Pod Insights The Dr. Hyman Show From Drug Smuggler to Healer: How Nick Brewer Created Primal Moves About this episode On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Nick Brewer, founder of Primal Moves—a method born from his own healing journey. Once a pro skier turned drug smuggler, he spent ten years in prison, including four in solitary, where he discovered the power of breath and movement to rebuild his body and mind.
I had the chance to try Nick’s class myself, and I was struck by how powerful such simple movements can be. I’m excited to share that experience with you. You can watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
[YOUTUBE THUMBNAIL]
We discuss:
• How to spot when your nervous system is stuck—and steps to restore balance
• Why talk therapy alone can’t release trauma in the body
• How group movement triggers natural feel-good brain chemistry
• Why we feel cut off from our bodies and how to reconnect
Healing starts in the body. By working through stress and pain, we gain the strength and energy to show up fully in life. My hope is that this conversation encourages you to explore these practices and see what they unlock for you.
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Transcript 12,632 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dr. Mark Hyman? Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.
0:02 Dr. Mark Hyman? Went from cracked out of cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness.
0:07 Speaker 02 I smashed myself to pieces. I got into drug trafficking. I found myself in South America. I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina for smuggling cocaine. And I had a broken body and a broken mind. You had this life as a smuggler. It's finished. And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I gonna do? And I heard this voice. It came through and it said that I was gonna be a facilitator of movement into people's lives. So it was through a damaged body that I developed Primal Moves.
0:31 Speaker 03 Nick Brewer. Is the founder of Primal Moves. Fusing movement. Breathwork. And trauma-informed awareness. He turned a prison sentence into a blueprint for freedom. Reconnecting people to their bodies. And out of pain.
0:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? People say, what's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of life? To me, it's getting free.
0:46 Speaker 02 There's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well. Because people are actually quite happy living in pain. They think it's a place where they can reside. It's comfortable.
0:53 Dr. Mark Hyman? So many people don't live in their body. They are disconnected from their body.
1:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? Nick, welcome to the podcast. So great to have you on today.
1:06 Speaker 02 Thanks, Mark. Thanks for hosting me. I'm a big fan of yours.
1:09 Dr. Mark Hyman? Oh, ditto. I mean, here we are in Ibiza, in your house, or Ibiza, as they say in Spain. This morning, I just came from one of your classes called Primal Moves, which we're gonna talk about, which is a powerful way of rehabilitating the body, of gaining strength, of healing injury. And I've known you for years. I've come to your class for years. But I don't think the world really knows about you very much. And I don't think the world knows about this practice that you developed that is quite powerful. And for me, it looks deceptively easy, but it's actually quite hard.
1:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? And I wanna sort of start off by kind of talking about something that just happened to me, which is I'm rehabilitating from my own back surgery. And I've shared a little about that. And I really was taken down. And I've been doing better and better. And it's been about six months. And I've gained a lot of strength. And I was weight training by myself because I was traveling. And I was lifting these weights in a way that kind of tweaked my back a little bit. And I was really hurting. And I was a little nervous about, did I do something wrong? Did I screw it up? I was uncomfortable, but I decided I'm gonna go to the class and just do what I can do. And I just did one class. And I was huffing and puffing and sweating. And by using these sort of very weird movements, they're like animal movements, crawling on the floor,
2:26 Dr. Mark Hyman? crawling backwards, going on your side, stomach, stretching, it's like this kind of wild practice. In one class, my pain was gone. And I was like, holy shit. It's powerful stuff.
2:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's very rewarding to hear.
2:40 Dr. Mark Hyman? I want, I want to sort of start out by talking about a little bit about your background, because it's so interesting. And, you know, you're not your typical yoga teacher who, you know, like our, our fitness trainer, who kind of just went through the traditional route. You had a kind of a crazy story. You went from basically, cracked down on cocaine to cracked open in your consciousness.
2:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:59 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um, through an incredible story that we can't really tell the whole thing because it takes hours. And we were in Africa together and you told me the story, it took hours to tell the story and it was, blew my mind. But it's, but essentially, you know, you, you, uh, I want you to sort of start by how, how you first injured yourself. And then how you became like a drug smuggler. And then how that led to being in prison and then what you learned in prison. So kind of take us through that story. And what happened to you and how you came out the other side as a whole human being.
3:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, that's a big backdrop. So, you know, first and foremost, uh, movement is medicine. It's a healer for the body. It's a healer for the mind. And, uh, when I was growing up in my teenage years, uh, I was a pro skier. I had an idyllic, uh, life. I lived in the Alps. Um, I was on the international circuit. And I broke my back in two places.
3:51 Dr. Mark Hyman? You fractured your vertebrae?
3:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, I fractured L three and L four. So, uh, compression fractures and completely herniated all the lumbar spine. That was the first injury. Five years later, I broke T seven and T nine in a motorcross accident. So, you know, in my teenage years, in my early twenties, I smashed myself to pieces. Uh, in the process of that, you know, I had hit the self-destruct switch. I'd gotten into drug trafficking. Uh, I found myself in South America. I wound up with 10 years in prison in Argentina, um, for smuggling cocaine.
4:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
4:22 Speaker 02 And I had a broken body and a broken mind. And it was the template that I had.
4:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, I haven't, by the way, I haven't had anybody on my podcast who's been in prison for 10 years.
4:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, actually, of those, of those 10 years that I spent in prison, I spent four years in isolation.
4:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? Wow.
4:35 Speaker 02 Which is another story. That was a deep, deep, uh, deep dive into my, into myself, into practice, which is actually where a lot of the kind of benefits and a lot of the rewards that I get today from movement and meditative practices came from. And that's kind of how and why I developed primal moves. I, I came out of prison in two ten with a broken body. You know, my spine looked like it had scoliosis. I had total lumbar herniation, I had degeneration of the discs.
4:57 Dr. Mark Hyman? When you went into prison.
4:58 Speaker 02 Yeah. So when I came out, I was in a lot of pain. And I spent years practicing um with a chiropractor. The kind of modern medicine were like, look, let's just open up your spine. Let's put a big bolt in there. Let's stitch the entire lumbar spine together and bolt it together. And I was like, no way. Like, there's no way we're going down that route just yet. So I started to.
5:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? Major surgery. That's what I just had, by the.
5:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think yours was uh undeniable. You had to have it.
5:26 Dr. Mark Hyman? I had that.
5:26 Speaker 02 But I was still in that position of, you know, I was forty years of age.
5:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
5:29 Speaker 02 And I was like, I don't wanna have a rod in my back. So I went down the route of yoga, pilates, elementary gymnastics training, and I tapped into lots of different modalities of movement. And you know, I just came out of prison as well, where I developed a deep, deep yoga practice.
5:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? In prison.
5:44 Speaker 02 In prison. And that was what started the whole kind of journey into rehabilitation, like physical and mental. My body was not in a good place when I was fourteen. I was in a lot of pain. I had joint pain, my spine hurt. You know, more often than not, I'd be two or three weeks lying down in my bed in the fetal position. Where uh the, the discs are just completely bulging. I had no spinal stability. I had no joint stability. So I basically went about restabilizing my joints through quadrupedal body weight movement.
6:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Quadrupedal body weight movement.
6:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, so my body weight.
6:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? Legs.
6:18 Speaker 02 Moving on all fours.
6:19 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
6:19 Speaker 02 In a nonlinear fashion.
6:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
6:22 Speaker 02 So it'd be forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally.
6:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
6:25 Speaker 02 Moving in multiple planes of direction, multiple joint action, but with my body weight. Not creating any levers in the body, which would then create stress in the lumbar spine, which is what you've done. You've picked up a weight in an awkward fashion. And that lever, you know, the weak part of the lever is the hinge, and that's what's happened. You've just tweaked it. So what I was looking at doing was restabilizing my body. So I did it through this practice. So it was through a damaged body that I developed primal moves.
