Tony Riddle's Natural Lifestyle Philosophy For Optimum Health, Happiness & Vitality

Here to rewild us and reconnect us to that which is most essential is barefoot ultra running phenom Tony Riddle. Returning for his 2nd appearance on the podcast (his first being over 3 years ago on episode #463), Tony is a natural lifestyle coach who has devoted his life to studying what makes us human and how to live naturally in the modern world. Today we pick things up where we last left off in an old school, no video, audio-only conversation convened during my recent visit to London that goes deeper into Tony's natural lifestyle practices. Tony and I cover his various endurance feats and training, his unique coaching philosophy, and the principles that underscore his new book Be More Human, a bible for deconstructing the ways of living that aren’t serving us, and reconnecting with new ways of living that are more in sync with our human biology. Show notes + MORE: bit.ly/richroll717 Watch on YouTube (audio only) Newsletter Sign-Up: https://www.richroll.com/subscribe This conversation is packed with a battery of actionable practices and strategies to rewild and reboot your life. My hope is that you employ these strategies and they allow you to maximize your human potential. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Tony Riddle?

  We can't all live in nature, but it doesn't mean we can't live naturally. We should be able to get our needs met in every environment. That's the point. It's just, more often not, we're here within the rewilding circles at least, like this demonizing kind of the zoo, the human zoo. Actually, it's not about demonizing the city life. It's about just dismantling, deconstructing ways of living that aren't really serving us in those environments, and then reconnecting to ways of living that, of course, are more in sync with our human biology. And the lyrics of my friend Nick Mulvey, "Happy is the man that breathes in the morning." So it could be, right, I just sit and I just do some breath work, in bed even. Just open my eyes, instead of going, right, there's my phone and checking in, just check in with yourself, just breathe for a moment. Down regulation, start calm. It's the everyday stuff. It's the environment stuff.

• 1:50Tony Riddle?

  What can you take control of in your everyday habitat, in your everyday environment? Because otherwise, all that work is just, it's literally symptom relief, and you really need to get to the cause of it. Because we might be going, oh, running's the cause, or cycling on the bikes the cause. I would say it's the stuff that you've been doing for 10 and a half hours a day that isn't natural, then you go and try and run with, and try and cycle with, that then compromises that chain.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  Stress, anxiety, overwhelm, fatigue, obesity, depression, and lifestyle illness are just a few of many hallmarks of our modern, fast-paced, convenience-focused world. And it doesn't really take a genius to see that what ails us is very much related to our disconnection, our divorce, from food that nourishes us, from the movement that maintains us, and the natural rhythms of our bodies and the planet. So, here to rewild us, to reconnect us with that which is most essential, and remind us that we don't live in nature, but that we are nature,

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  is the barefoot, ultra-running, unschooling, lifestyle coach and legend himself, my friend, Tony Riddle, returning for his second appearance on the podcast, his first being a bit beyond three years ago. That was RRP 463. It's a great one. Check it out if you missed it. Today, we pick things up where we last left off in an old-school, no-video, audio-only conversation that was convened during my recent visit to London. We cover his various endurance feats and training, his coaching philosophy, and the principles that underscore his wonderful new book called Be More Human, which is really this beautiful bible for deconstructing the ways of living

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  that aren't serving us, and reconnecting with new ways of living, ways that are more in sync with our human biology, and allow us to thrive, to connect, and meet our human potential. I always love spending time with Tony. He's super smart, very engaging. This one is full of practical and actionable tools that are going to help you rewild, reboot, reconnect, and refine your life. I think you're going to dig it. So, let's quickly take care of a little business, and thereafter, enjoy me and Tony Riddle.

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  Okay, let's do the show.

• 4:38Rich Roll?

  Old school.

• 4:40Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man.

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  On the road.

• 4:42Tony Riddle?

  No crew.

• 4:42Rich Roll?

  No video, no distractions, except the noise coming from Portobello Road, but you know.

• 4:48Tony Riddle?

  They're downstairs.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  It's okay, man. The ambiance. Being here. Nice to be in your presence. Thank you for making the trip down from the countryside.

• 4:57Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. Over, I guess. It's an over trip.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  It's over.

• 5:01Tony Riddle?

  But thanks, man. Thanks for inviting me.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  A lot has happened since we first met up at my house. I think it was almost exactly three years ago.

• 5:09Tony Riddle?

  It must be.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You've done a lot of things since then.

• 5:12Tony Riddle?

  It was pre-Lands End John O' Groats, wasn't it? I was about to run that length.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  Right. I think it was right before that. Right before that. And were you still living in London at the time?

• 5:22Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, we were living.

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  Up in Hampstead?

• 5:25Tony Riddle?

  In Hampstead. And so I was choosing routes where it was just mind-numbing routes that you just go around. Places like Regent's Park and run round and round and round and round and round and round.

• 5:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:37Tony Riddle?

  You know, and then knew that, ah, well, when I finally go off on the road, it'll be like being unleashed.

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  This is a great running city, though. There's so many epic places to explore by foot.

• 5:48Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, it's like I talk about this with the nature immersion work that I work with clients and our bigger audience, right? Through other forms of media in the book, right? But it's 3,000 parks in London.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's unbelievable how much greenery there is.

• 6:01Tony Riddle?

  4 million trees. That's almost one tree per person in London to sit under and be. What an environment, right?

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be up there with the top cities in the world in terms of how they've mindfully created an urban landscape while incorporating natural environments into the experience.

• 6:19Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, it's labeled as a forest now, isn't it, really, London? In terms of how many trees are available here, parks, allotments, gardens. It's vast.

• 6:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And yet, you split the city.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  Headed to the countryside to live on like a regenerative farm?

• 6:35Tony Riddle?

  No, we went to it.

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  Tell me about that.

• 6:38Tony Riddle?

  So it was like a big exodus out of London. So when London kind of went into lockdown, we were with, you know, four kids at that time. You know, what was then a, I think Lola must have been 10, Tallulah, Millie, eight, Tallulah, three. And then the young bowman came in, you know? And we were in a two bedroom apartment in Hampstead with a terrace. And it's great because we're minimalist, right? And we live on the ground and our beds are just mattress toppers that we can roll up and put away. So it's not like we're struggling for real space. There was space there, but we only really had a terrace. And whereas when we lived in Hampstead, the beauty of Hampstead was Hampstead Heath and getting in the ponds. And actually being really close to that, there's a woodland there, right?

• 7:23Tony Riddle?

  One of those big parks we're talking about there. When that was suddenly removed, it was like, oh, wow. Well, what is London for us?

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:31Tony Riddle?

  You know?

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  Need to rethink this.

• 7:33Tony Riddle?

  You know, and the reason we were living in Ibiza and we moved back to London, right? And the reason we moved back there because I was looking to get this book out into the world, right? And Katerina was the one that said, look, I think we should go back to London. You know, I think that's where we need to be until we get the book done, then we look at moving. And then it was like, well, the book's done pretty much so. And at the same time, lockdown has hit and we were just, I guess, everything was up in the air. And it was an opportunity then to really just tune in, where do we want to be? And so we thought about the South West, getting down to the South West coast. And yet I was just about to go and run the three peaks. And a friend of mine, Seth, who owns this retreat space that is the regenerative biodynamic farm.

• 8:18Tony Riddle?

  And big retreat space, 42 acres it's known as, but it was like 170 odd acres there. He said, look, we're not using the space. Do you want to come and stay for a weekend? I said, just perfect timing, Seth, because just about to go on this next adventure. And explain this big endurance event I'm just about to go on with the whole family. And when we get back, we're looking at moving on. So we're looking at getting down to the South West and maybe we can drop in on the way there. And he said, I love talking to you, Tony. Normally I speak to friends. It's like, what are you up to? And it's, oh, I'm just about to go to this or do this event. And it's like, yeah, I'm going to go and crack the three peaks and run them barefoot. So come and stay, we'd love to have you. So as soon as we arrived back, we were kind

• 8:58Tony Riddle?

  of done with London and we arrived at forty-two acres, which was meant to be a weekend. Seth and his partner Renata were having a baby and they really liked having Caterina and the kids and myself around and we're learning so much in that process. And Caterina's got such amazing wisdom when it comes to parenting and that home lifestyle, she's like really refined it and rewilding parenting in a way. So it became this, well, how long would you like to stay for? And I said, well, Caterina would really love to be here. She's just growing so much since being on the land. How about we cap it at six months? So we spent six months living on this huge estate with a small community because there's still a

• 9:42Tony Riddle?

  community of people there that look after this retreat space. Huge lake and we'd go from, you know, I could get up in the morning and just take a stroll to this big lake sit, just be no one around all the way through the winter, like cracking the ice to sit in there and just amazing experience. And it really highlighted, well, that's where we've really got to get to. So if anything, it was a stepping stone in thinking that this is where it's at. This is where we want to kind of move towards, let's say, knowing it was capped to only six months where we were staying. Six months came around and we still hadn't found a home. We were searching, but because of this big exodus, everyone wanted to leave London. It was an opportunity for people to work from home. Suddenly people were really questioning their lifestyles at that time, right? But it meant the housing

• 10:25Tony Riddle?

  market, there was nothing. And even if there was, like four kids and it just, yeah, we couldn't find anything. And our friends then at another retreat space called Broughton Sanctuaries in North Yorkshire, it's like a three thousand acre estate that they're rewilding. So they've reforested like a thousand acres of this estate. Wow. I contacted him and said, look, we're a bit homeless at the moment. Do you think we can come and stay? And he was like, well, how long? I said, well, I don't know yet. We don't know. We're trying to find somewhere.

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  The nomadic rewilding guy. He needs a roof over his head.

• 10:56Tony Riddle?

  And so we just, we rocked up and they were like, yeah, okay, you can stay. Um, we moved about a bit on the land where we could stay. And just before leaving, we managed to find a house where we are now. So it meant that there was something that within six, within a period of time, we could come back to. And we had somewhere to stay, which is quite remote where we are now. It's super quiet.

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  But it's an extension of walking your talk, right? Like everything that you're about indicates that this is the type of environment that you would choose to live in and raise your children in.

• 11:29Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, I think we originally, we, we left London, Katerina and I left London when Lola was a newborn, really, like nine months, I guess. And we were just assessing at that point where would we want to be? And we moved out of London and then we moved into, well, first of all, we went to my parents and we were living with my parents for a period of time for six months. Then we moved into Windsor and we lived in this lovely little community, like picket fences and cottages and a big willow tree in the square and no cars and but certain things weren't quite aligning. It was a community, but it wasn't aligned with, say, our values, right? So food was at question and, you know, just certain behaviors were at question and weren't quite where we were and they were on a different path. You know, it's no judgment of where people were. It was just their path, right?

• 12:13Tony Riddle?

  And so we, at that point, we're like, well, where would we want to be? And then friends that I was with and bouncing in and out of London with were like, you should come to, you should come to Ibiza. Have a look at Ibiza. So next thing we moved to Ibiza and that kind of was a transition. It never felt like it was going to become home. But what it allowed us to do is pluck ourselves out of that community, immerse in a community that were very much aligned. You know, suddenly it was, you know, cacao ceremonies, voice awakening work and plant medicines and ecstatic dance and all this stuff. And being able to walk around butt naked and barefoot pretty much all day, right? And we had Lola and Millie in Antolula. And we were pretty much naked the whole time. It would be, come on, kids, let's get, let's get to the beach. And the kids would just jump.

• 12:56Tony Riddle?

  We had a big old Cherokee at that stage. And I battered up old thing that didn't really, no one cared really. And the kids were in the back of that, climbing all over the seats, naked. And then you get to the beach naked, get back in the car naked, arrive back at the house naked. And that was life, right? Um, but unfortunately, I was still having the flying and out. So I'd have to come into London and then back out. Had it been now, everything would have been online. It would have been very different for me. I could have, you know, we would, we would probably still be there. But there's this notion that the islands are an island of transformation. And when it, and when it, when it's, when you're done, you're ready to leave. It kind of spits you out.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Pushes you away.

• 13:33Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. We, it kind of felt that way. So we were coming back on Christmas. It's a bit repetitive now, but Katerina had said, look, you know, I think we need to go back. And you've given us an amazing time here. It's been ama, it's been incredible, but um, it's your time now. Let's get this book done. It was kind of, that was the push.

• 13:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and to get a book out, you have to participate in the world. You can't opt out of modern Western society and expect anybody to be interested in your book. Right? So you have to remain in contact to some extent with London or urban centers in order to do that, which you did. But I think it brings up a central point that's at the core of all of your work, which is like, how do you live this more naturalistic lifestyle, more symbiotic with, you know, your natural biological rhythms and those of the planet, while also, you know, existing in the world? Because I think a lot of people, it's easy to look at you and go, oh, he's the barefoot freak and he doesn't have any furniture and his kids are running around naked and he's, you know, doing Kekao ceremonies. Like, that's not my life.

• 14:35Rich Roll?

  Like, that's not, I don't, I have trouble like accessing.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  You know, what aspect of that is applicable to like how I'm living?

• 14:45Tony Riddle?

  Relatable, right?

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or relatable, right? Like, yeah, he's squatting. That's cool. Like, am I gonna squat? I don't know, maybe, but, um, but how do I connect with this? And I think really the power of be more human is this edict that you repeat, you know, over the course of the many pages, which is like, this is not about like being a Luddite per se, or opting out. It's about trying to, you know, find a rhythm that works for you, where you can kind of take from this wisdom and build these habits and practices into your life without completely disrupting the way that you live.

• 15:18Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, I think, and again, it's walking that path and not just talking the path, right? So we, um, when, if it, I think, I think if it wasn't for lockdown, we carved out a really nice lifestyle in London, you know, Hampstead was.

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  It's pretty great.

• 15:33Tony Riddle?

  Oh, man, we had this amazing life. And, um, again, you could have that nature immersion. And, you know, and throughout the book, I also put this, you know, we can't all live in nature, but it doesn't mean we can't live naturally. And we should be able to get our needs met in every environment. That's the point. It's just more often not, we, we, here we're in the rewilding circles at least. It's like this demonizing kind of the zoo, the human zoo. Actually, it's not about demonizing the city life. It's about just dismantling, just deconstructing ways of living that aren't really serving us in those environments, and then reconnecting to ways of living that, of course, are more in sync with our human biology. Like how we can move within everyday spaces, you know? If we looked at rewilding that way, in the sense that I do, it's like you can rewild your movement,

• 16:16Tony Riddle?

  your gut, your sleep, you know, your everyday behaviors in those experiences. And I think that's, that's, that for me has been the, the message really. And then it, and then it's much more relatable, you know? I've, I've, I've lived in cities. I get it. And I also get what it is to be a papa to four kids and have businesses in London, you know?

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 16:36Tony Riddle?

  You know, and still manage to carve out time to become an endurance athlete. So I'm a hundred percent aligned, right?

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Tony Riddle?

  I've, I've lived it and I walk it, but also I have clients from all different backgrounds, all different demographics, right? From again, students through to billionaires. It's always the same message, right?

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  My favorite is the example of the elder, I think he's an Indian gentleman in the book. You kind of walk through like how you helped him transition his life and how he kind of lived it hour by hour as an urbanite.

• 17:08Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Rich Roll?

  What was that guy's name?

• 17:10Tony Riddle?

  So there's Yehudi in the book. Have you, are we discussing Yehudi in there? Yehudi's a Jewish guy. He's um.

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, he's Jewish.

