Amazing Benefits Of Walking Backwards Everyday You Never Knew About (Heal Pain, Posture & Stress)

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 Lawrence, you work with some of the best athletes on the planet. You're an amazing movement coach. You're so much more than that. But one thing you recommend to a lot of your athletes is backward walking. Why?

Lawrence van Lingen 0:15 I think, um, there's a lot that goes on with backward walking. If I had to distill it out really simply, I think it's basically an antidote to modern life. I think it introduces an element of play into our movement. It's grounding. Um, it changes the timing of your walking. So I think we s- spend a lot of time in flexion, a lot of time sitting, and it's a really, really good way to sort of open up your posture and create length and space and kind of get the chair out of your posture. Um, but there, there's a lot to unpack in backward walking. It's just, it's something that you should just try and do and experience for yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:51 What are some of the benefits that people can get if they start backward walking?

Lawrence van Lingen 0:57 For a lot of people, it down regulates your nervous system, so it can be very calming, and, and that's, that's amazing in and, in and of itself to find a way that can kind of quickly ground you or calm you or, or change your autonomic nervous system. Um, and then the other one, it, it kind of decompresses your lower back and pelvis and creates space in your joints. When you're stepping back and you put your whole weight through your leg, you almost learn to trust the, the tensegrity, which is like a fascia word, the internal sort of structure of your body, and you learn to put your whole weight through your leg. Whereas a lot of time, people are, are kind of hurried and rushing and taking the next step, and there's a lot of tension in their movement. It really frees up tension from your walking and running.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36 Yeah. It's really interesting. I think most people listening to us right now will have heard the benefits of walking more.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43 Like, they-- You know, we all know, don't we, where... that we should be trying to walk more in society, and the modern world has made it harder or certainly more difficult for many people to get basic levels of low-intensity movement that we would have had for much of our evolution.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02 But there's very few people who are talking about backward walking, right? Which is, which is super interesting for me. You've told me before that some of your athletes will actually do a bit of backward walking before they go to bed. It helps them switch off. It helps them calm down. And so there's this relationship, isn't there, between the way we move and our body's stress levels.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:25 Yeah, totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:26 You know, can you talk a little bit about that?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:28 Yeah. Um, I mean, this is something that I'm really immersing myself in at the moment, and, and it's... because it's so powerful when you get it right, and it makes such a big change, and it's this relationship between your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. So, you know, for, for clarification, I think most people are pretty familiar with these terms now, but your parasympathetic's rest and digest, and your sympathetic nervous system would be sort of like what we need to in an emergency state. So it's fight or flight or fawn or freeze. And I think a lot of people are overstimulated in the modern world, and so can tend to be a little bit wired or a little bit anxious and a little bit uptight, and, and we really do need to calm down and down regulate. And you're seeing this incredible interplay between your autonomic nervous systems and the way you move and the way you breathe, and, and if you get it right, it's so incredibly powerful. Um, and so we really do want to sort of learn how to down regulate the stress at the end of the day so that you sleep better, so that you wake up and your next day is better. But also in that moment, learning how to move with more ease, learning how to move in a more relaxed manner, learning how to move in a more grounded manner, then walking becomes rehabilitation. And so your forward walking gets so much better if you, if you walking and it's a creative act and you're thinking and you're thinking better on your feet. Whereas, you know, on, on another level, you could be anxious and, and angry and stomping along or tr- you know, rushing to get somewhere and having a sense of anxiety and time pressure. And, you know, those are not the same walking, and I think modern pe- modern life can pull you into a state where you're not really aware of, of... You're just in a ch- constant state of reacting. You're always late. You've got deadlines. You're always rushing somewhere. You're not immersing yourself in the wa- in the walking itself. You know, you're not extracting all the gold from walking that there could be. So I think that's kind of where I'm playing around with it at, at the moment, is trying to get people more centered, more embodied, more in themselves, and then you move better and you experience life better and, um, you make better choices, and people around you react far differently to when you're calm. So it's just life-changing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:42 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 4:42 It's much more than movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:44 There's a couple of interesting themes there for me, Lawrence. Okay. Um, firstly, this idea that many people these days are chronically stressed.

Lawrence van Lingen 4:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:54 Okay? So they're chronically in the sympathetic part of their nervous system, which is the-

Lawrence van Lingen 5:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:00 ... fight or flight part-

Lawrence van Lingen 5:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:01 ... as opposed to the parasympathetic, that relaxation part.

Lawrence van Lingen 5:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:04 Okay. I think many, stroke, most people listening would go, "Yeah, yeah, I, I kind of get that."

Lawrence van Lingen 5:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:10 Okay. "I'm too busy. I'm too stressed. I'm looking for practices that help me de-stress." And what's interesting for me is I think a lot of people, when they think of, you know, winding down their nervous system and switching off, a lot of the time they're thinking about doing less things or maybe practices like meditation or journaling, right? And again-

Lawrence van Lingen 5:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:38 ... nothing wrong with those things, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 5:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:40 But you're talking about a particular movement practice, backward walking, as a way to down regulate.

Lawrence van Lingen 5:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:49 Now, I think that's-- I guess some people would, would maybe say, "Well, yoga helps me down regulate in the evening."

Lawrence van Lingen 5:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:56 "It helps me switch off." Okay. So I think-

Lawrence van Lingen 5:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:57 ... there is an understanding that movement-

Lawrence van Lingen 6:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:00 ... the right kind of movement can help us down regulate. But I guess-I, I'm really interested as to why you think backward walking does this. Is it because it's such a pattern interrupter? So because we don't do it, our brain is having to adapt because suddenly, you know, you're, you're, you're walking now not with the heel down first, your toe's going down first, and you're ... Do you know what I mean?

Lawrence van Lingen 6:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:27 Is part of it a pattern interrupter for the brain?

Lawrence van Lingen 6:30 Yeah. Th- there's an element of neuroplasticity because, you know, you're walking backwards and you, you sort of have a fresh look at walking. But it, it's ... There's a twofold answer to that question, is if you walk forward and you're up on your toes, um, and sort of elevated, you'll feed into your sympathetic nervous system. But if you use your whole foot, and you really sort of trust the ground, and your heels hit the ground, what'll tend to happen is you'll activate more your parasympathetic nervous system. And so walking backwards, you, you learn to trust your heel, you learn to connect your bones. And so if you just walk backwards and you, you ... as you put your whole weight through the leg that you're standing on, and as you translate backwards, you learn to take a lot of tension out of your hips and your, your adductors and your hamstring muscles and your leg muscles. And because of that, you learn to move in a way that's much softer, and it's, it really does impact the nervous system. And it might not work ... You know, some people are really big responders, and, um, I think from our previous lesson, a lot of people walk backwards and, and have very, very quick results. Within a week, they're like, "Oh, my word. This is incredible." Um, and then the second one is I think it impacts our tonic and phasic muscle system. You know, you had a great run this morning, and, and we sort of got a new move. [laughs] Um, and yeah, really getting into your tonic and phasic muscle system as a, as a way of actually understanding and healthily intervening and healing your autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:58 Okay. Well, we'll get to-

Lawrence van Lingen 7:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:59 ... uh, tonic or tonic-

Lawrence van Lingen 8:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:01 ... and phasic muscles in just a minute.

Lawrence van Lingen 8:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:05 Th- th- this, this word you, you mention a lot, trust.

Lawrence van Lingen 8:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:11 It's really interesting. Ever since I started consuming your content online, one of the things that I always loved about the way you talk about movement i- is, you know, in many ways you talk about movement as being life. The way we move is the way we live. If you can't trust through movement, you can't trust in life. I'm not saying you, you-

Lawrence van Lingen 8:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:39 ... directly say those words. This is what I take from it.

Lawrence van Lingen 8:41 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:41 This is how I think about it. And, and I think sometimes we, uh, the collective we, we think about movement as separate from our lives. Okay? So-

Lawrence van Lingen 8:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:51 ... I've got my job. I need to answer my emails. I need to do this, and then if I have some time, because I heard on a podcast that movement is good for me, I need to go to the gym and move my body.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:01 Again, I understand that.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:02 I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But what I really love about your work, and this is how I think about movement, is the way you move, your ability to trust yourself when you move, impacts your wider life beyond that specific movement. And backward walking's really interesting, isn't it? Because if you think about it, on so many levels you're having to trust. You know, have you had experiences of athletes who perhaps were, for whatever reason, maybe trauma, past experiences, you know, bad relationships, whatever it might be, struggled to trust in life?

Lawrence van Lingen 9:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:40 And through the trusting of their movement, through something like backward walking, it started to impact their lives beyond that movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:49 Yeah. And I think you're really onto something. So the trust notion, you know, it's like in ... I don't know. They'll have people fall backwards, and you, and you get caught from behind.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:58 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:58 You know, there, there's an element of that, for sure. But the more people start to trust their bodies, it ... you know, trust starts to show up elsewhere in, in your life. Like, let's say running. Running's ... We can, we're gonna hopefully talk about this a little bit later. You know, running, the injury rates are really, really high, and so a lot of people have a, a sort of a love-hate or a fear sort of relationship with running. They're always injured, or when's the next injury gonna come? Or you are injured, and you're very, very frustrated. Like, if, say, we're an antelope in the savanna in Africa, [laughs] if you're walking with a limp, you know, you're the food. Like, you're the weakest in the link. We don't like limping. We don't like being insecure. We don't like not trusting-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:34 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 10:34 ... our, our knee or our bodies or our joints. It's very, very unsettling. So if you can start to trust your body, like you know and you're confident that if you reasonably well behaved, you're not gonna be injured, that's very, very empowering. And, and we see it with athletes, for sure. I mean, like Taylor Knibb, who I work very closely with, um, she had in, I think three years, 13 MRIs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:00 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 11:01 And, you know, in the last nearly two years, she hasn't had a single MRI, and her level of trust in her body is, is blossoming in all areas of her life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 11:10 And, and, and the self-confidence, and she's just showing up different. And the way she perceives the world's changing, and the way the world perceives her is changing. You just know here's a young, confident woman that's stepping into her power, and, you know, you can't fake that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:24 No.

Lawrence van Lingen 11:24 Well, you can try and fake that, but it comes from a very authentic place.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:27 For, for people who are not familiar with the elite, uh, triathlon worlds, can you just explain who Taylor Knibb is? 'Cause she's not just any athlete, is she?

Lawrence van Lingen 11:35 No. No. Taylor's, um ... Taylor's a very special athlete. So, um, she's won world 70.3 Champs three times, and last year she won the inaugural, um, T100, which is like a middle-distance triathlon racing. She won every race she entered in that, and won the overall champion.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:51 So she's one of the best athletes on the planet?

Lawrence van Lingen 11:53 Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 11:55 At the moment, currently middle distance, she's unparalleled. And sh- you know, she went to the Olympics for two different sports. She went for cycling and for triathlon. She's, she's exceptional.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:03 Yeah. That, that, that whole idea that, you know, maybe before she started working with you-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:07 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:07 ... or taking this approach, she wa- she had 13 MRI scans in three years.The fact that running injury rates are so high, I, I, I definitely- let's come to that in just a moment. Let's just ... For people who are interested in backward walking, um, we'll shoot a video afterwards-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:24 ... and we'll try and sort of-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:25 ... pop it in or pop a link so people can see it. But just give us some, uh, rough guidance. How can people-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:32 ... actually do it?

Lawrence van Lingen 12:34 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:34 Is it outside? Is it inside? You know, w- what, is on a treadmill? Like-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:37 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:37 ... could you just walk us through those things, please?

Lawrence van Lingen 12:40 Okay. So you wanna be safe, okay? You know, don't ... [laughs] It's, it's very easy when you're walking backwards to walk into things. So if we do it in a gym, for example, with athletes, they'll, they'll actually focus on what they're doing so much and they, they will walk into equipment. So try and walk in a place where there's quite a bit of space or you're familiar with. So, like, your back garden is great 'cause you know how big it is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:01 Yeah. I think we touched on it first in our first conversation, but I think it's such an important concept for people to realize, is I feel very much that your posture will often reflect your personality.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:20 And I know for me that the more open I'm able to be, the more trusting I'm able to be, the more I'm able to actually, um, you know, be with my height. I'm a tall guy.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:34 You know? I'm actually getting taller. I'm, I think, an inch taller-

Lawrence van Lingen 13:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:38 ... uh, like my spinal measurement compared to-

Lawrence van Lingen 13:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:40 ... five years ago.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:41 Yeah. Well, that's important, and that's what we want. We wanna decompress the spine.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:45 Exactly. So it's not that, um, it's not that I'm suddenly mi- uh, miraculously growing. It's that I wasn't in my full height before.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:54 No. Yeah, you've regained your potential. That's what you're supposed to be. That's your birthright. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:58 Exactly. But, but, but, but this is where it gets really interesting for me, Lawrence, is that that is also reflected in my personality. So I was telling you in the kitchen just before, and I think, uh, Make Change At Last, that is my sixth book that came out-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:12 ... just a few months ago now. It is without question the best and most confident book I've ever written.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:18 And I don't think you can take my posture and the way I move away from that because ... Okay, so I'm, you know, 6'7" now, I think.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:27 Okay? But like many tall people, um, you try and hide your height, you know, when you're like 18, 19, 20. You're at university.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:37 You're trying to fit in. You're trying to make friends. You know, you're trying to get down to everyone's-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:42 ... level. So what does that mean? As you get down, you start to compress your chest.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:46 And I've realized that as I can move into my body better, as I can lead with my heart, and have an open chest, and be in my height, I'm more confident.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:57 I'm more secure. I'm less concerned with whether people agree with what I put in that book or not.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:05 I'm like, "It's fine if you disagree. No problem."

Lawrence van Lingen 15:07 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:07 Like, this is how I see the world.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:09 If you find it helpful, great. If you don't, okay, no worries.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:12 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:13 It, it's ... So again, you asked me about backward walking. I'm saying backward walking and a number of other movement practices have helped me change my posture, change my height, and that has also played out in the way I interact with the world.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:30 Yeah, and then, uh, the way the world interacts with you changes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:33 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:33 It's, it's, it's amazing. And I mean, you know, for the listeners, I- we had a treatment session yesterday, and your body's just so much better. Your joints are more aligned. You, you've got space in your joints. Your stack, your posture, everything's dramatically improved since I last saw you. So sometimes, you know, people say walking backward, you notice this initial result, and then there's slow change. But that's why you ... Whatever you choose to do, you should stick with, because if we took Rangan now back into your old body, you'd hate it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:00 100%.

Lawrence van Lingen 16:01 You, you, you just wouldn't wanna be in that same ... You'd just be like, "No, no, no. Get me out of here."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:05 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 16:05 And because it's a learned technique, you know, if we, if we could take what you knew now and then take you back five years ago and put Rangan now into that body, you know, instantaneously it would be ... it would ... you'd have a different posture. So posture is almost a, a learned technique.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:22 I'd have a different posture and a different personality.

