IDO PORTAL - Master Teacher - Explores Movement, Love, Suffering w. ViKA TALKS on BRAVE NEW STORY

hi EO hello a total Joy Beyond an honor to have you here you have been a surprise in my life and you're here because you're one of the best teachers I've ever had um the way that you taught made me realize what teaching could be in its highest form and so today we're going to explore are the the dance and the intersection between narrative and movement as a Storyteller as a movement Maestro so thank you for coming and it's special to be back in Berlin where we trained what like a month ago and I'm curious

what does the city mean to you yeah I first came here I working as a performer originally on some small Productions uh the city in one word maybe Freedom the sense of freedom and the sense of having no real Norms or standards which the way I live my life and it's uh can match it well I'm I don't quite live here I just visit from time to time but uh I think that that's mostly it it's uh it's a city when you say freedom it makes me think of the freedom that we have in our

movement and that when I started I felt so intimidated like the first day that I was walking into this twoe intensive all these voices in my head like who are you to do this there's people that have been dedicating their life to this 5 to 10 years and you taught me how to listen to my body in a way that all the years of being a dancer or participating in sport I was never consciously aware of and so I thought we would start with that question for those watching how does one listen to their body

I think it's a important point and something that is maybe often hiding in plain sight from a lot of people we're busy achieving we're busy doing but we're not really observing listening being present with what is going on and then we tend to receive a little bit different results and different quality of results one one might say for the external world it's the same maybe the achievement is still there you run certain speed or you move in a certain way visually from outside but then for your experience from inside it's totally different so first is

just to to give that space and to to give that recognition that one needs to listen one needs to observe totally change the whole way of approaching things and it can be exactly the same things the same movements the same practices but the how transforms them and is so much more important than the what really and and then creating a little structure for how to do that how to start that process of listening of observing of sensing so one of those verbs is not enough it's a it's an experience of being present with whatever is

there creating empty empty space creating silence so things can be heard can be appreciated it's not like those sounds are not surrounding us the sounds now from outside or the sensations they're always there it's more about tuning the station making sure the knob is correctly placed to receive those messages and yeah and we did that in the event as well and starting every day through this process spending an hour of really being in this quietud and then dragging it for the rest of the day from 7:00 a.m. until 10: at night of trying to be

present and and feeding it into whatever practices we did whether it was partnering or some improvisational practice or um some kind of an acrobatic practice or whatever it is but it totally transformed things yeah it was it was the most dynamic learning I've experienced because we would train the physical body for the 12 hours of the day have a lunch break and then at night there were these three-hour lectures and what I found so moving about that is I was expecting you to talk about just movement but you showed me the interconnectedness of movement to

poetry to philosophy you reading Bor to literature to the history all of it intersected and so my question to you is what for you is the intersection between movement and life is there any spaciousness or is movement life and life movement I think anything that you pursue deeply H with time the the deeper you go eventually you it's kind of that Taos shape like the the electromagnetic the the magnetic force you go in and you find yourself out and knowledge of everything is the knowledge of one thing it doesn't matter if you learn how to

make coffee and that's and that's something you research deeply or you you you're busy with football or you're you're a musician eventually the practices uh take you there so that's also a point for me after a a certain amount of time of researching starting from physical movement but then progressing to the concept the bigger concept of movement and the bigger concept of movement of course is informed by Stillness and by lack of movement by emptiness of course that they reflect one on the other and that informs life life is a some kind of an interplay

between those elements so for me it was a natural process with aging with research with working deeper and deeper and deeper and not wanting to just stay maintain keep a certain perspective try to protect a certain state of mind um but having the freedom to really keep going keep going don't get stuck a lot of the things that I did or discovered or shared or developed I let them go even before they actually kind of like die down I already let them go stop doing it keep moving keep moving um so that is naturally what

I also share there and that things are involved in motion they are interrelating it's relationships are informed by this movement and Stillness what is moving what is not moving and this is our experience of life as well and there are so many other correlations and areas that we can talk about but essentially that's that's how I got how I got more to the wider and wider and wider perspectives yeah because I I think of you as a philosopher above all and and when you speak about it especially when you talk about letting go we become

so precious with the things that we create how do you how do you let it go like you you mentioned that you had worked on some these practices for years as experiments and then you found that they weren't serving your students so you let them go is it just an acceptance that there in the there is no such thing as uh permanence or Perfection that all of this is an evolution and that to be a teacher you must constantly be letting go well it's a maybe a function of my my my way of thinking or

my mind that it it keeps digging it wants to go beyond beyond so what does that matter what does it matter don't get stuck there is a deeper and wider way to look at things and that leads me to just ripping the plaster off many times so it's not maybe I don't yet get the feeling of I want to let go but I I don't operate from that place and part of my practice is not to operate from those likes and those dislikes and those attachments so first them the intellectual properties informing okay this doesn't

go the full the full way and then I can start to look as okay take it off you don't need that yeah maybe part of you is still struggling to let it go you're attached to a certain degree but the more you do it the more regularly you do it the more you feel empowered to do it and less afraid to do it it might still be painful to a certain degree but also very freeing and for every little moment of suffering you receive also some kind of a reward from the universe maybe so this

reminds me of that moment when we were training and I think it was he said I don't like it and it opened up this huge philosophical conversation in the middle of the training about what it means to do the things you don't like and I felt emotionally naked in that moment because as an entrepreneur I basically only do what I want and when I was training with you you know those 12-hour days I was like I don't want to do this I don't deal well with authority why did I pay all this money to be

the worst one here and that was a turning point for me where I realized the value of doing the things you don't like so could you extrapolate on why that's so important do the things we don't like to do yeah well first doing the things that you like to do is perfectly fine but thinking believing that the things that you like to do are the things that you need to do that is a very wobbly grounds to stand on first it assumes that you are some kind of a formalized being capable of making decision doing

having free will understanding the gist of things directing and driving the ship this is definitely not the case now what we like and what we don't like is quite an arbitrary state of events that we tend to put a lot of value into um from a very weak point or very weak place so that that is one thing now when you can you can choose to do what you like and what you dislike if we take these two black and white decisions because you're actually moving on this spectrum and I believe you should move move

on the Spectrum you should do things that you like should do things that you also don't like not in an arbitrary way but if you do the things that you like they stem from the weaknesses of your structure your construct they stem from certain um weaknesses not necessarily weak points or incorrect things to do but not necessarily the things that are going to take you to the next level not necessarily the things that are going to allow you to evolve yet the things that we dislike are informed exactly by those weak points and and again

not just the dislike for the sake of disliking but to dig in and to observe why do I not want to do this and what happens if I am achieving a way to choose those things and to do them with a conscious choice not to force myself to do them and grinding through it which is very common nowadays this will not get you those deep results that I'm talking about and I think there is a lot of achievers that found this H this steroid this anabolic steroid like I can do what I don't like to

do but actually inside there is a huge amount of friction and they don't get the Deep work really affecting the depth of them but they get some of a some kind of an outside coat a coat that sometimes involve numbness a coat that sometimes involves and yeah certain loss of faculties fine faculties and not really the transformation of the possibilities of doing what you don't like to do by choosing it truly by loving it using your love to do those things and yeah and that that is empowering that is so I say to people there

is a lot more to us for us in the of our dislikes than in the areas of our likes and in terms of a practice it's not I'm not promoting just to do what you dislike of course that wouldn't be also what I'm offering but it is definitely an area of high value most bang for your buck in terms of personal Evolution development Discovery growth what was something for you that went from being a dislike to falling in love with the dislike that transformed you most of the things that I do really yeah most of

the things that I do are stemming from fear from weaknesses it's not not from this deep understanding that I'm sharing originally it was more coming from a certain sense of NE requiring to be stronger feeling my own weaknesses my own lacks feeling isolated feeling incap able which sent me in the direction of developing myself developing those faculties hence dealing with my fears dealing with my weaknesses so a lot of people when they see me or certain attributes or results they think oh it's naturally this area it's not naturally I would probably be going to the

direction of music or a certain intellectual pursuit in the academic more more classical but I actually ended up doing other things and dealing with fears like for example the martial arts acrobatics and yeah dealing working with my mind in certain ways where my mind is not really naturally inclined towards H doing somatic practices and internal practices that are very were very difficult for me still can be difficult for me in certain aspects so it's almost everything that I share come from that point which is connected also to my ability to teach it and my ability

