Modern WisdomHow To Get Out Of Your Own Head | Mark Walsh | Modern Wisdom Podcast 230
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,953 words- 0:00 – 0:45
Intro
- MWMark Walsh
So do you want to have some conscious embodiment or do you just want to have the same old bloody unconscious embodiment that your dad had and his dad before him, and that your culture gave you, and you're supposed to have as a working-class British bloke, or whatever the hell you are out there? Like, like, that's, you can just be completely unconscious with that, or you can say, "You know what? I choose something different." And I'm a believer of any embodied practice. If people want to do yoga or dance or martial arts, different people like different things, great. Get in your body. Start to feel again. Stop thinking that wanking over porn and reading books is gonna cut it. Like, get into a dojo, go do yoga, do something that you get into your body again and reclaim that humanity.
- 0:45 – 2:13
What does embodiment mean
- CWChris Williamson
(wind blowing) What does embodiment actually mean?
- MWMark Walsh
Get asked that every single interview. There's different answers. One, you know your body is a part of you. It's not just like a pen or something. It's a part of who you are as a person, your body. The subjective view of the body. So the body as an aspect of our being, as an aspect of who we are as people. There's a reason if people lose an arm, they get more upset than if they lose a pen, 'cause it's part of them. Um, another term for embodiment would be the umbrella, the umbrella term for all the body-mind arts. So I've done martial arts, yoga, meditation, conscious dance, body therapy, improv, body work. All these things have something in common. They relate to the body, uh, for awareness and the body is part of who we are. Um, so even though they look very different, they have this thing in common, so we need a sort of terminology for that. You could say body-mind arts, you could say somatic arts. Embodiment is the word I tend to use. Uh, so that would be another definition. Third definition could be a form of intelligence and we could drill down into exactly what the skill sets are within that. So how's that for an opener?
- CWChris Williamson
Nice, man. I like it, considering embodiment to me is a, a d- if you ask me to define it, I wouldn't really understand. Maybe I embody the role of a parent, I embody the role of a podcaster. You know? Um, but so it's crossing the barrier between the mental and the physical whilst remaining in
- 2:13 – 5:59
Common Sense Usage
- CWChris Williamson
the body?
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. So the common sense usage is actually quite close to the technical usage. We say, you know, such-and-such, uh, embodies leadership. We understand that there's only so much you can learn from a book. If someone said to you, you know, "I've read, Chris, I've read a lot of books on kissing. I'm an amazing lover."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
Or, you know, "I've looked at a lot of websites on how to drive a car. Do you wanna lift to Newcastle?" You might say, "Well, hang on. That's one way of knowing. That's knowing about something," right? So, uh, if you're listening to some of your podcasts to prep for this, it tends to be the Western philosophical tradition is to think about or to know about or to learn about. And that's useful. Like, it's useful for me to know the capital of France is Paris, but that's quite different from the embodied knowledge of Paris. It's quite different from, you know, having your coffee in Paris and there's a certain kind of light that comes up in the morning, and being aware of that, or the French way of being, God forbid. Uh, or, um, you know, that, that manner of Frenchness. So this is a different kind of, of knowledge and requires a different kind of learning. So you know, I'm, at school I read every book in the library. When I was in sixth form, s- high school for American listeners, I literally speed-read every book in that library, and yet I was suicidal, drug-addicted, miserable, failing at my first intimate relationships, and everyone was telling me I was really clever. They said, "You've got a high IQ, you know, you're a very clever guy." And I said, "If I'm so clever, why am I so miserable? What has education f- how has education failed me?"
- CWChris Williamson
Well, the goal of-
- MWMark Walsh
You can't p- p- talk-
- CWChris Williamson
... the goal of education, especially at that age, isn't to make you happy.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, I mean there's a sort of frame that you can say it's social conformity, but even if it were just knowledge, the sort of main view of that is you learn about things, you a- a- acquire knowledge and it's ... You know, Wikipedia hasn't solved all the world's problems, right? We've got, on this phone, there's more knowledge than most human beings had in your Alexander's Library or whatever, right? So it's, there's all that information there, but is that the same as wisdom? And if I wanna change, if I wanna grow as a person, I'm gonna at the very least have to acquire skills like kissing and driving, or maybe even at a deeper level, change who I am as a person. And while you can take a drug or go on a weekend workshop, what really works there is actually embodying something different, and that takes practice over time.
- CWChris Williamson
I've been thinking a lot this year about the world of self-development, self-improvement, and I think a lot of the challenges that we're coming up against are given very cerebral answers. People try and think themselves out.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
This is a, a post-modern, post-Enlightenment, scientific, utilitarian, um, very transactional kind of environment that we're living in, and that has some wonderful advantages. Unlike the Greeks who thought that bloodletting was a great way to get rid of diseases or I think Aristotle believed that the brain only existed to get heat out of the body. You know, we've made ... The Scientific Revolution has given us some wonderful insights and drilling down into the world of personal development, self-development, a lot of the guests that I've had on this show, they do, by its very nature, we can only ever show someone or tell someone what to do. We can't do it for them. And I suppose that the, um, that bifurcation in distributing what people can do versus them actually enacting it, embodying it, and doing it-... is that ... Uh, uh, are we getting in, uh, some part of the framework that you look at here by seeing that distinction?
- 5:59 – 9:44
Knowing About Knowing To Be
- CWChris Williamson
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. So there's a distinction between knowing about and knowing to do and knowing to be. I mean, if we look at the Greeks, they had the word soma, which meant the body in its wholeness, the embodied b- body, and they had sarx, which meant kind of a hunk of meat. And that's generally how the body is viewed, as a hunk of meat. Even in a gym where you're trying to get fit, the body is an object which is a fundamentally dehumanizing position. Uh, you know, the Greeks also had philosophy in the gym. The gymnasia wasn't a place just to lift weights, it was also a place for emotional and psychological lifting. And an embodied perspective is one which recognizes that these things are, uh, deeply intertwined. You know, we s- we say academic, meaning irrelevant, meaning cognitive. You know, my friend who's an academic, God love him, you know, I tried to tell him about embodiment and he was like, "Well, my body just gets me from one lecture to another." And I was like, "Dude, there's real consequences to that." You know, in his case, it's health consequences, emotional consequences. And there's a human consequence for, uh, being hyper-cerebral, uh, being, you know, there's one that says cognicentric, you'll sometimes hear. And a slightly pretentious way of just saying that thought is what matters, and actually our embodied life, our embodied being, our ... (exhales) You know, like, everything, like we're building relationship, right? There was someone I reached out to, I thought he seems like a cool guy, let's get to know each other. Now even though we're doing that virtually, the felt sense of each other's the key thing. It's like, is this a man I can push on and trust? Is this someone who's gonna be fun to have a laugh with? Is this someone who's got backbone and spine? You know, there's a reason we use that kind of language when we describe character. And, let's say I'm in the business world doing business leadership training, which I've done quite a lot of, they'll be very good at telling you what a leader should have. 10 seconds, then you know, I've done my MBA, you know, a leader should be empathic and charismatic, and then you'll say, "Well, how do you develop that?" Right? Or you'll hear philosophers, they'll say, "Well, man should have these virtues." Or Jesus said, you know, "You love thy neighbor." And I, I've always thought it was kind of lacking on the detail, Chris. I've always thought it was kind of lacking on the method. So, and this is where I think some of the Asian arts were, uh, ahead of western knowledge in a way. They had a praxis, they had a way of developing oneself. And if someone's stressed or wants to be a better leader, you know, if someone's listening to this and they're lonely 'cause of COVID or, you know, they're isolated, or someone's listening to this and they're just being driven nuts by their boss, they don't really need more information, they need a practice, they need to be able to shift their way of being.