Lawrence van Lingen 16:24 And a different personality.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:25 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 16:25 Yeah. Emotion and motion cannot be separated, and your posture and your deportment and ... We see it in the lines of your face. You can see it in ... Y- you know, we're a reflection of what we habitually do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:37 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 16:38 And how we move and how we think are absolutely linked, and that's why, like, with, with running, often we'll give emotional postures rather than a cue. So instead of saying, "Oh, drop your elbow," you know, you, you want to have a sort of run with an open heart or run with a sense of trust. It's more powerful because then you start, you start to realize, oh, that's how I keep the sensation. It's the feeling of it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:00 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 17:01 You know? The feeling of what it means to you to be openhearted, what it means to you to be in your full power. It'll mean something different to someone else, but it's a really good running cue. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:09 If someone wants to start backward walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 17:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:12 ... on the back of what they've heard and go-

Lawrence van Lingen 17:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:14 ... "Okay. All right."

Lawrence van Lingen 17:14 All right. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:14 "Lawrence Rangan, you've sold me."

Lawrence van Lingen 17:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:15 "I need to ... I ne- uh, not I need to."

Lawrence van Lingen 17:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:17 "I want to-"

Lawrence van Lingen 17:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:19 ... start playing around with backward walking."

Lawrence van Lingen 17:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:23 Like, 'cause people love a bit more precise guidance, don't they?

Lawrence van Lingen 17:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:27 Like, what is it? Is it five minutes a day? 10 minutes a day? Morning? Evening? Barefoot? Wearing shoes? You know.

Lawrence van Lingen 17:33 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:34 What, what ... You know, just help someone understand that.

Lawrence van Lingen 17:36 Okay. So yeah, you're gonna walk backwards into your new life. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:41 Love it. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 17:42 So what we wanna do is prefer ... Ideal situations, backward, grass. We want texture or sand, so we want texture in our feet, and be- you got more nerve endings in your feet than your hands.So, so skin on something pushing up into your arches, like ground or, or sand would be absolutely ideal.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:00 So outside-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:01 Outside

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:01 ... if you can.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:02 If you can.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:03 Barefoot.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:04 Barefoot.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:05 No barefoot shoes.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:06 Skin on the ground.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:07 Skin on the ground. Now, uh, let's just pause there a minute. If you don't have access to grass or sand-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:14 Do the best you can

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:15 ... do the best. What about, can it be okay on a carpet inside?

Lawrence van Lingen 18:18 Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:19 Just-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:19 Barefoot on the carpet in- barefoot is best. So barefoot on the carpet inside, AstroTurf, gym. Barefoot's better, but if it's with shoes, it's fine. Just, just do the work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:28 Okay. Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:28 You gotta start somewhere. You, you don't have to nail it. You know, perfection is the enemy of progress.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:32 Yeah, love that.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:33 Just, just get it done. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:35 Get it done. And how long for?

Lawrence van Lingen 18:36 And so five minutes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:38 Five minutes a day?

Lawrence van Lingen 18:39 Yeah, yeah. Five minutes. We really wanna try for five minutes pretty continuous, and the reason is your brain will sort of discombobulate or break down after about two minutes or 90 seconds, and you almost wanna refocus and then go again. And, and we think that in, in the, in the second part of that practice, you'll get more neuroplasticity and more gains out of it. It's kinda like you play guitar, right? You, you should do, um, your scales for five minutes. And often you can constant- it's really easy for about 90 seconds, and then at about the two-minute mark, you'll make a few mistakes, and then you concentrate, and then the second part of your practice seems to create n- neural change and neuroplasticity. So five minutes is the magic number.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:16 Okay. So five minutes a day, backward walking barefoot. And I know from when I started to do it that there's a particular pattern-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:24 ... you want, right? And I know, I think I shared this on the first one-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:27 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:27 ... like in my family of four, three of us did the wrong pattern initially.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:33 So our intuitive feeling-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:34 ... was we didn't do it right. My daughter nailed it first time.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:37 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:37 She just got it.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:39 Um, I can now nail it now-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:41 ... because I know it.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:42 But I, I mean, we'll try and shoot a video to show people, but can you... Are you able to articulate it in words for people-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:48 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:48 ... so they know?

Lawrence van Lingen 19:49 Yeah, yeah. So, so the cues are soft toes. So as you step backwards, you wanna relax your toes and let your toes bend on the ground.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:57 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:57 And then your heel goes down. Your heel must... You- as you step backwards, you want to be able to have full weight through your heels. It's really important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:05 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 20:06 Um, so that's the important thing. And then your belly button or your sort of solar plexus, so here where your ribs are, that should point towards the lead leg, the leg in front of you. And it's very common for people to sort of step out of pattern the wrong way around, which would be your, your belly button pointing to the leg that's stepping backwards.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:25 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 20:26 Okay? And, and that's basically a reversal of your normal gait patterns.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:31 And, and-

Lawrence van Lingen 20:32 And that's one of the reasons some people respond to it. Once you, you s- restore that pattern, it has a profound effect on the nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:38 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 20:38 So if you walk the wrong way around, you wanna be thinking, "Oh, this is an opportunity because if I correct this, good things are gonna happen."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:46 Yeah. And not just in your backward walking practice, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 20:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:49 The- your stress levels, how relaxed you feel, but also I'm guessing when you go forward walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 20:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:55 ... or when you go for your park run at the weekends-

Lawrence van Lingen 20:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:58 ... you're gonna run with more efficiency-

Lawrence van Lingen 21:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:01 ... because of the backward walking practice.

Lawrence van Lingen 21:04 Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And, and it shows up really, really quickly, so I would encourage anyone that if you're gonna do flow rope, measure your height before you... Because the flow rope often decompresses people's spines by about an inch and pretty rapidly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:14 What... That, that term, you used it a lot last time as well, decompress the spine.

Lawrence van Lingen 21:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:19 What does that mean?

Lawrence van Lingen 21:21 So your, your body works like a suspension bridge. We've got rigid levers and elastic tissue. It's a combination of the two. So steel and... You know, like a su- suspension bridge has steel and concrete, right? Um, so your spine can often be compressed by muscle tension. So all the... There's hundreds of muscles that run up and down your spine. There's a lot of long muscles that run across multiple joint segments, and they'll... If they're tight, they'll compress your spine. And the flow rope and learning to sort of move from the center and taking the tension out of your movement will, will relax those muscles, and your spine will decompress. It gets longer. You actually take pressure off the discs. So anyone that's got back pain or, you know, has sort of degeneration of their spine, you know, I really strongly encourage you, if you start these sort of practices, you know, for flow rope, measure yourself, your height, and I'm pretty sure you'll decom- You know, if, if people comment and come back and say, "Yeah, I measured myself and I got taller," it'll be really good feedback 'cause a lot of people will. Um, and I almost expect it. It should happen. And with backward walking, your running will improve, and it'll improve quickly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:26 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 22:26 You'll... If you take a before and after video, so you take a video of you running on the treadmill from the side and you walk backwards five minutes a day, and it doesn't have to be every day, it can be three times a week, whatever you can fit in, you know, within two weeks, and if you, you know, video you're running again, it'll have... your form will have changed.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:43 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 22:43 There's no doubt about it, and for the better, and your, you know, your, your experience of running will be, will be better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:49 What, what's really interesting, Lawrence, is those two practices you mentioned, backward walking and the flow rope, not only are they incredibly beneficial for multiple aspects of our health, our happiness-

Lawrence van Lingen 23:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:02 ... our wider lives, they're also really fun.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:06 Right? A lot of people have this love-hate relationship with movement, don't they?

Lawrence van Lingen 23:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:09 They, they hear public health messaging that they should move more, but what... for some reason, and there can be many reasons, they don't enjoy the movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:18 It may be the particular movement they're doing.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:20 Or it could also be that their body is locked in certain patterns, so movement feels hard and difficult. Backward walking and the flow rope, like you're gonna have a smile on your face-

Lawrence van Lingen 23:32 Yeah. Totally

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:32 ... as you do them. That, that you feel like you're a child again playing around.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:35 How important is that when it comes to healing our bodies?

Lawrence van Lingen 23:38 Well, it's really, really important. I think, l- let's say for the listener, you're sitting there and say, "Well, I wonder how wired I am or how stuck in a sympathetic state I am," you know? Well, one of the things is if you're not curious and you don't have a sense of play, you're in a sympathetic state. So parasympathetic and curiosity and play go hand in hand.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:57 Okay, hold on. Just pause there a minute-

Lawrence van Lingen 23:58 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:58 ... 'cause I wanna make sure everyone follows the term. So s- um, sympathetic nervous system, I know we've covered it-

Lawrence van Lingen 24:03 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:04 ... but I just wanna y- I just wanna land-

Lawrence van Lingen 24:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:06 ... this point right.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:06 Sympathetic nervous system is the stress part of your nervous system, which you don't wanna be in all the time, just now and again.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:12 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:12 But unfortunately, f- in the modern world, many of us are mostly in that state.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:17 The opposite is the parasympathetic nervous system-

Lawrence van Lingen 24:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:19 ... the relaxation part of the nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:21 You're basically saying one way you can ask yourself and determine if you are in that stress state or that relaxation state-

Lawrence van Lingen 24:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:29 ... is to ask yourself how playful and curious you are.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:32 Because if you are in the relaxed state, you are gonna be curious.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:36 Yeah, you should be play- playful and curious, and that's the precursor to neuroplasticity. It's the door you have to go through walking backwards to get into a sense of, of change.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:47 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:48 And, and, and, you know, so, so what would be the opposite of playful and curious would be reactive, opinionated, guarded, defensive, um, fearful, you know, the lack of trust. So yeah, trust, play, and curiosity would indicate that your nervous system is healthy. And yeah, it's, it's really hard to imagine that people are gonna walk backwards and not start smiling or, you know, laughing or, yeah. And then, and, and it's so important. And then, and then what happens is when you start bringing those concepts, you know, the flow rope can bring a sense of creativity and flow and release and, um, a lot of people with the flow rope, you know, also it can be very down-regulating because you're sort of mobilizing the spine and you're waking up all these incredible nerve endings and muscles feeding back into your brain, which you're not... You know, we all understand, like, a massage can be really, feel really, really good. You know? Well, that's, um, because we, we're sort of wired for, for touch and movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:44 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:44 And so it releases oxytocin, and oxytocin is the hormone of trust. So you can start, you know, doing these things and totally reframe your relationship with movement into a healthier one. You know, that, that Strava did a, a questionnaire of, of quite a lot of runners, and 90% of people don't like running. They run 'cause they perceive the benefits of it, but they don't enjoy running, and we would definitely wanna shift 90% of people hating running and 10% enjoying it to 90% of people enjoying running and having a healthy relationship with running and movement because then it's sustainable.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:17 That is a staggering statistic.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:19 Right? Now, I don't know the sample size. I don't know-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:22 It was like 10,000 people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:24 Yeah, and again-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:24 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:24 ... I don't know if the people-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:26 ... were more likely to answer if they didn't like running as opposed-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:29 ... you know, I, I get all that stuff.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:31 But nonetheless, even if it's a, you know, not quite right-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:35 ... it's still pretty alarming. What-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:38 Strava's a, a, you know, a movement tracking app, right? So people are interested in movement if they're on the app, or they're trying to-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:47 Yeah, they, they're monitoring their fitness and their activity levels-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:49 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 26:50 ... for sure, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:50 90% not enjoying running.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:54 It's a remarkable statistic.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:56 It makes you think, why do they actually keep doing it if they're not enjoying it?

Lawrence van Lingen 27:00 Yeah. Well, probably for the benefits afterwards or because they're told that it's good for them, you know? And it's, it doesn't seem to be that intrinsic. I mean, Dan Lieberman touches on this, Professor Dan Lieberman. Um, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, we're kind of wired to conserve calories, and so-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:18 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 27:18 ... there is an initial resistance to exercise, you know? But once you get into it, it, it, then it rapidly reframes and you realize, oh, I feel so much better. I, I mean, often you don't feel like going for a run, but you feel fantastic afterwards. So there, there is always a bit of resistance to, to exercise or doing hard things usually.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:35 Ah. I, I wonder what your take on this is, Lawrence. My, my perspective is that one of the reasons a lot of people don't enjoy movement or running-

Lawrence van Lingen 27:49 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:49 ... for that matter, is because there are restrictions in their body. So when they, you know, they, whether it be from stress, trauma, stored emotions, the modern work environment, right? It changes our body. So we then take that changed body to this kind of natural, uh, playful activity like running.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:09 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:09 Right? And we're taking, um, I don't know, this kind of flexed, um, inefficient body into that movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:20 Right? So then we don't enjoy that movement, or let's tie this into those injury rates.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:25 Uh, the running injury rates are through the roof. I think you told me yesterday or this morning that running injury rates are higher than NFL.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:34 Yeah, the, I mean, you know, again, they're stats and, you know, but yeah. I mean, pretty decent-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:38 American football injury rates.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:39 Yeah, American football, yeah. You're more, you... The injuries are miles higher for running than NFL.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:45 But, but the, the natural, uh, conclusion for some people would then be-

Lawrence van Lingen 28:49 Running's bad for you. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:50 ... running's bad for you.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:51 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:52 But maybe it's not that running is bad for you. It's the way that you are running is not currently helping you.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:58 Yeah, totally. I mean, you've, you've experienced it. You had a great run this morning. I mean, it's just, it's extraordinary when you get it right, like how-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:05 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 29:06 ... it's, it's just in... It's a, it's a pretty incredible experience. You feel your body opening up, space in your joints, a sense of energy, a sense of lightness, a sense of, um, sort of animation or, and, you know, it's just, it's just profound. And, and yeah, a lot of people unfortunately just will never ever in their lives experience what you experienced this morning.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:26 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 29:27 And so it's just much harder than it could be. And then I, I think a lot of people try too hard when they run and, you know, almost like a work ethic. You, you, you're straining or you're forcing it and, you know, like there's ego involved or you're being tracked or you're worrying how fast you're running or you're not good enough or, you know, you're comparing yourself to others. Whereas you... Running should pretty much be within yourself. And like we walked multiple times this morning. You know, we played-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:49 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 29:49 ... we walked, we skipped, then we ran, then we slowed down, and it's okay to play. If, if, you know, hunters, you had to be curious about where the animal was going, you know, if you, if you go into this persistent hunter model. But yeah, we, you know, the hunter was tired, he'd slow down, or every now and again you'd stop to slow down and listen because you can't really listen when you're running.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:06 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 30:07 Um, so I th- I think an element of play and an el- an element of not being-You know, I've got my pace. I want to run this pace. I should be running this pace. I want to basically run faster than I ran last week. [laughs] You know, we just bring a whole lot of drama to running that just really doesn't need to exist there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:23 Yeah. I think this is such a big issue. Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to Vivobarefoot shoes. Now, I've been a huge fan of Vivobarefoot for over 10 years now, well before they started supporting my podcast. They are the only shoes that I wear, and they really have had a huge impact on my own life and the lives of many of my patients. You see, when people start wearing minimalist shoes like Vivos, you can see improvements in things like back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain. Even things like plantar fasciitis can often get better. And scientific research shows us that just wearing Vivos for about four months or so improves the strength in your feet by over 60%, which is absolutely incredible. One thing people don't realize about these shoes is just how flexible they are, which allows your feet to do what your feet naturally want to do rather than the shoe dictating your foot's movement. Vivobarefoot are giving my audience a 15% off one-time code when you make your first order, and they make it really easy for you to give them a try. They give a 100-day trial for new customers, so if you don't like them, you just send them back for a full refund. I'm a huge fan. I really hope you take advantage of this offer. To get your 15% off code, all you need to do is go to vivobarefoot.com/livemore or click on the link in the description box below. Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to AG1. Now, AG1 is a science-based foundational nutrition supplement that contains 75 whole food sourced nutrients. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, and also prebiotics and digestive enzymes, which helps support your gut's health. And one of the best things about AG1 is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life, no matter how busy you feel, and it's also really, really tasty. What makes AG1 really special is the team of scientists behind it. I speak to them regularly, and I'm really impressed by their commitment to making a high-quality product. If you want to try AG1, they are giving my audience a really special offer. One year supply of vitamin D, which is really good for your immune system,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:55 and five free travel packs with your first order. You can see all details at drinkag1.com/livemore or just click on the link below. Now, back to the conversation. Right. I've noticed it. Um, I don't have it myself anymore, that's for sure. But you see it everywhere, particularly with running. You know, they... I think it's called the Strava Effect.