to teach it stems from dealing with that because if if I was inclined of course I would have a lot less insight and able to help people work through the process themselves yeah I felt that that you had gone through Decades of conscious suffering and conscious choice and that's why you're able to teach this and that was actually of all of the principles that you taught us one of the most Illuminating was that we we do have Choice consciously and once we realize that we can also choose consciously to suffer and we think of suffering

as something quite negative but the way that you had presented it it was one of the most important teaching tools that powers a transformation so could you talk about the differences between conscious choice and conscious suffering the word suffering can be misleading to people it has been used in all kinds of spiritual traditions in certain ways and maybe that is too fixed for us to use but we can also think of it as friction if we if we choose to move which move through life move through processes Evolution growth anabolism if if we want to

do that that will involve some kind of a resistance once there is a will once there is a direction immediately there comes some friction some resistance and that is experienced as suffering once there was a direction once there was a whe pointing at a certain area there is a yearning there is a need now there is something battling that um that is experienced as pain painful that is experienced as limiting suffering now if you don't apply any conscious choices in in that regard you still get this friction because you're still moving even though moving maybe

randomly we can just take it as an analogy for now in a chaotic fashion I'm just moving through life but life includes movement life includes movement of many elements not just you and there will be collisions there will be frictions there will be needs even the need to breathe every moment includes that there is a suffering installed into every breath or else you would not have the motivation to breathe it is installed within the organism every process process of dig gestion process it includes it's such a refined and and present thing just like gravity is

pulling us down to the ground and we don't experience it anymore we were born in gravity like the fish in the water we don't even understand how much suffering is surrounding us and every action that we do we want to or else we would just simply not have the motivation H to go through things so if that is the case suffering is a given pain is a given this is part of our reality in existence sometimes you hear people praying for the end of suffering that is praying for the end of everything that is this

this suffering this pain is offering possibilities of course if that was the case then what would be the point to begin with it has it serves a very important purpose on the level of physiology on the level of mechanics on the level of physics on the level of spirituality it is a very important Force this denial the conscious part is realizing that that is the case that is what is occurring and starting to harness that process for your own personal growth and evolution not to let it go to waste but to direct it a little

bit like the water wheel using the flow of the river to produce something else it's not really going to stop the river it's not going to change the course of the water it's just harnessing it by a very smart manipulation Without Really affecting the essence of that water flowing in there this is more for me the practice using that as a mechanism for growth whether it is consciously chosen to begin with OR it is accepted when you didn't choose it but it is perceived and understood that is the state of events that's the the current

situation and harnessing even that for your growth maybe you you are a loved one died or a disease or War breaks or whatever is happening but there is still a possibility within that friction pain suffering and difficulties to make lemonade from the lemons yeah that makes me think about something we talked about exactly yesterday about how we don't appreciate suffering and maybe that's why we don't appreciate ourselves H because to to accept suffering would be to accept that that's part of the package of Being Human of being alive so I throw this back to why

don't you think we appreciate ourselves well first just to reflect on the first part is uh well installed into the will the desires the directions that we employ the fact that we're not going to accept suffering on every level or else suffering will not be mobilizing us so even within the the process of harnessing suffering you are not on every level this is a very common misconception eliminating suffering by realizing that truth suffering is still going to be there that's the whole point you're not going to get rid of it you just bring it to

a certain layer where you understand the need of it and having that layer to jump into and to reflect from you can now direct the process so suffering will not be eliminated in that way I am not a believer in those spiritual Traditions that are talking about the end of suffering here here there will not be end of suffering I that's my experience my belief my understanding uh about appreciating oneself well that takes us to a different place and why should we appreciate ourselves that's that's the real deep question I think people are trying to

resolve the fact that we don't appreciate ourselves but why deeply inside people also feel yeah because there is nothing to appreciate because I'm not doing what I can do I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing almost never so how can I appreciate myself imp poster syndrome but on the deep deep deep level of being alive I am here faking something this is not really what I can or supposed to do even those who go through great efforts and I think that that is for me an essential point of placing practice as a primary

primary way to live for me primary way to live I cannot appreciate myself if I am not in practice but if I am in practice even if it's imperfect and it will always be imperfect even if I fall down countless times the fact that I acknowledge that the fact that I am here to do work on myself the fact that I am not going to give up no matter how many times I fall down that brings about a sense of appreciation for oneself and that frees us and enables us to live our life and to

be better human beings for others for ourselves Etc but it it first requires that you let go of the Shady construct that we call EY usually with its you know likes and dislikes and and and weaknesses so we can start to evolve this structure and go beyond that structure eventually as well so it's like this structure is informed by deeper layers but it's not it still there is still some kind of a character Evolution or personality Evolution that is informed by this but it's not it as well which is often something that I think is

not not so well understood so there is personality development or you know we installed ethics into society trying or education and all these attempts we are the least moral in history like that we've been like and and we're we're not moving in the good direction we're moving in the opposite direction seemingly we're promoting these higher Concepts through education but practically we don't go anywhere maybe even regress in some aspects where the animals are much more moral and you know much more yeah working with something innate a conscious without needing to lean into this Shady grounds

of this philosophical Concepts or ethical Concepts that's why I think people have a sense a deep sense I don't I don't appreciate myself but what can I do about it well you can start to Rebel Rebel against that self that shady self that thing you can start by taking a step back observing listening starting to perceive how things are done not falling asleep into these delusions of you know I'm doing good I'm doing this you're feeding your family with someone else's family you're you know all those like seemingly on the surface level moral Concepts and

and ethical Concepts turn out to be very sometimes very EMP inside so the sentinus makes me think of the moment in the huberman podcast where you talked about practice and it felt like you were talking about practice as a gateway to the Divine can you talk about that um well the practice is you are using this this toolbox to extend yourself self extend where extend into the you can say the Divine the ultimate the absolute the one without second the nameless one whatever you want to call it God that extension naturally moves there moves everywhere

because maybe that's the Saving Grace if we don't appreciate ourselves the mechanism to appre appreciate ourselves to appreciate the preciousness of Life Is by building a practice and once we have that practice we're connected to something Transcendent bigger than ourselves is am I following that yeah yeah yeah that is definitely one aspect of it we tend to lean back a lot of people reach this recognition I am nothing I have nothing so God but by doing that you know by putting this God with the white beard you know or or the the the crucified God

or The God man or whatever God it is Allah or Elohim or whatever concept it is you're kind of again you're trying to put the blame somewhere else so you're trying to put the responsibility somewhere else you're trying to rely on something but not with doing your conscious effort and the whole point is for you to join that God on all levels because you are part of it of course but if in within your construct your current construct you do not sense that you're part of it you're on some level not part of it and

that is involving a conscious Choice what is ridiculous is trying to develop Consciousness without the conscious effort and that is all almost all of what is offered in many many many places in many many distorted practices and teachings and masquerading as the thing as if I'm going to drink you know I'm going to drink this um this beverage and I'm going to get into this place or I'm going to do this pract I'm going to stand like this I'm going to do this with my eyes I'm going to assume this shape I'm going to how

is this going to make me if I don't make the conscious effort now all of those methods work with the fuel of conscious choice and all of these methods absolutely not work without it so the essence is that conscious Choice those are just ways to learn that we we receive the cup and we start to chew on the cup instead of using the cup for what it's supposed to do yeah the that the emptiness within the cup that's the real gift of the cup as Krishna Mor said so that is that is for me the

essence of practice I am in practice I am in life in practice that is the same that's what I'm here to do I'm here for a seminar I'm here for a workshop and I can go through this Workshop half asked and die or I can actually make put a dent on it I can make conscious effort with my time here to do to do something to to to do something meaningful for me everything else almost and it doesn't matter how lofty it looks whether it's charity or is not of that depth because again charity is

another form of a container and with conscious Choice within it it's powerful tool an important tool but without it it turns into the same empty vessel and so a a lot of people hide behind helping others they don't but they do not want to help themselves that is really the essence of why they are going to help others it's easier easier to help others for me it's something that I'm very careful about to talk like this this this place here I'm talking I'm talking I'm talking but 99% of my time I am there at work

with myself not talking about this thing but trying to work with that within myself if I do do that then there is a place to share to help others to talk but without it I have no business doing that that would be a shady ground to tell people come hang on to me I'm not I cannot offer anything so I I I feel the necessity to to apply it every day every moment before I came here after after while dur all the time this is a huge pressure but it's a good pressure that I want

