EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,141 words- 0:00 – 3:30
Ido Portal, Movement & Movement Practice
- AHAndrew Huberman
(uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Ido Portal. Ido Portal is somebody who truly defies formal definition. He is, however, credited by many to be the world expert in all things movement. Movement is one of the more fascinating and important aspects of our nervous system. In fact, it was the great Nobel Prize winner Sherrington that said, "Movement is the final common path." And what he was referring to is the fact that so much of our nervous system is dedicated to movement and, in particular, that the human nervous system can generate the greatest variety of forms of movement. We can run, we can jump, we can crawl, we can move at different speeds. Far more variation in movement and different types and speeds of movement than any other animal in the animal kingdom can perform. My interest in bringing Ido Portal onto this podcast stemmed from a discussion about just that, about Sherrington and the enormous range of movements that humans can engage in. Ido is both a practitioner and an intellectual. We all know what a practitioner is. It's somebody who walks the walk, who actually performs the thing that they are knowledgeable about. And indeed, Ido has studied Capoeira, a number of other martial arts, dance, gymnastics, various forms of sport. He's trained top athletes like Conor McGregor, and he has many, many other credits to his name as a practitioner and teacher. However, he is also a true intellectual of movement. I define an intellectual as somebody who can both think about and talk about a subject at multiple levels of granularity. That is, with exquisite detail and with exquisite simplicity depending on their audience and depending on the topic at hand. And as you'll soon hear from my discussion with Ido, he is both a practitioner and a true intellectual of all things movement. Today, through our discussion, you will learn how the nervous system generates movement and the different forms of movement, the different speeds of movement. You're also going to get an incredible insight through Ido's mind and eyes of how movement can serve us in the various contexts of life. Not just in sport, not just in exercise, but in every aspect of our lives from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, how we engage with others, how we engage with ourselves, indeed, how movement even informs relationships of different kinds. I found our discussion to be one of the most enlightening and interesting discussions that I've ever had, not just about movement, but about the nervous system. I can assure you that by the end of this episode, you will not only learn a tremendous amount about movement through the eyes and mind of the one and only Ido Portal, but you also will learn a tremendous amount of neuroscience, about how the cells and circuits and hormones and neurotransmitters of your body assist in creating the various forms of movement that you can generate, that you're trying to learn and generate, and that perhaps you should think about trying to learn and generate. And indeed, you'll learn some protocols and tools for how to do that. In science, we have a phrase, actually it's a title, that's reserved for only the rarest of individuals. We say that somebody is an N-of-one, meaning a sample size of one, and as you'll soon learn, Ido Portal is truly an N-of-one. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is
- 3:30 – 7:49
AG1 (Athletic Greens), ROKA, Helix Sleep
- AHAndrew Huberman
separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also has adaptogens and digestive enzymes. I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012, and so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. In fact, when people ask me what's the one supplement they should take, I always say, "Athletic Greens" because it covers all of those essential nutritional bases and the probiotics, adaptogens, and digestive enzymes are vital for things like the gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome is trillions of little microbacteria that live in your gut and that support your immune system, your endocrine system, and the so-called gut-brain axis, which is important for mood and neurotransmitter production, a huge number of biological systems in your brain and body. Athletic Greens also tastes great. I mix mine with water, and I like a little bit of lemon juice or lime juice in there. As I mentioned, I drink it twice a day, usually once in the morning during the phase of the day in which typically I'm fasting or around breakfast time and then again in the afternoon or even in the evening. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs, which make it very easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, and they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Vitamin D3 and K2 are important for endocrine health, for cardiovascular health, for calcium regulation, and so on. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality and practicality. I've spent a lifetime working on the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges. For instance, when you move from a shady area to a bright area, your eyes have to adapt to that. ROKA understands the various challenges that the visual system has to face, and they've developed sunglasses and eyeglasses with all of that biology in mind. Their glasses were developed by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, and initially, ROKA sunglasses and eyeglasses were for athletes. They designed eyeglasses that then and still now will stay on your face if you get sweaty. You can wear them running. You can wear them cycling, et cetera. They're very lightweight, so lightweight, in fact, that most of the time you don't even remember that they're on your face. But ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses also come in a terrific aesthetic, so you can wear them anywhere. So unlike a lot of so-called performance glasses out there that make people look like cyborgs, you can wear ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses when exercising, to dinner, to work. Again, the aesthetics are really terrific and really adaptable to all those different environments. If you'd like to try ROKA glasses, you can go to ROKA, that's roka.com, and enter the code "Huberman" to get 20% off your first order. Again, that's roka.com, enter the code "Huberman" at checkout. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your sleep needs. I've talked a lot on this podcast, and on other podcasts, and on social media about the essential need for sleep. Put simply, sleep is the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. Just a few nights, or even one night's poor sleep can really hinder your mental health, physical health, and performance in all aspects of life. Helix has customized sleep products, that is, mattresses and pillows that are designed to your sleep needs, and you can figure out what those sleep needs are very easily by going to the Helix website. They have a quiz, it takes just about two minutes, and asks you questions like, "Do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during sleep?" Et cetera. Or maybe you don't even know the answers to those questions, that's fine too, that's an option that you can answer as well. You take the brief two-minute quiz, and then Helix will match you to the ideal mattress and pillow for you. I matched to the so-called Dusk mattress. I started sleeping on that well over a year ago now, and it's the best sleep I've ever had. I'm sleeping much longer and much better through the entire night, and as a consequence, I'm feeling much better, more clear, more physically alert, et cetera, throughout the day. If you're interested in upgrading your mattress, go to helixsleep.com/huberman. You can take that two-minute quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress for you, and you'll get up to $200 off all mattress orders and two free pillows. Again, if you're interested, you go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $200 off and two free pillows. And now for my discussion with Ido Portal. Ido,
- 7:49 – 10:56
What is Movement?
- AHAndrew Huberman
thank you for coming here today. I've been looking forward to sitting down with you to talk for a very long time. I was first exposed to your work from a post or a podcast, I believe, of, you had a group of people walking down handrails, literally the handrails along stairwells, and as a, I don't want to say former skateboarder, once a skateboarder, always a skateboarder, as a skateboarder, uh, handrails have a particular meaning, but I was really struck by, first of all, uh, the incredible range of skill that people had, and yet their willingness to do this, right? I think of handrails and walking on handrails or skateboarding on handrails as a potential hazard, and yet some of the incredible proficiency that some of the people there, including yourself, had. So like many people, I was drawn to your practice and your work initially through a, a wide-eyed, "Wow," you know, they're doing some incredible stuff on natural objects, much as skateboarders or parkour folks do. But over the years we've been in communication, and I've come to realize that you're a true intellectual of the topic of movement, and I define an intellectual as somebody who can understand a topic at multiple levels of granularity. Detailed, general, specific, connections, et cetera. So, to start off, could you share with us your conception of this idea of movement? You know, w- obviously movement involves translation through space, but when you talk about a movement practice, what are you really thinking about? What are you, what are we talking about when we talk about a movement practice?
- IPIdo Portal
(inhales) Uh, it's a big question, uh. I- I somehow left the d- definition, the very tight definition of it, eh, out for myself because I felt it was starting to constrict me and be around me, and I let the practice itself really define it. (inhales) Ehm, but I think, ehm, part of our sense of everything is actually a sense of movement, and then the stillness in the background of that. So for me, this is the entity that I refer to as movement and using that perspective, eh, for self-evolution, development, of course, the physical side, but also movement of emotions, movement of thoughts, ehm, and any other movement streams. Eh, and by switching these layers and examining it from different places, you get a better and better sense of it. Eh, I think the visuals nowadays and media are what defines for people in the beginning things, and then little by little with experience they can dive deeper, which is good. There is some aspects, sexy aspects, eh, or not so sexy aspects and then you pull on it and you start to examine and dive deeper and, eh, then you receive the gift of, eh, finding out more.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I
- 10:56 – 14:47
Movement & the Body-Mind Connection
- AHAndrew Huberman
heard you say once that we are not just a brain with a body, but we are a body with a brain. Which I absolutely love, because as a student and a researcher of the nervous system, I never think about the brain as its own isolated thing. I think about the nervous system and the fact that the brain and the spinal cord are connected to the body, and the body c- is connected to this, uh, to the brain, in every direction it's, everything truly is connected at the physical level, physiological level. Could you just share for a moment how you think about this body-brain relationship in terms of, you know, you mentioned movement of emotions, movement of the body, that you can't really separate the two, and for the typical person who's listening to this they might not immediately understand wha- what that means. Maybe it's something that has to be experienced. But when we think about the body and the brain and the, the whole thing working as one cohesive whole, what, what does that mean to you? Eh, or put simply, when you do a movement practice, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the movement of your limbs? I have to imagine that's true. But are you also focusing on how that makes you feel or how your feelings make you move?
