How To Get Out Of Your Own Head | Mark Walsh | Modern Wisdom Podcast 230

Mark Walsh is the Director of the Embodied Facilitator Course & Founder of the Embodiment Conference. We all spend a lot of time being cerebral. But by celebrating the powers of cognition, are we missing out on the wisdom accessible in our body? Expect to learn Mark's framework for improving your embodiment, his favourite tactics for how to get yourself out of your head, how embodiment can be used every day to benefit your personal growth and much more... Sponsor: Get 50% discount on your FitBook Membership at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Sign up for The Embodiment Conference here - https://theembodimentconference.org/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #embodiment #overthinking #chriswilliamson - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So do you want to have some conscious embodiment or you just want to have the same old bloody unconscious embodiment that your dad had and his dad before him and that your culture gave you and you're supposed to have as a working class British bloke or whatever the hell you are out there like like that's you can just be completely unconscious with that or you can say you know what I choose something different and I'm a believer of any embodied practice if people want to do yoga or dance or martial arts different people like different things great get in your body start to feel again stop thinking that wanking over porn and reading books is going to cut it like get into a dojo go do yoga do something that you get into your body again and reclaim that humanity.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  What does embodiment actually mean?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Get asked that every single interview is different answers. One, you know your body is a part of you. It's not just like a pen, something it's a part of who you are as a person, your body. The subjective view of the body. So the body as an aspect of our being is an aspect of who we are as people. There's a reason if people lose an arm they get more upset than if they lose a pen because it's part of them. Another term for embodiment would be the umbrella, the umbrella term for all the body mind arts. So I've done martial arts, yoga, meditation, conscious dance, body therapy, improv, bodywork, all these things have something in common. They relate to the body for awareness and the body as

• 1:31Speaker 00

  part of who we are. So even though they look very different, they have this thing in common. So we need a sort of terminology for that. You could say body mind arts, you could say somatic arts. Embodiment is the word I tend to use. So that would be another definition. Third definition could be a form of intelligence and we could drill down into exactly what the skill sets are within that. So how's that for an opener?

• 1:52Chris Williamson?

  Nice, man. I like it. Considering embodiment to me is a if you asked me to define it, I wouldn't really understand. Maybe I embody the role of a parent. I embody the role of a podcaster, you know. But so it's crossing the barrier between the mental and the physical whilst remaining in the body?

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the common sense usage is actually quite close to the technical usage. We say, you know, such and such embodies leadership. We understand that there's only so much you can learn from a book. If someone said to you, you know, I've read, Chris, I've read a lot of books on kissing. I'm an amazing lover. But, you know, I've looked at a lot of websites on how to drive a car. Do you want to lift Newcastle? You might say, well, hang on, that's one way of knowing, that's knowing about something, right? So if you're listening to some of your podcasts to prep for this, it tends to be the Western philosophical tradition is to think about or to know about or to learn about. And that's useful, like it's useful for me to know the capital of France is Paris.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  But that's quite different from the embodied knowledge of Paris. It's quite different from, you know, having your coffee in Paris and there's a certain kind of light that comes up in the morning and being aware of that or the French way of being, God forbid, uh, or, um, you know, that, that manner of Frenchness. So this is a different kind of, of knowledge and requires a different kind of learning. So, you know, I'm at school, I read every book in the library. I was in the sixth forms high school for American listeners. I literally speed read every book in that library. And yet I was suicidal, drug addicted, miserable, failing at my first intimate relationships. And everyone was telling me I was really clever. They said, you've got high IQ, you know, you're a very clever guy. And I said, if I'm so clever, why am I so miserable?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  What has education, how has education failed me?

• 3:47Chris Williamson?

  Well, the goal, the goal of education, especially at that age, isn't to make you happy.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there's a sort of frame that you can say it's social conformity. But even if it were just knowledge, the sort of main view of that is you learn about things, you acquire knowledge and it's, you know, Wikipedia hasn't solved all the world's problems, right? We've got on this phone, there's more knowledge than most human beings had in your Alexander's library or whatever, right? So it's, there's all that information there, but is that the same as wisdom? And if I want to change, if I want to grow as a person, I'm going to at the very least have to acquire skills like kissing and driving, or maybe even a deeper level change who I am as a person. And while you can take a drug or go on a weekend workshop, what really works there is actually embodying something different. And that takes practice over time.

• 4:38Chris Williamson?

  I've been thinking a lot this year about the world of self-development, self-improvement. And I think a lot of the challenges that we're coming up against are given very cerebral answers. People try and think themselves out. This is a postmodern, post-enlightenment, scientific utilitarian, very transactional kind of environment that we're living in. And that has some wonderful advantages. Unlike the Greeks who thought that bloodletting was a great way to get rid of diseases, or I think Aristotle believed that the brain only existed to get heat out of the body. You know, we've made the

• 5:21Chris Williamson?

  scientific revolution has given us some wonderful insights. And drilling down into the world of personal development, self-development, a lot of the guests that I've had on this show, they do, by its very nature, we can only ever show someone or tell someone what to do. We can't do it for them. And I suppose that the, that bifurcation in distributing what people can do versus them actually enacting it, embodying it and doing it, is that, are we getting into some part of the framework that you look at here by seeing that distinction?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the distinction between knowing about and knowing to do and knowing to be. I mean, if we look at the Greeks, they had the word soma, which meant the body in its wholeness, the embodied body. And they had sarx, which meant kind of a hunk of meat. And that's generally how the body is viewed as a hunk of meat. Even in a gym where you're trying to get fit, the body is an object, which is a fundamentally dehumanizing position. You know, the Greeks also had a philosophy in the gym. The gymnasium wasn't a place just to lift weights. It was also a place for emotional and psychological lifting. And an embodied perspective is one which recognizes that these things are deeply intertwined. You know, we say academic, meaning irrelevant, meaning cognitive. You know, my friend is an academic, God love him, you know, I tried to tell him about embodiment. He was like,