• 17:16Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, he's um, he was basically brought natural birthing really into the UK. So if anyone rewilded natural birth in the UK, it's Yehudi. And he was ostracized at that time when he brought it in, you know, there's amazing stories from him, but he originally came to me wanting to learn how to walk, you know? And he was stooped, like, he was 72 at the time, so it was like what our template perhaps might have been of a 72 year old, right? Stooped and, and just wanted to learn, how humble just to come in and say, I want to learn how to walk. So I said, okay, let's just hop you up on a treadmill. Uh, I'll record you. First stage is you need to see what it is to walk, what it, what it looks like, right? Where you're at, otherwise you're just kind of this, there's incompetence there, subconscious

• 18:01Tony Riddle?

  incompetence until you drag it out. And then he's like very aware that it's conscious incompetence. So he could see the stoop and then it's like, okay, let's go through these processes. And so start with it's getting him back on the ground, just interacting with the ground. So like when we saw this guy without furniture, Yehudi became the guy without certain parts of furniture in his home, but at the age of 72 and, and I think, I think the thing with age also because we, we have more patience in a way, you know, like he was really patient with it and could allow things to grow and open up and saw that it was a long game. Yeah, I think that's what he grasped from the very beginning. So had him interacting with the ground, then rewilding his feet, then rewilding his footwear. And there's amazing studies around there with footwear, you know, like Chris Dort, University

• 18:44Tony Riddle?

  of Liverpool, 60% of foot strength is lost. Well, they've, they've put people back in barefoot shoes or walk around barefoot, it's Vivo Barefoot in this case. Six months of transitioning back into a barefoot footwear, they found a 60% increase in foot strength, but 40% increase in balance. So for someone like Yehudi, it's like, wow, okay, not just improving his, the way that he walks, it would be the way that he stands, it would be the way that he squats, or we could then ramp things up and get him into running. So then that became movement for him on the ground. So even his work setup became a standing desk to squatting desk, you know, I mean incredible. And then we had a tray beneath him that would have stones in it so he could have his feet rather than being on a flat linear

• 19:25Tony Riddle?

  surface. He's now interacting with that kind of those realms as well, very nourishing. And then eventually over time become hanging practices, lifting practices. And then I discuss his commute in the book where, you know, he wakes up and first of all, he's down to the next level of his house. He has a hang and then he answers his email standing, then has his smoothie in the morning, then off he goes to the tube because his wife could buy him. Off he went to the tube. And this is up until I think seventy nine before he's retired, right? And he'd walk down the hill, get onto the tube, gold is green at this time, and the doors would open, people would automatically, because of his age, say, would you like to sit down? No, no, no, he's okay. And he'd start hanging, right? And I call it the, it's the hang squat surf on the tube train. The tube is the underground,

• 20:08Tony Riddle?

  right? And he'd hang between stops, right? So hanging on a train at seventy nine years, up to seventy nine years of age at this point. And then when the doors open, he would either stand or he'd squat. And then the train starts moving again, he'd then surf. So surfing, he's not allowed to hold anything. You're using those pads that he's rewilded and his feet and his foundations to stand. And then it just becomes an opportunist. He's looking for more movement throughout the day. You know, he doesn't have to find, he doesn't have to find an hour to go and train somewhere. He's just had a thirty minute commute on the train, training, hanging, squatting, standing, surfing, which is like being on a power plate, right? Also choosing the stairs, not the escalator. And that's quite a phenomenal story, you know, it's very empowering because we often look at

• 20:52Tony Riddle?

  it and think, well, oh, you know, it's too late for me, or, you know, I haven't got the time, or, you know, and there's a great example of that. And he really shifted stuff within me. It was like, ah, there's a new template there for a seventy two, which was seventy nine, who's now eighty one, you know, an eighty one year old. Now he's in cold immersion. So I tell this in the book as well, right? I'll share this. He, um, he heard he was terrified of the cold. I mean, properly terrified. He was born stillborn and he's kind of where he takes it into from the deep work he's done, the layering that he's got to, is that there was PTSD around cold because he was put on a cold slab, cold oxygen. And so whenever it was any discussions around even going out in the cold terrified,

• 21:35Tony Riddle?

  like where that thermogenic kind of loads of layers because he'd been conditioned to room temperature. So we held a workshop, it was called Move, Breathe, Chill. In the early days, it's now called the Hundred Human Experience, but originally it was Move, Breathe, Chill, movement, playful movement, breath work, like real conscious, connected breath, and then into a freezer that I'd converted at my studio. The day before the workshop, he'd all agreed, Houdie's like, yeah, I'm definitely coming, definitely coming. And then that night, an hour on a call with Houdie, like just talking him through, yeah, you're gonna be fine, man. It was like, he jokes, like a podcast in itself, being on a call for an hour, just going through this process with him. He arrived, being, actually living the closest to the studio where the practice is, he

• 22:18Tony Riddle?

  was the late one, you know, rocked up. And once we got him through the breath, it's like, who's going first? I'm going first. He was straight in. And we have images of him like this, like really mouth open roaring, you know, primal roaring in the cold waters, like rite of passage at the age, I think he was seventy seven then, rite of passage at the age of seventy seven. Dealing with that early trauma of cold, it was very evident in that moment. And then since then, he's been to either Hampstead Ponds or the River Lee, and it's been every day he goes into the River Lee or Hampstead Pond.

• 22:55Rich Roll?

  Year round.

• 22:56Tony Riddle?

  All year round, man. All the way through the winter now.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  That's a major.

• 23:00Tony Riddle?

  Complete shift. Yeah, now, now eighty one, right? So now you're, suddenly you're eighty one. You originally wanted to learn how to walk again. And through that, he went, the reason he wanted to learn how to walk was I discovered that it was his dream for him and his wife Wendy to get to Everest Base Camp. So they walked Everest Base Camp for their fiftieth anniversary. That was why. And then since then, it's been Mount Kenya, Atlas Mount. It's been just incredible, right? Empowering.

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Tony Riddle?

  At that stage, you know?

• 23:29Rich Roll?

  Did you take blood markers also to kind of bear witness to any metabolic changes?

• 23:34Tony Riddle?

  No.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  Or any of that kind of stuff?

• 23:35Tony Riddle?

  I don't get involved.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  It's not your thing, man. Right? He looks good, he's happier. He's getting in the cold, right?

• 23:42Tony Riddle?

  He doesn't need to get involved with that.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  He's cruising up mountains.

• 23:45Tony Riddle?

  I think, you know, we're at this point where we are really, I talk about this in, I have an online community and it's like more information, more information, more information and we are information rich and experience poor. It's like, how do I experience these things? What am I picking up on? What are my signals? It's like for me running now, it's all controlled through breathing and down regulation, the moment I sense something, I'm picking up on it. I even, someone was asking me about this, I'm tackling this path, it's called the Southwest Coastal Path and to run it is like a thousand Ks, all of this amazing coastline. But if you think the way it's banked, it's like this, the canter of it, right? So, um, someone said, yeah, but you, you know, if you think about it, you're running at this, you know, it's always going to be the same gradient, the angle that you're running at. I was like, yeah, I know, but that's okay.

• 24:30Tony Riddle?

  And they were, well, how are you going to deal with that? So you just bend one leg more than the other and then you're always running like this. And you think about, you know, I always think about the legs being like two wheels. You know, there's little scooter bikes where you have the two wheels. So if you lean to your right, this, this wheel becomes shorter. Yeah?

• 24:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:45Tony Riddle?

  To the lean, right? So it's literally just doing that around the bend. So I pull this leg of the right side to move to my right and I pull this left leg more to my left. And it works like suspension system. So it's as if you were going over terrain and if you went over a right bump, it's the right suspension that moves.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 25:02Tony Riddle?

  So you're, then it's not felt elsewhere. So to go over the right bump, I just bend the right legs some more by pulling it. And you start to think of the legs being like wheels going over this.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so, so essentially developing a more robust mind-body connection so that you're in tune with how your body operates.

• 25:19Tony Riddle?

  Hundred percent.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  And your point being that we abdicate. So much control and decision making to devices or experts. And all of that short circuits our own ability to be more interconnected and to listen more deeply to what our body is trying to tell us. Like, oh, I don't need to, I don't need to feel that because this thing will tell me whether I am okay to work out today or not, right?

• 25:45Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, so much better articulose than me, that rich. Yeah, a hundred percent. Again, I innately wild, connected, empowered beings. I think it's all within us, you know? And I think the more convenient this stuff becomes, the more inconvenient it becomes over time.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Tony Riddle?

  You know?

• 26:01Rich Roll?

  He picked up his phone.

• 26:01Tony Riddle?

  I picked up my phone. I forget we're not on cam.

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  We're not, we're not on video.

• 26:04Tony Riddle?

  You know, in other words, it's like.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  All the off camber stuff and all of that. Like, I think people get it.

• 26:08Tony Riddle?

  We figure it out, you know? Yeah, so imagine if you're running to your right, you pull up your right leg a bit more and it would be shorter on the ground. It's a bit like if you were standing right now, standing up. This is a great example. I had a guy called Yanos come and see me and he, he's an amputee. And so, standing through his two supports, you could see on the side where he's wearing a prosthetic limb, the limb's slightly shorter. And what it was doing is throwing out his pelvis slightly. So a bit like running, if you were running and you were landing without those, that ability to understand shock absorption, you'd be driving one side of the pelvis up over time, or hammering the knee over time, or striking into the ankle too much. So with him, it was, okay, all you need to do is just bend your, bend your, bend your right leg. So he bent his right leg and he just dropped his hips in.

• 26:52Tony Riddle?

  Rather than standing on a really strong, straight, rigid leg, just bend the knee slightly. And then took him through running, and then barefoot running, and then coached him into like technique of running. It was phenomenal. He's now coaching, he's like this amazing coach. And Mallorca now has a natural movement studio over there and is teaching basically natural movement within a practice which involves balancing, lifting, jumping, all of these practices, right? And it all came from that conversation of, ah, okay, there's back pain there, the reason there's back pain there, just bend the knee some more. So if you were standing. And you you would have put a block underneath your foot when you're standing, which would represent the bank where I'm running and it's dropping off into the sea. And you just bend that knee some more, it would bring your pelvis into alignment. And that's the way you look at running, it's as if you just bend one leg more than the other.

• 27:34Tony Riddle?

  They're both landing underneath you, and this is the danger of not having your feet landing underneath you. If you're swinging your legs like a pendulum, which is more associated with walking, that leg will have to be straighter and out in front of you when it makes impact with the land. Therefore, you can't bend it. Try and keep the feet underneath you, as if you're on this, um, like a unicycle, but it has two wheels, you know, and it's, yeah.

• 27:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. It will be interesting. So you're you're in the final throes of of training for this upcoming adventure. I want to go through all the stuff that you've done since we first sat down. But right now, you're getting ready to do this two thousand kilometer run that you're going to complete in twenty two days. This is what you're referring to, this south coast path, or like, what is the?

• 28:18Tony Riddle?

  It's known as the southwest coastal path.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 28:20Tony Riddle?

  And it's just north of where we're living now, it's a place called Minehead. And you start in Minehead, which is Somerset. And then you run the coast of Somerset and then into Devon and then down to Cornwall, which is Land's End.

• 28:33Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 28:33Tony Riddle?

  Where I started Land's End, John O' Groats. And then you get back and then you get into South Devon and you finish in Dorset. So six hundred and thirty mile or a thousand K route. The record is ten days, twelve hours and eighteen minutes. So that's going to be my attempt. Um, as far as I can see, no one has ever turned around and run back again. So I'm actually going to do an out and back on the southwest coastal path. An attempt to get the record on the way out. And then in a true out and back sense would be then to get the record or under the record on the way back.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, if nobody's done an out and back with it, though, if you complete it, you at least get that.

• 29:07Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  F K T.

• 29:08Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's F K T in its own, right?

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's exciting and knowing that that pavement will have a consistent off camber tilt to it the entire time, 1,000 kilometers running where it's not, you know, it's not a flat surface.

• 29:28Tony Riddle?

  Exactly.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  That is a very unique chance. It's one thing to say, well, I can run that distance for 10, 20, 30, 50 miles, but 1,000 kilometers.

• 29:37Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, it's about 100 Ks a day, right?

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Tony Riddle?

  So you could call that five half marathons or 10, 10 Ks, whatever you want to call it, or 25 Ks per day. But it's the, they say it's one of the hardest, it's the hardest trail in the UK, so it has everything. So in, we were out, decided that we'd go and we'd discover some of it last weekend. So off we went with our bell tent, put a bell tent up, the whole family. And Catherine and the kids would be on the beach and I'd run out and back so I could go to the beach and then meet them for lunch and then go off again. And so one route going from this place, this beach that we found called Perranporth, going north to do 10 K and then 10 K back was sand dunes, right? So these massive sand dunes are going up and down because the sea was in.

• 30:20Tony Riddle?

  And then all of a sudden it's rock and then all of a sudden it's like steep climbs, 1,700 elevation just on that one little section. And then it drops down, then it's sand dunes again. And then all you have are these little signs every now and then, they're like acorns that show that it's the southwest coastal path, but you're in the middle of sand dunes. And when you're in sand dunes, like people are always a little lost in sand dunes anyway. So you have all these different paths going off all over the place. So the navigation stuff's pretty tough. And then coming back to Perranporth and then going out the other way, it's solid rocks and really high ascent elevation again. So on that route, it's not just 1,000 K, it's all like that. So there isn't a moment when it's not. So the elevation's a bit insane.

• 31:00Tony Riddle?

  There's four Everest in, in, in terms of elevation on that route of 1,000. So it's 1,000 Ks and four Everest.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  So like, like 60, 60,000 feet of gain.

• 31:12Tony Riddle?

  115,000 feet.

• 31:14Rich Roll?

  115.

• 31:15Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, because Everest is 29.032.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Wow. And are you going to do this barefoot or with vivos or some combination of those two like you did on the Three Peaks?

• 31:27Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, well, I'm, I'm working with Vivo at the moment, so um. Yeah, I'm not too sure how much I can actually put out there on this one. So it's with, with, uh, I'm having my feet scanned and we're kind of having more bespoke footwear for Tony right now.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  Right. Um. Special Tony edition.

• 31:45Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man, well, my feet, yeah, they're quite wide. They've basically, they've had this model of like from normal to where is supernatural.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 31:53Tony Riddle?

  And I've now kind of pushed the boundaries of where supernatural is. Yeah.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  Well, at this point, with the amount of kilometers you've, you know, you've put on those bare feet of yours.

• 32:04Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  I would imagine they've morphed in unusual ways.

• 32:07Tony Riddle?

  Well, it's the strength again, isn't it? You know, you think of that foundation and, you know, I've spoke about this before with you, but there's 26 bones, 33 articulations in this, you know, accumulation of like, there's 100 muscles, tenders, ligaments, but 200,000 receptors in your feet. So it's in a foot, we're just talking in one foot. I mean, that's incredible, right? So, yeah, where, where can we take that, you know? Where can that go? And I'm really interested in the physiological adaptation. I love all that, but where my mind's going now is more towards, well, even the microbiome, right? Obviously not when you're living in London, it's dysbiosis, right? Whereas you want to back out in nature and the sand dunes or the beach or the trail and the roots and the rocks and what do we get from that experience? And footwear is a modern phenomenon.

• 32:51Tony Riddle?

  It would have been skins or something, right? Something would have protected us from thorn or whatever it is, but we still would have been having this amazing experience and more natural underfoot, the more natural the experience and outcome, right? So I'm more interested in the, well, the microbiome's one, but the neuroplasis, what is it? You know, what, what is it that we're also losing from dumbing down the information? So if you went over that terrain in lots of cushion, you don't really notice the difference through your feet. What is sand? What is rock? What is mud? What is root systems? It's just all one thing because it's just the inside of a shoe. And, and also the shoe is shoe shape, not foot shape. So you're, you're compromising even the shape that you would receive that information through. So I'm more interested in that.

• 33:32Tony Riddle?

  I'd like to go into a study where we look at perhaps, you know, what's, what, what is that? What is lost through that behavior? A bit like the picking up my iPhone again now, a bit like the convenience of this. What are we losing in that process through becoming more convenient?

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:50Tony Riddle?

  Now, the neuroplasticity, think of navigation, right?

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 33:53Tony Riddle?

  Following G maps versus actually navigating.

• 33:55Rich Roll?

  It's that abdication, because once you kind of inure yourself to Google Maps, then you're not really paying attention to your environment, because you already can, you know you can just look there and it'll tell you where to go. Like, we all know what it was like as kids. You know, you either had to have a map or you had to figure it out, right?

• 34:11Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Rich Roll?

  And so you kind of have to be a little bit more aware of what's going on around you, or you're gonna get lost and you don't have a cellphone to call anyone. Now, all of that is taken care of, so we can just kind of bumble about, you know, without worrying about whether we're gonna run into any kind of trouble. And I think your point about neuroplasticity is super interesting, like, that signaling, you know, with all those nerve endings on the bottom of your foot, like, what are those signals that are being sent to the brain? And what is being, what are the pathways that are getting kind of reaffirmed or strengthened in, you know, in your brain as a result of that experience?

