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Health By Design
83 Plays4 years ago
Our conversation covers:
- Environmental psychology
- The connections between Feng shui, modern health sciences and biohacking
- Organizing a healthy home
- Detoxifying your home environment
- Defining an intention and energy level for different rooms in a house
- His tips on Essential oil aromatherapy
- Active vs Passive physical activity
- Biophilic design
- Building biology
- The ancient history of healthy buildings
GUEST / ROR ALEXANDER
HOST / MATT MORLEY
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 29
00:00:11
Speaker
to episode 29 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we discuss wellbeing and sustainability in the built environment. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico Wellbeing Design and Biofit Health and Fitness.
Exploring Health Concepts
00:00:26
Speaker
Today, we're in Vancouver, Canada, talking to my good friend, Raw Alexander, an integrative health expert with a strong Eastern influence to his work, Philosophy. Our conversation covers everything from environmental psychology
00:00:41
Speaker
The connections between Feng Shui, modern health sciences and biohacking, organizing a healthy home, detoxifying your home environment, defining an intention and an energy level for different rooms around a house, hacking the home office for productivity as he's done, his tips on essential oil aromatherapy,
00:01:01
Speaker
and the ancient history of healthy buildings we're not talking about. If you like this type of content, please hit subscribe. You can find my contact details in the show notes. Raw is at RawAlexander.com.
Integrative Health Philosophy
00:01:14
Speaker
Let's do this.
00:01:17
Speaker
Well, super to have you back, or have you on the show for us to talk once again. It's been a year since we last spoke. I would really like to just start with your interpretation of what you do, where you're at, and how you contribute to this world of green and healthy places from your base in Vancouver.
00:01:35
Speaker
Well, basically what I do is I come from a, what I call integrative health. It's a great health and weight loss. And weight loss is always the key when it comes to health nowadays. Most of chronic obesity and health, you know, health is, weight loss is the main thing. If you can lose weight in any healthy way, it's good no matter what diet you're on.
00:01:56
Speaker
But I go past just weight loss, like weight loss is great. But you know, I really liked I have a saying my mother's slogan is live stronger, longer and better. And that's kind of the way I follow with my coaching. Stronger is saying okay, let's get the because you know, muscle is the it's kind of the organ of longevity, they call it. So if we get stronger first, which is your more traditional nutrition and fitness, and then we go into the longer
00:02:23
Speaker
Which is getting more into the micro nutrition, some of the more interesting aspects, the little more less well-known aspects and then the better is obviously like you will talk about travel or bettering your career or bettering passion, so
Environmental Health Impact
00:02:38
Speaker
all that sort of stuff. So I come at health from a
00:02:40
Speaker
very broad point of view, but in phases, not to overwhelm people. And then the environment is a big part of those. So I have my, what I call my Bagua of Health, which is kind of a term I borrowed from Feng Shui, which is your eight areas of health. Because it just happened, my eight areas and Feng Shui, before I even learned about it, it almost matched.
00:02:57
Speaker
But what I don't have really described on the website very good yet is the border around that bagua is actually your environment. So the way it works is your environment is on the outside, pushes in towards the inside and that center square is your house. So that's the way I look at it, kind of like a, kind of phasing in.
00:03:19
Speaker
You mentioned the idea of how you in a way sort of independently develop your thinking and if you want to call it your value system, your philosophy, and then you found that actually correlated with
00:03:32
Speaker
a far wider system around Feng Shui. It reminds me, I had a similar experience with this whole biophilic design stuff. I was just digging around into how you could bring the outside world in and then suddenly you stumble across a term that opens up the whole world to you and you're like, oh wow, okay, it's exactly what I've been talking about and thinking about, but someone's already defined it. But what led you towards Feng Shui in the first place? I know you had time in Asia, was that sort of formative in that process for you?
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I took psychology in school and I was always interested in kind of East. I took a few classes on like Eastern religions and stuff like that. So I was always kind of interested in it. And then I went off to Asia and I lived in Hong Kong at the beginning and Hong Kong is, you know, it's a Mecca for Feng Shui architecture.
