Aaron Alexander is one of the foremost experts on how to utilize the body to improve all aspects of your life. He is the host of the Align Podcast and the author ofThe Align Method: 5 Movement Principles for a Stronger Body, Sharper Mind, and Stress-Proof Life.As a holistic performance coach, he has helped thousands of people, including some of the world’s best athletes and celebrities optimize the function of their body. In this podcast, we talk about myriad ways to tap into the innate healing capacities of our bodies and find medicine in the mundane. 

AUBREY: Aaron, my brother. 

AARON: Aubrey, my brother.

AUBREY: Good to be here with you, man. 

AARON: Thanks for making it happen again. 

AUBREY: Yeah. So right before we started, we did a little hoppe ceremony and there was a very clear message that came through for both of us, and the message was, “you can't do it wrong.” And I think for me, obviously there's so many times in my life that I look forward to the future worrying that I'm going to do it wrong. I look back into the past thinking that I did it wrong. And so I carry the anxiety about what I'm going to do in the future, wondering if it's going to be wrong. And I carry judgment about what I did in the past, wondering if I did it wrong. And that's a whole lot of weight to carry. And so I'd love for you to go into your own experience with that feeling that you can do it wrong and what that creates and how that feeling and how the release of that feeling creates the thing 

AARON: I have a counter question for you. And I can answer one and ask the other. But first the question part that I'm really curious about, the thing that hit me during that moment was the way that you presented that suggestion of you can't do it wrong. It wasn't a thing that you said. It was where it was coming from. That I could feel and that was interesting. And something that I think is interesting, like the worlds of talk therapy and all the different types of therapies, somatic therapy, whatever it may be. I think so much of what we are doing when we're working with clients or patients or each other, or friends or family, and we're communicating to each other, it's so much coming from this declarative space, which I'm like, memory speaks declarative. That's the part where we're talking it's facts, it's numbers, and all that, but it's this topical layer. And we learn to communicate from that topical layer. And underneath that subconscious part, that implicit part, that's the part that's actually running the show. And what I felt in that moment when you had that come through for you, if we can't do it wrong, it felt like it was, like there was opening a channel through that explicit declarative talkie part. That opened up and then that deeper information was able to come through and then it was like, oh, it hit me in a way. I was like, oh, okay. And I actually feel my whole body shift just from that. And it wasn't anything that you said. It was the way that it was said and where it came from. And I noticed as I was sitting there, we were both sitting in an upright studious meditation position. And in that moment of, you can't do it wrong, I just noticed my whole spine kind of shifted to the left and kind of like, ugh. And relax and settle. And so there's the place that I was trying to be even subconscious, not realize I was trying to be there. I thought I was totally being, I'm like being right now. So, I mean, come on, look at me. 

AUBREY: Aligned. 

AARON: A fucking aligned. And you can't do it wrong from that place. And perhaps there was some level of response there, but the question is what do you think that was for you, and where did that come from, and is that something that you can tap into with regularity? 

AUBREY: I think this is a place that I'm going towards. It's a place that's always within us. So going towards is also when language starts to fail because you're actually never going towards something. You're always typically going backwards almost. It's like you're just remembering a truth that we've forgotten or that we're not looking at, or that we've adopted through conditioning another belief system. The belief system is that you can do it wrong, you did it wrong and you're gonna get punished for this, and this is your punishment for this, and if you do it wrong, these are the consequences of pain that you're gonna have when you do it. And it's this whole baptism that we've had in life through the opposite conditioning, but from the right purview, which I was gifted and assisted in. With this great healer that I work with, her name's Kimmy Lucas, and she brought me through basically right before that, an hour long guided experience where, really, I mean, might as well tell the truth forces Archangel Michael Christ, they were teaching me and expressing this to me in their own different ways. Like, we know it's gonna be hard. We know there's pain. We know the human experience. Like we see it, we feel it, and everything you're feeling there was the message that Jesus had for me when I was looking at all my fear and all my trepidation and everything that I was going through, the energy, memory, whatever you want to call it, but that force that was present there, just smiled at me and said, me too. And that was coming from Christ, right? Because we think of Jesus as the infallible one, the perfect one. That never had fears and never had doubts and never worried if he was doing it wrong and never had any of these human things that we do. Because he was always the Christ. He was never Jesus. He was never like, Hey, what's up G? From his buddies at some point who saw the human in him. And I think that's something that we've really missed and that deep message of, oh yeah, me too. Like don't worry. And that's I think where that place where there's the love that holds no record of wrong, it's 'cause Jesus was all of it as well, and knows all of it as well. And there is just this complete release of any judgment in that. Yeah, me too. Whatever. Yeah, me too. And there was just this complete absence of judgment. And in the absence of judgment, that's when you realize you can't do it wrong. And you combine that absence of judgment with the higher perspective of everything happening in accord to help us learn and experience literally everything. It's God experiencing God. And so there's no experience in which God isn't experiencing God and learning or expressing something or your soul. There's nothing your soul can do that your soul can't learn from. And so that it was the combination of like the wings of which was another symbol that came through the wings of that purview and the truth and the kind of humble acknowledgement from the perfect one as we have in our mind. Jesus, the perfect one, just smiling and saying, "Yeah, me too.”

AARON: Yeah. I wonder where the body comes into that whole equation. Like, is the body a vehicle to arrive at those places or those places, a vehicle to arrive at the body? If the body is in a state of chaos, if it's impinged or twisted or torqued or held contraction from whoever, however long ago. Does that get in the way of accessing those places? Can the body get contorted and twisted and contracted to the degree that eventually there's like a snapping point where that actually is the vehicle to get into those places? Like the body's an interesting conversation there.

AUBREY: It is a super interesting conversation and a great way to go. There's this beautiful truth about the body. So one thing about the body is we always project onto the body that it's doing something wrong. Something's wrong. And the body's like, I'm just communicating. So that's one aspect of recognizing the inherent perfection of the body. And reprogramming this idea that your body's broken, oh, I'm sick. Oh, this is hurting, this is something wrong. The body has failed me, the body has done something wrong. And we cast our judgment on our body when the body's like, no, I'm just communicating, giving you feedback. So like one of the sacred roles of the body, I would say, is to give you feedback. It's a communicator, that lets you know, oh, if you're contorted, if you're doing this way, what are the psychological conditions? What are the other things that you're not looking at that your body's trying to show you? I think that's a big part. And there's also, I think without a body, it's a lot easier to have courage because there's no pain. Like the body actually is what can bring pain through in a very physical visceral sense. Like your body can actually hurt. And so I think there's those dual roles that the body has of perfectly communicating and also giving a sense of consequence, which can give you the fear, which can give you the liberation from the fear. By giving you that courage and also teaching you acceptance and surrender. So many lessons it can teach you.

AARON: Yeah. And then the interesting thing with all of that is to actually arrive at those places, you have to forget the intention to arrive at those places. And typically the most efficient route to do that is through play or dance. Or for a lot of people it's sex 'cause plays feel too distant. And when you can come or when a person can come into that place. It's like you never get to the place by trying to get to the place, but maybe the trying builds up the intellectual story around it. But a lot of that, like Ramdas has a bit where he was talking about feeling uncomfortable in his human suit. He's like, I felt this internal spirit. All the things. And then there's the suit and I never really felt like the suit fit. Like I walk into the room and I feel kind of a little bit twisted this way. And then he goes to see a psychoanalyst. And the psychoanalyst has these potential answers to essentially provide Ramdas with a new suit to wear. And so he says, for a small penance, I can offer you this new suit. And you go back and forth with these different stories. And then the irony is it always comes back like the times that are actually the most meaningful and the most connected. And it's always the times that you forget about all that stuff. And typically, for me at least, it's typically channeled through the body. Like if I go to some type of bar setting or a party or whatever it is, oftentimes I can walk in and feel like I'm aware of the human suit, I'm aware of the errand suit. And then that creates a barrier, this sensation of disconnect or anxiety or insecurity or any of those. And then if there's music. And there's a little space to wiggle. All it takes is like five minutes to snap out of that. And it's through forgetting about those ideas and actually tapping into the physical body. And then I think what's really interesting with that as well is dance. Is one of those systems that integrates all of your systems in one shot. And it integrates it to music as well, which your auditory system is a part of the systems. And so when you hear whatever you might hear, maybe a clash or a bang in the background, immediately your nervous system goes into this mobilized state, ready to attack. And that's deep primordial influence from years and years and years. Similar thing with all of your senses, even like smell, a weightlifter before they go to do a big 700 pound deadlift or whatever, their coach might give 'em this blast of smelling salts. And it channels their nervous system back into that mobilized ready to go state. So they're gathering that information from the environment. And then it's informing the way that they show up with themselves. And when you can integrate all those different parts. So movement is one of them. Sound is one of them. Touch feel is one of them. And then you bring in that social interaction. That social connection, it has this way of integrating the system, making a more coherent system. It's like a cleaner frequency, but you could never talk somebody into that state unless you talk from that place that you did 45 minutes ago. Seriously. And no accreditation or like, I'm not saluting you at all.

