Hollis,
Welcome.
This is Josh of InnerSkilled,
And today I've got Asher Lester with me.
Asher,
What's happening?
Not much.
Happy to be here.
Well,
Cool.
Me too.
Well,
I'm happy to have you here too,
Is what I mean as well.
So,
Who's Asher?
What kind of work does he do?
That is a long question,
A long answer to an easy question.
But,
You know,
I was,
I got really interested in human psychology when I was young for a whole list of reasons,
But probably the most impactful reason,
Honestly,
Is my best friend,
When I was 11,
Took his own life,
And that kind of pushed me in the direction of just trying to understand human beings on a deeper level.
So,
I went to school,
Went to college,
Got a degree in psychology,
A bachelor's degree in psychology,
And then I went on and got a master's degree in education with an emphasis in behavior analysis,
And I was in that world for almost 20 years.
I worked in a pediatric psychology clinic.
We treated every childhood behavioral disorder you could imagine,
But we focused primarily on early intervention for kids on the autism spectrum,
And that overlapped with me starting training in Krav Maga.
It's been almost 20 years now,
And eventually I went full-time doing that,
And I've been doing that ever since,
Like,
2015 now,
And,
You know,
It was primarily a business decision,
Quite frankly.
If you work in that psychology world forever,
You're not going to make a whole lot of money,
And it was kind of an easy switch at the time,
And quite frankly,
You know,
The skills that you learn in that context,
They apply no matter what you do in life,
And so these days I teach Krav Maga primarily full-time,
And then I teach breathing and meditation.
Well,
Right on.
Yeah,
That's kind of my bread and butter,
So to speak,
Where my major interest lies,
But before we get into that area,
I want to talk about behavioral analysis.
That is an interesting term,
You know,
And I'm sure it has far-reaching uses,
You know,
Some way more skillful than others,
I would imagine,
So talk about that.
What kind of things you were doing in your day practice with those on the spectrum,
Which is the,
I guess,
The popular terminology to use now,
Along with autism,
And I'd also like to,
What did you learn?
I'm always fascinated by this huge explosion of that.
Do you have any theories or,
You know,
What is the current prevailing sentiment on why there was a huge explosion,
And then if you have your own,
You know,
Unaffiliated theories or ideas about that as well,
I'm fascinated by that because it's a really big deal,
You know,
We've got the popularity of this one podcast about non-verbal,
Kids being non-verbal these,
And I don't know how deep you go into metaphysics,
But there's people on that end talking about certain things,
So it's a fascinating topic,
And then where is the crossover?
I guess I'm not immediately seeing it between that and,
How do you say it?
Krav Maga,
Yeah.
Krav Maga,
Okay,
So it's spelled like maga almost,
And I have a friend on the west coast who she swears by it,
She just absolutely loves this modality,
And it's fascinating for me,
Like the psychology of martial artists,
Especially those in the military and veterans,
Where it's,
I'm kind of the other end of the spectrum of this,
But I do advocate it for certain personality types,
And people of certain backgrounds,
I've seen how well it benefits them,
Because as you know,
All the things like discipline,
You use,
Not bystander,
But upstander,
I saw that,
I haven't heard that before,
It's a great word,
You know,
And there's so many benefits,
It's just,
It just doesn't seem for me,
But I've,
I like the training that is involved with it to some degree,
Now when it gets to things like IFC and people beating each other to a pulp for entertainment,
I just,
I write that off as another bread and circus,
But we know that that's not what martial arts is all about,
For the most part,
So anyway,
Yeah,
Those questions,
That's enough to chew on here for now.
I,
You know,
To me,
You're,
We're all behavior analysts,
We're either good at it or bad at it though,
Right,
And so I,
You know,
I really feel super lucky that I got that training so early in my life,
Because it,
It completely changed me and my perspective on human beings,
And what,
What,
Look,
If you,
If you look at it,
We're going to talk a lot about breathing,
I would imagine at some point today,
And breathing is a behavior,
Right,
Learning new skills,
Any behavior in martial arts,
So the idea behind behavior analysis is super simple,
If,
If we're trying to teach a new skill,
We figure out what is the most effective way to accelerate the learning of that skill,
And it really comes down to what are the incentives to learn it,
Ultimately,
Right,
And every person is different,
You have to figure out what makes each person tick,
Right,
So if you have 30 students in a class,
You can't interface with every student the same way,
You have to figure out the best approach for each student to teach them whatever skill it is that you're trying to teach,
So you have to figure out what motivates them and use that,
It's interesting too,
Because,
You know,
I,
I teach kids,
I teach adults,
I teach kids as young as four and a half,
I teach adults,
My oldest student is in his 70s right now,
Which is incredible,
Because he's a total beast,
He didn't,
He didn't learn Krav until he was 60 years old,
Right,
And up until then,
All he had ever done physically,
Really,
For exercise was run,
He ran five miles a day,
Right,
He was just trying to stay in shape,
And he gets involved in Krav Maga,
Becomes an incredible human being in terms of his fitness,
He's more fit than pretty much everybody in the gym,
It's so awesome to watch,
Just imagine at 70-something years old,
Being able to do dive rolls over barriers,
Things like that,
Right,
So to me,
That's really what it comes down to,
As far as Krav Maga is concerned,
I think everybody should be able to defend themselves,
Should,
Should have the capacity for violence to defend themselves,
And the people that they love,
But at the same time,
Balance it with things like breathing and meditation to be the best human being that you can possibly be,
But what I,
What I was going to say about teaching is,
You know,
You walk around the room of,
You have 20 students,
20 kids in a room of varying ages,
And you know,
Some people need a teacher,
A coach,
Who is kind of militaristic,
Almost,
Right,
They need that really firm voice,
They,
They need that firm approach,
And then you walk five feet to the next student,
And you have to have a soft approach,
And so you really need to know your students well,
So that you know what is the best method to teach them,
And it doesn't matter what it is that you're teaching,
Whether it's,
You know,
Teaching somebody how to defend a choke,
Or how to use their body as a weapon,
Or teach people how to breathe in a more effective way,
In a more efficient way.
I just saw this paper,
I don't know if you've seen this,
I just saw it for the first time,
It's so fascinating that they're,
They used,
They took 100 participants,
And they hooked them up to a machine that,
That tracked their breathing patterns over the course of just 24 hours,
And after that 24-hour period,
They had an AI analyze those breathing patterns,
And they were able to identify the individuals,
All 100 individuals,
Simply based on their breathing patterns,
With a accuracy rate of 96.
8 percent,
Which is mind-boggling,
Right?
So what,
Really,
What they were,
What their conclusion was,
Is that we all have a breathing print,
Similar to a fingerprint,
And what that means is that each person's breathing habits that they display throughout the day are conditioned for a whole variety of reasons.
There's social conditioning,
There's,
There's simple things like,
You know,
A person experiences a stressor,
An external stressor,
That has a direct impact on their nervous system,
And that,
That results in a certain breathing pattern,
And that varies from person to person,
Depending on what that person's,
What their goal is,
Ultimately.
Some people,
When they experience stress,
They don't want to experience it,
And so they'll breathe in a way that might be aberrant,
Right,
Might be deleterious over the course of their lifespan,
But in the moment,
It helps them dissociate from whatever it is that they're experiencing.
So a lot of people,
For example,
When they experience stressors,
They hyperventilate,
And that results in vasoconstriction,
Because they reduce carbon dioxide too much,
And they end up dissociating,
Because there's a restriction of blood flow,
Which equals a restriction in oxygen,
Which is incredible,
Because in like 30 seconds,
You can see this on a functional MRI machine,
In 30 seconds,
You can reduce blood flow to the brain by 40 to 60 percent,
Which causes dissociation,
Which is incredible,
Right?
So as a behavior analyst,
I look at everything from the perspective of anything that human beings do is behavior,
First and foremost,
And behavior,
All behavior,
Is conditionable.
And sometimes,
Unfortunately,
That conditioning results in patterns that may serve you in the moment,
But may be detrimental or harmful in the long run.
Well,
Right on.