• 6:44Speaker 00

  well, my body just gets me from one lecture to another. And I was like, dude, there's real consequences to that. You know, in his case, it's health consequences, emotional consequences. And there's a human consequence for uh being hyper cerebral uh being, you know, this is cognocentric or something here. A slightly pretentious way of just saying that thought is what matters and actually our embodied life, our embodied being are.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  You know, like everything, like we're building relationship, right? You're someone I reached out to. I thought he seems like a cool guy. Let's get to know each other now, even though we're doing that virtually. The felt sense of each other is the key thing. It's like, is this a man I can push on and trust? Is this someone who's going to be fun to have a laugh with? Is this someone who's got backbone and spine? There's a reason we use that kind of language when we describe character. And let's say I'm in the business world doing business leadership training, which I've done quite a lot of. They'll be very good at telling you what a leader should have and saying, you know, I've done my MBA and a leader should be empathic and charismatic. And then you'll say, well, how do you develop that? Right? Or you're the philosopher, they'll say, well, man should have these virtues. Or Jesus said, you know, you love thy neighbor.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  And I I've always thought it was kind of lacking on the detail, Chris. I've always thought it was kind of lacking on the method. So, and this is where I think some of the Asian arts were uh ahead of the Western knowledge in a way that you had a praxis, they had a way of developing oneself. And if someone's stressed or wants to be a better leader, you know, someone's listening to this and they're lonely because of COVID or, you know, they're isolated or someone's listening to this and they're just being driven nuts by their boss. They don't really need more information. They need to practice. They need to be able to shift their way of being.

• 8:26Chris Williamson?

  I think you're very right. The fact that we believe that more knowledge is the answer as opposed to increasing our compliance to the knowledge that we already have. Every personal trainer or anyone that's ever been to the gym knows that it's not really that much about what diet or what training plan you follow versus whether you follow it consistently over a long enough period of time. If you do anything long enough, you'll get good at it. Now, the hope is that the thing that you do for long enough to get good at it isn't drugs, or isn't cheating on your partner, or whatever it might be. Just to bookend something you mentioned there, you talked about the Greeks and about how the gymnasium was this place

• 9:09Chris Williamson?

  that was not only one of physical being, but of mental being as well. Did you know that Plato's real name wasn't Plato?

• 9:16Speaker 00

  What was his real name? Keith?

• 9:17Chris Williamson?

  No, thankfully not. There was also, there was no Keiths born in the UK in 2018. That's another, they're a dying breed. Aristocles. It was claimed that Plato's real name was Aristocles, and that Plato was a nickname that translates to roughly "the broad", derived either from the width of his shoulders, the results of training for wrestling, or the breadth of his style, or from the size of his forehead. So hopefully it's from the broadness of his shoulders, not the size of his forehead.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, this is throughout history, people have talked about how, you know, George Washington sat a horse, or you know, Nelson Mandela was a boxer, there's not the only one. But this has been lost somewhat if we look at our kind of current crop of politicians or corporate trainers. And you mentioned practice. Like, we're all practicing something. Like, everyone out there listening to this, maybe you've got YouTube on your phone where you're taking a shit, maybe you're walking down the street, maybe you've got it on in the car. You're practicing a way of being. Like, I interview people for my podcast and you see their way of being all the time. As soon as someone comes on, some people are like, "Right, right in your face." Other people are like, "Oh, let me examine this." Some people are wide and they're like, "Big!", you know, like Americans can be, it's a cultural embodiment,

• 10:30Speaker 00

  you know, like, "Hey!". And other people, you know, you had Douglas Murray on, I was like, "You know, Douglas has his Douglasness, doesn't he?". And it's very particular, it's a flavour. And that is great for some things, and rubbish for others. So my general approach to personal growth, whether it's business, yogis, life coaches, whoever I'm working with, is awareness, range and choice. So first thing is we need to know what we're doing. What's the default? Right? Like, most people don't know which way they cross their arms, but then you try it both ways. You know, you go, ah, okay, that's really uncomfortable. Oh, you're done with your fingers, yeah? So this is like your personality. You could lean forwards, lean back, and people could try this. Go on the balls of their feet and then on the heels.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  You know, it's like go up. You know, some people, they're kind of all up here, aren't they? And they're either very anxious or they're like, dude, like totally spacey, like in Northern California. Or, you know, my family are like Irish potato people. They're right down here in the earth. You know, and you see this in different parts of England, you know, some's more grounded, like up north it tends to be a bit more grounded and south bit more up here. Uh, so this cultural fact, it's not everyone, because there's individual factors to this situational factors, there's relational factors. These are all going on in embodiment. So I don't know if you're like this all the time. This is the first time I've seen you, right? So, or if you're just like this when you do interviews. So there's all these different aspects of embodiment. But if we bring some awareness to that, maybe we can try something different.

• 11:56Chris Williamson?

  The first place that anyone has to go with any type of change presumably is cultivating a sense of awareness of what they're doing at the moment.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Know thyself, nothing new.

• 12:07Chris Williamson?

  Where do we go next?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Choice. So this is the difference between mindfulness and embodiment. Mindfulness is like be aware of your state and it's like, oh, I'm really angry. Right? And it's like, well, hang on a minute. I've got a meeting with my staff. This is a real example. Absolutely pissed off with something, really angry. And then it was like, well, I don't want to bring that to my team. That's not going to be a helpful state to bring to my team. So then, then we become, the philosophy won't help you here, but the physiology will. So here we then have the physiological shift. So maybe it's, you know, I put my feet on the ground. Ah, come back in my chair, soften my jaw, I let my peripheral vision open up. I take a deep belly breath and, you know, people listening can try this if they want. You can do this with your eyes open, driving a car.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Okay, tell me again, what was it you were saying, Chris? So that ability to shift state is so key and you know, you don't wanna be that guy on the high street shouting saying, I'm not angry. He doesn't even know he's angry, but if he did know he's angry, he'd still have a second thing to do, which would be to shift it if he wanted. Or he could express it, which is another skill. That's another embodied skill. A lot of my fellow Englishmen lack is the ability to express themselves. You know, like I I lived in Brazil for a while in the slums of Brazil, working there and I I got back and I was just more fluid and relaxed. My mum was like, where did you get those hips, you know? It's like I learned, I lived above the nightclub for six months in Brazil.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Did nothing but fucking fight and dance for six months. I came back and it was like, there was a different embodiment. Cause I'd been, you know, you know this, like you go on holiday for a week even, you can start to soak up the embodiment or. You go down to London from Newcastle, it's a different vibe, right?