00:04:19
Speaker
So I just started goofing around and learning a little bit about it on my YouTube channel. I have a Feng Shui tour I do where I take you and I kind of show you the interesting Feng Shui aspects. But yeah, it was really just more like just kind of fun. I liked learning about temples and I kind of liked the psychology. And so I just started reading about environmental psychology and how that environment affects us. And it just kept leading me to
00:04:42
Speaker
Feng Shui and Feng Shui and then from Feng Shui I started to learn about Vastu which is the traditional Indian version so Vastu actually came first I found out and then Feng Shui because almost everything came from India almost all knowledge at the end of the day really came from ancient ancient India
00:05:00
Speaker
and then ancient Greece, but even ancient India before that, and then spread, especially in Eastern philosophy,
Feng Shui and Modern Health
00:05:05
Speaker
right? So it's spread up into, you know, up into Thailand, and then it's spread up into China. So Chinese medicine is actually based on Ayurveda. Thai massage, Thai yoga is based on all the yogas, Tai Chi and Qigong, all that all comes from yoga. But getting off track, but
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I started learning about Feng Shui in Hong Kong. And then I just continued learning about it. I bought some books on it, I did a couple courses on it. I got a chance to interview a really, really cool contemporary Feng Shui master on a trip to Hong Kong. And right then, I really liked her take on it because her take was a very modern take. She comes from a little more from a relationship background, where I just noticed, right away, what I really noticed was Feng Shui
00:05:51
Speaker
had so many connections with modern health sciences, it's just the terminology was very different. Like I remember the first time I was in Hong Kong, my very first day I arrived in Hong Kong, a friend picked me up and we were driving through an area called Stanley, which is kind of like their beach area. And he said, do you know why these buildings have these big spaces in them? And I said, no, no idea why there's a hole in the middle of a building. And he said, that's for the dragons to pass through.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I was like, all right, Game of Thrones here, whatever. But then dragons represented chi, which represented the wind, which represented air. So what actually will happen in these buildings a lot is the air circulation will be placed into these. So what allows the air to circulate more through the building? And I was like, well, that makes sense. Coming from a health point of view, it makes sense to have the cleaner air and have this kind of gap in the middle of the building where the air can flow through better.
00:06:42
Speaker
help with the ventilation. So that's kind of where it came from. And then like I said, I traveled to India and I learned about Vastu, happened to know, there's only about 10 books that I know of really written on the topic. And I happened to be friends with one of the authors of that. So that was really interesting to say that his Ayurvedic retreat in India had him on my podcast, you know, and talk to him about Vastu because it just, yeah, so it's just very interesting how
00:07:04
Speaker
these ancient traditions and what we call modern health or even biohacking a lot of them are the same related just different topics like we talk about them in different terms. I think that there's something about fundamental truths that many of us get to from different angles at different times of our lives but
00:07:24
Speaker
We often seem to conjoin in similar concepts. I'm reading a book at the moment called The Barefoot Architect that's all about more of an ancestral health approach to how you would design homes and whether you call them dragons or you call them ventilation courtyards or what have you. But again, you're getting to the same concepts.
00:07:42
Speaker
I know that you're thinking when you describe your relationship around functional function right now, you have your four pillars, organization, detoxification, intention, and optimization. So how does that work in terms of your advisory to a client or to an individual?
00:08:01
Speaker
Well, functional feng shui, you hear a lot of people say feng shui is crap. It's all superstition. You don't really understand
Psychology and Home Design
00:08:11
Speaker
it. Really what it is. It is an art. It's also a science. But a lot of it is about psychology.
00:08:19
Speaker
The way it's about organizing your home so it affects you in a positive way, whether it's psychology or psychically or physically. So the way I describe it to clients is I try not to use the term feng shui a lot when I'm talking to people, but I'll just talk about healthy home design. And so the very first one is the organization.
00:08:41
Speaker
And I think any book, any women's health, everybody talks about decluttering, but there is truth behind it. Decluttering, organizing your house, arranging things, getting rid of the crap, getting rid of broken things. Psychology tells us that when we have a desk that's all cluttered, our eyes are constantly scanning and it's a little bit harder to stay on focus.
00:09:02
Speaker
So by straightening things up and minimizing your area, it just allows you to stay on target a little better, helps you to keep your attention. I mean, I think that everybody's had that. You walk into a really messy, overwhelming room, your just senses are overwhelmed. So the first step is very easy, and that's just organization. Then from there, you can, once it's organized and you got it, you know, things lined up, you got your book stacked up, then you go through, I don't really like the term minimalization, but I am a bit of a minimalist, but
00:09:30
Speaker
Things that either bring you function, so like you have cooking tools that you really need, things that help your life be better, or things that bring you joy or getting rid of things that bring you negativity.
Detoxifying Home Environments
00:09:42
Speaker
For instance, you've got something broken and you just never get around to throwing it away or fixing it, but it's always kind of bothering you. Oh, there's that broken lampshade over there, that broken thing.
00:09:51
Speaker
Or maybe it's something that maybe not a great relationship, a breakup had, and you're kind of keeping it, or something that was given to you from guilt, but you don't like it. And you're thinking, man, I really don't like that, but grandma died and she gave it to me. I feel bad for getting rid of it. So that's where the organization sort of part fits in. From there, you move on to what I call, I always forget the terms,
00:10:18
Speaker
From there we move on to detoxification. Thank you. And literally that is it. That is just detoxing your environment mostly. And I'm talking about that from a, mostly from a chemical point of view. So that is getting rid of any harsh scents.
00:10:34
Speaker
harsh odors, anything that could potentially have some negative effects on you breathing wise or food wise. So that is just, again, that's the more the physical side, right? The first part was kind of the psychological side, the second part's the physical side, because we're learning more and more about how so many man-made, and I'm not anti man-made things obviously at all, but there's a lot of things that are just not that great for us when it comes to health wise.