- CWChris Williamson
I think you're very right. The fact that we believe that more knowledge is the answer as opposed to increasing our compliance to the knowledge that we already have, every personal trainer or anyone that's ever been to the gym knows that it's not really that much about what diet or what training plan you follow versus whether you follow it consistently over a long enough period of time. If you do anything long enough, you'll get good at it. Now, the hope is that the thing that you do for long enough to get good at it isn't drugs or isn't cheating (laughs) on your partner or whatever it might be.
- MWMark Walsh
Well-
- CWChris Williamson
Um, just, just to bookend something you mentioned there, you talked about the Greeks and about how the gymnasia was this place that was not only one of physical being but a, a, a mental being as well. Did you know that Plato's real name wasn't Plato?
- MWMark Walsh
What was his real name? Keith?
- CWChris Williamson
Ari- (laughs) No, thankfully not. There was also, there was no Keiths born in the UK in 2018. That's another ... They're a dying breed. Um, Aristocles. It was claimed that Plato's real name was Aristocles and that Plato was a nickname that translates to roughly “the broad,” derived either from the width of his shoulders, the results of training for wrestling, or the breadth of his style or from the size of his forehead. So hopefully it's from the-
- MWMark Walsh
That's clear.
- CWChris Williamson
... broadness of his shoulders, not the size of his
- 9:44 – 15:47
Awareness Ranged Choice
- CWChris Williamson
forehead.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. And you know, this is throughout history, people have talked about how, you know, uh, wha- George Washington sat a horse or, you know, Nelson Mandela was a boxer. There's, there's, there's ... Not the only one. But, uh, this has been lost somewhat if we look at our kind of current, uh, crop of politicians or corporate trainers. And you mentioned practice. Like we're all practicing something. Like everyone out there listening to this, maybe you've got, you know, YouTube on your phone where you're taking a shit. Maybe you're walking down the street. Maybe you're, you know, you've got it on in the car. You're practicing a way of being. Like, I interview people for my podcast and you see their way of being all the time. Some are ... As soon as someone comes on, some people are like, "Right. Hang on. Bluh." Right in your face. Other people are like, "Oh, let me examine this." Some people are wide and they're like big, you know, like Americans can be as a cultural embodiment, you know. Like, "Hey." And other people, you know, you had Douglas Murray on
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
... was like, you know, Douglas has his particular Douglassness, doesn't he? And it's, it's, it's very particular. It's a flavor. And there's a w- and, and that is great for some things and rubbish for others. So my, my, uh, general approach to personal growth, whether it's business, yogis, life coaches, whoever I'm working with, is awareness, range, and choice. So first thing is we need to know what we're doing. What's the default? Right? Like, most people don't know which way they cross their arms, but then you try it both ways, you know, and you go, "Ah, okay, that's really uncomfortable." O-dub your fingers, yeah? So y- this is like your personality. There's, you can s- you can lean forwards, lean back, and people can try this, go on the balls of their feet and then on their heels. You know? It's like go up ... You know, some people, they're kind of all up here, aren't they? And they're either very anxious or they're like, dude, like totally spacey like in Northern California. Or, you know, my family are like Irish potato people. They're right down here in the earth. You know, and you see this in different parts of England. You know, some's more grounded, like up north it tends to be a bit more grounded and, uh, in the south they're more up here. Uh, so there's cultural factors. And not everyone, 'cause there's individual factors too, there's situational factors, there's relational factors. These are all going on in embodiment. So I don't know if you're like this all the time, this is the first time I've seen you, right? So I, or if you're just like this when you do interviews. So there's all these different aspects of embodiment. But if we bring some awareness to that, maybe we can try something different.
- CWChris Williamson
... the first place that anyone has to go with any type of change presumably is cultivating a sense of awareness of what they're doing at the moment.
- MWMark Walsh
Know thyself, nothing new.
- CWChris Williamson
Where do we go next?
- MWMark Walsh
Choice. So this is the difference between mindfulness and embodiment. Mindfulness is like be aware of your state and it's like, "Oh, I'm really angry," right? And it's like, "Well, hang on a minute. I've got a meeting with my staff..." This is a real example. Absolutely pissed off with something, really angry, and then it was like, "Well, I don't want to bring that to my team. That's not going to be a helpful state to bring to my team." So then, then we become the philosophy won't help you here, but the physiology will. So here we then have the physiological shift. So maybe it's, you know, I put my feet on the ground, uh, come back in my chair and soften my jaw. I let my peripheral vision open up. I take a, a deep belly breath and, you know, people listening can try this if they want. You don't... You can do this with your eyes open driving a car. (sighs) Okay, tell me again, what was it you were saying, Chris? So that ability to shift state is so key. And, you know, you don't want to be that guy on the high street shouting, saying, "I'm not angry." He doesn't even know he's angry, but if he did know he's angry, he'd still have a second thing to do, which would be to shift it, if he wanted or he could express it, which is another skill. That's another embodied skill a lot of my fellow Englishmen lack, is the ability to express themself. You know, like I, I lived in Brazil for a while in the slums of Brazil working there, and I, I got back and I was just more fluid and relax. And my mom was like, "Where did you get those hips?" You know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
And it's like, "I learned this." Like, I lived above the nightclub for six months in Brazil. Did nothing but fuck and fight and dance for six months and I came back and it was like, there was a different embodiment 'cause I'd been... And even you know this, like, you go on holiday for a week even, you can start to soak up the embodiment or you go down to London from Newcastle, it's a different vibe, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Very much so.
- MWMark Walsh
S-
- CWChris Williamson
Very, very much so. So we've got awareness to begin with. We need to know that we are X and I'm going to guess that this could be, uh, macro or micro that we are angry in the moment or that we are perhaps unhappy or frustrated over time.