Yeah,
No,
I haven't heard of this,
And it just makes me wonder about these studies in this,
And how important it is to be able to throw off AI by doing unpredictable things too,
Because,
Yeah,
But until they do pre-crime,
Right,
And then they say,
Oh,
This,
Our systems don't know what to do with this,
So we're going to go come check you out,
Because we're not predicting your behavior.
So this is,
Just use this as a responsible tool,
People,
Right?
But no,
What it does show us,
Though,
That there is this,
That it can recognize that,
But like you said,
A lot of this is an unconscious patterning,
And yeah,
And that we can consciously breathe or consciously be aware of it.
So,
And to me,
I'm tensing a little bit,
Because then,
You know,
I don't want,
It's easily misinterpreted as,
Oh,
I'm doing this wrong,
You know,
And then I get a little bit more nervous.
Okay,
This is another thing I have to do right,
Right?
But it's not like that,
Right?
It's not like that.
What we're talking about here is that,
Okay,
You know,
This is going on,
Whether we're aware of it or not all the time,
Or breathing,
Which is interesting.
I don't normally think of breathing as a behavior,
But it's on that threshold,
Right?
Like swallowing,
Breathing,
And blinking.
We have conscious control over it,
But when we don't,
Are consciously engaged with it,
So to speak,
It happens autonomously,
Right?
It happens automatically.
Now,
One of the things that scared me about a certain breathing technique that's really popular is,
You know,
I've been doing meditation every day for around two hours a day since 2012.
And I had a psychologist buddy of mine who was really into this particular type of breathing.
And he told me to do it,
Or he showed me how to do it,
And I did it once.
But I haven't got that afraid for quite a while.
And then I reflected on,
You know,
Why,
Why is,
Am I,
Why would I get afraid by something like this?
And what I,
What came up as an answer is,
This is like direct access to hacking the autonomous nervous system.
And I didn't have the,
I didn't feel responsible or knowledgeable enough to do this,
But the,
The in is there to go in and affect the atomic,
The auto,
Autotomic,
You know,
That goes on autopilot when we're not,
Well,
Even most people aren't at a level they can consciously engage with it at all.
But you know,
With a lot of meditation,
It seems like it becomes,
So I just,
It was real interesting to see that as an experience.
So of course I didn't do any of this anymore that I later saw an expose on this which is another interesting thing.
We didn't need to go into politics around that,
Especially since I don't even want to name the,
The,
The thing.
But yeah,
This is really,
Really,
Really.
Was it like a breathing heavy for a long period of time?
Exactly.
And then,
Then there's another,
Yeah.
And then you do another technique and then,
You know,
You can go in cold water and shoot yourself up with certain bacteria and heal from it or whatever like that.
Right.
So that's why,
Yeah.
But yeah,
Just saying,
Yeah,
This stuff seems fairly real to me.
I just didn't feel qualified to go in there and start messing around.
So yeah,
If people do that,
Cause we know advanced yogis,
They can go in and affect their heart rate,
You know,
All kinds of things.
And breathing's a little bit more accessible,
Right?
We have a pranayama and things like that where it's,
It's,
It's really well easier to do under conscious control.
And then we have traditional meditation where we're just observing the natural breath.
And to me,
That feels the most relaxing and yeah,
And develops awareness and mindfulness.
You're a huge mindfulness practitioner,
But I do want to come back to before we get into that,
The autism thing.
Did you want to comment on that one too?
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I didn't really answer your question in that regard.
It's okay.
I threw so many things out there.
So my understanding of your question,
Just correct me if I'm wrong.
You're asking my perspective on what in the world is going on with autism diagnosis and the prevalence that seems to have increased.
Yeah.
You know what?
I'm very aware of all of the theories out there,
Right?
Maybe we're better at diagnosing.
There's just so many things.
Maybe there truly are more people on the spectrum.
In my experience,
Just as a person who has interfaced with thousands and thousands of young students,
Right?
My perspective,
Well,
I'll just tell you this way.
When I first started in the field of behavior analysis,
Soon after I became what they call a supervising therapist,
I was one of the teachers for new therapists that would come through.
I was one of the trainers.
And this is back in 1999.
Back then,
The prevalence was three to five in 10,
000 kids.
And now the numbers are somewhere around one in 32.
So something huge changed.
And I can tell you right now that if you walk into any of our classes in Houston,
I teach in Houston and I teach in other places as well.
If you walk into any of those classes at any given day right now,
You're going to see almost 50% of the kids and sometimes as many as 60 to 70% of the kids are on the spectrum,
Which is completely different from what we saw 10,
15 years ago.
My best answer is I don't know what's causing it.
There's something like 100 genes that are involved in autism.
But it seems that those genes are turned on or off based on environmental factors.
There has to be some sort of environmental element.
And there's just so many things that are hitting our bodies at this point.
I don't know if you've seen,
This seems to be true,
The best I can tell it's true.
But there's this thing I've seen multiple times online talking about how 20 years ago,
If your house caught on fire,
You had 17 minutes to get out before your house was engulfed.
And now it's three to five minutes.
That's all you got.
Because of all the stuff that we have in our homes that is super flammable,
Because there's so many chemicals in everything that we buy for whatever reason,
Starting with our couches,
I mean,
It's kind of endless.
And then,
You know,
Just about every company,
Man,
This is so interesting,
Because I had kidney stones recently.
And I read this case study about this woman who developed kidney stones.
And they biopsied the kidney stones and figured out that they were 100% sand,
Silicon dioxide.
And it came from the supplements,
Nutritional supplements that she was taking.
Every supplement in her cabinet had silicon dioxide in it.
And it absorbs moisture,
It keeps your supplements on the shelf longer,
It extends the shelf life.
And if you're a supplement company,
You're thinking is,
You know what,
I put silicon dioxide in here,
It keeps my product on the shelf longer,
Makes it last longer.
And it's not really going to cause that much harm,
Because it's just a little bit.
But then if you consume a lot of those supplements,
Right from different companies,
And then for some people,
It's going to be a problem.
And I think autism is the same way,
That from even when you're in the womb,
Whatever your mom is consuming,
You're getting that as well,
Toxins and all.
And then the day you're born,
You're just inundated with so many things that it's just hard to describe.
It's shocking how many things are going in our bodies.
Everything from glyphosate,
Things that they use to keep bugs off of our food,
Whatever you want to say,
There's just so much.
And I think we would be shocked to realize what effect all of those chemicals are having over the course of the lifespan.
And I really think that they probably have an influence on the autism numbers.
But are we ever going to truly know?
Probably not.
Well,
I mean,
It's tough.
We could compare it to places where a lot of this stuff is banned.
Like I lived in Europe with my now ex-partner,
And it was so much easier to get non-GMO foods there.
I don't know how,
It's like some 5,
000 chemicals that are allowed in the United States in food,
But there's not nearly as many there,
Right?
And you talk about chemicals in everything,
In the housing and stuff like,
And then even if you go to get it fireproof,
Well,
Then there's an excuse to use fire-retardant chemicals,
Which probably aren't that healthy either.
And I didn't know about the Silicon Dock.
So we're under assault on multiple levels.
It's not to mention people who are EMF sensitive.
We're being bombarded with tons of amount of Wi-Fi,
Cell phones,
Satellites,
Who knows what other kinds of wireless technology,
Just different things,
Experimental injections in a way that didn't normally pass rigor,
And so that other things do.
So it's just on and on and on.
And then we talk about epigenetics,
And that is a really vast,
Complex field that I don't think we,
It's relatively new,
Turning certain things on and off,
And not everything is genetic either.
And we're just talking about the physical things that we can study with scientific instruments.
So,
You know,
On such a massive scale,
I wonder about all the mysteries and the unseen that we just don't know about how,
You know,
Certain generational differences and,
You know,
How do we get here?
Why are we here?
You know,
These big questions,
Where are we going?
You know,
So it's not even to even scratch the surface of that vast mystery either.
So yeah,
It's,
I really appreciate it.
At the very least,
It doesn't matter what kind of diagnosis people have.
