How To Heal Pain, Reinvent Your Life & Find Purpose Before 2025 | Lawrence Van Lingen

Lawrence van Lingen 0:00 Habits are really, really hard to change. Um, extraordinarily hard to change. And like I say, you know, pe- we're riders on an elephant. Our nervous system kind of dictates what's going on. And I, I say to people, "I'm not actually treating you, I'm treating your nervous system." Which is n- your rational brain, you know, we're having a conversation, but your nervous system often dictates your habits, or your behaviors, or the way you talk, or... It, it's really, we're on autopilot.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:25 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 0:25 And so again, it's that if you're a drowning person, they can't think, they can't make decisions. There's, there's no rationality to their behavior. Um, the lifeguard is trained, secure in that environment and, and they're thinking, and they've got this. And we definitely wanna shift towards, towards that state. And, and breathing is a massive portal of entry into creating a change betw- or a space between the stimulus and the response-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:50 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 0:50 ... and that pause, and then you can make decisions. And a, a lot of this is you actually become self-aware.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 0:56 And the amount of people that I work with that s- suddenly become self-aware will go, "Oh." And it's almost like you wake up, and you realize like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05 ... "Oh, you know, I, I was asleep before," or, "I was on autopilot," or, "I, I was not in charge of my life." And it is, it's pretty profound.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13 Yeah, I completely agree. We see the world through the state of our nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18 We interact with the world through the state of our nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21 And until... It's amazing, like I can imagine many athletes saying that to you, 'cause I also feel that there was a time in my life where I was asleep.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30 And then you... It's not even sudden, but-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32 ... you just suddenly realize, wait a minute.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35 With every single external event-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38 ... I have a choice in how I react to that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41 Right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42 But until you realize that, you think, "No, I am a victim to-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46 ... the external actions in the world. Things happen, people talk to me a certain way, my boss says something, of course I'm gonna be reactive to that."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54 But at some point, and I think breathing and other things that you recommend, which we're definitely gonna go through loads of practical things for people, I think it helps people develop that awareness to go, "Wait a second."

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05 "There is time here for me to choose a response."

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09 Talking about the nervous system, you, you're, uh... when you treat someone in pain, you're essentially treating their nervous system, right? So let's just talk about, um, how emotions or trauma, I guess, get stored in our bodies and affect the way that we move, 'cause I think it's really, really important.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:34 Yeah. And, and this is layers, and it, and it, it goes deeper and deeper. So, so I like the example of, of w- your tailbone. Um, you can fall and, um, damage your, your coccyx, which is at the tip of your sacrum, right at the bottom, your, your tailbone. Um, and typically, that'll tighten up your pelvic floor, and you'll splint and guard if it's painful. And that can so profoundly change your gait pattern, because basically what you lose is extension in your, in your gait, because you sort of, you know, your butt's sore, and so you, you don't really want to take a big step going forward.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:09 Right.

Lawrence van Lingen 3:09 Or you can't leave your... It, it changes the pattern and firing, um, and also creates a asymmetry. And just from that, from having a, a tight pelvic floor, which affects your breathing, which affects your central nervous system, which affects the way you gait, you c- you can literally see, you know, athletes... I mean, I, I gave you the example of a water polo player that, that was, you know, just exceptional, um, went snowboarding, fell on their tailbone, and had fear and guarding. I mean, she became, um, asymmetrical from it, and she actually complained of a knee injury. And I was like, "No, no, no, no. [laughs] There's... What happened to you?" Because, you know, luckily I'd seen her before, and I knew this was not her normal state. And it, it affects the way you move so profoundly. Like think of a, you know... We're are extraordinarily good at picking up people's body language and signals. It's a survival mechanism. So think of a dog with its tail between its legs. You know, well, that dog's cowardly, or fearful, or running away from us. And then you think of a dog wagging its tail. I mean, you know, it's two different things. And so you can have a system just from a trauma where you suddenly got your tail between your legs. You're not as confident as you were. Your balance has decreased. Your movement patterns have decreased. And you can just totally see someone's sort of almost world erode around them. Um, and, and that's just on a, on a, on a structural level. But generally speaking, for a human being, if they have trauma, any sort of trauma, emotional trauma, physical trauma, you can diet them, put them in solitary confinement, play really loud noises, shame them, kick them, do whatever you like, you will go into a fetal position. And that's one of this sort of relationship between extension and flexion, and flexion is pretty much where we hold our deepest traumas and fears. We go into a protective guarded state. And a lot of what I'm doing is extension-based running is to extend and run, and open up, and, and get out of that and into our sort of the best version of ourselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:05 I wanted to ask you, do you think that humans are born to run? And if we are, why do so many people struggle with running with things like pain?