- MWMark Walsh
State and trait. So awareness of state is easy, you can feel it. That's mindfulness. Awareness of trait is invisible. It's like the taste of your own mouth. You have to have it pointed out or you have to do some kind of comparison to feel the difference. So the guy who's always angry doesn't feel angry. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
He does. Just he's, he's... it's like comfortable underpants. He's, you know, you've, you've gotten used to it, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
Am I wearing... I don't... I'm not even wearing any today. I haven't worn any for ages. But it's like, you're used to that embodiment so you have to step out of it to feel it. It might not... it might only be by stepping out of the anger you go, "Shit, I'm spending a lot... I'm angry most of the time. I didn't even realize." Everybody else can see it, but he can't. State is much easier. It's like being tired or being energized or, you know, I can notice like, "Oh, I'm a little bit nervous for this interview. Not a lot, but a little bit." Okay. Might want to slow down a little bit more. So if I can notice my state, I can change it. Trait-
- CWChris Williamson
I'm g- Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna guess that knowledge or the learning is going to help us more moving from step one to step two, rather than just being step one. Step one of the awareness of either our state or trait is simply cultivating a mindfulness of what is happening either in that moment or what has changed over time. But moving on to step two, which is...
- MWMark Walsh
Choice.
- CWChris Williamson
Choice.
- MWMark Walsh
Choice. Awareness and choice.
- CWChris Williamson
But you don't necessarily know, you mentioned the man that is angry, even if he becomes aware of his anger, needs to learn or needs to have a particular process that he can follow in order to, uh, enact that anger, to release that anger, to deal with that anger, to do whatever. So I guess that you do require some knowledge in the choice section.
- 15:47 – 21:05
Expert Knowledge
- CWChris Williamson
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. And I'm not anti-knowledge. I love what the West brings in terms of science and the Renaissance. I love the fact that we can dissect things and, you know, I'm a geek for this stuff. Like, I'll look at practices and I'll say, "Okay, you could try..." You, you're kind of... I'm coaching this, like, Russian business guy today and it's like he's kind of a bit stiff, you know? And I'm like, "Okay, you could try conscious dance. You could try improv comedy." You know, I could just give you a little exercise to do at home that just takes two minutes 'cause you're a busy guy. You know, this is where we get geeky and this is where a bit of expert knowledge can come in to know how to shift. But p- people are also pretty intuitive about this stuff. Like, you know, I could take someone and say... let's say there's a young woman who's lost her confidence. This happens to a lot of girls in teenage years, their embodiment kind of folds over. They get these kind of round shoulders. They, they lose that natural confidence kids have. Now, someone like that, they know what it's like to be confident 'cause they've seen it and at some point in their life, they've done it. Even if they only do it one day in 100. So actually people know. You know, like if I say to a little kid, "Which direction is happy?" Sounds like a weird question, but the... you know, I asked that to a seven-year-old and they jumped up in the air, right? Like, "Which direction is angry? Is it tight or is it relaxed?" Well, most people would go, "Okay, it's forwards and tight." Yeah. Like people can figure this stuff out. I mean, I have maps for it and I, you know, as I said, I geek out about it, but, um, it's like, it's like human inheritance really to know this stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
So we've got choice and what's third?
- MWMark Walsh
That's it. There's awareness... there's awareness, range and choice. So range means that you can actually have some options. That's kind of the middle ground. Sometimes I say awareness, acceptance and choice. So this is the paradox of change that we need to know how we are and then say, "Okay, that is how I am. And right now I'm scared," or, "Right now I'm angry." Saying yes to that, you know, I was listening to you, your man on who is stoic guy, you know, being able to accept things is a really important skill. And then moving to, do I want to change something? Can I change something? Am I gonna take the time to develop myself? Um, maybe that's a small practice like walking a little bit more. Um, you know, you see some people, they're walking, their arms are vapid. They take small steps. You know, their practice could be walking to work every morning with just a little bit more push from the back foot.... swinging the arms just a little bit more. Skin it like every day for 10 minutes, you know. And then we have the relational side, okay? So we have awareness and choice for self, but then what about other people? We've got-
- CWChris Williamson
Before we get onto that, um-
- MWMark Walsh
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... there may be people who are naturally or trained to be more utilitarian, very pragmatic-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and they will say, "Well, that's all well and good, Mark, telling me to walk a little bit more off my heels and stand up straight with my shoulders back-
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... like Jordan Peterson, but that's, that's just a physical movement. That's me just drilling-
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"You're telling me to walk a particular way, that doesn't change anything about me other than my gait."
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. So the first thing I'd say is don't believe a word I say, okay? First thing I'd say is, uh, try these things. I mean, I could be some cult leader lying to you for my own, you know, financial benefit or something, right? So, um, don't believe me. Like that would be nice. And who am- who the hell am I? I'm just some guy from the internet. So I would say try it. You know, I've n- for example, like I get some guy to do star jumps, jumping jacks they call them in America, and say, "Tell me you're sad." It's just impossible, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
It's, it's like I cannot-
- CWChris Williamson
Unlike if you get someone to do burpees and no one's happy. If you make them do burpees-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. Well, I think burpees-
- CWChris Williamson
... no one's happy. If you make them do star jumps, they're sad.
- MWMark Walsh
... burpees are just a form of torture. Or here's another one. Someone's tired and I say, "Right, well, you could do chest breathing for three breaths." All right? (breathing deeply) Okay, do you feel more or less tired? 99.9% (laughs) of people are saying, "I feel more awake, I feel less tired." Right? Don't believe me. Like test this stuff, you know, and if, if you, if you have enough trust after a few of these little tests to do a bigger test like taking up tango dancing or taking up karate or, you know, taking up whatever, salsa dancing, whatever it is, then see how it changes your life. And like that's my philosophy. Like you don't have... it's not a religion.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, uh, really enjoyed this insight I got from Derek Sivers earlier on this year, founder of CD Baby, um-
- MWMark Walsh
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... really, really insightful guy. And he, uh, he talked about most books are spending their time convincing you that the author's word is worth trusting. The vast majority of books are either context or justification.
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and what's, what's really interesting about that-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and it was an in- an insight that I'd never heard. I've riffed quite a lot this year on a lot of books are blog posts that should have been a tweet expanded out into 200 pages.
- MWMark Walsh
Nice. Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
But what Derek hit upon that I really, really enjoyed is that most books have a, a one particular key insight, but the problem is that you don't trust the author enough to believe it. So they have to, they have to give you all of these different examples. Like if your best friend whose last five pieces of advice for you about relationships or the horse that you should pick-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. That's
- 21:05 – 22:24
Authority and Trust
- CWChris Williamson
And-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, the, the authority and trust, right? So-
- CWChris Williamson
Precisely.