00:11:00
Speaker
So one of the next things I do is I just detox the house and I say, you know, if you can't eat with it, or like if you couldn't put it in your mouth, you probably shouldn't be cleaning with it. So especially if you got little kids, right? They put it on, they get it on their hands, they put it in their mouth. So things like Lysol, things like these really harsh antibacterials, I mean, they can affect your gut by them. Studies have shown that kids who come from homes that use green cleaners,
00:11:25
Speaker
tend to weigh less than kids who come from homes that use heavy harsh chemicals, right? But now people who make the argument, well, is that because the house from the green cleaners, are they more concerned with healthy eating and getting their kids active period? So is it causation or correlation? Well, we don't know exactly, but it looks like when they've done studies, the gut biomes of these kids are different and a lot of it has been related
00:11:51
Speaker
or at least strongly possible to the things that they're cleaning their homes with. So for me, detoxification is an easy, no brainer. Like for instance, I brought a few pieces here I can show you, right? Like we use a strip of strength vinegar over Windex, right? It's just, I want to put Windex in my mouth. I can shoot that in my mouth. It's fine. For soap, we use Dr. Bronner's. Dr. Bronner's the good stuff.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is the kind of your dishes, although I don't use it for dishes. I usually just buy a decent, like natural dish soap. But I mean, we use it, I use it for shaving, shampoo. I use it for, I mean, this is everything. We all just use it. It does everything.
00:12:35
Speaker
Now, people say, well, okay, well, what if you need to not just, you know, you need to disinfect your house, you know, you got to get bleach or you need like Clorox. I'm like, you know, hydrogen peroxide right there works, you know, works very good. And then that's just basic cleaning supplies. You can take it up a step, you know, like for sunblock, we use pretty much just a natural zinc sunblock.
00:12:56
Speaker
So little things like that, that if it doesn't affect your life really negatively, but something like, if it's gonna create a major hassle in your life to get rid of it, then don't. But if it's something simple like switching Windex for vinegar, switching a laundry soda for some crappy, you know, for breezy laundry. So, you know, using essential oils for smells instead of, like I said, glade fresheners.
Room Purpose and Energy Optimization
00:13:18
Speaker
To me, they're no brainers. So that's detoxification.
00:13:22
Speaker
then you move on to the little more feng shui element which would be the intention and this is i kind of like this every room in your home or every space you're in has an intention it has a purpose it's supposed to serve right so what's a bedroom supposed to do it's supposed to help you you're supposed to sleep in your bedroom you're supposed to be able to kind of relax and whine
00:13:45
Speaker
shut down in your bedroom. So that's what the bedroom's intention is. It's a place to sleep. The kitchen has an intention of being a place where you go to get healthy. It's the number one key to health in your home is your kitchen.
00:14:02
Speaker
Your social area, I mean, the term social is what it's intended to do. So if you have the room set up where there's an anti-social, not facing each other, whatever, then that's not gonna work. So I look at, I maximize the intention of every room, and then you can get into things like the colors you use, the yin, the yang energy. It just means does it have a powerful energy, like something that gets you excited? Like an office should have yang energy.
00:14:30
Speaker
All right, focused, bright, organized. You do your best thinking in there. It's not distracting. At the same time, a bedroom has to have an energy, kind of that soft, relaxing energy. You don't want a bunch of bright colors in there. You don't want bright lights because that doesn't, that's not the intention of that space.
00:14:52
Speaker
So what I do is I break it down into the intention of different roofs. And then finally, we have what's called optimization, which
00:15:02
Speaker
It relates to the intention, but what it is is, I'll give you an idea of the bedroom, right? So what it is, these are the little tweaks we can do to add into the intention. So in my bedroom, for instance, I use only light balls with no blue and no green spectrum in them.
00:15:23
Speaker
And you probably know why that is, but maybe your listeners don't. Blue and the green are the ones that wake up your brain, right? So you got all these LEDs, you got your CFLs, that affects your melatonin level. So if your bedroom is full of fluorescent lights, even just a CFL bulb while you're reading at night, that is not going to help you
00:15:43
Speaker
getting a good sleep. It's going to perhaps push your melatonin back, make it later, and you just get worse sleep. So that's what optimization is. And there's different tweaks you can do in every room to optimize the intention of that room.
Feng Shui Misconceptions
00:15:56
Speaker
So work through it. That's kind of... There's a lot in there and it's... But what I'm seeing is, you know, I'm very involved in this sort of healthy building movement and creating, you know, workplaces that are geared for
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, employee well-being and looking at things like the well-building certification. And there's so much of what you've just described that is actually at the core of a lot of what's going into a very scientific and detailed
00:16:27
Speaker
corporate level approach to kind of achieving the same things that you've just described that as I understand that have a sort of you know a pretty serious history behind them and yet we're still to this day kind of in a sense reinventing them, rebranding it all, putting it out there as well. This is a well-building standard and look we've not come up with new ideas maybe more research behind it but the principles
00:16:52
Speaker
The underlying principles, man, they've got hundreds of years of history behind them and that's what's hardly spoken about, it seems.