Lawrence van Lingen 5:18 Yeah. I think from an evolutionary standpoint, the, the feeling would be that we evolved to run, and it's, it's an integral part of human design and human DNA. Um, you gotta be kind of careful, 'cause there are obviously some people that, that can't run, or it's not gonna be part of their world, and you wanna be respectful of that. And obviously it's, it's harder for some people to run. I feel like maybe some people really adapted well to agriculture and sort of more standing around than hunting and gathering, if, if, if that makes sense. You get people with really big calves, really big feet, and, um, you know, and someone that's a more natural runner will have a really light bone structure in their feet and long Achilles. So, so there is, uh, there is genetic predisposition to some people are way more talented at running. But yeah, I think running, all humans should be able to run if they're healthy and, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:10 So, so- That's really interesting, that perspective that you feel some people may have adapted to not be quite as natural at running as other people-

Lawrence van Lingen 6:20 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:20 ... which kind of makes sense. But given that a lot of us probably are, on some level at least, born to run-

Lawrence van Lingen 6:29 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:29 ... we have that within us, the mechanics-

Lawrence van Lingen 6:31 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:31 ... the, the capability of running.

Lawrence van Lingen 6:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:34 Running is increasing in popularity as a sport, as a pastime, yet it seems, depending on what research you look at, that running injuries are quite significant, and many people want to run but can't run because of pain. Why do you think that is?

Lawrence van Lingen 6:51 I think a small part of that, interestingly enough, is I don't think we've quite shed our, our sort of more primate shape of, of being on all fours, and, uh, it's a small component. Like, I, I, I think humans still haven't fully adapted to being upright on two legs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:07 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 7:07 We've been upright on two legs for a relatively brief period of time, if you think of our evolutionary, of ancestry, and that's a small component, but otherwise I'd say the two big things is modern lifestyle, and for me, I'm pretty fascinated in, in the nervous system and the effect of the nervous system has on the way we move. And I feel like, you know, we sit a lot, we sit in flexion. Most people, th- I mean, there's people that can quote the stats accurately, but the, the vast majority of people have accumulated trauma, nervous system trauma, a history of trauma, um, dysregulated nervous systems, and it, y- your nervous system influences the timing and the way we move and the way we stand and the way we feel, and somewhere in, in there's, lies the problem.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:52 Yeah. You are a quite exceptional coach who's got a reputation for helping people who can't be helped get out of pain and run efficiently, and compete at things like the Olympics, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 8:07 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:08 So you're clearly looking at the human body in a way that many people aren't. What has drawn me very much to your approach is the fact that, to me, you seem to really go upstream to what are the root causes here?

Lawrence van Lingen 8:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:24 What's actually really going on? Not just there's back pain or foot pain or hip pain or whatever.

Lawrence van Lingen 8:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:29 It's like, let's go further up the chain and figure out why that's happening in the first place. Would you agree with that?

Lawrence van Lingen 8:35 Yes, 100%. You can't work with humans in a reactive nature. It just doesn't work. And so, um, and also, you know, if you have a, a logic stream, if the first assumption's wrong, everything other, although it might be correct, is also wrong. And so you always wanna work as fundamentally as you can and as an upstream as you can, and it's really, really important to look at the human as a whole and as a system. And I think modern medicine and general life has taught us to specialize and, and be reductionist, so we're trying to know more and more and more about smaller and smaller parts, but at some point that breaks down. And humans are systems. You have to understand how to talk to a system and a, and, or influence a system, and, and we're not trained to do it, or it's not a natural way of thinking for a lot of people either.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:19 Yeah. You're speaking my language there.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:21 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:21 This is, uh, for sure something that I think has frustrated me since I qualified-

Lawrence van Lingen 9:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:27 ... as a medical doctor-

Lawrence van Lingen 9:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:29 ... many years ago now, that a lot of our training is reductionist.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:37 You know, very, I guess a very relatable example might be a patient comes in with a headache.