- MWMark Walsh
... I know from body phenomena as well, I mean there's a reason, you know, British Airways when they say, you know, "Tonight or today we'll be flying at 10,000 feet and blah, blah, blah, and your mother would probably find me attractive." You know, there's a, there's a, there's a embodiment to the British Airways voice, for example. Now if they were like, "Hello, welcome to British Airways. Um, we're going to Malaga, I hope it's gonna be fine." I mean just the anxiety, you'd hear that fight or flight response and you wouldn't trust that guy. So, I mean, it... one is embodiment of there's two factors, warmth and power. So one, one factor is like is this person authoritative, are they competent? Now we can base that on past experience, like, you know, I've listened to your podcast so I know you're a competent interviewer, for example, right? I can base that on that experience. However, if I didn't, I would get that sensed from the first three seconds of this interview because you're relaxed, you're like, "I know what I'm doing. You know, this is home base for me. Welcome to my h- home, you know-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
"... welcome to the podcast. I do this all the time. You know, it's episode whatever it is, 250." You know? And then there's warmth, right? But if you just did power, you'd be like, "Okay Mark, fuck you, I'm in charge, I know what's going on. You know, like, like I'm the boss here." And then I'd be like, "Oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable, hang on, I don't, I don't feel very relaxed." So it's what... you know, with children, with horses, with human beings generally, like this is just what we need to convey and these are embodied capabilities,
- 22:24 – 25:04
Relational Life
- MWMark Walsh
uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Cool. So we, we've looked at the individual and then-
- MWMark Walsh
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... relation.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Relational.
- MWMark Walsh
Life's about relationship, right? If we're just on our own in a cave, it's not a very satisfying life for most people. So it's the same thing, this is the embodiment skillset, embodiment intelligence I sometimes call it. Um, awareness and choice, then we have self and other. So other, we have awareness of other, and that is state and pattern. Same thing, okay? State and trait. So it's can I look at someone and go, "Are you all right?" Like I was talking to my colleague yesterday and I just went, "Are you okay?" And she went, "Actually, my mom's in hospital and my housemates hate me." And it's like she just needed to listen, you know, 10 minutes of me listening to her before we could get on with the business meeting. It was fine and I didn't mind at all. But had I not caught just in my gut, in my own... empathy is embodied. Without embodiment, you're psychopathic, right? Like if you're not feeling... and we all have this experience maybe, you know, on the tube or walking through a crowded street or when we're stressed or in a rush, we lose empathy because our body tightens, we lose the ability to resonate. You know, you've had that experience, right? Of just being a bit of a dick and then afterwards going, "I'm sorry, I was stressed, I shouldn't have said that." And you'd lost the empathy in that moment, you know? So when we're relaxed and we're open and we're centered on ourself, we've done the s- stuff we just talked about, we've got some chance of resonating with other people. In this case, realizing my, realizing my colleague wasn't very well and you needed a bit of listening to. So that's the, the listening side, the empathy, and then, and then there's body reading, right, where we can look at different patterns. And that's always a guess and it's to be approached with humility, but-In a way, it's common sense. You know, you're walking down the street, someone's there and you go, "Oh, this doesn't feel good." Right? You get so ... Either in your own body or you see something that, then that, you know, they're looking around, they've got a certain muscle tone, they've got a certain tension in their body, their breathing's a certain way and you go, "Maybe best cross the road." You know? So it's like, you know, I worked in war zones for years and I go, got quite attuned to this. I spent a lot of time watching people who I didn't really speak their language or I was just learning their language, like Brazil, East Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan, and I'd go, "Is this safe?" So I was quite motivated to figure out whether they were shouting 'cause that was just their culture and like, you know, like in the Mediterranean, some of those people shout. Or was it that they were angry and this could be a dangerous situation? And the other thing is just touching a lot of bodies. If you touch a lot of bodies, you start to get a different felt sense of them. So I was traveling around the world doing martial arts, um, and after touching several thousand bodies, like, in, in quite intimate ways in some ways, you start to get a bit of a better felt sense of people than the average person. Um, so that's, that's the, the sort of third of the four capabilities with just awareness of other people.
- 25:04 – 26:45
Laughter Kung Fu
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
I did for a long time when I was a kid, I did Lao Gar kung fu, which is a southern style of kung fu. Very popular.
- MWMark Walsh
Yep. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and I did that to Brown Sash, and a big part of that is sticking hands.
- MWMark Walsh
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
So with that, uh, anyone who doesn't know what that is, it looks a little bit like a dance. You have your wrists on my wrists, from your right on my left, my left on your right, and we ... Yeah, we roll. We roll our wrists between each other, and what you're waiting for as you're moving forward, the other person will move backwards and as they move towards you, you'll move backwards, and what you're waiting for is a break. If that person breaks contact with your wrists and you're flowing backwards and forwards, left and right, in circles and then you'll reverse the circles, and you're waiting for a break. And at that break is an opening at which you can then move into that person. But if you move into them when they're still touching you, they know you're moving and they can reverse that particular move, and then you'll end up being struck. So that insight, incredibly intimate. You used the word intimate there which is one that, it comes sort of quite heavily loaded, but it's really correct. You know, that was some of the most intimate understandings that I got of how other people's bodies worked. And really, you know, sort of being honest, other than proper body work that I've had done to me or that I've said, "Oh, hi, mate." Like, "Your back's hurting." Like, "Give me a ... I'll give you a hand." Other than that, or, you know, much more intimate sort of passionate relationship stuff-
- MWMark Walsh
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... you don't ... I, I ... Had I not have done that, my understanding, my genuine felt understanding of what other people's bodies are and how they move would be significantly lower, and I know that doing Lao Gar kung fu is an outlier. You know, it's not like you, you-
- MWMark Walsh
Well, it's a great sensitivity
- 26:45 – 30:10
Physical Skills
- MWMark Walsh
(00:03:30) surprise. It doesn't surprise me you've done martial arts, by the way. You can feel that in a person, you know, it's, it's ... There's a way in which someone carries themself even years afterwards when they've had that character training. And some, you know, some practices have that sensitivity. Sometimes people learn a physical skill and it never really transfers into their life, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
What like? Any, any particular physical skills that you see in people that don't tend to translate across much?
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. Sort of in everything, but let's take, let's say you spend ... Let's take a popular practice, yoga. So, people could get very good at being calm in yoga and then walk out of yoga, pick up their phone, go on Facebook and immediately start a flame war. Now, they've got ... Had a little bit of a holiday from their life in yoga and they've had a bit of calming down which is, you know, it's good for all of us. So good luck to you if that's what you wanna do, but they haven't really learned any skills. They haven't really transferred any skills across from yoga, um, into their life, which is kind of a pity and there's, there's ways I, you know, point out for my yoga students about how to increase the transfer or else, you know, particularly it's, it's a particular container, say an Aikido school or a yoga school, it's got its own clothes, its own ritual, its own words. You know, the, the ... Let's stay with the phone example. There's no mobile phones, right? So I spend about an hour a day on my mobile phone at least, I'd say. So I might have ... Let us say I've learned a breathing exercise, like belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. Well, why don't you try that with your phone? And if that's too easy, get your email on your phone and then see if you're still breathing. Right? And we can actually train that as a transferrable skill. So that's one of the things I do with students. We'll start with ... Like, let's say we're s- training the stress response, so we'll, we'll start with throwing a tissue at them, throwing a Kleenex at them and they, they flinch, right? I mean, it actually even works online. You wanna try?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
Wanna try?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, sure. (laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs) Okay. What did you do with your body when I threw that at the camera?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, you wanna move backwards. You want to jerk backwards.