6:54 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
6:54 Speaker 02 And the story that I'm hearing from you today is a story that I've heard hundreds and hundreds of times. People come to class and they've got stiff bodies, jammed up bodies, herniations in their lower back, destabilized joints, hypermobility, stiffness. And just basically like degenerating bodies. They come to class once, twice, three times. They get hooked. And they're going away happy humans.
7:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
7:18 Speaker 02 And they're going away pain free. And then they take on, and really then they start to embody the practice. Because not only do they get their physical youth back, but they actually start to like grow with that. And really start to enjoy their body again and start doing things in their forties and fifties that they thought they would never ever be able to do again.
7:32 Dr. Mark Hyman? You said earlier you were in solitary confinement for four years. I mean, that would drive most people insane.
7:37 Speaker 02 I mean, you'll you'll end up climbing the walls.
7:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah. And and you know, there are practices like the darker treats that Tibetans do where they go for months or longer in darkness.
7:47 Speaker 02 And vipassanas.
7:48 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah. And but but you didn't choose this.
7:52 Speaker 02 It chose me.
7:53 Dr. Mark Hyman? It chose you. And and four years is a hell of a long time.
7:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:56 Dr. Mark Hyman? Uh.
7:57 Speaker 02 It's a long time.
7:57 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's a long time. And you were in a little cell.
7:59 Speaker 02 Yep, I was in a cell. It was probably two meters by three meters, had a tiny little window at the top.
8:05 Dr. Mark Hyman? Uh.
8:05 Speaker 02 And gray concrete walls.
8:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? And you had to figure out how to move in that space.
8:10 Speaker 02 So I had some books on yoga that I managed to get sent in.
8:12 Dr. Mark Hyman? So they let you have books in solitary?
8:14 Speaker 02 So I could have books. And I was in there like twenty two hours a day. So I did a lot of seated practice. Uh, did a lot of kind of reflection, a lot of mind work. Um, I I started to study the works of Ramana Maharishi.
8:26 Dr. Mark Hyman? Hmm.
8:26 Speaker 02 Which was about, you know, observing the mind and the ego, which I actually didn't even know we had one until I got into isolation. So this was really.
8:32 Dr. Mark Hyman? You didn't know you had a mind and an ego?
8:33 Speaker 02 I had no idea that we had a mind and an ego prior to going into prison.
8:36 Dr. Mark Hyman? You were just going through life.
8:38 Speaker 02 I was just completely numbed out and desensitized, going through life like a bullet. Like a steam train, completely on a self-destruct mission. So actually, it was a really beautiful process of actually going into that space of, you know, I was a very grateful convict.
8:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
8:52 Speaker 02 Albeit, you know, South American prisons are slightly rough.
8:56 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
8:56 Speaker 02 And Argentina was not a pleasant place to be in prison.
8:59 Dr. Mark Hyman? It wasn't like when Martha Stewart went to prison.
9:01 Speaker 02 No, no, no, it was nothing like that. The opportunity that I had to go into that isolated period for four years of my life was really quite profound and, you know, I got into the yoga practice, but it was static. So that was fine. It kept me moving and I was basically practicing all day, but when I got.
9:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? You mean yoga postures?
9:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was static. It was mat based. So when I got out of prison and I had a studio to move in, I thought, wow, let's try moving this across the floor. So I was doing my sun salutations and the static poses. You know, instead of just staying on the mat, I actually moved across the floor. And then it was through the healing that started to come around my body. And then I started to practice with clients. And through that, the practice built a small community in London. And it was from this community and observing bodies that then I really started to systemize an entire method around it.
9:53 Dr. Mark Hyman? And then you you kind of found that yourself out of prison, but your body was still not great. And then through these embodied practices that we now we've called primal moves, you've been able to sort of repair all that. So all the broken back, all the disc herniations, all the pain. Cause you're like in your mid 50s now. You're one of the strongest guys I've ever met and you can do like a one-armed handstand and crazy shit.
10:16 Speaker 02 Exactly. And it is my absolute joy.
10:18 Dr. Mark Hyman? And you feel like that that's sort of that time in prison helped you sort of get grounded and present in yourself.
10:23 Speaker 02 Oh, completely, yeah.
10:24 Dr. Mark Hyman? Kind of start to listen to what was happening, cause you didn't have a lot of distractions.
10:28 Speaker 02 Pre-prison, I was totally distracted. I was numbed down and I was desensitized. Going into prison and going into isolation and going back into that space of stillness. And started to embody myself, meaning I was able to actually feel and stop thinking.
10:45 Speaker 02 Um. Yeah, so instead of asking myself what I was thinking, I was asking myself, what am I feeling?
10:50 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
10:51 Speaker 02 And that was a completely different outlook. That was a completely different lens to look at my life through. So you know, how am I feeling in the morning? How am I sleeping? What do I feel like? How's my cognition?
11:01 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um.
11:01 Speaker 02 How's my memory? How's my evacuation? Do I have energy? Am I recovered?
11:05 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um hum.
11:05 Speaker 02 Am I feeling depressed? So I was actually able to start feeling myself again.
11:09 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
11:09 Speaker 02 And then I worked out that through embodying these practices, which was a lot of breathwork and a lot of movement. You know, I was able to remove that uh that kind of depressed feeling that came down into me. You know, anything that became stagnant, any stuck energies, I moved them through with practice. It was through moving my body. That I was able to free myself completely.
11:32 Dr. Mark Hyman? So not only did you kind of move your way out of physical pain, you were able to move your way out of emotional and mental pain.
11:39 Speaker 02 Absolutely, because all the traumas that I had, you know, from fifteen years of smuggling and breaking my body and being on that self-destructive path. I was actually able to go in there and start healing that in prison through these practices. You know, I realized I was so stuck. I was so stuck in my head. I was so rigid.
11:58 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um.
11:58 Speaker 02 There was so much control, there was so much manipulation going on up there. Um. There was a lot of darkness.
12:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um.
12:04 Speaker 02 That was going on in my life at the time and I had no idea.
12:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, it was just your life.
12:07 Speaker 02 That was basically what it was. And then as I started to work through my body, I started to work through the facial system. I started to work through the mind. You know, I also I broke down. You know, I had mental breakdowns as well. I think three or four years into prison, uh I'd been in isolation for about two years and it brought me to my knees. You know, I had a completely emotional mental breakdown.
12:27 Dr. Mark Hyman? What did that look like?
12:28 Speaker 02 What did that look like? That looked like a baby crying on the floor, sobbing for about two weeks.
12:34 Dr. Mark Hyman? Um.
12:34 Speaker 02 Completely broken and shaking. It was.
12:37 Dr. Mark Hyman? Kind of letting go of your old self.
12:38 Speaker 02 My old self, my, I was having a total ego death. I didn't even know it.
12:42 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
12:43 Speaker 02 It completely crushed me. It brought me to my knees. I lay there crying and sobbing for about two weeks. And where I was, there was no humanity. There was no one coming around to check up on you and say, hey, how you doing? You wanna hug? Do you need something? You need any help?
12:57 Dr. Mark Hyman? Prison guards weren't doing that?
13:00 Speaker 02 The prison guards in South America didn't even come and check. They just came and checked for dead bodies.
13:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? They just want to give you your food in the thing.
13:05 Speaker 02 They gave you a head count, that was it. They didn't even feed you.
13:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? They didn't feed you?
13:07 Speaker 02 No.
13:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, how did you get your food?
13:09 Speaker 02 You had to get your food in.
13:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? So they just went through?
13:11 Speaker 02 Someone from the outside had to bring your food in for you and you'd have it in boxes and bags and you had to try and make it and cook it somehow.
13:16 Dr. Mark Hyman? Really? So there was no food in prison?
13:17 Speaker 02 The malnutrition in the prisons was, people dying of malnutrition, it was terrible. It was horrific. It's like third world.
13:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's a powerful story because, you know, most of us are pretty locked into our psychological framework. Our emotions are pretty sort of fixed in the way we relate to the world, to our experience, to relationships, to work, to family, to ourselves. And, and those rigid patterns like keep us from being free.