- IPIdo Portal
Okay. Ehm, okay, so some thoughts, ehm. I will try not to answer any of your questions, eh, during this interview, but I will definitely give, give some thoughts and, eh, then we can play with it. (clears throat) Ehm...... I think these definitions, and in general, the limitation of words ends up, eh, creating some kind of a co- corruptive process. The words corrupt us and corrupt our understanding. So, I think the brain body, this Cartesian state of mind and thinking, eh, brought a lot of good, but also brought a lot of problems. And movement for me is the entity that ties everything together. It's the magic, it's the forza anima, it's the, eh, it's when the coin spins and you see both sides appear at the same time. I- it's a beautiful analogy from a, a friend of mine, uh, Dr. Rasmus Holm. And so, the mind and body are o- one of those pairs, and I call it the movement body mind system. So, it's w- when it's integrated, it's in motion. There is also a stillness that appears there, of course. Eh, without it, there can be no motion. But, ehm, maybe that is, eh, a very good way to start to think of things. There is no really pure mental processes, cognitive processes. There is no pure physical processes. Everything touches everything, there is a wholeness, and that wholeness is in motion. Ehm, yeah, the movement practice takes these beats and examine them, and here is a pragmatic, eh, thing, the, the scientist, the cerebral thinking about movement, this is important, the emotional side coloring, feeling the colors and the textures of motion. A lot of people who are involved with a movement practice never end up feeling motions, really focusing on how it makes you feel or how it feels itself, and then the actual movement, the action. So, it's action and motion and thought, and those are three streams of movement, and they interlace together into this, eh, kind of a braided experience, mm, and whole experience, and I try to bring all these aspects into my, my practice and the way that I live my life.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I think most people who embark on a movement
- 14:47 – 18:08
Entry Points to Movement
- AHAndrew Huberman
practice will first want to know which movements to do, right? Squats, planks, uh, push-ups, um, pirouettes, right? (laughs) Uh, pick your movement. I- i- it could be any movement. Are there any sort of just basic entry points that you believe everybody should walk through as they embrace a movement practice the first time, and maybe even every time they do a movement practice? I mean, earlier today, I had the great, uh, privilege of being guided through a, a long series of, of movement practices, and yet the first practice we did involved, at first anyway, stillness not movement. So if, if you would, could you inform us, you know, how people should think about approaching a movement practice, what is the first layer of any good movement practice?
- IPIdo Portal
So, you touch the word movements, and it's important to, for me to separate it from the word Movement with a capital M. Movements are the containers, and movement is the content, and the content cannot be carried in any way without containers. So, the first entry point is to choose containers, and then the second thing to make sure is to put specific content into those containers, and then enjoy them. I tell people that it's like a cup of water, and you're being handed that cup of water, and nowadays, very often, people will start to chew on the cup instead of drinking the water, making it yours, discard the cup. And then maybe later, you want to have bone broth or soup, so you use a different container, a bowl. So, a movement practice to start can start from anywhere. It's a rhizome. It's, it's an open system. It has no center. It's decentralized, and it can be approached from anywhere, and, eh, that's its magic, and that's, that's the benefit of it. Some people, eh, find the body a good entry point. Some people don't even enter from the body, ehm, sometimes you can enter from other perspectives, and then inside the body, for example, where should we enter if we decided to take the body approach? The spine can be a nice decision, but some will choose just the pelvis. A- a- any one of those points are valid, and then playfulness can be an entry point, an attribute or... And this is so open, so I, I don't want to limit, eh, people and limit their minds in the way that they engage with the practice, but I also want to encourage the self-inquiry, "Am I doing movements practice or am I doing a movement practice?"
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, could you help me distinguish the two a little bit further? I think I understand the difference between a, sort of the noun versus the verbs, uh, and in some ways, uh, here we are dealing with the challenge of, you know, the, the barriers that language present to something that's physical, right? I mean, i- indeed, there may not be a... I have to assume there is no perfect verbal language for movement. There are certain movements that defy language. I could say, "Somebody jumped at a particular trajectory, at a particular speed, and moved this limb and that limb," but, eh, by fractionating it, something is most definitely lost.
- 18:08 – 21:19
Early Education in Movement: Awareness, Play & Examination
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, so if someone wanted to, let's say, get in "better touch with their body," in order to explore the infinite space that is movement, uh, how might they begin to approach that? Is it... does it begin with an awareness, with practice, or both?
- IPIdo Portal
It begins with education.... and that's probably the most stable (laughs) point of entry, uh, awareness to some- something as a concept, i- i- that it is a concept, that there is a validity or, because sometimes people look for that, uh, to looking at this entity, this open entity. And, uh, tha- that's part of the reason why answering questions is, um, not something I, uh, can do or even attempt to do. I believe in the power of the non-complete process, like making this, uh, this, uh, table, but leaving something undone, not perfecting the product. Why? Because it offers some kind of a dynamic nature of evolution that naturally unravels from it, uh, a- almost like a... sometimes I do it, uh, I count reps and I only come to nine 'cause it tends to leave people in the count and it keeps going instead of giving them the 10.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Everyone wants to end on 10. (laughs)
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah, which is wh- because of the decimal, uh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
... system, et cetera. So, e- all kinds of, uh, things like that is also important with the movement idea, is to discuss, to examine, to look, to taste, to try, but then also not to try to capture because if you... like the invisible loop of Hofstadter, i- if you look at it too closely, it's gone, but if you look away, it functions and exists just like us, very powerfully, and obviously, uh, gives us the experiences that we have. So, when people enter movement practice, it is about education, bringing some awareness to the fact that they are living in a body, that they are living in motion, that their mind is a type of movement, that their life is a type of movement, uh, bringing attention to the movement o- of the emotions as well, bringing just attention to the fact that things are in motion, uh, the, the, the Heraclitus, uh, panta rhei, all in flux.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
Nothing stops besides something that is the background of it and, and allows it to express, and this is the beauty of things. And this, for me, is the movement practice, is, is this examination and bringing this awareness into things. As we sit now here, I'm also aware of my body, um, e- and I'm also aware of the way that things make me feel, the way that your face is communicating to me, and, uh, and I'm not just i- in some limited, um, and, and very verbal, overly verbal state, because it misses a lot of the beautiful flux.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. I'm going to inject some, um, or project some ideas, and,
- 21:19 – 31:34
Stillness, Movement & the Environment, Playfulness
- AHAndrew Huberman
um, perhaps you would tell me if they're ridiculous, um, potentially useful or useful. Um, as I understand what we're talking about now and what we've discussed earlier is that movement, uh, can and should be incorporated into one's entire life. I even heard you say that even before getting out of bed in the morning, one can experience movement, and it doesn't necessarily have to be of the intimate kind with somebody else, it's... it can be paying attention to the rhythm of one's breath or how you get out of the bed, or, um... Actually, in anticipation of you arriving here today, I noticed that as I was going up and down the stairs in this, in this house, um, that I was injecting a little bit of playfulness in the way that I might have many, many decades ago, but haven't for a very long time, and I asked myself whether or not that's what Ido is referring to when he talks about m- threading this, uh, body awareness throughout the day, as opposed to, but of course, not exclusive from just saying, "I have 45 minutes, I'm going to do movement practice before I shower and have some dinner," right? I have to imagine both are helpful, but in terms of moving through the day and having bodily awareness, clearly there are an infinite number of ways one could do that. If you could just share a few. You mentioned, um, I mean, one could pay attention to their breath, could pay attention to posture, and this notion of play is a very attractive, or as we say in science, it's a sticky concept, a concept that kind of draws one in. Maybe if you would, uh, could you share with us just some ideas to get people thinking about, or maybe even, uh, incorporating movement practice into their day and maybe even, uh, touch on the, the potential role of play or playfulness.