• 13:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very much so, very, very much so. So we've got awareness to begin with, we need to know that we are X. And I'm going to guess that this could be uh macro or micro, that we are angry in the moment. Or that we are perhaps unhappy or frustrated over time.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  State and trait. So awareness of state is easy, you can feel it, that's mindfulness. Awareness of trait is invisible, it's like the taste of your own mouth. You have to have it pointed out or you have to do some kind of comparison to feel the difference. So the guy who's always angry doesn't feel angry. He's that's just his, it's like comfortable underpants, he's, you know, you've you've gotten used to it, you know. I might wear, I don't know, I'm not even wearing anything, I haven't worn anything for ages, but it's like, you're used to that embodiment. So you have to step out of it to feel it. It might not, it might only be by stepping out there and you go, shit, I'm spending a lot, I'm angry most of the time, I didn't even realise. Everybody else can see it, but he can't. State is much easier. It's like being tired or being energized or. You know, I can notice like, oh, a little bit nervous for this interview. Not a lot, but a little bit.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Okay, might want to slow down a little bit, Mark. So if I can notice my state, I can change it. Trait.

• 14:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm I'm going to guess that knowledge or the learning is going to help us more moving from step one to step two, rather than just being step one. Step one of the awareness of either our state or trait is simply cultivating a mindfulness of what is happening, either in that moment or what has changed over time. But moving on to step two, which is.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Choice.

• 15:24Chris Williamson?

  Choice.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  And it's a choice.

• 15:26Chris Williamson?

  But you don't necessarily know, you mentioned the man that is angry, even if he becomes aware of his anger, needs to learn or needs to have a particular process that he can follow in order to enact that anger, to release that anger, to deal with that anger, to do whatever. So I guess that you do require some knowledge in the choice section.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not anti-knowledge. I love what the West brings in terms of science and the Renaissance. I love the fact that we can dissect things. And, you know, I'm a geek for this stuff. Like, I'll look at practices and I'll say, okay, you could try, you were kind of, I'm coaching this like Russian business guy today. And it's like, he's kind of a bit stiff, you know? And I'm like, okay, you could try conscious dance. You could try improv comedy. You know, I could just give you a little exercise to do at home that just takes two minutes because you're a busy guy. You know, this is where we get geeky and this is where a bit of expert knowledge can come in to know how to shift. But people are also pretty intuitive about this stuff. Like, you know, I could take someone to say, let's say there's a young woman who's lost her confidence.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  This happens to a lot of girls in teenage years. Their embodiment kind of folds over. They get these kind of round shoulders. They they lose that natural confidence kids have. Now, someone like that, they know what it's like to be confident because they've seen it. And at some point in their life, they've done it. Even if they only do it one day in a hundred. So actually, people know, you know, like if I say to a little kid, which direction is happy? Sounds like a weird question, but I asked that to a seven year old and they jumped up in the air. Right? Like, which direction is angry? Is it tight or is it relaxed? Well, most people would go, okay, it's forwards and tight. Yeah. Like, people can figure this stuff out. I mean, I have maps for it and I, you know, as I said, I geek out about it, but um. It's a, it's a human inheritance really to know this stuff.

• 17:12Chris Williamson?

  So we've got choice. And what's third?

• 17:14Speaker 00

  I said, there's awareness, there's awareness, range and choice. So range means you can actually have some options. That's kind of the middle ground. Sometimes I say awareness, acceptance and choice. So this is the paradox of change that. We need to know how we are and then say, okay, that is how I am. And right now I'm scared. Right now I'm angry.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Saying yes to that, you know, I was listening to your man on who was Stoic guy, you know, being able to accept things, a really important skill. And then moving to, do I want to change something? Can I change something? Am I going to take the time to develop myself? And maybe that's a small practice, like walking a little bit more. Um, you know, you see some people, they're walking, their arms are vapid. They take small steps, you know, their practice could be walking to work every morning with just a little bit more push from the back foot. Swinging the arms just a little bit more. It's gonna like every day for 10 minutes, you know, and then we have the relational side. Okay. So we have awareness and choice for self, but then what about other people?

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Before we get onto that, um, the maybe people who are naturally or trained to be more utilitarian, very pragmatic. And they will say, well, that's all well and good, Mark, telling me to walk a little bit more off my heels and stand up straight with my shoulders back like Jordan Peterson. But that's, that's just a physical movement. That's me just drilling. You're telling me to walk a particular way. That doesn't change anything about me other than my gait.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the first thing I'd say is don't believe a word I say. Okay. First thing I'd say is try these things. I mean, I could be some cult leader lying to you for my own, you know, financial benefits. All right. So, um, don't believe me. Like that would be nice. And who am I? Who the hell am I? I'm just some guy from the internet. So I would say, try it, you know, for example, like I get some guy to do star jumps, jumping jacks, they call them in America and say, tell me you're sad. It's just impossible. Right? It's like,

• 19:04Chris Williamson?

  Unlike if you get someone to do burpees and no one's happy. If you make them do burpees, no one's happy. If you make them do star jumps, they're sad.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Form of torture. Or here's another one. Someone's tired. And I say, right, well, you could do chest breathing for three breaths. Right?

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Okay. Do you feel more or less tired? 99.9% of people are saying, I feel more awake. I feel less tired. Right? Don't believe me. Like test this stuff, you know? And if you, if you have enough trust after a few of these little tests to do a bigger test, like taking up tango dancing or taking up karate or, you know, taking up whatever salsa dancing, whatever it is, then see how it changes your life. Um, like, that's my philosophy. Like, you know, it's not a religion.

• 19:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I, uh, really enjoyed this insight I got from Derek Sivers earlier on this year, founder of CD Baby, a really, really insightful guy. And he, uh, he talked about most books are spending their time convincing you that the author's word is worth trusting. The vast majority of books are either context or justification. Um, and what's, what's really interesting about that? And it was an insight that I'd never heard. I riffed quite a lot this year on. A lot of books are blog posts that should have been a tweet, expanded out into 200 pages.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 20:27Chris Williamson?

  But. What Derek hit upon that I really, really enjoyed is that most books have one particular key insight, but the problem is that you don't trust the author enough to believe it. So they have to, they have to give you all of these different examples. Like if your best friend who's last five pieces of advice for you about relationships, or the horse that you should pick, or whether you should move house, or that job, or whatever. If they just gave you gold advice and they came up and said, well, mate, here's the central, the central thrust of, and just said the bottom line impact of a particular book, you'd be like, yeah, cool. But when it's a stranger, that's not the case.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, the authority and trust, right? So and those embodied phenomena as well. I mean, there's a reason, you know, British Airways, when they say, you know, tonight or today, we'll be flying at 10,000 feet and blah, blah, blah. And your mother would probably find me attractive. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a embodiment to the British Airways voice, for example. Now, if they were like, hello, welcome to British Airways. Um, we're going to Malaga. I hope it's gonna be fine. I mean, just the anxiety, you'd hear that fight or flight response and you wouldn't trust that guy. So, I mean, one's embodiment of these two factors, warmth and power. So one, one factor is like, is this person authoritative, are they competent? Now, we can base that on past experience, like, you know, I've listened to your podcast. So I know you're a competent interviewer, for example, right?