00:16:58
Speaker
And that's what it is. It's just the principles. That's why when people say feng shui is crap, I had an argument with a guy on Instagram that I'm like, it's not crap. I'm like, there's nothing crap about, it was a system developed to just help you maximize your natural biological rhythms and your psychological energy. It's as simple as that, you know, whatever they call it, you know, don't sleep under the moon. It's just, okay, well, that just means don't sleep on bright white light, not have a bunch of bright light, because the light of the moon, they would say, oh, the light of the moon affects your sleep. Oh, whatever.
00:17:27
Speaker
Woo-woo. Well, no, but they didn't have light bulbs back then. Nowadays, the feng shui master would probably say, hey, you know, don't sleep under a CFL. It's probably not the best idea. And it was about living in circadian rhythms. They didn't have electricity back then. So it was about building your house so it would face the sun.
00:17:42
Speaker
heat of the sun and all that stuff. It was about even things like you'll hear about people like the different spaces in Feng Shui. Well, it was because back in the day, you would take your most valuable objects and you move them to the back of the house and hide them because it was the most secure place. You didn't put your valuables right at your front door, right? So it's just, it's
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean that's what it is. It's just we have
Designing Productive Workspaces
00:18:04
Speaker
a new way. We're redescribing all things and that's why I found fun That's why I call it functional punctuates to me. It's like functional medicine in meets fonchoi So and you mentioned the idea of an office space and how these principles can be applied to that I think you know there's been so much happening over the last year and a half around in
00:18:22
Speaker
breaking down that barrier between, that used to be quite a clear dichotomy for many of us, where we have a place where we live, where we sleep, we eat, we're with our family, and then there's another place where we go to do our work. It might be a co-working, it might be a corporate office, or just some other space where we go to do that type of productivity. And then suddenly we all found ourselves without that barrier, where the distinction was just broken down, suddenly home is also the office, work comes home,
00:18:51
Speaker
How are you now thinking about the home office? Because in a sense, I think that seems to be here to stay or many of us have discovered that there are some positives to it. So what's your take on that? How have you set up your home office and any sort of tips and suggestions for people?
00:19:05
Speaker
Well, I definitely have a home office and I probably broke one of the biggest, you know, classical feng shui nonos, which is having your office in your bedroom. There's nothing I could do. There's no other space in my house, right? I can't put in my kid's room. I'm not going to do that. I can't put in my living room because I already have a gym in the middle of my living room, which is already not the greatest spot in the world.
00:19:27
Speaker
I can't put them, right now I'm in my kitchen, my kitchen is kind of my second office, but what I did is, what I did is this, they, what they do say is, you know, in Feng Shui you always hear about cures, you hear the word cure, which I don't like the word cure, but what it just means is mitigations.
00:19:43
Speaker
And what I did in my office is I decorated a little differently than the rest of the bedroom. It's on the far side of the bed, right? So it's on the complete furthest area I could put it from the bed. So I'm not staring directly at my desk when I'm sleeping, right? Because I don't want to be monitored. I just, you don't want that.
00:20:00
Speaker
I do have it set off into the picture of my room. It's the right hand corner so the window is to the left of me because I do like having a window. You really should have a window that you can see through because you're working. You want to have a window that you can peek out of every now and then plus that light coming in is nice. You don't want it directly in front of you because then you can't see your screen. You don't want it behind you because you can get a good glare. Again, feng shui things will tell you this too but it's just common knowledge. It's got a point A2.
00:20:25
Speaker
So there's the office, sorry, there's the light, the desk, and then I paint the walls differently around my desk. So they're painted in, right now they're a cream color, which actually came with the house. So the bedroom is white, the walls are cream, but they're eventually going to be gray. So I'm planning on doing like a light gray around the office to give that space a slightly separate feel.
00:20:47
Speaker
The decor in the office is a little bit different than the rest of the bedroom too. Now, something I've been toying with the idea of getting is, you know, one of those Japanese dividers, you know, those wall dividers, they sell them at IKEA and stuff. You can put it up a sort of separate room. Again, just my room isn't really quite big enough. I think that would kind of get in the way and be more annoying. So what I've done is I've just
00:21:09
Speaker
put the office facing away from the bed, facing out a window, kept it decor different and kept a slightly different color scheme on it. And then again, I've used optimization tools around my office. So I have a standing desk, which I basically tell my
00:21:25
Speaker
coaching clients, they have to get, I don't say you have to get an expensive one like I got, I got a digital one, you know, you press the buttons, go up and down. When I lived in Thailand, I lived in Thailand for years, I mean, I knew the importance of standing desks, well, going back 20 years, I've probably always kind of used a standing area.
00:21:44
Speaker
So in Thailand, I just had a regular table and I put a box on top and I just had my laptop there and my keyboard down. So it doesn't have to be expensive. They have desk converters now. But anyway, standing desk is a must for me. I have a couple little tools that I use that I can do some exercises with when I map my desk. And this isn't sweaty. I'm not talking about getting on a sweat while I'm working because, you know, I don't want to do that.
