How to Master your Nervous System for Productivity and Joy - Jonny Miller
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This episode is a conversation between me and my friend Johnny Miller.

Now, Johnny is an expert in the nervous system. He teaches a course called Nervous System Mastery, where he's taught over a thousand students how to regulate and take control of the nervous system to enhance their productivity and performance, but also their joy and general enjoyment of life. I'd say that there's actually

an art to the feeling part of feeling good. Joy comes from or emerges on the other side of being willing to welcome and feel the full spectrum of our human experience. He specializes in teaching people how to access and work more skillfully with their emotions, which is something that I am very interested in. Now, Johnny's introduction to these topics is quite interesting and also quite sad. I was engaged to an amazing, actually junior medic, junior doctor. Her name was Sophie. She had bipolar disorder.

And on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life. That journey that followed into and through grief was what unlocked all of this for me. Hey, Johnny, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? It is great to be here. Well, thank you for coming on. I was hoping to talk to you about the nervous system because you're the nervous system guy, at least on Twitter. You've got a course about it. You teach this sort of stuff. And we were talking on this retreat earlier about how

My whole shtick is that to be productive, you want to feel good. You want to find enjoyment and joy in the thing that you're doing, and then you'll be more productive. But your whole shtick is that in order to feel good, you should master the nervous system or something to that effect. What's going on with that? Yeah, totally. So you've been to medical school. You've studied the body physiology. Most people think that we are victims of our nervous system state. Yeah.

We might get triggered in a certain situation or we need to use coffee to stimulate or alcohol to relax.

What I've learned and what I've realized is that there are these physiological levers that we can use to upshift or downshift our state depending on what is appropriate. And learning these allows us to show up in ways which are way more appropriate and we can be way more productive or way more relaxed without needing substances to change how we feel. Okay. So what do you mean by state? So...

The nervous system has very different states. You can be in a flow state, you can be relaxed, you can be overstimulated. And we have what's known as a window of tolerance. So everyone's tolerance is bigger or smaller depending on our capacity to be with intensity.

And one of the things that I teach is by increasing our window of tolerance, we can show up in more stressful situations. We can go for longer and also be able to downshift more effectively afterwards. And these different states are... The important piece is that we have a dynamic nervous system so we can be adaptable to the situation. Okay, so if I need to run away from a tiger, I should be in a sympathetic, like, hyperactive,

heightened state because I need to fight or flight. I need to get all of the blood flow into my muscles rather than in my gut and my brain and just like run away. And that's

that's quite kind of like stressful, but it's a good stress to be in if you want to run away from a tiger. But if I'm trying to, I don't know, relax with my spouse or like chill out on the beach and I'm feeling that heightened sense of anxiety about what if my business crumbles when I'm gone or whatever, that would be inappropriate for that moment. Is that fair to say? That's pretty much spot on, yeah. And there's various ways in which you can, you know, upshift or downshift your state depending on what you want to do. Okay, so upshift is like more towards...

Fight or flight. Downshift is more towards relaxing. Exactly. Broadly. Okay. That seems reasonable. So, yeah. So in this podcast, I was hoping we could kind of dive into the sort of the specific practical things that me and viewers and listeners can do to downshift and upshift our state and stuff. But firstly, like, why does it matter? Like, why should we bother? Why not just go with, like, what's the difference between someone who

has, I guess, mastery over the nervous system to whatever degree you can have mastery over your nervous system versus someone who doesn't, who just sort of goes, who has never heard the word nervous system and has never thought about state or anything, any of that. Yeah, totally. So the frame that I have, I have a framework called rise out of reactivity. And I think this for me is the key of a lot of what I've learned and a lot of what I teach is

And it's this idea that a good life is a life that is lived intentionally. And I think this is something we're very much in agreement on. And what takes us out of intentionality or what kind of on the other end of that spectrum is reactivity.

And there are so many times in life where we might get triggered, we might be overwhelmed, we might be procrastinating. And that kind of takes us towards the reactivity side of the spectrum. And the set of practices that I teach with nervous system mastery and breath work and things bring us back into that intentionality side. So you can think of rise out of reactivity is like a pyramid.

The bottom is R, so RISE, the acronym. R is reactivity. I stands for interception. S stands for self-regulation. And E stands for emotional fluidity. And we can get into what each of those mean. But the basics are...

The first step is you need to be able to be in touch with how you're feeling, which is your interoception. Your interoceptive capacity is what is actually going on in my body? What feedback, what data am I getting from my physiology that I can then pay attention to and make decisions from?

The S, self-regulation, that is basically how do I shift my state using top-down, bottom-up or outside-in strategies to be appropriate. And then the emotional fluidity is how can I welcome the full spectrum of experience, welcome all emotions, kind of like we were doing in breathwork yesterday. How can I just be with whatever's happening without trying to fix it or change it?

Okay. So let's say I am really struggling with procrastination and there is this thing that I have to do. Let's say in my case, it's filling out my tax return or something, something to that effect. I've been procrastinating on it for months. How might I use these rice principles to beat procrastination? Yeah. So, um,

Firstly, the interceptive piece is tuning into what is it that you're actually feeling in your body? So if you think back to when you were filling out your taxes, the story you had was I'm procrastinating. What do you think it was you're actually feeling or what were you not wanting to feel at the moment? Yeah. So I think that was a sense of like, oh, there's a lot of random shit that I'm going to have to email the accountants. I'm going to have to dig up the fricking...

figure out is Ali Abdaal YouTube channel actually owned by the company or owned by myself which requires me to go through my emails from like 2006 all the way through 2017 from Google to find out there's a lot of work. Can't be asked to do this. Let me just do it some other time instead. So in that state it sounds like the state is one of almost like stagnation and maybe lethargy.

And so in that example, I mean, one option would be drink like double espresso caffeine and just like blitz through it. The other option, which is more of like the bottom up option would be something like breath of fire, which we can demonstrate. It's basically rapid exhales through the nose that will create more energy and aliveness in your system, like more arousal energy in the sympathetic branch. And you will have more energy to do the thing. Yeah, taxes is a tricky one because it's like,

Like, no one kind of wants to do it. And you kind of just, like, have to sit down and get it done at some point. Yeah. No, fair enough. Like, my strategy around that is to, you know, I've got an hour on my calendar next week and I'm calling my admin party where I'm going to have some music in the background. I'm going to bring some friends over. We're all going to do it right together. It's a little ways to make it feel good. Yeah. Cool. So that's a really good point. With the...

The self-regulation strategies is basically three approaches to changing your state or three broad categories. The first is top down, which is like cognitive reframes, CBT, like telling yourself a different story. Maybe in the taxes example, it's like actually this doing this is allows me to keep running a business, which allows me to keep doing what I love. So it's actually really important. Yeah, that's like a good like.

Top-down reframe. Outside-in, I love the example of playing music and then inviting around your friends. So inviting around your friends actually has this co-regulation effect. So you feel more chill, more grounded, more safe. There's a greater sense of embodied safety. And music as well. Music is an amazing state shifter.

So I was just offering like, and in addition, there could be a bottom up practice, which is basically using your physiology in some way. The breath is the easiest lever, but it could be moving, could be dancing, could be playing music and kind of shifting your state to create the vibe that you want. Maybe vibe is a better word there. Okay. And so given that procrastination is really when we are trying to avoid some kind of negative emotion by under, by,

By using interception, we sort of check in with our body and figure out like, okay, what is that? What is the emotion that's coming up for me when I'm sitting down to do this task? Then self-regulation and self-regulation is where we can regulate ourselves using these different strategies. Exactly. And then emotional fluidity. What is, what does that come into it? So emotional fluidity is, this is almost like the, yeah, this can take a lifetime to learn. It's also what Joe Hudson, who I know you've spoken to recently, teaches a lot.

There's an example where, that I like to use, where every time you think you have a decision to be made, like a big decision, it's usually an indication that there is a, actually an emotion to feel or emotion that you're avoiding. Otherwise it would just be the next most obvious thing. It would just be like, like we're making choices or I'm making a choice to drink or not drink water. It's just like, obviously we're just doing things. But whenever, often it's fear. Whenever there's some kind of emotion that we don't want to feel, we will,

like get paralyzed there's almost like the kind of like internal tension that you feel and that's usually completely dissipated by like tuning in like oh actually i feel like a little bit afraid because if i make this decision then it's gonna lead to this consequence that i'm afraid of and just welcoming that sensation actually allows that tension to dissipate and the next action becomes obvious oh that's fun yeah that's really good so whenever we are making

Whenever we're making a decision, it's because... Whenever we feel like we need to make a decision... You think it's a big decision. No, you think there's a decision to be made. A big decision or any decision? Could be big or little. If it's a big one, the next most obvious thing might just be, oh, I actually need to do some more research to figure out what... Until the choice becomes obvious. Yeah. So, like, you coming on this podcast and us having this conversation, there was no decision there. It's just like, oh, it's just...

Yeah, it's just the next thing to do, which makes perfect sense. But if someone who was a friend of mine who didn't have something that they were an expert in and was not charismatic on camera was to ask me, hey, Ali, can I come on Deep Dive?

there would be a decision there right of like do i say yes or do i say no great example and the feeling is like oh i don't want to disappoint them but also i don't want to want to be valuable for my audience and also like and there's this thing that i'm not feeling beautiful and i would probably just ignore the whatsapp message and hope hope they go away uh rather than actually like how how would you respond in that situation if someone says hey johnny i want to come on the podcast and you're like oh

I don't think you're the right fit. Yeah, that's a great example. So this has happened to me a handful of times recently. I think the key thing there is not making myself responsible for someone else's emotional reaction or their disappointment in order to stay true to my own sense of integrity.

So in that, in that situation, it would be, I think the, let me feed into that for a moment. The emotion would be a sense of guilt or feeling bad that I, I'm making myself responsible for them, whatever their reaction is. If I say no. Yeah.