Lawrence van Lingen 9:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:43 And of course, there are many causes of a headache, and we have to screen people and make sure-

Lawrence van Lingen 9:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:46 ... we're not missing anything serious, but a lot of our training is, I would argue, stuck downstream. So the patient has something, and then we have a selection of treatment modalities, usually a selection of drugs-

Lawrence van Lingen 10:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:01 ... to try and treat the headache.

Lawrence van Lingen 10:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:04 But I remember, you know, a couple years into my career as a doctor thinking, "Well, yeah, okay, I get that. Symptom relief has its place, but why does this person have a headache in the first place?"

Lawrence van Lingen 10:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:18 And I guess my whole career, I have been trying to help people understand, let's, let's start to go further upstream.

Lawrence van Lingen 10:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:25 Are there similar examples of that in running, things that people commonly complain of, and they try and get treated a certain way-

Lawrence van Lingen 10:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:34 ... which may have some utility for a few weeks perhaps-

Lawrence van Lingen 10:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:38 ... but doesn't deal with the root cause? Are there any sort of common examples?

Lawrence van Lingen 10:41 All of it [laughs] is an example. Um, there's very few people that can treat, uh, a human as a system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:47 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 10:48 Um, I mean, the easiest would be, let's say, your head position, 'cause your head's so heavy, and it sits on the, on the top. And so if we had to sort of think about balancing a ball on a stick in your hand, we'd start to understand that, that where that ball is is really, really important, and most people, you know, don't have a great posture, or their head's tilted to one side or it's too far forward, and it just immediately affects everything. You know, your upper cervical region, just the atlas axis, you know, the top of your neck, if that's not balanced and stacked, no joint in your body will stack properly. And so s- uh, these are... I, I don't want the, the, the listeners to think that, oh, I'm, I'm paralyzed or insecure, y- you know, or I have doubt, or this is difficult, because the really nice thing about a system is if you put some goodness into the system, the whole system gets better. And an example of that would be, you know, if you, you can do this at home. You can try to sort of bend forward and try and touch your toes and get a sense of how flexible your hamstrings are, and if you take a, like, a lacrosse ball or a ball and you roll it underneath your foot, you know, both feet, just for two minutes on either side, and you go back, your hamstrings will be more flexible. You'll be a- your range of motion will very likely improve. And then you can come back tomorrow, and then you could do eye exercises. So you could just look at your thumb and then look at your thumb in the distance and look at it close, and then look at it far, and then maybe move it around the room, and then look at the horizon, and look at a narrow object, and then go and measure your hamstring range of motion, and it'll im- increase as well. And so that's from two ends of your body and two different pathways, you're increasing the health of the system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:20 What you're speaking to there for me is this idea that everything in the body is connected.

Lawrence van Lingen 12:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:25 We're, we're interconnected, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 12:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:27 And so let's talk about hamstrings for a minute, because it's very common for people to say they have tight hamstrings.

Lawrence van Lingen 12:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:37 And so I would say the commonest solution that many people think they need-

Lawrence van Lingen 12:42 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:43 ... for their tight hamstrings is to stretch their hamstrings.

Lawrence van Lingen 12:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:48 But what you have just demonstrated with those examples is that if you go a bit upstream, a bit further upstream, well, maybe the reason your hamstrings are tight is because of either your feet or your eye movements.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:06 Is that, is that sort of a- an accurate summary of what you just said?

Lawrence van Lingen 13:11 Yes, but I want, I wanna bring that back a little bit. You know, your eyes and your feet are a factor, but it's probably sitting. You know, you sit with shortened hamstrings and you, you sit with, um, shortened hip flexors, and the hip flexor and the hamstring is, is synergist. Now, you know, the point of what I was trying to say is you can, you can interact with the system almost from any direction.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:28 Yeah, okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:29 You know? Um, as to the blame, yeah, what you can't do is you can't-- it's generally not fruitful to work on a for- first-order thinking. So, oh, my muscle is short, I therefore need to lengthen it by stretching. Um, and here lies the paradox in my world is, is engineers don't really run the show, so we don't even have a formal definition for stretching in medicine [laughs] which is extraordinary. You think, like, you know, an engineer knows, I don't know, there's a formula for everything, and everyone knows exactly what you're talking about if you talk about velocity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:58 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 13:58 But, um, it is-- the human is so complex, and it's organic, and it's moving, and it's changing, and so that's what makes it hard. And I think a lot of people don't have agency or tools to help, and, and it's just-- it's kind of sad. A lot of the people that come and see me, it's all been first order. Your hamstrings are short, stretch them. This muscle's weak, strengthen it. But you know, you have to ask the deeper question of why would your hamstrings be short? What in your lifestyle is contributing towards those factors?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:26 Yeah. I guess what I was trying to summarize your point, what I guess I was trying to get across to people is this idea that the site of the symptom is not always the site of the problem, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 14:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:39 So tight hamstrings-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:40 ... can have a variety of different-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:42 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:43 ... causes.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:44 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:44 And if you just, in inverted commas, "stretch that hamstring"-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:49 Yeah. You're not getting at the root