- IPIdo Portal
Okay. Um, yeah, those, uh, th- those are some good directions. I think one thing is this, what you call wordlessness, uh, I, I have, have been recommending to people non-verbal experiences and the awareness of the body, which is not really the awareness of the body, as you know, not purely or not fully. The awareness of motion is a very good way to start to, to bring awareness to that layer, and that layer will start to get clarified more and more and more the more you practice, and then it will enable for most people a safe haven away from many states and difficulties, and will unlock a lot of potential, uh, attributes and strengths and, uh, freshness, and a lot of beautiful things. Really, uh, one of the pretty perspectives about who we are comes, uh, from, uh, a person who influenced my thinking a lot, Moshe Feldenkrais, the late Moshe Feldenkrais, and he talks about the body as the core three elements, the core nervous system, two is the mechanical system of muscle, skeleton, et cetera, and the third is the environment, which is a unique way to look at it. And he talks about how the nervous system is both get, receiving information from the outside and from the inside, and in the first years of life, you work a lot on differentiating those, what am I, what is me and what is not me? And I think-... movement, when you feel movement, you feel the movement of the outside that is, of course, arriving to you and receiving this, and also your own internal movement, and the same can be said for stillness. So, bringing the attention into those layers, it's a tricky thing. It's one of those elusive things to look at, but it's definitely of huge benefit to start to train it, start to practice it. To feel not our thoughts, not necessarily our body, but to start to recognize the dynamic nature, the flux, the motion, and it occurs in all these layers. So, you can, you can, you will need to find it in multiple locations before you start to more and more m- make it your own, make it really yours. Eh, how? Eh, for example, eh, simple pragmatic things. I used to do this, eh, I spent some time in Hong Kong, eh, with the... need to get my practice in, but, mm, I'm, I'm really turned off from commercial gyms and th- there is not a lot of nature accessible there. So, I would just strap on my bag and I would walk the streets of Hong Kong, which are very crowded, and then I would try to avoid touching anyone. And it would be, like, two hours of, of just, like, moving, involved, fully involved, fully in my body and experiencing beautiful things and enjoying and developing myself as well in all kinds of scenarios, up and down and, eh, in the escalators and off. So, this is an example of a, uh, uh, a way to, to practice, and then the way that we're sitting, like, these chairs, for example, our chairs are not very dynamic, but there is rocking chairs, right? And this is something I recommend for a lot of kids. Eh, like, in schools, I used to rock on the chair, which is very common. which one-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, I used to have my skateboard underneath my chair and roll it back and forth, and the teacher would tell me to stop, and I would just slowly, l- little by little, trying to get the most subtle movement I could without e- them telling me they were going to take it away, or try.
- IPIdo Portal
Which is, which is probably horrible, horrible advice and instruction, eh, just like, "Sit up straight," and, "Chew with your mouth closed," because they remove a lot of the self-education and a lot of the self-development and the practicum and discoveries that are necessary, and even will damage focus and thinking processes in so- some ways. Um, so I w- I, for example, I would make the chairs even more mobile, and, eh, I would support more motion, and then I, I would be able to bring attention there, but I would also be able to bring attention away from it into other things, and it keeps refreshing me so I don't become stale, the water doesn't stand. This is the beauty of, of movement, so you can focus for long periods of time and do incredible things with the mind, with focus, with awareness, attention, um, and it's l- with skin in the game. So, I'm not talking as some meditator and he's describing the act of being very focused, but then I put a stick on the edge of his fingers and I tell him, "Balance it." He, everyone can do it for 10 seconds, and I tell him, "Okay, now hold it 10 minutes." And you see that the skill has... he has no skin in the game. It wasn't developed in various scenarios, but so there is a delusion that start to develop.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
Um, and, and that's, that's how m- movement keeps me very honest and humble i- in the way that I view humility and, and, eh, in a way that protects me, e- e- and, and keeps me... yeah, it keeps me fresh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. I, I love the example of moving through the crowded street with a backpack because of the way in which it's completely adaptive to the situation you happen to be i- in and highlights the fact that y- one doesn't need a gym or, um, any specific scenario, um, although we will, uh, certainly touch on ideal learning circumstances for movement and, um, some of, uh, the work that you're doing, of course.
- IPIdo Portal
The less of your own personal practice and understanding and knowledge you've done, the more toys you need. The more you've really worked on yourself, uh, the more high-tech you are. The more low-tech are your tools, the more high-tech you are, and this is the most advanced technology by far on this planet. With all the advancement, it doesn't even start to scratch, and you know it from the way that we understand the eyes all the way to, with all due respect to the Boston robotics, eh, a five-year-old m- motion, uh, uh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, yeah.
- IPIdo Portal
... movements, eh, or animal, eh, motion was very underdeveloped, eh, still relatively to us and systems, so important to, to remind ourselves.
- AHAndrew Huberman
A lot can be done with the body and gravity, as I-
- IPIdo Portal
Floor, a piece of floor, a piece of wall, a corner of a room is a beautiful scenario which you can become discover in and play in, and... but we are not so developed, so we don't see those options, and this is something that I try to stimulate, and that's why I made it a point to avoid any of the big, eh, sponsorship and, and, and high-tech tools, and I, one point, brought a stick into, you know, big conventions and, and s- or I... sometimes I use a shirt with holes in it that... just like a used shirt as a point to make when I'm addressing a crowd to keep things wher- where it's important, and it's important, we are important, and our experience is important, and, uh, we, we have to be very careful. The- these, these, uh, habits and these directions, they come from s- many times good intention, but they are...... the, the, the devil many times. They turn into the devil, just like our technology nowadays and what is happening with people, with depression, with meaning- meaninglessness, um, uh, also with the body in various perspectives, or even I will also flip it into high performance sports and their price. Because for me, this is not a movement practice, it erases the person in the center of it, and then came places like skateboarding or breakdancing, where somebody with a disability becomes the best in the world, turns it into the biggest advantage, but he would never be accepted into gymnastics class, and I love that. And th- and that, that change, to place change in the center, it, uh, it's important.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You touched on mention of a few sports.
- 31:34 – 40:50
Unique Postures, Types of Movement, Contents vs. Containers
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, maybe it was Charles Poliquin or maybe it was another trainer that, um, I heard once say that, you know, for kids, one of the worst things they can do is over-specialize in a particular sport. Um, the idea being that it leads to improvements in performance in a very narrow domain, but they raised the idea, uh, that it could perhaps also constrains the development of the nervous system such that certain emotional states, cer- certain intellectual abilities will forever be shut off because of the intense plasticity that occurs early in life. The more I learn from you, the more I'm thinking that that statement really should be extended to all of life. And I loved to remind people, uh, because I started off as a developmental neurobiologist, that development doesn't start and end. You don't have childhood and adulthood, our life is one long developmental arc from birth until death, however long that might be. So, if one is going to be anti-specialist, maybe even we call that a generalist, what does that look like? What are the different domains of movement practice? And as I ask this, I realize I d- I am in serious danger of fractionating movement into a list of words like strength and speed and explosiveness and, uh, suppleness, uh, a word that I've heard you use before. And yet, I think for most people because we think in words often, um, some of those categories can be useful. So, let's say I was going to embark on a movement practice or a child was going to embark on a movement practice, eh, either throughout the day or for a dedicated period of time. What are the sorts of categories of movement that I might want to think about? Ballistic movement, smooth movement? Maybe you could, uh, just enrich us with some of the, uh, some of the landscape around that.