As opposed to if I'm like, okay, like they might feel, they might feel that, you know, a sense of lack of self-worth or a sense of rejection. And I am not responsible for the way that they should. So there's a sense of taking ownership over your own emotional experience and not making yourself responsible for someone else's. And as long as I'm able to do it in a, like share that no in a kind of kind loving way, in a way that still creates connection,

I don't think there were, and oftentimes I've done this and there's been a sense of like, oh, I actually appreciate that. I appreciate the way that you said that. And often it's like, it's like, this doesn't feel like it would be a good fit, like right now, but maybe down the line that will change, which feels true in my system. I'm not, I'm not lying. I'm not making anything up. It just doesn't feel like a good fit in this moment, but thank you for your interest. Yeah. This thing around taking ownership of your own

and actions, but not feeling responsible for other people's emotions. This is something I'm struggling with and have done quite a lot because I think I take a lot of, like, I think I take probably an unhealthy amount of responsibility for the emotions of the people around me to an extent. If those people are people I care about, like my mom or like my partner or whatever. And so if I, for example, do something that,

feels authentic to me that I know my mom will be disappointed or angry about because it's no, it doesn't vibe with her values or whatever. Right.

I feel this sense of guilt and or shame that like, oh, I'm being selfish. I'm being a bit of, I'm being a dick to my mom by doing this thing. I don't really have to do the thing. It's not the end of the world if I don't do the thing. So like, why not just do the thing that makes my mom happy? And I get into this kind of weird thing. Any thoughts? Yeah, no, there's a lot there. I mean, firstly, coming back to maybe like your core values and principles, like you strike me as being a very intentional person. So I,

what like one question is how does it feel if you were to do that many many times over the course of you know months and years how would what would be the long-term cumulative effect oh that would be bad on that yeah okay so that's like a that's like a not good outcome oh yeah okay nice and then on on the other side a principle or something that i've learned is that um and this is particularly relevant in you know my partnership i'm married uh not taking like i am not responsible for

triggering or not triggering my partner. And there's a way in which that is actually very freeing. Like there's a way in which if I was to change what feels true for me in order to keep someone else happy that I care about, I'm kind of caretaking them. And the reason that I'm doing that is because I'm avoiding the way that I would feel if I was to say something that let's say upset my wife, but it was true for me.

And in the short term, it might create more disharmony. But in the long term, you're creating like trust and safety and actually genuine connection. Because if your connection is based on an implicit agreement not to say things that trigger each other, then there's a way in which that relationship is superficial. Yeah.

And you're missing out on the deeper levels of connection, which, you know, maybe there's a period where let's say you said something to your, or you did something that made your mom or that your mom reacted to in a way that she was disappointed maybe in the short term. But as long as you were able to share like why this was important to you and maintain like connection with her, my sense is that it would actually like, it would be net positive in the medium term for sure. Yeah.

What do you mean by maintain connection? Like what would that look like, let's say, in an argument with a parent? Okay. So it's actually, it ties in with something we were talking about earlier, which is around like prioritizing the nervous system. So if you're going into a difficult conversation, if both of you are in a place of you're like outside of your window of tolerance that we talked about earlier, if you're triggered, if you're in a reactive state,

there is a very high likelihood that that conversation won't go well. Correct. It's almost guaranteed. It is almost certainly guaranteed. So like a very practical note, and this is relevant for everyone listening is, um,

if, if, if, if both of you are in that state, then hitting pause, walking away, doing something to reset. Maybe it's like walking nature. Maybe it's, um, doing some breath work. Maybe it's listening to a nice relaxing track, whatever it is until you feel like you're back in your body. And this kind of ties back to the interception piece. Like if you're, if you're not aware of how you're feeling in your body, if you're not noticed that your, your system is really activated or maybe shut down. Yeah. And there's actually these, these two modes of reactivity. So, um,

We all tend to move one way or the other generally. One is kind of, and I'd be interested to hear what your take on this is, but one way is like people will go towards anger, frustration, like aggression. And the other is more like collapsing, shutdown, withdrawing, and just becoming like numb. Those are two ways, like two protection strategies. And so firstly, like think which, what is your default reactivity tendency? What does that feel like in the body?

And then from that place, like once you notice the early warning signs, like for me, it might be, oh, I'm noticing this like heat in my chest. I think I'm going to get angry. I'm going to take a moment for myself and just like step away. And then coming back to your question.

meeting in a place where both of you are like grounded and common in your bodies and you can actually have a conversation where that connection is maintained and tracking this is actually a really useful point particularly for podcasts like even right now like track in yourself like is your awareness is your attention is it more on yourself or is it more than me usually like for really empathetic people they might be entirely focused on the other person's experience this might be your you might be totally focused on my experience but

And you could switch that. So now you're like, okay, I'm aware of like, oh, there's like a tightness in my lower back or my throat's a bit dry, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can bring to kind of meet somewhere in the middle. So you're aware of both at the same time. And that,

speaking from that place almost like regardless of what you're saying that creates a sense of connection and speaking from uh like first person experience so like right now i'm noticing like my mouth is a little bit dry but i'm feeling cool and just like speaking from that what you're actually feeling as opposed to projecting stories and things in the head

creates a lot more connection. This is a very long answer and it's an interesting tangent that we're going down, but I think, I feel like this is... Yeah. I like how you sort of, I had a bit of a dopamine hit when you mentioned that there's these two different states because in my mind, I've always equated being triggered with being angry. Okay. And I don't often get angry. And so I...

I guess I sort of told myself, oh, I don't often get triggered. But actually now that you mentioned the second one in terms of like withdrawal and shutting down, um, I have had it mentioned to me in the past that if I'm triggered, it will, it will feel as if I am like a stone statue or something to that, something that I've become really cold and my voice will be very calm. But like the person I'm speaking to will feel as if there's no, there's no warmth, there's no connection using that word connection. Um,

Hmm. Yeah. So I think that's probably my default state. And so if I'm, for example, having an argument with my mum, it is very rare for me to get angry, but it's very common for me to get more into that state where I'm just like, I sort of withdraw from, I don't, I sort of disengage from the conversation. Is that kind of what we're talking about? Yeah, totally. And I'm exactly the same, like for the record. I, my response is,

historically for like 25 years, I was like, oh, I'm just a calm person. I'm not like, I'm stoic. I don't get angry. And it turned out that I did get these like micro frustrations, but I would then kind of push it down, which creates what I call accumulated emotional debt, which over time builds not only resentment towards...

other people and other situations, but it created this like health challenges and just like a lack of aliveness. And this is something that I see in the work that I do, that people who have a, like a healthy relationship to anger, there's also more aliveness, more capacity to set boundaries, more capacity to say no. Like it's actually a really healthy energy when it's not kinked.

And so, and often we learned, I learned when I was younger that anger was bad. I was angry and I hurt people or people were angry and they hurt me. And I was like, okay, anger is bad. Avoid anger at all costs. And even though that wasn't conscious, that's what, that's the story that I believed. And so I went through these, you know, I did hundreds and hundreds of breathwork, breathwork journeys. And at some point along the way, my teacher said to me, you are loved in your anger.

And I just like, I like rage came through and then I just bawled. I just like cried and cried and cried and cried. And there was this like deep grief there for me because I'd, I'd had shame around my anger for my entire life.

And yeah, that was, was a fascinating part of my journey. And so a big part of my journey has been kind of going through these emotions, like anger was one, shame was another, and then learning to not be ashamed of shame itself and just feeling the sensations of shame as these like, like,

like swampy kind of like that, like, oh, like gunky, icky things and be like, oh, that's shame. Like, oh, what does that feel like? And not then having the thing of like, oh, I shouldn't feel shame because shame is bad, but just like allowing everything to come through. Nice. Yeah, this is some of the stuff I was talking about with Joe Hudson yesterday. So I think we'll probably put this episode after that one in the running order. But we were talking about how

You know, I avoid reading any reviews of my book because I don't want to read negative reviews. And there was one time I did a podcast episode with my brother where we were reading comments on this celebrity gossip forum that were about me in like a mean way. And I was sort of like convincing myself that I wasn't really feeling anything, even though it was clear that I was like nearly in tears. And he could be like, bro, like, come on. Why are you insisting that you're the stoic fucking sage who never feels anything? But actually, come on, everyone can see it.

I was like, oh shit. Yeah. Because I think I've also drank the stoicism Kool-Aid with a, you know, the true stoics would probably say that like, no, this is not actually true stoicism. But I, you know, I think I identify quite a lot with the idea that I tend not to experience negative emotions so that when I do,

It's like, I feel the thing and I'm like, oh, well, the story you tell yourself about the thing is blah, blah, blah. You know, I can't control what someone says. And it's like this cacophony of voices from like Tim Ferriss and like William Irvine and Derren Brown and like Ryan Holiday and freaking Seneca are all like in my head. That's like telling me, no, it's all good. It's all good. It's all good. Change the story, change the story, change the story. And then it's like, oh.

That emotion is gone. Yeah. Gone in a bunch of comments. Totally. Totally. So this is a really interesting thing to speak to, which is that there's something known as the self-regulation paradox that I talk about. And

In any moment, let's say, let's say like you're reading a negative review, like in certain situations, it actually would be helpful to be able to self-regulate away the challenging emotion. So I typically teach like breathing practices or awareness practices. It can be bottom up or it could be a reframe and maybe the reframe is like, oh, actually some people are just like angry all the time and it doesn't matter. Like,

Either way, but, and that emotion starts to kind of go back down again in the short term, that can be really helpful because you can then continue doing the podcasting, whatever you're doing without any, any issues. Yeah. Um, however,

Every time that you're self-regulating away and kind of like pushing back down a challenging emotion, that is adding to that pile of emotional debt that I mentioned earlier. Okay. So it's like, and you can imagine most of us have like two, three, four decades of accumulated emotional debt. And this emotional debt in scientific terms is allostatic load. It's basically, um,

chronic wear and tear on the body, which creates fragility in the nervous system. This fragility leads to health conditions, burnout, and like chronic reactivity. So you can probably think of someone who just like, you know, like a hair trigger, they will freak out or they'll, they go from burnout to burnout or they have some kind of chronic health condition. That in my experience is a result of this accumulated emotional debt. And so the

The other path, let's say in that situation is maybe not in the moment, but like later on in the evening, maybe when you're with your partner, you share this thing and you allow yourself to actually like feel the thing that's there. And just kind of like we were doing in breathwork, right? When there were lots of people having different emotional experiences, that emotional debt was being like repaid.