• 21:49Speaker 00

  I can base that on that experience. However, if I didn't, I would get that sensed from the first three seconds of this interview. Because you're relaxed, you're like, I know what I'm doing. You know, this is home based for me. Welcome to my home, you know, the podcast, I do this all the time, you know, it's episode, whatever it is, 250, yeah? And then there's warmth, right? But if you just did power, you'd be like, okay, Mark, fuck you, I'm in charge, I know what's going on. You know, like, like I'm the boss here. And then I'd be like, oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable, I don't, I don't feel very relaxed. So it's all, you know, with children, with horses, with human beings generally, like this is just what we need to convey. And these are embodied capabilities.

• 22:24Chris Williamson?

  Cool. So we've looked at the individual and then relation. Relational.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Life's about relationship, right? If we're just on our own in a cave, it's not a very satisfying life for most people. So it's the same thing. This is the embodiment skill set, embodied intelligent, I sometimes call it. Um, awareness and choice, then we have self and other. So other, we have awareness of other. And that's state and pattern. Same thing. Okay, state and trait. So it's, can I look at someone and go, you all right? Like I was talking to my colleague yesterday and I just went, are you okay? And she went, actually, my mom's in hospital and my housemates hate me. And it's like, she just needed to listen, you know, 10 minutes of me listening to her before we could get with the business meeting. It was fine. I didn't mind at all. But had I not caught, just in my gut, in my own, empathy is embodied. Without embodiment, you're psychopathic.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Right? Like if you're not feeling, and we all have this experience, maybe, you know, on the tube or walking through a crowded street or when we're stressed or in a rush, we lose empathy because our body tightens. We lose the ability to resonate. You know, you've had that experience, right? I've just been a bit of a dick and then afterwards going, I'm sorry, I was stressed. I shouldn't have said that. And you'd lost empathy in that moment, you know? So when we're relaxed and we're open and we're centered in ourself, we've done the stuff we just talked about. We've got some chance of resonating with other people. In this case, realizing my, realizing my colleague wasn't very well and you needed a bit of listening to him. So that's the, the listening side, the empathy. And then, and then there's body reading, right? Where we can look at different patterns. And that's always a guess and it's to be approached with humility, but

• 23:56Speaker 00

  in a way it's common sense, you know, you're walking down the street, someone's there and you go, ah, this doesn't feel good. Right? You get so, either in your own body or you see something that in that, you know, they're looking around, they've got a certain muscle tone, they've got a certain tension in their body, their breathing's a certain way and you go, maybe best cross the road, you know? So it's like, you know, I worked in war zones for years and I got quite attuned to this. I spent a lot of time watching people who I didn't really speak their language, or I was just learning their language, like Brazil, East Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan. And I go, is this safe? So I was quite motivated to figure out whether they were shouting because that was just their culture and like, you know, like in the Mediterranean, those people shout, or was it that they were angry and this could be a dangerous situation?

• 24:39Speaker 00

  The other thing is just touching a lot of bodies. If you touch a lot of bodies, you start to get a different felt sense of them. So I was travelling around the world doing martial arts. Um, and after touching several thousand bodies, like in in quite intimate ways in some ways, you start to get a bit of a better felt sense of people than the average person. Um, so that's, that's the, the sort of third of the four capabilities, which is awareness of other people.

• 25:04Chris Williamson?

  I did for a long time when I was a kid, I did Laogar Kung Fu, which is a southern style of Kung Fu, very popular. Um, and I did that to Brown Sash and a big part of that is sticking hands.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:15Chris Williamson?

  So with that, anyone who doesn't know what that is, it looks a little bit like a dance. You have your wrists on my wrists from your right on my left, my left on your right. And we, yeah, we roll, we roll our wrists between each other. And what you're waiting for, as you're moving forward, the other person will move backwards and as they move towards you, you'll move backwards. And what you're waiting for is a break. If that person breaks contact with your wrists and you're flowing backwards and forwards, left and right in circles, and then you'll reverse the circles. And you're waiting for a break and at that break is an opening at which you can then move into that person. But if you move into them when they're still touching you, they know you're moving and they can reverse that particular move and then you'll end up being struck.

• 25:57Chris Williamson?

  So that insight, incredibly intimate, you use the word intimate there, which is one that becomes sort of quite heavily loaded, but it's really correct. You know, that was some of the most intimate understandings that I got of how other people's bodies worked. And really, you know, sort of being honest, other than

• 26:16Chris Williamson?

  proper body work that I've had done to me or that I've said, oh, hi mate, like you backed her in, like, give me, I'll give you a hand. Other than that, or, you know, much more intimate sort of passionate relationship stuff. You don't, uh, had I not have done that, my understanding, my genuine felt understanding of what other people's bodies are and how they move would be significantly lower. And I know that doing Laogar Kung Fu is an outlier. You know, it's not like you.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Well, it's a great sensitivity, Brian. It doesn't surprise me. You've done martial arts, by the way. You can feel that in a person. You know, this is the way in which someone carries themselves even years afterwards, when they've had that character training. And some, you know, some practices have that sensitivity. Sometimes people learn a physical skill and it never really transfers into their life, you know?

• 27:01Chris Williamson?

  What like? Any, any particular physical skills that you see in people that don't tend to translate across much?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's something everything, but let's take, let's say you spend, let's take a popular practice, yoga. So people could get very good at being calm in yoga and then walk out of yoga, pick up their phone, go on Facebook and immediately start a flame war. Now they've got, had a little bit of a holiday from their life in yoga and they've had a bit of calming down, which is, you know, it's good for all of us. So good luck to you if that's what you want to do. But they haven't really learned any skills. They haven't really transferred any skills across from yoga into their life, which is kind of a pity. And there's, there's ways I, you know, point out for my yoga students about how to increase the transfer or else, you know, particularly it's, it's a particular container, say in a keto school or a yoga school, it's got its own clothes, its own ritual, its own words,

• 27:50Speaker 00

  you know, the, the, the stay with the phone example, there's no mobile phones, right? So I spend about an hour a day on my mobile phone at least, I'd say. So I might have, let's say I've learned a breathing exercise, like belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. Well, why don't you try that with your phone? And if that's too easy, get your email on your phone and then see if you're still breathing, right? And we can actually train that as a transferable skill. So that's one of the things I do with students. We'll start with like, let's say we're training the stress response. So we'll, we'll start with throwing a tissue at them, throwing a Kleenex at them and they, they flinch, right? I mean, it actually even works online. You want to try?