to take upon myself and uh part of the reason why I am doing things in a certain way or I don't do many podcasts like this I I believe it's futile you do too much of it it's it becomes that it become or to use fame or to use money or to use things in the wrong way and without Without Really transforming oneself first that's uh one of the things I think that struck me about you is that you were training us and you would go and over lunch train yourself like to be a great

teacher I believe is to be a voracious student and so I'm curious to ask this both as a student and as a teacher what do you most respect when students come to you with what qualities or characteristics what are you looking for in a student because it's an investment of your life force energy well first you cannot expect almost anything because from the nature of things you realize that people cannot do much well temporarily things can be done things can happen a student might look very promising what now but 5 years down the line you

see that there was no real deep force or when there things are tested in certain ways so first this is a learning that I had to go through by I I'm teaching since I was 15 so and maybe even before that if you know even as a kid I used to teach I used to share and always had this role of a teacher and so it's a real izations like it doesn't matter what people declare what people say or even the best intention or their beliefs per specific moment because their nature is that that they

are unreliable unstable incapable of owning the word well the only way to achieve that state is by going through that not breaking your word not breaking your practice realizing it doesn't matter every time there is another delusion of why we need to change things up this partner this romantic partner is not as good as what I can get there without realizing you are not a good romantic partner to begin with so what business do you have actually picking and choosing in that way instead of working on yourself and allowing the other person to work on

oneself you're trying to find a better partner which means I am already here you're the wrong thing in this equation this is also true for the student and the teacher I realize I don't need better teachers I just need to stop I need to own the teaching that I've received I need to start somewhere to achieve that stability this is true for so many aspects um and you see the fruits of such a process because in certain areas of life we don't get to choose like our children or our parents and even then some people

try to choose try to do something but it's Irreplaceable so even if I take out this person as my parent I don't want you to be my parent because you have these issues you cannot now really replace that in the same way you will bring another person into your life but it's not going to be exactly under that same umbrella that same role um so what is a student what the student can bring to the table is a really a deep sense of wanting to go beyond the current state of events beyond the current self

the more that student is holding on I know I know what I need I know what the less that has a potential to stay it might develop over time but really this is the surrender that you're looking for within a student and many people will disagree including there is a a the circular ruins the short story by bores where he's talking about the only student worthwhile is the one who Rebels against you um on the surface level he tends to disagree with what I'm saying but I think the deeply it is the same he Rebels

against you him and anything it's not about rebelling against the teacher and the teacher should offer such a construct as well so I am here to evolve I'm here to discover I'm here to move Beyond I don't know what's on the top of the mountain I'm climbing the mountain I don't pretend what I want I am aware of but it's not going to dictate everything that I do it is part but there is other things that I'm not informed about I have a little bit more calmness a bit more stability now I'm ready to go

on a long journey of Discovery and evolution that is the essence of a good student many people will think that that is lying on your back that is being too weak well how can you be strong with your current state of affairs if you are strong you don't need a teacher if you have achieved that stability that Divinity that recognition good luck go on your way you're all good to go not in essence to need me to need a teacher in general but if we're here to discover I do not feel that that is a

powerful point to have those delusions I feel that the powerful point is to move beyond the delusions I am essentially weak I am essentially unstable incapable I wish to extend further now I'm in a point of strength now I'm in a point where I can move Beyond move Beyond and for you what I so appreciated is that you sprinkled our training with the lessons of your teachers and you had so many incredible teachers I wonder if you can share a story of a teacher that broke open in your head as Krishna already says well sometimes

I don't know who taught me more my good teachers or my bad teachers right right so it's all teaching moving through these containers and and maybe the highest form of a teacher is to become that purity of the teaching without disrupting it anymore so the power of the the liquid the water or the expansion is moving through freely yeah I started in martial arts and when I was young and in in traditional Chinese martial arts I did as a kid and also some Japanese arts and there was was the ' 80s and it was a

little bit different of course to do some martial arts back then and I got some great lessons like you know I remember myself you know s years old you doing knuckle push-ups on the hard floor and banging arms and doing these things and the smell of smelly feet of the of the training training place place all these experiences they really shaped me they really gave me some kind of a some kind of a relationship that I'm not afraid of effort or of pain in a certain way and I know how to activate myself in a

certain direction and I remember myself on the ground holding my my my abs seven eight n years old I'm not sure which age looking through a screen of tears after my teacher who is like a 100 kilo guy heavy guy 220 lbs kicked this kid in the stomach and he probably kicked me you know very lightly for him but it took out all my air and I'm through this and I'm I have to pick myself up and I'm crying and I have to arrange myself and I go back to it and I wasn't traumatized by

these things it was like down in a certain way where it offered me something it wasn't pleasant at the moment but it offered me something it gave me some construct to rely on later in life where in in my in my house in my home my parents never laid a hand on me and there was never anything aggressive I I remember few times that my dad raised this voice that was enough to to do something but nobody ever hit me or something but my mother realized I need to be also receiving those directions and since

I gravitated towards martial art she was happy to give me those opportunities there I think that was very empowering yeah and then with the years later I went I played some soccer and I did some other things Athletics and and I got into Capa and there I met my first teacher and Paulo and and he was a he was also a part of a lot of different areas of Discovery relating to relating to my up my growing up becoming a teenager sexuality putting on Capa shows for the public without a shirt on the street traveling

to Brazil getting into fights and having to you know learning to do acrobatics on hard floor crashing in all these areas learning Rhythm and music and expression I remember this capua show we did in in Tel Aviv in in Israel I was like 16 15 we're putting on a capera h and after us there is the Brazilian Samba dancers with the feathers you know bikinis and stuff and then I when I'm I'm taking the break I'm like we're waiting behind the scenes and then the the dancer Girls comes in and she Yanks off her top

and remains you know topless and I'm just like 15 years old I see you know this grown woman with you know those boobs out and so it was just like discovering discovering a lot of a lot of different ways I was already in Brazil when I was 15 for the first time and since then went every year I tasted a different culture a different way to look things it was very early on so it kind of almost merged with my own my own identity these were huge lessons then later on I I I evolved within

the capera world and I met my next teacher who was my main Capa teacher and an amazing figure Master Idan Harari from Israel and he taught me a lot of things a lot of he took me on on I used to go sleep in his place regularly and it is far away from from when I live relatively to Israel and so I used to spend some time there and he showed me what compassion is where it plays a role what it means to be a teacher for people some of these lessons were very difficult for

me to learn was almost too late in some ways and only now I understand how I could not pick them up so quickly and I wish I sometimes I wished I grew within that scenario to begin with and but you know you get what you get and he's an amazing figure of pedagogy education morality ethics support but also technicality understanding how to construct things and how to place them together and I learned a lot from him then later I met my um one of the people I call might teacher all all of these were my

teachers and by the way I thank them daily within my practice in the end of my sits my sitting practice there was there is a moment where every day I revisit those teachers that really influenced me and and have gratitude and my next teacher was um a another Master dudy Mala David Mala who is Shadow yoga teacher and I was really never quite into yoga in the way that I've seen yoga in the west but once I met him I saw there is another yoga is not about that I started to understand a little bit

deeper um and he became also a figure of I often say I'm not a yogi I did not study yoga but I studied dudy and in many ways he's a figure that was both a friend and a support and a Guiding Light in showing me how to look at things showing me what is important what is not important example that I did not receive before that example for silence example for observation example for deep practice beyond the physical practice and is still one of the most important and influen influencing figures in my life and of

course my mother is another figer I can talk about with my main teacher and by her example first which I resisted a lot as a kid that was the opposite of her in many ways I slowly slowly saw the great strength in her and U her capacity to be very clean and to be stable and to do and that was a huge teaching another teacher is my boxing teacher and and I say I don't like to use the word boxing coach because is a really teacher and life teacher Jacob dascalo yakob dascalo and who is

a figure also of pedagogy and education he has an harder Edge but also very powerful Edge to support the people around him and uh he also taught me a lot taught me about emotional modulation and working within pressures within getting hit in the face and how to the psychology of the problem process and the the physiology of the process and the yeah just contributed another aspect that wasn't always there so clear what who is the coward who is the brave are they really that different in which way those are just some examples and I can

keep going but those are main teachers a lot of people I've learned with they like sometimes they use the they say Ido is my student but to be a teacher it wouldn't do justice towards these figures that I spend years with close by to call anyone I've learned with something some technique some practice my teacher um and the same I look at my students to someone who says I'm I'm your student you got to earn that with with stability with work within those parameters it's not somebody who came for a weekend or a week or