- IPIdo Portal
Okay. First, I'll address the first part, eh, that you mentioned, and, eh, I've learned from you about certain changes in the way that things develop later in life versus earlier in life. And you're right, this was something that Charles Poliquin also mentioned and I learned from back in the day as well from him, and which can seem dark a bit and, and, and kind of hopeless, but then y- you, you should go beyond that. Um, one thing that does seem to, to, to, to appear for me when I look around is these, the concepts of unique postures. Eh, and I think this is true for postures of thought, emotional postures, and movement postures. Truly, earlier in life, we are creating these unique postures, and they get into these drawers or like language, letters. Later in life, the process moves more towards integration of these unique postures into all different organizations. The beauty of it is that you can use very few postures to create many possibilities, just like a Leibniz search for a language that contain one symbol only versus two, which he discovered. Um, and this is something that is often seen. Like, you take someone who moves in a certain way and you teach him all these new sports or techniques, but essentially, if you look deeply and you're sensitive, you see it's the same postures that he will have to work with till the end of his life. The same thinking postures. And this, this is really problematic, where we are... (sighs) We are not freeing the mind beyond this, eh, how would I say, a scaffolding of thinking, and we are actually letting go of the content. We, we, we get more and more focused on the, the way, the, the way of thinking versus the thinking itself, or, or habitual ways and f- forms of thinking, associative thinking, et cetera. And emotionally the same, we are constructing these emotional postures, and then we have to go through the rest of our lives working with that. So, this is the dark side, right?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
But, of course, there are always possibilities, um, both, I think, invading this early system to some extent, even if it's 5% or 7% or whatever percent, and also on the freeing yourself of going beyond all postures, period. Working with the postures you have, but towards a postureless way of doing things. So, this is something interesting, eh, to work when y- when people work with movements, but...... finally are able to go into movement, and this magic starts to happen, and then the techniques fall apart and something appears. Um, and, and it's a phase change.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
It's a, it's a transformation. It's not a, a... it's, it's a binary moment. There is a jump there, for sure, you know. I- it's very rare to see, both in thinking and emotionally and in other ways. We have many names for it, and some talk about enlightenment and some talk about all kind of processes related to it, and I think most of them are, uh, shadows, uh, of the sun, but it's not the sun itself, really. And then, talking about ways of thinking about movement, this is where I use, uh, something I, I call my slice and dice. Because of the problem of using words and definitions and categories, I try to create a lot of them, and I write them on, on the paper, and then I crumble them, throw them into the bin, and I keep doing it, all my life. The writing them down and the geeking on it is very important, also very important to let it go. I tell people, "What you forgot is not the same for... Forgetting is not the same as never knowing it." The crumbling and throwing away is a form of forgetting, but it leaves some kind of a homeopathic, uh, trace behind. So, let's take some slice and dice, uh, and try to look at it. Here is a physical one, contraction, relaxation. That's a spectrum, and pretty much everything falls on this spectrum. Also, in terms of analyzing a person or yourself, you can tell me if you feel closer to this side or closer to that side, and then it allows you to examine your practices. How many of the practices are moving you towards balance, and how many are... it's your addiction of just doing what you're good at versus what you need? Um, here is another example, physical culture. So, we have the dance realem, working with internal concepts and expressing them, abstract concepts expression. Second perspective, the marshal concept, but not in the sense of just fighting, but also partnering, working with a- another person, a dynamic entity that is communicating with you. The third one is, I call the elements, working with the environment. The next one is a somatic one, is the internal practice, and of course, they are all gray zones and, and another one is object manipulatory, which you can think of it also as the environment, but it's more small objects, heavy objects-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
... many objects, few objects. And then you can look at these way of thinking, and you can say, "Oh, I have many of my practices in this direction, but not..." and you can draw it for yourself. So, that's another perspective. And this way, I, I use dozens of perspectives, and with the years, uh, it gives people a sense of where they want to go, how they want to do it, and what they need to address versus what they like to address, et cetera. Is it helpful?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Very helpful. Those different bins are very helpful. I really appreciate that you mentioned that people will often practice what they're good at as opposed to what they need. In, um, gym culture, we refer to this as the guy that always skips leg day type of person, right? (laughs) You know, big upper body, skinny legs, or, uh, you'll see people that have these enormous thick torsos and they're bench pressing all day, but they clearly need to pull on an object every once in a while to create some balance, but they don't do it because they, for whatever reason, uh, they have an obsession with moving greater and greater poundage or something like that. Um, which in certain sports, like powerlifting, where aesthetics aren't the, the goal and it's simply to push more weight off one's chest, uh, you
- 40:50 – 47:05
Discomfort: Marker of Movement, Failures & Learning
- AHAndrew Huberman
could imagine that there's something beneficial there. However, I think that it's really important in intellectual endeavors and in movement endeavors, if I understand correctly, to bring oneself to a place of real challenge on a regular basis. In fact, earlier today, I was in a state of constant challenge 'cause it was all new to me (laughs) , and as much as I told myself, "Beginner's mind, beginner's mind, beginner's mind," it, it's hard, I confess, to not want to do well, to perform well, right? And, and I think, I think that's a natural and healthy thing. And yet-
- IPIdo Portal
Not only natural, it is necessary, but I want you to keep it on that side and to bring something to balance it. If there is not this challenge, the process will not work. It has to be the scale, and you're talking about scales of pain, pleasure-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
... and this is another scale, and this discomfort, again, is necessary and should be recognized as, "I'm in the right place." When it becomes too high and I'm unable to resolve, to make any progress, I went overboard. But when it's not present, I don't do nothing here, nothing that I'm truly interested in. I'm just gratifying myself, wankery. It's, i- in essence, it's not about searching for the discomfort, but it's a marker. Um, and I think the question should be, who am I serving? 'Cause people do not serve themselves, in essence. They serve part, parts of it, some, some kind of a fraction of themselves, and this separation of oneself from oneself and...Thi- this is also a result of the practice, a good practice. Um, I think i- it... Maybe the biggest gift I received from the practice is I'm, I am, I can say, although it will take a c- maybe a- a certain context, I am not my friend. At times I am, but many times, I am not my friend and by creating this separation, I can assume a certain stability in the face of everything all the way up to our own mortality and death, which is m- and maybe beyond. Who knows?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Th- it was, um, a striking moment for me earlier today when I was (laughs) really challenged with one of the, uh, practices we were doing and you said, "This is exactly the f- what I experienced this morning, Andrew." That's what you said. Um, and I couldn't imagine that you were having challenges doing the, what I was attempting to do, and of course, you were. What I believe what you were referring to is that you had put yourself at that edge earlier in the day in which you were making failures. You were, you were failing to execute the way that you were attempting to execute movement. I should just, uh, to inject some n- neuroscience and neuroplasticity there, I can't help myself, this is what I do after all, there are beautiful data in animals and humans showing that in the seconds and minutes after a failed attempt at a motor execution of something, the forebrain is in a heightened state of focus. And when you hear it, it suddenly makes perfect sense. Of course. Why would the nervous system change unless it got a cue to change? And the cue almost always comes in the form of frustration. The, the "eh," or as we said earlier, "nah."
- IPIdo Portal
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
The "nah" signal is the one that preps you to extract more learning from the subsequent trials, and yet, for a lot of people, they feel that, ugh, that failure to execute or even to approximate execution and they feel and experience the, "eh," negative signal and they lean out of the practice. They start to depart either mentally or physically or both. And if there's anything I think that, um, perhaps, uh, we can offer is this understanding that that edge, as some people call it, or that failures aren't just necessary, they are part of the learning process. They are the entry gate to n- neuroplasticity.