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Want to try?

• 28:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Okay. What does it do in your body when I threw that at the camera?

• 28:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. You want to move backwards. You want to jerk backwards.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Did you move backwards? Yes or no?

• 28:38Chris Williamson?

  A, a little bit, yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, a little bit. And you tensed up probably a little bit too, right?

• 28:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  And your breathing changed a little bit?

• 28:44Chris Williamson?

  Little short, sharp breath in.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Okay, great. So good noticing. You have higher body awareness than a lot of the beginning. That, that would already indicate to me you had some real practice behind you already. And then you would get with building your awareness of that fight, flight response. Then we could give you a technique to work with it. It could be something as simple as, um, uh, can I offer you one now, Chris? Is that right?

• 29:04Chris Williamson?

  Fire away, man. Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Your, your eyes are quite narrow. It may be you're just looking at the camera. It may just be today. I don't know. But try, uh, opening up your vision so you can see all around the computer, not just the computer. Something you draw a little bit. We call this the Russian smile in Russia. Say ah.

• 29:23Chris Williamson?

  Ah.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Okay, what happened that time when I threw the tissue?

• 29:30Chris Williamson?

  Nothing.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Not a whole lot less, right? So we actually just trained you to reduce your fight flight response. Now, throwing tissues at you is completely pointless, but what we could do, and I won't do this online because it's a bit personal. We could train and take this into a coaching environment and we could use a situation like a piece of criticism or something stressful, maybe your girlfriend criticizes you or your mom or your boss. And we could then train that to A, again, notice the response and B, to then reduce that response. So this is the reducing the fight flight response because it's usually not helpful unless, you know, you've got a heavy rock to lift or something. It doesn't really help for our social interaction. Um, or we could work with expressing it, right? That would be a whole nother set of practices.

• 30:10Chris Williamson?

  Cool. Just to close that open loop that we've got, there will be a lot of people listening. Uh, there'll be a lot of people listening who do yoga and are thinking, oh, fucking hell, Mark's rumbled me there. Um, I, I, I do really enjoy my practice. I do feel very mindful, very embodied, very centered when I'm doing my yoga. And yet, you're right, I, I really struggle in X situation, in traffic, when I get out, when I have this, that and the other. How can people that are practicing yoga or similar other practices transfer that across into their day to day life?

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is the question. I've spent my life really looking at that. So first of all, I'm not slagging off yoga. If anyone's enjoying yoga, if it gives you a break, it makes you less stressed, great, keep doing it. Good for you. No problem. I like yoga. So I want to say that first of all, because otherwise people think you're kicking their puppy a little bit, you know? It's, um, people get very attached to practices because they help people. Um, so how to transfer it? One, notice what you do 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after class. So bringing a bit of an awareness to, for example, I've seen people be really abusive to the person at the desk. And like just unpleasant as they go paying for their cars and then go into yoga and sit down and start saying, oh.

• 31:21Chris Williamson?

  Ha, yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And it's like, dude, you're not even ten minutes before you were being mean to someone.

• 31:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Right? So we can open up before and after. Uh, another thing you can have reminders. So, you know, iPhones are great for this. You just set your phone to go off five times a day. When it goes off, you do one yoga breath, one full yoga breath, five times a day. Okay, there's another one. Another one, micro poses. So if you've got YouTube, they can look all this up. It's much easier to show than tell, but there's something called embodied yoga principles where we explore this on YouTube. Um, you, you have warrior pose, right? How do you get warrior pose into your life? You find the way of doing that on a small level. So this takes me five, 10 minutes to train a yogi in, and we can take a pose they know really well.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  And we can then take it into walking, standing and talking. And I'll say, right, ask me for a cup of tea in warrior pose. Right. Ask me for a cup of tea in the opposite of warrior pose. How would you walk like a warrior? And they go, well, you know, I move my arms, I'd extend from my back leg, I'd look straight ahead. Okay, I go, great, do that. And then we've taken warrior pose as a sort of bad bit of exercise into stretch in from stretching into something they can use in conversation. Something they can use as a practice, walking down the street, something they can use to stand slightly differently without looking too weird. Now we've made it into transferable practice. There's, there's about 10 other things, but there's um, three for stars.

• 32:44Chris Williamson?

  That's some nice takeaways. You mentioned that we were at three out of four.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we've done awareness and choice self, and we did other awareness. So it's empathy and, and body reading, but we didn't do influence. So really it's just based on the other three. So how do you calm someone down? Or wake them up, yeah, or make them laugh, or turn them on, or whatever the influence you want to have on someone else is, that's through the body. I, I give you an example of this. I was, I work in Russia. I was just there now actually, and um, I have an interpreter. And my interpreter is very polite, um, slightly nervous, very particular young lady called Julie. And it's quite difficult because I'll say, da, da, da, da, da, and she'll say, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. And it completely changes the message. So she's actually, to her credit, she's learnt my embodiment and she kind of steps into it.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  And another example from there, when I make a joke, people laugh before she translates it. Why? Because the embodiment is what's being conveyed. Yeah. And this is what we do all the time. Like, I used to work with kids a lot. I used to work in like, you know, PGL, like outward education and big groups of kids running around the woods, lots of fun. And, you know, you have to hold their authority. That's a body thing. And it almost doesn't matter what you say. You know, like my best mate, he'll, I haven't seen him in ages, he'll see me once or twice a year back home. And he'll say, Mark, you're the biggest knobhead I've ever met in my life. You're such a wanker. But what his body's saying is, I love you and I missed you. You know, this is proper British bloke thing to do.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  And that's, actually, I can tell that's what his body's saying, because my body relaxes and opens. Makes sense?