- MWMark Walsh
D- did you move backwards, yes or no?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, a little bit, yeah.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, a little bit, and you tensed up probably a little bit too, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MWMark Walsh
And your breathing changed a little bit?
- CWChris Williamson
Little short, sharp breath in.
- MWMark Walsh
Okay, great. So, good noticing. You have higher body awareness than a lot of the beginning (00:05:30) that, that would already indicate to me you had some real practice behind you already. And then you would get with building your awareness of that fight or flight response. Then we could give you a technique to work with it. Could be something as simple as, um, uh ... Can I offer you one now, Chris? Is that all right? Like a little technique.
- CWChris Williamson
Fire away, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MWMark Walsh
Your, your eyes are quite narrow. It may be you're just looking at the camera, it may just be today, I don't know, but try, uh, opening up your p- vision so you can see all around the computer, not just the computer.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh.
- MWMark Walsh
Soften your jaw a little bit. We call this the Russian smile in Russia. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
Say, "Ah."
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- MWMark Walsh
Ah. Okay, what happened that time when I threw the tissue?
- CWChris Williamson
Nothing.
- MWMark Walsh
No, a whole lot less, right? So we actually just trained you to reduce your fight or flight response. Now, throwing tissues at you is completely pointless.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
But what we could do, and I won't do this online 'cause it's a bit personal, we could train and take this into a coaching environment and we could use a situation like a piece of criticism or something stressful. Maybe your girlfriend criticized you, or your mom or your boss, and we could then train that to A, again, notice the response, and B, to then reduce that response.So this is the reducing the fight or flight response, 'cause it's usually not helpful unless, you know, you've got a heavy rock to lift or something (laughs) . It doesn't really help for our social interaction. Um, or we could work with expressing it, right? That would be a whole nother set of practices.
- 30:10 – 35:34
Yoga
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
Cool. Just to close that open loop that we've got, there will be a lot of people listening-
- MWMark Walsh
Close what? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Uh, there'll be a lot of people listening who do yoga and are thinking, "Oh, fucking hell. Mark's rumbled me there. Um, I, I, I do really enjoy my practice. I do feel very mindful, very embodied, very centered when I'm doing my yoga. And yet you're right-
- MWMark Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I really struggle in X situation, in traffic, when I get out, when I have this, that, and the other." How can people that are practicing yoga or similar other practices transfer that across into their day-to-day life?
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. That is the question. I've spent my life really looking at that. So first of all, I'm not slagging off yoga. If anyone's enjoying yoga, if it gives you a break, if it makes you less stressed, great, keep doing it. Good for you. No problem. I like yoga. So I wanna say that first of all, 'cause otherwise people think you're kicking their puppy a little bit, you know? (laughs) It's, um... People get very attached to practices 'cause they help people. Um, so how to transfer it? One, notice what you do 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after class. So bring in a bit of an awareness to... For example, I've seen people be really abusive to the person at the desk, and like just unpleasant as they go, paying for their cars, and then go into yoga and sit down and start saying om.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah. Yeah, exactly.
- MWMark Walsh
And it's like, "Dude-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
... "Not even 10 minutes before, you were being mean to someone."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MWMark Walsh
Right? So we can open up before and after. Uh, another thing is you can have reminders. So, you know, iPhones are great for this. You just set your phone to go off five times a day. When it goes off, you do one yoga breath, one full yoga breath, five times a day. Okay? There's another one. Another one, micro poses. So if, if people got YouTube, they can look all this up. It's much easier to show you than tell. But there's something called embodied yoga principles where you explore this on YouTube. Um, you, you have warrior pose, right? How do you get warrior pose into your life? You find a way of doing that on a small level. So this takes me five, 10 minutes to train a yogi in. And we can take a pose they know really well, and we can then take it into walking, standing, and talking. And I'll say, "Right, ask me for a cup of tea in warrior pose." Right? "Ask me for a cup of tea in the opposite of warrior pose." "How would you walk like a warrior?" And they go, "Well, you know, I move my arms, I extend from my back leg, I look straight ahead." Okay, I go, "Great. Do that." And then we've taken warrior pose as a sort of bad bit of exercise into stretch, in from stretching into something they can use in conversation, something they can use as a practice walking down the street, something they can use to stand slightly differently without looking too weird. Now we've made it into transferrable practice. There's, there's about 10 other things, but there's, um... it's three for starters.
- CWChris Williamson
There's some nice takeaways. You mentioned that we were at three out of four.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. So we've done awareness and choice self, and we did other awareness, so it's empathy and, and body reading, but we didn't do influence. So really, it's just based on the other three. So how do you calm someone down? Or wake them up? Yeah. Or make them laugh, or turn them on, or whatever the influence you wanna have on someone else is, that's through the body. Uh, I'll give you an example of this. I was... I work in Russia a lot. I was just there now actually. And, um, I have an interpreter. And my interpreter's this very polite, um, slightly nervous, very particular young lady called Julie. And it's quite difficult because I'll say, "Da, da, da, da, da." And she'll say, "Do, do, do, do, do." And it completely changes the message. So she's actually, to her credit, she's learnt my embodiment and she kind of steps into it. And another example from there, when I make a joke, people laugh before she translates it. Why? Because the, the embodiment is what's being conveyed. Yeah? And, and this is what we do all the time. Like, I used to work with kids a lot. I used to work in like, you know, you know, PGL or outward education, and big groups of kids running around the woods, lots of fun. And, you know, you have to hold their authority. That's a body thing. And it, it almost doesn't matter what you say. You know, like my best mate, he'll... I haven't seen him in ages. He'll see me once or twice a year back home and he'll say, "Mark, you're the biggest knobhead I've ever met in my life. You're such a wanker." But what his body's saying is, "I love you and I missed you." You know, this is proper British bloke thing to me. And that's... Actually, I can tell that's what his body's saying 'cause my body relaxes and it opens. Does it make sense?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- MWMark Walsh
So this, this is a fundamental way we influence people. Like, you know, let's say you're interested in attraction. Maybe there's guys or women out there and they, you know, they're interested in being more attractive. Now, you can wear some clothes and get a haircut and maybe learn some pickup lines, but if you're not embodying, uh, s- attractive qualities, you won't even be looked at. You won't even be looked at by women or men. And as soon as you have those, it's just like, you can be wearing the dirty T-shirt with food on it and have your hair all over the place, and you've all got a mate like that. Isn't he annoying? You know, who kind of had that naturally, never had to learn it. He had that, we call it charisma or chemistry or... You know, chemistry is an embodied thing. If you and your partner's love life has gone... And I've worked with gay community a lot in Russia as well, so this works with gay people too. But if you, you and your partner, your love life has gone a bit flat, it's you've lost polarity. That's embodied. You know, if you're yang and she's yang, or you're yin and she's yin, that's not... it's not really gonna help. So can you actually step into that polarity, step into that where you can influence them? And, um, this is an embodied skill, I... Tre- tremendously useful for any kind of leaders or influencers.