Lawrence van Lingen 33:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:19 You know, when people know-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:20 ... their run is being tracked on Strava-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:22 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:22 ... they're like, "Oh my God, I, I can't post that time. I must go quicker. What will people think?" It's like-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:29 ... who are you having this conversation with?

Lawrence van Lingen 33:31 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:31 It's like it's just an internal conversation with no one, basically. But we cause ourself this mental stress over nothing. It should be this expression for you and you alone.

Lawrence van Lingen 33:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:43 And so a couple of things come to mind there, Lawrence, for me, okay? One is the fact that you told me last night after you tweeted me that you've made so many improvements in your running efficiency that now you can do, like, a 20K run and not feel it the next day.

Lawrence van Lingen 34:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:04 That is super interesting to me because there's an idea, and I'm not saying people should or shouldn't run every day, but there is an idea that when I run, of course I'm gonna have pain the following day and stiffness the following day. But that's not necessarily true if you're running with beautiful running efficiency, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 34:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:29 Yeah. So that's quite interesting to me.

Lawrence van Lingen 34:30 Yeah. We, we see... I mean, for me personally, running, you know, I, I obsessed about running because I couldn't run, and I found it harder than it should be, and I wasn't very good. So if you look, I did triathlon, right? My swimming was exceptional. My biking was okay, b- and it didn't feel like I had a hard... I thought I could just, with time and effort, I'd, I'd get better at cycling. But I, I was a very, very bad runner, and when I ran, it hurt. Like, my muscles would get sore. My muscles would get damaged. So I'd have to train more and more to condition myself enough to be able to do long runs, and it would beat me up. Um, and now I have a totally different relationship with running. You know, I'm, I'm really, really efficient when I run. It feels amazing. I don't get tired. I don't break down as much. It's not as harmful for me at all. And we have this... So I worked with Jan Frodeno, right, who was... He, he's a, a gold medalist in the Olympics in triathlon and m- multiple world champion. His running efficiency improved so much that he said, like, I kinda stole his, his track workout from him. So what, what he meant by this is, you know, he'd go down to the track, and he'd do sort of eight by one kilometers, and then afterwards he'd be pretty beat up. But he enjoyed the satisfaction 'cause it was like, "I've done work." And he actually liked the sensation of being beat up, and then every day he'd just have physio, um, deep tissue, try and restore himself, and the next day he just repeated. And I was with him in Andorra when he did a track workout, and he said, "That didn't touch sides. It feels like I haven't worked enough and I haven't done enough." So he added two more, I think, 1Ks on there. So he did 10 by 1Ks, and he said, "That's still not enough." And he started doing 400 repeats. And I was like, "Dude, it's enough, but your relationship with running is so changed that..." You know, and this is in a, in a world champion and a gold medalist.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:11 There's a-

Lawrence van Lingen 36:11 So we really can change the, our relationship with running through how well we move.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:15 It's super interesting that you're talking about this-... Olympic medalist, this world champion. A- and from, from what you just shared there, it strikes me as though he had conditioned himself over a number of years that if this workout is gonna help me improve my performance, it's gotta feel hard.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:37 I've gotta feel as though I've worked.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:41 There wasn't this idea that it could actually feel effortless or more efficient-

Lawrence van Lingen 36:48 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:48 ... right? And I, and I, I really find that point interesting because I would say one of the biggest things I've changed with myself over the past years is this goes beyond movement actually.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:57 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:57 This is just... Well, can you separate movement [laughs] from personality?

Lawrence van Lingen 37:00 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:00 I don't think so. But I also... You know, I remember I used to cram for exams at school, at medical school. You know, I had to feel the pressure.

Lawrence van Lingen 37:11 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:11 I had to, I had to stay up late to know, oh yeah, you've, you've right, you've really tried to get it in there for the exam.

Lawrence van Lingen 37:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:18 And over the last few years, um, it's very much been a, a different approach to, to, for me to be thinking, "Oh, well, does it... What if it doesn't feel hard? What does this look like if it was gonna feel easy?"

Lawrence van Lingen 37:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:35 And it's been a, a, a, a seismic shift because I can now go into things not feeling that stress that I have internally generated to make me feel something is worthwhile.

Lawrence van Lingen 37:50 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:50 I'll tell you, actually-

Lawrence van Lingen 37:51 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:52 ... I've not... Don't think I've shared this with anyone yet. Um, in March, I did a 16-date national theater tour-

Lawrence van Lingen 37:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:00 ... of the UK, okay?

Lawrence van Lingen 38:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:02 And it was an incredible experience for a variety of different, uh, reasons. But one of the things... Actually, there was a, there... I can't remember which event it was, but some of my mates were there in, in my dressing room beforehand.

Lawrence van Lingen 38:18 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:18 And I said, "I'm kind of feeling so calm."

Lawrence van Lingen 38:23 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:23 "Like, I'm not even feeling remotely stressed-

Lawrence van Lingen 38:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:26 ... about going on stage." And then this is where when you change, you have to almost, um, challenge existing narratives-

Lawrence van Lingen 38:35 Yeah, totally

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:35 ... that have maybe served you in the past.

Lawrence van Lingen 38:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:38 So the comment... Look, I've changed a lot over the last few years, but, but still, one of the things people will say about stress is that a little bit of stress is good for you.

Lawrence van Lingen 38:46 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:48 Uh, too much stress starts to give you diminishing returns and starts to become problematic.

Lawrence van Lingen 38:52 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:52 And I, I believe that is generally true, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 38:54 Yeah, and I think chronic, unrelenting stress.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:57 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 38:57 So, so parts where you push and then fall back, but it's, it's that chronic-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:02 Yes

Lawrence van Lingen 39:03 ... unrelenting.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:03 And I've been really thinking about this. Well-

Lawrence van Lingen 39:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:07 ... I've, I've thought about it for a few weeks now, but I was thinking on... when I was on the road in March, I was thinking people say, and I've said before, that you need a little bit of stress to get on stage and perform.

Lawrence van Lingen 39:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:21 But what I promise you, Lawrence-

Lawrence van Lingen 39:22 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:23 ... some days I felt m- I felt no stress-

Lawrence van Lingen 39:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:25 ... no anxiety, no pressure going out on stage-

Lawrence van Lingen 39:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:29 ... because all I had to do was be myself. I didn't kinda need any stress. D- d- do you know? So-

Lawrence van Lingen 39:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:38 It's just making sense.

Lawrence van Lingen 39:39 Totally. Totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:39 How do, how, how would you... How do you see that?

Lawrence van Lingen 39:42 Well, totally. G- well, it, it requires w- let, let's say you tell a lie, okay? So I, I don't know, I did something really bad, and I'm being interrogated by the police, and I tell a lie. It's exhausting. You gotta be consistent. You gotta work at it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 39:55 You know, it's draining, and, and a lot of people, I wouldn't say living a lie, but not as authentic as they can or don't express themselves as purely as they can. Whereas if you just show up and that's you, there's, there's no drama, there's no fuss-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:06 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 40:06 ... there's no mental emotion. You're not... You don't have to second-guess yourself. You don't have to think, "Well, did I say this? Did I mean this? Am I in character?" It's just you, you know? And, and it's really, really... You know, that's getting down to the crux of all of this sort of the movement drama, is just shedding away the drama and expressing yourself, and because it's liberating and it frees up energy, and that's why it's high performance.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:28 Why do so many people allow comparison and the time that they're running something in to infiltrate and get in the way of their experience of running?

Lawrence van Lingen 40:46 I think it's culturally imprinted on us. It's keeping up with the Joneses. It's school, it's hierarchy. It's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:52 Everywhere? I mean, you grew up in South Africa.

Lawrence van Lingen 40:53 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:54 And you moved to America.

Lawrence van Lingen 40:55 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:55 Is it, is that the same there? I know there's many cultural differences.

Lawrence van Lingen 40:58 No, I, I, I think y- no, I think if you wanted to go to a cultural place in the world at the moment where that wasn't apparent, it would be you go into the Amazon or into Tanzania and find subsistence hunters, because in a small band of, like, let's say 100 people, everyone adds value-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:15 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 41:15 ... and your value is different. So some person's good at skinning, and some person's good at hunting, and some... You know, everyone's got a different role and function, and I don't think there's a, the same sense of comparison.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:26 I agree.

Lawrence van Lingen 41:26 But from a social structure, I mean, chimps, you know, there's hierarchy in the chimps. You've got the, you know, the alpha males, whatever. We're just hierarchical. It's part of the human condition.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:36 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 41:36 But if you can let it... You know, you don't wanna let that sense of hierarchy and comparison ruin your life or, or, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:44 For someone who is listening to us and, let's say, loves to do a 5K parkrun every Saturday, something that's very, very popular in the UK-

Lawrence van Lingen 41:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:55 ... especially with my audience, um, and they're trying to PB, so get a personal best-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:03 Yeah, yeah [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:03 ... every single Saturday. They've got a busy job-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:05 ... maybe they're stressed, but Saturday morning it's like, "No, no, I've gotta go and push it." And they are someone who always compares, and even if they have a good run but it was 10 seconds slower than last week-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:17 ... instead of looking at the fact that, "Hey, I got out there-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:20 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:20 ... and I started the weekend with some fresh air and nature"-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:23 ... they're beating themselves up-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:25 ... that they were 10 seconds slower than the week before.What would you say to them?

Lawrence van Lingen 42:30 Is it worth it? [laughs] What's the cost? I mean, is it ... You know, is it worth it? Are you ruining a beautiful Saturday morning? Is it worth it? Perfection is the enemy of performance, which, which there's not that narrative. There's, there's, there's, there's excellence, and you've got to show up every day and be, like, amazing. It's the devil's in the detail, or there's marginal gains. But trying too hard just never works out right. And I think most people, when you ... If you look at the greats, like, uh, you know, Eliud Kipchoge, he trains within himself most of the time. He only really, really pushes himself in a race when it matters. And, you know, so, yeah, it's law of diminishing returns. You're gonna go to that park run, you're ruining a really good experience and an opportunity. And running is so social. We, we're a band of brothers. Like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:19 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 43:19 ... the African proverb is, you know, "If you wanna go fast, go, go alone. But if you wanna go far, run with friends." I, I think running as well is one of those lessons in life, 'cause it's, it's a great metaphor for life, um, is at some stage you just start slowing down, and you've run your last fastest time. You know, you can go to Boston Marathon, and you've got to age qual- you know, you're running in your age group, and you've got to qualify. So you can always compete against your relative age. Um, but I think, you know, judging your self-worth or your personality or, or how ... Your, your, I don't know, just judging your self-worth based on how fast you run is not a great metric. Um, I, I ... What I will say is instead of don't, and telling people what to do and what they shouldn't do, you know, the way to do this is learn to run more efficiently, learn to trust your body, and suddenly the drama seems to just disappear. I think you've-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:09 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 44:09 ... experienced that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:10 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 44:11 You know, you, you trust your running, you enjoy your running. It feels amazing. You're showing up, and suddenly there's no need to, to try and better yourself every week-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:18 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 44:18 ... to the next. And, and chances are you are running faster.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:21 Exactly. I am.

Lawrence van Lingen 44:22 And your potential's opened up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:22 And I'm not even looking at my times.

Lawrence van Lingen 44:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:25 I ... What, what, what really drives me is efficiency, is fluidity of movement, and I'm really, uh, as you can probably see, as Helen can see, like, I'm, I'm ... I think too much focus in society has been on how much we move-

Lawrence van Lingen 44:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:41 ... and not how we move.

Lawrence van Lingen 44:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:43 So all the guidance says you've got to run more, you've got to walk more, you've gotta, you've gotta have work on your strength. And we-

Lawrence van Lingen 44:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:49 ... we'll cover all these things, 'cause I, I know you've got some interesting thoughts on these topics. But, but very little of the messaging is about how you're doing those movements.

Lawrence van Lingen 45:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:01 You have this beautiful phrase, I think, Lawrence, you say, um, "We need to move in a way that respects our joints."

Lawrence van Lingen 45:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:08 Um, what does that mean?