• 34:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  This is a fundamental way we influence people. Like, you know, let's say you're interested in attraction. Maybe there's guys or women out there and they, you know, they're interested in being more attractive. Now, you can wear some clothes and get a haircut and maybe learn some pick-up lines. But if you're not embodying attractive qualities, you won't even be looked at. You won't even be looked at, whether women or men. And as soon as you have those, it's just like, you can be wearing the dirty t-shirt with food on it and have your hair all over the place. And you've all got a mate like that. Isn't he annoying, you know, who kind of had that naturally, never had to learn it. You had that, we call it charisma or chemistry or, you know, chemistry is an embodied thing. If you and your partner's love life has gone,

• 35:07Speaker 00

  and I've worked with gay community a lot in Russia as well, this works with gay people too, but if you and your partner, your love life has gone a bit flat, it's you've lost polarity. That's embodied. You know, if you're yang and she's yang, or you're yin and she's yang, that's not, it's not really going to help. So can you actually step into that polarity? Step into that where you can influence them. And this is an embodied skill. I'm tremendously useful for any kind of leaders or influencers.

• 35:35Chris Williamson?

  What are the biggest challenges that people come up against when trying to improve their influence?

• 35:42Speaker 00

  They're not basing it on the other stuff. So they they go try and go straight to the tricks. And they're not basing it on their own self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy. Um. So they need to sort of they sort of come to me and say, look, I I'm fine, but everyone else is fucked up.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  All right, maybe let's look at that, you know. So, um, yeah, that's probably the biggest challenge and just not being in their bodies. I mean, if, you know, it's like, hello, I'm Norman, I'm your manager, I'm completely in my head, I've got no embodied presence. I'm not feeling anything and I'm trying to inspire you today. You know, just not having any kind of passion or embodied presence at all, that that's not going to be helpful.

• 36:20Chris Williamson?

  I put in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago that you are the common denominator in your life. What is what is more likely? All of your relationships end badly, let's say, or your boss always seems to like you. Or you always seem to be much better with money than all of your friends. Or um, you just never get invited out to parties, whatever it might be. Wherever you go, there you'll be.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Like what I've been saying right there.

• 36:49Chris Williamson?

  You're always you're always going to you are the common denominator in your life. And I I know it's hard, it's hard for everyone to hear because

• 36:58Chris Williamson?

  it feels so bestowed on you, right? Like whatever the common threads are that exist in your life. They manifest in your mind like a curse that's been thrown down from the heavens. And that's also the way that our emotions then manifest them, right? You know, the the feeling of love is oxytocin.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Love is an action done in the body.

• 37:19Chris Williamson?

  So. But the way that you sense it, the way that it actually manifests when you try and think and break it down and you feel it in your chest and you feel the warmth. That doesn't feel anything like just a chemical getting released. And the same thing goes for the situations that occur in your life, the challenges that you face feel like they've been bestowed upon you. And the successes that you face also for people dealing with imposter syndrome feel like they've been bestowed upon you too.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, personal responsibility is the first thing I teach all my new employees. It's what I, you know, we just took a big team on for the conference we were talking about earlier. And the first thing I taught them was personal responsibility. It's like, you know, in embodiment, we call it somatic responsibility. It's like, no one made you angry. You made you angry. I mean, you know, you might say, hey, he made me angry and it's a shorthand, that's fine. But really it's, I did anger in my body. This is from Paul Lindon, one of my main teachers. I did anger in my body when he said X. Right, like that, even if it was an unconscious choice, was a choice. And then actually it's radical to take responsibility over yourself. And there are, that's the conservative truth, right? The personal responsibility. The liberal truth is equally important to balance, which is that there are conditions.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  And those conditions might be intergenerational trauma, it might be poverty, it might be whatever the, this, you know, living in Moscow, it might be that you haven't eaten breakfast that's, that morning. There's lots of conditions, right? So we have to acknowledge both of those things, the conditions and the responsibility. And for me, embodiment is a great way to take responsibility over myself and, you know, get out of that victim position.

• 38:49Chris Williamson?

  I want to get on to the embodiment conference in a little bit, but before we do that, can you try and give us some more common embodiment techniques? The most common ones that you use with your clients or that you've been, that you've been taught, that you think the broadest cross section of people that I know can probably benefit from some of these?

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. So I mean, we've got state changes and then we've got how do we develop ourselves as people? There's no quick wins for the second one. Okay, like the second one, you want to develop yourself as a person, get a practice, start going to karate or to tango or conscious dance, you know, do meditation every morning. Great, that's a long-term project. But people often need the quick wins first, so they can have some sort of state change, which is fair enough. So stand differently, walk differently, sit differently, breathe differently. There you go, that's about it. Breath, do you want to breathe a bit more in the chest or a bit more in the belly? That will have a different impact.

• 39:44Chris Williamson?

  Which do we want?

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Well, it depends what you want it for. So when everyone talks about good breathing or good posture, my next question is, well, what for? So if I'm trying to go to bed at night and I want to go to sleep, long, smooth out breath. Yeah, that's Camarote breath. If I want to wake myself up in the morning, espresso breath. I was in bed this morning, I had five hours sleep, but I need to get up to see my team, I was like. Okay, just one, one breath. Sometimes you only got two, three seconds, right? Uh, did that, got out of bed. Okay, simple get up technique. Whoa, I'm awake from doing it just now. And then like this evening, it's like, what are we at? Like, it's like, oh, we've got a few hours yet, but there'll be a Oh.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  And that makes me just go to sleep. Just I don't want to do that too much actually being interviewed. So there's two breaths for you right away. We could say yang in the belly and long out breath versus the in breath. Uh, how do you stand? Do you want to take up space or do you want to be more private? More width or less width? More forwards? Do you want to be more engaged? Like as an interviewer, right? You can be more engaged. Hey Mark, tell me that. Or you can be more back, evaluating, taking your space. Yeah. And we can go up and down. Do you want to be more down? Which is like grounded, solid. Hmm. Stubborn, we will fight them on the beaches. Yeah. Or do you want to be more up here, more like lively and inspired and light and fun and Well, it depends when, right? Like, maybe you want to be serious now you're at work, but later on you're relaxing, you know, you're having fun with your friends at the pub.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  You want to be a bit more up, up above. So we can use posture. Walking, I've mentioned, simple ass techniques. You're someone like me who tends to rush. Walk a bit slower. Walk more on the heels. You're someone that lacks confidence. Well, with a slightly, it doesn't have to be Monty Python, just a slightly longer stride. Push from your back foot a little bit more. Yeah, look up. You know, the Jordan Peterson thing about, you know, stand up tool. It's not wrong, it's just not very detailed, right? It's just, it's fine. It's just, you know, I did a video on what could be added to that. Um, so what have we done? Sitting. Again, you know, how do you want to sit? Posture, breathing, movement. So these are basic tools. Um, and then we could look a bit more esoterically, you know, like or a bit more creatively, like, um,

• 41:58Speaker 00

  like right now, imagine, visualize the hand of someone supportive on your back. Someone from your past, a teacher, maybe a dad or grandparent and lean into that.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, you just shifted. How was that?