- IPIdo Portal
Yes. Contextualizing or re-contextualizing that sensation is something I work a lot with and I just remind it to people, and I also remind it to myself, and if it wasn't difficult and we didn't need to redo it again and again, we wouldn't be again on this correct scale which is dynamic and moving, just like rolling downhill. So, the reason... There is definitely a necessity to succeed, to orient. There is certain aspects that you want to achieve, but then there is also the letting go of it and, and the de-ambitioning of it and the... And within that tension, the plus and the minus, comes movement, and tha- that's how the, the... And i- again, if I stretch it too far away or if I increase one of them too mu- is, then I would have some issues, but you will, with practice, learn to recognize the optimal point of progression. Of course, it's a... It takes many years and a lot of play and exposure to get a sense of it regardless of the layer in which it is applied. So, I- I'm sure in your field and in, in your pursuits, you are already aware of it and imp- applying it in your life. Talking about focus, talking about ways of thinking, creativity, et cetera. But then it's enough that I, I pull into another perspective and you will see that people are specialists and, and then they don't have the really, the, the real essence of the, of the concept. It's not theirs. It's applied specifically. The one who changes all the time gets the general component because what appears when everything changes? That is that new entity. Everything changes, something stays. That's what we want to get. This concept and this understanding.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I've heard the statement before, "We are just a
- 47:05 – 56:36
Movement Diversity, Squat Challenge, Injury, Movement Evolution
- AHAndrew Huberman
meat vehicle." Right? We're just a sack of cells and it, um... And I, I truly despise that statement because now first of all, it, um, it deprives us of all meaning in, of our lives and we can go down the route of philosophy as to whether or not there's meaning or not, but more importantly, it divorces us from the idea that the body and brain are interconnected and have at least equal value (laughs) at any one moment. They, they're informing each other. Emotions inform movement, movement informs emotions. One thing that I've heard you say before and I really love to hear you, uh, embellish on is this, this important principle that human beings are truly unique in terms of the enormous range of movements that we can perform, and yet we are e- excellent, maybe superior, to all other species at certain types of movement. Um, the one that comes to mind is walking, stride, striding. So, um, maybe we could just, uh, explore that, that idea, uh, because obviously a cheetah is very fast, uh, the gibbon seems to have a lot of proficiency at grabbing and swinging from branches. Um, but human beings perform an enormous, or can potentially perform, an enormous array of movements. Do you think all human beings are potentially able to explore all the different types of movement, um, and if so, how does one approach that? So, um, basically, what I'm doing is I'm tabling a concept which is not range of motion, right?
- IPIdo Portal
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
For the, for the gym rats, discard with range of motion. I'm talking about the variety of movements.
- IPIdo Portal
... uh, first, uh, it's not important what I think, if it's possible or not possible, or if it's even possible for you or not possible for you. What is important is what you truly want to do, what you truly are after. And it's important for me because many times this way of thinking about things is already limited. (clicks tongue) Uh, I like to- (laughs) I like to say, "A man doesn't go to the ocean to empty it with a spoon." (clicks tongue) A lot of the types of dressing up of the concepts nowadays is trying to fit an elephant into, uh, the hole in the needle, yeah? Like for example, the concept of practice, uh, and then our lives, as if we have a life. (laughs) . (clicks tongue) Uh, we have some kind of a stream of behaviors. We have, uh, there is the argument of free will, et cetera. There is a multiplicity, definitely, uh, a, a man is a legion, that's the- the real meaning of- of that phrase. One day, you wake up like this, I- I say, "Andrew, let's meet tomorrow at 7:00 AM," but I don't know who's going to wake up tomorrow. And then you send me a text message, "Oh, uh, I'm feeling off," (laughs) right? At 6:55, and go back to sleep. So, (clicks tongue) examining that and seeing that, I think frees you up eventually, and- and start to orient you in a, in a better direction. (clicks tongue) Uh, so what do you want to do and what... But in the orientation of also what you need to do, what you sense, and- and what you are developing as a evo- evolutionary direction for you, this is the important bit. Is it possible for everyone to engage in certain specific physical movement? For example, in Scandinavian countries, the squat is not very approachable. It's, uh, i- i- i- it's very difficult, uh, th- they're more built for dragging heavy s- things, and also in this climate, I guess, it- it makes less sense to squat and... 'cause you're going to freeze there. So, uh, this is... And- and you, then you see the squat in- in warm c- climates, and it's, like, so open and accessible. They're very good, uh, deadlifters usually, uh, not good squatters, and the sh-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Hmm, they want to get away from the ground.
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah. The shallow hip socket, uh, which allows one activity, but then the stability of the deep hip socket, the architecture of- of- of the hip, uh, the femur heads, the queue angles, the shapes, et cetera. So, we are all unique and there are certain elements which... Like for example, my squat challenge is like... For most people, there is something there, but-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Could you remind people what the squat challenge is?
- IPIdo Portal
Uh, the squat was, uh, my attempt to- to bring a new fresh state of mind into the word squat, uh, not as a strength element, not... Uh, it's a fundamental resting position, really. Actually should be one of the most abundant ones. We r- replaced it with, uh, sitting, which is not really, doesn't work well if you're in a natural environment. It's not very comfortable, actually, to sit for long periods of time, rocks and different terrain, so you end up lying down, standing, and squatting a lot. Also, when you're moving low and dynamic, like even collecting berries, the squat is much more dynamic and open, and then elimination is happening there, so it's like, it's such a fundamental thing, and we totally eliminated it. We eliminated many other things, overhead movements, behind the back, uh, all kinds of, uh, back realm, what I call the back realm is totally absent in- in people's awareness. So, that was my attempt to bring it back into people, and I recommend, uh, I recommended to... in order to- to really get the transformation going, to accumulate, um, 30 minutes a day in the squat position, unloaded, just resting down, not correct, not erect. Many people make this mistake, they didn't read through the whole thing. It's just resting down there. And of course, you have to be mindful of dosages. Some people will get hurt if they try to do it too quickly, so they might need to build a process towards it. And also, I'm not talking about 30 minutes straight, um, but accumulation throughout the day. And this does a lot of good for digestive problems, for lower back pain, for hip pains, for knees, and generally for aging, because it's basically folding your body in the most basic way. Are you folding your body? If you're not folding your body, you will lose the foldability of your body, and this is probably the- the mo- the easiest and the most abundant way to fold the body. So, uh, but th- this is an example of something that can be very useful with many, many people, but there will always be unique individuals which need something else. And, uh, there- there are benefits in examining things, and also there are benefits in getting hurt, which is not often discussed, especially not in these parts. So, I- I'm one of the only ones, uh, as a teacher, that says, "I injured many of my students." And if I did not do that, I would ha- be totally useless for them as well. The totally safe system is... has nothing to offer, practically. Nothing is totally safe, and we can... Of course, we don't approach it with a ballsy or machoistic thing, but we are aware that sometimes we have to go beyond the boundaries. And hopefully those would be the small injuries that will help us avoid the big injuries, but if you try to avoid the small injuries, maybe you'll get those big injuries in there.... so, uh, examining which types and forms of movement, the location of the- the body, um, speed of execution, the type of organization of the body, which is a whole thing that we can discuss, um, all of this is, uh, up for the grabs and, uh, something that we have to create individual relationship with, hopefully with good guidance where we can get the right scenarios, a facilitator of good scenarios for our learning, which is what I try to do, and less of a technical state of mind, "Do this A, B, C." Or, uh, yeah, like chunking, what I, uh, really dislike, uh, from- from- for a long time is, like, many people, th- they tell me, "Have you met this guy? He's an amazing teacher because h- he chunked the process into these bits and not even in the correct places to chunk," so it's like, uh, and it- it doesn't offer, it locks us, this, uh, this state of mind. I- I talk about the chemistry model, my, I call it my chemistry model where an atom, a molecule, and then a compound is conceptualized versus just chunking, so there is an actual evolution, like, uh, I call it also sketch learning. I'm not going to try to draw you, if I know anything about art and- and drawing. I'm going to start by capturing something very rough and I need to practice that first, that dynamic entity before I go into the rendering and the shading, et cetera. Um, so the same way to learn things, so big picture to small details, and unlike many of my teachers in, uh, that I ran into, and I say, uh, with the greatest respect because I don't know who taught me more, my good teachers or my worst teachers, um, but some of them just teach from the small details into a big picture that never arrives.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Given
- 56:36 – 1:02:04
Animal & Human Movements, Gain & Change
- AHAndrew Huberman
that humans can generate such a broad array of types of movement, run, jump, duck, squat, leap, uh, you know, all these types of movements, um, do you think there's value in observing the movements of other animal species? I know I certainly enjoy watching other animals move. Um, I think the most, one of the more spectacular animal facts that, uh, was shared with me is when I was a graduate student. Someone down the hall was working on the little petals of the chameleon as it, which can walk up walls, and it was a great mystery as whether or not they were suction, but it turns out they can do it in a vacuum, so it's not suction, whether or not there was some sticky substance, and it turned out, I don't know why, I feel compelled to share this with you, so I'm going to do it because I have a feeling it will lead us to an- an, to an insight of some sort, that those little tiny petals are so thin and so close together that the- the chameleon actually sticks to the wall by what are called van der Waal forces, meaning it's a very weak molecular force, but strong enough to stick to the wall because they are actually exchanging molecules with the surface they're on.