Okay. I'm skeptical about this. So, you know, allostatic load, emotional debt, all of this starting to err into like woo territory. And we didn't learn about any of the stuff in med school. And I like to think of myself as a fairly scientific minded chap. Yes. I guess the first question would be like, you know, in terms of people who you've worked with, can you give a sense of like, well, what are some examples of

emotional debt and how it's manifested in people's lives and what they've done about it just so i can get more of a picture in my head of like what this actually means yeah so um let's see

I mean, so one example comes to mind. I work with startup founders in a coaching capacity. And one of my former founders went through a pretty intense burnout experience while he was working on his startup. Probably not uncommon. And that burnout then led to an eye condition where he almost went blind. What do you mean it led to that condition? It's challenging to point to exactly what it was. But the blindness and the eye condition started there.

directly after the burnout. So in his mind, it was like, this was related. I was so stressed. My body was shutting down and even my eyesight started to go. Okay. And, and, and this is the thing, like we know there's all these correlations between amount of stress you experience and loads of health conditions, even though no one's quite been able to figure out exactly why something about inflammation, something about immune systems, something about something or other, but we know that there's a really strong correlation between this stuff. So there's a study that I can share for the show notes in the list that shows, um, I believe it's

An increase in static load has a 60% increase in energy expenditure in the body, meaning that 60% more energy is being wasted just by kind of keeping this out of static load going. Yeah. It's like walking around with like a big ass backpack on you. Exactly. Yeah. Like a big full of rocks. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So in the case of the startup founder, he both was really afraid of like his own anger. And so like working through that created a lot of aliveness. And then

Once that cycle went through, we then went through a phase where he actually was afraid of going back into the burnout again. And he hadn't allowed himself to feel the hurt and the pain in that burnout himself. He'd just been disassociated the entire time during the burnout. And that's another common thing. And it connects to the numbness that people feel. People just check out of their bodies constantly.

And they lose connection. So by kind of working through and allowing him to like feel the shittiness that was there during that burnout experience, he then stopped being afraid of it and was able to kind of continue working in a healthy way. Sick.

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Okay, so if this happened to be a one-on-one coaching session, where you charge a lot of money for this, I'm sure, but if I were to hire you to help me work through stuff...

Is there anything we can do on air that could demonstrate this for me? Like how might I understand where are my emotional, where's my emotional debt and what can I do about it? Kind of interesting. So what would you say, what is something that you're like challenged by or stuck on slightly? Like what kind of comes to mind?

It can be an area that you don't show up in a way that you would like to show up better. It could be where you get that kind of withdrawn response. Yeah. Okay, so if I'm in my relationship with my mum, if I'm doing something that she disapproves of, then I kind of feel a bit weird. Yeah, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, firstly, I think our parents are the most like a juicy source of triggers. And there's another frame that I want to mention as well, because I think it's important, is that at a certain point when you start to go down this, like, I think of it as like an inner adventure. It's like really...

understanding like how we work and how we operate. And it can be really challenging at times. And parents are often like the kind of boss level version of that adventure. So that's the context. The second thing is a certain point

when you feel that kind of shutdown response trigger in your system, that's actually in some ways it's like a gift because your mum, let's say, is perfectly positioned to kind of elicit that trigger and that way in which you are not free, that way in which you are kind of contracted. So all of that is kind of framing. In terms of how you could approach that situation, it kind of comes back to

that interceptive awareness to be able to notice like ideally in the moment when you start to feel a certain way as opposed to like four hours later like oh I just realized I've been shut down and frozen for all of this time so part of the work is like decreasing that half-life so that you can catch it earlier nice once you catch it yep the second stage is

creating a sense of the best phrase for this is embodied safety, which sounds a bit woo, but it's basically do I like, like how, how safe do I feel in my body and what can I do to maybe more at ease and ease is another way of putting it. So it could be like a relaxing song. It could be sitting on a sofa. It could be just stretching, kind of getting more into your body. And then once you feel, once you feel like you're kind of regulated in your body, then, um,

Lying down, bringing back an image of the specific thing that you said to your mom or that your mom was disapproving of. And like bringing that image to mind and actually tracking in your body what is happening in this moment. So I have a practice in my training called somatic surfing. And it's basically, so somatic means like body physical. So...

We could do this right now. Let's try it. Bring to mind that image of maybe it's your mom's face disapproving of Ali for something that Ali's done. Once you've got that image, drop down into your body and just notice what is happening. What are you tracking right now? What are you sensing? What do you feel? Is there a tightness? Is there a heat? What are you noticing?

Is there anything that feels like it might be connected to that image? Yeah, there's a sort of like pressure type thing over here. Yeah. Like whenever I've done these sorts of exercises, which have been like three times in my life, I've always kind of felt like... But like, I mean, I've just had some water, so maybe I'm just getting on an abdominal extension because I've just had some water kind of thing. But there is a sort of tightness around here-ish. Okay. It's also roughly where the stomach is, so I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And so if you, if you stay with that for a moment, like say, and you can, maybe you can like put it, put a finger on it and just like bring a sense of like, uh, whatever your, um, whatever your sense of like loving presence, let's say like, like say there's a part of you that is just bringing a sense of, of like appreciation for that part. And just notice if anything shifts in your, in your experience. Hmm. I feel like it's gone. Yeah.

It's because the water's probably gone through my system. Yeah. So is this what people are doing? Like I've seen Tony Robbins and other type, this sort of like bring out the emotion and imagine it's in your hand. Now I imagine pouring love into that emotion and all that stuff. And it seems to have like a visible effect on people. And I've always been a bit like,

Is that person a stooge? No, surely not. Surely not. Like, is that kind of what we're getting at? Yeah. So, I mean, in the breathwork circle that we did yesterday is probably a good example where the breathwork technique just creates intensity in the nervous system, which, and it also shifts the state of consciousness, which allows that subconscious material to arise. Yeah.

Okay, that was a lot of weird-sounding stuff. What do you mean by state of consciousness? Okay, so by breathing in this circular way, it creates changes in the blood chemistry. Yeah, so you're hyperventilating, so your CO2 level's got... Go down. Go down, yeah, off-gassing. And sometimes it can be tingling. And this, like the actual scientific mechanism hasn't been shown, but...

from a kind of like and like n of and it probably like 200 this is kind of what happened like I've seen this many many many times in that state

or these incomplete reflexes is probably the most technical way of describing it. So every time an emotion arises, it is a mobilization response in the nervous system. What can happen? What do you mean by mobilization? So it's like when you're running away from a tiger, that's a mobilization response. Your system is mobilizing to do something. Okay, cool.

What happens when we make any of these emotional experiences bad or wrong is that kind of cuts it short. So it's like this mobilization response doesn't get to complete. It is an incomplete reflex, incomplete response. So it's like...

If showing... If I'm... As a kid, I'm feeling anger towards an authority figure and I get told that it is not allowed... I can't express anger towards any authority figure because that would be disrespectful. Yep. Then...

there's an incomplete reflex there totally totally and every time subsequently every time that that thing arises it's then cut off and it's just like like no not now so should on that note should we let kids scream at the teachers and stuff or if they're feeling anger or like what yeah

Yeah. So, I mean, I think the way that Joe Hudson raised his kids is a great example where his daughter, I believe he's told me this story. She comes home and she gets angry as soon as she gets home because that's where she feels safe. It's in the house where that anger is actually welcome. And so Joe and his family create a space where that anger can actually be released. She's mad at her teacher. She's not releasing it.

at the teacher because that would be destructive yeah she's really releasing it in a safe place being able to totally rant and rave about the teacher totally and ideally in a school situation there would be spaces where anger is welcome not at other people not at teachers or at others but just where they can be angry and just be with their anger

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Which I think would incidentally make the world a much better place. Okay. Nice. So it doesn't come out kinks in other situations. Okay. So we've got, we're talking about incomplete reflexes. There's like an emotion that wants to mobilize through the body, like anger or like grief or sadness or shame or whatever. Yep.

In the case of my reading negative reviews, there's an emotion that wants to, and I'm like pushing it down with the stoicism head top-down approach. Yeah. And the art of this is really just getting out of your own way. So maybe a question for you right now would be like, what would be a reason that you wouldn't want to feel or read and feel the associated emotions of the negative reviews?

Because I'm worried they are right. Okay. Okay. And what would that mean? That would mean that... Oh, good question. What would that mean? That would mean that... If they were right. Yeah. If your book was actually shit. Yeah. If my book was actually shit, that means that...

This thing that I've poured loads of time and effort into was actually a waste of time. And I should never have left my stable career in medicine to be a YouTuber and to have the audacity to think that I could do this thing where I share my thoughts and publish them on the internet or in book format and stuff. And therefore, the life path that I'm on doesn't make sense. And something, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Beautiful. I mean, it sounds like there's a bunch of different emotions that could be connected to that or like feeling states that could be connected to that story of like, I'm doing the wrong thing potentially. Yeah. Maybe I made the wrong decision. Maybe that's kind of what it could come down to. Yeah. I made the wrong decision. I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I'm dumb for thinking that this could be a

This is weird. Like, I don't usually have what others describe as negative self-talk. But when... I think as we're working through this, I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, obviously, that's the reason I'm not reading these negative reviews and why I never look on that celeb gossip forum or whatever. Because...