• 42:13Chris Williamson?

  It's a nice cue.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Nice, huh? So you can have a visualization, like sometimes I'm, you know, visualize you're on fire, visualize you've got angel wings, visualize your feet are trees. I mean, you know, some people love visualization, but other people it doesn't work for. So yeah, or we can say, okay, like, one of my translators, Julie in Moscow, good love, she's one of my best friends now. She says, when she wants to be more confident and kick ass, she's, she's kind of like, you know, she does a sort of her inner Mark Walsh, and she sort of moves and stands a bit like me. And if I want to be sort of nice and polite and a bit less offensive, I can be a bit more like Julie, right? Like that's a mode, because I'm quite familiar with Julie from years of standing next to her. I can just, it's like channel, but there's nothing weird about it. It's just I'm bringing that person to mind. Ah, there's a body. There's a, this quality with Julie, a particularness,

• 43:00Speaker 00

  and I change as soon as I start to put that on. But all this stuff is just hacks, right? And I, you know, in my book, plug, there's a whole chapter on sort of hacks and like little quick wins you can do, things you can do as you get in a chair, self-coaching. It doesn't have to be complicated, you know, the iPhone that goes off and reminds you to breathe, that sort of thing. But really, if I'm working with people long-term, it's the practices. It's what are you really practicing? And yes, we can give you shapes to practice, yoga shapes and poses, but it's something like, you know, you mentioned your Kung Fu practice, you know, that has stayed with you. That has stayed with you years later because you put the hours in. And like, let's

• 43:44Speaker 00

  grow up. Yes, it's nice to go and do some my Alaskan mushrooms. Yes, it's nice to jump up and down and, you know, do a workshop and, you know, pump the air and feel good. But unless you're really developing a practice, that stuff's not going to stick. Let's, let's get real. All the books in the world won't solve your problems. I can listen to a thousand podcasts from me or from you and learn about Stoic philosophy and listen to Douglas Murray and all these great thinkers, but unless I develop a practice, I'm not changing.

• 44:12Chris Williamson?

  That difference between state and trait, I think, is a really good point to make. And again, it comes back to the transactional nature of what the self-development world has come to. And we try as much as possible to talk about compliance on this show to try and remind people that what you do every day is what you'll end up becoming. There's a concept which you might love, actually, with the martial arts reference from Ethan Suppley, my buddy who was in Wolf of Wall Street, big, huge Hollywood actor, massive guy out of, my name is Earl, and now he's lost £300 and he's got a beard and he wears his cap on backwards and he deadlifts like 500 pounds and he's just, he's a beast.

• 44:54Chris Williamson?

  And he was learning martial arts for some huge blockbuster that he was in. And the martial arts instructor that he had gave him a rule, which is called no bad reps. And no bad reps is a really smart way to remind us that you're always drilling something.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:15Chris Williamson?

  The way that Myelin sheaths wrap around the neurology, neurology? Yeah, neurology of how the Myelin sheaths wrap around in your brain, isn't that you don't get to choose not to make a habit, you just get to choose which habit it is that you're making.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Something is wiring together right now. Everyone listening to this right now, something is wiring together.

• 45:36Chris Williamson?

  Neurons that wire together.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, firing together right now, they're wiring together right now. So do you want to have some conscious embodiment or you just want to have the same old bloody unconscious embodiment that your dad had and his dad before him and that your culture gave you and you're supposed to have as a working class, British bloke or whatever the hell you are out there. Like, like that's, you can just be completely unconscious with that, or you can say, you know what, I choose something different. And I'm a believer of any embodied practice. If people want to do yoga or dance or martial arts, different people like different things, great. Get in your body, start to feel again. Stop thinking that wanking over porn and reading books is going to cut it. Like get into a dojo, go do yoga, do something, get into your body again and reclaim that humanity.

• 46:24Chris Williamson?

  What are some suggestions you've got? People think, yeah, yeah, Mark Feller was all right. Like he's, that embodiment stuff sounds pretty good. First off, let's say that we're in Covid, which we are. What can or should, what would be a good suggestion for people to start? And then let's say that we're back into the real world. What are some things perhaps that people have overlooked that would be a little bit more left field?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Okay, if they're a complete beginner, if they're pretty cerebral, like my academic friend, any movement practice that involves feeling, whatever's comfortable and happy and inspires you, whether it's martial arts, dance, yoga, whatever, okay? You can do that at home, the Zoom classes and all these things now are actually more available than ever before. So that, you know, getting up from your chair, this, I don't like, you can see I'm getting antsy. I don't like sitting still for an hour, you know, I normally move around a lot more. Being in nature, being around other embodied people, they're the key factors. But movement is the first one. Do some simple things, even if it's just 10 minutes of mindful breathing a day, a little bit of mindful barefoot walking on the grass in the park, that's what I do. And then if you feel inspired, do a class.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  If people are listening to this and they already have a practice, next level, examine it. Is it transferring? Question one, is your yoga or your karate or whatever getting off the map? Yeah. Question two, is your practice chosen from your neurosis and just making you more and more like how you are? Maybe you actually need a second practice. Like I did martial arts for ages, I got very disciplined. You know, I got that Japanese thing that I needed to get my ass sober and to, you know, give me that structure in my body. But then I got a bit uptight and I needed to go to fire rhythms and let it all hang loose and dance and be free. You know, so there's like different things. If you've already got one practice, you might want to look at a second one.

• 48:10Chris Williamson?

  And what's a more left field suggestion when the world reopens?

• 48:16Speaker 00

  Well, let's all have an orgy in Newcastle. You know, in this, in the snow, I think, I think all go clubbing in Newcastle and have a great time.

• 48:24Chris Williamson?

