that's pretty much it. Try to stay hydrated, you know, like duh. So simple stuff like that. Try to not eat within typically around like a three hour window of going to bed.
00:51:32
Speaker
But then going to bed, having a little bit of something kind of like sweet is advisable, you know, so that people oftentimes will have low blood sugar throughout the night and it can impede the body's ability to go into deeper states of sleep like REM. And so that's something that I'll do sometimes, I'll have like a little banana before bed or something like that. That'd be like a typical, kind of typical day.
00:51:58
Speaker
And sometimes they, you know, bullshit too, but it's typically, I don't, I don't really like enjoy most things that would be classifiable as bullshit. So thankfully that's just, that's shifted over the years that if it's, if it does, if I don't deem it to be like, Oh, it's like pretty quality, like densely packed food with some, you know, some level of nutrition, I usually just don't enjoy it that much. So I think that's just been like years of like telling myself stories about health or something. And now it's like, Oh, like I enjoy the taste of healthy shit.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very much at a similar stage two meals a day. Uh, yeah, the whole shebang, but we won't go into that right now, but last question inward practices, uh, what's alive for you meditation wise, breath wise, and what is a question? What is alive to you that you ask yourself? What are you pondering and they go hand in hand usually. Hmm. Hmm. Well, I mean, I think it just,
00:52:57
Speaker
old-fashioned meditation, which is really good for you. You know, I just did a, did a podcast with, uh, what was her name? Dr. Amishi, Dr. Amishi was at a book, she did a Brogan's podcast a couple of weeks ago. Um, what was her name? Amishi Ja. Anyways, uh, she broke down in our conversation that like the minimum viable dose of meditation to create
00:53:20
Speaker
like visible, measurable, neurological impact. She suggests just 12 minutes a day. And so I've kind of hung on that as being like a baseline of like, okay, like at least 12 minutes. I think it's a nice thing. I try to get that in in the morning and in the evening, like upon waking ish and before going to bed. You know, so I think just that, like that's,
00:53:46
Speaker
I did a Vipassana meditation a few years ago, which is like a 10 day sit. You just pretty much just don't do anything but meditate for 10 days. They feed you and they give you a shelter and all that stuff and you meditate for an hour. You go back, hang out for like 45 minutes, turn around or whatever, then you come back and meditate an hour. You just do that. You get up like four or 30 in the morning. And in that, Guanka is a guy that founded most of the centers.
00:54:14
Speaker
they, he's suggests that, you know, you can pretty much just sit through most of your shit, you know, and if you, if you don't run from it, and like we're talking about before, like you invited in, you'd be with it, you know, you allow your body to kind of whatever the response that you would have had to go eat some food or jerk off or get on hinge or
00:54:39
Speaker
exercise or whatever, go make more money or whatever your thing is, you just sit with it. On the other side of that, typically, for a lot of people, is some level of restoration or healing or being able to actually gain relationship with that thing.
00:54:57
Speaker
And so I think that meditation is just so darn invaluable if a person's willing to like be with it. And then from there, you know, integrating that again, like into your daily life. So you can have a little meditation moment, just like looking at somebody in the eyes and they're like giving, they're buying coffee off them or something like that. You know, have a moment like, Hey, like I see you like, hello. You know, you know, starting to integrate that into your, into your day. And then I guess a question that I ask is,
00:55:33
Speaker
I don't think I have a regular question that I regularly ask. I mean, I guess earlier I was just asking why, like why are we doing anything that we're doing?
00:55:46
Speaker
So that would be, that would be an interesting question that I probably ask a lot of, a lot of people and myself, you know, so I think it's just why, you know, why are you doing what you're doing? You know, why are you, why are you doing this podcast? You know, why are you working out? Why are you eating what you eat? Why are you thinking the way you think? I don't think I have like a specific, like deep transcendent question other than just why I'm like, I'm like an annoying little kid with why, you know, I just like keep on asking why it can be terrible.
00:56:17
Speaker
Aaron, thank you for coming on. And I'm always going deep is invaluable. So thank you for taking it deeper than expected. And yeah, if you want to check you out and what you were up to, how do you find you? Well, so we have a
00:56:35
Speaker
a revised expanded version of the Align Method book that comes out pretty much now whenever you release this. It's up for pre-sale now. It's January 11th. And so people can grab that by just going back to the Alignbook.com. That'll take you all the, like the, you know, the buy button and all that stuff. They check out the Align Podcast. Maybe people listening to this might like like the Bruce Lipton episode. Probably you could play this to point people to start. He's the guy that wrote Biology of Belief. He's like one of my favorite conversations.
00:57:05
Speaker
Um, and then Instagram slime podcast. Yeah, those would be probably the main place. But I think that main, if you're interested, most of what we talked about in this conversation, isn't really the book is way more like mechanics, nuts and bolts of like how to, how to work this human, human machine. Um, you know, so folks are interested.
00:57:26
Speaker
and learning more about how to operate their bodies more effectively in this coming new year. I think the Align method is a great resource. And so the Alignbook.com is the place to go for that. Nice. Aaron, thank you very much. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Good times.
00:57:42
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in, listening to this fascinating episode with Aaron.
Conclusion and Recommendations for Health Insights
00:57:49
Speaker
If you want to hear some really cool stuff, I mean, his podcast is badass. I'll give it to him in his book. I mean, yeah, read it too. Like I've come across quite a few things in a health world. He has an incredible summary. It's almost like a
00:58:07
Speaker
manual to how to live your life optimally. And he topples quite a few of the books that are out there. I won't name names, but damn, it's worth it. Listen to it. Read it. The new extended version is out right now. Check out his podcast. All the links are in the show notes. Enjoy. And if you're going to connect with me, same thing. Links are in the show notes.
00:58:32
Speaker
Last ask. Hit five stars if you like this. Thank you for doing such. Take you five seconds, literally. If you want to do a change today, help this message spread more people. Just this message will spread to more people. So you can help someone else by indirectly helping us by liking this, sharing a review, hitting a subscriber like. Thank you for doing such. Sending you much love. Peace.