Like if someone tells me that I have a slow typing speed, it's just like, it's just obviously not true. But if someone tells me that like, actually the stuff that I write is really just recycled from other people's stuff and I have no original thoughts of my own. And like, you know, what does a fucking 29 year old have to teach anyone else about productivity? And like, he should have stayed in medicine. I've had many of these thoughts many times. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I mean, I think it's, it's so, it's a really helpful, um, almost like, uh, guide, um,

To see what criticisms of you actually land. Because like the slow typing speed thing, it's just like, you just don't care. It's like, all right, it doesn't matter. But if something actually lands in you, it's like a signpost that there is something in there, like some...

another way to put it is like some part of yourself, if you subscribe to the internal family systems model has been exiled. So it's like, there's like an exiled part there that is wanting like love and attention. You can basically like boil it down to that. And that exiled part will usually have an associated emotion. So if you think of, you know, Ali as like multiple parts, multiple ages, when, um,

someone writes a cutting book review that actually is like articulate and like makes a good point. Yeah. There's that's like hitting a part of you that is then like shit. And, and your, so the invitation there is whether you do the somatic thing or whether you go into your room is just like welcoming that part, whatever it's feeling, if it's feeling shame, if it's feeling helplessness, if it's feeling like all of the shitty stuff that we, we typically spend our lives avoiding, um,

Like the freedom and feeling good is ironically on the other side of feeling those discomfort, like feeling the discomfort. And the secret, like the, the, maybe the joke at the end of this is that the feeling that we think is bad is actually our resistance to feeling it. It's not the feeling itself. It's, it's,

The discomfort is caused by my resistance to not feel anger. And that's what most people think of as anger. Like when anger is actually welcomed and clean, it's like determination. It's like, like, no, it's like clarity.

And so like it takes time to kind of like iron out those kinks that we all learned throughout our British childhoods where we, you know, we both come from an emotionally repressed culture. I think that's a big part of why I got into this work is I was numb from the neck down for the first 27 years of my life. Nice. Same. Great. And it's been an adventure kind of thawing my internal experience in the last seven or eight years. Yeah.

Sick. Okay. How did you get into this? Like, how did you end up being like the guy for this sort of stuff? Yeah. So, I mean, I had a kind of tragic journey and the commonality that I've noticed between people in this world and honestly people kind of carving their own intentional careers is there was some form of crisis that was like the thing that caused them to question everything they were doing.

With our friend Paul, it was Lyme disease. With other friends, it's burnout. With some friends, it's like getting a divorce. For me, I was engaged to an amazing, actually, junior medic, junior doctor. Her name was Sophie. She had bipolar disorder. And on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life. And that happened.

That journey that followed into and through grief was what unlocked all of this for me. Like I didn't even realize that I was someone that didn't feel my emotions in a way. I, I just, you know, I was a happy guy. I was chill. I was, I was calm. I was generally pretty easygoing and something about the both, like having the courageous curiosity to feel into the grief and

as it was arising and allowing the what felt like these like tidal waves of emotion to kind of um it felt like they were like obliterating a part of me and in a way they were because you know i had this like entire five-year vision of what our life was going to be was like mapped out you know we were going to have kids we're going to move to bristol blah blah blah and all of that was just like it was like gone and so that journey kind of

brought me progressively inwards initially meditation then breath work then plant medicine and then like deep nervous system research and science and combining them all into a curriculum that I wish I'd had when I was you know in my teenage years ideally wow well thank you for sharing and I'm sorry you had to go through like I cannot even imagine what that's like to lose someone that you love like that

How did you find out and what were the feelings that were arising in you at the time that you were surprised by? So we were on a holiday in Portugal, climbing, and she went home two days early to start work again. She'd taken time off work. It was her first day back on a Monday morning.

I found out I was shaping a surfboard in Portugal and I had a phone call from her sister's partner, Mungo, who called me up, told me. And I just I collapsed into this giant golden retriever dog that was like right by there and just just sobbed, got on a plane, flew home.

met with her family. And then, you know, really the first like few days and weeks were just like a blur. Like it was too much to possibly take in and comprehend. And it really wasn't until...

her memorial and like the weeks and months afterwards where there was what I what I I'm so glad that I did was basically just like stopped working for that period of time just allowed myself to to feel to process and in those weeks and months afterwards that's when the it kind of comes in waves I don't know if you've experienced grief much and something about meeting specific people or like going back to places that were very meaningful to us just like surfaced up like a fresh new wave

Yeah, and it's... I ended up giving a TEDx talk called The Gift of Grief. And in that, there was a point in which I was... This was maybe a year and a half later. I was kneeling by her memorial bench in the coast of the Oversands in the UK and feeling the intensity of this grief pouring through me. And at a certain point,

if I felt so much like joy and bliss and love. And I was like, I was confused. I was like, but wait, I meant to be feeling sad. I meant to be feeling great. This is meant to be a bad thing. And I was actually experiencing this, like just raw aliveness and sense of like, whoa, like it just felt like an overwhelming amount of love was, was the experience. And yeah,

That kind of, yeah, that moment really opened me up to a lot of what then followed of like trying to understand what the hell was happening from a scientific perspective, from a Eastern mystical perspective, from my own lived experience and trying to, trying to understand what was going on. And I, that was probably like one of the inception moments I would say. Yeah.

So where did, like, how did we go from that to you becoming interested in this, the stuff that is broadly labeled woo? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I studied philosophy at university. I've always been just like very curious about what it means to live a good life. Yeah. Kind of like the big question, the big questions of meaning. Yeah.

I then went down a deep meditation path, did 10-day retreats, spent 10 days in a dark room completely on my own. Why meditation? Meditation, I mean, it was kind of like...

This was in, you know, 2018. It was kind of alive in the zeitgeist to some degree. And the, I guess the books that I was reading were like meditation is the answer. Meditation is like the path to feeling good. What kind of books were they? So this was like, you know, reading Ram Dass, reading Shinzen Young, who is like, has an incredible scientific mind and was able to explain meditation to me in like a very non-Wu mystical way. So very kind of, and that's, you know, I come from a background of like,

And I have been skeptical. And I'd say like my woo threshold has been increasing gradually over the years. But I started out as a like firm atheist materialist, just like very skeptical of everything that I was looking at. And then... So what was this guy's description of meditation that vibed with you? That made you realize, oh, I think there's something here. Yeah. I think it was framing meditation as... This actually is very similar to your book. It's like...

Here are some experiments that you can run for yourself and use your own lived experience. Like be like an interior scientist, right? Run these experiments and see what the effect is. And if it works for you, you know, keep going or do something else. If not, you can ditch it.

There was no, nothing else attached to it. It was like, here's something to try. And then I think the other, the next big unlock for me was, well, psychedelics was a big piece. And then doing a free diving training and experiencing breath work for the first time. Oh, okay. So free diving really connected me to interception, which is this word we were talking about, where you take a huge breath of air, you start diving down underwater, like pulling yourself up,

deeper and deeper down. This was like 35, 40 meters underwater. And as the ocean pressure increases, the tightness and tension in your diaphragm, because your lungs shrink to a third of the normal size of that depth,

And in order to get deeper, you have to tune into your internal experience and just like soften and relax. So like that is the secret. Yes, it's taking a lot of air, but really it's about being able to equalize as the pressure increases as you go deeper and deeper. So the competitive part of me was like, wow, if I can improve my interception and like learn how to surrender into it, I can do really well in freediving. I can go down to like 40, 50 meters.

And my, this is a bit of a long story, but my teacher, a freediving teacher guided me through my first breathwork journey. And during that, I had an experience of like profound bliss, grief, just like intensity. And it was similar to what some people experienced yesterday that I was like, what the hell was that? Like, what the hell just happened? Like, I want to understand what was going on in my body.

And why I felt so incredible afterwards and for the next like three days. Wow. So, so your free diving instructor was, did he call it breathwork or? Yeah, he was trained separately in a, it was biodynamic breathwork was, was his modality. Okay. There's many different approaches. And what's the title of that book that you read that by the guy that?

Shin Zen Yon. Yeah. The Science of Enlightenment, I think, is one of his books. I also really love Ram Dass as well. I've read all of Ram Dass' books. Oh, yeah. You recommended Christopher the Milt to me and I'm still going through it. He's using a lot of words that I still don't quite understand. I'm like, hmm, interesting. Yeah. And his approach, he was a Harvard psychiatrist essentially. And so really speaks both languages in a way that resonates. Okay. So you get into meditation. Oh, you stop reading these books. Yeah.

And they all lead to meditation pretty much. A large number of them anyway. And then you start experimenting with like 10-day retreats and like the darkroom stuff. And then what happens on meditation specifically in your journey here? Yeah, so I actually started moving away from meditation. I think there's a number of traps that are very easy to fall into in the meditation path. There's ways in which...