00:22:09
Speaker
But things I can do some postural exercises. I have a bar stool that adjusts different heights so I can sit on it, put my foot up so you kind of get those different movements. I've learned to do a few different stretches I can do at my standing desk. And I will put it down to sitting because there's a thing too. You don't want to just be standing in one position all day. It's really standing in one position is not a heck of a lot better than sitting in one position. You're just moving the pain or the issues down the road from your back to your knees.
00:22:37
Speaker
And then you got to look at, you know, other things. And this is where I screwed up a lot, actually, for years. Luckily, it was, I caught it early enough, but not having the screen set up to eye height. So I'd be working on a bar desk, for instance, but my head would be down. Nowadays, our heads are always down because of the phone. Then you got your computer screen down too. So at the end of the day, it always ended up kind of like this, you know, even though you were using a standing desk that you're supposed to, your neck would be stored.
00:23:01
Speaker
Now I got everything optimized so it's all the perfect height. So ergonomics I've learned a lot about. So I would definitely say learn about ergonomics. And for a regular chair, I just use a Swiss ball. I have a Swiss ball that I sit on.
00:23:13
Speaker
Instead of just a regular seat. So my standing my desk and I'm buying for hours. It forces me though to Move a lot so and I have a timer set up to sometimes so every 30 minutes and I gotta watch nowadays that Reminds me but before that I would set a timer for 30 minutes or an hour and it would buzz Okay time to move it down buzz time to move it up So just a few little things that I've done in my office and that essential oil I keep a very
00:23:41
Speaker
scientifically-purposed essential oils at my desk, which is largely peppermint. I use a lot of peppermint oil on my desk, because peppermint's been shown to actually wake you up and help you focus. I'll also use cypress there. I like to have vore smells a lot, you know, by affiliate design. I'm a huge fan. It's like 10 drops of cypress. I think only one or two drops of
00:24:06
Speaker
patchouli, too much patchouli you start to smell like a hippie you know but patchouli i like it because it does have that moss scent when you walk into a forest and then usually a drop or two of peppermint in there as well you know the cypress has been shown even to help rate boost your immune system help boost focus but at the same time it's not a stressful focus it's not like it's these smells stress you out you know cypress and forest bathing you know shinwin roky that it's calming it's calming in clarity at the same time it's very interesting
00:24:37
Speaker
It's like caffeine and you take that amino acid that calms you down so you get the high and the low at the same time.
Passive Movement and Health
00:24:46
Speaker
El Theanine. Yeah, that's El Theanine. Yeah, yeah. But I like I like your approach around really thinking, you know, about sort of creating an experience effectively thinking about the light, how you're physically interacting with your your workspace, the sense around you. And it's a lot of that stuff that I've applied to gyms in the past. And you mentioned the gym, so I got to go there. I'm interested to dig into this topic that you you've described elsewhere around
00:25:14
Speaker
I think you use the terms conscious, deliberate exercise, and then passive movement. So not everyone's necessarily thinking about movement in those terms, but from your perspective, how are you distinguishing between those two concepts?
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, so it comes down to what they call NEAT, which means non-exercise activity thermogenesis. People don't think about that a lot. And, you know, when you think about burning calories, what's the first thing people think about burning calories? I think go to the gym, right? So always go to the gym, go to the gym, exercise.
00:25:48
Speaker
Well, even the most hardcore workout, at the end of the day, if you were to measure all your calories, your basal metabolic rate burns the most. That's your brain, your breathing, you know, all that sort. Just being alive is about 60% of your calorie use in a day. The next biggest one after that is NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So you notice I'm a hand talker. I talk a lot with my hands.
00:26:11
Speaker
That's neat. That is anything where I'm moving, but I'm not sweating. This isn't hard. And then after that, you got exercise and the thermogenic effect of food. Well, for me, focused exercise means that's exactly what it is. I separate between movement or what I call physical activity and exercise.
00:26:31
Speaker
Exercise to me, focused exercise means I'm going in there and I'm either putting a load on my muscular skeletal system and outside load, or perhaps I'm putting myself into a position where there's extra load on, you know, like I'm doing a pushup, for instance, right? There's gonna be extra load on my chest that's normally not there.
00:26:50
Speaker
or there's a load and or I should say stress on the heart and the lungs right your heart rates going up because you're taking it out of that typical standing and sitting zone so that is what I call active exercise and it's important it is very important you know but
00:27:07
Speaker
that neat that non-exercise activity thermogenesis that passive movement that movement without sweating is so important it can burn between 15 to 30 percent of your calories a day and it's so easy to make that closer to that you know 30 percent and that 15 percent by doing simple things like using a standing desk um
00:27:33
Speaker
creating environments that just force you to move more passively. You don't even think about it. One of the simplest descriptions I get is if you were to go in a room that had only standing desks,
00:27:45
Speaker
Well, you're gonna stand. There's no option. If you go into a room that has no furniture, you're gonna sit on the floor. There's no choice, right? And sitting on the floor is not overly comfortable, so you're gonna be moving around a lot. So I always talk about designing spaces, particularly your home, to really force passive health on you in one of the aspects is passive movement.