- 35:34 – 36:20
Biggest Challenges
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
What are the biggest challenges that people come up against when trying to improve their influence?
- MWMark Walsh
They're not basing it on the other stuff. So they, they try and go straight to the tricks, and they're not basing it on their own self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy. Um, so they need to sort of... They, they sort of come to me and say, "Look, I, I'm fine, but everyone else is fucked up." Right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
All right, maybe let's look at that, you know? (laughs) So, um, yeah, that's probably the biggest challenge, and just not being in their bodies. I mean, if, you know, it's like, "Hello, I'm Norman, I'm your manager. I'm completely in my head, I've got no embodied presence, I'm not feeling anything and I'm trying to inspire you today." You know, just not having any kind of passion or embodied presence at all, that, that's not gonna be helpful.
- 36:20 – 38:49
You are the common denominator
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
I put in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago that you are the common denominator in your life.
- MWMark Walsh
Mm-hmm. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
What is, what is more likely, all of your relationships end badly, let's say, or your boss always seems to like you-
- MWMark Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... or you always seem to be much better with money than all of your friends, or, um, you just never get invited out to parties, whatever it might be.
- MWMark Walsh
(sighs)
- CWChris Williamson
Wherever you go, there you'll be. Like you're-
- MWMark Walsh
That's what I've been saying. Right there. There you are.
- CWChris Williamson
You're alwa- you're always going to... y- y- you are the common denominator in your life. And I, I know it's hard. It's hard for everyone to hear because it feels so bestowed on you, right? Like, whatever the common threads are that exist in your life, they manifest in your mind like a, a curse that's been thrown down from the heavens, and that's also the way that our emotions then manifest them, right?
- MWMark Walsh
That's pretty much, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, the, the feeling of love is oxytocin.
- MWMark Walsh
Love is an action done in the body.
- CWChris Williamson
So, but the way that you sense it, the way that it actually manifests when you try and think and break it down and you feel it in your chest and you feel the warmth, that doesn't feel anything like just a chemical getting released.
- MWMark Walsh
Nope.
- CWChris Williamson
And the same thing goes for the situations that occur in your life. The challenges that you face feel like they've been bestowed upon you, and the successes that you face also, for people dealing with imposter syndrome, feel like they've been bestowed upon you too.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. I mean, personal responsibility is the first thing I teach all my new employees. It's what I, when I... We just took a big team on for the conference we were talking about earlier, and the first thing I taught them was personal responsibility, is like, you know, in, in embodiment we call it somatic responsibility. It's like no one made you angry. You made you angry. I mean, you know, you might say, "Hey, he made me angry," and as a shorthand that's fine, but really it's, "I did anger in my body." This is from Paul Linden, one of my main teachers. Uh, "I did anger in my body when he said X," right? Like that, even if it was an unconscious choice, was a choice. And then actually it's radical to take responsibility over yourself, and there are... That's the conservative truth, right? The personal responsibility. The liberal truth is equally important to balance, which is that there are conditions, and those conditions might be intergenerational trauma, it might be poverty, it might be whatever the, this... You know, living in Moscow, it might be that you haven't eaten breakfast that s- that morning. There's lots of conditions, right? So we have to acknowledge both of those things, the conditions and the responsibility, and for me embodiment is, um, a great way to take responsibility over myself and, you know, get out of that victim position.
- 38:49 – 44:12
Common embodiment techniques
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
I want to get onto the embodiment conference in a little bit, but before we do that, can you try and give us some more common embodiment techniques, the most common ones that you use with your clients or...
- MWMark Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that you've been, that you've been taught, that you think the broadest cross-section of people that I know can probably benefit from some of these?
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, great. So I mean, we've got state changes and then we've got how do we develop ourselves as people. There's no quick wins for the second one, okay? Like, second one, you want to develop yourself as a person, get a practice, start going to karate or t- tango or conscious dance, you know, do meditation every morning, great. That's a long-term project, but people often need the quick wins first so they can have some sort of state change, which is fair enough. So, stand differently, walk differently, sit differently, breathe differently. There you go, that's about it. Breath, do you want to breathe a bit more in the chest or a bit more in the belly? That will have a different impact.
- CWChris Williamson
Which do we want?
- MWMark Walsh
Well, it depends what you want it for. So when everyone talks about good breathing or good posture, my next question is, "Well, what for?" So if I'm trying to go to bed at night and I want to go to sleep, long, smooth out breath, you know? That's chamomile tea breath. If I want to wake myself up in the morning, espresso breath. When I was in bed this morning, I had five hours sleep, I needed to get up to see my team, I was like (inhales and exhales deeply) . Okay, just one, one breath, 'cause sometimes you only got two or three seconds, right? Uh, did that, got out of bed, okay? Simple get up technique. Whoa, I'm like (laughs) I'm awake from doing it just now. And then, like, this evening, it's like, what are we at? Like, it's like, oh, we got a few hours yet, but there'll be a (sighs) . And that makes me just go to sleep (laughs) , just, I don't want to do that too much actually, I'm being interviewed. So there's two breaths for you right away. We could say yang and yin, belly and long out breath versus the in breath. Uh, how do you stand? Do you want to take up space or do you want to be more private? More width or less width? More forwards? Do you want to be more engaged? Like as an interviewer, right? You can be more engaged, like, "Hey, Mark, tell me that," or you can be more back, evaluating, taking your space. Yeah? And we can go up and down. Do you want to be more down (taps chair) which is like grounded, solid, mm, stubborn, we will fight them on the beaches, you know, or do you want to be more up here, more, like, lively and inspired and light and fun and... Well, it depends when, right? Like, maybe you want to be serious now, you're at work, but later on you're relaxing, you know, you're having fun with your friends at the pub, you want to be a bit more up, up above. So we can use posture. Walking I've mentioned, simple-ass techniques. Y- you're someone like me who tends to rush, walk a bit slower, walk more on the heels. You're someone that lacks confidence, walk with a slightly l-... It doesn't have to be Monty Python, just a slightly longer stride. Push from your back foot a little bit more. Yeah, look up. You know, the Jordan Peterson thing about, you know, stand up tall, I mean, it's not wrong, it's just not very detailed, right? (laughs) It's just, it's fine, it's just, you know, I did a video on what could be added to that. Um, so what have we done? Sitting. Again, you know, how do you want to sit? Posture, breathing, movement. So these are basic tools. Um, and then we could look a bit more esoterically, you know, like, or a bit more creatively, like, um, like right now, imagine, visualize the hand of someone supportive on your back.... someone from your past, a teacher, or maybe a dad or grandparent, and lean into that. Yeah. You just shifted. How was that?
- CWChris Williamson
It's a nice cue.