You can meditate and be in, you know, sometimes blissful states, but in a very disembodied way. So a lot of people, a lot of very intellectual people get into meditation and they will still stay in their heads.

be almost like ignore everything in the body, which is ignoring this emotional debt that we kind of touched on earlier. And so this is why I believe you see meditation masters, you know, people who are like supposedly enlightened will come to the West and there'll be these like big scandals, like they'll have sex with their students or they'll do all this. And it's because there's still this unprocessed emotions that are kind of like the, um,

it's not technically true that the body keeps a score, but the body is the scorecard. I think that's a better way of framing it. Allegedly, it's actually in like the bottom of the brainstem. It's like the cortical map where that stuff is stored. But I do believe that meditation without a kind of somatic emotional component actually creates this like dryness and this lack of aliveness and this lack of

So my approach now is really trying to combine the two where there's obviously a lot of good stuff in meditation, but if it doesn't have this kind of somatic component where you're also exploring from the neck down, there's a way in which you can kind of get stuck there. Okay. So you doubled with the meditation stuff.

you got introduced to breathwork through the freediving instructor and you were like, Oh shit, like what just happened? And I had my first breathwork experience, which you, you and Kelly facilitated yesterday. Yeah. And I also kind of, a, I had the sort of, um, kind of vibration hypocapnic response of like the tetany kind of thing, which was like, Oh, that was new. That was interesting. But also as, um, you know, towards the end of the experience had this, um,

it's going to sound woo, but like profound feeling of like bliss and joy. And that actually everything was perfectly fine as it was, as it was. And, you know, I don't need to strive for money or status or all this shit because actually happiness is found in the present moment and stuff. And I don't know to what extent all of that was just, um, me sort of parroting the stuff that I've read, but I did, I did in, in that moment have a, what I can only describe as a

internal bodily sensation that that was true. I was like, oh, this is interesting because it didn't require any psychedelics. It just required lying on a floor and like breathing, listening to some cool music. And I was like, oh, like I've long struggled to get into my body or connect with my feelings or connect with my body and all that shit. But this experience of like an hour of breath work made me think, oh shit, is this what people are talking about when they say connecting with the body where it's like,

And like being out of the head. And I was like, Oh, this will be out of the head. Me. Okay. That's useful to know. Cause I now know that like, if that's the feeling that we're going for, when people say, get out of your head, go into your body, connect with your emotions, blah, blah, blah. Like, Oh, there's something here. Um,

Did that sort of vibe with your experience of breathwork at all? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's very similar. And I mean, what you just said, it sounds like it was actually very powerful. And there's maybe still a part of you that's questioning the experience and like, was it? How real was it? And that's kind of what happens when the mind comes back online. It then starts to question everything, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just something to be aware of. I say the other thing that's maybe worth mentioning is

I spent a lot of my twenties with this question of like meaning of like, of like, of like why, like what is the, what is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of this? Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the state that you just described, um,

I tried asking that question and the question just felt stupid. It felt irrelevant. It was like, that is a dumb question because the meaning was so inherent in the experience and in the moment and in what I was feeling. And so I think that was another pivotal point for me where

It helped me to kind of soften the very heady left brain intellectual way in which I was like firing through life, which was like, you know, like kind of what is the purpose of this and into a much more experiential of like, how can I create the conditions for these experiences that are drenched in meaning to just arise? And how can I create the conditions for those states of being to just be more common in my everyday life?

I like that you used the phrase drenched in meaning because that was, you know, the phrase spontaneously arised in me. It's like everything is dripping with meaning. When I had an ayahuasca experience a few months ago and also sort of on this breathwork thing, it's like, oh, of course...

everything is meaningful just because it is. There's just like a real knowing with a capital K that that's true. Yeah. And how would your life be different if you were in touch with that sense on a more regular basis? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I have the memory of that sense, but I don't have the feeling of that sense. And if I were, then I would be a lot more relaxed about growing the business. I would...

Probably still want to grow the business because why not? But it would be coming from a place of true why not and joy and stuff rather than currently where it's partly that, but it's also like a sense of should, a sense of scarcity and all that stuff. I would probably be more okay with, I'd really just like eat food more mindfully and just actually appreciate the sensations of food and stuff. I'd probably give myself more time to...

just relax and go for a walk around Hyde Park or Regent's Park or something, rather than thinking the point of the walk is to listen to audiobooks, recite thoughts into VoicePal, an app that I'm building to help create content ideas, to help grow the business and get my 10,000 steps while I'm at it, which is currently how I think about going for a walk in Hyde Park. And occasionally there are moments where I'm like, I'm listening to an audiobook at three times speed while walking in Hyde Park, where I'm like,

I don't want to listen to this audiobook and I'll just sort of like put it away and try to experience the whatever nature and stuff. But post-breathwork in like the sort of 20 minutes afterwards as I was like walking, we're in this nice farm in Northern California at the moment. But as I was walking around, even actually this morning, I had the memory of what was happening post-breathwork. And this morning when I went out to grab my bag and stuff.

Initially, my hand reached into my AirPods and I was like, hmm, no, actually. And I could almost like feel my foot on the ground and looking around and it's like such a nice day and stuff. Yeah.

And I don't normally have that pure feeling of like, oh, it's such a nice day. What a time to be alive. Yeah. I generally have an intellectual, like, oh man, my life is sick. Like, you know, we made it totally GG kind of thing. But this was like a more experiential version of that thing. And as I say all this stuff, I'm thinking like, if me two years ago heard me saying this now, they'd be, they think I'm on drugs and off my rocker and like, you know, what's wrong with you? Yeah. So yeah.

Yeah, I think if I were able to connect with that feeling of like everything is dripping with meaning, everything is fine as it is, there's never any reason to worry. The universe is perfectly designed, blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm.

That would be a nice way to live. Yeah. How do I do that? I mean, it sounds like your book and the conclusions you came to with like feel good productivity was very much like the first stepping stone. I'd say that there's actually an art to the feeling part of feeling good. It's like easy to like feel good based on the checklist of things that you've accomplished, which you've nailed. Like you have ticked a bunch of those boxes in a really impressive way. I feel like the next stage is like actually reimagining

and feeling how good that is and how good it is in each moment, how good it is that we're in a beautiful location with amazing people, with people that we love. And, you know, that's not a journey that, you know, it can take a lifetime. But I think that feels like the, and there's ways that this can be practical in the same way that I think one of your takeaways was this idea of focusing on enjoyment over optimizing certain metrics and how by optimizing

By focusing on enjoyment, the outcomes happen anyway. Yeah. But in a different way and the process gets to be so much more enjoyable. And something that I think about a lot is like, how can I create the conditions for my desired state to arise? So a good example that everyone can relate to is like sleep.

Like you don't do sleep. No one, like if I said to you, like you've got to sleep right now or I'm going to just like shoot you in the head. Like it's really hard to actually do sleep, but you can create the conditions for sleepiness to arise. And I think the same is true with creativity. Same is true of like forms of productivity. Same is true of connection. Yeah.

And so a question that I ask myself a lot is like, how can I create the conditions for maybe enjoyment to arise? And what is, and those conditions are always going to be, there's going to be some internal conditions and there's going to be some external conditions.

And you have, you can be the architect of those and you can shape those and make it increase the surface area for that to hit and get that to land. In your life personally, how do you create the conditions for enjoyment or joy, let's say within your work and within your life? Yeah, it's such a great question. I think the answer changes all the time. And I think it's something great. It's a great one to reflect on, journal on end of every week, end of every quarter,

Um, I think what comes to mind now is location and environment obviously matters a lot. So my wife and I just moved more into the, into the countryside, into nature. We kind of live in a Canyon, um, really prioritizing, uh,

meaningful connection with other people I think has been a big one. So starting a men's group, for example, attending events like this, which aren't easy to get to, but the reward and the sense of connection and enjoyment that comes from that is just so worth it. And I think being really intentional around how I'm designing my days and weeks and what my calendar looks like is actually a key piece. If I try and

bite off too much or scram too much in, it's actually very hard to find enjoyment without some spaciousness.

So I think that's good. It's hard to find enjoyment without spaciousness. Building and really prioritizing some spaciousness. I mean, today's a great example, right? We've just had a really intense three days. The insights per minute that were shared in some of the talks was just insane. And now we have two or three days of spaciousness to let some of that breathe and feel the enjoyment of all of the nourishment that we've just had.

And then maybe a third one is, yeah, I mean, it comes back to coming back into my body and actually like, what does the enjoyment feel like? What is the actual sensation of enjoyment? And like amplifying that. And, you know, that can even be a practice. It can be part of your morning meditation. It can be while you drink to your coffee in the morning after you journal.

So I think it's just something that builds with time. And my experience is that my capacity for enjoyment and joy has actually increased a lot over the last few years. And I love this quote that joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens. And so I think like having that as something that I come back to and just knowing what joy feels like is it's just become more of a default state in my life. Very nice.

What advice would you have for someone who wants to create the conditions for joy, but who has a real job? Yeah. It was difficult for you and I to speak to. My condolences. There's a belief that I feel strongly about. I have conviction in that joy is actually our default state. Joy is when the anxiety, when the rumination, when everything else kind of falls away, joy is just there.

whenever we are resisting some aspect of our experience, it's very hard to feel joy. So my advice would be, um, to what degree can you first intentionally even, you know, orient towards joy is actually a priority, like which for a lot of people that sounds ridiculous because it's like, no, I have these, these things I want to do with my life. Like I have ambition. I want to create. Um, so actually prioritizing joy, um,

And yeah, I mean, it comes back to allowing yourself to feel the emotions. And so one thing that a lot of students come to me with that we work through in the course is struggling with anxiety, which I think is, you know, more rampant than ever in the last two or three years after COVID. And something I learned recently is that the word anxiety, the root or the etymology of that word is to constrict.