• 34:47Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, I think it's a cool idea. Yeah, like, rewild, there's rewilding the feet, but there's also rewiring, right? There's a rewiring that's happening there, right? Through different environments that become more and more nourishing, right? What is it, what is, what is the difference between, and it's never changing, right? More natural expression again. But you could take it beyond feet and just think, it's in the book again, I have this organic, inorganic consumption leads to inorganic behaviors and being, right? So, really, the more organic the consumption, the more organic the behavior and being. I'm not just talking what we consume, as in what we eat. It's like thinking, well, what am I absorbing from all of my senses? So even just wearing huge amounts of layers and not experiencing nature again through

• 35:31Tony Riddle?

  my skin, or through my eyes, my ears, or running with headphones in, what are you, what are you, what are you removing yourself from, right? And then the layers and the skin and the contact and what we inhale, like, you know, even running through a forest, look at the amazing potency of a forest, they're now linking to like, phytocides that are antibacterial, antifungal, right?

• 35:51Tony Riddle?

  And we're missing all of that. That's so valuable, right? For ourselves and our own senses, that's antibacterial and antifungal. But I had this profound thought the other day running through a forest and I was thinking, it was almost like a farm really for trees, you know, whereas it's for softwoods, which aren't native or indigenous to that land. So what's the difference then for us, you know, as we go on this path of reforesting the globe, right? Because we feel like we have to reforest now. What are we losing in creating straight lines of trees and planting the same trees that perhaps aren't indigenous, you know, because perhaps those trees and those ancient woodlands are there for that, you know, the being within that environment to inhale the properties that are specific in that environment for healing? You know, what are we, what are we losing in that?

• 36:36Tony Riddle?

  I had this profound thought the other day, taking it beyond the...

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, well, we're, we're applying our matrix on top of nature rather than just allowing nature to, you know, do what it would do, like it'll find its own way to optimize that environment and thrive without our involvement.

• 36:52Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  So the difference between like purposefully reforesting or rewilding an environment versus like allowing or just letting it, letting it be and letting it do whatever, whatever it wants to do.

• 37:05Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, the control is the controlling within that again, right? Of where we would like, it's like rather like a board game in a way. I'll chuck in a bit of that and I'll throw in a bit of that and I'll move that over there and I'll play with that. Oh, there we go.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  There is a little bit of human hubris that gets injected into that. I mean, I'm sure there are ecosystems that are so decimated, it requires some human intervention to like, how do we, you know, expedite the process of getting this back into a healthy state?

• 37:31Tony Riddle?

  Absolutely. Yeah, I have friends that are really heavily involved in rewilding and regenerative processes now and it's come a long, long way. It really has. And you, there's planting methods, I think it's known as the Milwaukee method now and they kind of plant different groups of trees that, you know, become friends and it's not straight lines. It's like bringing back what would be the community or the friends of the trees. That's, that's fascinating.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  Are you acquainted with Darren Olean?

• 38:03Tony Riddle?

  No.

• 38:03Rich Roll?

  You met Darren?

• 38:04Tony Riddle?

  No.

• 38:04Rich Roll?

  He's my buddy back home, and you guys are very much on the same page. He does lots of things. He has a podcast, but he does these segments on his show, and he's writing a book about this, on the subject of fatal conveniences, like these things you were just referencing, like all of these things that we do, these habits that we've adopted that are part and parcel of just being in the modern world that we think are making our lives easier, but are actually, like if you really deconstruct them, are not in our best interest. And just to be more mindful of the truth behind these things, whether it's chemicals we apply to our skin or using Google Maps instead of paying attention more, there are just an endless laundry list

• 38:49Rich Roll?

  of things that we really don't think twice about that perhaps require a second look. And you're the Zen master of all of these things.

• 39:00Tony Riddle?

  Well, it's come around because I had, unfortunately, it was my grandmother's funeral, but I had an uncle there. They came back to the house, and we were discussing, he had to climb my parents' stairs to go to the toilet. And he said, "Oh, it's so difficult getting up the stairs these days." And I started to unpack what that means. And well, my mom calls them bungalow legs. So bungalow legs are when you start living on a single-story house. Suddenly, the stairs become challenging because a single-story house is called a bungalow here, right? So suddenly, you develop bungalow legs so that to get up the stairs is now a huge effort. It's become inconvenient, whereas living on one floor was convenient at one stage for them. So for him, it's become inconvenient. The stairs are now a struggle.

• 39:41Tony Riddle?

  And then we went right into then, well, even thinking about food systems, what it would have been at some stage for us to get food. If we went right back to hunter-gatherer, foraging, and then suddenly into farming and agriculture, and it would have meant huge pulling and pushing and involvement still on the land. Not the same as foraging or hunter-gatherer, but there's still a huge physiological metabolic load for that.

• 40:08Tony Riddle?

  Versus now where we just, I'm picking up my phone again, we just pull, pull, so we pull the screen down and we push a button, right? That's getting food, right? So there's, again, that's hugely convenient, yes, but look at how disconnected we are from that system. That's just the physiological stuff, but think about how disconnected we are from actually the senses, that neurophasis again, or opening up digestion even. Like that old, I had a guy called, was it Mindful Martin? He was on one of my very first retreats and Mindful Martin came and he had a raisin for each one of the attendees and he puts a raisin in the hand. Have you played this before? No. And you, and you look at the raisin, spends about an hour with this raisin, right, in your hand and you're rolling the raisin around and the raisin, before your very eyes just gets bigger, bigger, right?

• 40:53Tony Riddle?

  It's like just, you know, you're identifying all the wrinkles of your raisin, right? And looking at this thing as if it's like you've never seen a raisin before, but it goes on and on, it's like this process that he takes you through and you realise you're suddenly salivating, right? All your saliva re-enzymes erupt, right? Cause your whole digestion is prepared for this raisin, right? And then eventually it allows you to touch your lips with the raisin, you touch your lips and again, it's like, oh my god, this raisin. And then finally, when you put the raisin in your mouth, it's like the best raisin you've ever tasted, right? So you bring that into like foraging and foraging, I did a retreat at Forty Two Acres where we were staying for a period of time and Tasha's there, she's this amazing foraging coach and she pretty much lives on the land and, but I can identify stuff but lives it, it's

• 41:37Tony Riddle?

  different to, oh, these are the five things you can pick and these are five things you can't pick. She lives it, right? And breathes it and is so knowledgeable. And so I took people on this adventure where I took them into the woods in like a line, like, well firstly, I stopped them at the entrance to the woods and I said, okay, I need you to repeat these words, trust the process, respect the process, be patient whilst in the process and while you finally figure out this is all process, you just be. And yeah, okay, so right, and here's a blindfold, and then put your blindfold on, so they put a blindfold on, and I, and then I walk them in a chain, and the person at the front is my friend Arthur at this stage. And he has his eyes wide open, and he's now walking them into um the forest.

• 42:18Tony Riddle?

  And then around this lake, and then I position, I take one off the back, and I put them into the forest, beneath a tree, or one was particular, was like in amongst these bluebells in wild garlic, it was insane, like high definition through your eyes. Sit, like next one, next one, next one, and then they had to practise one hundred cycles of breath, like alternate nostrils for right and left hemispheres. And then once you'd completed your hundred cycles, you take your blindfold off. And then I'd come back round, but as I dropped everyone around this lake, I was back to the start, and you just, they're like, they're completely blown away by the senses have completely opened up through breath being blindfolded and hearing. Nature and then suddenly seeing nature, as if they were on psychedelics or something, it was like their first experience seeing nature again, but fully plugged in.

• 43:04Tony Riddle?

  And then I'd have them then taking ten things that they can find in the area to build something, a structure, some kind of, using their, I called it their imaginative architectural minds at that stage. And to build something that they're with intention, and that they could either, it's a gift to the forest, or they could perhaps come back and that was where their place would be. And and then I then, we then finished that, walked them back and met Tasha in the forest kitchen, and then she took everyone out to forage. And their senses were completely, she says she never had a group that were that open before, like feeling everything, touching everything. And whatever they picked then became part of the dinner in the evening for the forest kitchen. That was absorption, that was digestion, that was fully having a relationship to the food on their plate, you know.

• 43:48Tony Riddle?

  And compare that to, you know, again, it's in the book, right, I put Maslow's hierarchy of needs in there, and understanding your fundamental needs like food, right. And if your fundamental need is is one of the basic fundamental needs at the very bottom of the pyramid, right. And that would be getting a food need met, right? Versus, we're in Portbella Road right now and I've got to get a tube. And I'm going to leg it into this convenience store here. Tear in there, grab a sandwich that has a really long shelf life or something, you know? Um, not caring about the source that it comes from or any of that relationship. Just tear it open and wolf it down as quickly as I can in an upregulated state to get on the tube. And then, you know, being enthralled in the chaos of London, right? All upregulated because I've been rushing.

• 44:33Tony Riddle?

  Who gets their food need met, right? In that relationship? Because that's not absorbing that food, right? And it's where the food comes from. So it's having a, even down to that level, like having a better relationship with the food, you know?

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, that's powerful. The heightened, you know, sensitivity to your environment that is so accessible through some pretty basic.

• 44:57Tony Riddle?

  Basic, yeah.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  Exercises.

• 44:59Tony Riddle?

  Um, free.

• 45:01Rich Roll?

  And, and, and I couldn't help but think, yeah, free. Uh, truly available to all of us that can create that kind of shift. And then the neuroplasticity piece, right? Like, I'm sure certain areas of your brain then light up, right? Like that heightened, yeah, like then to go forage in that heightened state. To be so much more aware of what's available to you is powerful. And then what is the shelf life of that? Because for someone like yourself, you live it. You've, you've had these experiences. You've carried them into your life and you've built, you know, a life around those practices. I'm interested in whether, you know, those people who had that experience, when they go back to their life,

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  do they find a way to build that in? Or does it kind of dissipate? And before you know it, they're kind of back to doing what they were doing.

• 45:54Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  That's the sort of flaw in the human.

• 45:57Tony Riddle?

  It's always giving them tools. Because I, I, yeah, I have this, um. You know, I no longer call retreats retreats, I call them experiences. Because retreats would sense that, you know, retreating from something, right? And that's bad, this is good, right? But for me, it's an experience and we gain something from an experience, right? And for some of the, some of the people there, it's just understanding there's a relationship with food. You know? So there's a sensitivity around food that might just be preparing your meal or a number of meals per week. And then the other one was just to sit and be with the food you're about to eat or down-regulate with breath just before you're about to eat. They're, again, very simple practices that you can then offer. And then when we start to down-regulate and we start to take more time,

• 46:41Tony Riddle?

  we're no longer so chronophobic as well, right? That fear of time, I've got to get to this place on the, you know, and it's... And actually, we carve out more time for ourselves because we start to feel so amazing within those practices themselves, right? It's like getting here, I could have easily, you know, jumped in a cab or got the tube, but it's like, no, you know, it's thirty minutes, amazing walk, right? You know, for some, like, you know, and if I think back to when I was, you know, I said when I arrived, it reminds me of my mid twenties to early thirties. I'd be in a cab, right? Yeah. I'd probably be hammered in a cab. Yeah. You know, around this area. So, um, and, and it's equally understanding that we're all on this amazing path, right? And it's for some that have been on those experiences with me, for some, it's just identifying that understanding of

• 47:25Tony Riddle?

  this is what it looks like in nature almost. And this is what it looks like in the human zoo. And how can I bring some of these practices into this everyday environment? And also, it's, it can be just small steps. You know, if you think about going up a flight of steps, there's a step and then there's a, there's a flat part of the step and there's an up part of the step. So there's a small part of the experience and then you have to integrate it, right? So I make a step, integrate, then on the flat part, go up again, integrate, flat part. Um, rather than seeing it as this huge incline, you know? Because that's, you suddenly look at that and you're like, oh my god, that's a huge step I've got to make. And the point being with these practices, it's not. You know, it took minutes actually just to enter the woods with your eyes closed.

• 48:07Tony Riddle?

  And it took minutes actually to do a hundred cycles of breath. You know, you could try just before every meal, even this practice, like inhale up through your nose. You don't even have to count because self and counting gets in the way and it's a chemical metabolic cost for thinking. So just try and inhale for as long as you can into a relaxed belly. Start by relaxing your pelvic floor and your lower abdomen. Breathe in for as long as you can. Now try and extend the exhale. By extending the exhale, we get a lowering of heart rate and blood pressure. And six cycles of that is a minute. Just do that before eating. At least you then you're improving the absorption of the food. Because if we're not doing that, then what are we doing? It's just satisfying a want. Whereas we need to think about more about needs. Food is a need, but I have to digest

• 48:50Tony Riddle?

  it to reach the need, right? So how can I look at improving absorption? And I think, yeah, those practices might seem extreme, but it doesn't take a minute, you know?

• 49:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:01Tony Riddle?

  Four seconds in, six seconds out, six cycles, one minute. Do that before you eat. Or grace, sit with your family and just have grace, you know, before you eat. Bring back those old practices, you know?

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is a means of of down regulation, right? On some level, to just bring a little conscious awareness into your daily experience and to, you know, mindfully engage with yourself to, you know, create an optimal state, whether it's for eating or for walking into a stressful situation. I mean, I think I want to spend a little bit more time on down regulation. I think that's that's like a really powerful takeaway for people.

• 49:37Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  It was cool to see you demonstrate that in the documentary, like after a hard day on the three peaks run to like lay on a bed and like prepare your body for a state of overnight repair, right? Like to enter that phase of this extended endurance adventure with a conscious intention and a technique to kind of lure your physiology into a place where it can be receptive of that experience.

• 50:06Tony Riddle?

  Yes, restorative again, isn't it?

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:09Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, I think firstly describing like up regulation, down regulation, right? So up regulation, we could call fight and flight. You know that fight and flight response or fight, flight, freeze that we experience? That's almost been normalized.

• 50:22Rich Roll?

  Well, we're all in a chronic state of it.

• 50:24Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. So again, if we look to nature as an example, there's Bruce Parry is a great person to talk to because he spent so much time with independent tribes. And he talks about this Penan and the Bengelli tribes and how they're just in a frequency that you and I can only really achieve through meditation, right? They're in there, tuned in, right? And they're in this perfect harmony the whole time through left and right, massaging that, those hemispheres. And that's a real down regulation, they're in that. And only when it becomes a threat, or an acute, it becomes an acute response, fight and flight, it's acute, it's not meant to be this extended chronic state. So we, so they're in down regulation, say for their percentage, let's say it was a ninety, ten, or an eighty, twenty even, right?

• 51:09Tony Riddle?

  Eighty percent down regulation in this rest and digest, moving through a landscape, being the landscape, in that foraging state that I took people in blindfolded, that's them, right? That's where they're at. Why I bring those practices in, it's so inspiring hearing that. And then twenty percent might be, oh, it needs to be an alert state. But even their alert state, I would say, is more of a positive alert state, it's like on, you know? Not anxious, but on, you know, just. Versus then, it can be, we talk about the chronophobic kind of behaviour of, let's talk about the underground, right? So the behaviour in the underground sometime, when we lived in London, and people would go, I had one guy come tearing down the stairs, and he hit the bottom of the stairs, and then

• 51:52Tony Riddle?

  he went to do like a turn to the left, but he did like a Scooby Doo of his legs, and his legs carried on going, and then he just planted, that was it, face planted on the deck. And then, good, brushed himself off, and then carried on running. And the doors of the tube shut, and it went. And then, when I finally arrive at the platform, and I look up, the next one's in two minutes. You know, because their tube trains are every two minutes, right? It's two minutes to the next one.

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  So that the induced state of panic, for no real benefit, like, there's no, there's no payoff for inducing that, like, state of fear and anxiety.

• 52:26Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and it starts like, I mean, there's stages to it, it's accumulative, and unless we find practices that enable us to step outside of it, this is why experiences, or we could call them retreats, right, or workshops, then enable us to get tools that we can then bring into those everyday environments, right, that can change our, maybe even our internal beliefs, but certainly allow us to step outside those everyday behaviours that perhaps aren't serving us, right? And then to make real change, I can come back, oh, suddenly, oh, how about this, in the lyrics of my friend Nick Mulvey, "Happy is the man that breathes in the morning", right? So it could be, right, I just sit, and I just do some breath work, in bed even, just open my eyes, instead of going, right, there's my phone, and checking in, just check in with yourself, just breathe for a moment. Down regulation, start calm.

• 53:12Tony Riddle?

  You know, and then try and remain calm. And I'd prefer even to rock up two minutes late for something calm than I would to be upregulated mess because it's about then who's receiving me and what am I bringing into that environment.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what, what energy are you?

• 53:25Tony Riddle?

  You know, and then everyone else goes all upregulated. Imagine we're like, we're.

• 53:28Rich Roll?

  You're not getting a good result out of that.

• 53:31Tony Riddle?