two weeks or five weeks in 5 years but sometimes people make that effort and for them it's Unique so they say I'm a student it's um not quite it I think in when I look uh through my life backwards yeah thanks for sharing that because what also touched me about being in that space for two weeks as a total newbie uh there were so many people there that were true students that had trained with you for five 10 years and in a world where you can train with anyone to have that level of loyalty mean

something and what you reflected on is also what they reflected is that you have evolved as a teacher and you're a different kind of teacher now than you were even a few years ago your emotional regulation is different can you share what has contributed to that Evolution and why you think you're a better teacher now than you were before it's funny how sometimes people tell me Wow E you changed a lot you evolved you look different you speak different you're emotionally different and sometimes it's funny like what do we expect why is this pointed even

out as something unique decades are passing years are passing it's just that we don't have a lot of people in practice so because of that we tend to see something as a finished product the fire of my youth is not something I want to hold on to necessarily there is good things there but there is things that you want to evolve beyond the way of doing things so that's the first thing to recognize if I am not changing I am not in practice so as a teacher I reached it and now I'm sharing it this

is never the case no one reaches it here here the essence is one of evolution enlightenment in that way is very misleading as if there is this point you finish the journey now you share my belief is it's only a temporary step we might not know what is beyond step XY Z so we can confuse it that's the end all be all it's just a trap for example I've reached a place where I don't need anything else anymore I am emotionally stable well isn't this a trap isn't that type of Enlightenment means the end of

one's Evolution and for what feeling calm feeling good in face of adversity in face of end of suffering the end of suffering in that case is total stagnation for very cheap price if you're truly good you will embrace all the difficulty again and even more so I think that we are sometimes getting caught on all these areas and start to get into stagnation I can move well now I'm going to show you how to move well this is not the case I am a work in progress I am a practitioner along the way I can

share some insights and contribute perhaps to someone's Evolution but if you wish to have someone who reached the top go somewhere else because I don't believe there is such a figure and within my looking for teachers that's one of the first sign that I look for a person inside dynamism inside movement inside momentum there is progress there is life there not someone sitting on a throne thank you I think so much as I've been traveling and training with different teachers is this pedestal in that we do and what I appreciated about you is there was

no performative aspect to your teaching who you are behind closed doors is who you were when you were teaching us and and it's something that I watch for now because I've had you as a living breathing case study of alignment and integrity it's very easy to see the charlatans and there's so many of them so I want to switch gears and do the dance between narrative and movement because what strikes me and my buddy gillad asks this question specifically for you is how do you teach the infinite in the finite construct of language um these

are the the important thing to realize is constantly to break the containers up by doing this repeatedly we must use this but we crash it after we swallow the water we crash the cup and we take a bowl and now the ball can serve to serve another type of food into us then we take a fork which cannot carry the water but can carry a a piece of meat to our mouth so first is not to get caught on these containers and words are some of the most difficult containers to realize as containers cuz words

are not just anymore within the personto person communication they're within us and they have corrupted us and the infinite and the formless is all the time entering forms and entering the fite and entering the containers so it can be mobilized used because it must be carried by something and then that something can be discarded and the process repeats again if you do this enough for example you change I I often change my terminology I use the words that I use often to describe certain processes or directions I replace them sometimes I borrow them from one

author sometimes from another from a philosopher spiritual teacher from um from a certain practice and that gets people all the time to let go let go and there is a little bit different perspective and they can start to develop more the blurry eyes the open gaze that sees the infinite the formless within that movement for example so it's about a freshness of vernacular yes not allowing yourself to fall asleep into the ways of transmission into the words for example knowing a few languages is already an advantage as you know because you have those little different

perspectives through different words each time it's a tiny bit different and the same thing with physical techniques if I'm just for example a Kung Fu guy or I'm a Capa guy or I'm a dancer of sort and I'm using that those primary Vehicles repeatedly of course I will be Miss missing the essence of movement movement is inside all those things but the chances of me truly absorbing that are low because you're constantly delivering it within a specific container with its limitation shapes Styles Etc so even though the potential is there to know everything from one

thing in reality it's rarely achieved but if you keep changing if you keep your chances increase and that's part of why I am promoting the way of practicing in the way that I am promoting it and that is one way to not get caught too much on that the same thing happens with principles not just words techniques descriptions terminology even principles must be changed but we tend to want to hold on to specific sets of principles those are the principles of narrative therapy those are the principles of x y z there is no principles the

principles are also not that thing that formless thing they are pointing at it but they should not be confused with it hence I work with many different systems of principles and every time I take them I crumble them and I throw them away again that frees me up to have the potential to see perhaps Beyond if I do it smartly repeatedly again and again so this makes me think about this excellent book that you recommended bone a physicist on dialogue we don't have dialogue anymore we speak at each other we speak to each other but

we don't speak with each other uh where do you see the intersection between movement and dialogue here well movement again like it's a very open word but whenever you're moving you're in dialogue with everything around sometimes we assume dialogue happens when when it is placed in a very specific now there is a place for dialogue now dialogue is happening no dialogue is happening all the time dialogue is happening with the Rays of Lights now that are coming in through and going into the camera dialogue is happening between us there is vibrations going on and movement

represents that deep essence of dialogue so you're in dialogue with the environment with your Sensations with everything and that dialogue is a lot more in line with bom's concept of dialogue where he's directing it to human dialogue this was his legacy of trying to leave us something is like stop negotiating you're not in dialogue you are just negotiating these constructs are already fixed so there is no dialogue and that that's that's the intersection that's that's really it if I'm deciding how I'm going to move in a specific scenario whether it's physical movement or other I'm

already fixing it and I'm not in in essence I'm not understanding the essence of my dialogue with other forces I'm forcing myself I'm in Collision to other things and I'm erasing them I am ignoring them or they will be Breaking Me Up also possible so a disease is a dialogue right like something happens within us and again we're fighting it we're cutting it out we're taking this we're killing it but sometimes we discover that disease is an attempt to protect ourselves from something else something deeper much more dangerous and yeah it goes on and on

and on that book I recommend to a lot of people because it opens the Mind into how limited we are in the way that we communicate we are we are so limited and the the great irony is as a story teller and teacher of story and teacher of human connection I find that words not not only can be some of the greatest source of divisiveness weapons one word can be an entire weapon because you say a word and it has already the imprint that as you say it you have no idea but this person sees

that word in a completely different lens than you do and so now like for instance masculine and feminine I refuse to use them in my work with men because as soon as I say masculine the brain conflates and thinks male feminine thinks female so what do we do when words are at best blunt tools they're not precise what is beyond words and what I'm learning is actually the nonverbals that's how we create dialogue is is the energy the eyes the tone how you carry yourself in the room the intention how how does that person feel

around you are they safe are they skeptical how do they feel inside themselves so my curiosity is how how do we use the power of story to leverage transformation that's the the heart of my work is understanding that I'm curious if you have any thoughts well those are nice nice thoughts we should also be careful not to glorify nonverbal gestures or for something that is devoid of that issue because it still has that same issue I think the solution is relating relating relative language if there is a spectrum and here there is feminine and here

there is masculine then I understand what you want to tell me if I tell you hot it relates to the cold so using that relating thing is very foreign to us because we shorten the way we we want to condense more pieces in our culture moved into trying to condense by stripping them off the knowledge that we transmit is extremely limited oversimplified knowledge is oversimplified from its Essence it is a representation it is a symbolic thing so knowledge cannot be that thing itself it always is a small picture of the real thing itself things are

non-coherent by Essence not coherent so our looking for coherency in that way is totally misguided we should be looking for the coherency within the relativity of things we should be investing more time into this that relating area so for example within movement I use a lot of organizational teaching tools where they're looking at two elements or more but at least two how they relate to each other instead of saying this is this is how it should be it's like this is in relation to this now examine the relationship between them instead of focusing just on

the pen or just on the cup let's examine how they relate to each other in different ways we're not used to looking at that connection that is one one thing um to to to educate ourselves and next Generations to have that point of view that interrelating point of view and from there we start to open a space for dialogue for because immediately this is the dialogue between the elements right this relationship is also a dialogue now we see where we stand if I examine my distance to you and my relation to you now I examine