And I think when a lot of people, what they experience as anxiety is actually the constriction of a certain emotion. And so by kind of welcoming and relaxing into the feelings and trusting that

you know, it won't last forever. I think a lot of people are scared, you know, if they start crying, they'll be crying for the next like five years. It's like, that's, that's a fear. But when you're with the sensations, the life cycle of these emotions is between 10 to 20 seconds. It's really, it's short. And so I guess like the, the deepest answer that I can give to that question is joy comes from, or emerges on the other side of, of being willing to

and feel the full spectrum of our human experience. Nice. You mentioned men's group. What is a men's group? What is a men's group? Yeah. And why is it good? What is a men's group? A men's group sounds like, it sounds very kind of culty and bro-y. Um,

I started a men's group, gosh, eight or nine years ago. It is a... And I've been part of many at this point, one in Boulder right now. Currently, the way that I've set it up, there's six of us. We meet every two weeks for two hours, 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday. And it's basically a place where...

we can be like seen, heard, celebrated and challenged by four or five other men who there is like mutual love and respect for. So our format, if that would be interesting to share, we have like a check-in round, like how am I doing mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually? And there's then a...

intentions round or we actually call it integrity round where we say am I in or out of integrity with myself am I in or out of integrity with other people that can be the group can also be relationships and we then set commitments or intentions for the next two weeks so I might say I want to get my first YouTube video published in two weeks time I want to have this difficult conversation with my partner I want to blah blah blah and then we go into a

40, 50 minute kind of topics or challenges around. So each of us will say number one to five, how important, I might be like, I'm thinking of moving country. I'd be like a five out of five. Someone else might be one out of five. We then go through

kind of like the mastermind we've just been to. We'll share, this is the challenge I have. I would love reflections. I would love advice. I actually would love to just be seen and witnessed in this emotion that I'm struggling with. And then we just close. And we do that every two weeks for like two hours. And it's one of the most life-changing things that I've done, honestly. Because

It prevents that emotional debt from building up, right? Because often I'll go into one of these men's groups, not even realizing that this stuff, this stuff alive for me. And then when it comes to my turn, I'm like, oh, actually I'm, I'm feeling this thing that I'm really worried about, or I'm feeling really angry or I'm like, I'm really annoyed at this person. And it creates a space where again, kind of like the breathwork essay where there's just this permission and there's like a safety that everything is welcome.

And that's actually pretty rare in most people's lives. So if you can either join an existing one or even design your own, and I can share a playbook that I have for this format, it's game-changing. Yeah, it's a real game-changer. Why is it men's group rather than men's and women's group? Sure. Yeah. I think that for me at least, growing up in the UK, there was a...

um resistance to forming deep male friendships um i don't know if this is true in your experience but i i really struggled to kind of form i guess like intimate and deep friends friendships with with other men and this you know you certainly could do this with with co-ed with with both genders but there's something there's something about it being other men that changes the energy and particularly around the integrity as well like there's it's hard to say but i i

I've really appreciated. And I think also unless there was a deep existing connection between the people, there would be some censoring with what gets shared, particularly in like a relational context if there were women there as well. So I'm all for this format in both and it would work with just women as well. I think it's just a different format and it's what's worked for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because there seems to be, you know, a lot of articles written about this epidemic of loneliness in particular amongst men. Yeah. Like women tend not to be as lonely because, I don't know, for whatever reason, women tend to be more sociable and make friends and stuff. But it seems like men, especially once you get into your 30s and 40s, it's very easy for the only people you know to be your spouse and like the only people you hang out with to be like, I don't know, your couple of friends rather than your solo friends. And I wonder if that

that misses out on something. Yeah, I think it does. I mean, what's your experience with that? Does that feel true? Yeah, not yet. But I am quite mindful of it. Because I think I've had pretty strong male friendships because I went to a boys' school and then at uni most of my friends were dudes just by the way things turned out. And...

beyond uni, a lot of the creators and entrepreneurs that I hang out with also happen to be dudes because I think those, those fields skew male anyway. So it's like, yeah, I feel like I've got a good, a good group of male friends, but now being in a relationship where, you know, if I want to get married and stuff, uh, where it becomes less,

I guess the relationally acceptable to be always on lad's trips and stuff like that. Like I can see a lot of my male friends who've gotten married in particular who then stop hanging out with the boys, especially when kids come in and I'm

And I'm like, okay, that's a default inertia that is basically going to happen unless I do something about it. And so I'm trying to figure out like, so I like the idea of a men's group. Totally. And I think there's something powerful about committing to that group for the long term as well. Like I've, it's been challenging with the amount that we've moved in different locations, but

I would love to be part of a group that's together for like 8, 10, 12 years. And I think that there is something different between like hanging out with the lads and like a kind of like a men's group. Like they might be the same people, but in that space, there's an explicit permission for the deeper vulnerable things to be shared. That in...

a lad's trip you're probably not going to talk about and I think that's where the real juice is it's like explicit permission to say the thing that's scary and to actually ask for support which is really hard for most men because we want to be seen as being strong being independent like I got this yeah but actually we we all need support in different areas right and and asking for that support and and giving that support is often what creates connection which is what everyone is like at

like freaking starved of that's the the nourishment for most people is yeah is creating that connection yeah that's so true um yeah sometimes i will uh i'm you know i'll hang out with a lot of creator entrepreneur type people and one thing that i notice is some have a significantly higher um ability to be vulnerable than others and

And those are the people that I want to hang out with more. Because if someone, if I kind of get the sense that someone's fronting or like, you know, they might say to me that like, hey, the YouTube channel sucks and they're failing at it. But then when another bunch of, another few creators arrive at the table, it's suddenly like they're like trying to impress people by pretending to have their shit together when really they don't. I'm always like, bruh. Like,

You don't realize that actually you opening up about how much imposter syndrome feeling or how much imposter syndrome you're feeling about how much you hate your analytics or about how you're thinking of quitting YouTube is actually what everyone else is thinking as well. And it really connects people. Whereas when you have this front of like, I've got my shit together, no one connects with that. Weirdly. Yeah. It's like this, it's like this armor that creates that like barrier between people. I mean, this weekend's a great example, right? Where Joe opened up with an exercise that was like,

basically eye gazing with a stranger sharing what is most scary for you in that moment. And that, that, and then, you know, the breath work that we did yesterday and the day before, there was a real sense of like, like a vibe shift, right? Before and after of like, after this, it's like, wow. And then the quality of conversation and the things that people shared about what was actually going on below, like the surface level persona stuff that we all like put out to the world. And that's, that's, I think part of what made this, this weekend so magic. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I took some inspiration from you for this men's group thing. And I started a men's mastermind a couple months ago in London, because there's all these mastermind groups and stuff that happen in the US, but there are so few that happen in Europe and the UK, it seems.

And so initially, me and a friend, Chris, who's been on the podcast, we were thinking, oh, we should start our own mastermind. And then as we were making the invitee list, we thought, you know what? Actually, let's make it a men's mastermind. And it's not because we hate women or any of that. It's just because there are so few opportunities to hang out with a group of guys who are all facing similar challenges where a lot of the conversation, you know, half of it was about business and the other half was about life. And I agree, had there been even a single woman in the group,

people would have been a lot less comfortable sharing struggles they're having in their relationship, for example. Because there's always this sense of like, oh, it just feels kind of weird. But that was really effective. So thank you for the inspo. Amazing. I'm stoked that you're doing it. Yeah, I hope it continues. And the playbook that I created, I've designed to be open source. So I would love if...

5,000 men's groups were created as a result of this conversation, this playbook and passing it out there because it's so easy. It's such a low lift. Anyone can do it and it makes such a difference. Nice. We'll put a link in the show notes and video description. Is there an easy URL for this or something or is it like a funky weird URL? It's a Google Doc so it's got a funky weird URL. Cool. We'll put a link in the video description. That's all. That's all good.

What have you personally seen as the differences between yourself? How old are you? 35? 35. 35. So age 35 versus age like 25 in the last 10 years as you've been on this arc of personal development. Obviously, a 25-year-old is quite different from a 35-year-old. But I guess what are some of the key differences that you'd have been surprised by age 25 that you are right now? Yeah. I mean...

Holy shit. Just, I feel like it feels weird to say, but I feel like I'm a, just a different human or different, just a very different personality and type of person than I was eight or nine years ago. I think some of the tangible shifts that I can point to, there's a sense of like, maybe one of the biggest shifts is the sense of like deep trust in myself and a trusting of the

the wisdom or whatever it is that's coming through me if it's an emotion if it's an idea if it's a thought like the trusting that like this is something to pay attention to and that actually I can show up in spaces where whether it's this podcast or whether it's like an unknown group of people that like like like I've got this there's a sense of like like I'm good and and there's a there's so much more

ease in my system I would say like in my my 20s I went down the startup path we raised funding you know we did the whole startup thing went through tech stars and there was this sense of like ambition but it was really me trying to prove myself to other people and being like I am I'm worthy like validate me like we raised all this money etc etc and I

Maybe the most concise way to frame it is that ambition went away for like two or three years, actually during the grief process. But on the other side, it's almost like the fuel source got changed. So like when I was younger, the fuel source was mostly, if I'm honest, oriented towards validation and like having an impact, right? But that having an impact was like me wanting to be seen and look good. And I think now it's shifted much more to...

My baseline is I'm inherently good. Like life is amazing. And I feel excitement to do these creative projects, to teach in the world. Like I love teaching. The work that I'm doing with Nervous System Mastery is just, is like so enlivening and I keep learning from it and it becomes my vehicle for having interesting conversations, for developing new frameworks and techniques and doing things like the breath work that we did, which actually has this like

I feel like I'm deeply of service, I guess. And that, that feels very nourishing to me. And so, yeah, I think the ambition is, is still there. Maybe it's even higher than it used to be, but it's like, what is fueling that ambition is now, is now very different, I'd say. So let's say someone's listening to this and they feel like, yeah, what's fueling them is desire for, I don't know, status or to be seen or to be validated or whatever. Yeah.

Are there any quick routes to getting off that mountain and moving on to the proverbial second mountain where the fuel is service rather than status? Yeah. Yeah, go through a crisis. I mean, I joke, but I used to run an accelerator program called Escape the City. And we would joke that our purpose was to accelerate people into their first quarter life crisis.