  No, it's like turning up for a meeting or imagine an interview or whatever it is and you're in that state and I go for a lot of these practices with our kids because it's so important at a young age to learn this stuff. If I knew most of these, my daddies when I was a kid, I would have crushed it, you know. Instead, I was a mess in all my exams, didn't come away with anything. And, you know, it could just be a simple practice for kids. Imagine mock exams, Rich, were about, oh, you go through these practices as well as doing the exam so that you can remain calm in that situation because you know what? This exam's gonna, this might be how the rest of your life plays out in this moment, right? And for some it is, there's so much involved in their education that that's their careers and everything for the rest of their lives, but not being taught, well, these are practices

• 54:12Tony Riddle?

  that will enable you to think smarter in that environment, you know, and behave differently within it, you know?

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  So what would be one of those practices? I mean, you, you took us through the simplest of breath exercises, but I know you do a lot of stuff with like alternating nasal breaths, like what would be one tool that you could give to people?

• 54:32Tony Riddle?

  I would, I would work with those extended exhales really, like if you put your finger on your pulse, when you, when you inhale, you'll notice your pulse picks up. And then as you exhale, you get a lowering of your pulse. So it's tuning into that lowering of the pulse. So even if you had someone that had, you know, blood pressure, right? Oh, I'm gonna go have my blood pressure read. Go to the doctors, blood pressure goes up for most people when they enter the doctors, right? But if you started extending your exhales, you'd have a different outcome. So think of it like that. I start to extend exhales. It's whenever I've been on radio or it's been TV, which was new for me, I used to sit and just put a breathing app on. I, I put this on now. This is by Eddie Stern. Eddie Stern's like a, a Stanga teacher that put this free app out into the world. It's brilliant, it's genius and it just has a sliding scale of, and you can set ratios on there. So this is like a four.

• 55:22Tony Riddle?

  Four seconds in, six seconds out. And it just gives you that tone. It has a circle on the plate and then closes back down again.

• 55:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:30Tony Riddle?

  And I have people working with that.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  And that app is called his name, Eddie Stern?

• 55:34Tony Riddle?

  It's called Breathing App. So it's just Breathing App, it's free. If you have trouble finding it, look up Eddie Stern. I think it was a Stanger teacher like Madonna and people like that. But amazing to put a free app out there, right? And so it has this disc on it. So even if you're in a situation, it could be a quiet coach or something, and you can't have the sound on. You just follow that inflated ball and it closes and opens. And you just work with the breath to that. And it's so hypnotic. I get people that are having trouble sleeping. Five minutes of that, they're done.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:02Tony Riddle?

  It's so quick to drop in. And it's a tool that you can just carry in your pocket, right? And then eventually it gets to the point where you're just familiar with the breath, like the four seconds in, six seconds out. Where to breathe through. And you know, there's a lot of people out there operating like the breathing police at the moment. Right, you need to breathe through your nose and breathe through your mouth. Whatever is comfortable. So it could be, I prefer you to inhale up through your nose. There's this whole relationship with nitric oxide and what that does. It's a vasal dilator and bronchial dilator. So we know that with blood pressure and how we basically absorb oxygen, it's going to improve through that breath, through the nose. It's also associated with parasympathetic rest and digest again, right? So down regulation. And then you have these extended exhales. And that could be out the nose or out the mouth, just.

• 56:47Tony Riddle?

  That's one way, so that's breath. Equally, it could be, there's one of those 3,000 parks in London or one of those 8.4 million trees that is nearly enough for every person in London to sit under. The studies show just 20 minutes in nature is enough to lower heart rate and blood pressure. Just 20 minutes, you know? Equally, you can get that through staring at nature scenes like that on the wall with the trees there over your shoulder. Books with nature scenes in. Equally, they've been suggested that that will lower heart rate and blood pressure. So even if it was at your desk, have something living on your desk that is, you know, within that urban linear box that we're in. Then just maybe if you're walking anywhere is to think one step, one breath

• 57:31Tony Riddle?

  and start to slow the walk down, appreciate the walk. And even think about getting taller, you know? Rather than shorter, looking down at a screen, become taller. Take in your environment and your settings. What's the other new stuff that's coming through? The visual field work, so looking at the visual field, opening up that panorama, opening up the view. That's also associated with parasympathetic. So if you think of our screens being the, obviously the complete opposite of that, like really focused in hyper visual state, right? It's associated then with what would be a sympathetic state, this fight and flight.

• 58:05Rich Roll?

  A wider, taking a wider gaze and a softer.

• 58:08Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and trying to soften your visual field and wider. So, and especially if you're out in nature, like those guys that took those blindfolds on, like wow, okay, and open up the visual field. So if you think visual field, breathwork, nature. And then, you know, it's not enough even just to, you know, I did a piece on this the other day. It's, it's even with meditation and breathwork, we can often just get and sit, like with a breath, I'm just gonna sit now and do some breathful meditation. But if your physical vessel is starved of movement and compromised and stiff and rigid and then really it's not the best vessel to receive, I would look at kind of just some mobility practices as well that help, especially with that respiratory system, think of where that is, oh, it's the thoracal spine. Can I do some mobility or ranges around that to open things up?

• 58:52Tony Riddle?

  Hanging is brilliant for that, okay, because again, it opens everything up. Enables that whole respiratory pathway to open up. And then, again, just look at moving throughout your day, like moving through a landscape and make it, make it inconvenient. Make movement inconvenient, look at your landscape, right? How do I get from there to there in the most inconvenient way, you know? I set people in my online community, it's called NatLife Tribe, and I give them homework, I meet them three times a week and I give them homework, we might finish on some simple like low gate walking or crawling practices. And what your homework is, you have to hoover your whole apartment in a low gate walk. So a low gate walk is like being on the ground almost, like real knees over toe work, trying to remain upright. If you were down in a low squat with your heels up, but you could walk in that position.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:37Tony Riddle?

  Yeah? And so it's as if you're foraging off the ground like that, but now you're hoovering instead because we no longer forage off the ground. And then others might be like crawling, right? Now you have to think of weird and wonderful ways to crawl around your apartment. Because, again, it's hugely nourishing, right? And it's stuff that we've lost within this landscape. And the thing about this landscape, unfortunately, again, on that term of neuroplasticity, we are literally just moving from one linear box to another linear box on another linear street, right? With headphones in or heads down in phones. So it's, how can we nourish that within those urban environments? So again, it's, you know, it's not demonizing the city, but it's finding ways of living within it that are enhancing.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And it does require you to kind of set aside your ego a little bit. I mean, you have all these videos of you like crawling around on the ground with your kids and like waving your, flapping your arms around and stuff like that. Like, there's a little bit of shared DNA with Ido Portal and the work that he does, like bringing play into all of this, making it joyous and fun and not being so self-conscious. Like, you know, we're not going to be able to go down on Portobello Road and crawl around, you know, like, we might get arrested. I don't know, you've probably do this or have done it, I don't, you know? But I, you know, it's like, people are going to clam up, like, I can't, I can't be that way in the world, right? Like, but how can we let go a little bit of that?

• 1:00:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, you've got to quote something about like, we have to become less ego-conscious and more eco-conscious. And eco being broadly defined as, you know, our physical vessels, but also our environment in which we, you know, share.

• 1:01:14Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, so it's disconnecting from the ecosystem, reconnecting to our ecosystem. And there's practices in there that I call rechilding, right? So it's about taking people through a process so that they can remove all that armor and awkwardness that comes, you know? It's like, when did adulthood, when did it become so serious, right? When was that? What was the point? And I often talk about schooling because we unschool. And it's not against demonize schooling, but it's to say, well, what happens within that schooling environment, right? Whereas we are very playful. If I look at... My youngest, he's like just, just play the whole time, right? He's even playing with his emotions when he lets rip and just, you know,

• 1:01:58Tony Riddle?

  starts tearing the house down or whatever he's doing, he's still playing, he's playing with emotions. And then Tallulah is like, she's our budica, she's like really wild and roaring and, you know, just full of energy, but they're so playful. And so that's up until Tallulah's now six, so she would be ready for school, right, five or six. And then you enter that environment and then that play that you're allowed to play with all your emotions and your expressions is suddenly in a container, right, in a linear room all of a sudden, in a chair with a hierarchical system. And suddenly you're no longer allowed to speak when you would normally just let rip and just let stuff go. So we're all then get a bit locked up even in our throat chakras, if you think about that, from a very early age, right?

• 1:02:39Tony Riddle?

  So that's expression that goes and then we're allowed out to play in an environment that is adult-led in a way, right? It's painted lines and stuff that we think they would want to play around on.

• 1:02:49Rich Roll?

  There's very specific parameters of what that play can and can't be.

• 1:02:53Tony Riddle?

  And then, and within health and safety, right? So it's not, it's not, this isn't, again, it's not the schooling system, this is systems that we've created over time, right? And then within that, then you're then returned back to the classroom environment. And then over time, that play experience becomes lunch break, right? And then you have PE and PE is then very specialized, less generalist. Very, there is play within it, but it's specialist play, so it becomes a sport, right? And it's repetition and repetition of movement in a way. So my practices have been, we have these workshops now called the Hundred Human Experience. And it starts with an opening circle, usually around a fire, and then we set intentions and we have people kind of intro'd within it and then I open up play.

• 1:03:37Tony Riddle?

  So it's now the circle opens up and I have people just meandering around in a circle. And they walk around, they brush shoulders, they make eye contact. Now they bump shoulders and bump bums together and all of a sudden laughter comes immediately, it's done. Like within five minutes, complete strangers, suddenly just giggling away. And then it continues, right now you stop and you hold their shoulders, you look at them in the eyes, then you carry on walking. And then eventually it's like, right, you stop, make eye contact, really strong eye contact, then walk off again. Because if you'll notice here, very little eye contact will occur in where we are right now in London, right? And then eventually those layers, those facades, that armour is broken down with a hundred complete strangers, suddenly you start working as one, that collective bonding starts to occur. And then I have them holding each other's shoulders and then yelling into each other's eyes, you are loved, right? And all of a sudden you can see people just cracking at that moment, right?

• 1:04:22Tony Riddle?

  It's very emotional even, just to have someone look at you in the eyes and say you are loved. And especially after you've dealt with getting the armour away that's broken through that allows that emotion. And then it continues and it turns into this very playful, um, there's so much humour and belly laughter that is in that moment. And when we return back to the circle before going into the next practice, which is usually breath, the sharing is always, you know. Sure. You know, oh my god, it's, it's as if I've just re-entered back there and I can't believe that I gave all that away, you know, and, and that, that's re-childing, just as, that's rewilding, but it's re-childing for me, and, you know, it's, it's, it's such a powerful, powerful practice.

• 1:05:03Tony Riddle?

  Almost beyond what the breath work and the ice bath is, because you're stripping away many, many layers there. Mm-hmm. And going back into a playful state of mind, it's like, play isn't just play, it's a, it's a state of mind which then opens up new worlds and we have people that, well, we've all been stuck at some point, right? And we get stuck and we almost get stuck in a character. And we can get stuck in a character of depression, I'm holding men's circles and the amount of guys that come on those circles who are locked in with depression, right? And we go through the same practices, like really playful stuff. And it's a way all of a sudden of reconnecting with your imagination brain, let's say, right? And you can imagine yourself in, as a different being altogether, you can imagine yourself

• 1:05:47Tony Riddle?

  in a completely different position in life, you can imagine yourself as someone completely different to the person that's stuck right now. And they reawaken from that through acts of play. There's trauma work in play, it's fascinating when you go into it, like as a, as a modality for dealing with, uh, mental health issues even, right? Mm-hmm. And then we have to say, well, where does that stuff enter? Oh, well, is it perhaps when I had my playful state of mind removed? Could it be that, that I no longer can imagine myself in these different worlds? And I think we talked about this on the last podcast, there's that, um, it's Peter Gray, he wrote this book called Free to Learn, right? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna mention it again, cause I think it's really valuable, as he asked ten leading anthropologists what play looks like in nature.

• 1:06:30Tony Riddle?

  And they look at three independent tribes, different geographic locations. And first, the first thing they come back with, all of them, it's like they're the most well-adjusted, well-rounded individuals they've ever met, right, are the children. And what does it, what does it look like? And they said, well, from infancy through to teenage years, all the kids do is play. And they play at being everything within the environment. So they play even being, they play at the adults. So imagine through that experience, they have birth, they have death, they have all these different rites of passage that occur, but also they learn to track animals. They learn that stuff that I've taught people blindfolded to go into. They learn foraging seals. They can build shelters, they can track. So suddenly they, they enter adulthood. Is adulthood any different then?

• 1:07:13Tony Riddle?

  Isn't it not just the playful state of mind that they're achieving, they're managing to walk around? It then brings Bruce Parry's work in where they're in this permanent state of meditation that you and I can only achieve. Is that possible for us then? You know, if you think about, if you really unpacked it that way. So there's, there's so much to that playful state of mind that we could open up and unpack.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the level of layers, the extent to which we build these, you know, castles around our identities and our personas and the adherence to social constructs and rules, all of that calcifies our ability to just be who we are. And play, by its own definition, requires a sort of transcendency of the logical, rational, you know, like looping mind, right? It is a flow state of sorts in the sense that when you're playing, you're not really thinking about what you're doing, you're being, right?

• 1:08:12Rich Roll?

  And when you're being, there isn't room for all of those narratives to get in the way, right? But the more we erect these walls around ourselves, the more difficult it is to connect with that primal state of play because the ego intercedes and tells us like, you'll look like an idiot if you do that. Or, you know, what is somebody gonna say if you behave in this certain way? And all of these things create a prison of our own making that is driving, you know, it's, it's obviously more complicated than that, but, you know, has to be on some level at the root of some of these, you know, depressive tendencies that we're seeing on the rise.

• 1:08:52Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, again, I think it goes back to imagining yourself in other realms even, you know, and. Those kids in nature, again, they're learning everything about their environment. That, I mean, that's one consciousness, is it not? That's understanding real biodiversity, because you've literally been everything within that habitat, right? So, um, and then versus like the men's circles that I'm holding. You know, in the UK, it's like, what is the number one killer in men under the age of 50 is suicide, right? So there's a, there's, what's happening here, right?

• 1:09:23Rich Roll?

  Right, and there's something uniquely British about not, you know, you're, peop-, you, you, men are not demonstrative in their emotions here. By default, right?

• 1:09:32Tony Riddle?

  Well, again, I think.

• 1:09:33Rich Roll?

  There's a cultural norm around like.

• 1:09:35Tony Riddle?

  How far we go back, though, it's like, where do we go? Because if you think about the, say, the Celt ancestors, they were again about being and being at one with land and there is huge emotional stories and and weaving folks to stories and song and is it, it feels to me, it's almost like when the written word come in almost, you know, it's like that, that what, what did we lose in those processes? But I think a hundred percent, I think for the guys that I meet, suddenly you get them in a circle and yet they're communicating all of a sudden. You create a ceremony and then it's as if, it's so in our DNA to hold ceremony in circle. When you create it, men open up and start sharing. That is very different, you know?

• 1:10:19Tony Riddle?

  So I think it's, it's within us, it's almost in those, what I call the, like the primordial, like you mean primordial database, it's within us, right? There's something within our DNA that's ceremony and circle enables us to tap into that, which is, again, a rewilding, right? There's also letting stuff out. I have guys like, allowing them to roar and shout and yell and express that suddenly they paid, be put a lid on that because they felt it was so inappropriate. That level of, that level of masculinity, letting that stuff out. And why do we need to let that out? Well, it's so it doesn't erupt in places where it is inappropriate, right? So it's giving them a modality, like, work on this.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  Right, a healthy catharsis.

• 1:10:57Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and one of the guys, he, he went into, um, he said he hadn't been able to go to his local shops, just felt, just couldn't get out to do it, just felt disconnected and um, a level of depression, of course. And then post weekend, like 24 hours, 24 hour experience, right? Went into his local town, went into one of his local shops and go, ah, how are you, man? He's like, I'm great, it's a while we haven't seen you in ages. Have you been on holiday? He's like, no, he said, have you lost weight? There's something very different about you, you look, do you look really, you look great. And he said, yeah, I just went, just went and spent 24 hours with this guy. You know, and explain and unpacked it with them. And it's just, again, it just, it was playing with experience.

• 1:11:39Tony Riddle?