13:40 Speaker 02 The constructs that we create in our head, which actually I realized post-prison that, you know, freedom is actually a state of mind. Because I've met so many people that are actually in prison because they're just bound by their thoughts. They're so rigid, they've built so many constructs that actually they've stopped themselves from being free anymore. And I didn't actually realize that until I got out of prison.
14:00 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's true. You can be a billionaire and be still in the prison of your mind.
14:04 Speaker 02 Exactly. So I was euphorically, year five in prison, I was euphorically happy.
14:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's incredible.
14:09 Speaker 02 Euphorically happy.
14:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? You went from like breaking completely down.
14:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, from having complete ego deaths, total mental emotional breakdowns. Again, it was, it was movement and meditation, breathwork of a daily practice that got me out of that. Um, but I went into states of absolute euphoric happiness, which I haven't actually achieved since being in prison. Because now I'm actually, you know, I'm back in the world and I've got distraction again.
14:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, yeah.
14:35 Speaker 02 You know, I have a house, I have to pay rent, I have a business, I need to pay salaries, you know, I have a lover.
14:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? Right.
14:43 Speaker 02 So I have desires. So I actually went into some really interesting states of, of being when I was in there.
14:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, it's, and it's a sort of a gift in disguise, right?
14:52 Speaker 02 Totally. I mean, I had that now as a reference point to go back to. So I've, I've been there. I've understood that blissful state of nothingness. You know, when you absolutely own nothing, have nothing.
15:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
15:03 Speaker 02 And you can be blissfully happy. So I have experienced that.
15:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, I'm curious about what happened in the process of the, the breakdown because you describe it almost as a physical experience. You know, laying on the floor, sobbing and going through the somatic expression and discharge of all the emotion. You know, talk therapy really doesn't do that. And for me, you know, I went through a lot of things in my life. I've had many illnesses, many marriages. Probably about five years ago, I found myself fairly, you know, sort of stuck in the prison of my own beliefs in mind. And I knew intellectually what the issues were from my childhood. And my mother, who was a child of deaf parents, and how that affected her and how that affected her parenting me.
15:47 Dr. Mark Hyman? And it's a long story, but I really did not know how to get rid of it. And through a series of processes and things, I was able to kind of have this somatic experience where I just like literally broke down on the floor crying, crying for days, like a week.
16:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, so you've had that breakdown.
16:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? And it was the weirdest thing. I had the same experience after you. I literally, after it was all free from that, I emerged and I felt euphoric, like high, like I'd just taken some drugs, but like happy drugs.
16:19 Speaker 02 I hear you.
16:20 Dr. Mark Hyman? And it was pretty remarkable. And I just went around in this state for quite a while. It's why I think being in your body is so important and why the work you do is so important. Because if we just stay in our heads, we'll never get there. And you were forced into it unwillingly.
16:36 Speaker 02 Exactly. And I had no one to talk to.
16:37 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
16:38 Speaker 02 So I couldn't do talk therapy.
16:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
16:39 Speaker 02 So the only way that I knew was somatic work. To release myself of pain, mental, emotional and physical, all I could do was move. And some days I woke up in pain. My hips were hurting, my shoulders, but my pain, my head was in pain. You know, so I had no one actually there to talk to. I had no one to intellectualize or compartmentalize it with. But I understood, okay, these were the traumas. But the only way I could actually release myself from that was from basic breath work and movement. And it was actually the movement, the somatic work that I was doing in the prison and just constantly working with my somatic nervous system that started to ease out. It was agitating all this stuck energy. It was agitating these traumas to move out of the somatic system, out of the fascial system, and it was freeing me up.
17:24 Speaker 02 You know, don't get me wrong, some days I had to stand there in my room for maybe an hour, having an internal fight in myself. Because there was one part of me that wanted to lay down and just be depressed. And there was another part of me that was like, no, you've got to do your practice. Because this pain you're feeling will move through your body.
17:41 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
17:50 Speaker 02 I would literally stand there and have a stand up fight with myself for an hour.
17:54 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
17:54 Speaker 02 And I would not move until I did my practice. And the euphoric feeling that came through me as I started to move my body, even raising my hands above my head and touching the floor.
18:04 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
18:04 Speaker 02 And synchronizing that with some breathing.
18:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
18:08 Speaker 02 A lightness came.
18:09 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
18:10 Speaker 02 And it moved through me. And I went through this like a year, two years of this internal fight of to practice or not to practice.
18:18 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
18:18 Speaker 02 You know, that's why now for me, I think one of the reasons that um uh primal moves has become so successful is because of 15 years I've shown up every single day to practice.
18:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
18:29 Speaker 02 And.
18:30 Dr. Mark Hyman? You mean you don't feel like it, right?
18:31 Speaker 02 Everyone comes down and they see me kind of leading through example and inspiration. Like, hey, this guy's down there looking at a gray concrete floor two or three hours a day and he's euphorically happy. I'll try that.
18:42 Dr. Mark Hyman? I went through a different experience recently where I I kind of went through this portal where I almost died. And I had an infection in my back. It led to an abscess and I had to have major surgery and I was in bed for six weeks. I couldn't.
18:53 Speaker 02 Wow.
18:54 Dr. Mark Hyman? Walk. I lost 20 pounds, which I'm already pretty skinny. I came out of that and and I was really unable to move. Um, I couldn't tie my shoes. I couldn't get up off the toilet by myself. I couldn't do the most basic life things that you think you're getting dressed.
19:12 Speaker 02 You take it for granted.
19:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, I mean, and I recently saw my surgeon and he said, most people at your stage are on a walker or maybe never get off a walker. And I did, I did what you did, no matter how bad I felt or how depressed I was or how broken I was. I literally got up into the gym every day and worked with physical therapists and a trainer and started moving. I'm not a hundred percent back yet, but I'm. Uh, out of pain.
19:39 Speaker 02 Amazing.
19:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? I'm moving, I'm doing your class.
19:41 Speaker 02 No, I mean, I've seen the MRAS scans of your spine. It's incredible.
19:45 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, I've got all the hardware in there, like a hardware store in there. And, and, you know, I'm there with, I'm there with a bunch of thirty year olds in the class and I'm sixty five.
19:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's amazing. That's inspiring.
19:55 Dr. Mark Hyman? And it's just like, your body has that capacity. And what I really find interesting, and I wonder if you have any insight of this is, as I look around the world, and, and especially in America, so many people don't live in their body. They are disconnected from their body. And you can see their bodies become overweight, or they, they are hunched over, or they're, you can see they don't move fluidly. And, and it's interesting that people are kind of locked in this state of, of physical contraction.
20:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? And don't really even know it or aware of it. And they don't realize that there's a way to the other side of that and actually getting free. Cause I, I think, you know, more and more because we're so connected to our devices, we're so.
20:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:38 Dr. Mark Hyman? Not having to move our bodies, we're, we're just sort of out of this traditional way of living that we've done for hundreds of thousands of years. Which I think the question I have for you is, seeing what's happening in the world around this sort of disconnection from our bodies, how do we start to inch forward? Because it, it feels like a big hurdle for a lot of people who, who aren't in their bodies, who aren't exercising regularly, who aren't moving regularly, to actually go from that to doing something.
21:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's a big push. I mean.
21:05 Dr. Mark Hyman? Cause it's mental. You have to like, you have.
21:07 Speaker 02 No, it, it has to be a, a mindset. You need to shift the perception of your mindset and make movement a lifestyle. It has to become part of your life. You know, I, I say to a lot of people here that, you know, have full time jobs and they work, that you need to actually book this session in and make it part of your life. It needs to be embodied as a daily practice. And they see the benefits from that. And trying to create that shift of people where they actually think, yeah, you know what? Just gonna give myself one hour a day to go to class, or to get on the mat, or to go to the gym and do something. Even go for a walk or a swim, but something just move your body. Cause this is a hunter gatherer body.
21:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
21:43 Speaker 02 It needs to move. It was designed and created to move. And the more you move it, the better it feels.
21:48 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
21:49 Speaker 02 And it will degenerate. The, the body, if you sit in a chair all day, the body will just slowly degenerate.
21:54 Dr. Mark Hyman? Right.
21:54 Speaker 02 So quicker than you think.
21:55 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's true.
21:56 Speaker 02 It doesn't discriminate. The more you move it, the better it's gonna feel.
22:00 Dr. Mark Hyman? I mean, I was in bed for six weeks and I, I, I'd never felt so. Debilitated.
22:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, powerless, yeah.
22:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? Powerless, but also just like, my body lost all of its function. And I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself. I couldn't do the most simple life.
22:16 Speaker 02 Well, I think because if you had that template, that framework of being healthy, because.
22:20 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, I could, I could remember what it was like, but I was like.
22:22 Speaker 02 Remember what it felt like. So you had muscle memory to be like, hey, I want to go back to feeling like this. I don't want to feel like I am now.
22:28 Dr. Mark Hyman? I mean, I was a yoga teacher in my, you know, twenties and, you know, we did seven hours of yoga a day for like a month. And you get pretty flexible.
22:35 Speaker 02 But even as kids, you know, growing up now, you know, it's not in the school curriculum. There's no sport. There's not a daily session of sport where they're encouraging children to move. And be fit and be conscious and try and be embodied and do mindful practices. You know, they're sat down in a chair and they're given a book.
22:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? And, and that's true. And I think, you know, because we're so disconnected from our bodies, I think it, it also prevents us from, from being able to access a very powerful liberating force, which is using the body and the somatic practices, as you call them, start to free up a lot of the stuck emotions and the beliefs and the fears. And yes, sometimes, you know, talk therapy helps or coaching helps or those things can be helpful. Or psychedelic medicine, but I think, you know, movement is medicine. You said that right at the beginning is, is powerful. And you know, a lot of people are into longevity and they want to take this vitamin or this drug or do this special thing or take a hyperbaric chamber or whatever. And if like you don't actually move.
23:31 Speaker 02 For me, it's bypassing. They're trying to hack their way to health by, by bypassing doing the hard work.
23:37 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
23:38 Speaker 02 Which is actually going to a class. I mean, one of the beautiful things about Primal is a very community driven brand. So we have like a big group of people that move together and that's really beautiful and really inspiring. You know, we sometimes have eighty people coming to class.
23:51 Dr. Mark Hyman? I know, it's pretty crowded this morning.
23:53 Speaker 02 And but there's something very beautiful about that because of, you know, you get this.
23:57 Dr. Mark Hyman? I could barely find a, I could barely find a place on the, on the hanging bar.
24:00 Speaker 02 High bar, yeah. There's so many people there, but you know, just moving together as a group, it brings about exponential growth.
24:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
24:06 Speaker 02 You know, it brings a flow state around. It's inspiring. You release oxytocins, you release serotonin and dopamine. You get that happy drug feeling of just moving in a group.
24:15 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
24:16 Speaker 02 You know, when you're doing a, a class which biomechanically works, not only do you feel emotionally good, but you feel bloody physically good as well.
24:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
24:23 Speaker 02 You know, and that's what Primal essentially is.
24:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, it's sort of like healing. Almost invisibly when you do it and you don't have to think about it. It's like, and it's, and you know, I think whether it's yoga, whether it's primal moves or whether it's other forms of exercise, if people can get in their bodies, it's really the key to feeling good, to healing. If I don't exercise for a few days, I start to feel bad.
24:45 Speaker 02 Cranky. It's physical longevity. You know, people talk a lot about physical longevity these days, you know, just move.
24:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? And so do, are you familiar with the science around, around how this all works in terms of the somatic healing?
24:58 Speaker 02 Of primal?
24:59 Dr. Mark Hyman? Of primal or just in general?
25:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've studied it. I've looked into it quite deeply.
25:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? So can you tell us sort of about the, the science behind this? Because I think it's, you know, people may not really be aware of what the, the sort of underlying principles are of why this works and how it works.
25:15 Speaker 02 I've written a manual on this. You know, I wrote a hundred page manual on, on why primal moves works and.
25:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? Where can people find that?
25:22 Speaker 02 You have to do one of my teacher trainings to get that. That's like my blueprint. So it's a big topic. It's a big conversation about what it does, but it's actually starting to, it starts to rebuild muscle mass. It starts to restabilize your joints. It starts to increase cognitive and behavioral patterns physically and mentally. It's nonlinear. It starts to break down rigidity in the mind, the fascial networks. It starts to move the fluids around in the fascial system. The motion creates the lotion. The body starts to move. It starts to become lean and supple, becomes healthy. The muscles are working properly. You start to get bone density, muscle density again. You know, you're working with neuronal
26:05 Speaker 02 and non neuronal intelligence. You know, the cells are working to release stem cell, creating stem cell because of this micro trauma.
26:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
26:14 Speaker 02 In the body. Every time you're moving across the floor, all the joints are creating what we call micro, micro trauma, which then gives stem cell a job to actually start healing you again. You know, if you don't do anything, stem cell doesn't work, doesn't need to, goes to sleep. The more you work your body, the more stem cell has a job. So it starts to heal the body, starts to rejuvenate the muscles, the bones, the skin, the connective tissue. You know, along with that, if you're also eating consciously as well, that that for me is hacking. That's biohacking, breathing, eating, moving.
26:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? I think the um the hurdle for a lot of people is just getting started, right? So how how would you sort of advise people who wanna get?
26:49 Speaker 02 Just show up to class.
26:50 Dr. Mark Hyman? Show up to class. Well, not every town has primal moves yet.
26:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we, well, we've got a digital space, so you can find it online.
26:56 Dr. Mark Hyman? Where do you, where do you find it online?
26:58 Speaker 02 So W W dot primalmoves dot com. So we've got a plug and play, uh, really cheap subscription model. And on there, you've got probably like a hundred and fifty sessions and it's mat based. So all you need is a mat and a small space. You don't need to go to a gym, you don't need equipment, you can literally just roll out your mat, open up your your tablet and you get visual.
27:19 Dr. Mark Hyman? You don't need a big like floor space to do it.
27:21 Speaker 02 So I can completely, I guide the sessions. Actually, I built it in Covid, because when the studios started to shut in Covid, everyone reached out to me and was like, hey, how can we practice? So then I built this very simple plug and play digital space where people could just literally turn on the system and they could work through their bodies. We have like full flow classes or you can work on stabilizing your spine, opening your hips, strengthening your shoulders.
27:44 Dr. Mark Hyman? Amazing.
27:45 Speaker 02 So there's a lot of content on there.
27:46 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's definitely my future.
27:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, and obviously now what we're trying to do, um, you know, because there's so many people that have come into this community of Primal, that when they're going home to their cities throughout the States and Europe, they're actually wanting to open studios. So now we have a whole training program and the idea is over the next few years, we're gonna be opening, you know, like mothership destination studios in in the bigger cities.
28:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's great. And if you don't live in one of those cities, you can do it online. And I think, I think I'm gonna start doing that. I miss it like when I'm not here, I'm like, oh, I'm not.
28:14 Speaker 02 I mean, the session's like half an hour. There's ten, twenty, thirty minute sessions. That's all you need, just a little bit every single day. You just gotta tap into the body every day and also it gets you out of your head. You know, for me, there's nothing more pleasurable than living in my body. It's the most pleasurable place I can ever be.
28:31 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, I think most people don't live in their body. They don't pay attention to the signals that their body says. They don't eat when they're hungry and not eat when they're not hungry. They don't sleep when they're tired, they they push themselves. People are in all sorts of strange disconnect from their physical body.
28:45 Speaker 02 Uprегulated, they're anxious, they're living on sugar, their sleep patterns aren't good.