And something about that actually really humbles people. So yeah, I'm not saying like create the conditions for a crisis, but like a crisis is definitely something that can drop you in. More broadly, I mean, I think contemplating death is obviously a good one that I know you've spoken about. Like if you think about in the long run, think about your eulogy, think about

how would you want to look back on your life? Like what would make your eight year old self happy and what would make your 80 year old self happy? That's always a good frame of like, where am I coming from? And, and not judging the way that you're like, not judging the fact that part of you wants to be seen and validated, but it,

Maybe the real hack there is like, what is the thing that you want that's beneath that? What's the thing that you want beneath having 50,000 YouTube subscribers or 10 million in revenue? Like what is that a surrogate for? Or like what is the feeling beneath that, that this goal, you think this goal will give you, but you can actually give yourself in a much easier way.

Ooh, that's really nice. What's the feeling beneath the goal? I think the goal would give me, but I could give myself. So I mean, what would be that? Like right now you want your business to make 10 million in revenue each year. What is the feeling that let's say six months from now you hit that, you nailed the goal. How do you feel? The first word that comes to mind is safety. Because I have in my mind the idea that

If we can get the business to a point where not even 10 million, it could be a lot lower than that. But if the revenue generation of the business is not actually tied to me as an individual coming out and sitting in the chair and making YouTube videos and podcasts, that is now a true sense of safety. Whereas the sense of safety I feel right now is a...

it's only the illusion of safety because it's like, well, if I stopped making YouTube videos, the whole thing comes crumbling down. And I've never really sat down and run the numbers on this to see like, okay, how much money do I actually currently have? And even if I did stop making YouTube videos, would it come crumbling down, et cetera, et cetera. Never really sat down to run the maths on that. So the first thing that comes to mind for 10 million is safety. The other, the other thing, and I, I, I, I kind of flip flop between how much of it is safety oriented versus excitement oriented. Um,

It's just that it's just kind of fun. It's like, you know, I play horizon forbidden West on very hard difficulty. And once I beat the game and very hard difficulty, I'll probably switch to new game plus and play an ultra hard because like, why not? It's like beautiful. It's like the same video game, the video game of entrepreneurship, which is really fun. Just played at a higher difficulty level where the stakes are higher.

And as long as I can approach that with more of the, with this sense of joy and like, actually I'm, I'm loving this process. Then 10 million is 10 million is, is, is an arbitrary goal. Great. Let's go for 20. Let's go for a hundred million dollar exit. Just cause why not? It's just kind of fun. Totally. And over time, I think I've shifted more from,

wanting safety and security more towards that excitement and joy from just playing the video game at a higher level. But there's still definitely a part of me that has that desire for safety. If we can make the revenue decorrelated for me, all that kind of stuff. So I guess I'm chasing in a way a sense of safety, but also in a way a sense of

Maybe? Yeah. Both. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I mean, just to reflect that back, like it sounds like you're both, both of the fuel pipes are driving you right now. There is this side in which there's like playing the infinite game just because it's fun, exciting, and you just love doing it. And like, why not go for a hundred million? Like that feels great. And there's also this piece around seeking that sense of,

deep embodied safety, which I'm glad you mentioned that word because it's actually what is often underneath a lot of people's desires to make money is a sense of, I want to feel safe. And what I would offer is that there's actually no amount of money that will make you feel safe internally. There are, I've seen them. There are billionaires out there who don't feel safe in their body. They don't feel like they have enough money. They feel like it could go away tomorrow. It

And that cultivating that internal safety is a, it's an inner game. Like, like that is, that is where the interior work gets done. Part of it is the emotional work.

And frankly, part of it is, this is one of the things that shifted for me actually. I didn't used to feel safe in my body and now I feel deeply grounded. And there is a way in which breathing down into the lower band of your belly where a lot of the parasympathetic fibers are, it creates a sense of embodied safety. There is a way that you can breathe that you will feel safe in the moment.

And this is actually underneath a lot of what I teach, like a lot of the workshops that I do for facilitation, it's about helping people. It's about creating the internal and external conditions for people to feel safe. And you can think of it as like a muscle that can be trained. So I'm glad you mentioned that. And my challenge for you would be how can you increase...

How safe you feel regardless of the income for your business because we could tear apart that goal where like even if your entire business disappeared next week you're a smart dude like you could find a way to make that back pretty quickly and there's another scenario where you could be making 20 million a year and something could happen and it will get taken away.

So really like content, you know, maybe we can talk about this more off camera, but like there are things you can do that can really embody that sense of safety, which most people project onto money. Like money is just like some people project like power, some people it's safety and money becomes this thing. If I get enough of it, I'll feel safe. And that story is bollocks. There is some truth to that. That's that story though. Like,

you know, if you're struggling to pay the bills, then getting more money makes you feel more safe in that sense that you don't have to worry about where rent's coming from. So where's the point where it tips over? Yeah, so actually I don't, you know, like I've met people on the streets of Sri Lanka and on the streets of, like people who have literally almost no money at all, but they feel safe. Like often they have relationships and they have connections and they have community.

But they have materially very, very little money. Now, I'm not saying there is anything at all bad. Money is great. I love making money. But the safety actually isn't correlated. That's controversial. Yeah, because I guess when we were doing the breathwork yesterday, one of the things I felt was a sense of safety. I wouldn't quite have described it as that. But now that I think back to it, we were in this beautiful barn. The sun was shining. There were trees outside. And I was thinking, you know,

If I lost all my money, I just sat in a... I just had like a wooden cabin to live in where I could just write and make videos. Life would be pretty goddamn good. And I was like, huh, I don't need a lot of money for that. And it kind of made me realize that like I had this deep sense that my happiness is actually completely decorrelated from money and status. Like I could lose all my subscribers overnight, lose all the money overnight. And actually like in that moment, I felt very safe in my body. And I guess...

Over time, is that the sort of feeling that you have all the time? I mean, maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time. Yeah, a lot of the time for sure. And at the same time, like playing the infinite game of growing businesses and creating and doing awesome videos, that's amazing too. And that can kind of add to it. But I think the point of like really questioning and like deeply questioning for yourself, like is that connection true is pretty profound or it can be.

Hmm.

One of the things, you know, you work with a lot of startup founder, executive type people. Do people ever worry that if they become all nervous system mastery, they're going to be so Zen to the point that they won't actually have any ambition to do big things in the world or whatever? For sure. I mean, that's a huge, huge concern. I think people are afraid they're going to lose their edge because up until now they have been driven by that like anxiety or fear or need to prove desire to be validated, et cetera. Um,

Some very successful people are, but in those cases, I wouldn't want to swap places with many of them because often it's their relationships, it's their health, it's their internal state, their internal monologue that suffers. Most people can think of public examples where that would be true. I've worked with the CEO and founder of a rocket ship company who kind of went through this journey himself. His name's Ben. I'm sure he wouldn't mind me

naming him. And he, he has become a far better leader of his company through doing a lot of this work. Like he, he, there's something that I believe that like the nervous system of an organization is, is a mirror or is a reflection of the nervous system of a leader. And so as he became more grounded, more centered, made decisions from a clear intentional place was less reactive and,

the business outcomes were fantastic. Another example that comes to mind is Joe Hudson, who you've just had on the podcast, who I would say Joe is one of the most ambitious people that I know, but Joe also isn't being driven by anxiety, fear and scarcity, greed, like any of those things. So there are plenty of examples in both camps and I would rather...

kind of focus on the the enjoyment and the joy and trust that the the other like material external things will come into course which they are for me like i've had an incredible couple of years and it seems to just like it's going in an amazing direction and do you do yoga and how does yoga fit into this world of like stuff that we're talking about interesting so

yoga was the asanas were seen as a means of creating the conditions for meditation to be easy. That is like one of the foundational principles of Hatha yoga. There are certain postures and movements and like

ways that you can do poses which will shift the state of your body so to give an example backbends can be activating they stimulate the sympathetic nervous system forward folds especially if they're held for like two or three minutes they're very relaxing and calming so

If you're looking to, let's say, downshift and relax, doing something like pigeon pose or just like holding onto your feet and maybe even doing some humming at the same time is a great way to downshift at the end of the day. I still practice yoga every two or three days. Part of it's just to feel good in my body and part of it is for that nervous system shift as well. Nice. And so like...

you know, this bucket of like yoga, meditation, breath work, psychedelics, energy. There's like this whole starter kit which becomes, has like a whole spectrum of it where you can go really woo and, you know, there's more like socially acceptable woo and like, you know, something like meditation is not really considered woo anymore. But it was. It would have been 20 years ago. It would have been a while ago. Like,

Is all of this stuff leading to enlightenment or something? Like, where's this all going? Where's it all leading? Because you can imagine a world where, and I'm sure you know people like this, who are so in the weeds of this stuff, going after energy healer this, energy healer that, like doing all the meditation practices. Like, what does it all lead to? What's the point? Yeah, so it's a great question. I think that is up to...

frankly everyone to really decide for themselves there is a way in which um like Bali for example we've both been to Bali Bali is like an an adult woo Disneyland like you can do like breath work cambo like sound healing like all the things and whilst I think there's a time and a place for like experimenting with all of that you can also kind of get stuck on the merry-go-round of just doing doing the things over and over again I think that the key thing is to

It's to actually have that experimental mindset, like, like form some kind of hypothesis of like, if I do breath work four times a month, uh, in this way, like, how do I feel afterwards? Is this something that actually serves my life? Um, yeah.

And keep running those experiments for yourself, tracking how it changes your internal state. And I think the same is true of any of these modalities, whether it's forms of meditation, whether it's entheogens, blood medicine, men's group, breath work. It's really like, what is it that you're looking to feel more of? And is this supportive? Yeah.