It just makes sense to me and you,
And I'm sure tons of other people,
That there's so much in things that we either don't know about,
Some people think it's more insidious,
But that aren't really necessary for well-being that we can prove from other areas of the world too.
So yeah,
It seems like a no-brainer to me to work on this.
We do at least have a choice.
I mean,
We can do a lot of things.
It's more expensive a lot of times,
But of course it always starts with awareness,
Education,
And yeah,
Be willing to do things that might not be as simple and convenient sometimes for our well-being,
Especially in the long term.
Absolutely.
Well,
I'm not getting overly obsessed about it either,
So.
Well,
An interesting data point in this regard that points to some sort of environmental variable is that if a child is born to a mother who is obese,
That child is like two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism,
Which potentially suggests that whatever the family is consuming is playing a role in some capacity or some other variable that we can't identify.
But that to me is a data point that suggests that there's something going on in potentially the American diet,
The typical American diet that is playing a role.
Totally.
I would totally agree.
And then there's also,
I think some,
And I don't know for sure,
And this is not health advice either here,
That,
You know,
I thought some practitioners have reported success with changing diet,
You know,
And they've had a lot of success on behavioral changes and things like that too.
And,
You know,
There is a lot of brilliance,
I think,
Too,
That comes along with these kids as well.
It's just different from what we associate as well-being too.
So not to encourage,
You know,
More autism or anything,
It's just really interesting to see some of the skill sets,
Different skill sets that they have and how it just doesn't fit in us,
You know,
Older generation's boxes on how things should be or things like that too,
Which is another kind of confusing factor in all this,
You know.
Well,
And it's,
You know,
It's an interesting challenge.
I just watched one of the world-renowned researchers in the field of autism talking about the person interviewing him asked,
You know,
What can we do to reduce autism?
And he said,
We don't really want to do that.
And,
You know,
It's interesting because there's this idea that,
You know,
We,
There's a common myth to me that people on the autism spectrum in general have a certain set of skills that everybody else would like to have.
But the reality is a good portion of them aren't able to function in the real world as adults,
Something like 85% of people on the autism spectrum as adults can't earn a living,
They don't have a job.
And I don't think it's just because they're,
People see them and like,
Oh,
They're on the autism spectrum,
It's because they're not able to function in the normal work environment for a whole list of reasons.
But a lot of them just aren't able to function well enough in that type of environment.
And that's a reality that we have to accept and figure out along the way.
But it seems to me if we would be best served as a country,
As a community,
As a people to figure out what's going on there so that we can reduce the incidence of autism,
But at the same time,
Identify people who do have a certain set of skills and provide them with the support so that they can be functioning members of society because that's huge for them.
Well,
Totally.
I talked to,
And I would just say I agree with that as well.
It's just,
It's such a complex issue.
And this is where I turned to the woo-woo,
Which it's not for everybody and people don't want to hear this or consider it.
And that's totally okay too.
And there's really no way to prove any of that.
But maybe it can shed light on certain things,
But then it also,
I feel has to come along with some practical actionable suggestions as well,
Because it doesn't matter how esoteric or de-occulted we can get things if there's no solution to it.
Well,
Then it could potentially just put people in more fear or more wrong view and things like this.
So yeah,
It has to,
I think it feel,
Well,
What are we going to do about it?
Even if we can go into those waters,
But yeah.
And I talked to a gal the other day who is,
It's called highly energetically sensitive and just having the environment.
We know this is a big one with kids and just like artificial lighting and certain sounds and things like that.
To me,
It almost seems like a wake-up call for people that were considered normal,
Whatever the heck that means,
Right?
That maybe we're not living like we just talked about in the most healthy way.
I mean,
If certain,
Have these alert systems going off for danger and maybe it's not,
But what is that saying to those of us who are just,
Oh,
No big deal,
Just blowing off something and think,
Oh,
That's ridiculous.
I don't need to take a look at that or consider that.
That's not something I want to do or whatever.
So I think,
Yeah,
We can learn from each other perhaps.
And I think that's what we're in the process of doing that.
Well,
Right on.
So now let's talk about breathing and the,
I guess the psychology around breathing because I don't normally think of it this way and use this term nervous apes,
Which I looked online for this of where the provenance for that might've been.
And all it was coming up with was like some social media site where people were doing the certain trading on stocks and referring to themselves as apes.
And then this was rebellious and whatever term it is,
This rebellion going up against hedge funds or something.
And they say the nervous apes,
I don't know if that's where you got this term from or yeah,
Tell us about it.
But I mean,
It really evokes a really vivid imagery of,
We're mammals and some people say we're not too far removed from like primates.
I've got my white monkey organic green tea here too for this.
And you just kind of look at people sometimes and they're like neuroticism and they're excessive worrying about things that other people would just say,
This is completely pointless.
You're wasting a lot of life force energy.
Just chill out and relax a little bit.
Worry is the worst kind of fantasy.
It hasn't happened yet.
It's just a story in your mind.
You could fantasize about something more pleasant,
But yeah,
Tell the audience and me about this term.
What inspired this term?
Yeah,
Honestly,
It was a psychologist on the scene when I started doing this type of work.
It was during,
Right when COVID started,
I was already teaching meditation to a small group of kiddos at the school that I teach at in Houston.
We call it the master program.
It's for kids who really serious.
They have a long-term mindset in terms of their training in Krav Maga.
Their goal when they come in,
Say they come in at 10 years old,
They want to be a part of this program.
They want to earn their junior black belt before they graduate high school.
We put them in this program to where they're all training together.
It helps accelerate their skills.
So it's a skill acceleration program in Krav Maga,
But it's also,
We teach breathing,
Meditation,
Leadership skills,
That type of thing.
When COVID started and we shut down,
I decided to teach what I was teaching them,
The meditation,
To my community,
The Krav Maga community for free for the year of 2020,
Just to keep the community together and help everybody just kind of navigate what was going on during COVID.
I heard a psychologist say,
You know,
We're nervous apes,
Essentially.
Honestly,
The first time I heard him say that,
I was like,
That would be a really great band name.
I've been in music my whole life.
After a little bit,
I was like,
That's just what I'm going to brand myself as,
As far as what I do.
It's just kind of a fun name.
It's ear-catching for a lot of people.
I appreciate you asking that question.
If you think about it,
In a lot of ways,
What we're doing when we engage in breathing and meditation practices,
We are trying to overcome some of the programming that we have genetically,
Just evolutionarily,
However you want to look at it.
We come into this world with a certain skill set,
Certain priming,
A certain underlying way of being because we are animals.
That's oftentimes anxiety,
Right?
Almost everybody comes to breathing and meditation because they want to feel better.
They want to feel less anxious.
They want to be able to tap into rest in the body,
Those types of things.
We're constantly trying to transcend some of our natural wiring,
Like the negativity bias,
Right?
We come into this world.
I don't know if you've seen the work,
The research that says it's by three months old.
Worldwide,
This is worldwide research.
This is a universal human issue that the negativity bias shows up,
And it stays with us for the rest of our life.
That's one of the things that,
To me,
We're trying to balance out as we are engaged in breathing and meditation practices.
At least that was the case for me.
That's what I find with most people that I work with.
That's what they're trying to do.
The negativity bias is really important,
I feel.
Yeah.
Probably everybody listening is familiar with that.
It served us well,
Right?
Because we would have to respond to real threats,
Looking for things that were going to attack us physically as we walked about.
That's what they say,
And it seems to make sense.
Now,
That negativity bias is being triggered by less physical threats.
It's still there,
Though.
Sometimes it's falsely turned on.
I wonder,
Like you said,
It's going to be there for the rest of our lives.
Maybe,
Maybe not,
But let's just say it is,
Because then we'd have to work with it either way.
Well,
Then what do we do about it?
How do we turn this into an opportunity instead of a hindrance?
I think one of the ways I look at it is,
It will sharpen my discernment skills.
Is this a legitimate threat or not?
Then how do I respond to it?
Either way.
Then the other thing is,
I think it could be used to strengthen our weaknesses,
Too.