  I had them in deep play for work, like playing partner, partner work, forehead to forehead. When one moves, the other one has to mirror the movement. And I had them even sparring and play fighting and rolling around and playing with each other's weights. And again, things that we, we almost have lost, like that level of expression or human contact. And I think partly like the three years we've had has meant a real disconnect from human contact. And I explained to one of the guys, like, think about it like this, you wake up in the morning, get hit with early light immediately. All right, serotonin, one happy hormone, tick. Okay, he has a family. Okay. Hugging, go and hug your family. Oxytocin, another happy hormone, done. All right, now get out and move more. Okay, so then we have dopamine seeking hormones associated with happiness, done.

• 1:12:22Tony Riddle?

  Right now we have, um, let's maybe up the, um, intensity of it, then we can bring endorphins in. And then all of a sudden, right, we've got four happy hormones you can put in the happy hormone shaker, give it a good shake and bam, out you come. And that you could see there was almost like the guys like, yeah, but that sounds so simple, but it is.

• 1:12:39Rich Roll?

  Take me behind the velvet rope, Tony.

• 1:12:41Tony Riddle?

  You know, come on.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  It's so. It's that thing. There's a, there's an adage in, in recovery that's similar, like when you've been sober for a while. And you, you know, you're in this 12 step community. At some point you reach this Rubicon where you're like, yeah, I get it, man, but like, what's the next thing? Like, what's the next, I've done all that stuff, like, but I'm still struggling with this. Like, tell me the secret that you haven't told me yet. It's like, no, it's just back to these principles. You just need to practice them a little bit more, like I, the human mind wants to find. And you see it like played out on social media, like what's the one thing that, you know, nobody's telling you.

• 1:13:20Rich Roll?

  And the truth is, and you're, everything that you are is about this, like it is, there is no secret. It's these very basic things that we've always known, that we need to find a way to return to. And the process of returning to them involves unlearning so much of what, you know, we've been indoctrinated in. And opening ourselves up. In a childlike way to these innate pulls that we all have that connect us as humans, whether it's the campfire, or the breath exercise, or hugging your family members, or like embracing the day by acknowledging the sunlight into your eyes upon awakening.

• 1:14:04Rich Roll?

  Like, all of these things are so crucial and fundamental, and yet, in this age of reason and enlightenment, we dismiss them as trivial because we exist and value our identity from a perspective of what is going on in between our ears, the intellectualization of everything. And this is like a thing I have with Julie. She's more on the polarity of human experiences. I would place her much closer to you. And because of my upbringing, my default setting is to pivot back to that intellectualization of everything. And I've grown a lot and become much more open to different experiences, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

• 1:14:48Rich Roll?

  But when stressed, I will revert. And then she's like, what do you know? And it's hard, man. It's like, because I can see, there's wisdom in both of these things. They have to coexist on some level, right? And finding that right balance for me of being open to what I know and to new experiences, and also relying on the intellect when appropriate, is like this dance. I'm always in this... It's not a war, it's more like a relationship.

• 1:15:21Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. Well, there's symbiosis in that, right?

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:15:25Tony Riddle?

  I think, as I said at the beginning of the conversation, there is this information-rich and experience-poor moment. And it's just being mindful, is there values or is there a philosophy in there somewhere within us? That we can go, well, the information at least I'm gathering is just like for me, I have this physical, social, spiritual understanding, right? Within the physical self, I know there's movement and play and sleep and rest and how I eat and digest and sunlight and water, right? And sex, right? Okay. So the information I'm going to gather, I'm going to go and put this button. What I'm going to do now, that I have all that information, I'm going to implement it and action it and experience it, rather than get lost in this in information the whole

• 1:16:07Tony Riddle?

  time. It's a bit like studying, right? You can go from school to college, university, and then post grad stuff and then keep going, keep going, keep going. Because actually, the big wide world, when you finally have to go and implement that stuff can be quite scary. So sometimes it's easier to remain in education. And also, it sometimes helps feed the ego of when I do get involved in a conversation, I can articulate that conversation well and I have enough information behind me to prove that I'm an intellect, right? So there's, or there might be a frustrated academic underneath it, right? That needs to learn. And I, I, I very much went into information, information, information. And then I go, right, experience, experience, experience, experience. And I think that's a healthy balance. It's like go and actually practice it. Give it time, you know, give it the hoodie time, right?

• 1:16:49Tony Riddle?

  Know that this, this stuff's always going to be here. We are so abundant of information. But if we don't go and experience it, you know, what are we losing?

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  Right. And well, wisdom is birthed out of the experience of that information, right? Like putting that information into action from that, you know, is, is what arises. Like, we have too much information right now, not enough wisdom. If you want the wisdom, you've got to apply the information and experience it.

• 1:17:19Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, because again, it's actioning is the growth, right? So it's growth happens in action, right? Let's go and really experience this stuff. And in that, you also can find perhaps what it is for Rich, what it is for Tony to experience it, right? So we get our own unique interpretation. So it's not just our own unique interpretation, it's also our unique way of it processing and then perhaps expressing, right? So what is the universe uniquely assigned for you and uniquely assigned for me is completely different. And the more and more I get to experience and be. The more I get to fully tune into what that is, right? And to fully express what it is through me, you know, rather than maybe through the voice of another.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, and I think in that, in that place, you can find a deeper reservoir of empathy and non-judgment of others.

• 1:18:11Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, I've, there's a funny one around judgment, because I've, you know, in this, in my kind of online communities, a few of them in there, it's thinking what others think of them, this judgment, you know? It could be about the playful work, or hanging even on the tube, or it could, it could be anything within their environment, right? And then it's, you know, people, I feel that people may be judging me, and then you realize that, well, it's judgment. You're judging them for judging you. So judgment is the tier, right? That's where we need to do the work, right?

• 1:18:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the meta-judgment.

• 1:18:45Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Rich Roll?

  That's going on.

• 1:18:47Tony Riddle?

  The bigger picture of judgment, what is that?

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  How dare you judge me judging you?

• 1:18:51Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, judging you.

• 1:18:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:53Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, that's there, right?

• 1:19:02Rich Roll?

  So, the book is organized under these four principles, all ours, you know, reboot, reconnect, rewild, and then refine. We've talked a little bit about unlearning, talked a little bit about reconnecting, rewilding. What else can be said about this, you know, process of, of understanding these, these pillars?

• 1:19:25Tony Riddle?

  Well, I think, I look at rebooting, it's almost like this, um, there's a lot of practices in there for rebooting, right? Even that, the breath that we've discussed is an opportunity to just have a reboot in a moment, you know?

• 1:19:37Rich Roll?

  Right, like big reboots, like full life reboots, all the way down to mini.

• 1:19:42Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, so it can, like, for me, it's a very interesting period, because a lot of my stuff went online. And, um, so I, uh, there's been an adjustment within that, um, that had to happen. So within our environments, I now have a studio that's set up. And if I'm, say, mentoring someone, it's now more, it's more of, you know, it's online. And sometimes you are receiving, you know, all kinds of information, right? And some of it's like, there's a lot in there to process and... And if I left that studio and just opened up the door and walked into the house, my family are then receiving that as well. So for me, it's, you know, I, there's a reboot there. Okay, just stop at the door, take a breath, long exhale, okay, walk out.

• 1:20:25Tony Riddle?

  And then the next door I open, take a breath, long exhale, walk in, you know, so just breathing. Just imagine you had like a crazy day at the office and then a crazy commute home. And you're carrying all that stuff and then you arrive at the door and you open up the door and you walk in with all that stuff. And you have kids and the kids dying to meet papa at that moment. And it seems like a lifetime. And then all of a sudden you've brought all this, this kind of, you could call it toxic, right? Information in the house. So that's, that's, that can be a reboot on a micro level, right? A bigger reboot might be, okay, I'm, I'm gonna go and, you know, I might get into an ice bath at home. We have a couple of setups, have a barrel and have a big dip tank there. And so that's, that's maybe on a, on a bigger level of that.

• 1:21:06Tony Riddle?

  Or you could go even higher than that and like might go to psychedelics or something, you know, to have a real kind of reboot. Reconnecting, that's for me is mainly around reconnecting to the fact that we're nature and not, not separate of it. It's interconnected, us and nature, we are one in that sense. So I think there's the spending more time in those organic situations to become more of an organic being. And to have more organic behaviours in those environments, everyday environments. The more, more nature immersion, the more natural the outcome will be, I would say. And then trying to bring as much of that then into your everyday environment. So there's maybe that reconnection starts off with yourself and then perhaps then it moves out and, okay,

• 1:21:47Tony Riddle?

  maybe I might want to be doing more around the environment or environmental issues that are going on in the world. But it starts, I think, with the, with the human within that conversation, biodiversity. We have to reconnect to the fact that we are nature. And then we realise we're sitting around this huge table of interdependence with the plants, the rocks and the animals. And it's all one thing, right? And rather than seeing we're separate of it, all controlling of it. Rewilding is that state is getting back to that position of, well, again, what is it to move through a landscape, to be the landscape, to inhale the landscape? Not just reconnecting to the fact we are it, it's rewilding all the behaviours within it, you know. And then refinement is, you know, even when you think you've absolutely nailed it, is

• 1:22:32Tony Riddle?

  to keep going back and keep going back and keep going back to refine things, because there's so much value in that refinement.

• 1:22:39Tony Riddle?

  But more often not, I think, along that, along all of those journeys, is to go in with complete compassion for yourself and others, right? So, there's a guy on one of our last 100 Human Experiences, he comes in and he delivers a practice on alignment. So he had everyone sitting in a circle, like on their bums, in a long sits, your legs are straight out in front of you, but you're sitting up, like, all barefoot, so there's like a hundred people in a circle with their feet all together, it looks amazing, with a fire pit in the middle, love that, just that alone. I was done at that point, don't need an alignment circle.

• 1:23:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no video, but like, you know, Tony's lit up like a Christmas tree, just imagining that, like, this is your, this is your, your dharma and your heaven spot, like a campfire and a lot of bare feet pointed in your direction.

• 1:23:25Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and just doing deep work together, you know, and going through that reboot, reconnect, rewild, this is the experience. And he really brought something that was quite special, and it, and it drove something within me. So there's, he would ask questions, like, it would be about alignment, it might be, you know, we did a lot of voice awakening work, you know, I was saying, at some stage we would all been told, like, from the moment you're born, right, you come out making all this noise in the world, ah, and then everyone's like, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.

• 1:23:49Rich Roll?

  Don't speak unless spoken to.

• 1:23:50Tony Riddle?

  Trying to keep you quiet, or the children who'd be seen not heard kind of behaviour comes in, and then you sit in a classroom where you have to put your hand up to even speak, so the suppression of that.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  And the stakes of what you're gonna say are heightened.

• 1:24:01Tony Riddle?

  So then we could say rebooting, rebooting would be a voice awakening practice is to reconnect to the fact that I'll have this natural voice, and then we rewild the voice, you know, and then there's refinement within that, even looking at to that level. So within that circle, it's like, well, who, we have a voice awakening coach prior to that. Her name's Kate Lister. She is phenomenal. So she gets everyone playing with their voice. And you get people that come up and they're like, a bit awkward, you know. And one guy on the last, what was his name? I won't mention his name actually. So he was a fifty five year old dude. And he said, oh Tony, when you asked me to come up speak at the very beginning, I was so nervous. And then we actually unpacked it and went right back. And it was school assembly.

• 1:24:41Tony Riddle?

  Where the trauma came in. So the school assembly was, oh, he has to come out to the front stage and talk to a whole tribe of people that he probably hasn't, you know, has only met a few of them that have become his mates. And he now has to speak in front of that whole audience, which some might excel at immediately. But if you haven't been given the tools and the modalities to be able to go up there, a bit like walking into the exam and doing breath before that. Then that's traumatic. So his PTSD was in there, right? So whenever he has to stand up, he's like, can't speak. So we gave him like voice awakening work. So then you sit in the circle and it would be, Chris would say, in this giant foot circle of a hundred humans in Elsits around the fire. He would say, so if any of you came here today, you know, maybe you had difficulty speaking your truth.

• 1:25:23Tony Riddle?

  If you felt that you've now worked through that and we've processed that, do you think you can make a step forward? And they do like a, I called it the Angela Riddle, which my mum, she used to do these bum exercises in that Elsit position. Try and move around the lounge like that, so like hip hinging for a bum. And so it's like this bum shuffle, you'd make a bum shuffle forward or you'd make a bum shuffle back. And he had this whole series of questions, but he went through all the chakras this way, right? Fascinating, right? And then eventually you had people forward, people back all around this circle. So they're no longer in this really organised circle. It's very fragmented, right, in that sense. But they're all moving towards the fire. So they all have this purpose of getting to the fire, this path. And that was the thing about the path. Look around you. We're all walking towards the same

• 1:26:08Tony Riddle?

  direction, but we're all at different stages, you know. So we're all basically being asked of different things and different process and we're all at different stages in life, but ultimately we're all on the same path. And then he said, now just reach over. Maybe that person in front of you, you can just about reach them with your toe, but reach and touch them. The person behind you, reach them with your fingertips. And now can you see that we're all connected, you know, on that path. It was so powerful.

• 1:26:34Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:26:35Tony Riddle?

  You know?

• 1:26:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Obviously, all of this is very holistic and on some level individualistic. These practices and modalities and lifestyle habits are all about integrating mind, body, spirit, et cetera. The reductive human wants to say, Tony, just give me the three things. Like, what do I, you know, like, what's the most important practice? Or should I do breath? Or should I do meditation? Or is it important that I do the cold immersion? Like, that's the human animal, right? This is a matrix of, you know, countless practices, some small,

• 1:27:15Rich Roll?

  some big, all of which you're free to experiment with, all of which you can find, you know, in Tony's work and in his book, et cetera. And I'm sure you get this question a lot, especially you're doing media around the book. Like, what are the three things that I should be doing that I'm not doing? Or, you know, on some level, it's about communicating these ideas in a way that's digestible and practical for somebody who's trying to understand where you're coming from.

• 1:27:40Tony Riddle?

  Well, again, Nick Mulvey's lyrics always come to mind for me. Happy is the man who breathes in the morning. It's not enough just to breathe in the morning, so we need movement and we need to kind of wake up that physicality, right? And get into the vessel, get grounded, I would say. So move, move more, you know, and... Move in ways that you can't really recognise as exercise in a sense. That might mean um sitting less on the couch, you know. Watching Netflix whilst being on the floor, play with different sitting positions. If you're on Zoom, maybe turn that hour-long Zoom session into an hour mobility session. You know, some ground sitting positions in the book, right, that you can play with, there's six in there. I have tutorials and things like that you can have a look at, but have a little play.

• 1:28:25Tony Riddle?

  And if you have kids, just observe the kids on the ground, how they move, and they're your best teachers. They're, okay, I can do that, I can do that, I can't do that. Just play with it and you'll find that the more and more you play around on the ground, the softer and more mobile you'll become over time. So what might start off as stiff, you know, you'll get signals to say, that's enough now, I need to move. So Rich, I might be kneeling, a little bit of a niggling there, it's a bit tender, okay, move, next thing, next movement. And the more you move and the more you need, you go back to it. So you stretch the discomfort over time, rather than sitting in discomfort for too long, getting an emotional response and then going, no, I can't hack this anymore. It doesn't work, it's just play with the edges of discomfort and comfort until you can push the boundaries of that. Until eventually, like me, sitting becomes more uncomfortable for me than actually being on the ground.

• 1:29:10Tony Riddle?

  I much prefer being on the ground and it's assisted so much within my endurance work. I think in the documentary, there's a um the one man, two feet, three peaks. I've just run up Snowdon and back down again and then completed two marathons after that. And there's a whole elevation of like seven thousand four hundred that day. And we get back to a campsite and I'm now kneeling on the ground, eating food with my kids, you know. And that mobility stuff on the ground enables me to then stand up and move again. If I went to sitting, I'd get so locked up in hips and ankles and everything else. So just try and, yeah, think about nourishing movement and the movement will enable other practices. Breath, great, easy, simple breathing practices.

• 1:29:51Tony Riddle?

  You know, it's free, movement is free on the ground, don't need a gym membership for that, don't need to exercise, work in home anyway. Just improve that space, create a space where you can move to begin with, I guess, right? So that's that, that's um I would then look at, right, the voice work. If you have trouble speaking or articulating, breathing helps because then you can remain calm when that up-regulated voice comes in, you can breathe that. But also opening this stuff up, I I would get a cushion. And like scream and yell into the cushion and let stuff out, just really have a practice of that. Doesn't have to be with the voice coach in a big hundred human circle. You can just be in your apartment with a pillow.

• 1:30:33Tony Riddle?