AUBREY: Yeah, of course.

AARON: I'm saluting that. And maybe your path of potentiating the spaciousness to allow that to come through. But it's not the you part. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And I appreciate the acknowledgement, but also give that acknowledgement right back to the source, which is what you're talking about, the source from which it came, which is not mine. It's an archetypal truth. That's just whether we can tune our frequency to it. But as you mentioned, all of this, what we're really talking about is we're talking about resonance and, and really the resonance comes when instead of thinking of it as the human suit, we recognize that spirit, mind, and body, are all actually one. It's like recognizing that there is no separation. When you're talking, oh my mind, well, our body is just the dense part of our mind, and our spirit is perhaps the most etheric, in the ether part of our mind, the non-physical part of our mind. And then there's that middle level, the air realm, if you wanna use the elemental model of our mind. And so there's all of these different aspects, but it's all mind. It's all one thing. So you might as well call it that our language fails, but it's all the same thing. And the more separation we have, the more friction can be created between the elements. But when you realize like, oh yeah, this is just my dense mind and then here's the middle level mind and here's the upper mind, but it's all my mind and it's all the same thing. And then that's what dance or music, or sex or any of these things do, is they collapse all of the separation into a single source. A single force. 

AARON: Yeah. I think that the path towards getting to actually experience those sensations is coming out of a state of fear or freeze from a nervous system perspective. Fight, flight, freeze. There's the other one where you're immobilized and shut down and you just don't wanna respond. It's like this helplessness, this learned helplessness. And so to come out of that state of fear, it's interesting because you can do it right now. It's never not on the plate. It's never not on the table. 

AUBREY: It's true. 

AARON: But is it safe to do that? 

AUBREY: Ah, that’s the question.

AARON: Because you've learned from whatever I've learned from whatever age or maybe pre age, when I was like a glimmer in my dad's eye or however it goes that when I'm in that contracted defensive, braced, contorted state, ready for impact, that's allowed me to survive. And at some point it was absolutely necessary for my survival. Maybe. Yeah, it could have been. That's true too. But let's just say it was, regardless from a felt state it did because we're still here. And so, coming to the point of feeling safe enough in order to relax and allow, that's the big show.

AUBREY: That's the big cup, right? Like this isn't the thimble that we're trying to drink out of. That's the big cup of it. 

AARON: And then you can step into creation, and self-actualization. And these are things that I'm kind of like pontificating on. 'cause I still have tendrils of that myself. And I can see it and feel it. And I've witnessed it in various different ceremonies and moments throughout the day. I'm like, oh, there's that. So it's–

AUBREY: The resistance to accepting that truth about our expression and our being is because we have felt pain and we have thought, oh man, I fucked that up. Like I did that thing. I didn't listen, I did this thing wrong. Let's say a physical injury. I did this thing wrong and now this thing hurts. I wasn't paying attention when I was cutting the carrots and I sliced my finger. And we have these physical consequences for these actions, or man, I should have heard that thing coming or seen that thing coming, or I should have done this a different way because we felt unpleasant consequences from these actions. And we tell ourselves, if my mind would've just been a little better, I could have avoided that thing. And on some levels that's true, right? Like, so we learn this and it's very reasonable to learn this. And I don't think it's something we ever fully transcend. But then I guess the question is can we step into a deeper state of knowing which is the highest articulation of the mind, which is not trying to anticipate everything, but almost like feeling the Tao of the thing. Like, is this safe? Is this dangerous? Am I here present? 'Cause when you're present, all of those ‘mistakes’ that you make are way less likely to occur. Because that's really the whole game anyway. We think that we're actually doing ourselves a service by scrambling into the future, figuring out what's going on, scrambling into the past. Meanwhile, we're contracting our body, tweaking ourselves, driving us on this kind of runaway train towards some kind of dis-ease.

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: That we're actually really what, trying to prevent, but we're not actually doing it. So it's this kind of paradoxical situation where by letting it go and opening our awareness by being present and relaxing our body entirely, we're actually doing the best thing we can do, but we just have to trust it. So it becomes a sense of faith. And it's almost like faith in Star Wars, they'd call it the force, or in Daoism they call it the dao, or in mysticism, they might call it source. Or in religion they might call it God. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: It's just whatever the name is, but it's just like trusting that like, all right, I'm listening and I'm available, and I think that's the most powerful place we're in. Doesn't mean that chaos won't shoot an arrow, right through you knowing out of a surprise. We're in a co-created world, but nonetheless, our chances are the best. When we just let it all go.

AARON: I think the best part of the whole human situation is how jacked up every person thinks they are, like, everyone's winning the trophy for being the most fucked up. Like you look agro, some people are more honest than others. You're like, oh, okay, cool. Like, that's all right. Respect that, and that becomes disarming. But I think internally, most people have so many neuroses running all the time that in most people's minds, my guess is they think that they could do better. They think that other people are whatever, like other people are doing better than them. And we're exposed to a lot of that via social media and such. Mark Twain had a quote. He was like, I am old. I have suffered many tragedies. Few of them have actually transpired. So I think it's like we're like a big family. Like we're all fucked up. We come to that place of starting from that place, and then you can embrace the fuck up and it's not a fuck up. It just is. And then you're like, oh, okay, cool. Or you can kind of breathe with that a little bit. Like, okay, we're fucked up. And it's allowed us to survive to this point, and then it doesn't become this enemy or this thing that you're pushing away. It just becomes, like, great. Like, here we are. But then the next level could be coming to a place of, it's like getting into AA where I'm like, I'm a sinner and I'm an addict and all that stuff. I think there's a place where you can go beyond that, but I'm not just fucked up. I'm also a genius. And I'm also a king and a queen and light and divinity and like whatever. Yes. You were equally that.

AUBREY: And I think the beauty of that message that came through from Jesus, which was me too. Like whatever. And his message, when you really look through the mystical lens and read the passages, and I wish I had those available so I could spout them out exactly verbatim, like Ted Decker could, but ultimately his message is, I am within all of you. Like I am in all of you. So if he's in all of us. He's all of us. It's all of us. So that perfection is in all of us. The totality is in all of us. If Jesus is in every person, then it is Me too. And so it's always me too. Me too. No matter what anybody's experiencing, what you're experiencing, if everybody's being honest, then they go, oh yeah, me too.And I felt that in different ways in the Ayahuasca journey I did in Soltara. It was this deep understanding, and I've talked about it on the podcast, like there is no darkness in the world or no light in the world that I do not participate in. No evil, no good, no carnal desires, no sacred cravings, no actualization and denial of that actualization. There's nothing that I do not participate in on some level and it is like that ultimate me too. And it just, when we get to that place, as you said, that we have this idea that we're special in some way. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: I'm special in some way. No, you're just another, yeah, me too. 

AARON: I think the interesting thing is, I think all of us interesting, but we can hypnotize ourselves into believing whatever we want. I go back and forth of how much agency we actually have and whether what we're just like pinballs being knocked around and it's like an algorithm and just like, here we are. And all my thoughts are you could map out everything that I have always done and I'm about to do right now and will do in 10 years. It's already all mapped out, so maybe that's a possibility as well. But you can place yourself. You're always in a trance and no matter where you're at, you're always attuning to that space. And so you can start to self parent yourself and just start dropping your human in these locations that you want to be more like. So it's always gonna be good for you to be more like nature. 

AUBREY: I agree. 

AARON: It's always gonna be good for you to be more like love, more like compassion, more like acceptance more. So it's like, okay, cool. Like nature has a lot of that. It also has a lot of metal, like nature's metal. But then it's like being intentional with the people that you spend time with and how do they make you feel? And there's Meister Eckhart. The theologian dude, he had a thing of, with finding God, when you find some type of medium that brings you closer to God than other mediums be with that, I'm paraphrasing. And then if you find another medium, a book or dogma or cult or whatever it is that makes you feel closer to God, like be with that. And then eventually, ideally you get to a point where every medium is just a continuation of that sensation and you're not dependent on any one specific thing. So you're not even dependent on nature. You're not dependent on your circle of five people you spend time with. You're not dependent on your food or your instrument, your guitar that brings me into God or sex. You are God and you infuse that into the instrument and into the food, and into the sex and into your experience. 

AUBREY: Everything forms a bridge and it's a bridge. It's a bridge to a place that you are trying to go to. But we place so much value on this particular bridge over that particular bridge when really it's like whatever bridge you want. Oh, you want the pain bridge? Okay. I mean, that's a bridge you can get there. Through the liberation by using your pain, you can go with the love bridge, the sacred union bridge, the music bridge, the dance bridge, the nature bridge, the fasting bridge, the spiritual ideas bridge, the religion bridge, the meditation bridge. Everything is just a bridge. What's the bridge that's going to get you to the place that you're desiring to go and just discard the value proposition of one bridge being a different bridge? Is it actually pragmatically getting you to where you want to go? 