Instead of trying to suppress it,
Pretend it doesn't exist,
Use it to identify something.
Judgmentalism is a big thing in spiritual circles,
Or being judgment,
Judging someone.
It's tough,
Because we want these skill of discernment,
But we also don't want to just judge people willy-nilly.
It's almost automatic a lot of times,
Maybe due to our past conditioning and causes and conditions.
I like this perspective change by a teacher saying,
You're only being judgmental if I'm receiving satisfaction for passing a judgment on another,
Like feeling better about myself and building myself up.
That's judgmentalism.
This thing,
As soon as I'm even really conscious of not wanting to do it,
To me,
That's not being judgmental.
In a sense,
It can identify,
Okay,
I see and honor that,
Your Buddha nature,
Your divinity or whatever,
But that's just not for me.
It's not for me right now.
It's not saying it's good or bad or otherwise.
It's just a recognition that that's not for me.
It's not that I feel better about myself for passing that value judgment or whatever we want to call it.
I found that really helpful to putting this in perspective with negativity bias.
Friendship is really important too,
Because honest feedback from someone I really admire is so valuable,
More valuable than a mountain of gold,
Because not everybody's going to be that honest and helpful with their feedback and kind and useful with it.
It's very valuable,
Especially for those blind spots that I have that I'm not seeing.
I welcome that.
At the same time,
I realize or practice that not everyone's open to that and to ask their permission before giving that too.
That's how I found it.
Yeah,
What have you learned?
How do you deal with negativity bias and how do you work with that too?
Well,
I love what you brought up.
You mentioned that you hear people talk about the negativity bias and that it was essential in particular,
Way back in the day,
Ancient days,
Because we were running from saber-toothed tigers.
That is true,
But at the same time,
Probably even more so back then than now,
There was a social element to it.
That's really where we're stuck now in the modern world is we have these oversized reactions in our nervous system to social issues.
We're concerned about being left out,
That type of thing.
That was important back then as well,
Probably more important because if you were ostracized from the group,
You were more likely to die from that saber-toothed tiger because you didn't have the group to help you.
It is true that that system was developed for that reason,
But it's also true that it was developed so that we maintain that social cohesion.
Now,
Although we're not running from saber-toothed tigers,
The world is still quite scary at times because we don't want to be ostracized.
These days with the Internet,
It used to be when I was a kid,
If you were bullied at school,
Home was a sanctuary.
Your neighborhood where you lived was more of a sanctuary.
Now,
The kids can't escape it.
They go home and then they get online and then they're being bullied online.
That system still serves us in a lot of ways.
I think one of the things to acknowledge is that it serves us.
It's a good thing.
I had this moment because I was responsible for a long time where I teach in Houston to do the television spots.
If a woman,
For example,
Was attacked while she was jogging in a park,
In a local park,
The news agencies would call us and say,
Hey,
Would you like to do a new spot on how women can defend themselves in the park while they're jogging?
I remember this one time.
That stuff always terrified me,
To go on television in a big city like that.
You don't know.
In your head,
There's millions of people watching,
That type of thing.
Sometimes these spots were pre-recorded.
Sometimes they were live.
Sometimes they would call you days ahead.
This particular time,
They called and said,
You have 15 minutes.
We'll be there in 15 minutes.
Be ready.
You can imagine all the things going on in my head.
It was all me,
Me,
Me.
I'm going to mess up.
How am I going to look?
Oh,
No.
What am I going to say that's going to make me look stupid?
There's just so many things going on.
There goes my heart rate.
My heart rate skyrockets.
My breathing patterns change.
I'm miserable.
This was a pivotal moment for me because my mindfulness kicked in and all of the skills converged.
It was a beautiful moment for me where I just realized,
Hey,
Man,
It's all me,
Me,
Me right now.
It's all I,
I,
I,
All this nonsense.
I sat down against the wall.
I just reframed everything.
I got control of my nervous system,
First and foremost,
Through breathing.
Then I looked at the cognition.
What was going on in my head?
I adjusted it from me,
I,
I'm having,
I'm scared.
I'm going to mess up.
How am I going to look?
To something along the lines of,
Hey,
These people are contacting me because they think I have a skill set that can be useful for other people.
I just shifted it from focusing on myself to focusing on how can I be a blessing to the people that might be watching this?
And the moment I did that,
My nervous system adjusted.
I was still nervous,
But I wasn't so nervous that I was going to,
It was going to be a problem for me.
Right?
So that's a perfect moment where the,
The,
The negativity bias,
The nervous ape in me was very scared.
But I was able to tamp it down enough to where I could be skillful.
And that to me is,
That's a superpower as far as I'm concerned.
Absolutely.
And just to give on your side,
Even more,
I mean,
We look at the TV news media and they're out to get people basically,
You know,
I mean,
A lot of it is fear,
Fear,
Fear,
You know,
Be afraid so we can say people pay attention.
It's it's not a dog bites man,
But man bites dog,
Right?
And get people riled up so they'll be in a state of anxiety.
And so that's their whole modus operandi.
So you're going up against that too.
Don't forget that,
Right?
And the,
The key part to that is your intentionality.
It doesn't matter what other people are doing so much,
You know,
We can't control them.
But it's you,
When you had that shift from intention,
How am I going to be of service and benefit?
Then it's up to,
You know,
We can't control other people.
So that's,
That's on them.
But yeah,
When that,
That,
That intentionality,
I think is really important that that's what drives,
You know,
In these teachings,
Comma,
Are cause and effect when,
When we think,
Speak or act intentionally,
Be it skillful or unskillful,
It's going to usually reap either skillful or unskillful effects.
So yeah,
Yeah,
It's absolutely vital.
So I've,
I'm really pleased to see that like me,
I would probably say,
No,
I don't want to do that.
You know,
I would just because it would be too much of a trouble.
So I really admire and just like,
I wouldn't have this conversation because I'm not really into martial arts and I,
The things that I usually shy away to on instinct,
Then I need to say,
Okay,
I need to come back to this because you know,
There's,
There's something here that I want to explore.
And so maybe that leads me to my next point is you were maybe talk about your loving kindness experience,
Which,
And then,
Yeah,
Which maybe somewhat similar parallels to what I just said.
And also to me,
It helped me explain what I'm feeling or assuming is a little bit of cognitive dissonance between loving kindness,
Which is at least the version that I'm familiar with is,
Is based on a well-wishing towards everyone and protecting all living beings without any kind of harm.
You know,
It's,
It's kind of a sentiment,
But then there is a streetwise version of some for loving kindness that I learned too,
That if it's basically the sentiment of may this guy or gal realize the errors of their ways and change for their own wellbeing and that of others.
So it's not sugarcoating or being unrealistic.
I mean,
It's,
It's the hard facts of wishing wellbeing for them who,
Who are behaving particularly in a way that's helpful for themselves and others.
So,
So that's the way I,
One of the ways I square that practice,
But yeah,
Talk about this.
And I'll just say,
I,
Even though I won't have any weapons or I don't,
It's easy for me because I don't have a wife and kids at this point.
So,
So it's easier for me to be radically,
You know,
Non-violent in a way,
You know,
Non-harming.
So it doesn't apply to everybody,
But I do protect,
I mean,
I do support second amendment because everyone has,
Who am I to say someone can't protect themselves and their loved ones?
You know,
That's,
That's insane to not be everyone that's called a non-aggression principle.
And I haven't met anyone that's been against that.
We don't have the right to aggress on another,
But we do have a right to protect ourselves once aggressed upon.
Right.
So,
Yeah.
So I just want to put that out there that I'm not like a complete woo-woo hippie on this and,
You know,
A little bit radical,
But,
But not unreasonable.
I think so.
Well,
When I was,
When I was young,
You know,
The,
The,
The day I went to high school,
I was very small.
Actually the day I moved to Houston,
I was,
I was 13 years old.
And the day I moved to Houston,
The moving truck was still in the front,
In front of the house.
I took my bike off the,
Out of the truck,
Rode around the neighborhood just to explore first time,
You know,
10 minutes around the neighborhood just to check it out.