- IPIdo Portal
Oh, wow.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, obviously we can't do that, and yet I spent hours, because they were in the lab next door, watching videos of these little chameleons walk, and the articulation of these feet is incredible because they're literally rolling those little petals along in a way that kind of defies anything else I've ever seen. I told myself this was useful, A, because I thought it was interesting, but B, because I never really thought about how I articulate my foot. I've thought about being a heel striker or a toe striker when I run and no one can tell me which one I'm supposed to be. (laughs)
- IPIdo Portal
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Maybe you can- you can tell me. But, um, the point is, or I suppose the question is, do you think there's value in observing the extremes of animal kingdom movement as a way to inform the play space and the exploration space of our own human movement practice?
- IPIdo Portal
Mm, I think so. I think it's, first, uh, it's inspiring. It's, um, it opens up, but I will take it away from the romantic point of view, and I would offer another way to examine all these movements exist in us in ways, in certain ways, like the work h- of, uh, Grigovetski on the spine, the spinal engine, and to see how this old ways of moving, even all the way up to exoskeletons and, like, primary, uh, very ancient, uh, or even single cell things are still within us to a certain extent. And then, of course, this gets developed, uh, um, like the- the- the Darwinian state of mind, uh, got stuck for many years on the survival of the fittest. But actually, I believe, uh, I always believed and I s- I saw some information about it lately that mutation is the heart of- of the model, not survival of the fittest.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. People often hear the word mutation and they think, oh, mutations are bad. There are maladaptive mutations and then there are adaptive mutations, for sure.
- IPIdo Portal
And i- these places, they will change in the heart of it. What it wants to do, change. So, it does not want to become better. There is an inherent change in it. And then, of course, they become better at X, Y, Z, fittest is the secondary perspective that arrives in relation to certain things, but there is still a stronger, more ancient driving force into the process. So, for me, this is cool to see these animals take it all the way to this extreme, but it's also still reflecting within us, so I love to do, like, uh, for example, I introduce with people spinal waves, and by bringing these waves into the body, sometimes you get, uh, weird experiences like emotional releases and sometimes it's... and- and- and- and- and other times, it can become an incredible tool to help an athlete which specialized and reached the top of the top and then you defrag his system a little bit and offer him some freshness and- and some segmental movement, and first you fuck him up-... that's usually the case, eh. Technically, he's off, his coordination is off, but later the growth will arrive. It's a form of playfulness.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
It's a form of examining things regardless of their success or failure, uh, more understanding that change is important, and then after that, we can also look at the more competitive state of mind, and the more success and failure orientation. Um, but there is no game without change, so this is the primary one. Eh, and that's why I say, okay, you want to succeed in the tasks like we did earlier, but you stayed within the game, to sustain the game, the infinite versus finite game, right, perspective. To sustain the game means to continue to change, continue to transform, and then to win the game sometimes mean game over, um, so it's like... Yeah, within that tension, I think it's beautiful to play and to exist and to be.
- 1:02:04 – 1:12:39
Core Movement, Emotion & Memory, Spinal Waves, Evolution
- IPIdo Portal
- AHAndrew Huberman
You mentioned something that for me is an incredibly important concept, uh, for a couple of reasons, and you mentioned these spinal waves, right? I have to assume that's, eh, taking the, the torso for us, you know, uh, movement morons that are, I'll just refer to in coarse terms (laughs) , uh, instead of thoracic spines sort of, I mean, I ... we'll stay away from the technical anatomy and the torso and creating movement either side to side, ungul- undulation, or arching and, um, extension of the spine ?
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah, dorsal, ventral-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Yep.
- IPIdo Portal
... side to side, rotational as well as spiraling.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Do, is, is, have you ever had the experience that, o- of yourself or other people engaging those types of movements and experiencing particular categories of emotions? And I have a particular reason for asking this. There's no right or wrong answer, of course, but I'm just curious whether or not movement of the c- let's call it the core of the body, things close to the midline as opposed to far away from the midline like the digits far, is there any, um, do you have any evidence that that can evoke a certain, uh, category of emotional states?
- IPIdo Portal
Evidence, I have none, but, eh, I have experienced and I have some thoughts about it. Eh, Ida Rolf, eh, who is known to have, uh, created Rolfing or structural integration said, "The issues are in the tissues," eh, and around the spine, the spine is us, as you know, it's like y- you can take an arm off, a limb, but there is w- there, there's been attempts, but there is no brainy alone, the cerebral thing alone. The, the spine and the m- maybe more parts of and systems inside the torso are important, so that's why I like to start from that core entity. And then these little fluctuations they create, eh, they unblock s- things, th- they start to move things, and you can avoid, funny enough, mobilizing those areas by doing big frame motions and competitive motions and techniques all your life. So, even someone, most yogis for example, they look extremely mobile, but then when you're actually going into the small, what, what I call the small frame, I borrowed this from Chinese martial arts, small frame/big frame. The big frame is these big changes of our total body in space posture, and then the small frame is barely moving, but mobilizing the little bits that comprise the same pretty much posture, so these are very beneficial and it has totally disappeared from our physical culture. When you introduce it back, um, the small frame offers the big frame, but the big frame doesn't offer the small frame, because of course the small detail come together into the big picture. So, if I want to place my body in a specific position and I have all these bits moving well, I can construct it in whatever way I want, but if I just work on the big one, more- most chances are I just mobilize certain areas while other areas are totally held or blocked, and then I'm specialized one more time. Take me out of this realm, and I'll have difficulties. What will sit there in this stagnation? Emotion, material, thoughts, traumas. That's why people get discharges, mm, em... The body, m- memory is not what we think it is, that's how I believe. It is stored in a lo- everywhere.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
Em, and I've had th- those experiences. A lot of people have the opposite. When a certain emotion is evoked, they start to undulate the spine.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
So, this can be worked from this direction or from this direction, and I believe by applying such a practice, eh, it is wise. It wi- w- you, you basically turn over the land and you, you are pr- allowing things to, to shift and to move and to adapt, so I highly recommend it, and we teach it in a very elaborate and gradual way, and, eh, and, and this is needed r- really because people when they just go into like some general recommendation, they usually just get stuck into a new pattern. "Ah, that spinal wave? Okay. That's it." So, I've been using again this slice and dice, like, teaching dozens of systems of moving the torso until a person is freed to really move the torso, like the language is created, the, the, the small enough units are created in your understanding from all these systems, and then you improvise. You reach the highest level of the practice.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I love the answer. I, let me, um, tell you a bit of why I asked. Um, so there's a, a principle in, in neuro, in neuroscience, but especially in neuroevolution, they call it evo-devo, sometimes evolution and development, how those link. If you look at... So, we have motor neurons as you know, but for the audience, that live in our spinal cord that cause transmission and contraction of the muscles, allow us to move our limbs.... and then we have motor neurons up here, called upper motor neurons, that control the lower ones. So once something is reflexive or learned, we, we're not thinking about it, so to speak, we u- mainly use the lower motor neurons. We know this because you can do an experiment, it's a rather barbaric experiment but it's been done many times, called creating a decerebrate cat. You actually remove the neocortex and these cats will walk on a treadmill, it's called fictive motion, no problem at all. There are human beings who don't have a neocortex, or much of their neocortex is missing, they generate perfectly fine movement.
- IPIdo Portal
The pattern has been downloaded.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's right, and it's truly downloaded into the, into the spine and the connection between the spine and muscles. Now, the motor neurons that control the, uh, spinal waves, as you call them, are of a particular category. They have a molecular signature, a physiological signature, they were identified by, he's dead now, but a, an, a biologist at Columbia University named Tom Jessell and many of his scientific offspring. Here's what's interesting. In fish, or in animals that really only have the opportunity to undulate and flap their little, uh, you know, fins, though motor neurons that control undulation in those animals are identical, molecularly, to the motor neurons that control the spinal undulation in humans. What's been added in human evolution are extra rows, literally, categories of molecularly distinct neurons so that as you move from the center of the body outward, unlike a fish which can move its fins but can't actually artic- it doesn't have digits, we have special motor neurons to move these little bits, these bits, these bits. And I can't do a spinal wave but, but I can do the mudras thing, like the belly thing.