AARON: Yeah. And then also questioning who wants to go where exactly 

AUBREY: And what do you really want?

AARON: And what do you desire?  

AUBREY: What do you really want?

AARON: And what you desire today is probably gonna be different than what you desire to hear. 

AUBREY: Sure. And that's being flexible. Just being like, ah, this is what I want and these are the bridges that I think are gonna get there.

And then applying the discipline to actually take the steps to cross that bridge. If you know, like for me, I know that breath work is one of the best bridges for me. I have hella resistance to doing it on my own. It's like I also know that yoga is a great bridge for me to get into my body in a way that actually is really helpful for my body.

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: But I'll be like yoga or slam some kettlebells around. Ah, kettlebells. 

AARON: Both are good. 

AUBREY: Both are good. 

AARON: Both are yoga. And neither could be yoga depending upon how you're doing them. 

AUBREY: But for me, the particular type of yoga that's actually actually called yoga is a particular type. But what I'm saying is that there's, I'm not actually listening to what I want. I'm not clear enough in my wants. I'm not like, I haven't painted that clear enough that, and honest enough that I'm taking the bridges to the place where I honestly want to go. I'm just kind of stuck in a pattern of, Ah, well, you gotta be kind of big and strong and swollen. 'cause that's important. And I think that was from fear of not being enough of a man and not being able to fight it, good enough. And not being able to be physically dominant and this kind of desire to be that and fear of not. And I still like that stuff, but it's not what I really want. What I really want is the place I get to after breathwork and after yoga. And I have a ton of fun playing ball, doing martial arts, and going hooping. Like, it's not that I'm trying to give that up, but it's about just shifting the bridges that I take most regularly to get me to that balanced place of what I really want.

AARON: And then you have to ask yourself what plane of me or layer or strata of me wants this? 

AUBREY: Yeah. 'cause there's conflicting–

AARON: There's many uses. 

AUBREY: Almost an infinite amount, right? Because if we're going all the way from the densest part of the animal, what does the animal want? Well, the animal typically for me, it wants a lot of things, but it also wants a lot of release of tension. It desperately wants release of tension. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: It also likes to work, when I work and do physically work, I mean like go for something that's an hour long box, MIT work session where I'm just gassed at the end and I've exerted my body. I feel exhilarated at the end of that after a hard workout. But I also feel so good at the release of tension and it's really just listening a little bit more instead of forcing, but listening first without the preconceived idea. And just being like, all right, what do you want, body? Okay, what do you want, mind? Mind, do you wanna look a certain way, why? Do you think that's really helpful? Is that actually getting you what you really want or is it not? And then spirit, what do you really want? Like what do you want from the soul learning perspective? And those are three, it's kind of lumping three densities into three different buckets, which can be helpful. But there's all the gradient in between. And these little other tangents that might be going on.

AARON: Yeah. It's almost interesting that loneliness is such an epidemic. Because we got so many damn personalities right here. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

AARON: Like, you can talk to all of 'em all day. 

AUBREY: For sure. And at the etheric level, we really can feel how it’s impossible to be lonely. Because we really can't be alone. We're surrounded and enveloped and a part of, not even surrounded. 'cause that implies separation. There's me and there's the thing that surrounded me. It's like we're dispersed amongst the whole field. 

AARON: It just depends on what you're tapped into. So if you're tapped into the more like the topical layer, then all of that is finite and it will disappear. And you have every right to be terrified. But if you're tapped into, you can keep on chunk, chunk, chunk going down, and then eventually it's like, okay, well I'm a continuation of you, so your success is my success and I have compersion for you. Having whatever situation with whoever. And then you could keep on chunking down more and say, well, we're not even separated at all. This is all just one thing. So if you can be in that place, which it would be weird to live in that place because then you're not gonna get anything done. You're not gonna feed yourself. You're just gonna be like, passing spoons of chili to walls. Which is not gonna work. So it's great having that finite individualistic layer to work from. But having the dexterity and the flexibility to span through them like a pendulum. I think that's really the ticket and where people kind of have an aversion to really spiritual people. I think they have every right to, because a lot of the really spiritual people have no ground. And they're just all in the ethereal and floating like everything is God, brother. It's like, you owe me 20 bucks. 

AUBREY: Yeah, totally.

AARON: Like everything's God–

AUBREY: Totally.

AARON: Pay me. 

AUBREY: Totally. I think it's the fundamental reason why there's so many things that are a paradox. Where they could be saying something that's true, but only true in a particular articulation and identification of what you're expressing. And that's often untrue because it's not in totality, taking in the full expression of who we are. And the way I think about who we are, it's like we're a toothpick that's going through the layers of an onion. The center of the onion's source is the godhead. But also when you get out of the onion, you're also in the void, which is also God. It's the same thing. So it's both of the same things. So there's a source on both ends. One being the yin aspect of source. The pregnant void, the quantum realm of possibility. The Dao actually is really describing that void. Darkness within darkness, the eternal realm of possibility, right? These are what the Dao expresses to us. And then there's the Godhead, the Atman, the Brahman, the source that's within all of us. That's also the source. It's the creative element, the Yong aspect of that. And that's kind of a book ending our expression. And then in between we have all of the different layers. There's pure polarity at the second density, and then there's human experience where we are in the third dimension, which is somewhere in between all of those. But these are all just points. And then all of the other places in between that are in the astral and places to explore whatever model you want to use. But ultimately, we're all of it. And there's very few things that you can say that are true for all dimensions. You have to say like, all right, in this expression, and this understanding at this dimension, this is roughly true as closest of an approximation that words can get, this is fairly true, but at this dimension this is also true. And those things may be absolutely paradoxical and they may say exactly the opposite thing. But that's what we need to embrace is the fullness of the paradox of being such a broad spectrum entity.

AARON: And then the only way that any of this conversation has any relevance is if it becomes embodied. 

AUBREY: Because that's where we are. Like that's where we are right now. We're in the body in this desire to escape it. It is missing the point. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: Like the point is to go into this thing?

AARON: What is the anchor? Yeah. 

AUBREY: Go into this thing and figure it out. That's the learning here is how do we use this as a tool to learn from and to experience and to play. 

AARON: Yeah. I'm excessively flirtatious today. 

AUBREY: I like it. 

AARON: There's an Aristotle quote, and it says, what the mind has forgotten, the body has not. And that's like there's endless information. Every person's body. It's literally a chapter book. And you can go all the way through. The way that they hold their brows, the way that their shoulder carriage, the carriage of their spine, or their knees dropping in, or they kind of flex their chest out, and they have this compensation in their lower back. So now they have this hyper lordosis, and so they're taking, this is a story. They feel the need maybe at some level, they feel unstable or insecure or uncomfortable, whatever it is. So then they compensate. They chest out, they pull it all back and now they're adding tension into the system. And then they're placing what they didn't have up here of an open, free heart, you could say. If you wanted to start mixing layers of language, they ended up burying that down into their back where nobody can see it. Now they're in stable waiting for some type of catastrophe to happen, but on the face they look like they have it all together. And it's interesting when you're talking the other day of how you were having this meditation thing, you were saying you were spending a while massaging your face. Like three hours. And so that was an assisted journey. 

AUBREY: Ketamine and cannabis. 

AARON: Yeah. Ketamine and cannabis and what those open the space for is essentially for you to go into a trans state of sorts and drop you out of that prefrontal analytical story part of self and goes deeper in. And allows this deeper held information from the body. The body starts to bubble up onto the surface. And it could look like tremors. It could look like maybe you're yawning a lot. Maybe you cry, maybe you go through a fit of laughing. Maybe suddenly you feel the need to run or shake or whatever it may be. But it's that information from the body that's been there forever and ever. It's suddenly you open up the space for it to come through. And I think the body ultimately is always seeking homeostasis. It's always seeking balance. It's just us as the custodians of the body that either allow that balance to come through or typically through some sensation of fear or story. Keep on pushing it back. 

AUBREY: Yeah. It's such a great way to think about it. And the body wants to seek, it knows the blueprint for your best self. It truly does. It's woven into who we are. It knows what we're capable of. And it wants that. Yeah. It has the intelligence for that. And it knows that, and all of our own psychological stuff and then the choices we make based upon that psychological imprinting that we have, maybe traumas, maybe desires, maybe all of these things create something. And if you really learn to read yourself and you can also read others, but please, try to do it without judgment in this way. But look at me, for example. Like I'm very fit. But if you really look at my posture, my head is moved forward and my shoulders are moved up, which is this kind of like Wanderlei Silva kind of ready to fight at any moment, which is like, okay, I don't feel safe. I don't feel like I'm enough. And so I've formed my body into this kind of pugilistic posture. If you really look at me like, all right, well this is giving the signs of a life lived from a place where you didn't feel safe. And then things that are harder to see because it hasn't changed posturally is this deep tension in my jaw, which is what I was working on, which is just all of this judgment, all of this gritting my teeth, all of this pushing ahead, striving, I'm gonna grip my teeth and I'm gonna make, I'm gonna get this thing done. I'm gonna do this. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: And all of that's just held. And as I work on it, there's just so much release, release, release. But those patterns, it takes time. The body moves slow so it's not like I can be like, oh yeah, I can release my pugilistic posture immediately because I've figured it out. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: And I can release my jaw once and for all, it's like patience, time. The body's like a tree, you gotta give it water and allow it to bend to the new light source that you're providing. 