  If things get too much for you and you feel like you have to let go, it's much better to let go than screw the lid even tighter. You know, be playful, you know, can you just look at maybe what's an adult version of the play stuff that we could think of? Dance, you know? Put music on and play your physicality, dance, draw the curtains if, if, you know, no one's looking then, you know? Do you know what I mean? Just have a proper dance. But I see myself, I'm embarrassed of myself. But you can start with shakes, like you can even start with simple shakes on the spot, boom, boom, boom, boom. And find that and you suddenly start to find, ah, there's play in that, there's movement in that. And start to let that go because the rigid forms start to break down after a while.

• 1:31:15Tony Riddle?

  And that's not woo woo again, because there's so many studies around this kind of tremor work and trauma releasing work and through vibrations and shaking and that's all there, right? So stuff gets locked up in the body and that rigidity gets locked up. And then the other, where I'd really go, and I think this is probably the really important one to unpack because we all do lots of this and that's the sleep. Right, and but it's not the sleep, it's the environment of which we sleep. And going back to that inorganic consumption leads to inorganic behaviors and beings. It's the one thing really that it's not so free to begin with, but it's very freeing over time. Is to look at the environment of which you sleep, that you spend a third of your life in. And try and make it as organic as possible.

• 1:31:59Tony Riddle?

  So that might mean switching out the soft furnishings and the fabrics and even the paints, go to clay paints and just, but over time, bit by bit by bit. That might mean my budget only allows a pillowcase this month. Just choose a pillowcase, if one pillowcase is an improvement, it's an organic pillowcase, right? And just think about that expression then is that's what I'm inhaling, that experience for eight hours. Clean up the hair, could mean air purifiers, right, systems like that. Um, if you're in like Portobello Road like we are now, you are not going to open a window and sleep like that, right? So you need to think, right, but I've trapped that in this space. So we know the air quality in here is just as disturbing as it is outside, right? Then you can think, well, lighting, right? How do I get my lighting back to how it would be in nature?

• 1:32:43Tony Riddle?

  So it's less like daytime light, it's more like nighttime, so that's what we call biological darkness. We unpacked a fair bit of that on the on the first pod, right, around melatonin. But we now know that melatonin is heals oxidative stress. It's an antioxidant, anti viral work. It contributes towards digestion, immune, anti cancer properties. It's vast, right, way beyond. And some of those studies around diabetes even, they're suggesting through one journal that it's like after a number of months of supplementing on melatonin, the change within insulin, they're no longer diabetic. So it's it's like, it's vast, man.

• 1:33:24Tony Riddle?

  And so I think with just with the anti obesity, anti cancer properties around melatonin, that's lighting. So where we could go in the bedroom is then think, right, can I switch my lighting over time to be amber tones? And to begin with, depends on budget, that might mean a glass jar with a tea light in it. Right. You know, or it might mean a bit more budget amber glasses. And the other big thing within that environment then is to think firelight, right? So firelight and information around the fire. So if you were in your in the tribe, let's say, and there's one study that we've talked about in the past, which Professor Siegel, University of California, three independent tribes. And not one of them sleeps for eight hours, it's between five point seven and seven point one hours.

• 1:34:08Tony Riddle?

  But what's different, there's the there's the temperature, so thermogenic temperature, the temperature again, there's lighting. And there's also there's stuff that happens around the fire. So that's the communication and what we're absorbing. So when we say inorganic consumption, that also means what you're possibly absorbing through your phone at night. Not just the lighting, because we can get past that by wearing amber glasses. And we can think, yes, okay, I can still sit up scrolling because I've got my amber glasses on. It's actually what you're consuming. So if it's like murder, thriller, intense stuff, is that conducive with sleep? No. So I would go, well, keep try and keep the tech out of the bedroom and think, you know, the bedrooms for bed rooming,

• 1:34:49Tony Riddle?

  right, sleeping, sex, whatever it is, but try and keep the work and stuff out there. If you work from home and it has to be, that's the only room that you can work in. Then try and really disconnect from it, change something within it to make it more of a ceremony for when you do go to sleep. But you definitely be mindful of the information that you receive before sleep. Because that will also play out. So that guy that was running for the tube that morning, it didn't start when he woke up. You know, it starts really from when we go to sleep.

• 1:35:16Rich Roll?

  Sure, sure. Yeah, I, I, I think that, I mean, look, obviously, the more you align your, your, your biological system with the circadian rhythms of the planet, the more, you know, attuned you're going to be and the, you know, the, the, the more likely it is that you're going to have a restful night of sleep. I think so much of what people consider to be sleep disorders are really just ruminations of the mind. Like, they haven't moved enough to kind of activate the appropriate hormone balance over the course of the day. And I count myself guilty of this. Like, I'll, I'll live in my head and I'll be looping some narrative of some problem that I have with somebody, or, you know, some resentment that I have, or something like that, and I can't shut it off.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  Right? I cannot, I can't, like, every time I try to move my thinking gently towards something more down regulatory, if I'm not being super aware, it'll snap back to that narrative. And it's, it is like, paying attention to that has been amazing. But when I'm in that state, it is an upregulated state, and it makes restful sleep close to impossible. It keeps me up at late, et cetera. And I think this is a really common thing, and people are like, taking sleep medication because they believe they have a sleep disorder, but it's not a sleep disorder.

• 1:36:37Tony Riddle?

  No.

• 1:36:38Rich Roll?

  It's an anxiety of the mind.

• 1:36:41Tony Riddle?

  Upregulation again, right? Upregulation versus downregulation. Yeah, I've, I've had, you know, a number of people come that perceive themselves as insomnia again, but, you know, you firstly, it's the environment, the habits within the habitat before sleep, that's one. And then it's putting practices in place that enable you to get to down regulation. So if you rather than allowing the mind to go back, it's not enough to just down regulate and breathe, I'd use stuff like that breathing app because you just focus in on it. It's a bit like counting sheep, but you you're guiding it through breath. And you go deep with that and it doesn't take long. It does mean taking a device in, but you can do all that on flight mode and turn the screen off. That's that's a powerful tool, right?

• 1:37:23Rich Roll?

  Right. I don't want to make this about me, but I I can't like have you here and not like at least solicit your input on like my chronic lower back problem. I've talked too much of it about it on the podcast, so I don't want to linger on it.

• 1:37:38Tony Riddle?

  No, go on, man.

• 1:37:39Rich Roll?

  But I, you know, yeah, I just, it's it's really prevented me from being as active and as mobile and as agile as I would like to be. And I've been on this, you know, learning curve, this education about all the, it's very complicated, like all the different things that could have probably did contribute to this condition and that are exacerbating and perpetuating it from, you know, stored emotional trauma all the way to, you know, glutes that that won't fire, you know, like very basic things to more kind of ephemeral things and and and trying to kind of settle on a modality of of healing and kind of where I'm at with it right now is a combination of multiple things, but a lot of it has to

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  do with natural movement and trying to get muscles that have never fired to start activating and then slowly through natural posture and movement, trying to strengthen these underutilized muscles and, you know, basically shift my pelvic posture into better alignment so that, you know, the movements that I want to engage in aren't causing me pain.

• 1:38:48Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. Okay, so um if I observe you when you're sitting. Yeah. So you your right shoulder and right side flexors are quite dominant and then your head hinges to your left. Yes, always. My head is always going to the left. And then even the way that you communicate about your back, immediately your shoulders end up right around your ears. There's an immediate response of this stress that's there, right? So there's an obviously emotional tears to it, right, layer to it. I would go, well, if we're talking about natural movement and movement, um what have we just been doing for, we've been here a while now, right? Mm hmm. We've just been sitting, right? And sitting again um is not a natural form, right?

• 1:39:31Tony Riddle?

  So if we just took natural movement back to its real basics and just said, okay, I need to be performing on the ground in order to heal and reconnect, reboot, rewild, refine those joint actions. And the more aligned my joint actions or more appropriate the joint actions are, the more stable my pelvis and my lower back can be, right? Yeah, every time I sit, I then compromise that, right? I go against the way that the the joint actions, every joint action is compromised through sitting, right? Um we talked about hip flexors and glutes, glutes, the reason we have to switch our glutes on because they're so stagnant when we sit, right? Whereas if you squat, you you don't have that relationship, right? And you're always experiencing your body weight in the same areas of your feet when you stand up.

• 1:40:17Tony Riddle?

  You could say it's an endurance event, just squatting and standing, right, alone. Luke to the Hadza again, thousands and thousands of years have been living the same lifestyle, they're just as sedentary as we are, right? They spend ten point five hours sitting, right? They just, it's this notion that they're always busy and active and hunting, no, they spend ten and a half hours sitting. Just their ten and a half hours are on the ground, sitting. And every ground resposition is, we could call, like a prerequisite, or something that has to be involved, engaged into how we stand, then how we walk and how we run. So when we just go to one sitting form in a chair, which isn't conducive with standing up, there's little wonder why we have chronic back conditions, neck conditions, even knee

• 1:41:02Tony Riddle?

  conditions, because we're no longer taking the knee even into the depths of range that it needs, yeah? Yeah. So it's then not about this, not about, it's basically quick fixes of, I say quick fixes of further distraction from the truth, and the truth is we just don't move enough, right? And, and we sit for long periods of time, but in inappropriate shapes, which then creates symptoms, and then we're trying to then search a symptom relief, so we go and see this specialist, this specialist, this specialist, but we haven't changed the behaviour. Right. You know, so I would go to the, I deal with the cause level for me personally, that's where I've always gone with backs and knee injuries, is to get the optimal or natural ranges back into them, right? Right. So that would begin like- And still, but still, you still have, because you're still having symptom relief,

• 1:41:47Tony Riddle?

  like you're going to see this person, this person, but then what are you doing with that? Otherwise it's more information, right? Yeah. And what I need to do is then flip the experience and say, well, what's the natural, what's the natural sitting positions, right? Let's just keep doing this stuff, because the symptom stuff's working for me right now, it really helps to go and see this practitioner. Sometimes that's just an emotional hug, right? That's what that becomes, because it's chronic, it's sometimes, it's no longer existing where it did, right? Sometimes there's even a blockade and we hold on to it for a bit longer and we have to find a way, a mechanism of releasing it, but then keep going back into this, like trigger point work's fantastic, but it's not fantastic on its own, because you have to go back and see the trigger point specialist again, have trigger points specialist, and then go and change up your movement, and make your movement as organic as possible.

• 1:42:31Tony Riddle?

  So I would go, try and flip, even to start with, because it seems so extreme to think, I'm going to suddenly go and sit on the floor for ten and a half hours, just do segments of it. Mm-hmm. And bring more of it into your everyday, you know? Yeah. Otherwise it's seated posture that affects the way the hip joints behave, affects the way the pelvis behaves, because you've created like counter nutation with the pelvis, compromises the SI joints, um, abs are off right now, I have to work really hard to remain upright, um, mid-back, then shoulders can pop up, right? There's so much that happens just from sitting, and the more compliant the chair- The more stiff we become in it and the more awkward the positions we get into, right?

• 1:43:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:09Tony Riddle?

  Whereas if you sit on a really hard seat, suddenly you're actually more aware. Or if you sit on a really hard floor, you'll be more aware. Sit on a really cushioned floor, you can, you have, it's more sympathetic to play with, so that's sometimes nicer. Then you can use supports and bolsters and things to help. So if you're sitting cross-legged, maybe to start if it's too intense, put a bolster underneath your butt. If you're sitting in a squat and you can't get down it because your ankles aren't quite flexible enough, put a little wedge behind your heels. Um, and allow your pelvis to relax in those sitting positions because often there's tension there as well. So like relaxing the pelvic floor really helps. So I'm thinking lower abdomen, let that stuff go. And then look at the behaviours of the joints, right? How do I mobilise the ankle more? How can I mobilise my hip more? And the more mobile the hip, the more stable the knee. The more stable the knee, the more mobile the hip.

• 1:43:54Tony Riddle?

  The more mobile the hip, the more stable the pelvis and the lumbar. And think about that, even that joint by joint approach. I mean, if you apply that joint by joint approach to how we're sitting now, yeah. Where's the ankle mobility? Where's the hip mobility and where's the knee stability? So unfortunately it has to be lumbar, pelvis and then the mid-back. And we all know what the couching, slouching, surfing, um, swiping type in posture looks like now. It's really evident that through ankle spine gets um, a real kyphosis going, right? And the head position ends up more forward. And the problem with that then again is that when you do go to walk, we're no longer aligned. The head isn't up, the chest isn't up, the pelvis and all those three aren't stacked appropriately. The head's a huge weight, the more forward it is of that base of support, the longer you have to stride.

• 1:44:39Tony Riddle?

  The longer your levers, the more forces you have to deal with. You're tall, right? So you have to do even more work, right? Because of the length of your levers. And I, I, I, I often discuss this with parents, with kids. And if you don't keep these modalities of movement alive and you go into a, into a school environment and you don't keep the movement modalities alive as a parent outside of that, right? Like parkour's great for that and free running is great for that. Because they're really expressing their physicality and it's very natural. That when you get to a certain age, teenage years, you suddenly have a massive growth spurt. And whereas if you were divorced from movement and you suddenly weren't moving around how nature intended, and suddenly you have a growth spurt, it's like baby giraffes

• 1:45:23Tony Riddle?

  walking around and have no idea how to move their limbs anymore. Whereas if you carried on moving naturally throughout your day, like punctuated in amongst your day, I'm gonna just sit more on the ground, or I'm gonna hang, or I'll do this. Suddenly, those growth spurts aren't so alarming because you've created a micro kind of adjustment as you've addressed it.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:42Tony Riddle?

  So I'd really think about, it's the everyday stuff, it's the environment stuff. What can you take control of in your everyday habitat, in your everyday environment? Because otherwise, all that work is just, it's literally symptom relief and you really need to get to the cause of it, you know?

• 1:45:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Tony Riddle?

  Because we might be going, running's the cause, or cycling on the bikes, the cause. I would say it's the stuff that you've been doing for ten and a half hours a day that isn't natural, that then you go and try and run with and try and cycle with.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:07Tony Riddle?

  That then compromises that chain.

• 1:46:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think I shared this last time, like, my kind of default is, you know, sitting, doing like this, or at a desk, preparing to do something like this, and then popping up and immediately going and working out, and then when I'm done, just sitting back down again.

• 1:46:26Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, yeah. So you, then what you said, it's like, okay, so let's just look at stand, getting from the chair that you've been in for hours to going straight to exercise. That's like going, right, here's the jelly, and in a real liquid form, and I pour it into the mold, right? That's you working out now, the liquid, because you come super loose when you've worked out. And then you put that, and then you sit down, that's the jelly in the mold, and then I set it like that.

• 1:46:49Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:46:49Tony Riddle?

  You know, without doing the mobility work, the deep ranges. Whenever I, whenever I'm even out on a run, I get down into deep squats, and I get down into low-gate walks.

• 1:46:59Rich Roll?

  Like mid-run, you'll just drop into that?

• 1:47:01Tony Riddle?

  Somewhere in there, and I'll rest in it, like a rest on the run, and then I go off again. You know, and then when I get back, I'm straight into deep squats. No, I don't have to do all the mobility work, you know, because the squat is enough. It's got puts all the dorsiflexion in, all the stuff through the lower extremities, drops the hips in. It's amazing just to get to a resting squat and try and keep going back to that and keep reinforcing it.

• 1:47:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you don't, you, you don't know extra weight or anything like that, just full body movements.

• 1:47:29Tony Riddle?

  For you, I, I wouldn't worry about weight at this size time because the, the structure can't handle its own weight right now.

• 1:47:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:37Tony Riddle?

  So why add more to it?

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:39Tony Riddle?

  So I would start to look at the, the foundations of that structure, what the movements that I can be doing throughout the day that will just help reinforce my competency of moving my levers around and being stable enough for those levers to move from, right? And then add more weight.

• 1:47:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Tony Riddle?

  But you have to get, you know, you have to get that framework and the foundations of that framework super strong.

• 1:48:02Rich Roll?

  It's interesting to reflect back on my life as you're sharing this

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  and to recall, like, my preferred, my preferred posture for sitting was a squat. Like, I had incredibly flexible hips and I could sit in a frog-like position, you know, with, you know, my butt almost on the ground and my knees up high and all of that. And, you know, eat food or do whatever I did as a young child and maintained a high degree of flexibility as a young athlete, as a swimmer. But through running and these other things that I've done, I've lost so much of that flexibility. I still have it in my shoulders, but really in my hips, hamstrings, glutes, all of that. Like, you know, I used to be able to just, no problem, put both palms on the ground without bending my knees.