Lawrence van Lingen 45:11 Joints have a particular pattern. Um, so, like, your, your hip joint, your, you know, where your femur joins your, your pelvis, um, as you move into flexion, so as you bring your knee forward, it's sort of coupled with external rotation. And as you move it, um, into extension behind, it's coupled with internal rotation. You wanna respect that pattern. There's very strong ligaments, um, that reinforce that pattern. The muscles around that, um, reinforce that pattern. So that's a pattern. You wanna run with that pattern. Um, for those of you that walk backwards and you, you'll, you know, you realize, oh, hang on, my belly button's pointing towards the back leg, not the front leg, you know, that hip's working out of pattern. So you're not respecting the joint. It's ... These are biomechanically just how it works. Um, an example would, like, even if your elbow, if I bend my elbow, you know, my elbow can bend th- you know, this far that way. It cannot ... It ... That's, that's as far as it goes that way. We need to respect that. That's a, that's a hardwired into your joint. Let's say you've got knee pain, um, and it starts to hurt in your joints, especially weightbearing joints. You know, you need to recognize you're not running in a way ... First learn to move in a way that doesn't hurt your joints, and then what we do is we strengthen it up, r- which is almost the, the ... The current narrative is if you have an injury, you're gonna, um, rehab it and strengthen it, and I, I think what I would say is first learn to move in a way that doesn't stress the joint, and then strengthen up and rehab that movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:43 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 46:43 It's just a little bit of a different way of looking at it, you know, but we have to respect our joints.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:47 It's interesting. As you say that, I'm, I'm drawn to the London Marathon, okay? We're a few days out from, you know, the 2025 London Marathon. That's one of the reasons you're in the UK is-

Lawrence van Lingen 46:58 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:58 ... 'cause you're running the event, okay? So firstly, in a, in a society, in a running world obsessed with goals-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:09 ... I would argue overly obsessed with goals, uh, or that the overfocus on goals can come at a cost that a lot of us aren't recognizing, what is your goal, or what is your plan for this Saturday, or this Sunday's London Marathon, I should say? That's first question.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:26 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:26 But the second question is, in relation to what you've just said, we should move in a way that respects our joints.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:33 The London Marathon is an incredible event, and what will no doubt happen this year, as happens every year, is that some people will still complete that and raise a lot of money for charity-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:48 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:48 ... let's say, but they will not be moving in a way that respects-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:51 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:51 ... their joints, right? So first of all, let's talk about your relationship with-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:56 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:56 ... with the London Marathon this Sunday.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:58 But then let's move into that, because I think, I think there's this narrative in society that it's always good to do a marathon. Ah, you know, I did it. I pushed through.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:07 But I know, and I'm sure you know more than me, people who literally were so bloody-minded about completing a marathon, they then never ran again afterwards, ever-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:17 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:17 ... 'cause they broke themselves-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:19 ... or they wrecked their knee, and that impacted their life for years afterwards. But hey, they got the marathon. They can put that on their Instagram handle, "I completed-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:28 ... the marathon." It's, it's a really interesting relationship I think we have, so-What's your relationship, number one, and then how would you help someone think about this sort of other conundrum? Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 48:41 So my relationship is I'm gonna run with Chris Evans. Um, so I'm gonna run with a friend. Um, [laughs] you know, we're gonna go for a run with someone. So I, I don't have a, a time goal, I just simply would like to run with him, and if we, we decide not to run with each other, then that's also okay. You know, we can just go on and do our own race. Um, so I don't actually have much of a time goal or pacing goal. I'll just run with him. Um, and which is interesting 'cause I haven't, I haven't run a marathon in a long time, and I really enjoyed the fact that I was sort of almost like a little bit late notice. I think we-- I was given 11 weeks' notice, um, to run a marathon, you know, time to prepare. Um, but I think, like, it, it was good for us 'cause I hadn't been doing long runs for quite a long time. We just sort of ran 6 to 8Ks every day, but at altitude, at high. So it's-- we're running 40 to 52 minutes a day, and then on the weekends we'd run 10Ks or at that altitude, like an hour, just over an hour, and that... We were pretty set in that routine. So it was actually quite nice to get out of my comfort zone, run a little bit longer.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:43 So you're looking to have fun.

Lawrence van Lingen 49:44 So I'm looking to have fun, yeah, and, and camaraderie and a sense of fellowship. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:47 And, and if-- I'm not trying to tempt fate at all, and I don't th-

Lawrence van Lingen 49:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:50 ... I don't think this is gonna happen. But let's say during, um, the race on Sunday-

Lawrence van Lingen 49:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:55 ... at some point you start to feel something.

Lawrence van Lingen 49:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:58 Right? Now, obviously, you know your body very well.

Lawrence van Lingen 50:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:00 This is your area. You're a, you know, an incredible expert, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 50:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:05 With the human body and how it moves, so you, you can-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:07 ... probably figure it out on the fly. But let's say you got to a point where you're like, "Actually, this is hurting, and this pain-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:14 It's too much

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:14 ... in my knee is getting worse."

Lawrence van Lingen 50:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:17 You're gonna pull out, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 50:18 Yeah, 100%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:19 100%?

Lawrence van Lingen 50:20 100%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:21 Because your identity is not wrapped up in you completing that race.

Lawrence van Lingen 50:24 Yeah, totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:25 You pulling out doesn't say anything about your-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:28 ... worth as a human being.

Lawrence van Lingen 50:29 Yeah. No, it's good. It, I mean, s-so what?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:33 I think for some people listening to this right now-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:35 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:35 ... that is, uh-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:36 Yeah, you, you're a quitter or you're a loser. But I mean, those are labels. Like, you're not a quitter or a loser.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:41 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 50:41 And, and, and interestingly enough, with Taylor... So Taylor did-- Taylor Knibb, you know, the triathlete we were talking about, she did IRONMAN on, on-- in Kona, um, not last year, the year before. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:52 And that is the-- just for people who, who are not familiar with the world, that is the-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:55 The pinnacle of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:56 The pinnacle. You have to q- like the pros-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:58 ... even have to qualify-

Lawrence van Lingen 50:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:00 ... to even get in.

Lawrence van Lingen 51:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:01 And that's in Hawaii.

Lawrence van Lingen 51:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:02 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 51:03 Yeah. And it's a big, it's a big deal, like 3.8K swim, 180K bike, and then a marathon afterwards, and it's in heat and hot conditions and wind. It's, it's pretty brutal, right? And she-- I was kind of helping her, and, and she wasn't as well prepared for the race as she could've been. Like, she didn't do a very long IRONMAN-specific prep, and she's never done an IRONMAN before. So one of the agreements was that if I thought she was doing any permanent damage, I could tell her, and she'd walk off the course. So n-not, you know, not her feeling like, "I'm damaged to the point that I'm hurting myself." She says, "Lawrence, if you think I'm now doing-- I'm now damaging or impeding my future career, you tell me, and I will step off the course." That was, like, an agreement that she made. So at the world-class level, you know, where we, we really do idolize these people, you know, to have that sort of sense that, um, I'm not risking my future career, my future self in this race. And, and, and to come back to your second point about, um... You know, I, I have a tragic, tragic story where, um, a very well-known marathon runner was going through sort of, uh, online and publicly on social media a problem with her knee and running through knee pain, and she was having injections and, you know, it was a story, and there was blogging about it and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:16 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 52:16 ... we can get through this. And one of my clients that was really enamored with this ended up with a double knee replacement and ended up with a hip replacement as well, so three joints replacements because she was following her idol, [laughs] trying to get through this, you know, run through and, and do marathons and training, and she wanted-- she was so desperate to do a, um, a trail race. She ended up with double knee replacement and a hip replacement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:42 This conversation is gonna go out after-

Lawrence van Lingen 52:45 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:45 ... the London Marathon, okay?

Lawrence van Lingen 52:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:46 But I just wanna... Only 'cause I've come across this so many times, and so have you. Right now, someone's listening to this, and let's say they have a big race coming up-

Lawrence van Lingen 52:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:59 ... that they signed up for a year ago.

Lawrence van Lingen 53:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:02 And it was a big deal.

Lawrence van Lingen 53:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:03 And they've, they've had it on their calendar, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 53:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:05 And they're like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe I've got in. I'm gonna do this."

Lawrence van Lingen 53:08 Ah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:09 But they know as they're training that something keeps flaring, their hip-

Lawrence van Lingen 53:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:13 ... or their knee or their back, and they know, but they think, "I just push through for a few more weeks-

Lawrence van Lingen 53:18 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:18 ... and do the race."

Lawrence van Lingen 53:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:20 If they were your, um, athlete and you were their coach, what kind of things would you be saying to them?

Lawrence van Lingen 53:29 I think... So as a guideline, if you have more than 3 out of 10 pain when you're running, it's concerning. It's, it's okay to sort of wake up and feel a little stiff, and then it should clear up very quickly. But if you have persistent pain and if it's more than 3 out of 10 or when you're running it gets worse while you're running, you really need to reconsider what you're doing. Um, and, and it's not worth it. Like, when you, when you create infl- inflammation somewhere is inflammation everywhere.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 53:56 So when you create joint inflammation and you damage a joint, it's irreparable. It's v- it's... I've seen some pretty crazy things happen in, in 30 years of working with people where you do see osteoarthritis reverse itself, but it's, it's very, very rare, and you have to have, like, sort of, like, on the... If you looked at your spine and you've decompressed it by an inch, if you took an MRI from a year ago to an MRI now, this MRI would look better than a year ago more likely because you've got-- your disc heights would be higher.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:24 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 54:25 You'd have better, um, hydration of your discs. So there would be-- there might be some deterioration maybe somewhere, but it's more likely that you've reversed that deterioration. That is extraordinarily uncommon.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:34 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 54:35 [laughs] Okay? Um, so no, you, you hurt a joint, and you damage cartilage, and you damage bone, and you put inflammation in the joint, it's very, very difficult to settle down, and it's not just that it's that joint, it's now systemic.And so you really are harming your health, and then you're creating a fear response, and you, you're not trusting your running. You're not trusting your joint. You're guarded. You're defensive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:55 You're gambling your future-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:57 ... for this short-term goal-

Lawrence van Lingen 55:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:01 ... of completing a marathon or-

Lawrence van Lingen 55:03 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:04 ... again, I'm not trying to put people off.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:06 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:06 Right? I, I get what a phenomenal experience it is. People raise money for charity.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:11 Yeah, it's incredible.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:11 But I think, I think also for some people, I think they may regret doing it when they're not ready.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:20 Looking back. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:20 Looking back, they go-

Lawrence van Lingen 55:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:21 ... "Actually, maybe I shouldn't have done that."

Lawrence van Lingen 55:22 Yeah. And I, I, I think more-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:24 And that's sad.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:24 That is sad.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:26 But that's identity. That's like-

Lawrence van Lingen 55:27 Yeah. It's, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:28 ... being attached to this story that actually the time I get in this marathon actually says something about me as a human being.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:36 And it doesn't.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:37 Yeah, and that goes back to trust. So, so the, The Harvard Review or something, trust is authenticity, empathy, and logic. You know, if, if your... There's a breakdown in logic, like of course your health is more important than an event that's just made up. [laughs] And, um, you know, it's not authentic because you're not, you're not truly concerned with yourself and showing up and being the best version of yourself. There's, there's, there's compromise. You're letting society or your, or the opinions of your friends, or, you know, you're too embarrassed to show yourself up at the running club 'cause you quit. You know, like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:14 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 56:14 ... that's not authentic. You're not being true to yourself. You don't have a, you know, real sense of, of sort of strong identity, and anyone relat- relating to you should have a sense of empathy. They should understand that, yeah, a marathon's hard. You're not gonna get it right every single time. Pros often don't show up at the starting line when they don't feel good. You know, so, so it's, it's just a breakdown of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:35 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 56:35 ... a whole lot of things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:36 I, I wonder how much of this is, um, i- is, is cultural in the sense that you, you brought up Kipchoge.

Lawrence van Lingen 56:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:46 Okay? I, I had the great privilege of having a long-form chat with him a couple years ago on this show, and he'd literally broken the world record the week before in Berlin.

Lawrence van Lingen 56:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:57 And then he, he was coming to London to do press and interviews, and I, you know, very luckily to ha- I had some time with him. And one of the things I've never forgotten from that conversation is this idea that he never, ever runs by himself.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:15 Never. It's always with his crew.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:20 His running club.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:22 They run together. And I, I... To me, it was like, this is so interesting because, you know, we explored it together, this idea that in the West, that's a very broad term, that people often go for runs by themselves. You know, work was tough. I need to make sure I'm taking care of my health and doing something, so I'm gonna go for a run to unwind.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:43 Okay? I do that, so I, I am, I'm not judging it or criticizing it.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:46 Yes. I mean, there's a book, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:49 Yeah, but these guys don't have that. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 57:52 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:52 It's a different culture.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:53 Right? They run together, and it... I remember he said, he said, "You know, the reason, one of the reasons we run together is if, you know, if I'm not showing up for whatever reason, someone's gonna be phoning," said, "Hey, Eli, are you okay? What's wrong?"

Lawrence van Lingen 58:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:03 "Why aren't you here?" You know.

Lawrence van Lingen 58:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:04 "We're all, it's 6:00 AM. We're all running today."

Lawrence van Lingen 58:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:07 And I thought that was such a, such a beautiful thing for me to think about, this relationship we have with running. So coming back to this big identity that people now have about their Parkrun time on a Saturday or whether they can even do a marathon or not, it's... Surely, it all comes from this Western individualistic mindset-

Lawrence van Lingen 58:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:31 ... whereby it does say something about me. Whereas if you always run in community and in a supportive tribe-

Lawrence van Lingen 58:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:38 ... well, maybe there's less of a need to define yourself-

Lawrence van Lingen 58:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:41 ... by the time you run a 5K in.

Lawrence van Lingen 58:44 Yeah, totally. And, and, you know, it, like you s- you say, it is Western, or let's say, I don't know, you go to Scandinavia. You, you're the son of someone. You know, you're any, I don't know, there's a... She was a CrossFitter, any Thor's daughter. You're the daughter of Thor, so your identity's more familial.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:01 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 59:02 And you can be in, in China, and your identity is your tribe or, or your value of your tribe, or, you know, you, you are concerned. It, it's a very, very Western idea that you're the most important person [laughs] and that you're running for yourself. And, and it's really healthy to, to be a part of a community because the culture is the coach, and the... You know, those guys, they don't, they won't tell you what to do, how to do it. There's no sort of direct instruction. There's no sense of guilt or blame or, "You shouldn't be running like that," or, "This is bad form." You start running like that, and you'll start picking up their pattern and their rhythm. We were talking about this morning, like Buddha says, if one person in the house meditates, the whole house meditates with them. One... As you start running with people that run better, your form will naturally improve, and the way you understand an approach. So this community-based running approach is really, really important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:52 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 59:52 I'll, I, um, both Jan and Taylor really like it if I ride a bicycle next to them when they run, and it's just for the community and the camaraderie and just holding a space 'cause you're almost bringing a sense of calm and relaxation and, and ease, and they pick up on it. And then they just run better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:09 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:10 So it... We, we're incredibly sensitive social creatures, and we can get so locked up in our little silos and running on a treadmill and doing our workouts and following a training plan. And one of the amazing things about London is how many people there are, and we just go. Like, yeah, the crowds and the energy. We, we absolutely understand that people make running better, but then we train in a way that's like the antithesis to that. It's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:35 Mm-hmm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:35 ... it's not... It's crazy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:39 You've got your own online community, don't you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:42 Um, how do some of the themes that you've just mentioned show up in the community that you kind of host and curate?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:52 I think the culture is the coach. Like let's say I'm the coach and I'm gonna say, "I think, Rangan, that you should be running in this way or you should be doing this, or this is the workout," right? When you have a culture, you realize like, "Oh, that's not appropriate. I need to behave like this because no one else is doing it."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:08 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:08 Does it make sense? So it's a much softer way of shaping and malleable. Like, that's why businesses have a strong culture because then everyone knows, oh, at Apple, this is how we do things, or at this place, this is how we do things. Schools have culture.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:20 So-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:20 So culture, like if you play for the All Blacks, it's a very, very different experience than if you played NFL.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:27 In what way?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:27 Because of the, the culture. Well, the All Blacks play for each other, and the captain and the vice captain will clean the change rooms and make sure the change rooms are clean afterwards when they leave. You know, you lead by example and, and you as a captain are of service to your team. And, and the All Blacks, if you played rugby against, let's say England, they'd in- they'd invite England, the team round for, for drinks and a social function afterwards so you can socially decompress. You can, you can interact-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:51 Wow