28:51 Dr. Mark Hyman? And you you very, you were a um disciplined about your practices, right?
28:55 Speaker 02 So really, yeah, it's a daily thing for me.
28:56 Dr. Mark Hyman? So like.
28:57 Speaker 02 It's a nonnegotiable.
28:58 Dr. Mark Hyman? Tell us about your your food patterns and your habits, because it's different than most people.
29:02 Speaker 02 So I'm a very simple eater. I'm eighty percent carnivore. So my main meat is red meat, um and I'm super particular about how I source it. So I actually go to the farm myself, uh I look at the cows. I need to understand that the cow is walking around, eating grass, under the sun and does not go in the barn. And the way that the animal was killed is very special. As you know, the whole food conversation is a big topic, is a big debate. And getting well sourced foods is a really hard thing to do these days. You know, the soils are de-vitalized, they're demineralized, the foods are genetically modified. The animals are being injected with god knows what. So sourcing your food is a, for me, it's a really important thing, you know, what?
29:45 Speaker 02 I believe that, you know, what we eat is what we are. You know, what's going in the soils and what's going in these animals is who our body becomes.
29:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
29:53 Speaker 02 So, you know, my, my, my, my meat's grass-fed, grass-fed, and I eat a lot of it. I don't eat many vegetables. I don't eat greens. I eat fruit.
30:01 Dr. Mark Hyman? But you're explaining to me why, because people are like, well, greens are good or vegetables are good. So why, why?
30:05 Speaker 02 I started to feel inflamed.
30:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? Because you were noticing what your body was feeling.
30:09 Speaker 02 So I was observing my gut. It didn't feel good. When I ate greens, my gut started to feel almost a bit achy. And I started to feel a little bit, I had like joint ache and a bit foggy in the head. So I'd go through long periods, say three to six months of doing processes of elimination of foods that I would eat and wouldn't eat. So I stopped eating grains completely. I eat very few carbs. Um, you know, every now and then I might go out and have some pasta. Or some rice, but you know, very seldom, like once or twice a month. I don't eat many sugars, hardly any. I eat fruit, uh and all the animals.
30:47 Dr. Mark Hyman? And potatoes.
30:49 Speaker 02 Potatoes. My, my classic meal would be a, a fillet steak, barely cooked, with lashings of ghee.
30:55 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
30:56 Speaker 02 So I eat a lot of ghee. I eat a lot of fat and a lot of protein. So I'm essentially, I'm fueled by mitochondria. Which is the cells' ability to produce energy as opposed to insulin.
31:04 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
31:05 Speaker 02 So my energy levels throughout the day are really well balanced.
31:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? Neiman, yeah.
31:08 Speaker 02 I have a, two lattes. And a pan of chocolate. So I keep it real. I have like my my percentage of diet, which is what I call my junk diet.
31:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, yeah.
31:18 Speaker 02 Well, I keep it real. You know, I have a pan of chocolate, I have a coffee, every now and then I might have an ice cream.
31:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
31:23 Speaker 02 You know, I like to keep it real.
31:24 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
31:24 Speaker 02 Um. But I know that seventy five, eighty percent of what I eat is grass fed animals, really well sourced. And for me, like, you know, to understand my markers, I wake up in the morning and I I know you feel it, you know, how about how am I feeling? How am I sleeping? How's my recovery? How's my mind? Is it foggy? How's my gut? How's my evacuation? In my practice, my physical practice, you know, how's my body recovering? How am I training? How's my energy levels? Nine fifty five? And they're good. I just recently had my uh my bloods done and I had them them checked and they said, well, your bloods are like that of a man thirty years ago.
31:58 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
31:59 Speaker 02 Of a thirty year old man.
32:00 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
32:01 Speaker 02 Like my my testosterone's up at a thousand.
32:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
32:04 Speaker 02 My H D L, my A D L, A D L D O is really healthy.
32:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? Hmm.
32:07 Speaker 02 Uh. My hemoglobin's good, my minerals, my vitamins are really high. And they said to me, this is incredible. You don't eat vegetables.
32:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Do you take supplements?
32:14 Speaker 02 No. So I don't take supplements. I avoid supplements at all costs. I've started to take creatine just to see how it feels.
32:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
32:22 Speaker 02 For like cognition and recovery. Um. But I don't supplement. I literally just source really good foods.
32:28 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
32:28 Speaker 02 Train and breathe.
32:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
32:30 Speaker 02 And that for me is hacking. I take a sauna four times a week and I get in the ice bath when I can. But again, it's more of a lifestyle as opposed to you know, I I I try and avoid supplements and and I try and convert people onto healthy foods, healthy living.
32:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, you know, it's interesting, you know, historically, we never took supplements because we had a very nutrient dense diet. And if you look at hunter gatherers diets, and this has been well studied, you know, the the amount of vitamins, minerals uh were extremely high compared to modern diets and they also had animals that were eating wild plants.
33:02 Speaker 02 Exactly.
33:02 Dr. Mark Hyman? And those wild plants are full of not just vitamins and minerals, but also phytochemicals that are very healing. There's an amazing guy, did a podcast with him, a couple of podcasts, because one of the most incredible people I've ever met named Fred Provenza, who wrote a book called Nourishment, about what we can learn from animals about how to eat. And and what he said was he studied range land ecology and the relationship between plants and animals, the soil and nature. He found that the animals would eat, you know, a few main like calorie crops or plants, but then they would sample up to a hundred or more different plants.
33:35 Speaker 02 Right.
33:36 Dr. Mark Hyman? That had different properties.
33:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:37 Dr. Mark Hyman? The different minerals or different nutrients and that the animals knew, like I I've been in the Amazon, I remember seeing the side of this river, which is clay and the pears, this just came like flying flocks and were eating the minerals because they knew their bodies.
33:51 Speaker 02 From the soul, yeah.
33:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? Right. We're so disconnected, we don't, we think we need like Skittles, you know, like, oh, that looks good.
33:57 Speaker 02 Well, the thing is now, the the food has lost its vitality and so we have to overeat, overconsume to get all the minerals and vitamins that we need. And now we're we're lacking.
34:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
34:06 Speaker 02 Whereas, you know, if I eat three or four hundred grams of grass fed, grass finished fillet steak, it's so densely nutritious that actually that's all I need for the afternoon. That and a few potatoes for flavor, but that's it. And and and a couple of big scoops of ghee and I'm done. I feel absolutely amazing.
34:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? And the and the meat you're eating though is different because it's it's it's animals who are eating wild plants.
34:26 Speaker 02 Exactly.
34:27 Dr. Mark Hyman? And who are actually getting those phytochemicals in their meat.
34:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:32 Dr. Mark Hyman? And the nutrients in their meat and the fatty acids in their meat that are different.
34:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? And and those actually have profound biological effects. So it's not only what you eat, it's what you're eating ate.
34:41 Speaker 02 No, I'm really, I mean, I'm very careful. If I go out to a restaurant, you know, I'm super careful about if I eat meat or not. You know, I want to know that it's grass fed.
34:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? Mm hmm.
34:50 Speaker 02 You know, because if you eat industrial meat, you're gonna get sick.
34:53 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
34:53 Speaker 02 It's a fact. You're gonna get inflamed. And, you know, I go through periods, sometimes if I go away on holiday, then I will, you know, I'll venture out and I'll eat vegetables and I get flatulence, I get swelling in my gut.
35:05 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
35:06 Speaker 02 I get bloating.
35:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
35:07 Speaker 02 I get fogginess in the head. I wake up in the morning, I feel drowsy.
35:12 Speaker 02 So I'm thinking that can't be good.
35:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, what's fascinating, Nick, is that, you know, you went from being this kind of kind of broken guy who was dealing drugs and running cocaine between Argentina, the UK and
35:24 Speaker 02 eating McDonald's.
35:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Eating McDonald's to to to being at fifty five in a way that you really remade your whole self.
35:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:33 Dr. Mark Hyman? Physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, from the ground up. And most people don't have to go through what you went through. Hopefully, to get there. But what's so fascinating to me is that, you know, very few people pay attention to what's happening in their body in real time every day.
35:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:47 Dr. Mark Hyman? And then listen to it. Now, I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your body. It'll tell you exactly what's going on.
35:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:53 Dr. Mark Hyman? You're like, oh, I ate this and my stomach feels that. Most people have no clue that what they eat affects how they feel.
36:00 Speaker 02 When I was in prison as well, obviously, I saw the the effects of the human condition at its worst. You know, not only for living and the way that humans were treating each other, but what they were eating.
36:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? Hmm.
36:10 Speaker 02 So I I experienced such darkness that when I got out of prison, I was like, OK, I'm going to completely rewrite the story. Because I don't want to go there ever again. You know, I completely rewrote my rewrote my story.
36:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? And how old were you when you got out of prison?
36:24 Speaker 02 Forty.
36:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Forty.
36:25 Speaker 02 So I've been going fifteen years now, yeah.
36:28 Dr. Mark Hyman? Wow.
36:28 Speaker 02 And I've never looked back once.
36:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Wow.
36:30 Speaker 02 I got out of prison and I think within six weeks I was coaching. I never took, but I got out of prison with eighty dollars in my back pocket. And I had to go home and live in my uh my parents at the age of forty with no money in the bedroom that I grew up in. And that was tough. I mean, imagine going back to your parents at the age of forty.
36:47 Dr. Mark Hyman? A millionaire, right?
36:48 Speaker 02 I was a multimillionaire. I mean, I had everything.
36:50 Dr. Mark Hyman? Had cars.
36:52 Speaker 02 I had boats, cars, all the toys, I mean, houses, investments. You know, I was ahead of the game in my early thirties.
36:59 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
36:59 Speaker 02 And I lost everything. And and that was a good process as well. That was, you know, a big process around attachment because it was a tough call coming out of prison with eighty dollars in my back pocket.
37:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? And when you were in prison, did you have the sense that you were were wanting to move into teaching what you learned there?
37:13 Speaker 02 I didn't quite know. I was on such a healing journey. You know, everything was really about healing my body and my mind. And I knew that there was gonna be a big shift and a big change. But I didn't actually quite know what I was gonna do, cause I never knew when I was gonna get out of prison. You know, in South America, prisoners stay there indefinitely.
37:33 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
37:34 Speaker 02 Cause the justice systems are so bad. Early two thousand and ten, they came around to see me and they they literally said to me one day. You got five minutes to get your shit together, we're expelling you from the country. And a bunch of guys came with machine guns and they shackled me to a van. They took me to the airport and they put me on the back of a plane. So my first experience was freedom was the back of a jumbo jet with four hundred tourists. Imagine I'd just been in this wild prison in South America, where they're killing each other for fun. I was shackled and as I got to the bottom of the stairs of the airplane, they unshackled me. They took me to the top of the uh the stairs, the captain was there to meet me. And he said to me, uh when you get to the UK, you'll be free to go.
38:19 Dr. Mark Hyman? Wow.
38:20 Speaker 02 So I sat on the back of the plane for twelve hours and it was like a time warp. And I'll tell you something very interesting was, this was the first realisation that I ever had of living in your body and in your head. Cause I sat at the back of the plane, I was like a Zen monk. You know, I've just been in prison for six, seven years, isolation for four, and I just sat still. And I looked around me, I was like, wow, these people don't stop fidgeting.
38:44 Dr. Mark Hyman? Right.
38:45 Speaker 02 You know, they were playing with the in-house entertainment, they kept opening and closing these poppers and doing these zips up, putting things in the overhead locker. They had these new phones that had these screens on them and a thing called Facebook. And they were just like sitting there tapping and messaging away. And I just thought to myself, oh my god, these people literally cannot stop fidgeting, they're so anxious. And I suddenly realised, wow, they're like totally in their heads, not in their bodies.
39:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
39:10 Speaker 02 And this was the first understanding I I actually had of observing that in real life. You know, cause in prison I couldn't observe that, I could only observe myself. And then when I arrived to um Heathrow T five the next day. I was uh I was sitting down and I went and bought myself a coffee, it was the first thing I bought in seven years. And I sat there and I asked myself, I was like, you know. What the hell are you gonna go and do?
39:36 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
39:37 Speaker 02 You know, you had this life as a smuggler, it's finished.
39:40 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
39:41 Speaker 02 You've just sat in prison and you've rehabilitated yourself and you have all this knowledge on yoga, but it's not that compartmentalized. You've got nowhere to go and you've got no money. And I sat there and I asked, I said, what am I gonna do? And I heard this voice, it came through and it said that movement and meditative practices had such a profound impact on my life. That it freed me from prison. And if I could facilitate that into one person's life, then everything would be worthwhile. And with that message.
40:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? Huh.
40:11 Speaker 02 I got on the train, I went home to my mum, knowing I was gonna be a facilitator of movement into people's lives. And since that day, I've only ever focused on facilitating moving into one person's life. And now we get like twenty five thousand people a year that come to the space in Ibiza.
40:27 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
40:28 Speaker 02 And the same thing is now following through Europe and the States. So that's been my, it's almost like I was given this mission.
40:33 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
40:34 Speaker 02 And I've stuck to it.
40:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? I believe in it so much that I actually invested in the studio in Los Angeles, because I think it's. It's something that can help transform people and help them in a very sort of subtle, almost sneaky way. Get inside people.
40:48 Speaker 02 Totally.
40:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? And helps and helps them land in their.
40:51 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely. I mean, I come from a place of addictions, of alcoholism and of trauma. So I know that these practices have helped to cure me and shift that. And through the studios, I work with a lot of people that have a lot of trauma, they work with a lot of addictions, you know, I'm surrounded by them. And they use this practice to help channel the behaviour of their mind.
41:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Mm hmm.
41:14 Speaker 02 You know, and they say to me, this is really helping me.
41:16 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
41:16 Speaker 02 You know, this is really helping me stay centered, grounded, I'm learning to live in my body. You know, I'm leaving the narcotics alone, I've stopped drinking, I've stopped smoking, I'm getting healthy, I'm getting straight. So I know it works on so many subtle levels.
41:38 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, what's so interesting, Nick, is, and I don't know if you've heard this, but as I'm doing it, and I was there this morning, the movements are so foreign.
41:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:48 Dr. Mark Hyman? Things that you normally don't do, like you're outstretched with your arms and you're kind of walking like with your feet and your hands on the floor, with your body stretched out like Superman. And it's like not easy, or you're going backwards and doing strange things that you normally don't do. In order to actually do them, you have to be so present and aware in your body.
42:08 Speaker 02 Totally.
42:09 Dr. Mark Hyman? That all your thoughts kind of go away. So like you're just there.
42:12 Speaker 02 It brings a presence about.
42:14 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, because yoga, like I can kind of get my mind sometimes to be still, but a lot of times it's drifting and I'm like in my head.
42:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, because in yoga, you're kind of, you're mat-based, you're static.
42:25 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
42:25 Speaker 02 And they're asking you to be still. You know, that's a hard thing.
42:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
42:29 Speaker 02 You know, to sit and be still and not think is almost impossible. So it's, for me, it's like a moving meditation.
42:34 Dr. Mark Hyman? Exactly.
42:35 Speaker 02 And that's exactly, I came through a lot of practice of Ashtanga yoga, which again is a very beautiful moving meditation. I didn't find that it was, it didn't functionally fit all the physical needs that I wanted, but it was a very beautiful practice. I was really inspired from these practices. So it was through the community and so many bodies that I was actually able to fully develop the system, where it has now for so many people become a moving meditation. The practice works physically, that they understand and they know that, and I know that. You know, I've seen so many benefits from thousands and thousands of people over 15 years. But for me, it's now, people say it's like their checking.