AARON: Yeah. And there's like a couple different directions that I think you're interested with. One is looking at your bodies as beyond just the epidermis. It's not just like the skin bag. That's the end of the body. I've reached my kneecap. This is my body. Nothing else but like your home is also a continuation of that. Like you could conquer some shit with this house. And you go into your work and you go into the layers of relationships and you go into your karmic imprint on the planet knocking the microphone over, getting too excited about your stratus. So the body's everywhere. And so for some people maybe it's like, well, I don't really have the money to pay a couple hundred bucks to have a massage therapist come and work on my jaw. But what I can do is maybe I can start sorting out the feng shui of my house. I get to move that couch over there, take down that dark, weird painting of some satanic warlord–

AUBREY: Satanic warlord

AARON: Take that satanic warlord painting off from over my bed. I'm not related to anyone, particularly. And like, oh. All of a sudden like, wow. That's like a little bit deeper exhalation. Interesting. Like, I walk into my house and I feel like I step a little. My shoulders kind of relaxed a little bit. My jaw relaxed a little bit. It's like, cool, let's ride that. And then you could say, okay, now take yourself outside. Put yourself into some sunlight. Maybe take your shoes off every now and again, maybe hang from a tree branch, open your shoulders up and get into all that Amy Cuddy, Harvard Superwoman stuff where you're open your chest and your shoulders and this is really contentious. Highly debate–

AUBREY: Superhero pose. 

AARON: Yeah. But it's hers. She's going back and forth with it. But that being in an upright position, essentially the thesis changes you at not just a structural level, but also hormonal level. So, it increases testosterone levels and decreases stress hormones, cortisol and such.

AUBREY: How is that contentious? I mean, there's been studies. I've read studies on people who've gotten Botox that has influenced their ability to express a smile–

AARON: And also have compassion less be able to feel other people's emotions. 

AUBREY: Yeah. They're less happy. There's a million ways that you can show the correlation between what the body is doing and capable of doing. Testosterone increases that measure in different poses and seems not that contentious. 

AARON: Always gonna be contention and it's how easily, how easily duplicable it was, was the thing. And I think upon trying it in other scenarios, it wasn't that easy. But then she came back. There's a whole history of it back and forth of her being like, no, it is. And then back. But the Botox thing, same thing. There's contention around that. But the general story of it, with anything, it's like everything. It's like there's a kernel of truth there. And a lot of it's not completely accurate. And it's based off of the bias of the experimenters and the researchers that are trying to create this idea. So there's always gonna be bias that influences everything, but the kernel of truth within that is our bodies. Anytime you have a question about a thing or some research paper or study that's like, oh, I'm not sure about that, just test it with yourself. That's all that matters. And ultimately this is with subjects of 25 to 200 or whatever subjects doing a thing. None of which are you. 

AUBREY: And none of which are gonna have, it depends on your mindset. And that's the one thing, these studies are always trying to zero out the placebo effect. But we've unequivocally proven that the placebo effect is a thing, and this is the fountain head of all of Joe Dispenza's work is recognizing like, all right, let's not try and take this outta the equation. What if we make this the equation and just recognize how much the thought process influences that. And like you said, no matter if someone follows the right scientific protocol, like if the protocol in a study was to tell somebody you can't do it wrong and then measure it. Okay, well if somebody's saying those exact same words through scientific protocol, expressing it as I was able to express it today. Or if somebody who didn't believe that whatsoever was saying the exact same words, it's a completely different study. But it's not measurable because you're not able to measure the donation, the vibration, or the actual source point of that emanation that's coming through. So that's where I think some of these things run into trouble, especially as you start to study things that are so highly influenced by the level of consciousness in that transmission that was coming through. I mean, it is hypothetically possible that if everybody was hooked up to all of the right equipment and maybe even equipment that we don't even have yet, heart rate variabilities and EEGs and EKGs and all of these different things. And we could zero in what the materialist reductionist states that someone is in the brainwave. Are they in beta? Are they in alpha? Are they in theta when they say it? It is hypothetically possible. We could get closer, but nobody's doing that. And so–

AARON: It's still reductive. 

AUBREY: Yeah, that's not the point. The point is that this very same thing with the same words can be a drastically different outcome depending on the expression that it came through. 

AARON: Yeah. But the reason I was bringing all that up is I think that it's pretty cool, the level of control that we actually do. Like, there are certain, some to some degree objective truths in the body. And one of which is pretty consistent across the board. If you win a race, everyone wins a race pretty much the same way, the shoulders come back, they kind of expose their vitals and a smile comes, their face goes like their, their, for some reason why their lips go up and to the sides. Like, why is that so consistent? 

AUBREY: How do you know that if you ever won a race? 'cause whenever I raced you–

AARON: I have a video actually

AUBREY: I haven't seen–

AARON: Last night, I was sent a video from an undisclosed person of a race between you who was a female. Apparently, the story that I got from Aubrey was that he was the victor. And I actually have video evidence of Aubrey losing a race in his own gym from a girl, which I think is a great, athletic girl. Strong, powerful girl.

AUBREY: I do remember that. 

AARON: You got video evidence 

AUBREY: I mean, I didn’t get lost in all the races but I definitely did lose that one. That's hilarious. 

AARON: In my bucket, literally.

AUBREY: However, back to my former point, something you haven't experienced, but I'm glad that there's people in the world–

AARON: That's reasonable.

AUBREY: That has experienced such a thing as winning that race, and you can see through your own compassionate lens what that must be like. 

AARON: So in continuation. The body is, this analogy popped up recently. It was like you're playing with one of those windup piano things, you wind it up. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Like a little music box.

AARON: Plays like Beethoven or whatever, your nervous system, our nervous systems are kind of set up in a similar way where when you pull in certain chords, say you pull in your SCM, the big ropey muscle in the front of your neck, or your master the muscle to clench your jaw, or diaphragm or any of the parts. When you pull in those muscles, it has almost like a state frequency effect. There's like a ping boom, like you're playing music with your body that changes or translates to your mental emotional state, your hormonal function, your endocrinology, like literally you contort the body. You pull in these cords, it sends a signal into your physiology to feel this way. And so every person gets terrified the same way. Every person gets happy and elated the same way. They get proud the same way, they win a race the same way, they lose a race the same way. And so all of those positions have been anchored into your physiology for however long humanity has been as being indicative of those states. So you can go in and start to maybe do some self massage in your jaw or maybe hang from a tree branch and open up your shoulders or maybe go to a laughing yoga class and you “ha ha ha ha ha.” And you're opening up your face and you're doing this long exhalation, which tunes your nervous system into more of that parasympathetic state. And so you have all these toggles, like you're just covered in toggles, but most of us never got an education on how to start to pull in any of them. Our education predominantly, just dragging a bag of toggles just not using any of 'em. And our mind is just to focus on, typically some type of conquest of some sort or survival.

AUBREY: Yeah. It's the absence of the human operating manual. Which is, I think something great that you put out in your book in particular. I did it in my own way about how to operate through the day, but it wasn't solely focused on the human operating manual for how all of the musculature and structure and everything works in its most optimal way. This is why you call it the align method, right? I mean, it's like trying to get everything aligned and then using all of the mechanics tools to do that, which isn't some pill in a shaky orange bottle. It's like, what can you use in your environment as you're part of the environment? What are the tools that you have? And what are the effects of all of the applications of those in totality. 

AARON: Yeah. Which ones stand out for you? Which toggles are the most effective for you? And I want to also get into coming back to where we were at, that trans state I think is really important. Or like the hypnotic state to start to retune our thoughts and feelings and stories. Because ultimately, I think it really comes back to story. 

AUBREY: Saying trans, like transcendental? 

AARON: Yeah. Like hip 

AUBREY: or trans?

AARON: Trance. Oh, did I say trans? Like transgender. My mind's at a different place. 

AUBREY: But yeah, the trance. It's trance flow. Super fluidity. There's a lot of ways to say it, but that's what I think of a lot of the great dances, like the Sundance and all of these different powerful rituals, even any type of ecstatic dance is trying to get you into the place. Where you're in the state of trance. 

AARON: Yep. 