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:52 ... with the people that you just competed with. Like I promise you [laughs] you know, like the Denver Broncos are not having drinks with the Philadelphia Eagles after an NFL match, you know? And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:02 This, this-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:02:02 No one's cleaning up after themselves in, in the change room. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:06 This culture piece is so interesting. Uh, and I'm, I'm really fascinated because you grew up in South Africa-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:02:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:13 ... and moved to America.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:02:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:16 You know, are you able to articulate some of the cultural differences between those two amazing countries?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:02:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:24 There, there must be some really stark differences, I imagine.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:02:27 Yeah, I think, I think in running is, is how hard people try to, to run. Like in America, like the effort that people put into it and then how technical it's perceived to be, and how sort of almost over-engineered and, and the massive sort of role that strength and conditioning plays in, in running. Um, in South Africa, running was way more or- uh, organic and sort of they, they run on rhythm and feel. I mean, I worked a lot with, with African runners, and they'd often, they weren't that worried about pain because they could deal with pain and they... We, we were touching on this earlier, is like some of the runners came from such a humble and hard, um, upbringing that they were just naturally really, really tough, [laughs] okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:09 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:10 So they didn't have to work on resilience and mental toughness.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:12 They had that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:13 That, that is, they've got that in spades. But you know, when they were running, they were more concerned with, "Oh, I've lost my rhythm," or, "I've lost my feel," or, "It's not quite working like it should be."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:22 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:23 Whereas, you know, in America, um, you know, a lot of people perceive that you've gotta be tough to run and, and you almost, I, you know, I think g- in generally your quality and standard of life's a lot higher. So sometimes people almost feel like they need to work on their mental resilience or fortitude or toughness. Um, but you know, people are obsessed with pain, um, culturally, you know, and joint pain and, and, and obsessed with strengthening the pain out of their body. Like y-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:49 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:49 ... you know, rather than this notion of rhythm or feel or working with your body and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:54 But-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:54 You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:55 That, that thing about strength is really interesting. Let, let's talk about strength because one of the things in this health and wellness space at the moment is the growing awareness of the importance of our strength and our-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:06 ... lean muscle mass-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:08 ... as we get older.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:10 Okay? So as we get older, we're, unless we do something about it, we're gonna lose muscle mass, and maintaining that, preserving it as much as you can-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:18 ... is very important for your longevity and your ability to stay well as you get older.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:23 Okay, I'm agreed on that. But then going back to what I said before, I think there's too much focus on the what and not the how.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:35 So let's take strength, for example. Preserving your muscle mass is important.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:44 Right? There are multiple ways you can do that. Yes, you could do that at the gym.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:48 You could also do that in many other more, you could call them natural ways perhaps. But one of my concerns is, is that a lot of people don't move very well.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:02 They've got all these inefficiencies in their body. They can't walk very well. They can't run very well. They then hear the podcast on strength and start going to the gym, maybe with-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:13 ... a personal trainer if they can afford it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:15 Many people can't, so they're-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:16 ... trying to figure this stuff out by themselves, and then they're strengthening on top of these imbalances. So they think, yeah, I'm, I'm doing my strength training.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:29 But I do worry with some people, they're actually making things worse in the long term. I'm not trying to put people off, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:36 No. No, no, we really do want people to move-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:38 Exactly

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:39 ... and strengthen, get out there and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:40 But I think-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:40 ... I don't know if, I guess-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:41 And build a sense of confidence too. You know, and, and just to be clear, there is also a metabolic cost to this muscle. So at some point it's the law of diminishing returns, and we kinda see that in, in bodybuilders, you know, hypertrophic bodybuilders, like let's say, you know, old Arnold. Ar- Arnold's friends are all dead. The miracle of Arnold is how long-lived he is. I think we have a society problem and, and you know, like I was telling, joking, it's like it's really dangerous being an influencer these days because a lot of influencers are all having major joint surgery and joint replacements at very inappropriate ages.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:11 Well, I see a lot of bodybuilders or people with big muscles who tick the box. They've got strength, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:17 They've preserved their muscle mass.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:20 But there looks to be a stiffness, uh, and a, and a robotic-ness in the way that they move.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:27 Okay? I'm not having a go at anyone, to be clear.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:29 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:30 Everything has a cost, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:32 There's a consequence to everything we do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:34 And I think that, um, that freedom in movement, that efficiency, that mobility is also important as we age. So if you're putting on strength at the cost of those things-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:47 ... I'm not sure it's gonna end that well.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:51 I think it's really a, a, a world of diminishing returns.And like let's say, you know, we understand that if you've got a big V8 muscle car, it's, you know, it's gonna cost a lot of money in gas to keep going. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:02 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:03 Um, and when you, you know, when you work an engine hard, you might be sh- sort of slightly shortening your life expectancy, not lengthening it. Um, but so-- and you're not athletic. You know, if I, if I was gonna pick a basketball team, and we were gonna play some hoops or whatever, you know, I'm not gonna go to the gym, and the biggest person there is the person I'm leaving out of my team.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:22 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:22 So there is a, a point where, you know, what is the goal? Is it function, or is it just hypertrophic or looking good? And, and a lot of people-- and that's okay for where you are at that moment in your life, but a lot of people, it's looking good. I mean, I, I know triathletes that are more concerned with looking good than their performance. You know, that vanity metric and, and their appearance is more important than, than actually performing. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:45 How do you deal with that as a coach?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:48 Um, okay, so one is I don't coach in terms of training and training programs anymore. I, I did it for a little while in, in a kind of niche market, um, for, for a select few individuals, but I don't actually write training programs. I'm more like a movement coach, just to be clear. Um, I don't... I, I really am very, very picky with who I put my time and effort and energy into, so only people with a really clear sense of trust and understanding. So I, that-- a person like that wouldn't even enter in my world. There's no-- they have no access to me [laughs] because it's, uh, why? It's a, it's, it's a... You know, my job is not to try and tell you how to live your life. You know, for where I'm at, I'm interested in, in a professional athlete that wants to sort of focus on mastery, not medals, and express themselves and bring their fullest potential to what they're doing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:41 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:08:41 And at that level, you know, we're not having conversations about what you look like and how it's important to you. It's just that, that... That would have needed to fall away in your life by the time y-you'd wanna work with me one-on-one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:08:56 You just, you know, it's not part of my world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:59 Earlier on, we were talking about, uh, tonic or tonic muscles-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:04 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:04 ... via phasic muscles.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:05 We were talking about the stress response and how that's intimately linked with the way that we move.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:11 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:11 Okay. So I don't think we actually expanded on those terms. So it's really, really interesting, this stuff, okay?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:17 And it, and it relates to breathing-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:19 ... which a lot of people have questions on. So can you-- c- let's go back to that. We're talking about the relationship between the way that we move and our stress levels and our stress response system. What are tonic muscles, what are phasic muscles, and why should we even care about these things?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:36 Uh, so I think, y-you know, one of the things we just touched on with strength is this compartmentalization. We're not compartments. We-- everything interacts with itself. And so, um, the interrelation, the interrelatedness of all of this, or the human is a system. And so for the listeners now, don't, don't, um, [laughs] we'll go through some technique. We'll keep it relatively simple. The, the big takeaway with this is how the different systems start to interrelate with each other, 'cause I don't think it's something that we're kinda taught at medical school.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:07 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:07 And I don't think it's something that most people are very good at or have a high level of awareness, right? Um, so we have tonic muscles, which are your postural muscles and often breathing muscles. So an example, a, a very famous muscle is your psoas muscle, is a tonic muscle. Your hamstrings are a tonic muscle. They help support your posture. Um, and a tonic muscle is more slow twitch, so it's... um, because it's endurance-based. So you have to hold your posture up for a relatively long period of time, so there's a lot of, um, slow twitch muscle fibers so that they're endurance-based muscles.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:41 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:42 Okay? And that's your tonic muscle. And when tonic muscles become dysfunctional, they tend to have a lot of tone, so that's easy to remember, and they tend to be reactive, so tight reactive muscle. So a lot of people have tight reactive hamstrings. A lot of people have tight reactive psoas muscles, okay? The opposition sort of muscle of that is your phasic muscles, and phasic muscles are your movement muscles. So the quick animated, I'm moving my hands, how do I get forward, how do I go somewhere in life, are phasic. Your glute max and glute medius are phasic muscles.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:12 So your butt muscles.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:13 Your butt muscles, yeah. And so really simplistically, the muscles, your hip flexors are tonic, and your hip extensors are phasic. So you can almost think like, uh... It's not quite this simple, so someone that really understands is gonna say, "Well, that's too simplistic." I'm just, just but for the sake of getting somewhere with this conversation. The muscles in the front of your hips are tonic, and the muscles at the back are phasic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:36 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:37 Okay. The important part is when phasic muscles are dysfunctional, they become weak or inhibited. Your core muscles are also phasic because you're using your core to twist and animate quite rapidly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:48 So this idea that many people have sleepy butt muscles-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:52 ... fits in here.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:52 Yeah, or weak core. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:54 Weak core and weak butt muscles.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:57 Butt muscles, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:58 These are phasic muscles-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:00 That are prone to being inhibited.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:02 Prone to-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:02 So you gotta, instead of... So people will obsess with trying to strengthen their glutes, and it doesn't work. I mean, you know, I, I guarantee you this is resonating with so much of you. [laughs] So many of people in the audience is like, "You know, I do a ton of core and a ton of butt exercises, and I have weak core and weak glutes." Well, they're being inhibited by your tonic muscles. The tight reactive tonic muscles that tend to lock on and hold on for a long period of time are stopping your phasic muscles from moving.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:29 Okay. So just relating to this, the things a-and the themes we've just been talking about-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:36 ... if you have or you've been told or you've seen that you have weak glutes and you're trying-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:44 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:44 ... to address that, it's easy for people to go, "Oh, they're weak."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:49 "I must strengthen-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:51 ... those muscles."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:52 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:53 But you're saying for some people, simply trying to strengthen them without identifying and working on the root cause of why they're weak in the first place-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:03 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:03 ... is not gonna lead-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:05 ... to any improvements or any results.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:07 And you're saying that for some people, it's this relationship between tonic and phasic muscles.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:11 Yeah. I wouldn't say some. I'd say the majority.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:14 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:15 Most people, your most efficient route is to, to restore the balance between the two. Rehab and strengthening generally needs to be simple. I mean, Pavel Tsatsouline is sort of the, the guy that brought kettlebells to America. Like he says, "Find a very simple strength routine, and then just do it for decades."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:33 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:34 You know what I mean?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:35 I guess I'm always thinking about what are the things that I can do that are gonna help me feel better today, but also in the future. I do hope as long as I'm alive, I've got the energy, the focus, the cognition to do the things that I wanna do. That's what longevity really means to me, and so I'm always keen to emphasize it's a lifestyle and nutrition first. But I think there are certain things out there that can also help. For me, personally, I've been taking something called Mitopure from Timeline Nutrition. I find the research really compelling. Mitopure contains a precise dose of a post biotic called Urolithin A, and Urolithin A has been shown to have a powerful effect on the health of our mitochondria. Basically, it can clear out and recycle damaged mitochondria. That's what gets me excited because I know that good mitochondrial health is gonna be key for everything that I wanna do as I get older. Potential benefits for strength, endurance, immunity, the rate at which our cells decline as we get older. Now, I recognize that Mitopure's not gonna be in everyone's budget, and I understand that. I honestly think that 90% of your health outcome comes from those four key pillars, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. But if you can afford it, I'd highly encourage you to give it a go. To get 25% off your Mitopure order, go to timeline.com/livemore. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you wanna get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:30 So we have this perception of, oh, well, um, I don't know, I'm doing hip bridges, and my glutes aren't switching on or don't seem to be improving. So now I need to do more complex exercises or more different, where you're looking on Instagram and you're saying like, "Oh, my word. That's why my butt muscle's not-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:45 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:45 ... not, not engaging." So we can start to get very, very complex and, and do a lot more, whereas simple rehab should work, and if it's not, you need to probably pause at that moment and say, "I wonder why my muscle's not responding because I'm giving it an appropriate dose or stimulus."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:01 We're doing, um, some work on people's breathing patterns.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:05 I know we spoke a little bit about that in our first conversation.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:09 And I shared how in one of your YouTube videos, you have many more now, Lawrence. You're, uh, you are pumping out the content on your-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:16 Y-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:16 ... YouTube channel for sure