43:12 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
43:13 Speaker 02 It's like their daily place they come to. You know, it's like their morning church session, they just come in, they're in their bodies, and they, sometimes they call it church.
43:20 Dr. Mark Hyman? Moving church, yeah.
43:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like a moving church, it's a moving meditation. You know, it's so rewarding to see the effects that people receive from this.
43:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Not just physically, but...
43:31 Speaker 02 Mentally, emotionally. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it's a bridge into something deeper. Yeah, because then people actually learn to, you know, channel the behavior of their body. Their mind becomes quiet, then they can go more into like CT practices, which is pretty difficult if you haven't learned to kind of control your body and your breath. So then just try and sit, it's almost impossible, you know, because you're gonna be thinking about last night and tomorrow night and what you're gonna buy and what you're gonna eat. You know, the mind is just like a constant. Yeah, it's like a monkey mind, it's to channel the behavior, that's really hard. So for me to channel it through movement is is where it sits.
44:03 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's interesting because when I when I trained in yoga, which was forty year, two years ago, a while ago. Uh, before they had yoga mats and before they had Lululemon. We had like sweatpants and a towel, basically. The practice was powerful because I was like twenty three at the time and it was seven hours a day of yoga. But the practice was called meditation in motion. It was a kapala yoga and and basically it was a constant flow of movement.
44:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:31 Dr. Mark Hyman? And not just a static practice. And it was and it was very breath focused.
44:35 Speaker 02 Yep.
44:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? So it was like breath and movement and meditation sort of all in one. Which is kind of what Pramamooze is.
44:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:41 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's like breath and meditation.
44:43 Speaker 02 It connects those three together. And also, you know, in the classes, there is a bit of chit chat.
44:47 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
44:48 Speaker 02 Which creates that social interaction.
44:50 Dr. Mark Hyman? Was anybody else in prison um doing this with you? Were you able to sort of bring anybody else into it? Or you're just a weird guy doing this stuff?
44:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was kind of like the weird crank. They looked at me like, this guy's lost it. And actually, I mean, it was two or three years after being on the main wing in prison. And just observing the human condition at its worst, that I actually took voluntary isolation. Cause I wanted to be out of it.
45:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
45:13 Speaker 02 You know, I was tired of.
45:15 Dr. Mark Hyman? So you weren't forced to be in.
45:16 Speaker 02 No, I wanted to go into isolation because of the conditions were so bad. The violence perpetrated between humans and humans was horrific.
45:23 Dr. Mark Hyman? Worried about getting stabbed?
45:24 Speaker 02 Stabbed, killed, over nothing. Their life had no value. And I thought, you know, I'm done with this. I'd rather be on my own all day and checked out and tapping into something completely different. You know, and I used it as I turned it into a little ashram.
45:35 Dr. Mark Hyman? Like a mini cell ashram.
45:37 Speaker 02 Literally, it was a four year Vipassana.
45:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? That's crazy.
45:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, so quickly, four years isn't that long. But as you start going through the seasons, you you start to realise that you go very deep and start peeling back a lot of the layers of the mind and you really get to know yourself. I mean, they say, you know, you wanna let a man know who he is, just put him in a room with his thoughts. You know, it doesn't take long before the, like the default mind, the superficial part of the mind disappears. And then you start going really deep into, you know, your your framework and your blueprint.
46:09 Dr. Mark Hyman? And you're able to sort of see that.
46:10 Speaker 02 Very clearly. It takes some time. You know, eventually the mind will quieten down and your blueprint will come through. Any issues will come through. All your traumas, they will come through. You will be confronted with yourself.
46:23 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, I mean, I I a couple of years ago, I I decided to take a retreat and I and I went for a month in a cabin by myself in Vermont. No phone, no computer, a journal, no books, uh, just food. Me, nature, God. They did have a wood-fired sauna though. I liked that. And it was in the winter. It was in December. But it, you know, the first few weeks were a little challenging. And then I got really high, like I got really happy euphoric and realised that I didn't need anything.
46:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, less is more.
46:54 Dr. Mark Hyman? You know, if I had a place to sleep and had some food and clothes to wear, the the rest is gravy, you know?
46:59 Speaker 02 Exactly. You'd be surprised, you know, how quickly the distraction dies down. All the sensations of thought, like eventually they quieten down.
47:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? Most people can't do that. So how how how how do people start to sort of break down those old stories and the beliefs and their ego and the things that keep them in prison? Because I I I think, you know, people say, what's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of life? To me, it's getting free.
47:24 Speaker 02 I mean, having an embodied practice to start with is a good place to go. Having a physical practice, which is mindful, is definitely a good place to start. You know, just starting to feel your body is a very good place to start. Then you can start working on the other stuff. But if you're just gonna sit there in your head and try and intellectually work it all out, there's no somatic work being done there. It's like doing your own talk therapy. And you could talk yourself in and out of an empty cardboard box all day long.
47:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
47:49 Speaker 02 But you're still gonna wake up the next day with the same shit, you know?
47:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, you can see it. I mean, there there's a book, The Body Keeps Score, and you can see
47:55 Speaker 02 Totally.
47:56 Dr. Mark Hyman? how when you wa- are watching and observe people, where their where their bodies are not.
48:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:01 Dr. Mark Hyman? Free, whether they're constricted or limited or just completely living outside of their body. I mean, how, you know, how does someone get to three hundred pounds? You know, it's like
48:10 Speaker 02 That's crazy.
48:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? By being very unconscious.
48:12 Speaker 02 I mean, at what point, you know, do you not stop to look and be, okay, that's enough?
48:16 Dr. Mark Hyman? Well, it's just trauma, usually it's pain, it's, it's, uh, it's feeding an emptiness. It's, it's, there's all the psychological reasons.
48:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:24 Dr. Mark Hyman? But, you know, when you just start to do the simplest things to move, it's, it's, it's kind of a, it's almost like a trap door to get to freedom. It's like, you know, where's that sort of magic button you could push? We can push a lot of places, but I think if more people lived in their bodies and inhabited their bodies
48:43 Speaker 02 For sure.
48:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? or were doing what you call embodied practices, which are not that hard to do and don't take that much time.
48:49 Speaker 02 No.
48:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's, it's really profound what happens. And, and I, for me, I, I know it's, it's the core of who I am. If I don't move, I, I don't feel good. And I don't feel like I'm alive and I don't feel like I'm free. For me, being sick and not being able to get out of bed for six weeks and not being able to walk for months. And, you know, I was like on a cane for a long time.
49:10 Speaker 02 That's amazing what you just did there, I mean.
49:12 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, just a few months, like I just, you know, but the body has this incredible reparative capacity.
49:18 Speaker 02 The body is one of the most amazing creations ever.
49:21 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah. And then people don't realize that.
49:23 Speaker 02 It's so intelligent.
49:23 Dr. Mark Hyman? And so I've injured myself, or I've done this, or I've done that, so I can't do this, I can't do that. And they start feeling all these limitations.
49:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:30 Dr. Mark Hyman? You know, if I have an injury, I'm going to stop this, or I'm going to stop that. Instead of going, okay, how do, how do I actually get to repair my system? How do I get to heal those things? And I was talking to a friend recently about the yoga teacher, because he was a yoga teacher training with me. The yoga teacher that taught us was a sixty-five-year-old woman named Lila, a German woman, who was in a wheelchair, had massive back surgery, kind of like me, had spinal fusion, basically made herself completely like, like Gumby, which is like flexible and as a yoga teacher, through the embodied practices that we're talking about, through breath and movement.
50:06 Speaker 02 It's medicine, it really is. It, it has to be a non-negotiable. And once you start Are tapping into it and realizing the benefits of really simple embodied movement practices. You won't turn back.
50:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? And I think that this whole idea of somatic medicine is is kind of foreign to people, you know. We're used to therapy and talk therapy, but you know, I found for my patients and for myself and for many, you can talk all day long. But if if you don't change the the this sort of meat suit that we're in into something that can be a transducer for for understanding, for healing, for repair. You you you you kind of become almost rigidified in these patterns. And you so I really encourage everybody listening to think about how they can in their own life start to inhabit their body as a way of not just getting fit or living a long time or for exercise.