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:51 ... you're not getting at the root.

Lawrence van Lingen 14:52 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:52 And, and sure, you may get some temporary relief-

Lawrence van Lingen 14:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:54 ... but if you don't address the underlying causes, it's gonna, it's gonna retighten. It's gonna come [laughs] straight back, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 15:00 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:00 And so-- and clearly I know 'cause the-

Lawrence van Lingen 15:02 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:03 ... the testimonials that when people talk about you are just exquisite because so many people come to you, so many top athletes come to you when they've tried everything else-

Lawrence van Lingen 15:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:13 ... and you seem to be able to unlock what has been missing.

Lawrence van Lingen 15:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:19 Um, let's talk about breathing, because we're talking about this interconnected nature. I have changed my own morning routine over the last couple of months since I saw one of your breathing tutorials-

Lawrence van Lingen 15:30 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:30 ... on YouTube. I think it's absolutely brilliant, and it's how I start every day now. Um, why is the breath so important when it comes to our movement?

Lawrence van Lingen 15:40 Yeah, I think breath's the first place you wanna start. So, so we talk about systems. Systems are really hard to change and, and it's really hard to change habits in humans be- because we become stable or pigeonholed or used to a certain environment, so, um... Which, which I think is one of the reasons why I think-- why it gets difficult to work with people in the systems approach, because humans are so resistant inherently to change. Um, and so breath is a fantastic sort of portal into creating change. Um, when we s- so couple of reasons why your breath might get out of whack is, let's say you fell. Um, sometimes when you fall, you brace, you guard, your, your diaphragm becomes splintered. You, you might fall and catch your breath. Um, you know, you might have injured your ribs or, or any sort of trauma can often... You know, you keep guarded and splintered. Maybe if you had an episode of pain, your, your breathing will be dysregulated. We have, um... It's really important for people to, to work on breathing every day because it's almost like brushing your teeth. It's just really good hygiene, and that's because also screens. So there's a thing called screen apnea or email apnea. When we, when our pupils are fixed and don't change the aperture much, it affects our breathing and our breathing rate. And so we wanna slow down breathing. And then what's another example? And then commonly you'll have people that are told to engage their core, and, and this is what I see in, in the athletic realm, which is pretty common, is if you engage your core by pulling your belly button in, your diaphragm goes up, and when you breathe, your ribs should go up and your diaphragm should come down. That is healthy breathing. And a lot of people for, for various reasons, get into a reciprocal breathing pattern, which is diaphragm goes up as your ribs go up, and that projects your breath up into the upper-- you into your upper chest, and it's called, like, uh, apical breathing or reciprocal breathing. Um, and these reverse breathing patterns are, are, are really, really harmful, and if you don't, um, correct that reciprocal breathing pattern, it's very, very difficult to, to treat or get anywhere with, with a human. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:50 This goes beyond movement though-

Lawrence van Lingen 17:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:52 ... right? Doesn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 17:52 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:52 Because if, if we're talking about this interconnected nature of the body-

Lawrence van Lingen 17:56 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:56 ... right? If you're breathing dysfunctionally-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:01 ... like I think many people are these days-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:03 ... or, or at least suboptimally-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:05 ... yes, that can have an impact on your movement. It can have an impact on pain. It could have a, an impact on how stressed you feel.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:15 It can have an impact on your mood.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:17 It can have an impact on your anxiety.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:19 It can have an impact on how you interact with your wife, your husband-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:22 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:22 ... your partner, your children.