what I'm truly saying here but if I'm just busy saying it I'm just colliding I'm ignoring you I don't also know where I am cuz where is the sensation of self right now sitting on the chair isn't it informed by the sense of the chair under the seat Bones the pressure the sense of gravity the sense of heat this is all relationship so proprioception is all relationship so is perspective so is perception yeah those three and more and many more it's a Rel it's an examining of the relationship to other things the environment we call

it but the environment is even within us there is an environment within the environment so it's it's endless relating we're creating stories about all of this correct so that leads me back to your question about stories so my my point of view these days to work I always worked with stories but the more time passes the more I realize the real tools of teaching deep teaching are parables Tall Tales riddles lies encryptions Secrets difficulties Etc this is the direction why because this immediately places the listening side the other side well it's not honest to say

it's listening because it's also in dialogue but for the sake of H explaining simply now we'll call it that way in a place of openness to examine the relationships instead of just absorbing the story as it is you are now at work examining your relationship to the parable what does this what is it trying to say here so every all of this I'm sure is pretty clear well we don't like these things anymore allegories parables are still we're still kind of okay with definitely we don't like the word lies we have like a negative connotation

even though we're busy all the time living our lives through lies it's the cement that holds everything together our society our relationships our sense of self deep lies to ourselves and also of course riddles people hate riddles because it makes them feel stupid incapable Etc yet all of these are missing form for us in our way of teaching transmitting stories Etc this our stories became too detailed missing out on real Essence the old stories don't make sense to us because we want them to make sense immediately without any conscious effort and those were not the

old stories they are power powerful encrypted crystals with information inside of them and you have to decipher it and lies are the essence of any transmission nothing in transmission can be truth because again like it's an extrapolation it's not fully correct or true so lies are the essence of everything so if you assume that everything is a lie now you are at work now you are at practice now you are on your way to understand but if you just take things as they are the conspiracy theories are just an example of something that was always

there we just want to accept it but on the other hand we like to think that everything we feel inside everything they have lied to us they all the time lie to us and in these two things it creates this movement of conspiracy theories one thing is I feel like I've been lied to all the time the second thing I want to believe now still again to something else which is within that H process I think a lot of people get activated and connected yeah so those are some thoughts on stories oh I super appreciate

it it's uh speaking to your mother was a narrative therapist it made me understand your appreciation of story um one of the things that I think is really powerful and you do too is the re-examination of stories and so H I do this when I teach on stage I I do this one-on-one I do this with myself and I was wondering if you would do this with me today I'm going to give you a piece of paper and on one paper we're going to bury a story and on the other paper we're going to give

birth to a story yes and because I think people have this perception of you as like you have it all figured out and what you're so generous with in your teaching is revealing I'm a human this is a work in progress so I'll do this as well imagine that your life is a garden of stories and in this Garden there are weeds that have been disguising themselves as plants and flowers and these weeds are sucking out the essential nutrients of the fertile soil of your soul and so instead of cutting a weed at the top

it'll just grow back we're going to get down on our hands and knees and we're going to pull these weeds out and these weeds of stories may have been there for a year months or year decades and but they no longer deserve a place because we've brought conscious awareness to them so at the top of your paper you can write rip I'll do it to so what is a weed of a story that you want to pull out and bury today would you be willing to share yours sure um I am all alone it's me

versus them it represents a story from like a sensation that arose from all kinds of things that happened in childhood being left out being alone finding myself isolated hence no I cannot rely on anyone now now I have to produce my own grounding my own battery my own independent source of power so you became hyper independent yeah through that narrative yeah and so this narrative got you where you are but do you think this narrative is going to get you where you're going no so let's throw it away uh mine was uh I'm not enough

and that was because my father walked out when I was 21 and I had this feeling like if only I was better he would have stayed and so the way that this weed of a story manifested is I have to be exceptional I have to show him that I was worth waiting for or staying for okay so this is the fun part now you have a hole in this Garden of your life and imagine in your right hand there's like a a little seat of Z no and you put the seedling of a brave new

story in this hole and you put the soil on it and you hope that sunshine and rain will come and a beautiful plant or flower will grow so at the top of the page right Brave new story and this is what you're filling that hole where the weed used to live okay B has would be proud of this many no would you be willing to share your Brave news story so we're all alone same as me we are all we need if we consciously involve ourselves tell me about consciously involved um yeah I think that

sense of we are alone that sense of we cannot join we cannot join is because we don't involve ourselves consciously choosing to rejoin to be part so actually within that sense of isolation comes a letting go of the responsibility and uh that limits us I also like that because I think the real pandemic is loneliness and that speaks to the fact that you can choose a different path yeah so now we make a little airplane and we fide into the world my Brave news story was uh I'm more than enough I am thriving and loved

and lovable because I think one of the things about um abandonment whether it comes from your father or from your mother is this feeling like you are um defective and that you're not lovable and it took you know 16 years for me to understand I am okay Ready Set do it go so bad okay we're going to work on my airplane hello new and old friends my name is via I'm a speaker Storyteller and strategist running my own advisory called Brave new story for many years I've been traveling the world speaking on stages and often

people come up to me after and they want to continue working together and I've been able to do so in a one-on-one way as I've been building community in dinners around the world talking about various topics I've recognized how valuable it is for us to come together in the pursuit of expanding our perspectives so for the first time ever I'm going to offer a hybrid course for transformative storytelling for leaders it will include six private sessions with me and six group sessions and together we will grow we will learn we will study we will investigate

we will read we examine the power of narrative for leadership as much as for Love at home as much as for at work and in doing so my hope and and my sincere belief is that you'll come out on the other side of this 12we immersion not just a better Storyteller but a better human being more prepared with the tools needed to navigate uncertainty with emotional agility to to understand and perceive the world through a truer lens and to be able to regulate your emotions so that you are meeting the moment as it is and

enhancing and amplifying more peace and more power in the world I hope you'll join me I have details pending if you're curious go ahead and send an email to vivat talks.com applications are open one of the things that I really believe makes life meaningful is the stories we tell ourselves the stories we tell the world and the people in our lives that we share those stories with specifically my work centers around relational health and wealth so I work with a lot of guys particularly guys that are sold this narrative by their society that if you

do this if you get all these check boxes you build your power you build your bank account then you can get the girl and it's a very destructive process because they have to emotionally amputate themselves to belong and they want love so badly but they don't think they're worth love and so I know this is outside of the realm of usual movement podcast conversations but if you would be willing to share your journey into understanding love I think that would be really powerful I think that that word h love has so many Hues and textures

and we and we tend to paint paint it and use different and points of view each time we we discuss it and from that confusion arises a lot of problems like there is some kind of a bodily love and you can think of it as a a physical love we sometimes we call it by another words sexuality or attraction but it is a form of a craving of the Flesh of the meat the smells the connection um that is perceived by the instinctive faculties Etc then there is more of an emotional kind of connection which

is usually what is referred to by women more than men but all of our society mostly points at that direction and and that is clear that romantic love and then there is another attribute which is closer to the original use of this word love within the old spiritual practices whether it's in Buddhism or in other in Sufism and and more and this is more relating to conscious Choice conscious not connection not not just an attribute for the from the essence of it's there or it's not there naturally this is more the body orientation this is

more the emotion orientation but here since it's conscious it is a decision based I love you you that deep sense of taking responsibility of choosing that is really what the original word is used for but we are distorting it into some kind of a romantic or sexual bodily orientation so that creates a lot of issues where we try to serve one of those layers of love and we don't understand that it occurs on all layers for example someone who is I'm sexually attracted to is definitely important but sexuality transforms and changes and it's something that

we have to transform and change with it's not going to stay if you don't work at it romantically since we are a work in progress chances of us loving that that person 20 years from now in the same way is also not logical and doesn't make sense hence again you have to transform that romantic thing that is there to begin with and the third is the most important element is me choosing to be involved here to love another person if a practice a state of mind that is the most powerful aspect that informs also the

rest in many ways I'm not glorifying it as the only thing there is all these layers inter relating but this is something to think of and then this achievement thing this is yeah pretty immature limited state of I need to achieve XY Z to TI those boxes I'm going to get the girl this possession thing I'm going to possess this this is going to come to me if I want to have that girl of that high that level I'm going to do this this is something I feel not very connected to it is very empty

it is very limited it is trying to do something and doing the exact opposite and this is very Western State of Mind very ocidental State of Mind of and I think it's misguided and hurts us and under this disguise we try to soften it and put podcasts around it and put slogans and and kind of serve that thing is how to achieve the million dollar and how to achieve the girl of your dreams or whatever and I think this is pretty lame pretty low I don't think that we should serve that direction I think that