And by the time I got back to my house,
The neighborhood bully and all of his goons were already chasing me down.
And that,
That went on for two years until they finally tricked me.
Right.
And ultimately I got,
I got beat to a pulp because what,
What they did,
It was a,
It was a great trick.
It was a good learning experience for me.
He sent one of his,
His buddies to the door and knock,
They knocked on the door.
I answer and they're like,
Hey,
Once you come out and play football,
Water under the bridge,
No big deal.
I walk outside.
He rolls up on his bike,
Hops off his bike,
Extends his hand to shake my hand.
And when I go to shake his hand,
He punches me in the face.
Right.
And then he proceeded to just wail on me.
He probably hit me 40 times.
Right.
And the only reason that fight stopped is because a neighbor saw it and came over and pulled him off of me.
Right.
The first,
The first punch I was so stunned.
There was no way I could,
I could fight back.
So that was a huge learning experience for me.
Then I go to high school,
First day of high school,
Not kidding,
Five minutes in because I was so small.
I was also weird.
I moved from a small town.
I had,
I dressed differently.
Although I was from Texas,
I had a really deep Texas accent.
So everything about me was,
Was different.
And,
And so what ended up happening five minutes in is an upperclassman grabbed my wrists,
Lifted me off the ground and pinned me against the wall.
So my feet are dangling.
I'm pinned against the wall and several other people came up and started hitting me in the body.
Right.
And that went on for a couple of years.
It was brutal.
And,
You know,
What I,
What I noticed at once I graduated high school,
Moved on with life and started working with kids in self-defense.
What I figured out was that the schools were teaching kids that even if you are being attacked in that way,
You can't defend yourself.
You'll get in just as much trouble as the bully if you defend yourself,
Which seems completely insane to me.
Right.
So if a,
If a bully is choking you against the locker,
You're supposed to just let them choke you.
So to me,
There,
There are clear lines where violence is the only option.
Otherwise it's death.
Right.
And so that's,
That's really my focus.
What,
Where's the context where it is appropriate for you to use physical violence to protect your own life or quality of life and the quality of life of somebody else and,
And be skilled in that regard,
But at the same time,
Be a balanced,
I like to call it being a balanced warrior.
Right.
So you have that capacity,
But you,
You,
You channel it only when it's appropriate.
Otherwise you,
You're a peaceful human being and you do the best you can to acquire the skills to be a skillful human in all capacities.
Right.
And I just feel like this,
This,
This just so essential.
And what I found is that quite frankly,
There's this,
This myth or this belief that people carry around a preconception that those who engage in things like martial arts are more violent people.
And what I found is that the opposite is true,
That the more a kid trains in martial arts,
In self-defense training,
The less likely they are to engage in inappropriate violence for a whole list of reasons.
But especially if you're doing what we're trying to do,
Where we're,
We're trying to develop balanced warriors in the process.
Yeah.
I totally agree with that.
The,
The discipline,
The uprightness,
You know,
The,
The,
The knowing discernment of when to use it.
And when not,
There's a code of ethics in you.
So I totally agree with that.
And since I don't have kids and actively work with kids,
Obviously,
You know I want to know about this bullying thing,
Because I guess I was lucky.
I did have a few instances,
One more significant than others that I'm not interested in sharing right now,
You know,
But it's,
You know,
This feeling and you're,
You've dealt with this.
But relatively overall,
I think I came out fortunate,
You know,
But this is such a hard time in life.
I would not want to go through adolescence again.
Kids are buttheads,
You know,
A lot of kids are buttheads and it's not,
Sometimes it's not just as,
You know,
You know,
Funny as that either.
I mean,
There's like severe abuse and trauma involved,
You know,
Because what's usually when people say things to us,
A lot of times it's a reflection of what's been said to them,
Or the way people treat us is a reflection of what's been done to them.
We have the drama triangle of bully,
Victim and hero,
You know,
And how they move around from these different,
This drama triangle too.
So just what have you learned about in general,
About the just bullies in general?
And,
You know,
It's kind of always been there.
And like you mentioned earlier,
It's kind of taking a different form now where you can't even escape it because there's so much of the world online as well.
So how has it changed?
Like,
What are some of the fundamentals around it as well?
And then what are some other things besides having this self-confidence and know-how of a skill in martial arts to deal with it?
Are there other tactics and things that you teach and have learned around this?
Because yeah,
It breaks my heart to see kids have to go through this,
You know,
And I just have a niece and nephew and,
You know,
Luckily they haven't,
As far as I know,
They haven't gone through this,
Fortunate.
So yeah.
I will say that one of the primary issues that I encounter is that kids will confide in me in terms of what's going on at school,
Right?
But they're terrified to tell their parents because,
And so there's probably a lot more kids being bullied than we will ever know because they don't want to tell anybody.
They're afraid if they tell their parents,
Then their parents are going to go to the school,
They're going to talk to somebody,
And then the kid is going to be known as a snitch.
And I got news for you.
You know,
The school that I teach at in Houston,
We're nestled between two of the richest neighborhoods per capita in the United States.
Billionaires live two streets down,
Right?
The neighborhood behind us,
It's the richest and most educated neighborhood per capita in the United States.
And I had a group of five-year-olds come in for a anti-bully seminar one time.
And I started the seminar like this with this group of five-year-olds with their parents in the room,
Right?
I said,
Finish this statement,
Snitches get,
And all of the kids said stitches.
Five years old.
That's how early this conditioning starts,
Right?
And so,
You know,
They spend their entire elementary,
Middle school,
High school careers knowing that fact.
So,
I've worked with kids who are literally tortured every day at school,
Not only physically,
But also psychologically.
I'll give you an example that's happening right now,
A boy that is very skilled in terms of defending himself.
And there's videos of him helping protect other kids who are being beat up at school.
But the bullies that bully him because he's big and they know he's skilled,
I call them drive-by bullies,
Right?
Where they're really good at running up,
Doing something terrible to him,
And then making space.
And sometimes the bully will even have a camera to make it look like the person he just bullied is the aggressor.
And so,
You know,
This particular kid,
They're bullying him psychologically by saying things,
And this is intense,
Saying things like,
If you don't do blank right now,
Which is some sort of terrible challenge at school,
Right,
That is stupid and dangerous,
We're going to rape your sister.
Right?
So,
That's terrible psychological bullying.
And he kept that internal for years,
But the stress of that was resulting in bad behaviors on his part,
Not in school,
Outside of school,
Because he was so stressed and he felt like he had no way out,
Right?
So,
He felt like he was completely trapped,
Still does,
Right?
Blackmail and like an ultimatum and blackmail,
Yeah.
Well,
In the state of Texas,
For example,
It wasn't until I think it was 2012,
2013,
Where it was determined that schools can no longer have a zero tolerance policy for self-defense.
Because Georgia,
The state of Georgia actually spearheaded this with a Georgia Supreme Court case that said,
Look,
If you have a right in the state to protect yourself,
Then you have that right regardless of where you are in the state,
Including school.
But the schools,
Once that was lifted in the state of Texas,
So it is now illegal for a school to have a zero tolerance policy in the state of Texas,
Has been for over a decade,
But they don't inform families of that.
They make the kids still believe that there's a zero tolerance policy.
But by law,
Schools have to determine in each case whether there was a victim that was being bullied.
And if they don't do that,
They're violating the law,
Right?
And so what's happened is a whole generation,
Probably now two generations of kids have been taught to just take abuse.
And that is not,
That is not right.
That is not good for our society.
Abuse is never okay.
It's just end of sentences,
Full stop,
You know,
It's never okay.
So it's,
Yeah,
It's,
It's,
It's wild.
And this leads me to another thing here.
We were going to get into breathing and I think we still can.
If you've trauma,
So a lot of this is traumatizing.
We know that what might be traumatizing for one is no big deal to another.