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:17 ... you're inspiring me, Rangan. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:18 [laughs] But it's, it's great. There's this beautiful, I think it's a 15-minute video that I, for a few months, I literally followed it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:25 And interestingly enough, pretty soon after doing that, I went to see Helen and on her machine-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:29 ... Doris, the Tri7, it's like she, she could see ju- just doing those breathing exercises-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:35 ... how it changed the way that I moved.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:37 Which is just, just amazing.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:39 I mean, it was amazing for me to see that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:41 Um, but how does breathwork relate to this, uh, tonic, phasic muscle interaction, or does it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:51 So I think, um, with tonic muscles and phasic muscles, we've gotta go just one level sort of deeper. So Dr. Steve Porges wrote about the polyvagal theory.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:00 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:01 And so, uh, your diaphragm is a tonic muscle, and your pelvic floors are tonic muscles, and they're breathing muscles, and they're intrinsically linked to your posture. So on a very powerful level, if you, um, interact-- if you get a healthier diaphragm, and let's say a lot of people... You remember the default for tonic muscles if they're dysfunctional is, is spasm or tone and reactiveness. So if you have a tight reactive diaphragm, it's massively gonna affect your breathing and the state of your autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:30 And those glutes-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:32 And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:32 ... that you're trying to strengthen.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:33 Yeah. And so there is a relationship between tonic, which tends to be more parasympathetic, and phasic, which tends to be more upregulatory or sympathetic. So if you had to run away from a bear, you're gonna use your phasic muscles. So there is, there is a, a feedback loop here. And so breathing is a fantastic segue into balancing out your tonic and phasic muscles 'cause if you soften your diaphragm and you have a greater soft, like, excursion, your diaphragm can then draw deeper and move without tension. You're gonna... One is, you know, change your autonomic nervous system. You're gonna make it healthier. You're gonna be able to rest and digest. And two is it tain- changes the tone of the muscles, and it's a feedback loop. So as your tonic muscle tensions change, your glutes can switch on. So you wanna put soft, slow... That's why Feldenkrais-- So a lot of people said, "Do you do, like, Feldenkrais?" Feldenkrais was slow, soft, somatovisceral movement, which means, like, organ and spine movement, uh, which is richly, um, slow twitch. So slow, soft breathing, slow, soft in, um, somatovisceral movements tend to l- make the tonic muscles let go, and then your, um, phasic muscle system's just much easier to switch on.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:46 I heard yesterday your conversation with the Foot Collective recently on their podcast.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:18:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:51 And I think, I'm pretty sure it was in that conversation you said that slow somatovisceral movement is the biggest deficiency that modern humans have, or something to that effect.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:00 Yeah. Western... C- certainly where I'm living.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:03 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:04 So this is really interesting.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:05 Okay. Um, what does somatovisceral movement mean?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:11 Um, and, you know, why are we so deficient in it, and how can we start correcting that?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:18 Um, so somatovisceral means, um, soma, the body, and viscera, the organs. So it's like this-Um, let's go back to embryology. So when we're just a little bean [laughs] in the embryo, um, how we neurodevelopmentally developed, we have a sort of central notochord, um, which is where your spine in- comes out of. And so somatovisceral movement is like this central slow soft contractions or moving from the center out. You... We kind of discussed this on the run this morning, if you can learn to move from the center out. If you-- You can either move from the outside in, so let's say my hands move a lot, and you're almost creating tension into your body, or you can move from the center and your hands express-- your hands get to express what the center's creating.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:03 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:03 Or think of a fly fishing rod. Your, your hand's moving a little bit, but the fly at the end's darting all over, and you can, with great precision and a small hand movement, land a fly in the water and dip it out and pull it back in.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:13 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:14 Okay? So somatovisceral movement is the ability to move from your spine, move from the center out, and do so in a slow, controlled manner that's a force amplifier. So it's like cracking a whip. Your hand's not moving at supersonic speeds, but the end of the whip is moving at a supersonic speed. A lot of people, and you experience this, you're using your hands to help generate movement, but then that's movement going from the outside inside, and you can't move with your hands the end of a whip s- at a supersonic speed. It's impossible. So in terms of movement, generally speaking, your, your... you know, if you can use your spine as an engine, you tend to amplify the speed of the movement at the extremities. So it's a really cool way of looking at it. But why it's deficient is everything we've been talking about culturally. You know, John Wayne wo- rode a horse and he had a stiff spine, and he had to have backbone. You had to have backbone to go to war. [laughs] So you play staccato, um, drums before war to, to give you a backbone, to give you a stiff spine because, [laughs] you know... And, and I know it's kinda weird. People, this freaks people out. Um, but it's, it's got a lot to do with we live in rigid structures, you know. I'm-- we're in a beautiful room, okay, and I really like the look and feel of it, but everything's a straight, hard edge. We're not in nature. There's no straight lines in nature. I mean, some trees are pretty straight.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:33 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:21:33 So I think we, we culturally, we move on hard surfaces, we're sitting in chairs, we're surrounded by pretty rigid architecture, and so we've become pretty rigid. Um, and then, like I say, this obsession with almost moving from the outside or your, your outer sleeve, which is your mask and how you show up in the world, and we want a six-pack, we want to cosmetically look good, and people are walking around with a sort of tight or engaged stomach and a tighter out, and we're suppressing our internal movement. And again, it's that level of authenticity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:05 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:05 You know, nothing-- Everything I'm saying just ties in together. We're one person. It's all one thing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:11 How, how do we start bringing in somatovisceral movement? If it's deficient-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:15 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:15 ... I think one way you're saying is with breathwork practices.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:19 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:20 Um, how else can we start bringing in somatovisceral movements?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:24 Kind of everything I do. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:26 The flow rope must do that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:27 So the flow rope is massively somatovisceral. Yeah, spinal engine. You learn to animate your spine and to move from the sacrum out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:33 And what's interesting about that, just, if I just share my own experience, I've got, I think, pretty good at some of those basic-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:40 ... moves on the flow rope, but I was probably overusing my hands.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:44 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:45 And so what I'm trying to do at the moment is use the hands less-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:50 ... and see if, you know, my inside, my, my pelvis, my hips, my spine-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:56 ... can generate those movements-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:57 ... so the hands are almost just holding on for the rides.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:00 Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:00 But it's not coming from the hands-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:01 ... 'cause you can cheat it with your hands.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:03 Which is fine, I think, to start with as you're learning it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:05 Right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:06 Yeah. As soon as you learn some of the basic patterns, like, let's say it's really important that you can swing the flow rope backwards in a figure of eight, and most people, if you, if you're sympathetic, or if you've got an imbalance in your tonic and phasic system, you probably like chopping down 'cause you're gonna be flexion based, and you won't want to extend. So you won't-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:26 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:27 ... when you swing the rope, you're chopping down, and you're not swinging it backwards or, or underhand. So it's really important to get the underhand figure of eight pattern down with a flow rope. If you pick up... And you can swing any rope, a jump rope, a skipping rope. You can swing, um, a towel. You can swing TheraCords. You can swing a pair of sweatpants. It doesn't really matter if you enjoy it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:47 It's just easier with the flow rope.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:49 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:23:49 If you enjoy it, then get one, you know. But anyway, so you, you're swinging the flow rope. If you can swing it backwards in a figure of eight pattern, that's the most important thing. We really like the dragon roll for running. Um, I know a lot of your, your listeners run.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:03 Is that... Can I ask?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:03 'Cause I, I learned that off YouTube-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:05 ... about a month ago, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:07 And I love it, okay?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:09 Is it drag and roll, or is it dragon roll?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:13 Um, I didn't invent the dragon roll, so I think it's a dragon roll, but you teach it as drag and then roll, so it's both.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:20 Got it. And guys-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:21 ... for anyone who wants to know how to do this stuff, like, you've got a YouTube channel with all these how-tos on there, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:28 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:28 So your YouTube channel-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:29 ... has literally got-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:30 ... all-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:30 How to make a flow rope, how to swing the flow rope, how to, um, get the flow rope to help you with the timing and gait patterns and movements.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:37 One thing we haven't done yet-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:38 ... we're gonna do after this conversation, and we're gonna film it-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:41 ... is tire walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:43 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:44 Where... Well, first of all, can you explain what tire walking is?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:48 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:48 And does it or how does it fit into the things that we've just been talking about?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:54 Okay. That is a very good question. So tire walking or resisted walking, so you're walking with resistance, is basically restoring tonic and phasic muscle balance.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:04 Right.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:05 You know? And the reason... W- when you walk, you don't really use your glute max, and you don't really use your hip extensors 'cause it's almost too slow. It's too passive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:13 You're not meant to.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:15 Well-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:16 Even if you're walking well, you're not gonna use them much.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:18 Yeah, you're not using them much-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:19 Okay

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:19 ... even if you walk well. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:20 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:20 It's just not an activity that requires a lot of hip drive. Walking's very efficient. We populated planet Earth because we're so- such efficient walkers, so we don't really use our glutes. We don't drive forward when we walk. So what we're doing with a tire is adding a bit of resistance to walking so that you can then get hip extension, or your hip extensors, your glute max can basically help push your hip forward.Right? So that's why we add resistance, 'cause people say, "Well, do I have to walk the tire?" It really helps people move across the line in terms of sorting out this tonic and phasic muscle balance. Um, so and then we, we almost, like, reverse walking backwards, so, like, when we walk backwards, our belly button should point to our lead leg, and your heels should really have a good contact with the ground, and you should have a sense of relaxing your hips in order to make that happen. With resisted or tire walking, you just flip it around. Now you're gonna step forward, and the thing that you want to do is, as your knee goes past your hip, you then want to straighten your leg. So it's ... it ties into the Flow Rope. It's like this delayed, first you move in the hip, then you move in the knee, and then you move in the foot, 'cause you're almost cracking a whip.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:27 So the timing, the flow-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:29 ... the rhythm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:30 Yeah, the sequencing. So, so tire walking is simply learning how to get the step back into your running and into your gait, 'cause a lot of people pull themselves forward with their hamstrings.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:40 Well-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:41 Or a lot of people have got really tight feet, or maybe you were taught natural running, "natural running," um, by running on your forefoot, or picking your hamstrings up off the ground, or flexion-based running, so like, you know, you gotta lift your knees or on your forefoot. So basically trying to get that tension out of your running and learning to basically run by dr- pressing the earth away. So running is about downforce. You experienced it this morning. You know, when you start hitting the ground down, you start to free up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:08 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:08 So not a pulling. So, so running is how you get ... um, tire walking or resisted walking is how you get the step back into your gait patterns, and it's really, really good for you. And then we've got, like, the happy hip hack [laughs] s- which is, um, which we'll also do, a- and that really, what it does is you actually lengthen and release the inhibition from the tonic muscle, your psoas, and then your glutes really switch on. So coupling resisted walking with the arms overhead pattern is really, really a-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:37 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:37 ... amazing way of, of creating that synergy of you lengthening and making healthy your tonic muscles, and then switching on your phasic muscles.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:46 Okay. So we're saying that the balance between tonic muscles and phasic muscles is really important.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:52 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:52 Many of us have got that balance slightly wrong-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:55 ... or maybe a lot wrong.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:57 Which is impacting our nervous systems-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:59 ... it's impacting the way that we move, our efficiency, our injuries.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:03 Right. So you're then saying one of the things we wanna then focus on if we're trying to move more efficiently and move in a way that respects our joints-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:13 Sure

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:13 ... is to do some, uh, practices-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:16 ... hopefully that are fun-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:18 ... and enjoyable that naturally start to correct this.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:23 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:23 Okay. One thing you can do is backward walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:25 ... which we spoke about at the start of this conversation.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:28 One of the other things you can do is play around with the Flow Rope.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:32 And on a personal level, I love the Flow Rope, and it's playful. You feel like a child, and when you walk or run after you've been using it, you feel that flow. You feel that rhythm. You know, when you-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:47 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:47 ... when you were talking about those African runners-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:49 ... and they're more in tune with ... or the rhythm feels off.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:52 I feel Flow Rope is a way to, to give you that sense of rhythm. So when you run, it's less technical and in your head-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:58 ... and more about feel.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:59 Yeah. So the Flow Rope as well is, if you, if you're a awkward runner or, you know, if your one elbow's a little bit up, the Flow Rope after ... starts to tidy your running up, so you start to look way, way, way more symmetrical, which is really cool.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:12 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:12 You know, so just doing the Flow Rope. So, you know, I don't have to say to you, "Drop your elbow," or, "That's inappropriate," or ... You know, the Flow Rope really starts to make you symmetrical, and I think a, a really good way of, of thinking about that is we tighten with the twist, and you, you might have an asymmetry because you've got tension, and we let go, and things fall into place. But the Flow Rope is really, really good at unwinding tension, and because of the symmetry and the timing, we start to, um, unwind, and it m- it makes ... People that run with the Flow Rope, it takes time, but start to run very, very beautifully and very, very symmetrically.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:44 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:45 You know, it's ... it just gets tidy, and, and you look at that m- it's that undefinable quality. Um, I know some people use the term, and I think it's terrible, like, what defines good and bad, but it's like, it's like, let's say food. What makes a really great meal, and what makes not such a great meal? What makes something taste off? You know, when you look at someone that moves well, you go like, "That, that's something."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:07 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:07 You know, what is that indefinable thing? And the Flow Rope puts that into you, into your running and your movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:11 Okay, so we've got backward walking, Flow Rope.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:15 We mentioned tire walking, so for people who are interested in taking it, you know, not upper level necessarily, you know, people who are interested in this stuff-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:23 ... and, you know, have got the drill ready.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:25 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:25 We're gonna do it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:26 We're gonna, you know, with an old tire-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:27 ... make it, and hopefully shoot a video to show people what this looks like.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:31 But there are videos on your YouTube channel anyway.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:34 That's also gonna help.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:37 Um, and then the fourth one you mentioned, which we did yesterday-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:41 ... and I've been obsessed with already this morning-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:43 ... this healthy hip hack-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:44 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:44 ... which is the current name you've given it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:46 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:47 Guys, this is, this is a brilliant exercise. It's really easy.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:51 Right? I don't know if you can do it wrong.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:54 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:55 And I, I feel after I do it, I feel two things. I feel I'm standing up more.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:01 I feel I'm ... I'm ... my heart's more open.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:05 And at the same time, I feel more grounded.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:08 And it's, it's, it's a very simple ... So can you ... I mean, I don't know if you've already done this. Can we, can we try and describe it, and then what we'll do, we'll shoot it-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:18 ... and certainly for the YouTube version, we'll try and just put it in the screen in the corner so someone can at least see-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:23 ... what, what it looks like. But, uh, are you able to, um-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:26 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:26 I know it's hard with movements to try and talk about them in words.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:29 You ... G- give it a go.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:30 Okay. So, so the happy hip hack, um, it's remarkably simple. It, it's, it's so simple you're gonna say, "No, it can't be that good." It's amazing, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:41 Yeah. I agree.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:42 You really, really gotta try this. I, I think, I think-For people trying to fit up, 'cause now it's a lot, suddenly you've got like, "Oh, well, I've gotta do this and this and this," you know, I think it works better if you understand backward walking in these movement patterns, um, certainly. But anyway, it's really, really simple and make a big, big difference. And if you're very skeptical about everything we've been saying, just do this one drill, and I'm pretty sure it'll change the way you run and move and, and your experience of movement. So basically, all that you do is, as you take a step, on the same side that you're stepping back with, your driving leg, you just raise your arm above your head, okay? And so the right leg will be back and my right arm's above my head, and then you'll swap and you'll go left leg back, left arm over your head.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:30 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:30 And so for people that were backward walking and you were walking the wrong way around, so you couldn't get your belly button to face your lead leg, if you walk forwards with this pattern, your belly button will face your lead leg. So I don't have to... You don't have to try and cue it into someone. You don't have to try and get them to correct it. It'll just naturally happen. Whereas it, it can take... Well, I mean, I know, I've, I've had people that have sort of walked a tie and done resisted walking the wrong way around for three months before they figured out, "Oh, hang on, my belly button isn't actually facing my lead leg."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:58 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:59 So this immediately corrects that posture. You, you cannot basically do this wrong. I think the only m- thing you gotta be mindful of is drive through your heels. So leave your heel on the ground when you do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:08 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:09 Okay? It's, it's, if you're very reactive and, like I say, if you've been running on your forefoot, you m- might get up onto your toes doing it. So leave your heel on the ground, and then just basically step, and you put length on the one side.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:19 I love what I call sort of root cause-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:23 ... exercises or movements-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:24 ... like these, where you're not directly working on your running or-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:29 ... how your arms or hips-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:30 ... are moving when you run. You're just doing a fun activity and exercise-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:35 ... and it naturally starts to change all those things. 'Cause y- I guess, I mean, so-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:39 It's very, very upstream, this movement pattern.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:41 Ex- exactly.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:41 And that's what I think is what, you know, whether it's in medicine, where I feel we're too downstream just treating the symptoms rather than getting to the root cause-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:50 And being reactive