00:28:11
Speaker
Um, so that's what the, like the Swiss ball, like I said, my office core, you're constantly moving on it. You don't just sit. It's not a lazy boy standing up. So those are just, it's just two really great movements. So that's the way I separate them. There's that low level movement that's, and I call it passive because you're not thinking about it. It's just your environment is forcing you to do it. And then there's, well, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to, and I have my weights worked out and I know exactly what I'm going to be doing and counting my steps on reps and counting my load. I like, I like the idea of, of having
00:28:42
Speaker
a combination of some degree of willpower to make that happen, to get your sort of low level movement during the day, but also more of a systems approach. So take the desk and the load chair away and replace it with an alternative and you're no longer relying on your
00:28:57
Speaker
your own willpower, but the system has been put in place and boom, off you go. You can then, you can scale it back, right? It's all about the systems and having what I call it. There's a movement right now called the No Furniture Movement. And I'm kind of a member of that movement. Mine's a little more low furniture. For almost a year, my first year and a year and a half, I moved back from Asia. Actually, I didn't really have any furniture, even a floor just on the bed. Sorry, bed on the floor.
00:29:22
Speaker
now I have a little more but even my furniture whenever I buy my furniture I ask myself hey is this gonna make me like just zonk out it's like lazy boy for and binge on Netflix for hours or is it not so the only two chairs we own are papasan chairs which are cool because you can flip them up like the bowl and they actually make great meditation seats too and they're not the most comfortable they're not uncomfortable but
00:29:45
Speaker
You can't sit in them for three hours on end for the most part. They're just not the most comfortable chairs in the world.
Electromagnetic Fields Concerns
00:29:52
Speaker
But the wife likes a tooth from Thailand. She's like, oh, I grew up with these chairs. And I go, well, you guys grew up with these chairs, and you guys are in much better long-term health than we are. So lots of little secrets to take.
00:30:05
Speaker
Well, I like it. You're quite far out there in terms of really pushing the message. So I appreciate that. And I've got a feeling, I know what the answer to this question, this next one will be, but your take on EMFs and what the risks are from a sort of building biology perspective for people who aren't necessarily aware of the concept and where you stand on 5G, etc. Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
That's hard, because there's people that know the science really good, and they can explain this much better than I can. But in my coaching, I do have an option to work with a building biologist named Jason Mazek. And he goes into your house, and he primarily focuses on three things. The first one is your air quality. The second one is your water quality. And the third one, and honestly, his biggest thing he focuses on is the EMFs in your house.
00:30:57
Speaker
And I guess it comes down to the problem is when people think of EMFs, they only think of Wi-Fi. And yet there's what he calls magnetic, which is currency. So there's magnetic fields that can affect you. There's the electric or the voltage fields that can affect you. Dirty electricity, which can kind of create some problems. It's almost like pulses and surges. And then radio frequencies, which is your Wi-Fi and stuff like that.
00:31:25
Speaker
Obviously, I got lights all around me. We all got living houses with electricity. I'm not opposed to electricity. But I think we should try to mitigate it when possible.
00:31:41
Speaker
whether or not you wanna go as far as not having any metal in your bed, not having springs in your bed, which I don't. And there's some interesting research that shows that, hey, all that wiring could attract and magnify fields. Other studies say, no, they don't, they don't at all. Jason has said he's gone to places where he's held the compass up over the bed and the compass spins around, right? So there's a very strong magnetic field around that bed.
00:32:11
Speaker
Depending, it all comes down to what, as Jason explains it, you've got the duration, so how long you're in, like how long you're in a space for, and the distance, and then there's the intensity, right? So those are the three things. Well, I'll say to people, well, and people that maybe have no problems with EMS, don't believe anything like that. Well, would you put your face right in front of your microwave while you're cooking the entire time?
00:32:36
Speaker
And most people will say, no. Most people would say, I don't know why. If they're not worried about it, then why wouldn't you have your face in front of the microwave? Because it just doesn't feel like a smart thing to do, does it? Whether or not, I don't know. I don't know. So I would have to say I am,
00:32:53
Speaker
strongly concerned about EMFs. 5G, from what I understand, it doesn't sound like it's super awesome for our health. Again, you know, you've got guys that are much better than me that I've interviewed that can talk about how the pulses that can affect the calcium signaling between nerves.
00:33:10
Speaker
The blood-brain permeability can be affected by strong EMFs. So again, when it comes to me and my health coaching, I err on the side of caution, providing it doesn't interfere with your life to the point where
00:33:28
Speaker
It's gonna cause stress on your life if you got rid of it because stress is one of the worst things we can do so if you're gonna get if If what I suggest to you is just like man, it's gonna be so hard I can't it's gonna bother you and be a negative then don't do it, but
00:33:45
Speaker
If you can try to cut down and think about your EMFs overall, and I think having a building biologist come in is a good idea.
Importance of Rest and Recovery
00:33:53
Speaker
I don't think it's a great idea to have your bed right behind a wall where your refrigerator is. It's just going to create a strong magnetic field. There's quite a bit of mood disorder. Melatonin is a big issue when it comes to Wi-Fi signals, apparently.