AUBREY: And there's just amazing liberation that comes. There's so many different ways to get there, but that’s, I think, the most powerful tool for me is when I can get indirect communication from my body and capital I, information that's coming from all different sources, from self, from environment, from my body. Everything is just kind of tuned into the right frequency. And that's one thing I feel is when I go through some of these deep body work sessions, or even when we do a session, I'll come outta that or I'll do a session with Porongui and I'll come outta that and I'll feel like I've had this antenna that was all kind of bent 

AARON: Yep.

AUBREY: Corked up and twisted and kind of getting a staticky reception of like what's on this channel. But then as everything gets kind of tuned in and everything gets. Aligned, then I'm able to actually hear a frequency of something different. The communication from my body is clearer. And the communication from the mystery is also clear. And possibility. Possibility becomes a lot clearer.

AARON: I think that’s what the physical body is, is the physical body is an antenna. I mean, physical body is a lot of things and antenna is a story. But when you come into that point of alignment or balance or integration or any of those words, all of the rebalancing of all of those joints or meridians or energy centers or whichever model allows the mind to come into a more clairvoyant or clear state. But as long as, if you have a TV antenna satellite up on your roof right now you're trying to get the fight. But it's bent and twisted and there's a bunch of bird poop all over it and it's just jacked up. Like you don't take care of your antenna dog. Like how do you expect to see the game? And so you actually have like, I think taking the responsibility, like it's an honor to have a body. It's like a major deal. And most of us, I mean I think this is especially like Americans based off of my experience with other cultures that haven't had it like, as easy seemingly as Americans, which is easy is relative as well. Because we use more anti-anxiety medication, antidepressants and we're obese and like all the things, it's like, what is easy? Perhaps we need obstacles to go over in order to heal. It's the traversing of the obstacle that actually is the healing. So when you remove the obstacle, then you get all claustrophobic and stuck up in your own body. But it's an honor to occupy a body. And it's like this beautiful responsibility. It's like you're a custodian of God in a way. Like you got granted access to take care of God.

AUBREY: Agreed, agreed. 

AARON: And you are God and the cats are God, and these lights are God, it's all God. But like you popped up into this incarnation and you can take it as this beautiful honor and responsibility. That's why a lot of spiritual practices, Vipassana, one of the primary parts of Vipassana meditation is service. So you do your Vipassana and you're served. Like, cool, that's sweet. I got served for 10 days. I just sat and meditated or whatever and they brought me food and if I needed anything they were there to help and emotional support and all that. And then they say, we strongly recommend you come back and serve, not just to do a nice thing like serve for you. And so it's tying both sides of that. But back to the antenna thing, serving the body and your thoughts and every aspect of your life. It's like to perceive that as an honor, and perceive that as an opportunity, I think that that's a beautiful thing. And then you start self parenting a little bit more effectively maybe. And you say, I'm gonna do that meditation thing. Or I'm gonna floss my teeth. It's like, yeah, floss your teeth. That's beautiful. Flossing your teeth is biohacking, man. Like everything that you're doing, like you just thinking, being grateful in a moment that things are a little bit stressful and you intentionally guide yourself to find what you can be grateful for in this moment, or how it's positive or how you can progress forward. Like that's an act of service to yourself. 

AUBREY: The idea of the vipasana where you receive first, and that is the act of becoming fit, but it's becoming fit ultimately for service. And this is where the whole Fit For Service idea came from. It is like to be of service first you become fit for service. So you get your own vessel and your own vehicle in service to you, in service to itself, in service to whatever the divine will might be. That kind of aspect of you that you could call your soul or your consciousness. Which by the way, I've been meaning to go back to this, I think, that's the answer to all of the fatalist deterministic studying of the mind is that the mind may be on a pattern, but when you actually understand consciousness and understand how consciousness interacts with the quantum field, that's I think, where free will and choice comes in. So if you're not accessing your consciousness and you're not accessing what some would call the soul, then you probably don't have a choice. You're probably a program, a series of programs that are running infinitely. But the more you can access the still point of consciousness, the more you can access choice. And so when we're employing all of these different techniques, we have to employ it from that place of consciousness. Even if you just have a glimmer, if you can make a choice to give you access to more consciousness, then you can make a choice to do something even deeper and even deeper. And it becomes a game of momentum as you become more open to that part of you that is not measurable by instruments because it's not bound to the physical realm.

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: And I think that's where it comes from. So as we talk about these things, I definitely want to go deeper into the tools. But just to wrap that thought up, the idea of fit for service, first, it's about getting yourself ready, but then ultimately recognizing the collapse of separation between you and everything else. So you, serving somebody else is serving yourself. You, serving the world, are serving you. You are inexorably connected, at least in some particular articulation of a dimensional reality that you're in, and even in every reality, I mean, we're affected by the heart resonance of another person that's next to us, particularly up to three feet away. Like we're able to read that mirror neurons in an environment that's unhealthy, we will transmit their own sense of dis-ease in the environment. To us, we're just inseparable from the field. So first you get yourself as a vessel that can serve. And then as you serve, of course you serve yourself. 

AARON: Yeah. And with the attuning of your heart, women, they menstruate together the alpha woman or alpha male will be the one that everyone else attunes to. So I assume your heart is consistent with mine right now, Aubrey Marcus? 

AUBREY: I would hope so Aaron. Because honestly, I may be able to beat you in a race, but you're way better at playing than me. So if the real race, which is who's gonna play the most, you fucking win, man. You win every day. And that to me is a sign of health. Like, when I really look at what's healthy, I look at somebody who can play and who can laugh and laugh easy and laugh deep.

AARON: It's like measuring wealth. Like what's your measuring stick of wealth? If we're in more of the analytical, linear, put everything into a tidy box, then it's very convenient to measure wealth from the lens of, this person has more money than that person. And that's like, who is the present? They said GDP measures everything except what actually matters to a culture. Somebody could. But that same thing and that's that kind of explicit mind or prefrontal cortex, like analytical, just organizes the stories. And it's very convenient to line things up like that. But then there's so many other measuring sticks of wealth, 

AUBREY: Yeah. I mean, everybody measures GDP as a sign of your country's wealth. Gross domestic product. How much commerce is produced from your country. But I think it was Daniel Belli who was telling me that maybe it was Bhutan who's started to use a different metric of like gross domestic happiness. And measuring it in different ways. And to do that, it would be like, how many people are obese, sick on anxiety, depression medications, how healthy and happy is our nation. And we're really suffering when it comes to that. But everybody's looking at this one measurement, which is absolutely inconsequential because research has shown that money doesn't equate to happiness anyways. After a certain point, and that point is debated somewhere between 70,000 to 90,000 a year or something like that. So yeah, of course it does matter, at a certain point, if you're fucking starving and really suffering and things are really challenging, that's an incredibly stressful place to be in. And so we have that gift. But I think it's just about instilling the right tools. Like, all right, we got problems A through F covered, but now we're facing problems F through Z. And we need to really start addressing problems F through Z. Because these problems don't stop. And there's a simpler solution to problems. A through F doesn't mean that they're any less easy, and in fact they may be way more difficult. But nonetheless, the prognosis is simple. Oh, you're starving. Eat food. You need shelter, get shelter. That it's kind of a very logical and simple way to look at it to solve problems A through F. It doesn't mean that the world's doing it. And I lament that. I lament the fact that we spent trillions of dollars not solving that when it would cost less than half a billion to solve hunger and solve clean water for the world. And I think our priorities are all fucked up as far as that's concerned. But nonetheless, really acknowledging that there's problems all the way through this infinite alphabet. And just giving people the right tools, the right information, the right transmission to help everybody along the path. 

AARON: Yeah. And then what's the book? Whatever you think. Think the opposite. Paul Arden. Have you ever heard of that one? All you need to do is read the title to get the book. And it's really short read. I highly recommend it. There's lots of pictures. Very creative. It's very nice. And I think that that's so consistent in my experience thus far. Like many of the things that I thought with such great consistency, it's just, it's been that, but the polar opposite of what I was taught. I'm always kind of looking at the other side of things and when it's like something seems really obvious, like in the United States, like we have all the Teslas. Like we're good. We've got every veggie juicing machine and all the doctors and all the naturopaths and they're like, they're all here. We must be amazing. Like we must be biologically like the absolute peak. And then there's this inverse there where it's like, huh, interesting. So there's some compensation happening there. I think it's a similar thing when someone's like, this isn't a hundred percent, but when someone's really muscular or really tough or really wealthy or really, whatever it may be, you can do all of that and just come from a complete place of love and surrender. And contentment and then play the game beautifully. But very often it's coming from a place of compensation. And the thing is, it is in relation to Bhutan and just any country that where their values aren't so heavily based on just materials and consumption. Which I love materials and consumption, so I'm not mad at it. It's just the imbalance of anything where it becomes sickening and problematic. That's it. Like having a piece of cake is awesome. Eating a whole entire cake is less awesome. It's like, don't do that. But the thing that is, I think, interesting with that is the only stories and we romanticize like hunter gatherers and maybe we romanticize living in Bhutan now after this conversation. And that's not always accurate. Our idea and story, the romanticization. Romanticization? How do you say that? 