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  Now I would have to really like work up to that, like so much of that now has just gotten really jacked up. And, you know, just how and why, I guess, through my lifestyle habits and perhaps through, you know, it's, but it's all, I know that it's reversible if I give it the intentionality that it deserves.

• 1:49:10Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, but again, it's, it's going back to what's, what, what are the habits that led to it? So if the preferred sitting position is that, okay, let's start trying to work back to that preferred sitting position. Because there's so much value in that preferred sitting position, not just flexibility, it's strength to be able to hold it, right? You have to have strength to hold those shapes. Whereas you could say, right, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work in the gym and do all this mobility and do all this and then I'm gonna go sit down again. And then, well, well, but we haven't learned anything. We're going back to the same environment, which is the chair, right? I, through working more on, like, online and suddenly mentoring and, and meetings and god knows what else erupted in the last three years for me. The book coming out and then working, it meant so much more screen time for me.

• 1:49:54Tony Riddle?

  And yet I got all of it on the ground, but the thing I'd noticed is through my own practice, when I'd be coaching people, movement practice coaching, I'd spend much more time crawling. I'd spend much more time in low gate walk to, to the point it was like repetitions and hours of it, something like four to five hours of moving around on the ground. I, I divorced myself from a part of that. I've had, I've had to work to get it back in. Because that was a new phase for me, you know, and whereas I thought, ah, the, the running's enough and this stuff I'm doing and this is enough and still coaching and mentoring and still teaching uh, my online community, like three sessions a week. It's still not enough really, because it's the everyday movements that count. It's throughout the day.

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  Right. And when you de-escalated that, what were the differences that you noticed?

• 1:50:42Tony Riddle?

  I noticed it when I, when I, when I kind of went back into, right, I'm now gonna run this southwest coastal path. I just, I didn't

• 1:50:48Rich Roll?

  Didn't feel as stable.

• 1:50:49Tony Riddle?

  Feel as strong, I would say competent. I just call it competent, really. There's a level of competency that goes. So I've now, that's just, that's the part I have to edit. Right, okay, there we go. And then put that back in again.

• 1:51:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:02Tony Riddle?

  You know, so what is it in everyday life of Rich? What can I edit? I take it out and I go and work on that part and then I put it back in again.

• 1:51:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's so funny, like, the solution to becoming more competent in order to tackle this massive endurance challenge isn't more running, it's more crawling around on the ground for you.

• 1:51:18Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, more low gate walk and um, jumping, like jumping from great heights to lower. Cause then that's plyometrics, right? And how quickly, once I've landed, how quickly can I get off? Because there's You know, it's one hundred and fifteen thousand feet elevation over those ten days. That means there's, there's, there's eight Everest, really, if I'm turning around and running back in elevation. So not only is that running up, it's running down, dealing with the forces that are on the way down. And there's elements where now I do have to crawl, right? But there's, how much can I put through that physicality that enabled me at some stage in my evolution to be upright that enabled me to run? And in nowhere in that evolution was there ever a chair, right? You know, so if we want to become really, again, strong in that physicality, I think we have to just not, it's not, again, it's not,

• 1:52:02Tony Riddle?

  I was about to say, sit less, move more. It's not. It's, it's sit less in the chair, you know? Because when you sit less in the chair, you'll move more anyway.

• 1:52:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:11Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  And not just squatting either, like a, a multiplicity of different postures.

• 1:52:17Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, there's so many. Like the beauty of having.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  Like the microbiome, the more diverse, the better, right? So the more diversity of movements and positions that you can.

• 1:52:27Tony Riddle?

  But think biodiversity again, I think, you know, rather than, because diversity could be, I come sitting in a chair and I just move, move a little bit.

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:35Tony Riddle?

  It's actually getting it back to the most organic example of that on the ground, you know? So how could I up it even being in my apartment on the linear surface? Oh, I go to the park and I play with different rest positions while I'm on the ground there, reading a book.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:51Tony Riddle?

  And then you've got microbiome, you've got undulating surfaces, you've got other things that deal with, and that's again neuroplasticity. Each one of those movement patterns that we're working on the ground with, also there's a neuromuscular conversation there. You know, rather than, again, being in a chair where we disconnect from that physical vessel, we become divorced from it. And, and with that, we can find ourselves in weird and wonderful ways. And hours have passed, right? I'm slouching now, right? All my systems are off, my abs are completely collapsed, my back's rounded. And then how would I get up from here? I'd stand up with this same shape, right? So, well, what do we do then, Tony, if we're sitting for, you know, these periods of time? And like Rich gets up and you want to frame your sitting for as you go and then

• 1:53:35Tony Riddle?

  train, I would at least get out the chair, like hold the back of the chair, I call it a posture squat, and just allow your heels to pop up and drop into squat, a few little bounces, stand up, do a few of those.

• 1:53:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:47Tony Riddle?

  And then walk off.

• 1:53:48Rich Roll?

  Why is, why is having the heel elevated so important? I've heard you talk about that a lot.

• 1:53:51Tony Riddle?

  Well, because again, you can focus on posture, you can start to think about keeping the chest up and the head up then. Whereas if you were to get straight out of the chair and squat down when you've been locked up in the ankles and the hips, more often than not, the back ends up really rounded within that conversation. So it helps with the posture, so I call it a posture squat, it helps enhance the posture, keeps the head up and the chest up. For some, it's, it's the fact that the ankle is, there isn't enough dorsiflexion in the ankle anyway to achieve the squat. So then what happens is we try and achieve a flat footed squat, we end up over pronated in the ankle, the knees and the hips. And that again, isn't the best foundation for standing, walking or running or jumping or balancing.

• 1:54:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:29Tony Riddle?

  So in that case, I would then put a wedge behind the heel. And there's, even by cork wedges for squatting now. So you have a thick edge and it works way down to a thin edge. And so to start, if you could go, right, set a timer, Ido Portel was kind of thirty minute squat challenge, right? Put the thick raise behind the heel, thirty minutes a day for a number of days, right? Can I start to bring my heel down to the thinner edge over time? And then eventually on the thin edge, and then eventually to the ground. But that's step by step by step by step, allowing that physiology and the mind to make the micro adjustments that are needed. Otherwise, we go straight into it, force the ankle into a position, the knee into a position, hip into a position, do that for thirty days, I'm just, I'll do the squat challenge for thirty days. And then what have you learnt from that?

• 1:55:13Tony Riddle?

  You've learnt to create a really unstable foundation really for how you stand.

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. One of the things that I've become hyper aware of, that I've noticed more and more as I'm paying more attention to what's going on in my lower back, et cetera, is a loss of. Balance, like a lack of balance that I used to have. Like if I stand on one foot, like I used to be able to do all kinds of crazy yoga postures and balanced exercises. And recently, I was like, wow, I can't even hold my posture stable on one leg, let alone like lift the other leg or do anything, like anything compound, like just basic stuff.

• 1:55:58Rich Roll?

  Like putting on a sock while I'm standing on the other foot, I find myself teetering. And I'm thinking, is this because I'm getting older? No, it's because you've lost that foundation of stability and dispersed strength in all the right places to hold your body upwardly stable.

• 1:56:21Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, so I could go, what would the reboot be for that? I work with, there's a guy called Tom I'm working with, he's like 77, he plays a lot of tennis. And we've been working on footwork and balance techniques rather than tennis, because ultimately that is what he needs to play tennis, right? Otherwise, you're just relying on whipping his arm out and not getting to the ball in time or creating an injury through that. And it starts off being barefoot again, lifting your head, your chest and your pelvis, everything is stacked. And being barefoot, the reason barefoot is that's your foundation again, you make a reconnection to that. So he starts just eyes closed and feeling into the big toes, the smaller toes, the big pads behind them that we call the ball of the foot, then the outer edge, and then the heel. Because you can't, the arch isn't tangible, right?

• 1:57:04Tony Riddle?

  Because you can't experience gravity through an arch. Well, your lateral arch you can, sorry. But think about the pads where you're making contact to the ground and really tune into them, like heighten your awareness of them. And you take your visual state out, so it enhances your proprioceptive state and your vastibula, your inner ear, within that communication, which is like your somatosystem. So that's based on visual, vastibula and proprioceptive. And you keep tuning in, keep tuning in, keep tuning in, and start to then move segments. So you try and work like, imagine like a broom handle from the top to your ankle. And rather than moving with your head, you move the whole pole like a metronome needle.

• 1:57:41Tony Riddle?

  And that's you, but keeping your awareness in the base of support, the feet the whole time and work with that and then try and draw a circle around that base of support without creating any breaks in that pole. So the pelvis doesn't hinge or the back doesn't hinge or the neck is one long thing working like this, yeah? No camera here, guys. You have to kind of work with me. So it's like a pole being held from the top and the bottom. The bottom is the ankle and you grab the pole from the top being your head and you draw a circle. That's the first stage and work on that. And that's that'll start to bring your segments or your understanding how to move your segments around your base of support. Then I would go, um, have your feet a little wider and then work for like tick tocking. So as you go over all your segments with your head and your chest over your left side, you think about lightening your right side and increasing your perception

• 1:58:25Tony Riddle?

  of your left foot, those pads. And then you take your head and your chest and your pelvis right over to your right side, lift your left foot.

• 1:58:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:32Tony Riddle?

  And then eventually you go all the way over and stack all your segments and then lift the leg up. And then you go back over and you lift.

• 1:58:37Rich Roll?

  Right. And so Tony's sort of teetering back and forth.

• 1:58:40Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and you're organising all of those segments above your base of support and you really keep tuning, do not lose perception of the base of support. What can happen is we get so lost in the action of like what I'm doing with the leg that we take full focus away from what we're using to balance on, which is the base of support, our foot. And then you can go from right now I'm on one leg and then start to think about, right, can I draw a circle with this left leg, right? Whilst keeping my perception on here. So the key then is to keep your awareness, but also be able to draw a circle with this leg. Like just from the hip, not, not your whole body or not from the foot alone or the knee. It's from the hip to the ankle, proximal being the hip and the distal point being the foot. And you draw a circle, say 10 one way, 10 the other. Switch your weight over, 10

• 1:59:23Tony Riddle?

  one, 10 the other. And that's the first stage. That will make a huge shift already to your balance, right? Um, getting away from shoes that are narrow in the toe box, that compromise those 26 bones, 33 joints and 100 muscles, tendons, ligaments and the proprioceptive feedback they give. Getting away from cushioning because the cushioning also dumbs down the awareness. So that study is really important, that one I mentioned earlier, Professor Chris Dorff from University of Liverpool. That returning back to vivo barefoot shoes or being barefoot for six months was a sixty percent increase in foot strength. But also forty percent increase in balance. So that was without doing the drills. So I'm giving you some exercises to go with this. The environment would be the foot.

• 2:00:05Tony Riddle?

  This is like the practices to add to that new environment being nature or footwear that's wide enough to enable your feet to perform like feet. For some, that conversation is really hard because they've become so desensitized to an environment. The foot is quite rigid on another hard surface. So what could we do? I would maybe work on softer surfaces to begin with. And then over time, the feet will start to open up and behave. And then with that balancing work, then try hops. So draw a line on the floor. And once you're on one foot, try and hop from one side to the other, all the way along the line, and then hop back again. But do it in the, like the running shape, you know, when I say about running. So the head is up, the chest is up, and the ankle's pulled underneath you of the opposite leg. Have your hands up and just go ding ding ding ding ding ding, and then back again.

• 2:00:50Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:00:50Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and then change legs ding ding ding ding. You only need like the length of this room, or it could just be to begin with a meter at a time, right? And then change legs, hop hop hop, and then change legs, hop hop hop, and then work with both feet together, hop hop hop hop.

• 2:01:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:03Tony Riddle?

  And play with kind of the elasticity and the ground reaction will work within that. And that will reinforce the, the, when I need to be on and when I need to be off. So you start to get those natural responses to when the glutes need to be on, when I land. Yeah, and the glutes need to be on when I balance. So you can bring all that work in.

• 2:01:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:19Tony Riddle?

  Then there's heckling. Heckling, you can work with another person with it, or you can play with yourself with this, right? So you keep that same segments aligned with the head up and the chest up, head, chest, pelvis stacked above your base of support. Tune into the big toe, the smaller toes, the heel. Try and think two thirds of your weight being forward, only a third remaining in the heel. With the other leg that's now off the ground that we've managed to draw circles with and everything else. Use that leg to try and throw you off balance. So kick it around, thrash it around, whatever it is, and don't worry about what your head and chest is doing. The objective though is not to put that foot down. And even if that means hopping or jumping around the room to try and get stable again, do that. And that is also a rechilding practice.

• 2:02:03Tony Riddle?

  You could say that's like dance, you know, to start with. And you're literally just trying to use the leg to throw you off balance, you know? And can you keep tuned in to the foot that keeps stabilizing you?

• 2:02:13Rich Roll?

  Right, so the foot that's stabilizing you is doing everything that it can to just hold you upright. Right, so you're activating all these weird pathways and muscles that generally aren't triggered.

• 2:02:25Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and I would go into eventually the language being that not seeing the foot as separate or outside of you. So you are the foot, you know?

• 2:02:35Rich Roll?

  You are the foot. That's, I think that might be the title of this podcast.

• 2:02:43Rich Roll?

  Some of this stuff we covered, well, sort of. Uh, for people that are new and didn't listen to our first podcast, we went into a lot of, we spent a lot of time on your backstory in that one. But one thing we did do was after we recorded the podcast, you took me through some technique work. And we kind of ran back and forth on my pool deck and we filmed that and made a video of that, um, which we'll link up in the show notes there. But a lot of that had to do with thinking about, you know, lifting, lifting the foot. Like lifting, lifting the leg as opposed to overthinking where you're placing the foot, right? It's like a pop up.

• 2:03:21Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, rather than a push down.

• 2:03:23Rich Roll?

  Exactly, yeah, yeah. So maybe explain that a little bit.

• 2:03:26Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, and I've refined this somewhat now because I've been, you know, what was that, three years ago? Three years ago, a lot of miles of refinement and really going deep into kind of the, you know, the softening or, I really like to introduce in the language of like leaving no trace, you know? Like leaving the least amount of impact on the earth.

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and part of that being like, when your foot lands, like how quickly can you lift it back up? Like how gently can you land? And when you're barefoot, like you're, you're very hyper aware of how, because I have a very heavy foot. Like I, and that was one of the things you were pointing out, like, man, you're just like pounding it. Like you're landing so hard.

• 2:04:04Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, whereas you're trying to imagine you're almost like stealth-like, so, um, Going back to that head, chest, pelvis is to try and think about keeping all those segments upright. Visual field, open up your visual field so you see everything, rather than hyper-focus on one little, one area. So if you imagine you're looking down right now as if you're looking at your screen, I can only see really to that glass, the rest of it's a blur. So when I'm running, I have that amount of time to react by the time I get to the glass. Whereas now I'm looking at the guitar over there, right? I'm looking out the window almost, I still see all of this. I can see the glass, I can see everything. So I have all this time to be really proactive, rather than reactive, right? And my movement brain will make all those calculations. That's how sophisticated it can go, right?

• 2:04:46Tony Riddle?

  Visual field opens up, nasal breathing will help you be more relaxed. Visual field to help you be more relaxed while you're out there running, so that's less tension, we become more efficient, right? More efficient and also minimise the risk of injury because we're not tense. Keep the head up, the chest up, the pelvis stacked. Think about getting your feet off the ground, but it's not like you're just pulling them up, because that would mean kicking your legs back behind you almost. Think almost like they're... You're riding a bike. They're like, yeah, like a unicycle, so on a cyclic pattern. And because there's a trajectory to the leg, so by the time you've pulled it, you've already moved forward, you know? So you have to think it's like an arc, right? But only pull the leg as if it's going underneath your hip. There's a great guy for this, named Nicholas Romanoff, he has the pose method, right?

• 2:05:31Tony Riddle?

  So all that pulling mechanics is in there. So if you, he did a great book on the pose method of triathlon, right? That's a brilliant book to unpack, because there's cycling in there, swimming in there, and there's, there's running in there. And it's in a much simpler format, whereas I've studied like, I'm like a level three in pose, and also one of the, only six people on the planet teach pose movement, right? But there's, in, in the textbook version, it can get, can overwhelm a little bit, it stimulates the intellectual mind, but when you go out and experience it, it's a little different. So you play with just, yeah, pulling the, pulling the leg, and that gets the hamstrings involved.

• 2:06:09Tony Riddle?