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:51 ... and being reactive. The same kind of thing is with movement, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:53 Often it's like, oh, well, you're doing that and you're running, change the way you hold your hand and you're running. But it could be that, is there an exercise that you could do that would naturally-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:03 ... make that happen?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:04 Uh, th- yeah, I mean, that's what I'm really trying hard to do, is trying to address the root cause of things so that, you know, downstream falls into place, and this is one of them. This is extraordinarily powerful. So what it does, it really helps restore your tonic phasic balance. Um, you can couple it with resisted walking, so you can walk the tire in this pattern 'cause now you, you're strengthening your glutes as well as releasing your tonic muscles. For those of you who are technically minded and saying, "Well, why is it so powerful and, and what level it's interacting on?" Um, one is it's a crawling pattern. So you were, we were touching on this this morning with running. You were saying, "But running is equal and opposite." So why is it same leg, same side? And, um, one of the reasons, 'cause that's how you crawl. When you crawl, your right hand reaches forward and your right leg goes backwards, so you're putting a crawling pattern into your upright gait.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:54 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:54 And we crawl for a reason, so when we crawl, we learn really healthy gait patterns. So you as a child might have skipped crawling or didn't crawl that much, and this is common these days because parents don't get down onto the level of the children. So the child's on the floor, and everyone's up there, and they wanna get going. So then they'll-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:09 Wow

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:09 ... try and climb up chairs and stand on their feet prematurely or maybe you'll put in a baby walker or jolly jumper or, um... You know, kids, we talk about this flexion pattern. Kids don't lie on the floor and open up. They... in, in... They go from the carry cot to the baby feeder, which is sitting upright, to the chair in the car, [laughs] and they never really lie on the ground and learn to crawl and roll and put some of these functional patterns into them. So it's a crawling pattern, and what happens is you, you're lengthening your psoas, which basically puts-- stops its inhibition of your hip extensors and your iliacus. So your iliacus functions in... You know, we talk about these joint patterns. Your iliacus, in flexion is in external rotation, but when it lengthens, it's internal rotation and extension. So you put that internal rotation, extension into your hip, length through your psoas. You're getting your shoulder off your hip. So if someone's running, you got the dreaded hip drop, and you think it's a glute medius problem, this is really, really good. And then also because your shoulder starts to elevate, so when you walk and your shoulder starts to elevate up, you put a, the third dimension into your running, and it makes it much, much easier for you to realize you have to have down and up in your running. So you have to sort of step into the earth to get to go forward.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:25 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:25 So that shoulder popping up. So a lot of people will swing their shoulders from side to side to try and run or try and use their hands, and once you start the stepping pattern, you realize, no, the running and the energy is just up and down, and you just happen to move forward. So it really powerfully on so many levels will, um, totally transform your running.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:46 You mentioned some of the things, um, that we now do with our kids that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:51 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:52 ... is so different from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:56 Okay? And the knock-on consequences this can have, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:00 Yes, we, we talk about this a lot on the show in the context of food, for example, and how our food supply has changed, but even those movement inputs into the developing child's brain-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:12 ... that we've always had are now being leapfrogged in the name of progress.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:19 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:20 But we have to question, is that really progress, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:24 Screens are another thing that have been dramatically introduced into children's lives, but also-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:30 ... our lives as adults. I'm interested in your perspective on screens. What is the impact of screen use? What happens to our eyes, to our neck, to our hamstrings? What is the impact on our muscles? 'Cause I think a lot of the time we're talking about screens through the lens of, um, what is the content people are consuming-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:55 ... on their screens. That's a valid point.What is the impact on our circadian rhythms by looking at these bright, uh, lights into the evening-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:05 ... when we're not designed to look at bright lights in the evening? Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:08 So, uh, content circadian disruption, that I've spoken about quite a bit on this show.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:15 But I think you have quite a fresh perspective on the impact that screens are having on our movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:21 Yeah. So I, I think two sort of central things is, um, the ability to do hard things and our serotonin levels and our hormone levels, which I'm, I'm sure you've discussed as well, is, is profound. So I think a lot of people are losing a sense of agency and a, the ability to do things and a, as a sort of level of focus, which is-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:40 What, because it's too easy to be distracted by your screen?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:43 Yeah. You get cheap serotonin hits.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:45 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:46 And, um, you know, so it's just, just on a... And you just end up in a feedback loop. I mean, how many times have you picked your phone up, checked your emails, checked your messages, gone onto Instagram, then there's nothing there for you, so what do you do? You check your email, check your... You know, you're just cycling through apps.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:03 I, I, I was thinking-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:03 So you're in, in this crazy feedback loop of, of doing nothing and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:08 And you think you've done something. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:10 You think... Well, it's stressful because humans are actually partly prey, not just predators. You know, we like to think we apex [laughs] the apex of the species on the planet, but, you know, wait until you encounter a lion in the wild, and you'll very quickly realize, like, you're not an apex predator, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:25 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:26 So, so we like to, um, immerse ourselves in our environment and make sure our environment's safe. So just think of, you know, you, you look at an Instagram post, and you're transported to Africa. Part of your brain is like, "Oh, this is a new environment. What's the threat? Am I okay?" You know what I mean? Like, it's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:42 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:42 ... it's not just looking. You can be exhausted after work- being on your phone. And, and, and there's... I don't wanna get... uh, what I want to get into is the eye and the movement and your posture, which is kind of what you're asking, but also this notion of, um, we know that people's reflexes, people's ability to play sport diminish after being on the phone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:01 I don't even think we know the long-term consequences here-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:04 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:04 ... right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:04 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:05 Um, of being able to be easily distracted-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:08 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:08 ... because it's also what are you not doing with that time?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:10 Hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:11 Now, last year, I filmed this Channel 4 documentary on screens and children with Matt and Emma Willis.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:19 Matt Willis, um, is a singer-songwriter. He's part of the, the British, uh, band Busted.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:26 Right? And I don't think this made the final edit in the show, but o- on one of the days we were filming, and I think we were talking to the parents of the kids, who n- frankly, all of them said that we've lost our children to technology. None of them wanted their kids on the technology, but they were all doing it because everyone else's kids were on it, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:45 It was this really-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:45 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:46 ... bizarre situation that no one wants it-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:48 ... everyone's doing it 'cause they think everyone else's kids are doing it, but everyone, or all those parents at least, are saying, "We've lost our kids to technology," right? And Matt said something so interesting, which is he, he was one of the main songwriters in Busted, and he said he, you know... Yes, he has to really carve out time now to write songs-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:07 ... because he goes, "You know, how many of these great, uh, songs and albums that we listen to came from boredom?" People were bored-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:16 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:16 ... and went, "Oh, you know what? I'm, I'm just gonna pick up my guitar and start playing." And for after a few hours, they start to express these emotions, and we get these gorgeous songs.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:24 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:24 I'm wondering what's gonna happen in 20, 30 years when that boredom is literally being engineered out of our lives, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:31 So Matt was saying, "I don't write anywhere near as many songs. I don't pick up my guitar. I don't pick it up as much as I used to-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:40 ... because it's easier-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:42 ... to pick up your phone."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:43 My son and I love playing snooker. Snooker coach a few years ago said to me that he worries now that snooker's a hard game.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:50 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:50 It's w- to get really good is difficult. You have to put in time, attention-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:55 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:55 ... practice. You have to go through not being very good-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:58 ... before you break through. Why would a kid do that anymore when it's just easier to get these hits on a screen, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:05 So just, just echoing what you're saying.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:07 Yeah. Well, I mean, when you stare at a screen, um... Also, small screens are terrible 'cause your rate of attention is terrible. So what you'll get out of a, a email message on a screen is not the same as if you were on a big screen or if you printed it on paper. So that, I think that's really, really important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:22 What do you mean it's not the same?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:24 So your... If, if I sent you, um, a reasonably technical email, you know, a long email with, with, with valid points and content on, on your phone as a text message, if you looked at s- your ability to sort of what you got out of that email, uh, or text message would be different if I send it to you via an email and you looked at it on a big scr- screen because you're sitting back and you've got a bit of a broader perspective and your eyes are bigger.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:50 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:50 So more panoramic view, not pinpoint focus, okay? And if you printed out that out into analog, onto paper, your retention rate would go through the roof. So we're getting data, but we can't even interpret it decently because how our eyes perceive it affects our retention rates.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:06 There's also research showing that children do not retain stuff-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:10 ... as well on a screen as if on paper.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:13 Yeah. And you must write it out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:14 Yeah. And, and I'm, I'm-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:16 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:16 Just to be clear-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:18 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:18 ... like, I'm very, very against the rapid adoption of, uh, technology into the classrooms.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:24 I think it's coming at a huge cost-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:26 ... um, for a variety of different reasons that we're covering.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:30 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:30 Um, but purely just on that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:32 ... of, of, of learning, what, what do we want our kids to do at school? We want them to learn.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:36 But we know that they're learning better-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:38 ... if it's on paper-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:39 ... as opposed to a screen.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:40 So why would you not give them the learning on a piece of paper as opposed to a screen?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:45 Yeah, it's better. And, and... Well, anyway, so, so to the radical impact that our eyes have on our posture, how we interpret data, how we see the world, you know, how much... I mean, this is all sort of relevant, but one of the things that we do as well is when you look at a screen, you'll hold your breath. It's called screen apnea or email apnea. So here's a really interest- If you... You'll say, "No, that's not true." So a great breathing practice is to hum.Or whistle. Whistling's gone out of fashion. It used to be a big thing. You whistled while you worked, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:11 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:11 So but you can hum. So let's say, um, you know, and humming slows down your rate of breathing, which is really, really good for you. So we can start to over-breathe or take too many breaths per minute. So humming is, you know, if I breathe in, and then I hum out, [hums] okay? I'm slowing my rate of breathing. I'll take, I, I'll take fewer breaths per minute, which is generally a good idea. Okay, try and hum and write an email and be on your phone. It's almost impossible. So looking at the screen disrupts your breathing patterns so radically. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:45 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:46 And when your diaphragm-- when you hold your breath, your diaphragm tends to get tight, and people are over-breathing and having breathing issues just by screens.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:53 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:53 It's really, really hard to breathe through an email or a screen or a text.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:58 There was a study, I think it was UCLA-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:00 ... they did maybe five years ago, and in that study, I think the conclusion was that 80% of office workers change the way that they breathe when they're looking at their email inbox.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:14 Okay? Which is incredible, and not for the better. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:17 No, not for the better. No, no, no. And, and it-- and, and hopefully what you get out of this conversation is at a very, very intrinsic deep level. You know, in, in, you know, in a space that you don't really wanna mess with. You, you get your autonomic nervous system wrong, it's not great. It's really, really difficult sometimes to, to create health in, in a damaged autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:38 O- okay. So, um, we don't retain information as well-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:42 ... when we're reading it on a small screen compared to a big screen or on paper.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:46 It also-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:47 ... messes with your breathing patterns.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:48 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:49 Which of course I was gonna s- ask about posture-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:51 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:51 ... but of course, messing with your breathing patterns is gonna relate-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:53 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:53 ... to your posture.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:55 But what else does it do to your posture?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:56 So the fixed focal-- so your, um, pupils become fixed, and they don't really dilate and change the aperture, and your focal distance changes. So, one, it can ruin your vision. Um, oh, you're-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:06 Yeah, we know that

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:07 ... a nomad. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:07 It's increasing rates of myopia.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:08 Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So, so that's a big deal. But what happens is your eye muscles are intrinsically linked to your postural muscles, and like, so just on a very, very quick feedback loop, you can do... Like, if you bend forward to touch your toes and get a sense of how flexible, let's say, your hamstrings and your, your back is, so like whether you can touch the floor. Just so do that now, and then what you wanna do is, um, take your finger and look at the back of your nail, and then we do pencil push-ups. So you take your finger, and you sort of move it out and then move it closer to you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:39 While you're staying focused on it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:40 While you're staying focused on the, on the nail. So you really wanna be able to focus on the nail and then move out and then move closer. So basically, you're changing your focal distance of your eyes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:48 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:49 Okay? And then the third component is go close, far, and then look up and then have a-- try and really relax your eyes as if you're looking at a sunset. Like so-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:58 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:58 ... panoramic. And you do that, uh, just for a minute, and then bend forward and try and touch your toes, and you'll be more flexible. It really, really changes your eye muscles and how relaxed your eyes are. And whether your eyes are able to open and close and change in distance radically affects the, the tone of your postural muscles. The other thing that's really important is the muscles at the back of your neck, at the top of your head, your suboccipital muscles, are ex- intrinsically linked to your eye patterns, and that's so that we can track a bird or a ball. So you know, something comes past us, our eyes track it, our head immediately moves. And when we stare at a screen, our periv- peripheral vision decreases so that you can have more accidents. You can be in a car accident because you didn't see them coming because we have no more peripheral vision, which is one of the things backward walking does. It really opens up your peripheral vision.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:47 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:48 So it's great for that. And your sort of a-- your ability to be aware of things behind you, which most people are so forward-focused that they've lost. But tight, um, upper cervical muscles means restricted head movements, anterior head posture, text neck, text posture, um, and then your back tightens up and your hamstrings tighten up, and you affected your movement patterns.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:08 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:09 And, and it's, it's not happening on one level. It's happening on the level of the eye, the actual posture with your head forward. Your head's really heavy. It weighs what a bowling ball weighs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:18 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:18 So for every inch your head travels-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:20 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:20 ... further forward, it's four times the pressure at the base of your neck. People are walking around with their head four inches too far forward.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:26 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:26 That's sixteen times fifteen pounds through the base of your neck.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:30 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:30 And you wonder why you've got neck pain and a breathing pattern disorder.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:32 And wondering why they're tired-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:34 ... and got a migraine-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:35 Yeah, and headache