AUBREY: Romanticization. 

AARON: Oh wow. That's good. That was so in romanticizing it, the story's not completely accurate, but when you go to places, and I think that's the only way to really be able to download that information is actually be with those people that are living that life. Because outside of that, it's just gonna be this, this at least an abstraction, but like a distant abstraction. And then you go to the place and it takes energy to go to the place and you gotta buy a plane ticket and you gotta take time off of work. And it's like a pilgrimage. Like this is a part of spiritual practices forever. And you're on this spiritual journey. If you're an accountant, whoever you are, like you're on a journey. And so taking the time to go and do those things. There's been so many trips that I've been on even with you as well together and lots of other trips where it's like, in the beginning, I didn't really want to, 'cause it took work to do it, but to create change, it takes work to go from zero to one. Like you gotta like, and then upon arriving there, then your biology is able to pick up on the information because it's not just this auditory information based signal that's going into your ear holes. It's something that you could feel in your cock and in your stomach and in your feet. You're like, oh, okay, this is different, but it takes work to get to that point. That's just an interesting thing of arriving in those places. And the palpable feeling difference.

AUBREY: Well, it's knowing with the G versus knowing with the K, and when I say knowing with the G, it comes from the Greek word, gnosis. And it was a sense of knowing something as in, you know what an avocado is? When you take that spoon and spoon out the green stuff and eat the avocado after you've peeled it and taken care of the pit and you know an avocado, then whereas someone describes it to somebody, they may know it with a K. Oh yeah, I know what that is. I can recognize it in a picture. Like when they hold up a little sign for kids and they say, what is this? Cow. All right, yeah, what a cow is, but have you spent time with the cow? Have you smelled cow shit? Have you eaten a nice steak? Have you heard its sounds, and really know what that animal is. Like when you hunt, for example, like I knew what a tenderloin was. And then I went hunting and I was like, oh, the Tenderloin and I cleaned the animal and I quartered it and I was like, oh yeah, it's the tender muscle on the inside of the haunches that don't get used so much. So, ah, that's why it's tender and that's why it's the Tenderloin. Like, oh, now I actually know what this thing is that I'm with a G.

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: To a much greater degree. 

AARON: Then life becomes richer. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And that's the only way. We overvalue the intellectual aspect of knowing with a K, it's almost been idealized, like how you can read books. This idea of the wise librarian who's just got this book full of knowledge or you've gone to this school or Yale or Harvard. But really what I think you or I or so many people now with that intelligence trust is someone who's lived life experiences. Like I get a resume. It's like, all right, I spent six months in this monastery, then I went over to Monte Carlo and was working in the casinos and lived an absolutely hedonistic life. And then I went over here and did this, and then I went here and here I am now. And I'd be like, fuck yeah. That is a hell of a resume. Like where someone's like, I went to this school and I read this thing, but they don't know life. That's not the knowledge that I trust. I'd much rather trust a deeply embodied knowledge.

AARON: And to come into that point of being willing to feel safe and secure enough to explore life, you have to have an anchor point of feeling safe and secure. Or you can find safety and security through your experience. But from the lens of parenting, which obviously I don't have a kid, so this is talking to other people and reading books. If the kid feels safe with their parents, they cry and they get a boo boo, they get poop, whatever it is. Their parents' mom's like, oh, I'm here for you. What's up? I got you. You cry. I got you. The kid's like, okay, cool. I cry. You got me. I'm like, all right. This is a good deal. Like, I feel secure, like maybe I don't need to cry so much 'cause I feel pretty safe. Now I'm willing to go to the neighbor's house 'cause I know I have that anchor point of my home. And then I'm willing to go across the neighborhood and then I'm willing to fly to this country and then I'm willing to go to this monastery. Then I'm willing to start this business. Then I'm willing to jump off the bridge, whatever it is. Because I have that original anchor point of I feel safe and I feel secure. And I think that the safety and security from your parents, it starts off being, very obviously your parents, but then eventually that safety and security could come from some other version of parents. So as an adult, your safety and security isn't your parents anymore. Now you're kind of taking care of them. Perhaps maybe the next parent for many people could be like God. And whatever your story of God is. God could just be a general sensation of unicity. Maybe your God is atheism and you have more of a nihilistic perspective on all things. And like that is the God that you worship is nothingness. And you know that when the lights go out, there's nothing else here. As long as you feel it at peace with that. But having that anchor point of always coming back to something bigger than ourselves, which I think again comes back into that service. The practice of service is actually getting, tying your tendrils your roots into something bigger than yourself. You're taking yourself out, you're taking your energy and you're planting that seed of your energy somewhere else, and then you become bigger and then you feel more safe and secure in the world.

AUBREY: It's interesting 'cause it's a conversation that's uncomfortable to have. Because it seems like we're coming from a place of judgment, but if you look at all of the depictions of the angels in stories and in every piece of art and literature from time immemorial and angels have carried many names, maybe it's the Orishas, whatever your culture has and whatever your culture calls it, there's a sense of total wellbeing in the expression of the body of that being. Like we get it, we get like a healthy psyche is reflected as, as your point says, is reflected through a healthy body. But then because I think we don't want to be judgmental and because we don't want to really accept this truth and sure there's circumstances and shit happens and we all understand that but you look at a lot of our leaders and politicians and they come off very unhealthy. And if you really believe that to serve others, which is what a politician should be doing, is serving the nation. Serving the city. If you're a mayor, serving the state, if you're a governor, prime Minister, or whatever, Monarch or whatever the hell you are, it should be an act of service. That's the highest articulation of any position of power is service. But if you aren't serving yourself, you can pretty much bet that you're gonna have a difficult time truly serving the rest of the world. It's gonna be harder. And so it's interesting to see that, it's just something that we have all of these rationalizations, and sometimes the rationalization might be true. There's no absolutes and universals in this, but looking like, all right, how does the totality of this person express, which is whatever you might think of, let's just use Trump as an example. Some people love him, some people hate him, but I think it's pretty fair to say that there's a lack of health that's being expressed through the totality of his being. And you could look at that and say, all right, well there's probably, maybe he's not the savior in totality. He's obviously very human and he is obviously very struggling with stuff and that's okay. But let's not pretend that, it's all just fine that he hasn't been taking care of himself, but he is really gonna take care of us. I think it's worth at least some skepticism, but again, avoiding judgment and an understanding that there's lots of different factors. And also celebrating the Me Too of being human and the difficulty of being human and the courage it takes to be human and the challenges he has had to face and all the compassion and love. But just recognizing those people who are really here to serve us. Like are they serving themself? And I think it's a good kind of point to really look at. 

AARON: I was thinking about this morning of what a radical adventure just being in the human form is, and how much respect we can all have for each other for being on the trip. Like, yeah, like after, I mean, I'm sure you've experienced this after we've experienced it together, after doing a psilocybin thing or ayahuasca or something of that sort. And afterwards there's this certain level of comradery among the group. Even if there's somebody you didn't really like, that it was kinda like, oh, I wasn't really sure if you both did like a big dose of something, and you're like, oh man, I know what I went through. Like, oh man, you look over at them, you're like, a little nod. In Hawaii, there's a lot more fights. I moved to Hawaii when I was 18. I lived there for like, like four or five years. And so I'm a minority and I really wanted to be Hawaiian. And I got like a lifted truck and I'd always have a surfboard in the back. And I got like a juujitsu sticker with like a Hawaiian little island chain above it, and really trying to be that way. But one of the ways that they almost, I think, hash out their feelings or find respect for each other is through fighting each other. And so there's not as much of this, we're not gonna do a spirit circle in the backyard or bury their wife's menstruation or something and do a full mood ceremony or something like that. They're gonna beat the shit out of each other. And then at the end there's this mutual respect of like, all right, cool, good fight. And I think we could have that with each other. What's that? Who said that? Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle? Is that how that goes? Have you ever heard that one? It's a good expression. And I don't know who said that exactly, but I think that that's an appropriate way to navigate social scenarios or culture or life, is to come from a place of compassion for where the other person is at. Because ultimately it's kind of an insurance policy. Because compassion for another person is compassion for self. And if there's something that we have judgment for another person, say they're unhealthy, or say they're greedy or arrogant or whatever. I think in order for there to be a charge for that sensation with that other person, it's because it's something that we feel or see or know in ourselves. And so coming from that play, and then also knowing when to check somebody and say like, wow, if I was doing what you were doing, like the most kind compassionate thing for you to do would be to check me in whatever the most appropriate way is. 

AUBREY: Sure. Well, and that's something I really treasure about my friendship with you is you have the courage to play that role. You have the courage to say something if you see something that's out of balance. And I think it's so important to have friends like that. Like just have somebody who can just check in and be like, all right, what's going on? What are you really feeling and thinking? And another thing that comes to mind is we have this kind of value hierarchy based on what is the obvious observable expression of self to say what is healthy and what is not. So if someone has a six pack, we're like, ah, yeah, they're doing it right. But are they sleeping? 