00:34:08
Speaker
Like I said, I'm not the most professional, but I do err on the side of caution. I'll mention it to clients and I gaze their interest. And if they're interested, I'll have, you know, I'll sometimes set them up with a call with Jason or show them some videos I've done with Jason. And then I let them decide. But I really think it's a good idea to at least mitigate most of the problems if you can. Nice. I appreciate that. And in terms of your thoughts, then you sort of you bridge this gap between
00:34:36
Speaker
the world of physical activity and physical work and training and the physical environment around us. And so within that framework, how do you think about rest and recovery when you're working with clients now? How big a role is that playing? Do you think you've seen perceptions of the importance of rest and recovery change over recent years? Or are you still sort of trying to push that message? Is it still underappreciated?
00:35:01
Speaker
It's, honestly, it's still underappreciated. I think what happens, even to me, it's just like, you know, to me, it's like we know about blue light and how it affects us. I mean, to me, it's a no-brainer. But to this day, I don't think I've met a client yet that has any idea what I'm talking about.
00:35:21
Speaker
I think the problem is a lot of times we, people like me, health coaches and people like you too, we probably get, we kind of get cut in these circles where we'll listen to health podcasts, we'll listen to biohacking podcasts, you know, we'll listen to kind of fringe your stuff. And, and we hear from all these guys talking about, you might have 20 different specialists talking about how blue light affects us. And we're like, wow, it's becoming so common knowledge. It's great.
00:35:45
Speaker
But it's not. It's like, go to the grocery store right now. Everything we know about diets and nutrition, you know, everything we know. Go to the grocery store right now. Go to your local, I don't know what your big one is there in Spain or England, whatever. You know, for us, it's, I don't know, the super store, Canadian super store. Go to the super store and watch what people are buying. And it's still Cheetos and Coca Colas and just crap. So,
00:36:08
Speaker
In small circles and biohacking circles, yeah, they're learning about stress, but I would say for the majority of the population, unfortunately, it's still not. We haven't been able to reach the masses yet.
Breathing and Mindfulness Practices
00:36:19
Speaker
Little things like yoga has become more popular, but even then, we bastardize yoga, in my opinion, to where we've just turned it into an exercise routine. It's not what real yoga is supposed to be. So, yes, I do discuss a lot about stress with my clients. Again,
00:36:36
Speaker
I come from a bit of a... I like the idea of meditation and breathing but I don't use the word meditation very often.
00:36:44
Speaker
especially for guy clients. Just because meditation still, I mean, I was anti-meditation really and yoga. I thought it was so, you know, the first, when I was back in the day, I was teaching CrossFit and like laughing at yoga people. And then I went to Indonesia and we had a yoga class there and I tried it a few times and kind of just started to, I was so bad at it. I was like, I just wanted to get better at it. But over the years, as I learned more about yoga and about meditation, I traveled to India a couple of times.
00:37:12
Speaker
I was like, yeah, this is this is actually something we need. And I have ADHD, I'm kind of all over the place. And for me, just focusing on I don't even really want to say, I guess I don't sit and meditate and put my legs cross like this, you know, but I'm very aware of my breathing for me. So I've really in the last few years really switched to focus on my nasal breathing. So I'll teach clients about that.
00:37:39
Speaker
Um, I find a lot of the people said that one of the problems I have with these meditation retreats and stuff is you go and people feel so zen down and relax and oh, I feel great. I feel amazing. And within a month being back to the West, they're, you know, all stressed out again and they forgot all their lessons. So I just prefer to come at it from what we can do in our day to day. Um, and meditation is a great thing to work up to, but I call it breathing. So I'll talk about nasal breathing first and belly breathing after your workout. That's a big one. I talked about it just two to three minutes.
00:38:06
Speaker
then days of breathing period then i'll get into box breathing because it's a little more you can say oh navy seals box breathe oh okay well that must be good it's really just a very westernized folk way of doing a meditation so but yes i definitely expressed it kind of brings us background to where we started right i mean what's more elemental and basic
00:38:29
Speaker
than breathing. And yet, how often do any of us really just take a moment, if it's a minute or 10 minutes in the morning or the last thing at night, just to reconnect and just to listen in and allow there to be some space in our minds not to plan or worry or relive some moment of the day or sort of anticipate what might happen later in the day and just connecting with the breath, really. It doesn't need to be anything spiritual.
Biophilic and Nature-Inspired Design
00:38:58
Speaker
No, not at all. And if you can design, like I talk, one of the things I talk about a lot is designing a zen zone in your house, which again comes from, I've been very influenced by Eastern traditions. I think I sent you a picture of my kid in our zen zone. So it's pretty cool. It's a pop-a-son chair. And we got this cool light that hangs over top of it, which we use at nighttime, because that's in our living room. All of our house has special lighting. So it has circadian lighting the entire house.