So there's a spectrum there,
But like the kind of the normal spiritual karate moves,
I say don't really work on severe trauma for me,
You know,
Like turn towards it instead of away from it,
Because that could be re-traumatizing for some,
You know,
Or like,
There's some other ones that are just not coming to me now,
But it's a whole different kind of animal in a way.
So have you,
And then we get to really extreme things like RAMCOA,
I don't know if you're familiar with this acronym,
Ritualized abuse,
Mind control,
And organized abuse.
And so this is really severe things that,
I mean,
Only really specialized therapists can get into.
And I won't go into that now,
But like when we're dealing with stuff on that level,
It's of course an entirely different thing.
And a lot of that,
I just,
I'll just,
There's no need to go into that now because it's a whole huge thing that doesn't apply.
Thank goodness,
At least that we know of much to daily life,
But severe cases.
But,
You know,
When things are out there like that,
Like it's,
I wonder what the collective influence it has on it as well.
And as these kids,
You know,
That are bullied,
I mean,
I wonder their parents and what,
You know,
How their parents deal with it and what they say and how honest they are about what's going on and maybe even their own parents and generationally too.
It's really a tough one.
You're welcome to say anything else about that.
And then I want to get into,
Well,
I mean,
Maybe a transition here is do you work with kids?
How do you work with breath work and breathing and meditation to address this alongside the martial arts?
What's to say?
Yeah,
Well,
Just to kind of wrap a bow on the bullying situation.
I think it's a misunderstanding of bullying to say that bullies bully because they were traumatized or bullies bully because their home life is bad.
Look,
The reality is that school is in a lot of ways for kids,
For a lot of kids that are being bullied,
It's a prison.
They didn't choose to go there.
They're there with people that don't share their values and their family's values potentially.
And they're stuck there for a certain period of time.
I remember for me,
When I finally got out of high school,
There was this immediate sense of relief because I realized,
Wow,
I'll never be in that environment again.
That artificial environment no longer exists for me.
And what people don't realize is that school is a lot like prisons in the sense that the guards don't control the prison.
The prisoners control the prison and the prisoners will let you know that when they decide to take over the prison,
Right?
And so as much as schools like to pretend that the teachers and the administration are in control,
It's a facade.
It's not true.
I went and did an anti-bully talk at this elementary school one time because they had anti-bully week.
And the person who was escorting me to the auditorium,
Where they had probably 200 elementary school kids waiting for me to talk to them,
I asked the woman on the way there because I saw all the signs that said,
This is a bully-free zone.
I said,
Well,
You have me here,
But you have,
This is a bully-free zone.
Why am I here if it's a bully-free zone?
Is there bullying going on in your school?
And she said,
Absolutely not.
And so in front of her,
The first thing I said to the whole group of kids,
I said,
Raise your hand if you've been bullied in the last 30 days.
And 80% of the kids put their hands up.
And I looked at her,
But that just shows the layer of delusion that people have built around this issue.
And that takes me to the last part,
Which is,
If you've ever seen Lord of the Flies,
The movie,
Or read the book,
It doesn't have to come from the family.
It doesn't have to come from the parents.
When you put children of all ages in a building together,
And they're really in control,
Not the adults,
What's going to happen is they're going to fight for dominance in some capacity.
That's just a fact of human nature.
And so it's a denial of human nature to say it in any other way.
I can tell you that after I was abused,
I'll be honest,
I became a bully myself for a couple of years,
And I hate it.
I regret it.
And that was not consistent with my family's values.
Kids behave all the time in ways that are not consistent with their family's values.
My parents would have been horrified had they known what I did in school.
And I think that's the case for a lot of people.
Thanks for driving this home,
Actually,
Because you're right.
I'm just a little bit dumbfounded how I didn't see that at least as 50% at the minimum as well.
I think our role models are really important,
And what they actually do,
Not just what they say,
Is really important too.
Now I'm kind of not flashing back to high school,
But having memories.
And yeah,
Lord of the Flies is a really good way to put it,
Because yeah,
The kids are amongst themselves more times than not,
Or it's just so far removed from what the teacher is and what they say.
And we know reverse psychology and all the lot too.
Yeah,
So absolutely vital there too.
See,
I even was under that delusion.
How did I not notice that before I said that,
That that was a huge aspect of it?
I just kind of bought into the same kind of delusion that the teacher said that it's not kind of pushing the blame out,
But this is like troops on the ground kind of thing,
Peer group stuff.
It's just like if you went to prison tomorrow,
You're going to be put in a situation where maybe you're going to have to do something just to survive that you wouldn't normally do.
And that's what ends up happening with a lot of kids.
That's what happened to me.
I had to become something that I never wanted to be,
Just to be able to make it through and get out of that environment eventually,
Right?
And that's really sad.
That's the case for so many kids.
But then there's other kids that just feel like because of the conditioning of the school rules and all of that,
They feel handcuffed and unable to do anything despite their skill level,
Which is really sad because I've trained a lot of kids that are very skilled,
But they're terrified to use their skills at school,
Mostly because they're afraid of getting in trouble.
And that should never be the case.
So all I know to do for them is provide them with a sanctuary.
When they come train with us,
They have a sanctuary,
And then they have a sounding board.
They can talk about what's going on.
And then we can also give them the skills to be able to manage their nervous system when these things are coming up and to be as skillful as they possibly can be.
And that's where the organization comes in.
That's right.
And I'm thinking back,
And I didn't have at least be able to run away,
But then of course,
They'll get bullied for being sissies and running away,
Right?
And this is where I think that the power of the voice and confronting truth can be an assistance as well.
And of course,
Friendship,
Right?
If you have friends there and numbers,
Right,
And you go to,
And then the bravery to courage to,
And I was trying to think of snitches gets,
I was like,
Oh,
I know there's some kind of thing to fill in there that's really popular,
But I wasn't even remembering it.
And I'm just so crazy how five-year-olds,
All of them knew that.
Unbelievable.
But yeah,
So,
I mean,
You could go and do unconventional warfare,
I think would be one way,
You know,
But you address it this way.
So let's,
Let's talk about this kind of the state of fear.
I mean,
Where I really saw is during the lockdowns,
At least for a few months there,
Where I think I,
With my meditation practice,
I handled it really good,
But like I would go into certain stores without a mask or with,
I cut out a sleeve and I put,
Cause it was ridiculous.
It was kind of an artistic thing saying this is,
This is pointless.
And it also is kind of roll up your sleeve to get a shot with their planning.
I don't know,
But I mean,
I was getting these,
These looks like people wanted to kill me because they thought I was endangering their lives.
I mean,
I've never seen,
Well,
Of course it was my own kind of projection of them,
Maybe a little bit,
Who knows,
But I was just getting the sense,
Like I was endangering their lives,
You know?
And the psychology that happened during that thing with the huge divide too,
Of people that were pro this or anti this and the behavior on both sides was just nothing to be proud of.
But I get it.
I mean,
It was unprecedented.
There was no reference point for this.
The world changed overnight and we really got to see kind of what we were made of in certain ways.
Right?
So it was a really interesting time to look at the,
The fear levels and how that fear affects kind of our immune system,
I would say,
Because if we're run ragged all the time,
The body doesn't have time for the rest and digest,
You know,
And the things that are,
I guess,
Immune system or whatever we want to call it,
Need to catch up and to heal.
So yeah,
To me it makes,
It makes common,
It's common sense how this can address kind of fear and also confidence,
I think as well.
So how do you work with,
And I'm not a huge breathwork practitioner.
I just want to know kind of what kind of breathwork techniques do you use and then what do you do in meditation for the most part?
Well,
Just to,
Just to go back to what you started to mention earlier about breathwork,
Right?
In quotes and the things like super ventilation,
You know,
Breathing really deep and fast and heavy for many minutes at a time.
I don't teach that.
I've done that.
I've had profound experiences doing that.
I've done it many times.
I've taught it a couple of times,
But I'm not a fan of it for a whole list of reasons.
And again,
Because breathing is behavior,
Here's,
There's a couple of myths around that type of breathing that I just don't like and some languaging that people use that I just don't like.
And it,
This is why I don't,
I don't like to teach it very often,
Very seldom.