AARON: Yep. 

AUBREY: Like how much do they laugh? Like are they depressed? Like, what's going on? Are they in chronic pain or what? Like, what is actually happening? But you can take a bunch of Instagram photos of your six pack and everybody's like, ah, well this dude's got it figured out. But it's such a holistic approach that only you know how healthy you really are. It doesn't matter your body type or shape or whatever else is going on. I mean, of course it is an indicator of something, but true health is something that we have to do as self-diagnostic. 

AARON: And held tension isn't healthy and, and having a six pack all the time. It's fine. It doesn't mean you're unhealthy, but if you look at most of the healthiest people or hunter gatherer societies, again, it's romanticizing hunter gatherers as though, like they're the bee's knees. They're not that six packy jacks. Sometimes they are, but it's not mandatory for you to be this 300 actor specimen in order to be healthy. In fact, it oftentimes is the exact opposite of that in relation to what you're saying. And so when you are, I got this from Dr. Gabor mate, you've done a podcast with 'em. We did a couple podcasts. The last one he brought up something, it was as a young child or even, as a fetus, if you are under a state of stress, then your body will shunt blood into the periphery in order to get outta the room. So the blood goes out from your, and this is like the fight flight reflex. It's like, okay, we gotta get the heck out of the room. Let's get all the blood out here and in the legs. I'm like, but don't worry about your menstrual cycle or digestion or any of that stuff. We need to get the hell out of the room. When you meet that person that perhaps has been running an operating system, that is, I need to get the hell out of this room. I need to constantly be checking and like ready to go. They might look jacked 'cause they're ready to run the fuck out of the room 

AUBREY: Or fight their way out. 

AARON: Or fight their way out. And so that does really well on the cover of a magazine. Again, it comes back into the same thing. It's like the GDP thing. How much money do you have? How much muscles do you have? What's your BMI? But there’s, I think, deep health in ease and ease doesn't always look that impressive. Because it hasn't led a path of compensation to show you that it's impressive. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And that's the thing, like nobody can see someone's digestive distress. Like, 'cause that's one of the things that's deprioritized in this perpetual fight or flight. 

AARON: You can see if you're sensitive. You can see it in people's eyes, you can see in people's tongues, you can see people's skin, you can see people's mannerisms 

AUBREY: If you have some training and a deeper sense of awareness than usual. But you probably can't see that on an airbrushed cover or a filter through an Instagram thing. Hard to see, at least. You'd have to be really super perceptive. Just like someone who's trained in lie detection, like CIA operatives can tell if you're lying or not based on subtle cues. But that requires some training. But I think that's what ends up happening, and again, to use myself as an example, I express a lot of things in health, but then you really go deeper and you start to see signals that, all right, yeah, my digestion's a little questionable to be honest. So too much of my effort has been put out. Fighting, striving, running, figuring shit out, going forward, always in a battle state. And so that's been deprioritized. So that's suffered a little bit, and again, as I said, my forward head posture, all right, well there's some easing, there's some woo way that needs to be brought into my life in a major way. You can probably go all the way into the structure. And I'd like to go into this also a little more like where you're holding tension in the body. Like for me it's particularly my hips. Like my hips are probably the tensest part and the part that's the most inflexible. So like what do you see if we're doing this kind of diagnostic and people are doing a self-diagnostic, I've mentioned a couple of them. We've talked about digestion, we've talked about jaw, we've talked about head posture. What are some other things like let's say your hips or your knees or what parts of your body kind of give you signals of what's going on on a deeper level. 

AARON: Every part. I mean, a really obvious place for people to start looking at would just be the way they breathe. So if your breath, and I think most people listen to this, know by now, but you can actively start to change it. Just by guiding your breath. So if you're breathing up into your shoulders and it's like your neck is pulling your lungs up to get some air that's indicative that your nervous system is in that fight, flight, get the hell outta the room or die trying kind of state. And so just a simple thing that people can start to tinker with would just be bringing your hands into the sides of the ribs, like down low on the floating guys, which is nice to open up the shoulders as well. And just take a few breaths through the nose. So, breathing horizontally, breathing out wide, and then a long exhalation. And do a few more breaths like this. Then as your breathing starts to notice the ease of exhalation. And notice in comparison the ease of inhalation. So if your exhalation is really simple, and it's interesting that it's so quick and easy to change the state of the human organism. Like, it's ridiculous. So even just that little bit of like, oh, well, you just breathe right here. Okay, breathe twice, all of a sudden the whole room changes. But, within that, as far as actually having objective indicators of what's going on, if your exhalation is easy, that's that side of your breathing pattern, the parasympathetic side that's pumping the brakes. And when you inhale, say if you're afraid, you gasp, the deep inhalation through the mouth that's activating more of that gas, that throttle side. Both are good. Gas and throttle are both equally fantastic. And so you can just check in like, is it hard for you to exhale? Is it hard for you to inhale? And depending upon where that feels, where there's greater ease, you can kind of get a little bit of a read of where the baseline of your autonomic nervous system is. Similar thing with the way a person uses their eyes, which we've talked about before and it's in my book, and Andrew Huberman is a great resource for this. If someone's always darting around, I know you were kind of hunting for like musculoskeletal stuff, but this is musculoskeletal stuff. Your brain, your eyes are a continuation of your central nervous system. It's one of the primary toggles to the function of the rest of your physiology. And so when you're meeting a person, it might feel a little like some people will feel some way, some people will feel another way. A lot of that has to do with all of the information you're gathering from their postural patterns. But eyes are big one. Too much eye contact can be too much. Not enough eye contact can be not enough. You're like, is this person–

AUBREY: Why is too much eye contact too much for somebody you think? 

AARON: I think a lot of that is the too much eye contact thing can come from a place of spiritual compensation. The belief that Oh, if I do all the eye contact–

AUBREY: Right. There's a sense of trying that. 

AARON: I'm like this transcendent master. And you're like, no dog. This is obnoxious. Like, look away every now and again. Please.

AUBREY: So what you're saying is it's not necessarily the eye contact itself, it's the source from which the eye contact comes

AARON: And then the dirtiness of the eyes and the focus of the eyes. So if a person, they've already had six cups of coffee that day and they slammed a red Bull and they did some Wim Hof, and they jumped into a cold plunge and they're like, Hey. That person, the way that they're gonna use their vision. Because their vision is just an expression of their autonomic nervous system is gonna be more darty and that penetrative type eye contact can be a little like, Ooh. And so that's just an indication of what's happening at a deeper level. You're feeling all of them, but that's just a very overt indicator. And the other side of that is if a person's really spacey and they come in and they're just like, man, like, wow. Maybe their head kind of goes this bobble thing. Like a lot of girls that we know and it's like, oh my God. Like love, and just like that sensation is great. But from a nervous system perspective, it's great. It's like resting, digesting, healing–

AUBREY: I feel safe. 

AARON: I don't need to focus on anything because I could just take in the panorama of a whole room and I could just ah, just take it all in right as we're going, you're taking it all in. That's great. And that person can sometimes be kinda flaky, and a little bit bendy and a little bit like, it's the balance between the two, but you can read into a person's state based off of the way that they're just looking at you. 

AUBREY: And we also must be very mindful that we are all mimic actors. Like we see somebody do something and see something work for somebody. So let's say you have a spiritual teacher that has a lot of people that are flocking to listen to her speak about something, or him speaking about something and they behave in that certain way. And you're like, oh, behaving in this certain kind of affectation, saying these certain words, if someone asks you how you're doing, the answer is always so good. No matter what, like, that's the fucking answer. Because that gets the best response because that's what, so we're mimicking this, but that's not really it. Or mimicking someone's eye contact because people who are really aware, they give good eye contact, we start playing a role instead of being the thing. And I guess the only difference is that even pretending to breathe well, you're still breathing well, in a certain well, like, so, but all of these are things to be aware of and just check in like, all right, how can I authentically get to that place of bliss? And if I'm in that fucking place of bliss and that's where I wanna be like, great. But don't put on the bliss mask. 

AARON: Yeah. 

AUBREY: Because that's what gets you approval. At that point, 

AARON: I've never heard that, give good eye contact. I like that. That's like new age sexuality. Like, Hey baby, you wanna gimme some eye contact? Yeah. 

AUBREY: What else can you leave people, we're wrapping this up here 'cause I gotta run out, but what are some tips that you can give somebody to use their physiology as a lever to help them achieve some of their desired states?

AARON: Well, we talked about hanging, we talked about breathing, we talked about eye contact. 

AUBREY: Let's talk about hanging more. Why is hanging important? 