Lawrence van Lingen 18:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:24 So it's, it's a- It's a proper upstream lever-

Lawrence van Lingen 18:28 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:28 ... to get right, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 18:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:29 Would you agree with that?

Lawrence van Lingen 18:30 Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it is the most important thing to work with, and you'll hear it said again and again, and no one kind of ever does it, 'cause I think they don't have agency or it's not powerful enough, but breathing is the first thing that any physical therapist or any movement-based person, or any sort of intervention with a human you should work on. Because again, if your breathing pattern is stuck, you end, you end up being anxious and, um, I, I use it in, in the analogy as almost a drowning person. Drowning people tend to hyperventilate, and they get very, very anxious, and then their behavior becomes very inappropriate. So they'll, they'll s- drown the lifesaver coming to help to get another breath of air.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:09 And you've seen this, 'cause you, you were a lifeguard, weren't you, for many years?

Lawrence van Lingen 19:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for 10 years I was a community lifeguard.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:13 'Cause you explained this to me before.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:14 It's absolutely fascinating, because that's an extreme case-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:18 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:18 ... of where someone's breathing's gone-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:20 ... you know, where they can actually be saved and they-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:22 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:22 ... make poor decisions.

Lawrence van Lingen 19:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:24 Are you saying, though, is the, is the analogy that that's an extreme case where-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:29 ... someone's drowning-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:30 ... but actually many of us are kind of-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:35 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:36 ... sub-drowning-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:37 ... every day-

Lawrence van Lingen 19:38 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:38 ... because of poor breathing patterns?

Lawrence van Lingen 19:40 Yeah. And I think the listeners are gonna feel, "Oh, thank God, that's me." They, they'll relate to that story. And, and to save that person, the, the quickest way to get them out of the water is to slow their breathing down and tell them, "Yeah, I've got you. This is safe. We're gonna be okay," and you breathe with them and you slow their breathing down, and then they'll relax and you can pull them out the water. And, and you... It's that Viktor Frankl saying you need a s- a pause between the stimulus and the response, and most people, we're riders on the elephant. Your, your nervous system is dictating your movements, your behavior. You're, you, you're operating 100% or very close to 100% on habit, and there's no gap between the stimulus and the response, and you can't teach a drowning person how to swim, and I can't teach someone to move out of pain if they have a breathing pattern disorder, a- apart from the mechanical problems that it, that it in, it causes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:29 You obviously see a particular type of person, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 20:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:35 But if I was to ask you to estimate, out of the number of people who come and see you, what percentage have some kind of breathing pattern disorder, where would you put that percentage?

Lawrence van Lingen 20:47 Above 90.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:48 So greater than 90% of people-

Lawrence van Lingen 20:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:51 ... you feel have some degree of breathing pattern disorder.

Lawrence van Lingen 20:54 Yeah. It's really easy. I mean, anyone listening now, just take a deep breath in, just take a really deep breath in, and notice does your belly button go in when you take a deep breath in or does it go out? And, you know, the listeners can [laughs] feedback-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:06 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 21:06 ... and you probably find the overwhelming majority is y- your diaphragm will go up with your ribs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:13 What's really interesting for me if we're, if we're looking at, um, how common breathing dysfunction is-

Lawrence van Lingen 21:21 Is

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:21 ... the impact it can have on so many facets of our life and our wellbeing.

Lawrence van Lingen 21:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:26 But I will say that your... you've got some great videos on YouTube. I would so recommend people check them out, because you've got a great way of delivering the information and demonstrating it. But I have been doing, I would say, three to four minutes of the breathing exercises on your YouTube channel maybe for six or even eight weeks now, and it has changed how I breathe. It's-

Lawrence van Lingen 21:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:49 ... it's... And it... The, the reason I'm saying that is to sh- is to say, guys, this works, and I'm telling you, I do three or four minutes when I wake up each morning.

Lawrence van Lingen 21:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:58 That is it-

Lawrence van Lingen 21:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:59 ... and that is starting to reprogram it for me.

Lawrence van Lingen 22:01 Yeah. Yeah. And I think personally... Well, so well done, [laughs] and thank you. I think personally really resetting your breathing when you first thing in the morning sets you up. You take 20,000 breaths a day on average, and, and changing the, the, improving the quality and nature of those 20,000 breaths and possibly reducing them to even fewer breaths is, is, is a game changer, because then that sets up change in your life, and it, it makes you more comfortable with change. Um, so it makes a big difference, and I think, yeah, um.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:33 Well, let's... A lot of people will be listening 'cause they wanna know how to walk-

Lawrence van Lingen 22:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:37 ... uh, better and, and without pain, and run better without pain.