  Not so much about picking the knees up and driving through the knees. You'll think about your hamstrings and the hamstring is a huge pulling muscle. So if you think you're the bicep, if you pull your bicep right now and you flex your arm to do that, that's a bicep. We have a bicep fomorus as well. It's like a huge hamstring that we pull. So you get used to the pulling cycles and then when you're going over terrain, rather than even any thought of putting your foot down, forget that. Just think about getting off the ground, like, and the lighter you get, the better, because it just gets softer and softer and softer. And that's in that pulling cycle. It's refining the pulling cycle. There is a cadence to that where we have to observe somewhere between one seven six and one eight two beats per minute. And I often work with breath with this. I kind of breathe in tempos

• 2:06:51Tony Riddle?

  now, working and refining that. So there's a four little intakes and then four outtakes. And I match that to my tempo pulling. So it's like pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull.

• 2:07:08Rich Roll?

  So the breath is totally in sync with your running cadence.

• 2:07:11Tony Riddle?

  Yeah. And then not in, you don't have to get so, more often not, we're over breathing. So it's like, you don't need to, you don't need to breathe that hard, right? You can soften the breath. But I really feel that, yeah, softening the knees a little bit, thinking about being upright, really tall. I have this language of leading with the heart and then your feet follow. So by that, I mean your actual sternum, your chest plate. Think about that actually being a lead segment. So it's proud of your face. It's actually further forward in your actual head. And that huge weight being your rib cage and your pelvis, you'll be amazed at how we can propel on that. Almost think like a piece of cellophane in front of you, like a huge piece of cling film like that. And you're literally falling into that with your chest and just keep picking your feet up. And those

• 2:07:53Tony Riddle?

  feet will stay underneath you. And what I'm discovering out on that path, the southwest coastal path, by keeping the feet underneath you, just, they're just shock absorbers. It's like having these incredible shock absorbers underneath you, which you can't find when you're having this huge pendulum effect and landing on your heel. There's huge kind of forces you're dealing with there, like landing on a rigid pin, you know? Whereas allow yourself to land underneath you and it's much softer and that cyclic action will come through a bit. That video was good though, we covered a fair bit of that, I think that's worth going back to.

• 2:08:24Rich Roll?

  I think so. I mean, what you just described is a little bit different because I mean, I haven't gone back and watched it in a very long time, but I do, I do recall something about like, you know, the lifting part.

• 2:08:34Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:35Rich Roll?

  So it sounds like, you know, in a nuanced way, you're, you're letting go of some of that and focused on just the, the light touch of the feet and the, I mean, I do remember the bleeding with the heart part and the sort of leaning forward aspect of it. And for people that are listening to this and you're new to Tony and you're thinking like, well, you know, the whole barefoot thing is, you know, bollocks. You gotta, I mean, like, we went out and ran in Malibu State Park, Malibu Creek State Park, running over all kinds of gravel, small boulders, you know, all kinds of thorns and roots and it was a, you know, varied terrain. I couldn't imagine doing that barefoot.

• 2:09:15Rich Roll?

  And it was a marvel to like, watch you, you know, dance over that terrain and, and crush it and, and do it joyfully, not like, oh, this is hurting, but I'm gonna like, get through it. And then watching the One Man, Two Feet, Three Peaks documentary, you know, some of those ascents and descents, I mean, under like wet, sharp boulders, you know, a lot of like, technical, like much more technical as you, you know, get above the tree line and are, are approximating these summits. And to see you do that barefoot, like, it's really quite something.

• 2:09:50Tony Riddle?

  Well, I think there's something to observe in that as well. Like on the first, I went up the day before as well. I did like a practice, kind of just said to catch around, I'm just gonna go and run up there just to see how it feels. So I did, it was like I did the four peaks really. So I did.

• 2:10:03Rich Roll?

  You say that in the, like you went out and kind of did it the day before, like, only you would do that.

• 2:10:09Tony Riddle?

  So I did snowed in the day before and it was like quick up and down, one, one forty seven, I think.

• 2:10:13Rich Roll?

  And. It's like a thousand meters plus.

• 2:10:17Tony Riddle?

  It's two thousand something in that one.

• 2:10:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, is it?

• 2:10:20Tony Riddle?

  And then, so that's the, so that's the first, so that's the first ascent and then down. Um, which I was, the camera crew, right, on the day going off, they were just like, we had no idea who's gonna tackle it like this. So they then had to position another guy midway point so they could capture the content. As they had aspirations, they thought they were gonna run with me, I think. And then, um, so tore up and then on the way down of that first day. Um, it was really busy and so I had to swerve to miss some people and even if you're in footwear, this, this would have happened, right? I just hit something really full on, broke a toe. And then wasn't until we returned back to where base camp was at that moment where I can then get some plant based gains on board at that point.

• 2:11:03Tony Riddle?

  And then just get off again, back out. I, um, I was just like, okay, feet don't feel that great. And then we noticed I had a, there was a blood blister that had formed. So I'd obviously already made adjustments getting down because I'd broken a toe.

• 2:11:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:11:18Tony Riddle?

  The adrenaline and everything of running down on that first day didn't really pay much attention to it. And then went out and did, um, two marathons after that, it was like a fifty two miler after that. And then returned back to base camp and it was really evident, like the, you could even see there's a white, like a white. Marker, like I've been wearing a ring around my toe and then a purple end to it and a purple part behind it. And then went on to the next one, the next one, then Scarfell, Scarfell was next, that's like, so Snowdon is the highest Welsh peak. And then the English highest peak is Scarfell and then there's Ben Nevis to finish, which is Scotland. And the English one, Scarfell, it's very, it's like boulder fields, like huge, sharp boulders everywhere. And I, from that first one, I think just, I'd lost a lot of the elasticity in that.

• 2:12:03Tony Riddle?

  There's, as I said, I think there's seven thousand four hundred elevation on the first day. That then crept into the next two days and getting the mileage in, I'm then doing two marathons, two marathons and then on to the next mountain. There was rigidity in those legs and there was stiffness in the feet. So it then became like when people say about taking up barefoot, that was the example that I could give. It's like I'd lost the compliance and my own compliance and my own softness and my own elasticity. And I'd become hitting hard on hard. So it suddenly became like, ooh, every rock hurt on that next one. And then after Scarfell was out the way, it was almost like the midpoint, it was like the one in the middle that had to be the one that cracked Tony and it was.

• 2:12:47Tony Riddle?

  And I had to endure that, I had to go through it, it was almost, that was the rite of passage on that event. And then I found that elasticity back in on the beginning of Ben Nevis. And then Ben Nevis, we had severe weather came in. My intention with that was to, I could have done it with it. Basically, we could have broke it the fastest known time. We could have done it a day earlier. But at base camp where we were in Scotland, we arrived back and the film crew were there. And then I said, Tony, how's that? And what's happening tomorrow? And I said, oh, you know, I think we're going to, um, I think we should go up with, let's not go back out now. What we do is we, I want to go up with Catherine and the kids and we go tomorrow morning. So I think it'd be much nicer to make that memory with the kids. And he said, well, what about the record? And I said, oh, screw the record. Let's just, it'd be amazing to have that memory. Let's go up with Catherine and the kids.

• 2:13:33Tony Riddle?

  And so we left it. And so instead of going out that day, it was like the next day. And yet severe weather came in. So we then had, I think it was minus four and 50 mile per hour winds that came in. So there was no Catherine and the kids going out that day. But it did mean enduring that when we were up there. And again, that cold gets in and you then create again, what feels like hard on hard with the feet. So as romantic as the idea is, there's, there's that. You can see why through humanity, we developed skins and we developed something that protects us from those environments. And that's just a layer back then. It wasn't aesthetics and it wasn't cushioning and it wasn't of an unnatural shape.

• 2:14:17Tony Riddle?

  It was something that was from, from the earth, let's say.

• 2:14:21Rich Roll?

  Right. And the lesson from that for the average person who's contemplating getting into the barefoot thing is patience.

• 2:14:30Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah.

• 2:14:32Rich Roll?

  And I think that the kind of learning curve, the arc towards competency is much longer than, than people realize.

• 2:14:39Tony Riddle?

  Hundred percent. Yeah.

• 2:14:41Rich Roll?

  I mean, I found myself like I get enamored with it and I do it for a while. And then I end up, you know, defaulting back. And I don't think I've ever stuck with it long enough to really have the dividends pay off. Of being, because I haven't been fully invested in it.

• 2:14:58Tony Riddle?

  Again, I would go into, you know, what is it that we're trying to achieve from it? And, you know, what's the purpose and why am I doing it? And for me now, it's on that, it's, I, I, it's really beyond the physiological, as I said earlier. I think there's that whole neuroplasticity there. There's the micro bone that's involved in it and just. Interacting with different environments that again, we can have that conversation that we are nature, not separate of it, right? Rather than this, right, I'm wearing a huge piece of rubber and I'm disconnected, I'm going to go around stamping my print on the earth, right? It's like, oh, okay, how can I be, leave no trace, the bigger picture, kind of that, isn't it? Leave no trace, leave the least amount of impact on the planet, right? Not just when you're running, but yeah, just think it's, it's, it's that relationship

• 2:15:42Tony Riddle?

  that we can have through running, you know? But yeah, it ticks multiple boxes, but I guess the more and more gadgetry we involve ourselves in, the more and more, you know, heart rate monitors and phones and GPS, how much of that, how much, how much are we losing, right? Yeah. You know, and you might, might start off with just, even if it means a walk in the park, just go and investigate that, how's it feel to take your shoes off? You know, there's that school group I took out and they gave us, they gave us the real, you know, because there's no old adult mask and all the, oh, I wonder what people think of me, but we, they are, they invited me to take kids out to this place called Virginia Waters, very near to where we lived in Windsor. They're called Busy Buttons, they're like

• 2:16:25Tony Riddle?

  a, um, the unschooling group, creative group. Tony, do you think you can take the kids out rewilding? And I said, ah, kids don't need rewilding, you know, but yeah, but we'd really like you to. I was like, okay, let's go. And we went on this coach and we arrive at this place in Virginia Water and all the kids get off and they're super excited and we go and walk out into this, um, over a bridge and into a meadow. And so I sit all the kids around and get them all in a circle. And I said, okay, just, just sit and tune in for a bit. I even brought my adult coaching in at that stage. And just have a think, what can you, what can you hear? You know, what, what, if you close your eyes, really tune in, what can you hear? You know, and us, we'd be looking for the bumblebee or the bird or the, the sound of a leaf or the blade of a grass. And they were like, a lion, I can hear a lion, you know? Yeah. It's like, this is brilliant. Great imagination.

• 2:17:10Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, that's where it's at, right? Right. So then the next thing's like, okay, so I looked at the Laun Llewella, who is there, Busy Buttons, and I said, okay, let's just get them up. So then the kids are up. So I, let's try this, just take your shoes and your socks off. What? And I said, yeah, just take your shoes and socks off. Yeah, but, um.

• 2:17:29Tony Riddle?

  We're not going to have our feet out. And so that was, well, kids do need rewilding, right? Because we've basically put this on them, right, already. And so, once they got their shoes and socks off, it was, it was the most remarkable scene. It was like embedded in me now. So they, shoes and socks came off, like, literally, the moment they put them down, and their feet were down, they were off. And they were running around like absolute lunatics, screaming, yelling the lion. They were doing all of that. Completely freedoms. Like, that's what it is. That's where it's at. But we've again created the, oh, I wonder what people might think of me if I do this and do that. So, you know, the conversation earlier about that. So the guys said loud and went, what should we do with them? And I'm like, we're not going to do anything. Stop, right?

• 2:18:11Rich Roll?

  Get out of the way.

• 2:18:12Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, just step out the way.

• 2:18:14Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:15Tony Riddle?

  You know?

• 2:18:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I think that's a, I mean, that's profound on so many levels. And I think that's kind of a good way to

• 2:18:22Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man.

• 2:18:22Rich Roll?

  end this, dude. I mean, just to cogitate on that, like, how can we have more of that?

• 2:18:28Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, invite more of that in. Bring more lion in.

• 2:18:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, man. More lions.

• 2:18:33Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, more roaring, more barefoot roaring.

• 2:18:35Rich Roll?

  Okay. Um, we're gonna go wander the streets of London, and we're gonna roar barefoot.

• 2:18:42Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man, let's go do that. We can do that. I'd love that.

• 2:18:45Rich Roll?

  Um, cool. So Tony's book, of course, once again, Be More Human. Um, I'll link it up in the show notes. And the documentary, Uh, One Man, Two Feet, Three Peaks is on YouTube now.

• 2:18:57Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, it's on YouTube.

• 2:18:58Rich Roll?

  Watch it for free.

• 2:18:59Tony Riddle?

  You can.

• 2:18:59Rich Roll?

  If you wanna, uh, support Tony, though, you can find it on, I think it's on Vimeo also.

• 2:19:04Tony Riddle?

  It's free on Vimeo as well now.

• 2:19:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, is it free on Vimeo now?

• 2:19:06Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, yeah, we're putting, it's just rolling.

• 2:19:08Rich Roll?

  There you go, dude. And are you gonna, um, film this next adventure?

• 2:19:11Tony Riddle?

  I think we can do it differently. Um, I've been speaking to the guys. It'd be really nice to create almost like a diary format. So they're gonna meet me at certain stages. And then I can bring in the charities as well, and what we're raising funds for.

• 2:19:23Rich Roll?

  What are, you wanna shout out those organizations?

• 2:19:25Tony Riddle?

  Well, there's a SAN in Namibia. So we're getting behind the, the kind of this, this, um, community there about protecting their lands and their rights. Through sandal making as well, they're making barefoot sandals, which is rather fabulous. And then there's Sonia Guajaja. There we go. I did say that right. Have you heard of her?

• 2:19:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:19:43Tony Riddle?

  So there's a documentary that's being built through Earthrise. And she is a indigenous, she's a Brazilian indigenous environmentalist activist, who is, um, a politician as well.

• 2:19:56Tony Riddle?

  And so she is running an election, so she could be the first kind of Brazilian indigenous leader, let's say. And so the documentary is being built and I'll be raising funds towards that documentary.

• 2:20:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:09Tony Riddle?

  That will help amplify that voice again.

• 2:20:11Rich Roll?

  Ah, cool.

• 2:20:11Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:12Rich Roll?

  Nice, man. Uh, in the meantime, is there a place that is best for us to follow this adventure? Are you gonna, is there gonna be some kind of live streaming thing or just your Instagram?

• 2:20:22Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, they've, as I say, we're gonna build like a diary. So I've got guys that are gonna come out and meet me and they're bringing, it's Chris and Will and Will will edit on the day.

• 2:20:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:32Tony Riddle?

  So rather than be with me for 22 days.

• 2:20:35Rich Roll?

  Right. It's be like kind of a vloggy, vlog type thing?

• 2:20:38Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, we can do like 90 second reels, I think we'll be putting out there. And that will then include like interviews with people along the way, along the route. And also through those organizations, we can get little interviews going that we can edit those in. It'd be a really nice way of doing it. And then perhaps there is a way of kind of amalgamate, putting that together that will create a mini doc, I guess.

• 2:20:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:57Tony Riddle?

  You know?

• 2:20:57Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 2:20:58Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man.

• 2:20:59Rich Roll?

  So the best place to check all that out is Instagram at The Natural Lifestyle.

• 2:21:03Tony Riddle?

  And also Vivo, they're behind it. So they're, um, I'm sponsored through Vivo. So they will be, no doubt there'll be enough stuff going around on their channels too.

• 2:21:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good.

• 2:21:12Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man.

• 2:21:13Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right. Well, to be continued.

• 2:21:15Tony Riddle?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:15Rich Roll?

  You find yourself in Los Angeles. So it's good, man.

• 2:21:18Tony Riddle?

  Yeah, man. Love that.

• 2:21:19Rich Roll?

  All right. Love you, brother. I'm here to support you in any way I can. I just, I love the mission that you're on. I think it's really important and, uh, you're just, you're just a beautiful guy, man. And I think, I think what you're doing is a great service.

• 2:21:31Tony Riddle?

  I appreciate you. Beautiful guys, man. Oh, man, that's awesome. Thank you.

• 2:21:34Rich Roll?

  Right on, man. Peace.

• 2:21:35Tony Riddle?

  Thanks.

• 2:21:37Rich Roll?

  Barefoot.

• 2:21:37Tony Riddle?

  That's a big one.

• 2:21:43Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 2:22:14Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale

• 2:22:57Rich Roll?

  Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.