00:39:25
Speaker
So at 7 p.m., the house goes, all the blinds come down, and then the house switches to those non blue and green spectrum bulbs, the entire thing. Because there's no point having it if you're just going to switch on your kitchen light, you know, ruin your melatonin again. But the Zen Zone, you know, mine's very Eastern base. We got some cool stuff we have from Thailand, and some fun stuff from Hong Kong and stuff around it, but it doesn't have to be.
00:39:48
Speaker
It can be, you know, it can be really simple. A few cushions on the floor doesn't have to be a cushion on the floor. It could be a lazy. It could be anything you want, but it's a space where you go to purposely recharge and get a few minutes of me time. But again, it's not something I say to client. Oh, great. You want to lose 10 pounds. We got to build you a meditation space. It's something that I'll work towards down the road.
00:40:08
Speaker
I think in India, it's called the puja room. It's a prayer space on all Eastern cultures. That spiritual zone is a part of your home. And it's a part that we're severely missing here. And it's not vague. It could be a meter by a meter. It's not a big space. So I'm not saying you need a room. I love it. Thanks, man. It's been really interesting to get your take with a slight sort of Eastern twist on a lot of themes that even for myself, I kind of, yeah, you get you get focused in your own world and sometimes
00:40:38
Speaker
you need a little bit of a fresh angle, a fresh perspective on things. And it's really just reiterated how much of this is just part of a fundamental connection between us and the natural world. And the terminology, the descriptions and the histories and traditions behind it can come at that from many different angles, but ultimately it all comes back to the same ideas. And I think you've really encapsulated that.
00:41:03
Speaker
And then bio-philic design is a big part of it. My living room is, I got a green wall. I see you got one to your right hand side there. I think I got a bio-philic wall. In my office, I got a bio-philic wall. We got plants going up the yin-yang. We want to get more plants. But yeah, I mean, nature is a huge element of it. And then Feng Shui always talked about nature too. It always talked about the importance of nature. When you look at, like you talked earlier about
00:41:27
Speaker
it was like you know you look at all the old Buddhist temples they'd always have a courtyard in the middle you know you look at and you want to take that to the most modern crazy extreme singapore like singapore is airport a vortex waterfall to create negative ions in a jungle i mean singapore that's where i got really interested in bioflick design i was visiting singapore i mean that place if you're gonna look at a place this is what is the poster child for modern
00:41:52
Speaker
and biophilic design and they've put it together and they've done it on purpose. So the biophilic design I think is just a huge aspect that's so important. So I really try to get people into biophilia as much as I can. Even if it's a fake green wall, it's still better. Hell, they've shown just pictures of nature can make people feel better. So if that's what a picture can do, just imagine what real plants can do and then to the level you can take it to.
Kitchen's Role in Health and Mood
00:42:19
Speaker
I noticed you've got lots of fresh herbs, it looks like, in the background there in your kitchen, which is another one, because you're adding aroma and scent, right? And it's sort of doubling up. We got basil going on here. I got sprouts growing. We got the whole thing. And that's part of the nourishing kitchen. I got a green clean nourishing kitchen, where, again, it's just talking about natural cleaners I talked about, and then having clean whole foods, not junk foods. And then, obviously, nourishment is that whole thing put together.
00:42:47
Speaker
You might have a kitchen that inspires you to eat healthy, not stinky, bright, organized. We got, you know, one of the things in the blue zones, right, they tell fruit bowls on the table. Well, I don't know, ours is empty right now. We do have three fruit bowls behind here, but we just ran out of banana seed. Our good fruits are always on display and the crappy foods are either not in the house or they're hiding pretty good. So again, just more little tips. So lots of tips. I love it. Yeah. Basic common sense, but it just, it's so helpful to be reminded and it can seem
00:43:17
Speaker
So that immediately makes complete sense to me. But you think, well, yeah, are things on display or are they hidden away in the fridge? Okay, well, maybe I could just bring them out of there and have them visible in the kitchen and that would have an impact on my mood. I have Oreos out here. If I see them, I'm like, it's true. It's true. So I got a little junk food that I do keep on display. It's my dark chocolate covered almonds. And I even eat more of those than I really should. You got to hide them away somewhere in a corner, right? That's it.
00:43:46
Speaker
Well, thanks so much,
Conclusion and Contacts
00:43:48
Speaker
man. So listen, where can people find you? What's the best way to keep in touch? I know you have your own podcast, your YouTube channel. Yep. Well, there's a couple. Like I said, my own podcast is Health By Design, which they can check that out. And then YouTube is just almost everything for me is rural, Alexander. I'm rural. And that's just R-O-R, not R-O-A-R. I'm not a lion.
00:44:06
Speaker
So Roar Alexander at you know, find me on Instagram Facebook's probably my best one I tend to deal with an older audience, you know, like mid 30s 40s 50s So Facebook's still the place I do have a tick-tock, but I don't understand that one
00:44:20
Speaker
I don't really bother much with that. But my main place I like the best, because I kind of host everything there, is my website, which is again, just RoarAlexander.com. And then you can link to everything from there. It's my resource for everything, blogs and video. We'll link to everything in the show notes. Well, thanks so much for your time, man. No problem. Thank you.