- MWMark Walsh
Nice, huh? So you can have a visualization, like sometimes I'm, you know, visualize you're on fire, visualize you've got angel wings, visualize you're, uh, feet are trees. I mean, you know, some people love visualization but other people it doesn't work for. Um, so yeah, or we can say, okay, like, um, one of my translator, Julia in Moscow, good lord, she's one of my best friends now, she says, um, when she wants to be more confident and kick ass, she's, she's kind of like, you know, she does this, sort of, her inner Mark Walsh, and she sort of moves and stands a bit like me. And if I want to be sort of nice and polite and a bit less offensive, I can be a bit more like Julie. Right? Like, that's a mode, because I'm quite familiar with Julie from years of standing next to her, I can just, it's like channel but there's nothing weird about it. It's just, I'm bringing that person to mind. "Ah, there's a body. There's a, a, this quality with Julie, ćevertiljkast,' yeah? And I, uh, change as soon as I start to put that on. But all of this stuff is just hacks, right? And I, you know, in my book, plug, uh, there's a whole chapter on sort of, on sort of, um, hacks and like little quick wins you can do. Things you can do as you get in a chair, self-coaching. Uh, it doesn't have to be complicated. You know, the iPhone that goes off and reminds you to breathe, that sort of thing. But really, if I'm working with people long term, it's the practices. It's what are you really practicing? Um, yes, we can give you shapes to practice, yoga shapes and poses, uh, but it's something like, you know, you mentioned your, your kung fu practice. You know, that has stayed with you. That has stayed with you years later 'cause you put the hours in. And, I th-... Like, let's grow up. Y- yes, it's nice to go and do some ayahuasca or mushrooms. Yes, it's nice to jump up and down and, you know, do a workshop and, you know, pump the air and feel good. But unless you're really developing a practice, that stuff's not gonna stick. Let's, let's get real. All the books in the world won't solve your problems. I can listen to 1,000 podcasts from me or from you and learn about Stoic philosophy and listen to Douglas McMurray and all these great thinkers. But unless I develop a practice, I'm not changing.
- 44:12 – 46:24
No bad reps
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
That difference between state and trait I think is a really good point to make. And again, it comes back to the, the transactional nature of what the self-development world has, has come to. And we try as much as possible to talk about compliance on this show to try and remind people that what you do every day is what you'll end up becoming.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, there's a, a concept which you might love actually, with the martial arts reference, from Ethan Suplee, my buddy who was in Wolf of Wall Street. Big, huge Hollywood actor.
- MWMark Walsh
I get you.
- CWChris Williamson
Massive guy out of, um, My Name Is Earl, and now he's lost 300 pounds-
- MWMark Walsh
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... and he's got a beard, and he wears his cap on backwards, and he deadlifts like 500 pounds, and he's just, he's a beast. Um, and he was learning martial arts for some huge blockbuster that he was in, and the martial arts instructor that he had gave him a rule which is called "no bad reps."
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And no bad reps is a really smart way to remind us that you're always drilling something.
- MWMark Walsh
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
The way that myelin sheaths wrap around, the, um, neurology. Neurology?
- MWMark Walsh
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, neurology of how the myelin sheaths wrap around in your brain isn't that you don't get to choose not to make a habit. You just get to choose which habit it is that you're making.
- MWMark Walsh
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Got this really-
- MWMark Walsh
Something is wiring together right now. Everyone listening to this, right now, something is wiring together.
- CWChris Williamson
Neurons that wire together.
- MWMark Walsh
They're firing together. They're gonna wi- they're gonna, they're gonna, they're firing together right now. They're wiring together right now. So do you want to have some conscious embodiment or do you just wanna have the same old bloody unconscious embodiment that your dad had and his dad before him, and that your culture gave you, and you were supposed to have as a working class British bloke, or whatever the hell you are out there? Like, like, that's, you can just be completely unconscious with that, or you can say, "You know what? I choose something different." And I'm a believer of any embodied practice. If people want to do yoga or dance or martial arts, different people like different things, great. Get in your body. Start to feel again. Stop thinking that wanking over porn and reading books is gonna cut it. Like, get into a dojo, go do yoga, do something that you get into your body again and reclaim that humanity.
- 46:24 – 48:10
What are some suggestions
- CWChris Williamson
What are some suggestions you've got? People think, "Yeah, yeah, th- uh, Mark Feller was all right. Like, he, he's, th- that embodiment stuff sounds pretty good." First off, let's say that we're in COVID, which we are.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, what can or should y- wh- what would be a good suggestion for people to start? And then let's say that we're back into the real world, what are some things perhaps that people have overlooked that would be a little bit more left field?
- MWMark Walsh
Okay. If they're a complete beginner, if they're pretty cerebral like my academic friend, any movement practice that involves feeling. Whatever's comfortable and happy and inspires you. Whether it's martial arts, dance, yoga, whatever. Okay? You can do that at home. There's Zoom classes and all these things now are actually more available than ever before. So there, you know, getting up from your chair, this I don't like. You can see I'm getting antsy. I don't like sitting still for an hour, you know. I normally move around a lot more. Um, being in nature, being around other embodied people, they're the key factors. But movement is the first one. Do some simple things, even if it's just 10 minutes of mindful breathing a day, a little bit of mindful barefoot walking on the grass in the park. That's what I do. Um, and then if you feel inspired, do a class. If people are listening to this and they already have a practice, next level, examine it. Is it transferring? Question one. Is your yoga or your cry or whatever getting off the mat? Yeah? Question two, is your practice chosen (laughs) from your neurosis and just making you more and more like how you are? Maybe you actually need a second practice. Like, I did martial arts for ages. I got very disciplined. You know, I got that Japanese thing that I needed to get my ass sober and to, you know, give me that structure in my body. But then I got a bit uptight and I needed to go to 5Rhythms and let it all hang loose and dance and be free. You know? So there's like different things. If you've already got one practice, you might want to look at a second
- 48:10 – 50:10
A more leftfield suggestion
- MWMark Walsh
one.
- CWChris Williamson
And what's a more left field suggestion when the world reopens?
- MWMark Walsh
Well, other than let's all have an orgy in Newcastle-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
... I think, um, you know, and this is, in the snow. I think, I think we'll all go clubbing in Newcastle and have a great time. That, that would be my-
- CWChris Williamson
That's fine. Guest list available, text below. Um-
- MWMark Walsh
Inviting you.
- CWChris Williamson
... you mentioned about like in- interpretive dance and, and, and-
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... comedy and all this sort of stuff.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, all of these different practices might, they're horses for courses, but getting into the body, I, I, I really like that idea. I, I think as well this year more than ever, I've noticed the lack of variety in the movements that I've been able to do. You know, I haven't been-
- MWMark Walsh
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
No- no one's been going to a nightclub in 2020. No one's been really spending a ton... I- in the UK we weren't even allowed to go out of the house. You could maybe barefoot on the wa- on the grass once per day.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Unless you got a, unless you got a garden. People been locked in their houses. You know, you live in a city, it might be a fair distance for you to get to some nature. So, I think that there's a good, a really good case to be made that taking yourself out of your mind ... And I'm gonna make a pejorative statement about the vast majority of people who choose to listen to podcasts and consume this type of content in any case, I think that'll select for a particularly cerebral type of person already.