  That's fine, guest list available, text below. You mentioned about like interpretive dance and comedy and all this sort of stuff. You know, all of these different practices might. They're horses for courses, but getting into the body, I really like that idea. I think as well this year more than ever, I've noticed the lack of variety in the movements that I've been able to do. You know, I haven't been, no one's been going to a nightclub in 2020. No one's been really spending a ton in the UK. We weren't even allowed to go out of the house. You could maybe barefoot on the wall, on the grass, once per day. Unless you got it, unless you got a garden, people have been locked in their houses. You know, you live in a city, it might be a fair

• 49:08Chris Williamson?

  distance for you to get to some nature. So I think that there's a good, a really good case to be made, that taking yourself out of your mind, and I'm going to make a pejorative statement about the vast majority of people who choose to listen to podcasts and consume this type of content. In any case, I think that'll select for a particularly cerebral type of person already. I think they'll exist a lot more in their head than they will in their body. And I certainly know that I do, as someone who thinks that he's trying to push these boundaries already. So I definitely agree. I think there's a lot that can be taken from the embodiment practice.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, man should be well danced and well fought as well as well read. And I love reading, you know, loaded books behind me, ordered about five yesterday. I'll probably get around to reading two of them if I'm lucky. I love reading, but we need something more than that if we're going to grow as people. We need a practice. We need some way to get back in our bodies. And as you say, in these times, I think it's particularly important. We, you know, we're in this slightly disembodied world right now. And yeah, I encourage people to whatever embodied practice appeals to them, give it a go.

• 50:10Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Tell us about your conference.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Okay, so we have a huge conference coming up. Where to begin? I love embodiment. I think it's a good thing. I'd like to see it out in the world. I've been putting stuff out on the online, on YouTube, on my podcast, in embodiment for free. And then I went, hang on a minute, we could do an online event. Two years ago, we did it for the first time. Everyone laughed at us because no one knew what Zoom was then. 15,000 people turned up. And then I thought to myself, well, hang on, how big can we make this? And now we've got a thousand speakers, probably going to be half a million people booked in. The Embodiment Conference, it's called theembodimentconference.org. All the top names in trauma and yoga, in meditation, martial arts, free to the world.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  And we we make our money by buying the record, people buy the recordings, but it's totally free if people want to listen to it. It's theembodimentconference.org. And I'm going to be honest, it's a terrifying proposition. All of a sudden, I'm the mayor of a small town and I'm, you know, a million pounds to do it. And I'm in charge of a team of sixty people. And I'm like, you know, I'm used to doing little embodiment trainings for thirty or fifty people. So it's a bit of a step up for me. And what can I say, I feel inspired by it, I feel stressed by it, I feel happy I'm doing it. I feel frustrated sometimes, it's the full spectrum, it's it's like a Mount Everest to climb. But it's happening, it's really happening.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  So if people are at all curious about this stuff, the Embodiment Conference would be a good place to get a taste, get a free taste of many, many different approaches, like a kind of tapas meal, you know?

• 51:45Chris Williamson?

  When is it?

• 51:46Speaker 00

  It is the fourteenth to twenty fifth of October. And it's online, it's free for everyone, free to register, real easy to do. And there's ten different channels running simultaneously twenty four hours a day. It's in nine languages as well. So if people want to listen to it in German or Spanish or Chinese, whatever they can. So it's, yeah, we think it's the largest educational event in human history. It's certainly the largest online summit there's ever been. It's pretty ambitious in its scope. And we've got this very clever computer systems, some Israeli friends of mine made, which is sort of means you can find what you want rather than just get lost in it. So you can say, right, I want to learn about trauma and I want a beginner's class and I want it next Tuesday. And you just put all that in and you can find what you need.

• 52:31Chris Williamson?

  Dude, what an event, man. That is a serious, a serious undertaking.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  You know, if someone told me, hey, well, what about next year? I said, I'm not going to be talking about. This is crazy. Like, it's really something. And I, I wanted to push it and just see how far it would go. And, um, you know, have that personal challenge. And as I said, I think this embodiment is needed in the world today. I, I think we are disconnected from ourselves and that has, that leads to all sorts of problems, whether it be health problems, emotional problems. We're disconnected from each other, you know, we're disconnected from the planet. And those, those things cannot continue. So even in this weird, techie, you know, tuning in online, learning embodiment on the internet world, we need to find a way to come home to the body. And I hope this is, um, some contribution towards that.

• 53:20Chris Williamson?

  Awesome, man. I think that's a really noble pursuit. And I'm going to guess that this was planned long before Covid kicked off.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's eighteen months in the making.

• 53:29Chris Williamson?

  Yet. Twenty twenty, probably a pretty good year for people to have this, some sense of community, a connection to half a million people.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the Facebook ad price came down, if nothing else, you know, but, um, it was, I'm joking, I don't wish Covid on anyone. It can be nasty, particularly for elderly people, can't it? But, um, I think a lot of people are isolated, stuck indoors. Uh, having, we've done a lot of lead up events to this. We did events on stress and trauma and, you know, all different things like that. And you could see it was really beneficial for people to, even if they were in the house, to be able to connect with other people. Um, that feels like a worthwhile thing to be putting out there and, you know, giving some of the, the skills and the experts and just making it globally available for everyone online. So, um, I'm proud of it, to be honest, mate. I feel like we've already achieved something just getting to this point. And, um, yeah, it's, it's definitely a test for me as a leader.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  It's not always easy, but, um, I'm proud we're doing it.

• 54:26Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations, man. People want to check it out? Where do they go?

• 54:29Speaker 00

  TheEmbodimentConference.org or if they just Google Embodiment Conference. If people like what I've been hearing us saying here as well, you can look at YouTube channels about it. The podcast, I've got a book out called Embodiment. Basically, you start Googling the word embodiment, you're going to come up with all this stuff. And there's loads of free resources online. So yeah, I want to encourage people to look up those. And there's lots of other teachers in this field, not just me. And if I'm not your cup of tea, you might like Paul Lyndon, Richard Strose Heckler, Wendy Palmer. There's a whole load of great teachers out there in the world.

• 54:59Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Everything that we've gone through will be linked in the show notes below. I'll be tuning in, I think I'll ask you for your, your top superstars from the conference. It'll be like asking you to choose your favorite children or something.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Have to tell you offline.

• 55:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm gonna ask for the secret.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  It's a little bit political that.

• 55:16Chris Williamson?

  The super secret best of guest list and I'm gonna get, I'm gonna tune in and do that. Mark, today's been really, really fun, man. I really enjoyed it and I think that the concepts that we've gone through, hopefully it'll help a lot of people. Like I say, anyone that's interested in finding out a little bit more about this, I'll have linked most of the stuff that you need. Or if not, just search Mark Walsh or the Embodiment Conference online and you'll be able to find out some more. For now, man, thank you so much.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Thanks for your time, Chris. It's a pleasure.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd, rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.