AARON: Well, there's a lot of things. So everything's tied into everything else and we can go into other places as well, beyond the hanging as well because there are more. But the shoulder has a tendency of, in the modern world, getting wrapped up in that medial rotation and protraction. So it's pushed forward and kind of sucked in. And what that's televising is for the world around you and yourself is defense protection, guarding. And it can start to get bound in that position, like the structure of the shoulder starts to change shape. You change the shape of the structure of the shoulder. You're changing the relationship with the shoulder girdle, the scapula and the clavicle and the spine and the diaphragm and your heart, and your whole carriage of everything. And then that's tied down into the ileus and your visceral tissue. And all of a sudden it comes into this contracted kind of protective place. And so hanging is just a really simple solution to essentially, you could call it like rewilding the body, going back to that set point of where at one point you absolutely were. Human beings are better brachiators, there are good brachiators as apes. Like, what's the shape, the length of our clavicle, the shape of our hand, like we're built to hang off of stuff. There's this innate like primordial coating there. It's like, okay, this is built to do that. And when you're in a world where you're chronically in this media rotation and you're looking into the phone or the screen and that's shortening your vision, your eyes. That might start to affect your breathing cadence, the depth of your breath. Like it's all tied in. So literally, you could pull on any of the strings, it does not matter. And all of the other strings will follow suit because it's one integrated organism. So hanging is one of those things that's excellent, because it taps really directly into not just the shape and the structure and the function of the shoulder girdle, but it also opens up space in between the ribs, the intercostal space. And so then it is also a decompression for the spine. And so you're decompressing the spine. The spine is your brain. It's the continuation of your central nervous system. And so now we're decompressing that channel. When that channel's open, then the body gets the indication that it's safe to be strong. When you compromise the shape of the spine, like we're doing in these chairs right now for an excessive period of time. And you try to lift something, your body will literally shut down your access to power because it doesn't trust you from that position. And so by opening that space up, it opens information to be able to channel through there. And that's like, what was it? I think Roger Sperry, he was the Nobel Prize winner for the split brain theory, I think is what it was. And he said something like 93% of our energy and nutrition that goes into our brain is actually from the movement of our bodies and the movement of our spine. And if we shut down that channel, we're shutting down our brain like all this stuff is so simple. Like to be a healthy human, it's so simple, but we continually get bombarded by influencers and people selling things and whatnot. And I think selling stuff is great. I sell stuff. You obviously sell stuff and they're additive. They're supportive, they're helpful. They're not the root. You don't sell nature, you don't sell sunlight. You don't sell love and connection and purpose, like you get that right. You don't sell structures. Like all of those are tied back in like, how do you breathe? Okay. We have this tool to help you breathe better, but ultimately you need to breathe you better. 

AUBREY: Yeah. The greatest doctors we have available, and Paul Chek talks about this in his own way, but it's the air, the sunlight, the water, the earth, the movement, the sleep, the sex–

AARON: It's so simple. 

AUBREY: All of these things are just the basic functions. And then, yeah, add some steel maces to that on top of it. 

AARON: That's great.

AUBREY: Add some other supplements, add some different super foods, add whatever you want. And it's all super helpful, and that's there. But the base of everything, which is doing, 85, 90% of the work is just available on any walk to any park.

AARON: Yeah. And so figuring that out before you go get testosterone replacement or something of the sort you're getting, some type of exogenous hormone put in your body. And I'm not mad at testosterone place. I think it's really helpful for some people. But first, and that's just one example, anything, some kind of surgery, whatever it is. Have you exhausted all of the simple free low hanging fruit? Because my guess is if you're a person in Western culture, there's probably a bunch of fat apples that are just right in front of you. You just haven't been trained to see 'em. 

AUBREY: Breath work before benzos. Which is like, it should be a T-shirt, right? It'd be a lot more helpful.

AARON: And exercise before benzos. Like that's the reason that antidepressants–

AUBREY: Exercise before antidepressants, particularly.

AARON: Yeah. And so there's all sorts of research around, comparing exercise and antidepressants. Because they have similar effects on the brain and at least in the sense of releasing brain derived neurotrophic factors. Which is essentially, they call it miracle growth for the brain and it helps to produce neurons. Neurogenesis starts to come as a product of you just feeding your brain and your body the right stuff. And a depressed person will have degeneration and atrophy of the synapses in the hippocampus. And their brain starts to kind of darken and shrivel up. Exercise does the opposite of that. That's what we're trying to replicate with most pharmaceutical drugs. It's like when you go see some Marvel comic movie thing or something like that, or some avatar. Most of that stuff comes from reality. Like you go to Hawaii and you're like, this looks like Avatar. Like, damn, this is real. Most of what we're creating in this human plane comes just from stuff that we've gathered from nature. Really strong rope, webbing, all of that. It's like, oh, spiders.

AUBREY: Yeah, totally. 

AARON: Including mental wellness. 

AUBREY: There is a study that I was looking at that showed on a lot of the antidepressants. They will move you down two points on this depression scale that psychiatrists use. They put it in a scale, just like with trauma, there's a scale with a certain number output that you get based on how you answer certain questions. 

AARON: And it's like the state trait inventory.

AUBREY: Yeah, something like that. And so the antidepressants will move you down two points and there's pretty good evidence and Godsy can get into it pretty deep, pretty good evidence that this is partly because of the active placebo hypothesis and the belief that you're gonna get better and there's a whole different thing. But in any case it's about two points. But gardening will move you down four points and the lower you are, the less depressed you are. So like in this study, looking at it, of course there's not a lot of money behind the gardening industrial complex that's like pushing a bunch of studies out. But from this early indication, it could be up to twice as effective as taking a pill. It's just gardening.

AARON: And sustainable is the big thing. 

AUBREY: And what is gardening? It's, oh, you're out in the sunlight service, you're service to the earth. You're cultivating something. You're watching something grow–

AARON: Purpose. 

AUBREY: You're moving, you're exercising your body as you go through it. It's so many different elements that it's touching, so no wonder it's effective. 

AARON: Then every time you walk past that garden, like I'm grateful to have been a part of building some things. Like I built a cabin at one point. I've never been the boss, I've always been the bitch. But it's still great to be a part of it. We did some various different things. Build a fence at some point. Like you get to step back and you look at that fence and you're like, I built that fence. Like every day you pull up to your house, you come in and you say, there's that fence I built. 

AUBREY: I felt that right after college, I came to live at my parents' house out in Dripping Springs, and they had a little guest cabin that I was staying in. And I built the fire pit that was out there, dug it out, found the rocks, selected the rocks with the tractors out and the land. Built the circle around and built the fire pit, placed the rocks in it. It gave me immense satisfaction. Every single day.

AARON: That's therapy. Psychedelics. I think it's a trip. It's not psychedelics, but like that's a trip. There's all these different substrates of healing or mediums of healing that we have throughout our lives, and we think of the very obvious ones. Okay. Breath work is pretty clear. Talk therapy, psychedelics, like all these things like, okay, pharmaceutical drugs, very clear, but that sensation that you get when you walk past that fire pit and it's this reconfirmation that you're constructive, you're engineering, you're intelligent, you do things. It's like, wow. Whew. That was medicine that fills you up. And then you go into the next scenario and you're like, you walk into the room, there's a bunch of girls and you can build a motherfucking fire pit son. 

AUBREY: I am a fire pit builder. 

AARON: And then that starts to change the way that people perceive you. Because it changes your perception of yourself. Now you're rolling. And those are the parts that's like those innate healing mechanisms that I think oftentimes we end up meandering into through by happenstance, building the fence. It changes the way that you feel and it changes the way people perceive you, et cetera, down the line. Like that's like the butterfly effect of that. They're all over the place. I think that medicine is like in, in Native American, it's like owl medicine and whatever, bear medicine. They're like, what does that mean? And I'm like, oh, okay. It's like everything matters more than we think. Like everything influences more than we think. And if you have that intelligence to just start to pay attention, it's not even intelligence, it's just you pay attention. Like we've talked about David Blaine with that before. He's invested so much time and energy into paying such deep scrupulous attention to sleight of hand tricks and cards. He would resent that tricks. But like the sleight of hand stuff and then getting into introspection into himself and like challenging his body beyond what anyone would think to be possible. He's spent so much time just invested with attention to that, that now he seems magical. 

AUBREY: Yeah. He might be magical.

AARON: He's probably bumped into some magical shit. 

AUBREY: Aaron, my brother, this was a pleasure. Where can people find you for more? 

AARON: Well we're gonna run this back on the Align Podcast. 

AUBREY: Fuck yeah. 

AARON: Is the hope. So hopefully whenever you release this, we'll release that on the same day. So Align podcast is the most likely place. That's Instagram @alignedpodcast, everything's based off of that. And then there's the book Align method. But Align podcast, Instagram podcast, is the place. 

AUBREY: I love you, brother. 

AARON: I love you. Thanks for making time to this. 

AUBREY: I truly treasure this friendship, man. 

AARON: Absolutely. Me too.

AUBREY: And I treasure you guys too. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.