- MWMark Walsh
I-
- CWChris Williamson
I think they'll exist a lot more in their head than they will in their body. And I certainly know that I do, as someone who thinks that he's trying to push these boundaries already. So there's, I definitely agree. I think there's a lot that can be taken from the embodiment practice.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah. You know, man should be well-danced and well-fought as well as well-read. And I, I love reading, you know, just loaded books behind me. I ordered about five yesterday. I'll probably get around to reading two of them if I'm lucky. I love reading, but we need something more than that if we're gonna grow as people. We need to practice. We need some way to get back in our bodies. And as you say, in these times, I think it's particularly important. We're, you know, we're in this slightly disembodied world right now and, um, yeah. I, I'd encourage people to do whatever embodied practice appeals to them, give it a go.
- 50:10 – 53:20
The embodiment conference
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Tell us about your conference.
- MWMark Walsh
Okay. So we have a huge conference coming up. Uh, where to begin? I love embodiment. I think it's a good thing, I'd like to see it out in the world. Uh, I've been putting stuff out on, you know, online, on YouTube, on my podcast, Embodiment, for free, and then I went, "Hang on a minute, we could do an online event." Two years ago, we did it for the first time. Everyone laughed at us because no one knew what Zoom was then. 15,000 people turned up. And then I thought to myself, "Well, hang on, how big can we make this?" And now we've got a thousand speakers, probably gonna be half a million people booked in. The Embodiment Conference it's called, theembodimentconference.org. All the top names in trauma, in yoga, in meditation, martial arts, free to the world. Um, we, we make our money by buying the record, people buy the recordings, but it's totally free if people want to listen into it. It's theembodimentconference.org. And, um, I'm gonna be honest, it's a terrifying proposition. All of a sudden I'm the mayor of a small town and I've, you know, a million pounds to do it. Um, and I'm in charge of a team of 60 people. And I'm like, you know, I'm used to doing little embodiment trainings for 30 or 50 people, so it's, it's a bit of a step up for me. And, um, what can I say? I feel inspired by it, I feel stressed by it, I feel, um, uh, happy I'm doing it, I feel frustrated sometimes. There's the full spectrum. It's, it's like a Mount Everest to climb. But, um, it's happening. It's really happening. So if, if people are at all curious about this stuff, the Embodiment Conference would be a good place to, um, get a taste, get a free taste of many, many different approaches, like a kind of tapas meal, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
When is it?
- MWMark Walsh
It is the 14th to 25th of October, and it's online. It's free for everyone, free to register, real easy to do. And, uh, there's 10 different channels running simultaneously 24 hours a day. It's in nine languages as well, so if people want to listen to it in German or Spanish or Chinese or whatever, they can. So it's, um, yes, we think it's the largest educational event in human history. Uh, it's certainly the largest online summit there's ever been. Uh, it's pretty ambitious in its scope, and we've got this very clever computer systems some Israeli friends of mine made which just sort of means you can find what you want rather than just get lost in it. So you can say, "Right, I want to learn about trauma, and I want a beginner's class, and I want it next Tuesday." And you just put all that in, and, uh, you can find what you need.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, what an event, man. That is a, a serious-
- MWMark Walsh
(laughs) It's something.
- CWChris Williamson
... a serious undertaking.
- MWMark Walsh
You know, if someone told me, "Hey, well, what about next year?" I'd say, "I'm not going to the clubbing with my ex. What are you talking about?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
"This is crazy." Like, so it's, it's really something, and I, I wanted to push it and just see how far it would go and, um, you know, have that personal challenge. And as I said, I think this embodiment is needed in the world today. I, I think we are disconnected from ourselves and that has prob- that leads to all sorts of problems, whether it be health problems, emotional problems. We're disconnected from each other, you know, and we're disconnected from the planet. And those, those things cannot continue. So even in this weird techy, you know, tuning in online, learning embodiment on the internet world, we need to find a way to come home to the body. And, uh, I hope this is, um, some contribution towards that.
- 53:20 – 54:26
A noble pursuit
- MWMark Walsh
- CWChris Williamson
Awesome, man. I think that's a, a really noble pursuit. And I'm gonna guess that this was planned long before COVID kicked off.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 18 months in the making.
- CWChris Williamson
Yet 2020 probably a pretty good year for people to have this, some sense of community, a connection to half a million people.
- MWMark Walsh
Yeah, I mean, the Facebook ad price came down if nothing else, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- MWMark Walsh
But, um, it was... But I'm joking. I don't wish COVID on anyone. It can be nasty, particularly for elderly people, can't it? But, um, I think a lot of people are isolated, stuck indoors. Uh, having... We've done a lot of lead-up events to this, we did events on stress and trauma and, you know, different things like that, and you could see it was really beneficial for people to, even if they were in their house, to be able to connect with other people. Um, that feels like a worthwhile thing to be putting out there and, you know, giving some of the, the skills and the experts and just making it globally available for everyone online. So, um, I'm proud of it, to be honest, mate. I feel like we've already achieved something just getting to this point. And, um, yeah, it's, it's definitely a test for me as a leader. It's not always easy. But, um, I'm proud we're doing
- 54:26 – 55:54
Where to find out more
- MWMark Walsh
it.
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations, man. People want to check it out, where do they go?
- MWMark Walsh
Theembodimentconference.org, or if they just google Embodiment Conference. Uh, if people like what have been hearing us say here as well, they can look at YouTube channels about it, the podcast. I've got a book out called Embodiment. Basically, you start googling the word embodiment, you're gonna come up with all this stuff, and there's loads of free resources online. So, um, yeah, I want to encourage people to look up those. And there's lots of other teachers in this field, not just me. And if I'm not your cup of tea, you might like Paul Linden, Richard Strezi-Heckler, Wendy Palmer. There's a whole load of great teachers out there in the world.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Everything that we've gone through will be linked in the show notes below. I'll be tuning in, I think. I'll, uh, ask you for your, uh, your top superstars from the conference. It'll be like asking you to choose your favorite-
- MWMark Walsh
Ooh. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... children or something. I'm gonna-
- MWMark Walsh
Great. Now I have to tell you offline as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm gonna ask for the secret.
- MWMark Walsh
It's a little bit, uh, it's a little bit political, that. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
The super, the super secret best of guest list, and I'm gonna get, um, uh, I'm gonna tune in and do that. Mark, today it's been really, really fun, man. I've really enjoyed it, and I think that the concepts that we've gone through hopefully will help a lot of people. Like I say, anyone that's interested in finding out a little bit more about this, I'll have linked most of the stuff that you need. Or if not, just search Mark Walsh or The Embodiment Conference online and you'll be able to find out some more. For now, man, thank you so much.
- MWMark Walsh
Thanks for your time, Chris. Pleasure.
- CWChris Williamson
Outro: All things. Ah, yeah. Oh, ah, yeah. All things.
Episode duration: 55:55
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