And with a select group of people that I know that are really interested in it,
Then I'm certified in it and I can help,
Help them through it and all that stuff.
Right.
But there's,
There's this languaging where people say,
You get these profound effects.
Like I had a rebirthing experience that I never expected.
Right.
That was super intense.
And sometimes that type of breathing is called rebirthing,
Right?
I've had many experiences similar to that.
But people say the reason that's happening is because you're oxygenating the brain.
That is,
That couldn't be further from the truth.
That is,
That is either ignorance or a lie.
I don't know which one,
But it's just not true.
What's actually happening is as you breathe that much,
You're off gassing CO2,
Which constricts the blood vessels,
Which reduces blood flow,
Which reduces oxygen to the brain.
And it's,
It's the reduction of oxygen to the brain that is causing those effects,
Uh,
With that vessel constriction.
And quite frankly,
You don't really know if you work with a whole lot of people over the course of time,
You're not sure how each individual is going to respond to that and whether it's going to be good or bad.
Right.
And sometimes it could be really bad,
Uh,
Even,
Even dangerous.
Depending on who can pass out if they're in water,
Right.
And drowned.
I've,
I've heard definitely never do it,
Do it in water.
And the people that promote that are pretty,
Pretty vocal about that,
But people still,
For whatever reason,
Will do that heavy breathing before they,
Uh,
While they're in a hot tub or,
Or a ice bath or whatever,
Very dangerous,
Very bad idea.
Um,
But what's interesting about it is oftentimes after a person engages in that type of breathing for say 30,
45 minutes,
And then they come down afterward,
They are still over breathing for hours after afterward,
When they go into their daily life,
Which is,
Is not a good thing.
If that becomes a habit,
Uh,
Because the reality is that we need a certain level of CO2 in the blood in order for oxygen to,
To be released from the hemoglobin into the tissues of the body.
And this has profound impact.
Um,
There's a researcher that recently wrote a paper,
Um,
Saying,
Talking about this very thing.
He's an exercise physiologist,
PhD in exercise physiology.
And,
Um,
To give a little backstory on this,
Uh,
I used to,
Uh,
Teach Krav Maga to,
Uh,
A guy who is the cardiologist for all the professional sports teams in Houston,
Every professional sports team,
Sports team.
I went to dinner with him one night,
We were having a conversation.
Uh,
I was just asking him,
What's it like to work with such incredible athletes?
And along the way,
I was like,
You know,
I got a question.
Why do you see marathon runners drop dead after they crossed the finish line of a marathon?
And his answer was,
Ah,
It's just the nature of the beast,
Right?
Um,
That,
Uh,
If you,
If you do that type of exercise for decades,
Uh,
And you run those distances like they do,
Uh,
It's just part of the risk,
Right?
Comes with the territory.
And that didn't sit well with me as a complete answer.
It sounded like a answer a doctor would give when they they're not real sure,
Which is fair,
Right?
Uh,
Fast forward 15 years,
Uh,
This researcher wrote a paper,
I think it was December of last year.
And he said,
No,
No,
No.
Here's what's happening.
Most likely is that people are breathing too much for the metabolic demands of the activity that they're engaged in.
Like you and I right now,
We're,
We're just sitting or stay I'm standing.
Um,
And there's not,
You know,
Super high stress.
We're not running.
Right.
And so we're breathing 12 to 15 times a minute.
But if you and I suddenly changed our breathing pattern to 30 breaths per minute,
What's going to happen is our heart rate is going to skyrocket.
It may go up 30 to 50 points in 30 seconds.
That's all it takes,
Um,
For the heart rate to go up that high.
And the reason being is because it's going to,
It's going to spike the heart rate because your body,
You're sending a message to your brain that there's an emergency essentially,
Right?
So your body is preparing for that emergency.
At the same time,
You're getting that vasoconstriction.
And I mentioned before that in 30 seconds,
You get 40 to 60% decrease in oxygen to the brain.
But what people don't think is that's also happening in the heart.
So if you're running,
Okay.
And your mouth is open,
Which is probably going to be,
If you're running fast,
You can over-breathe even though you're running and should be breathing heavier because of the activity.
If you over-breathe for the act,
For the metabolic demands of the activity of running,
What's going to happen is you're going to get that vasoconstriction.
You're going to get a reduction in oxygen to the heart and just a 5% reduction,
5% hypoxia to the heart causes scar tissue.
And that scar tissue,
After it forms,
The electrical signal that makes the heart pump,
It hits that scar tissue,
Goes in a circle and puts you in AFib.
And that's what kills people when they run a marathon across the finish line and drop dead.
It's not just the nature of the beast.
It's not just because you're exercising too much.
It's because you don't understand that you're breathing too much for the metabolic demands of the activity that you're engaged in,
Which to me,
Underscores the importance of understanding how to breathe properly,
Regardless of the activity that you're engaged in.
And I'm not saying don't ever open your mouth.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is understand how to breathe all day,
Every day,
Right?
Because if you adjust the way you breathe all day and you're breathing properly all day throughout the day,
Then when you start to engage in other activities,
You're more likely to breathe properly.
It's not always the case.
Sometimes you even have to relearn how to breathe in that context,
Whatever the high intensity physical exercise context may be.
But the idea is really,
Quite frankly,
The only way to measure this is through capnography so that you hook a person up to this little pocket device.
You can put it in your pocket.
You can engage in physical activity and it tells you how much CO2 you have in your blood at any given time.
And so the goal is to maintain a certain level of CO2,
Regardless of the activity that you're engaged in,
Sitting or otherwise,
Right?
Running a marathon.
And if you don't maintain a proper amount of CO2,
There are going to be negative consequences.
And if you do that for decades,
Then it could honestly result in death of some people.
And that's amazing.
That shows the power of breathing,
Right?
So you're asking,
What do I teach?
I don't teach the hyperventilation,
Superventilation work for all the reasons that I've already mentioned.
My concern,
My goal is to teach people how to regulate their nervous system,
Regardless of what they're engaged in,
And to bring calm to the nervous system,
Regardless of what they're engaged in.
And the best way to do that is to reteach people how to breathe diaphragmatically.
First and foremost,
By teaching them to no longer breathe up and down,
What we call vertical breathing,
But to breathe in the middle of the body.
It's not about belly breathing.
It's about breathing in the middle of the body,
At the bottom of the ribs.
If you think about your ribcage,
Right?
If you put your finger on the tip of your sternum and follow down to the bottom of your ribs on either side,
It forms a triangle.
And so if my elbow here is the bottom of my ribcage,
And this is my sternum,
With every breath,
My ribcage should go out a little bit.
Should go out and then go back in.
Inhale,
It goes out.
Exhale,
It goes in.
That's why your ribcage is shaped the way it is,
So that it can expand and contract,
Right?
They just did a study in Japan,
I think it was 1930 students.
Actually,
They went from elementary school all the way up to collegiate level athletes,
And over 95% of them were breathing vertically rather than horizontally in the middle of the body.
So they were breathing in a way that was aberrant,
Which means they're probably going to be over breathing during their physical activity,
Which could be deleterious over the course of time.
But even more importantly for an athlete is they are not going to perform as well as they could,
Simply because of the way that they're breathing.
And especially for athletes,
This is actually,
This applies to anybody that exercises,
Not just athletes,
But anybody who exercises.
Everybody's probably experienced during exercise,
Their arms start to feel heavy,
Their legs start to feel heavy,
And they attribute that to their hard work,
Right?
They're like,
I'm doing it right.
But probably what's actually happening is that their breathing muscles are getting tired.
And there's this really incredible reflex that our body has,
It's called the metabo reflex.
It's also known as blood stealing.
When your breathing muscles get tired,
Your body shunts blood flow to your extremities and sends more blood to the tiring breathing muscles.
So your arms and legs get heavy,
Not because you're working so hard,
It's because your breathing muscles are getting tired.
So the first thing that I teach is where to breathe on the body at the bottom of the ribs,
Right?
A little bit of belly motion,
But not much.
Most people are concerned about looking fat when they're breathing.