we should work on ourselves towards a deep understanding of ourselves and of love from that perspective and from there comes good things good things will flourish from there so I understand that there is whole Industries and I understand that many people don't like to hear about something else or maybe there is no alternative structure yet to rely on so it's very difficult to let go of this but ultimately I think that a lot of good will be happening to us if we understand that deeply if you look at old school relationships even fixed marriages fixed

um partnering which sounds totally foreign for us these days but it actually now can be observed through a totally different light things that we thought evil things that we thought leave us out of it are sometimes leaving us a lot more involved within it than we think we misunderstand them we judge them through history through the point of view you know in postmortem but I I view them now very differently not that I'm suggesting let's go back in order to go beyond you have to go through we are in the through we should be busy

with that but it's also should be understood for what it was essentially not what we think it was now with our modern state of mind where we choose I want to choose I choose everything actually you don't choose it chooses through you you have this inclination that inclination and then the The Thinker proves what this desire this Instinct wants to wants to do and you create all these beautiful theories on why what you're doing is the correct thing or essentially it comes from just a tendency a predisposition a weakness many times taking responsibility deep responsibility

for that exposes a real Love A Love That Will can go through mountains loveing kind kindness meta also relates to that it is not something that I am expected to feel I don't feel love towards that person I must not love that person versus I choose to love love is a verb yes I I choose I choose but we don't have that capacity yet we are working in it so we feel we oh I love this you're just attracted to this it's just like certain circumstances brought you to the place where this is you know

I love big boobs I love small boobs that's it's just it's a superficial layer it's a superficial layer and it's not involving you deeply it's not about you it's about something that moves Coes through you for those of us that have experience the transformative power of love and I I would consider myself in this pool because I don't think I've ever had big love with a capital l I've had little loves I've had lust I've I've never experienced what you are talking about the third layer how do you know it's true and can you share

personally how has it transformed you as a man well to know that it is true is not a knowing it is an experience first you understand the conscious choice that has to be part of that love like logically you know but that's not enough then you must apply by choosing what happens when your daughter or son are born and they're now here and you look you hold the baby and you don't F love what happens now and it happens often and rarely is it talked about or mentioned can you love that child no because always

you waited either you love it or you don't love it but you're incapable of choosing and that child might have the wrong smell or look like he reminds you of your uncle or whatever reason it is but you're not capable now of loving are we capable of loving our parents as they deserve well we might not feel love from a variety of circumstances and issues up to them or not we are constantly held back by this so first is to understand first is to know then to understand and then to apply by choosing choosing again

and again and it's part of the practice for example to love The Practice not when it makes me feel good that's a hobby a practice is I love deeply and believe in what I'm doing and that empowers me so most of the practices for example that I practice these days they they are not really giving me that knee-jerk reaction of like wow what a fun thing not at all and I can spend hours daily doing them it took me decades to reach that point where I can choose I want to do this I truly believe

in this and want to do this now not I feel like doing it that's not capable being capable of Love of course I need to respect places where I also do what I like to do temporarily feeding those layers or sexually attract being attracted it's important right now because I'm limited I haven't moved beyond the flesh I haven't moved beyond my emotion so it's something to take into account but also where do we say stop there are things in you that I don't like but I choose to love you in spite of them because there're

comes a point where I need to make a conscious choice and to say I'm not going to get the full package you're not going to get that perfect package it's not going to happen when are you going to say stop I stay here and I work on myself and I allow that other person to work on her or himself as well that has been transformative to me instead of looking for that you know tea we say it's like a some kind of a natural connection it fits like this instead looking to create myself and to

interlace so I'm examining what is needed here and then I come in and I fit myself into that maybe my shape my original shape was like this but it doesn't fit so I I go somewhere else instead no I say stop can you transform oh that's how it goes that's letting go of a lot of things that we hold so precious and holding us back thank you for sharing that it makes me think also about how in especially Western perspective we have this rigidity about the qualities we want in a partner in a romantic relationship

uh and I don't think that's actually true I think what we're looking for is the feeling that we feel around that person and I don't know which school of thought you subscribed to but given that you lived on this Earth a couple decades what are the qualities that you now recognize or the feelings that you now recognize are important in that third layer of love as it pertains to romantic partnership go back to the the answer on student what am I looking for in a student it's exactly the same only here there are other supporting

attributes romantically emotionally physically that should be addressed it should be there one might say humbly good enough if it's good enough those areas now you can also apply the real work which is conscious work you don't need perfect there is always a guy that will be richer or look looks better when do you say stop when do you say stop it's not the point good enough right why to serve my current limited self to say I need a little help here I need to feel that traction I need to feel that thing but 40 years

from now when your teeths are on the ground and his testicles are on the ground it's it's going to have to move into that it's going to have to expose that conscious choice that you will require for most most of your life for most of your life it's not going to be not not just when you're 80 but most of these decades that you plan to pass through together Decades of transformation you're going to need that support the sexuality is going to be yeah five times a week two times a week one time a month

whatever the emotional connection will be taken care of from the essence of evolution so even if there is limitation emotionally at the moment but there is a desire to move Beyond this will take care of it but the most important thing is a fellow journeyman for this transformative process so I'm not suggesting to eliminate those romantic layers sexual layers but I suggest to also look at the most important attribute even though it is currently might not be on the surface level that that's what you're looking are you here to work on yourself or are you

here as a finished product offering me this great package smells fishy I think so much of of the dating woes that we face is also because we lie to ourselves and if we lie to ourselves we lie to others it was like uh I was on a date with this guy and he talked about his his ex-girlfriend on the stayed for 45 minutes and I had to resist the urge to like coach or mother or therapize him through it and I just let him talk because I sense this is maybe raw 45 minutes into it

I look at him and I'm like are you emotionally available he goes yeah of course and I asked again are you sure I don't want to waste my time yeah yeah of course I am I am I wouldn't be here if I wasn't we had a wonderful night he made plans for a week later to take me out to this famous fedo never called and in that moment I realized I can't be mad at him because he genuinely thinks he is emotionally ailable so you know to those people that are that are single and watching

this how do we navigate all those layers of love in a world where we're living in our own delusion we must get involved with working on ourselves and practicing and in that moment you realize that it's less important all these holds all these you know finalized things he will call he doesn't call he understand where is he at well I'm on my way I'm employing my work here now let things take care of themselves and they will because there is nothing final about how you approach things I deserve what do you deserve well I don't

feel like and I deserve much because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do yet to the level that I wish to do it every day a little bit more so what sense of entitlement can I have actually we have a great disease this disease is not called that way it might shock a lot of people to hear it's called selflove a lot of people declare I don't really love myself I have an issue and there is all therapies about it but actually I believe that deeply there is a deep sense of selflove in there

those who did not have it already committed the suicide those are already a work in progress it can be extreme to that place or to this place I'm not suggesting to eliminate these outer selflove lack of confidence Etc but once you you are employing this transformative force on yourself now you can deeply love yourself I am a work in progress so I can stop I can let go I am already a human being trying its best here without this very tricky very tricky the self love dels me as if I deserve a better partner I

deserve a better what makes you qualified for that if you're not a great partner yourself uh we tend to think highly of ourselves the thinking highly can only come from some kind of conscious efforts on our side and working on ourselves to release our tight hold of these delusions and from there comes Beautiful Things So speaking of beautiful things what is something that romantic love has taught you that you couldn't have learned on your own not much not much it's um because it's because you specifically said romantic love so yeah maybe the Broken Heart of

of teenage years is what taught me the most but it also created other forces in me because I did not have an alternative structure so it numbed me oh I'm never going to get hurt like this again so I totally closed down the the knob on all these risky emotions and states I don't want to experience that again so I rather just tune this off that's something that taught me eventually to realize it and to realize that was happening but uh to to love in that way to to be intoxicated in that way of love