50:57 Dr. Mark Hyman? But as a way of starting to heal some of the psycho, emotional, spiritual things that we all carry through life that we get stuck in.
51:03 Speaker 02 It's it's a big step, you know, and also there's a lot of fear around actually wanting to be well.
51:08 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
51:08 Speaker 02 Because people are actually quite happy living in pain. They think it's a it's a place where they can reside. That sometimes feels quite normal. It's comfortable. I mean, I used to live in pain. You know, I used to live in my trauma based state of living. That was my day to day way of living, numbed down, desensitized and in pain. And it felt good. Sometimes I still go back there. You know, I can regress, I can relapse, and I can go into this place of traumatic pain, which feels normal to me. But luckily I've got tools, you know, where I can move that through.
51:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? So if if someone's listening and and they want to reset their nervous system and they want to begin to kind of start with some tools. If you feel anxious or stuck or disconnected, like where do people start? What's what's the practice that that you recommend just starting with in terms of reconnecting with your body?
51:55 Speaker 02 I mean, if they have access to go to a local studio and do a movement, body weight movement based class. It could be yoga, it could be pilates, any kind of movement based practice is a great place to start. That's the beginning and make it a practice, make it a daily practice. And very quickly, you're gonna see the benefits and the shifts.
52:14 Dr. Mark Hyman? So don't, don't, don't overthink it, but just start somewhere.
52:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, people say to me, now, what do I do? Might just show up to class.
52:20 Dr. Mark Hyman? Or go to primalmoves.com.
52:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Just show up. Just do that for yourself. Give yourself that one thing. Show up to class. Show up for yourself once a day and do something. And that will be a bridge into something different.
52:32 Dr. Mark Hyman? Like you say, you have ten minute classes, twenty minute classes, thirty minute classes.
52:35 Speaker 02 It's a start.
52:36 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
52:36 Speaker 02 It gets you into the body, it gets you feeling. The relationship to yourself will start to shift very quick.
52:41 Dr. Mark Hyman? But, but you know, sometimes I do see that, you know, even people like yoga, who do a lot of yoga, for example, they still can be rigid in their mind.
52:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:49 Dr. Mark Hyman? And so, can you kind of explain that in terms of why?
52:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, because of, a lot of the, the yoga practices are quite dogmatic. They're tradition based. So, when I was building the primal system, I made sure that it was stripped back from any esoteric or traditional belief system. We don't actually do any spiritual work in there as such. I don't teach a belief system. We're not teaching yoga or Buddhism. Yeah, we don't use any kind of lineage as such, other than that of practice. My lineage is just practice.
53:23 Dr. Mark Hyman? Just do it.
53:23 Speaker 02 Just do it. But we're not actually trying to share belief system. If someone wants to come to practice to have a belief system, that's fine. But we're gonna try and break that, that rigidity. And a lot of times in yoga, there's a lot of lineages that are very traditional and they're taught through dogma. So people again are getting stuck in rigid kind of thought patterns. It has to be a certain way. And that was another reason, reason why I actually broke away from a lot of the kind of traditional yogic practices.
53:55 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
53:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I still do breathwork. If you wanna call that spiritual, that's fine. I go to primal every day. If you wanna call that spiritual, that's fine, but it could just be a practice. So we strip it back from all, anything esoteric. And people really enjoy that because we're not trying to put our beliefs upon anyone in class. And people really find that very refreshing.
54:15 Dr. Mark Hyman? It is refreshing, yeah.
54:16 Speaker 02 You know, we're coming to do a practice and that's it. Showing up could be the Spiritual part of it. And it could be enough.
54:23 Dr. Mark Hyman? And also the the the the movements are so unique and different that you do. And they're sometimes very physically challenging and hard. That it seems to break a lot of the rigid patterns of thinking and being and moving.
54:35 Speaker 02 It's an agitator.
54:36 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah, it definitely shakes things up.
54:38 Speaker 02 Exactly. When you agitate.
54:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? How do you do this? And how do I make my body do this thing?
54:42 Speaker 02 So I mean, I sometimes I get a lot of people asking me questions in class. And I can see that they're really stuck in their heads and they put their hands on the floor and they can't move. And I say to them, you're completely in your head.
54:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
54:53 Speaker 02 Stop thinking, just move your body. And then I don't know how. I said, just follow these people, just move that way. And they start moving and I look back at me and they smile. You know, I can see their body language, that they're overthinking how to move. And the body actually knows how to move in that direction.
55:07 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's it's such an amazing thing. So so this has been an incredible conversation. You've gone from being a guy with a broken body, with a broken life. In prison and have basically resurrected yourself. And have transformed your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual self in a way that you're now sharing with people. And inviting them in with you to try. And it's it's so beautiful and it's so rare. And I think you don't put yourself out there as a guru. As some guy who's got the the answer, but you just encourage people to just live in their body.
55:38 Speaker 02 I'm a student like everyone else.
55:39 Dr. Mark Hyman? Just live in your body, which most of us don't, get connected to your body, which most of us aren't. And to listen to your body, which most of us don't know how to do.
55:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:48 Dr. Mark Hyman? And and when you start to do those simple things, like if I if I eat something that isn't good for me. I my body tells me, like, I feel it.
55:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, you feel it.
55:58 Dr. Mark Hyman? And I'm like, if I am in Europe and I'm eating at like ten thirty at night. Yeah, I my body's like, no, don't do that, you know? The invitation is really to start to listen, like start to listen to your body and start to change the way you.
56:11 Speaker 02 Observe how you feel.
56:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? Observe how you feel, connect the dots between.
56:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, wake up in the morning and sit on the edge of the bed. Don't look at your phone. Ask yourself, you know, before you open your apps that's telling you how you slept. Ask yourself how you slept.
56:22 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
56:22 Speaker 02 Ask yourself how you're feeling.
56:24 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
56:24 Speaker 02 You know, are you foggy? How's your gut? How's your recovery?
56:28 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
56:28 Speaker 02 How are you feeling?
56:29 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
56:30 Speaker 02 And then from that you can work out, okay, let's let's maybe shift some things today. Let's eat differently or eat earlier. Or change the way that I'm eating and change the way that I'm moving.
56:37 Dr. Mark Hyman? It's such a simple invitation. It's just you're inviting people just to listen.
56:41 Speaker 02 Very much so.
56:41 Dr. Mark Hyman? To be aware and to be present.
56:42 Speaker 02 I don't use any apps.
56:43 Dr. Mark Hyman? Yeah.
56:44 Speaker 02 For health data at all.
56:45 Dr. Mark Hyman? Amazing. Nick, what a journey you've been on. What a gift you've given to the world. I think everybody should check out primalmousse.com.
56:51 Speaker 02 Thanks, Mark.
56:52 Dr. Mark Hyman? They can find you on Instagram at?
56:54 Speaker 02 Primalmousseibiza.
56:55 Dr. Mark Hyman? Primalmousseibiza, I B I C A. And check out your studios where they're coming around in America. You're going to be in Los Angeles, you're going to be in?
57:04 Speaker 02 Miami, Austin, New York, San Francisco.
57:06 Dr. Mark Hyman? When is Austin opening? Because I live in Austin.
57:09 Speaker 02 We should be doing Austin next year.
57:10 Dr. Mark Hyman? Amazing. Great. I'll be there. I'll be there every day.
57:13 Speaker 02 Fantastic.
57:13 Dr. Mark Hyman? So Nick, thanks so much for what you do.
57:15 Speaker 02 Thanks, Mark. It's been a real pleasure to show you. Thank you.
57:17 Dr. Mark Hyman? If you love this, when it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D R H Y M A N dot com.
58:01 Dr. Mark Hyman? Podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical
58:44 Dr. Mark Hyman? professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please. Seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.
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