- IPIdo Portal
Uh-huh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That comes from seeing the movie E.T. when I was a kid-
- IPIdo Portal
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and puffing out my stomach and then realizing that I could wave it, but only in one direction and-
- IPIdo Portal
Okay.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... apparently not up. Anyway, um, the, the yogis out there can chuckle at that. But, um...
- IPIdo Portal
The yogis actually do it to the side.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, do they?
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I don't know if I can do that. Anyway, my spinal wave is weak, but, um, I'll work on it. But what I find so interesting about these layers of s- I don't want to say sophistication, but these ev- with evolution came the addition of more pools of opportunity, these motor neuron pools as they're called, are opportunity to engage in new, more elaborate types of movement, but with each new pool became the opportunity to create combinations of new movement. And so the reason I asked you why spinal waves create one category of movement is that if you touch a fish on one side of its body, it moves to the opposite side, it never moves toward it, but earlier we were doing a practice somewhat similar of testing this similar reflex, and sometimes I or someone will move toward a, a touch, we don't deviate to the opposite side. So I have this, um, untested, uh, least formally tested hypothesis that movements of small digits and portions of our distal, as they're called, far from the midline body parts, evoke different sensations, maybe even far more subtle sensations than movements of the core of our body and, and the, the stuff closer to the spine. Again, it's just a theory, but, um, I'm grateful for your answer because it lands at least in the general vector direction of, of my, uh, of my i- uh, idea here.
- IPIdo Portal
The central orientation is mostly gone from our culture. We don't even walk basically these days. If you look at traditional culture, the amount of walking you do on a rest day, on a... (laughs) it's, it's huge. And so w- we started to create technologies to bring everything into the periphery, controlling it with the fingertips et cetera, so we have incredible neurological development relating to this, but our central patterns, swimming, running, jumping, throwing... Throwing is not pushing away. That's an example, right? Like-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Some people when you give them a ball to throw, they... You can tell if they've never thrown a ball before.
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah, they throw like a girl Yeah, they don't use... (laughs) ... that is often said here in the US and it's, it's of course unfair but it, it re- it relates to experience, right, that is less, um, less maybe promoted or offered for females so you get this, this, um, peripheral pattern instead of a central generated pattern that progresses towards the extremities. Um, one thing I wanted to, to ask you is I know an, an area that is not often mentioned is that some of these ancient patterns and systems are primary in many ways, hence those newer developments inside of us are constrained by using the connections running through these ancient systems. Hence, uh, we are much more limited by the gene pool. We are hitchhikers on a piece of DNA, uh, I like to say, and, and that gene pool is like, is driving something so primary that even when you are in kind of the driver's seat in your eyes, you're actually not, or you're being con- totally constrained by that, um, and I wanted to hear about this.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, the... Recently we
- 1:12:39 – 1:21:39
Song, Dance & Complex Language, Movement as Language, Consilience
- AHAndrew Huberman
had a guest on the podcast, um, named Eric Jarvis, he's a professor at, uh, Rockefeller, who was, um, offered a position to dance with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, so an accomplished dancer and, and comes from a musical family, chose to become a neuroscientist instead and study speech and language.
- IPIdo Portal
Wow.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But he said something incredible, several incredible things, uh, really looking forward to getting your reflections on. First of all, he said that when you look at the species in the kingdom of animals, including us, that have elaborate language and true song...... they all also have the capacity to dance. All the ... it turns out hummingbirds actually have a dance and a song capacity. That perhaps, and this is the going idea now in neuroscience and evolution of the brain, that singing actually came before finely articulated speech and language. That voice evolved first to sing, to communicate. I mean, to enunciate (grunts) or uh, or you know, or mm, you know, but then song may, may have come first. Where you have song, you have dance and the capacity to dance, which of course is movement of the body. And where you have song and dance, you always find that those species can generate elaborate language. Now, the simple version of this is, okay, sophisticated brains tend to create clusters of sophisticated capabilities, but the other possibility, and it's the one that Jarvis proposes, and I think it's in line with what you're perhaps raising here, is the idea that movement of the body and range and sophistication of movement of the body through all these different systems may have actually promoted or even driven the evolution of the things that we think of as, you know, speech, and language, and the ability to have multiple, uh, words for the same concept or to have elaborate articulation of speech. I find this incredibly attractive as an idea because certainly from, as a hierarchy of needs, we needed to move first to survive, and to mate, and to flee, and to attack. It makes perfect sense to me that the layers would be built up fundamentally from the body to the mind and not the other way around. So, that's one piece, and then the other piece which, um, I'll just share, uh, for any reflections you might have that I, just blew me away was Jarvis told me that when we read, if ... and this has been done experimentally, if one records the EMG, the low-level muscular activity in the larynx and pharynx, we are actually repeating the words that we read but so subtly so that we don't actually speak them out unless there's some sort of neurologic deficit, which some people have. Some people mumble while they read, but what that tells me is that language is movement and movement is language. So again, we have this convergence, but at a very basic level, I'd love your reflections on ... those are all his ideas. I want to say I'm just repeating what, what he said, and not nearly as, um, precisely as he did, but how do you think of movement as either the foundation of language or as its own language that perhaps even defies words?
- IPIdo Portal
Mm. Whoo. Wow, those are beautiful, mm, perspectives, and I definitely feel, feel the same. Uh, there's a lot to say about singing and dancing as well as ... also as a form of, uh, ancient programs of transmission. Uh, sometimes, uh, that, there is this, uh, in, in some ancient practices, the m- the, the mantras, and, uh, people don't realize that they are tantric practices. They contain a form of vibrating and breathing, all tied together into very elaborate way to promote s- certain effect, and how would you do something like this in ancient times? This is ingenious. We c- ... even until today, we need a full book to describe something like this and it wouldn't work as well. So, it's like a very ancient form of transmission. The more accurate we became with the language, the more dead it became because it is, it is less of a movement entity. It is less of a dynamic entity from its nature, and that's why, uh, Yukio Mishima says it's corrupting. It corrupts us. Um, so definitely, definitely the, the, the conducing force or the, the primary force for me is movement that is experienced. Every time we, we talk about movement basically even now we are spilling it into a container to call it what it is, but it is beyond that. So then it is applied into dancing, into singing, into language. There is no other language that I see as a primary mode and this is a nature of space, time, things moving, uh ... so I think, I think everything moves into the direction of understanding that more and more, and, uh, maybe it's not so popular to call it movement, eh, or people have some connotations and it's okay. You can throw away this word and put another word and we probably need to do that also like regularly. Like, I, I start to see the end of this word for me. Uh, i- it's things get corrupted again, overused, abused, uh, and then we need the, we need a new, a new word and, and that's ... e- even that word is only needed for communication and for specific processes of education, exchange. It's important to stay within the experiences. It's important to continue to promote scenarios in which the experience is primary. Mm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, more open experience, let's say, and not try to hold down and, and, and define eh, overly accurately or if it's done, throwing it away and starting again. So there is no winning concept. You got to the winning concept, you got nothing. Eh, y- you've, you were able to grab it, you were able to ... this is very science, right? Like, we got it. We got it, and then it turns out to be nothing and ...
- IPIdo Portal
... like, uh, more and more time passes, I feel science, uh, is becoming more humble and things are being discussed in, uh, in, uh, in this way. And, uh, because really what does science do? Report that the sun came up a, a certain amount of billions of times and then tomorrow it will come up again? It's, it's statistics.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, it's good prediction.
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs)
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah, but we, we can go beyond. There is something inside of us-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
... that can go beyond. Uh, hard to communicate, uh, I can't offer it right now here, but I, I have the experience, and, uh, thankfully I have a practice and a, a way to sense it, to feel it, and to reexamine it, and then we can talk about it and, and have something from that and...
- AHAndrew Huberman
Ed- Edward Wilson, the great sociobiologist, he actually founded the field of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson, they call him Edward Wilson, um, had this beautiful word, and indeed named a book. Actually, the word was better than the book. Sorry, Wilson, but the book was a little bit meandering for my taste, but then again, he's the Harvard professor, not me. Um, although Stanford's pretty, pretty darn good. The, uh, this word is consilience, this idea of a leaping together of divergent forms of knowledge to create a truly valuable concept, which I love. I love it because, uh, of course I'm formally trained as a scientist, I look at things mainly through the lens of neuroscience, but experience is real, and observation is real. And even in the field of medicine, you have, you know, double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials and then you have case studies, N of one, right? Not often discussed, right? I mean, H.M., the most famous example in neuroscience of a patient that had no hippocampus informed us more about the process of memory and indeed the function of the hippocampus than thousands of independent experiments that followed. So, you can't have one, you need all these different forms of exploration, which is, you know, I think, uh, I think we share the belief, if I may, that convergent forms of knowledge eventually this process of consilience can eject a new concept. And yet the challenge again is that if we don't have a language for it, it becomes hard to transmit.