I I don't want to glorify that it was it was it was a very intoxicating feeling when it happens real love when you realize you love something more than yourself but you're also intoxicated you are also not consciously involved with that so it's a little bit like those drug experiences they might show you something down the road and you might employ that in one's practice which is where these things come from but most people abuse them and eventually it does not become a conscious Choice it becomes exactly the opposite a non-conscious choice here I swallow

this and it will be done to me and love is not that much different in that way this romantic love you know that in in wheel hunting in that in that movie which I like a lot he talks about okay Ling he he tells them you never knew real love you don't know what it means to be years in hospital next to your wife seeing seeing your soulmate goes away that's that's a conscious thing that is more more synonymous with that that is a cultivation of something I choose to be here sometimes even those processes

are driven from a sense of guilt a sense of I have to do this what would people think not from a real deep choice but that is for me a little bit pointing at a better direction of choosing being there so romantic love as it is it's a powerful drug but with out the conscious part of it still Limited in my eyes one of the the things that you just spoke about really resonated because I've I've heard this so many times I had an experience in my youth and and the sheer force of my emotions

scared me and I realized I didn't want to feel that vulnerable again so I shut it down and there's a it's almost like a write of passage for many guys this emotional nness which over time creates emotional intimacy issues and so then they spend the next two decades of their life so hungry for connection but so terrified of it so can you walk me through how you got to the other side where you moved from the numbness to the feeling cuz I see you as a deeply loving person who feels and receives love from family

from partnership from students how did you de numb yourself yeah it's a it's a great question and uh it's a process and I always am feeling a very much a work in progress in that regard not a finished product again and but I think where it comes from it's just like banging into the walls one more time seeing this doesn't go beyond that point for example toughness in that regard as you point out many a lot of guys are using that toughness this is not the real toughness this is a toughness of many people in

Special Operations and in fire department and many great men but this is actually a fake toughness a a toughness of a coat of numbness a coat of insensitivity that allows you to go through the fire but the moment that code is cracked and then you are exposed you have no true strength it is an external attribute to you to your deep self you are preventing your deep self from Meeting those forces because they're incapable of withstanding those issues that is the male issue these days and what you're pointing is it creates a lot of problems

with intimacy and with a lot of things it's like forget about intimacy between men and wom or part sexual partners intimacy with oneself to be intimate with a situation to be capable of being intimate with a situation that is even deeper runs they are hiding even from themselves a deep sense of Shame from oneself a deep sense that is just showing you careful careful where you where you're walking here because this is very fragile so instead of developing that depth we are just putting on more and more Cates same as what technology did to us

we're changing the temperature one Dee higher one degree lower we can match everything but we are so vulnerable for it if something a little bit goes astray you don't need you you are now going three days without eating you're out with the elements you'll be exposed and we're seeing will destroy you we're incapable we've lost sight of what is important that is not the machism of ancient cultures and traditional cultures we sometimes view them again through a modern State of Mind modern point of view through eyes of very violent very crude but sometimes they contained

deep sensitivity deep softness um rituals which we cannot understand practices which we cannot understand we tend to wrongly um interpret them so what is that process well that process is a process of gradual release gradual let go let go of what of that protection you must not use that protection and what you will discover even a small blow of air can feel like a terrible acid because your your true deep Essence is extremely vulnerable and weak but you have to start somewhere so even though you're capable of taking a lot of strong damage seemingly with

your coat you're now employing a different process of going to the feather massages you go to the massage therapist who specialize on the feather massage and you remove all your protection and it's brutal the feather massage is just brutal but that you have to start somewhere and if you're incapable of releasing the hold of letting go of that protective layer you're not employing that process you're going back to the other process which you already did most of your life so it does not take you further and that is that process it's a gradual process when

a woman meets a man in that classical let's be kind of dog let's be dog itic and stereotypical that woman can expect from the man the depth of that intimacy and it's just not going to happen there has to be a gradual practice of how to get there because it is feeling unbearable it is feeling very and and and and again it might not be understood from the other side the same as other things cannot be understood but that is really process of working and I I believe in that process also within movement like for

example the emotional modulation drills that I developed and I thought in the event that you were part of where I'm telling people I don't care if you can take all those shots and somebody can stand in front of you with boxing gloves and hit you and you can take it I don't allow you to protect yourself and to cringe and to even have the emotional the emotions disregulated Rel ated you must take ownership of that and what do you discover light contact is all that it takes to feel the jumpiness inside the vulnerability but now

you're starting to work on something else yeah this shouldn't be confused by the way with those hitting each other in the face and trying to get tougher it's exactly the opposite process but maybe viewed from the outside can seem the same but it's not it's it it just strikes me as the thing that We Fear so much is actually the thing we must do if we if we are terrified of being emotionally naked we must become emotionally naked if we're terrified and being destroyed okay destroy yourself because the fear is greater and the cost is

greater in indulging that fear for the rest of your life than being brave enough to try a different way that's very true we don't understand the cost of those things they add up and our life is just lost for meaningless little things like avoiding certain discomforts run it down the line 30 years down the line your life became meaningless because of little little decisions day to day so it's definitely true but it's not like we can do it in one moment as well the other side is like to say start to involve yourself with the

process you don't have to to perfect or to dive too deeply start to be busy with a very light process and slowly slowly progress it onwards but be aware of the necessity of such a process to remove those Coates yeah I like how you talked about intimacy before we even get to talk about intimacy between two people whether it's your friend or a lover facilitating the process of becoming more intimate with the celf and I think that's why Co was so hard for some so many people because it was the first time they were confronted

with you are here on your own you don't get to play a role outside of this house and and in fact sometimes you're multiple roles in one day or in one hour you're a powerful leader and you're a mother and you're a wife or whatever it may be so this process of becoming more intimate with the self I think is also connected to H removing the delusions of the self and you have worked with some of the most Incredible Minds across multiple categories uh top athletes um and I have also worked with people that have

reached very high esteem and I think what's interesting is we are trained to believe that if we make enough money if we get the fame there becomes this point of Enlightenment but often it it surprising it's actually the opposite can you speak about the myth or the delusion of what's driving most people in society and how that's actually not the nectar of life well what you don't have you well if you don't have XY Z you are constructing your belief system from Far Away about those things because you don't have them and that is shaped

by our society messages surrounding us Etc so of course we have a wrong idea especially poor people have a wrong idea about what money is going to do also rich people have the some wrong idea but from another way or having a a partner if I only have a partner everything will be okay well you'll be two broken people together instead of one you still need to work on oneself it's not going to fix you the fact that you have a partner it's going to not going to facilitate your conscious choice so I think this

is like what is shaping us and driving us forward a lot of these messages and very distorted messages and very few people say the king is naked you're going to get it and then what then you're back to square one that is a gift of achieving things that is the one gift that they give you and many people deny that gift and they keep on somehow deluding themselves into the next level so if they make a million dollars they no I just I need 10 they make 10 they want a 100 then they want a

billion instead of realizing I'm walking here in circles actually I'm increasing difficulty and moving away from deep personal growth and development by pursuing this I need to balance myself out because I realized that making 10 Millions did not fix me did not fix the world around me and the same thing can be said not just for money-making but I can also spin it into an area where people will not expect like for example on charity work or for example on doing a lot of other things as if I do this more things will be right

or even fancy movements fancy movements I can get the back flip if I can yeah yeah I'm going to have or the body the body shape and then what and then what that body is not going to be sustainable all your charity work will be swallowed within the general evil forces all your this is you you you yeah but I did my best well to do your best is to do consciously first it's not just to do in that way that it is done through you your body is not is going to deteriorate wrinkle crack

break disappear these are the essence of things I'm not saying it tonight at everything and to move away I'm saying it because we can employ a different process of deep choice so what are we left with if everything is going to fall apart if all of the fame the money the status are delusions of the Mind what is the bones of the house we built over our lives that deep conscious choice that deep conscious awareness that deep sense of of Discovery and evolution that orientation towards realizing what is this what is going on here what

is the Deep essence of things and how can I go beyond those forces trying to pull me back down to the ground that are required from that conscious Choice part because if it wasn't difficult impossible almost almost then there wouldn't be a need of a conscious choice but if you wish to receive that possibility of choosing you need the resistance you need that difficulty you need to move beyond the flesh you need to move Beyond the Bones and that is an amazing thing and along the way you know you receive a lot of moments ups

and downs but they shouldn't be confused for that depth there is youth which is energetic and powerful and there is money there is sometimes luck sometimes not but everything is now taken in a different perspective it still occurs and it still rattles the bat but everything is happening within a bigger construct which freeze you and make you make everything meaningful instead of everything meaningless yeah I believe it was Einstein who said There are two ways to see the world one as though everything is a miracle and one as though nothing is and I think it's