And the real like, is it working? It's like, how do you then show up in your life and in your relationships afterwards? I think that is like the most honest measure of is this working? So for me doing hundreds of breathwork journeys in a three or four year period that had dramatic changes on how I showed up in relationship with my now wife and allowed us to get through some of the like really rocky periods early on.

and stay in love and connection and kind of get to the other side and build that trust. So that would be, and I think this especially applies to, you know, plant medicine. Ayahuasca has become very popular these days.

it's very easy to get hooked on, maybe even addicted on chasing those peak experiences because peak experiences feel good. And if when you come back down, nothing has changed, if nothing has literally rewired in your nervous system that hasn't integrated, then you can keep doing that until the day you die and nothing changes. And so it's really important. And that's where the spaciousness comes in, that there is time to actually integrate, reflect on feelings,

feel the changes of this this this thing that you did whether it's a meditation tree or breath work or whatever and be like okay how like do i feel different to last week did anything change

And trust your own experience. Nice. I like that. That's kind of how I approach all personal development and productivity advice as well. Great. Experimental mindset. Great. You know what? Let me try working out every morning for the next month and see how that compares. Cool. Let's try doing it in the afternoons or evenings. Oh, the morning is way better because in the afternoons and evenings, I just don't do it. Okay. Morning it is. Fantastic.

Let me see what it's like, you know, if I were to write my goals out every morning because I heard someone say that's a good idea. Oh, shit, that actually really works for me because it helps me feel more connected and more purposeful in whatever I'm doing. Nice. Let me try the Pomodoro technique. I don't really like 25 minutes. I prefer 50. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And, you know, one thing with our new product, the Productivity Lab, productivitylab.com, one thing that we encourage with our students is, you know, don't take anyone's word as gospel, especially not mine, because...

you know, the law of equal and opposite advice, something that works well for one person, the exact opposite thing will work well for another person. And so what we're really trying to get our students to do to encourage is this experimental mindset with anything related to any advice at all. It's like, try it out. See if it works. If it does, great. If it doesn't, great. That's fine. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. I love that. And the thing that I'd add to that, and this is maybe something that's changed for me is, um,

When I'm looking at the results of my experiment, I am tracking my like my interceptive response as much as I'm tracking Excel as well. So if something let's say I'm thinking about taking a new project, I will be like, does that feel like expansive and exciting and interesting? Or does it feel like there's some kind of contraction like, oh, like maybe not. And even if I don't know why.

I will take that data from my body into consideration. And there's actually four times more neurons going from our body to our brain than from our brain to our body. It's like a super highway going this way and like one lane of traffic going this way. And I think that's a helpful reminder that actually our body is tracking so many more things than we're consciously able to process. So I think that's like, so if you're running an experiment, if you're not actually taking in all of the data coming your way,

then it's a shitty experiment. Damn, that's very good. I'm going to start doing that. Yeah, because I almost never ask that question. I think I subconsciously do it, but not consciously in the sense that I have found that having a team retreat where we all get together once a quarter

is expensive but it's also like really enlivening in like a yeah feeling easy kind of way right right right and even if we can't measure its impact on the bottom line it's like oh well it's enlivening in a nice way so we're gonna do it totally totally there's like one frame of that is like head hot gut like how does it feel in the head how does it feel in the heart how does it feel in the gut and they might have different answers you can journal this down so this nervous system stuff

If someone has gotten to the end of this episode, what are some tangible, practical, actionable things that you or I or anyone else could do to help, I don't know, shift our state towards something that's more productive or more intentional towards the thing we actually want to be doing? Yeah, beautiful. So let's see. Yeah, I have a practice I call, if this, then breathe.

So if, like if this and that, like if blah, blah, blah, it's like this automation thing. If you feel lethargic and sleepy, do espresso breath. If you feel anxious and overwhelmed, do breath of calm. And we can maybe demonstrate the breath of calm now. Yeah, absolutely. As an example. Yeah. Okay, great. So get comfortable in your seat. Kind of actually feel your body, feel your butt on the chair. Yeah.

And we'll begin with a very brief awareness practice. So, and you can do this if you're watching and listening, get comfy in your chair, you can have your eyes open or closed for this, whichever you prefer. And start by just being aware of the space behind you. It's like being aware of, in your case, the rocks behind, noticing that there is even space behind you. Being aware of the space behind you and now awareness of the space below you, feeling gravity pulling you down, feeling your butt on the seat. And finally, above you.

Awareness of the ceiling. Just feeling this like expansion in this like awareness bubble around you. And we'll start off with a couple of sighs. So full breath in and then sigh on the exhale. Nice. One more. Beautiful. All right. So opening up the eyes just to watch the demonstration. So I'm going to do something called alternate nostril breathing.

This is one of the fastest ways of activating the parasympathetic, i.e. relaxation nervous system. It creates measurable changes in blood chemistry. Those changes in the endocrine system then make their way into the nervous system, which then changes the thoughts and feelings that we're having. And that cycle kind of continues. So do this by raising right hand. Your thumb's going to cover your right nostril.

this ring finger is going to cover your left nostril. And we're going to be breathing to a count of inhaling three, holding three, exhaling six. And then swap sides, so I'll guide you through. So covering the right nostril, inhaling three, left, two, three, holding both, two, three, exhaling right, two, three, four, five, six. Inhaling right, two, three,

three, holding both, two, three, exhaling left, two, three, four, five, six. One more round, inhale left, two, three, holding both, two, three, exhale right, two, three, four, five, six. Lowering it down and then we'll finish with two single breath hums.

Inhale all the way, and then hum on the exhale. Last one. And just take a moment to close your eyes and just notice if how you feel internally has changed at all. Maybe there's more spaciousness behind the eyes. Let's see if you notice any difference in your state. Yeah, I actually feel...

I want to use the word light. The word light is an imprecise word, but yeah, light. And yeah, like there's more, more like space around me or something or that like my, my awareness has expanded or something. Yeah. Great.

Yeah, beautiful. And that was like, what, a minute? Yeah, a second. Yeah. And so you can obviously do a few more rounds. You can combine them. You can just do one of, and I can link to some of the practices that people can follow along to if they want to try it. Okay. So where, in what context might I use this? Yeah. Thing. So, I mean, I've used it sometimes like intense social gatherings. I'll do it in the bathroom. I've used it before going on stage for talks or almost always before podcasts when I'm at Zoom at home.

um and then so because it gets you more relaxed yeah it kind of like if if there's a lot of like energy in my system that's like let's say i'm nervous before like an important interview then it helps to like calm and ground the energy and and like you said there's this sense of like expansiveness and lightness that is there so i can think more clearly and not be like yeah because this feeling of like huh when the

is contracted is like it's really hard to think clearly, be productive, feel good. That constriction like is the opposite of what you're going for. So these practices help to feel like, ah, I feel like I feel more useful. I feel good. I feel just like relaxed. Oh, that's great. This super vibes with my whole feel good productivity thing because like...

You know, it's like the evidence shows that when we're experiencing negative emotions, it constricts our attention and everything, which is occasionally useful if you're running from a tiger, but not normally helpful chronically. Exactly. And if we're feeling positive emotions, it expands our awareness and helps us be more creative and think outside the box and feel less stressed and

There's like, they've done studies where there's like measurable differences in people's heart rate, breathing rate, like physiological parameters by virtue of watching a nice film, a feel good movie clip rather than something that makes them feel bad. It's like, oh, so because people have often asked me, it's like, okay, well, how do I actually do that if I have a day job or whatever, if I can't control my calendar? And I've never really had breathing exercises as part of my repertoire.

but I can, I can feel the impact where it's like, Oh, just doing this for a minute actually just makes me feel lighter and a bit more like. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Like I love that. And the feeling good piece is the releasing of the constriction. Yeah. That's kind of what so much of it's like, whatever you can do to get out of that, the constriction and what people think of going back to what we're talking about earlier, negative emotions. That is actually just us constricting against the emotion in that state of like,

I feel relaxed and at ease. It just passes through and it actually feels good. So the feeling bad is the constriction. What enables us to feel good is just opening and like softening in. And these breathing practices, humming, non-sleep deep breaths as well is a really powerful, Huberman talks about it a lot. How does that work? So it's a form of yoga nidra. It's like I have a 14-minute playlist where you lie down, blindfold, and you do a kind of guided body scan.

different parts of the body and a progressive muscle relaxation exercise and in 14 minutes you just feel rejuvenated like recharged re-enlivened and it also builds that interceptive awareness so it's like a good practice for nice working that as well i'll add that to my list of experiments to try out great

Amazing. And we'll put a link in the video description and show notes wherever people are listening to this. Yeah, cool. Nice. Johnny, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Final question is, I am about to turn 30 in a few days. Any advice? Wow. Yeah, I would say my reflection of you, Ali, is someone who has really mastered a lot of things in the outer game, from building businesses to...

a New York Times bestseller to networking with incredible people. The invitation I would give you is what would it look like if you were to master the inner game and like the inner world? And yeah, what experiments can you run that might move you towards feeling good, feeling that sense of deep safety and

95% of the time instead of 5% of the time. Sick. That's a great question. Cool. Thank you. Where can people learn more about you and the work that you do? Yeah. So I run a course twice a year called Nervous System Mastery.

I also have a self-assessment, which is at assessment.nsmastery.com, which is probably the best way of getting a sense for a lot of the stuff we've been talking about and also gauging your own benchmark for what is your interoception levels, what is your self-regulation levels, what is your environment like, and getting like a concrete score with specific protocols that are tailored to the answer. So that's probably the best place that I direct people to is assessment.nsmastery.

nsmastery.com. Nice. Oh, that's fun. I'll try that and we'll put it in the video. If we do a video about this thing. Nice. And on Twitter website, do you like, what's your thing? Yeah. Yeah. So Twitter, I'm Johnny Miller, J-O-N-N-Y-M-1-L-L-E-R. Wish I could get the actual handle, separate conversation.

I also have a podcast called Curious Humans where our conversation might be coming out soon. And I have many conversations about the, I say that the inner game is kind of the theme of the podcast these days. Lovely. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Thank you. This has been so great. Yeah, it's been so fun. All right, that's a wrap. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast.

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