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:35 ... and, or all kinds-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:36 ... or whatever it might be.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:37 Yeah. And, and your upper cervical region-- so one, one of the things that defines us, like Dan Lieberman talks about this, is our nuchal ligament, 'cause only animals that run have a nuchal ligament. So chimpanzees don't have a nuchal ligament.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:48 Where, where is that?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:49 So that's at the base of your neck.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:51 N-U-C-H-A-L.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:52 N-U-C-H-A-L.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:54 The base of your neck.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:55 Yeah. The base of your neck.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:55 So only animals that run have a nuchal ligament 'cause it's a head stabilizer.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:59 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:00 So we really need to work on stabilizing our heads when we run. So possibly it's really good neck rehab to run-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:05 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:05 ... 'cause it's a strong stimulus to stabilize your head. It's amazing how you-- I think about my own profession-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:11 ... and how many of the issues that we've just spoken about end up in front of doctors. Neck pain, uh, migraines, stress-related issues-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:24 ... like I can't sleep, right? But we learn, you know, it was a while ago since I was in medical school-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:31 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:31 ... um, but this idea that our posture, that the function follows our structure, we're not taught this stuff, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:43 We're, we're literally taught, oh, that's the s- the symptom is the head. Oh, that's a headache. Okay, what could be causing that? Or what, what's the name of that headache? Is it a migraine? Is it a tension headache? Is it something else? And then we, we can decide what drug treatment we can give for that. It's-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:58 ... it's broadly speaking, you know, with a few caveats, kind of how we're trained.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:50:05 Of course, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:06 Um, I've always looked at the, the human body holistically, and I remember at medical school, like following online or reading magazines about... this kind of stuff about posture and I thought, "Wow." You know, if you've got someone with really bad posture and their head forward position, I don't know how many of their symptoms might be related to that until that's corrected.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:50:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:26 But it's not, you know, this whole thing of that the way we look at health now or body parts is so reductionist, it's so separate everything out. "Oh, that's a head issue, or that's a neck issue, or that's a knee issue." It's like, well, maybe there's a root cause behind them all.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:50:41 Yeah, but it comes back to... So it just ties in beautifully. When people are tight and tension, they tend to move in a disconnected way, and when it's disconnected, it lights up in your brain as multiple moving parts, and movement is complicated.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:55 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:50:55 And so, like when you work with people and, and let's say you, and you just, you start with backward walking, one of the things you're integrating your joints, you're making movement simpler, you're tying the dots together. So what'll happen is when you really get this right and you run down the road, it won't be busy and there won't be a lot of moving parts. It'll feel like one thing. So everything starts to fit together and become one in your mind-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:17 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:17 ... because it's integrated, becomes one, and then you become better at thinking in systems. So, you know, someone was asking me, "Lo- Lawrence, how did I end up where I ended up?" It's by working on yourself and integrating your body and learning to move better, and the more, the better you move as a system, the better you are at systems thinking, and system thinking is very, very hard for most people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:40 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:40 You- what you do have to do is you have to know the basics really well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:43 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:43 I think I told you when I met Dan Lieberman and, you know, I had dinner with him, it was extraordinary, life-changing at the time, and I realized like, I really need to know my anatomy better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:52 What was it about meeting Dan that was so life-changing for you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:56 One, he's curious and playful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:58 Yeah. He's a, he's a great guy.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:59 You know, and you-- I-- So I just realized, like this guy's having fun and he loves what he does.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:04 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:52:05 You know, and that's why the quality of his work's so extraordinary and it's gonna last for times, you know? And people like misrepresent him and misquote him and project all stuff onto him. He's having fun, and he truly loves what he does, and he loves teaching, he loves being in help. So that was a big thing. Um, his, his whole perspective on how important evolution we are-- Like, so a lot of what we're talking about, if you just go Dan Lieberman mode, it's a mismatch of evolution. We haven't caught up and adapted to the technology and the food and the diet that we, we live. We haven't, you know, so it's, it's the evolution sort of mis- mismatch. Um, and the other one was, was how structured and routine his life was, and with kind of a lot of thought. So he, he-- I can't remember how far his house was from work, but he, he specifically bought a house, uh, that was, let's say, 20 or 40 minutes away from work, walking distance, so that he could walk to work and back every day because that's-- walking for him is really, really important. So that's where he gathers his thoughts, prepares for his lecture, you know, the creativity and thinking. So, um, and, and his day, his routine, you know, his pretty simple life and just very, very productive-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:10 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:10 ... and sort of non-negotiables. An hour breakfast with his family in the morning, 90 minutes supper with his family in the evening.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:17 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:18 You know, walk to work, walk back from work, like, so I don't know. He was just a true, true inspiration, and kinda like you [laughs] saw something in me that I didn't see in myself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:27 Why is it, do you think, that Dan and me can see things in you that you weren't able to see in yourself or didn't have the trust in yourself?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:37 Um, uh, yeah, a lot. You know, growing up, childhood, I lost my mother when I was 11. You know, boarding school, being bullied a little bit. I don't know, society. Like I think Rick Rubin says, like so your job as an artist is to sort of break through all the obstacles that society's beaten into you, you know, if you wanna think clearly. So I don't know. Um...

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:03 Do you have more trust in yourself these days?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:05 Oh, yeah. I, you know, my-- One of the reasons I'm so passionate about what I'm doing, and I want to really start working on my influencing [laughs] and my YouTube and, and get this content out there, is it's been totally, totally life-changing for me. I mean, I'm 54 now, and I run better than I've ever run in my entire life. I love running more. I move better. I feel so much more confident and comfortable in who I am, in my authenticity. It's so incredibly rewarding-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:31 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:31 ... when you start getting this right, and I wish that for everyone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:35 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:35 And, and y- not, not in a way you must, and I'm telling you to do this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:39 No.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:39 I'm just saying, come on in, the water's great, and if we can just slowly, one person at a time, on a deeply authentic level, start to live better, you know, we can just heal the planet or, or, or make the world a better place.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:52 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:53 Um...

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:53 Well, Lawrence, as you know-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:54 ... I th- I think you're incredible. I think you, not only do you have a proven track records with elite athletes, you move far beyond that. You just help people move better, move with more freedom, express themselves with more freedom, be more authentic, all these things you do. I think you have a wonderful way with words and a, and a wonderful manner, which is what I think draws a lot of people to you. You clearly want to help. For people who want to kind of get involved with you, you've got this online community-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:26 ... and you've got this new breathing app that you've created, okay. So tell us about the online community. Who's it for, and what do people get if they sign up for that?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:35 So the online community, you know, we talked on this earlier about the culture is the coach. We're trying to create a, a, a community of like-minded people and, um, you can go on there, and someone's very likely experienced what you've experienced, and there's just this sense of you can come there, you can learn by assimilating. You can say, "Oh, that's how they solve that problem. That's interesting. This relates to me," without, without it being too direct. So a good cultural space to be in to start thinking about movement and not just running, walking, movement, how you show up in the world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:04 And you, you go on there, you give classes, there's mobilities.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:06 Yeah, so there's four, four classes a week. Monday, a mobility class. Um, on Wednesday, we do a mastery class, so we'll, we'll deep dive into some aspect of movement or, um... Thursdays is a breathing class. So, and it's a very, very safe and secure breathing class. We'll, um-You know, breathing needs to be safe, and we'll talk about why. So, so Thursday we do a breathing class, and then Friday we do a strength class. And then I have, um, community-only videos on there, so some of the stuff that I do I don't release to the public. And it's more because of structure. We really do want you to understand the basics before you start doing something a little bit more advanced-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:44 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:44 ... because you can get distracted. You can be trying to p- solve a problem that's not appropriate for you at that time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:50 So people can go to your website.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:51 That's lawrencevanlingen.com.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:53 Dot com, yeah. Also, I go on there. You can ask me questions. So it, it's a way of h- people having access to me and my knowledge.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:01 Yeah, okay. So that's one thing people can do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:04 Um, obviously follow you on Instagram and social channel.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:07 I think Instagram's your main channel from what I can tell.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:10 Uh, apart from YouTube, of course.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:12 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:12 And then tell me about the AERI app. This is a, a new thing you're putting out into the world that's-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:17 ... you know, you're pretty excited about, aren't you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:19 Yeah, I am. I, I mean, breathing's really, really important. Um, it was born out of frustration that the apps didn't have what I wanted, and so one of my, um, one of the people in my class said, "Oh, we can build that app for you." [laughs] So it's like the app that I wanted to create. Um, and we've got a signature sort of breathing protocol on there, like we call it Level Up Breathing or Resilience Breathing. Um, so it's free, so it's A-E-R-I, the AERI app. If you search AERI app, it, it should be available on Apple and Android, and it's free. Um, there's a couple of different breath practices. So one's calm, one's to help you sleep. Your three, four, five breathing, is it?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:58 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:58 Your favorite breathing protocol's on there, so thank you. Um, but I'm, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it, but I think what we wanna do is... We talked earlier, you and I, we t- we, not on this podcast, we talked about if you get injured in a place of trust, it can be very, very difficult to, to heal that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:18 Well, hold on. So when people hear that, they might go, "Yeah, I, okay, this is obviously pretty harrowing." But, but we know, for example, some people trust their parents, and then their parents have-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:29 ... abused that trust-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:30 ... in a variety of different ways.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:30 Okay, but y- you don't just mean that, do you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:33 No. Well, I do mean that. So, so if you tr- like let's say we were training a dog, and like you have a rescue dog and it's had a, a traumatic past, and so you want to gain its trust. If you betray that trust, it's much harder for a traumatized dog to then regain that trust again. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:51 Yeah, yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:51 Yeah. So is it-- but if you have a puppy that grew up happy, resilient, lots of love, it's just trusting, you know, you can do wrong to that dog, and it's far more forgiving. Now, so let's say, I don't know, like I, you-- it's happened before, was like you're in a safe space and you do assisted stretching, and someone stretches you too far, and you get injured. Those injuries are often unsizably difficult to help people with because it happened in a place of trust. And so breathing's the same. When you're working on breathing, the more relaxed you are, the easier it is to hold your breath because nervous energy basically burns up calories.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:27 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:27 And this is one of the reasons we go back to the autonomic and nervous. It's exhausting being in a sympathetic state.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:32 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:32 So anyone here who's not curious and playful, start thinking you might be more tired than you think because it's exhausting to run on overdrive all the time, okay? So anyway, we go back to breathing. So breathing, um, is so powerful and so also breath-holding practice. So one is it takes back your agency and your ability to sort of do hard things or to concentrate. So if you've found like your phone's robbed your free will or your ability to concentrate, breathing's a really, really good way to reclaim that. Um, your, the reward system for it really, really helps with, with sort of scatterbrain, right? Um, and doing hard things. But if it's in a place of trust, you learn to relax, and the more you relax, the easier it is to hold your breath for longer. Whereas the more you force it and the more you try, the harder it is to hold your breath for longer, which I think is a great analogy. We were talking about the marathon, people training too hard, people trying too hard, people forcing it. So breathing in a, in a safe space, in a position of trust is very, very empowering and a, a good great life lesson, and it's a transferable skill to many parts of your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:37 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:38 What happens is many, many people have done breathing, and let's say you, you go after it or you do hyperventilating breathing, or you, you know, you have a pretty aggressive breathing practice. There are lots and lots of people that have got, um... it creates a s- a sense of anxiety in them, so they basically up-regulate and feeling way more anxious afterwards, um, commonly these people with tinnitus or tinnitus. So tinnitus is also a sign that you're sympathetically in overdrive. There's a couple of levels that tinnitus works on, but it's, it's basically an up-regulating of your nervous system in your ears. And so anyway, breathing for us is in a very, very safe and measured way, and we want to increase your breath-holding time. Um, and so like the resilience breathing on there is designed for that, is to, to teach you how to slow your breathing down, increase your breath-hold time, have recovery, add somatic visceral movement to it, all the things we've been talking about, um, in one beautiful practice. And we, we talk about doing it is while you're holding your breath, not to focus on holding your breath, but to focus on, um, mantras or visualizations and, and which is like what I'm gonna do on the London Marathon on this weekend. Like the, the discomfort is inevitable. I wouldn't call it pain, but the suffering is optional. And you shouldn't focus on the uncomfortableness of your sensations. You should be focusing on are you doing the things right or are you moving well or you can do visualizations or mantras because in breathing practice, that's what we do, is by focusing on not holding your breath. It's pretty extraordinary. Like people's breath-holding time just absolutely opens up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:15 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:15 And the other one, it ties in like a lot of the work that you do or the walking backwards. When your audit-- when your tonic and phasic muscle system starts to relax and starts to work in synergy, we can see really big improvements in your breath-holding time, and the opposite... it, it's bidirectional. So what happens is I had an athlete, uh, and of a ridiculously high caliber, right [laughs] ? Um, but was running on a, on with a mismatch between turning and phasing muscles, sort of very, very hamstring dominant and hip flexor dominant. Couldn't improve her breath-holding times. They would not improve. For three months, she tried to work on breath-holding for 20 to 30 minutes, three times a week, and her ability to hold her breath did not budge. It probably got worse over three months. Her husband's went from a breathe-out score of, like, under 20 seconds to, like, nearly 90 seconds, and her stay at 27-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:05 Oh, wow

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:05 ... 20 seconds or 17 seconds. So a lot of the time, when we start balancing your phasic muscle system, when you start hip extension base and your posture opens up, your ability to hold your breath opens up, and it gets easier. So it's quite a nice way to have your finger on the thumb of, am I moving better? Because generally, as you move better, it gets easier to, to improve your breath-holding.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:27 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:28 So, so for us, we ... the dose for resilience training would be about 15 to 20 minutes. But if you do it once a week, if you're moving well, your ability to hold your breath will increase.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:37 I love it.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:38 And most breath experts will say you've gotta do at least 20 to 30 minutes, three times a week to do that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:42 Yeah. That's amazing. So lawrencevanlingen.com is where they can find the community.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:48 The AERI app, A-E-R-I. They can look on Android and on Apple-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:52 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:52 ... to get that. Lawrence, I've, I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, as always. Um, there's definitely enough to go into a part three-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:00 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:00 ... so which I'll be, uh, trying to get in the diary with you next time-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:04 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:04 ... you are in the UK. Uh, of course, good luck for the marathon-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:07 Thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:07 ... on Saturday. Um, and just to finish off, Lawrence, for, for someone who's listened to this conversation, and is a bit fed up with their body-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:22 ... they've given up on movement and things like running and walking because it hurts. It doesn't feel good. They don't think that those movements are for them. What would you say to them?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:38 Come on in. The water's great. [laughs] Um, start moving in the right dire- like, baby steps, and don't you- don't be paralyzed by, um, perfection. Just start. It's just learning. It's like when you pick up a guitar. You are not gonna play that guitar well. That's just inevitable. There's very few prodigies in the world. Um, so you know, there's ... It'll be a bit difficult in the beginning. It'll be a little bit uncomfortable. It won't be in your comfort zone, but it's just a, a journey that you should definitely, definitely start. Um, we need to age well. We know we go back to longevity. Um, you know, I, I want to have, have quality of life when I'm old. You know, I'm, I, I don't think I'm ob- obsessed with how long I want to live as, as in how the quality of life of my later years, and I think, you know, we really do need to start putting money in the bank for our future selves. You're gonna look back. If you're moving well at 80, you are gonna look back, and you're gonna thank your current self so much, and it's so empowering, and your relationships heal. Your way you see the world gets better. You, you just deepen and enrich and, and improve every aspect of your life, and so it's absolutely crazy not to. I understand why, because we can be stuck in s- patterns of self-harm, or we can be really, really fearful. Um, so just start with one small thing and have hope and trust and believe, and it'll, it'll just ... It's just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:05 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:05 And it's not complicated. I know we, we talked about all this elegant stuff. It's not difficult. It's all one thing. It's just we're not used to be- having it explained this way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:15 Yeah, and you know, if people don't like all the explanations about tonic muscles and-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:20 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:20 ... phasing muscle balance-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:21 Doesn't matter

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:21 ... doesn't matter because if you do the backward walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:24 ... and the flow rope-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:25 ... you're gonna naturally start to work on those things straight away.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:28 So that's a pretty good place to start.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:30 Lawrence, you're an incredible human being. I feel very lucky to call you a friend. I really appreciate you coming on the show again. You are literally doing such wonderful work all over the world. It's a pleasure for me to be able to help you spread your message-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:44 Thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:45 ... with more people. I think many more people need to hear it. And, um, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:51 Well, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, you're a blessing, and all your good work, it's, it's ... You're an inspiration.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:57 Oh, thanks, man. [upbeat music] If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:07:03 If at 37 your limit is just being able to run that 30-minute park run, at 75 you're gonna have a very difficult time getting around.