a much more joyful meaningful existence to to let awe be a navigation like the smallest conversations it's why for me speaking to strangers is a practice of humanity if I can't connect to someone for 11 minutes in the car as they're driving me what am I doing you know it's like uh the interconnectedness of life is something that is always available to us and we sleep on it we sleep on it because our energy is sucked into this little device where we watch YouTube cat videos and so one of the things I I think we're

not realizing is how is Tech taking our Humanity away you had some really profound thoughts on that could you share H yeah again it's a it's within the the General application ation of conscious choice or less conscious Choice am I aware or if it decreases my awareness and my conscious choices it is by definition evil but technology is not that in essence it can increase your conscious choices and awareness it's just the fact that most of the direction that all humanity employs is towards more comfort and less consciousness less conscious choice so technology is just

is another is another attrib is another application of the same problem but it shouldn't be blamed for what it is when you are more challenged tackled which is now technology is also trying to help in that regard you hear the voices in podcasts neurologist and researchers speaking about the need for challenge what is the dopamine system what is testosterone about how we need to place pleasure on the other side of a challenge this is exactly it but this has been known since since men was Men by practices religions that pointed in this direction this is

not a new discovery it's like oh we found dopamine and testosterone involved with you know that process of course this is just one more attribute and you'll find many other extensions of that so technology can be great I'm not against technology but in general this is not what is happening right now so the corrective means are sometimes to decrease certain use of mindless mindless use of technology and to try to use technology for more mindful which I'm not a fan of the word but more conscious and aware choices definitely not relying on technology for that

I don't recommend that you said something in it it made me think I'm not a fan of the word when we were training you said you were not a fan of the word imagination as a Storyteller so much of my work is about inciting imagination because the brain can't tell the difference between reality and Imagination and so as I try to help people navigate a tough decision I'll drop them into a guided Story and there's the default future door and the other door and so what is it about imagination that can be dangerous because I

also think like with anything technology can be used for good or evil what is your perspective on imagination the same exact answer the the problem with imagination as it's usually portrayed when people use identification You Lose Yourself imagination is not evil but if you totally identify Oh What a Beautiful imagination he has he totally identified that's what we usually point at but if I use imagination while consciously being here choosing to employ it and to go which is often called visualization or directed imagination Etc not to lose myself in it this is something that the

meditation process is sometimes confused for I go so deeply that I lose my choice of going deeply and it becomes this self motivating factor I don't believe that is real real conscious deep connection yeah you move Beyond a certain limited self and that can be dissolved but then a Deeper Self is always there present and choosing or else it is not yours at least in some kind of area or level it's not yours this is something to realize and to think of so imagination great but keep on choosing it and being aware of it keep

being present within that and then it is as powerful as our imagined reality it makes me think also about where we're moving towards in the future and we're living in times of great uncertainty and I don't think humans neurologically are equipped for uncertainty we're wired for being safe our brain's constantly trying to keep us in survival mode what fascinates me about your work and I'm an anomaly because I get excited about the unknown I think that's part of being a Backpacker um it's just part of my nature I my mom says I was born without

a rejection bone in my but body I'll come up and talk to anybody right that is terrifying for a lot of people uncertainty is terrifying for most people so how do the tools that you employ in movement help facilitate Humanity towards finding the gifts of uncertainty and embracing the unknown rather than resisting and fearing and creating more strengths um yeah first you don't get to choose things are uncertain non-coherent unknown so it's any delusion of stability and certainty will be blown off the Black Swan is on its way we have to create a situation where

we're working with that we expect that so for example when I teach movement I don't employ systems that are trying to stabilize this the state but to achieve a stability within the unstable nature of the state for example I'll recommend people to learn how to box instead of to do some traditional martial art that tends to have a lot more an attempt to stabilize things where in something very alive this alive aliveness alive practices they contain that recognition is going to hit the F I'm going to get hit in the face I never went to

a boxing class in all those decades that I didn't get hit in the face I never went to a situation an open situation where I was controlling the situation 100% this is the nature of things and this is how life is so even if you're a meditator or a traditional martial artist or something with trying to develop and control the scenario tightly by controlling your inner conditions by controlling everything around you well obviously that's not the way that you live your life tomorrow you have a cold in 10 years you have you know a heart

attack eventually you die things affect you you do not move Beyond them even attempting to stabilize on some layer so that's not that's not really moving in a direction that is applicable I still think there is a lot of value in such processes to stabilize certain conditions but they must then be employed within the connection to the unknown so that's what I'm trying to do when I'm teaching people how to do a handstand when I'm teaching people how to move on the ground when I teaching people how to do partnering when I'm teaching people through

somatic processes they always include this communication with the unknown with the instability of the situation and then you aeve achieve a sense of stability that was very difficult to achieve otherwise without any delusions instead of changing the situation to feel fake stability now you're not changing the situation you take it as it is but you are capable of dealing with it to a higher degree than before you're going to get your heart broken you're going to get hit in the face we're going to twist an ankle next week one of us we're g this is

going to rain when I dress improper this is going to be the nature of things if you base yourself on something else you're not going to achieve the proper stability in face of such situations there is reality checks and there is something else that you know avoiding the reality checks the wet tests the other side not to glorify anything is to just mention the fact that things are going to go to everything is going to go bad and now we can't prepare anything we can't work and control our inner conditions that's another mistake that's another

mistake now it becomes a very dirty process who lacks quality lacks responsibility of our inner reactions Etc both of these processes in my eyes should be mingled together and combined to achieve a state which is the best possible state within the storm the eye of the storm we My Teacher Calls it the eye of the storm I was noticing that those two weeks that we were training I was still running my advisory full-time and all of the sudden the problems that I had at work the fires the unexpected stuff didn't rattle me because I had

just spent 12 hours in the studio with you with odelia working on stuff failing being the worst Falling on My Face getting back up doing it again and so I think what that showed me is that movement is the training for life and people think it's like a sometimes a nice to have like oh I'll work out I'll exercise it's not about that it's literally the training ground that prepares Your Mind Body Spirit for this experience of navigating uncertainty and that was kind of my biggest takeaway that's the problem with some some things like these

podcasts or these conversations that really most people who listen to this is say oh wow amazing ideas but what the hell do I do with it absolutely nothing I don't know what to do with it this stuff is unusable because one does not go the the the the space that we're offering here we refuse I refuse to take that space and to fill it with tips and tricks yet at the same time there is not a space here for practice now after after listening to this it's up to us from the next hour the next

day to employ practice into this and for me the practice should include the physicality of the body owning those ideas in face of for example you modulate your emotions doing loving kindness meditation I do it while somebody's hitting me I am employing the process of modulating the emotions there or somebody Cur cursing me or within a certain guided conscious visualization that arises certain emotions situations conditions I am employing the you talk about excess concentration on the great focus of meditators I give them a stick and I show that when the feedback is there there is

no Focus to talk about and then people say yeah but I didn't train it it's not the point the point is that we talk about development of general focus and concentration and then when it's tested through mathematics through physical exercises through whatever you expose the fact that it's all big talk but if it's not toet tested it might not be what we think it is cuz when I go to to do meditation Retreats I'm not interested to sit for the rest of my life I attempt to stabilize a condition within myself that I can employ

in my life but now I realize it's just stable within those conditions Retreat junkies meditation junkies Etc there is nothing wrong with meditation but eventually you should become meditation so how is that happening well let's examine it and we see it's not there this is the role of the practice and that's why I'll speak and do a podcast cast once every 6 months or five months but what do I do day to day I practice I practice physically I practice mentally emotionally it's about that application and that's why people are still feeling disconnected and there

is nothing I can do within this recorded conversation to bridge that Gap besides to offer here is a gate for a practice come in study the practice start to employ dayto day it's not about exercise in your body as you said it's about exercising every part of you every cell every faculty that is for me the practice this is not offered this is not happening most of the time and hence how can we live stabilize the state within life or live people think I'm an extremist that I demand so many hours and so much dedication

to the practice but eventually we want to bring it to life 24/7 so I am just just approximating I'm creating a bridge towards actually embodying that if you don't practice in that way and you kind of bounce between life and practice there is just too huge of a gap the practice is life the practice is life this is all about living life practicing all the time I can't think of a better way to wrap this up than that that was such a such a moment thank you for being a constant Source an inescapable source of

real life education it's beyond movement you have you have touched my core in levels that have made me a better teacher have made me a way more Curious student um and it means a lot to me that you share with generosity of spirit your thoughts thank you my dear [Music]