Lawrence van Lingen 22:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:41 So let's, let's really draw that link between the way that we breathe-

Lawrence van Lingen 22:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:46 ... and the way that we run, for example. So if a runner is saying, "Well, you know, I run pretty well, you know. I go to Parkrun every Saturday, and I don't seem to have too many problems."

Lawrence van Lingen 22:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:58 "Why should I work on my breathing?" Can you sort of explain why breathing is so paramount for your movement efficiency?

Lawrence van Lingen 23:06 So firstly, for injury prevention, and extremity injuries in particular. So if you have a central breathing problem, it can predispose you to peripheral injuries, because you basically get decreased blood flow and oxygenation. Your, your body protects the core over other things. Um, and so we can... I don't really wanna get into the, the physiology of it, um, but basically breathing pattern disorders actually predispose you to, to peripheral injuries. An example of that is, is Dupuytren's contracture. You know, you get a contracture in your hand.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:34 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:34 'Cause, you know, the person who's got a Dupuytren's contracture, you have a big adhesion in that diaphragm on that side. It's, it's just-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:42 You've seen that over and over again.

Lawrence van Lingen 23:43 I've never not seen it. You know, I'm waiting to be proved wrong, and I've never not seen it. So a, a big adhesion in your diaphragm on the same side as your Dupuytren's contracture and, and that goes for plantar fasciitis, too, and Achilles injuries. That's just from an injury perspective. And then performance-wise, if we see it at the elite level in triath- I work a lot with triathletes. In an elite triathlete level, if you can improve someone's breathing pattern, you can see a change in their threshold of 10 to 12 seconds per kilometer in a week.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:13 Yeah. For people who don't know what threshold means, can you explain?

Lawrence van Lingen 24:16 So that's as fast as you can sort of aerobically run. So that's typically for the average... If you're doing a Parkrun of 5K, it's probably how fast you can run a Pa- uh, the Parkrun will increase by 12, 10, 12, 15 seconds, even more sometimes, per kilometer

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:32 Just from sorting out breathing

Lawrence van Lingen 24:33 ... just from breathing, yeah. You swap your breathing pattern around, I guarantee your running improves, your running efficiency improves. And it, and we can go into the, the whys of that, but that's just how it works.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:42 Yeah. What's interesting for me there is, again, another idea I'm, I'm pretty obsessed with, and have been for many years, is that in this kind of health and wellness space-

Lawrence van Lingen 24:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:52 ... many people are talking about the need to increase movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 24:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:59 And of course, I talk about it, many people talk about it.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:01 Yeah, yeah [laughs] .

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:01 It is important that-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:02 ... as we become more sedentary-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:04 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:04 ... that we're moving more.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:07 But very few people are talking about how to move.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:11 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:12 Right?

Lawrence van Lingen 25:12 Quality of movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:13 Quality of movement-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:14 ... movement efficiency.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:15 And so for performance people, the fact that you can maybe get 15 seconds faster in a park run without doing any more training-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:24 ... just sorting out your breathing-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:26 ... hopefully that will be like, "Okay, I need to listen."

Lawrence van Lingen 25:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:29 But for people with injuries, and this is a, um... I think we should just briefly touch on the biochemistry, 'cause it's fascinating. I have my audience are, are familiar with breathing and the importance. I've had Patrick McKeown on several times-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:40 ... James Nestor-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:41 ... Brian Mackenzie, we've spoken about this in the past. But-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:43 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:44 ... you said something to me on a, on a message yesterday, which I found really, really interesting, that when we're over-breathing, which is many of us-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:52 ... we're lowering carbon dioxide-

Lawrence van Lingen 25:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:54 ... and that is contributing to those sort of injuries like plantar fasciitis.

Lawrence van Lingen 25:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:58 I mean, that is fascinating.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:00 Yeah, 'cause you, it creates a, um... Carbon dioxide's a bronchodilator and a vasodilator. It's a smooth muscle relaxer. So when you have an appropriate level of carbon dioxide, your blood vessels open up and you get more blood flow, and specifically to the periphery. And so if you want more blood flow in any tendon injury, that is a, is an absolute given.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:20 So hold on. So plantar fasciitis is very common.