If you do proper breathing,
You're not going to look fat.
But you want to be able to,
Especially during exercise and athletic endeavors,
When you need it,
You want to be able to take a full breath.
And you can't do that if you can no longer control your breathing muscles,
Or if your breathing muscles are getting too tired.
And so we first focus on the location of breathing.
Then we focus on the flexibility of the rib cage,
Which is super important because that translates into better lung health.
The more flexible your rib cage is,
The more flexible your lungs will be over the course of your lifespan.
And then we work on strengthening the breathing muscles so that when you engage in whatever athletic endeavor you're engaged in,
Even if it's just a workout,
That metabolic reflex kicks in later,
Or it doesn't kick in at all because you have strong breathing muscles.
Oh,
This is fascinating.
I'm just thinking about,
So I did like a 180.
Now it's,
Well,
I was doing,
What was it called?
A particular trademark name to a really extreme exercise that they teach like Marines and stuff.
And it has its own gym just for that,
But they give the daily exercise every day.
And it's really extreme.
And there's a thing called Rabdo people can get,
Maybe you know about that,
Where like the muscles can seize up.
And I didn't know that until after I stopped this,
But no wonder people were looking at me like it was absolutely insane doing that in a regular gym because they have their own gyms to do that.
And it was really ridiculously intense.
And I could see if someone's an extreme athlete,
Then that might help them or whatever.
But it was like burning because I wasn't breathing right now that you mentioned this.
It's this burn in my throat for not being able to suck air fast enough for the demand on the body that it was going.
And at the time I recovered from this and I don't have it anymore.
It was really minor heart condition called right bundle branch block.
So I think it was some kind of just electrical malfunction or something where it wouldn't be a regular heartbeat or something.
And I wonder if it definitely doesn't seem that extreme was,
Was helping at any,
Since I wasn't doing it properly anyway.
And it wasn't until I started,
Did a one 80 and just did walking and yoga for many years too,
Where I could really tune in to what you're talking about and breathing that way.
And I don't,
Well,
I don't exercise enough to,
To have that be a huge,
Huge benefit,
But it's still going to be a benefit for any kind of,
And just have that ability to,
Cause there's some yoga poses where you don't normally have access to certain ways of breathing,
Right?
So you have to either breathe it to the backside or like the ribs,
Like you're saying.
So yeah,
That's when you really can know immediately how it's just some ways,
Like the vertical breathing,
It's not really accessible in certain poses.
Right.
And then,
Yeah,
So this is,
It's really helpful.
I appreciate sharing that and everything involved in that.
There was,
I think there was one other thing here,
But I'm,
I think I'm blanking on it.
Yeah.
I've really appreciate your taking the time today to go through all this and allow me to pick your brain on the,
We spent a lot of time on the psychological aspects of this.
I think that it helped me learn a lot about like autism and,
You know,
Bullying,
Which I don't,
You know,
Normally get into.
So learning about these skills that affect so many people and so many people that aren't involved in it are still touched by that and still have to deal with it.
And then the societal ramifications and fallout from this type of thing.
So yeah,
I really appreciate you coming on here.
The final message.
I love this quote.
Somebody said breathing is the remote control to the body and the brain.
And I think that's profound.
And I,
To me and my experience there,
It couldn't be more true.
I know that my life has completely changed because of breathing.
And when to me,
We didn't get into it,
But it's the combination of breathing and meditation,
Proper breathing and meditation.
I find those two worlds are so siloed these days that there's very little discussion.
If you go to the meditation world,
There's very little discussion of breathing,
Except for when you first sit,
They say,
Take five deep breaths.
That's about it.
And if you go into the breathing world,
There's very little discussion about meditation.
I found that when you combine the two,
There's a synergistic effect,
Right?
And so that's what I try to do in all of my courses is try to really allow people,
Teach people how to experience that synergistic effect so that,
You know,
Everything that they're doing,
They're getting what they wanted out of it,
Essentially.
Right.
If you sit down to meditate and you take those first five deep breaths,
But they're,
They're not proper breaths.
They're vertical breaths and you're activating your nervous system rather than deactivating.
First thing that people think is I'm terrible at meditating.
You may not be terrible at meditating.
It may just be that you're not real sure how to breathe.
And so you're not able to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and relax the way that you want it to.
And so when you learn to do that,
The better control you have of your breathing,
The better your meditation is going to be.
And when you combine the two,
The better you are literally at everything that you do.
Well,
That that's amazing.
And so let me just extend it just a little bit here and talk about that a little bit,
Because I mean,
I'm practicing Samatha,
Which is,
You know,
Focused on one object exclusively.
I recently switched from breath to a casino because I wasn't having much success,
But of course it's still relevant breathing.
And I,
I would just say that,
Yeah,
The,
At least it will take a lot longer for the parasympathetic to be activated if there's not the proper breathing,
Or there are certain ways of breathing that are more optimal to,
I think,
Inducing that right away.
Right.
And,
And it's just also interesting.
And I haven't got to this level yet of Jhana absorption into the breath that it can say that depending on your definition,
There's a whole different discussion on what constitutes Jhana and not,
But a lot of people say that on fourth Jhana,
The breath becomes so subtle that it can actually even stop.
And that there's so minimal activity that it's really just not needed to sustain itself.
And some people can freak out if that happens,
But as long as you're,
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that it's a really rare case.
And most people will,
I would venture to say,
We'll never get to that level where that happens anyway.
So these are kind of a rare case,
But yeah,
So just really briefly,
How would you recommend starting a meditation session with five breaths?
Because there is Anapanasati where the whole practice is mindfulness of breathing,
Not where you're trying to control,
But you're being aware of the breath moment by moment as it comes in,
As it goes out.
I mean,
Some people teach it slightly different ways,
Like just around this spot,
That way you're not,
The mind's not being too distracted by what's going on in the body,
But other people teach it,
You know,
Diaphragmatically or wherever you can sense it in the body.
But yeah,
So there's many different ways people teach it,
But that practice is nothing but paying attention to the breath moment by moment,
Knowing it,
Knowing the breath as the breath.
But like,
I would be interested in,
You know,
Cause it's common for people to guide and say,
You know,
Take some intentional breaths in the beginning to relax.
So tell me,
Tell us how you like to do that to kind of jumpstart the process,
So to speak,
But in the other way around of calming the nervous system.
Yeah.
Well,
I'll say this first.
I think that the ancient yogis had a ton of wisdom in this regard,
In the sense that there was a particular order of things.
You did physical movement first,
Doesn't have to be long,
But some sort of physical movement first,
Right?
And keeping your breath calm during that physical movement,
Then breathing practice,
Then meditation and the physical movement and the breathing prepared your mind and body for the meditation.
But what's happened in our Western society,
We've siloed everything.
So now you've got yoga,
The physical component,
Then you've got breathing practice,
Which is a whole other world.
Then you've got meditation.
I think we would be wise to start to combine them again.
And it doesn't mean that your session has to be terribly long,
But there's some,
There's value even in a short movement session,
Then a short breathing session,
And then going into your meditation.
There's such value in that.
But if you only have time to meditate and you only have time for those first few breaths,
My favorite thing to do is to put my hands on the bottom of my rib cage like this,
One hand on each side.
And you notice the space between my fingers right now.
So my fingertips are not touching.
I exhale slow,
Breathing at the bottom of the ribs.
You can see my fingers come together.
And then I take a big inhale and my fingers go apart.
You can see that,
Right?
So I do a few breaths like that to make sure that I'm breathing and I'm relaxing as I do this,
But I'm breathing in a way that would be considered like balanced breathing.
So inhaling for about six seconds,
Exhaling for about six,
And making sure that's happening at the bottom of the rib cage.
And just doing that alone can be quite powerful to begin a meditation session.
Yes.
And I really feel relaxed just doing that as you're speaking.
You can probably see the feedback in my face.
So that's great.
All right,
Ash,
I really appreciate your time again,
And may all beings everywhere come to know their most optimal breath for their own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of all beings everywhere.
May all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free.