- 1:21:39 – 1:26:36
Movement Culture, Community, Collective Knowledge, Wild & Wise
- AHAndrew Huberman
One of the things that I find incredibly, I'll use this word again, sticky, is this notion of movement culture. Uh, I don't know who coined that phrase, or I've seen it in the circles and accounts around your, uh, Instagram account and others. I don't know if, um, that's a, a phrase that you coined, but this idea of engaging in movement practice with others, whether or not it's dance or other movement practices, um, because it's so dynamic, there's the unpredictability of it. Um, even two, like today, two practitioners at vastly different levels of knowledge and experience in movement practice, there's, there's information I like to think to be gained from both sides. (laughs) So...
- IPIdo Portal
100%.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, one thing that I've heard you say before which really resonated with me is this idea that people have, maybe particularly in the US, have this concept of, "Oh, I have my, uh, yoga friends, or my, the f- the people I dance with are distinct from my family friends, are distinct from..." But as you pointed out, gathering around movement is an age-old tradition, and that perhaps we'd be better off not thinking about people we exercise with or train with, but that friendship and connection made through movement is perhaps the most valuable form of connection.
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah, I think it's a product of those practices that are maybe not so aware or not so movement-oriented in the open sense, and then you get this sensation with people. But alone we do nothing, so much so that we're never alone also on the inside, and we will manufacture and, and produce entities, uh, inside, uh, so we're constantly in a dynamic exchange, cultural exchange. And practically I learned this lesson in capoeira. Mm. It's a cultural manifestation. Things happen within this context. We rub against reality, we rub against each other, and their movement occurs and their insight is to be gained and, and development happens. Um, and then c- comes other thoughts, uh, collective knowledge versus self-knowledge. We are transmitting knowledge. If, if we go on top of some mountain, 20 people, 20, uh, normal individuals, and we spend 20 years just fighting, four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon, and we do it for 20 years but we're isolated from any other source of knowledge, we would still not reach anything that a very young fighter these days has. We will be unable to develop, uh, those techniques, those insights. That's where collective knowledge comes in, and transmission jumps us forward. But what is the problem with that? Staying within just those technical constraints and never making it yours. That's the, the, the part of self-knowledge. The digestion of this collective information until it becomes digested and becomes part of yourselves and then you are it, versus you are doing it. And this is a clear separation that you can see in sports on a very high level and on a not so high level, even though...... I would be honest if I say that some people reach very far just with collective knowledge and ve- a very technical approach, and others reach extremely far with n- very little of it. And there is always outliers, uh, they're always, eh, outliers in that case. Another thought I had when you mentioned evo-devo-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
... evolution, development is th- also the Greek concepts of poiesis and, and piec- and, and, and, uh, physis. The growing of the seed into the tree and the other process of the manufacturing of the chair from the tree, two processes of development, evolution, very different. One from everything to something, the other from nothing to s- something. One is accumulation-based, one is subtraction-based. Both of these processes relate to collective knowledge, self-knowledge, but they're not exactly just that. And what is, what should we do? This is a question that, that my friend, uh, Rasmus, he, he asks in, in his, uh,
- 1:26:36 – 1:32:18
Potential for Movement, “Humming”
- IPIdo Portal
thesis and thoughts. What is the ultimate for us? Should we manufacture our chair or should we grow, like, into the tree? Uh, civilize the mind, leave savage the body, uh... Is it in this way or should the mind also be left wild? Uh, wild and wise, uh, is a nice combination of words that I like to place together, wild-wise. So, this is something that I try to bring into the way that I live my life and my practice and, um, I try to bring, uh, the information and the wisdom and the, and the collective knowledge, but I also try to let go of more and more until an essence is gleaned, until something is appearing and, uh, because everything was already there. For example, if I'm sitting here, all the movements are already occurring, all the possibilities are... So it's just about I need to ope- I open this window, the air would come from here. If I open this window, the air would come... I don't need to drive my motion, I need to discover what is stopping it from happening.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm.
- IPIdo Portal
Something is constantly holding and when we remove this, immediately movement appears. This is real deep movement versus the driven movement that is, uh, very wasteful at times. Like walking, you see people pushing through the walk instead of the controlled falling that it should be. Fighting, punching, to manufacture the strength and then to have someone who knows how to facilitate the conditions in which you are knocked out. He doesn't knock you out, it hits versus I hit like Bruce Lee said. So this is, uh, a beautiful thing to examine and to work within that so as l- to, to see, am I skateboarding? Am I using this perspective or am I trying to, to control because of risk and danger, I'm trying to overly control something that actually can never be controlled? The way to control it is to let go of the control and then, okay, but what about all this collection of information knowledge that I can bring in? Where do I want to play? I can play down here or I can play up here. The collective knowledge is maybe take you further in and then you're still going to need to do your individual work. A lot of people like to romanticize on that and it's you don't need teachers, we don't need nothing, we don't need information. It's not fully honest. Uh, y- you don't need, but depends on where you want to function and how you want to function. Th- they shouldn't be demonized, but they shouldn't be overly glorified as well.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, you mentioned about the opportunity for movement, perhaps even all forms of movement coming from deep within. Uh, it k- raises to mind in the neuroscience of motor systems we talk about motor neurons, as I described, the ones that actually evoke contraction of muscles, and then there's this category of, of neurons that isn't often discussed but certainly exist, um, a- aren't often discussed in kind of popular nomenclature of neuroscience which is the premotor system. Most of our movements are the reflection of certain patterns of transmission breaking through from the premotor to the actual motor. In other words, we are always in a p- anticipatory mode of movement and as, and I think you, uh, the way you describe it, you clearly intuitively understand this. You feel it and you, and you recognize it. Uh, think of it as, uh, it's like a layer of neurons that's constantly humming, mm, ready to go, and it's the release of these gates that allows movement to occur in a particular way. Could be very smooth-
- IPIdo Portal
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... could be very ballistic.
- IPIdo Portal
Which is DNA, the same?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- IPIdo Portal
Turning off and on, but e- all the information is already there.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right.
- IPIdo Portal
And then the possibilities are just allowed. So I am allowed... I don't do free will already, but I am allowed to do. I am... There are possibilities and I am dancing within that dance-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm.
- IPIdo Portal
... but I am not the only dancer. So that's, that's my sensation, at least with most, uh, um, states of being, let's say. Maybe there is other states, eh...... okay, that could be reached, a, a stability that will arrive from the waters, from the movement of the waters. This humming, these potential possibilities, uh, to be in that state, to vibrate like this is very powerful for our lives. To wake up in the morning and feel that li- living thing is the feeling of movement, and for me is a result of the practice. And so, then it's easy not to stagnate, and then the mind can stay focused for hours, like w- we've done today, and I can listen and tune in and I won't lose you, which is very difficult. Like, I haven't had a good conversation here, uh, uh, in the US. It's very difficult, and I- I've had your attention and you're listening, but it's rare. It's rare that somebody can do that, and, um, and it's a struggle, always a struggle, but it's definitely my trick, my dirty trick.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- 1:32:18 – 1:35:50
Instructiveness vs Permissiveness, Degrees of Freedom
- AHAndrew Huberman
In, uh, um, you said you're allowed, and again, w- I'm taking some of the language and, and what you report about your experience and I'm trying to map it to some concepts that relate to neural circuits. In, in the principles of neuroscience we talk about instructiveness versus permissiveness. There are instructive cues like, for instance, the, the ability to pick up this pen, right? There's an instruction clearly. There's a, a motor command, but that's just one way of looking at it. The way it actually works is that there's a pre-motor system that's already generating that movement, and what we've done is we've flung open the gate and allowed that movement to occur precisely.
Episode duration: 2:34:37
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