Lawrence van Lingen 26:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:23 Okay? And, um, of course there can be mechanical contributing factors-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:28 ... you know, with your biomechanics-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:29 ... that n- might need addressing. But you're saying also, or, and/or for some people, it's simply a case that because of their breathing, and they're breathing too much, so they're c- they're blowing out carbon dioxide, that's going down in their blood-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:46 ... and because it's a vasodilator, so it's, uh, dilating the blood vessels-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:51 ... because your carbon dioxide is low, relatively low-

Lawrence van Lingen 26:56 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:57 ... you're then constricting those blood vessels. There's less blood flow to things like your Achilles and your-

Lawrence van Lingen 27:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:02 ... and the sole of your foot.

Lawrence van Lingen 27:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:03 So you're saying potentially for some people with those problems, you can do as much biomechanics as you want-

Lawrence van Lingen 27:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:10 ... but until you deal with the central breathing problem, you're always gonna be fighting uphill.

Lawrence van Lingen 27:16 Yeah. You, you're going upstream. And, and yes. W- when... I, I did an online slinky spine course and, and after the, the diaphragm release session, um, where we sort of did diaphragm release, uh, three or four people emailed me and said that their plantar fasciitis had cleared up, and that was within a week. So, you know, that's out of 300 and odd people. It's, it's, I, it, it's a shockingly large number, because of the 300 people, I don't know how many people [laughs] had plantar fasciitis, but three or four people emailed me and said that their plantar fasciitis cleared up. Um, and the other one is, is just because we were talking about running and health and movement and, and head, um, I, I had this great privilege of, of one of- working with one of the greatest, um, runners of all time, and he had his first running injury at 60 that stopped him dead in his tracks.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:05 60, 6-0.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:06 6-0. And he's one of the all-time greats, right? It was, he was, he just said, "Look, I'm, I'm not equipped to deal with this." He says, "You might not believe this, but this is the first injury that's stopped me from running in my entire running career, and I've been running hard since I was 12."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:20 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 28:21 And he says, "I'm just not equipped to deal with this, because I've never had to face a, a, a pro..." He's had niggles and he's had some health issues, but he's never had a running injury. And it was interesting in his stance, and then this is really, really important, you can't separate motion from emotion or how you feel and how you move. And I, I looked at his stance, and he had like, he was standing with his toes dug into the ground, and he was leaning forward, and he had like a sort of determined, really well-shifted forward posture, and his, the, you know, his toes were white. And I said, "What's going on in your life?" And he says, "Yeah, I don't know." And I said, "No, no, like business, politically, are you..." You know, he says no, he's, he's... At that stage, he was facing strong political opposition and, and, and, and he had to sort of dig his toes in and stand firm and stand his ground and sort of that was the theme of his life, and you could see it in his posture. And we just got him sort of rocking his toes up and down and rocking forward and real, you know, getting him off his toes and his forefoot, and he was running in two weeks. And so then again, there's this motion, emotion, psychological... I mean, humans are a system. And, um, the one thing I just want... Like, people can get lost at this stage saying, "Oh, well, how do I know that's not me?" Or, "I resonate with this," and you can, you... I don't want people to feel not empowered or enabled, because again, just keep coming back to that theme, that if, if you improve the environment of the system, it always improves. And we talk about a pot plant. You can have a pot plant in one corner of the room and it dies, and you can just move it to another corner and it thrives. And a lot of what we need to do in systems is realize you're a human in a system, a system in a system, and improving your environment improves everything. Improving your breathing improves everything.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:01 Yeah. In terms of this interconnected nature of everything-

Lawrence van Lingen 30:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:06 ... I think it's gonna be a theme throughout this conversation, because ultimately, I think that is one of your kind of golden talents and abilities. It's to witness someone and actually be able to take a step back and go, "Well, what is really going on here? There's local causes in the body-

Lawrence van Lingen 30:25 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:25 ... but actually, what's also going on with that person as a whole in the-

Lawrence van Lingen 30:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:29 ... in their life? Are they stressed? Do they struggle to let go?

Lawrence van Lingen 30:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:32 Are they having toxic relationships?" All those kind of things, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 30:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:37 We talk a lot about nutrition-

Lawrence van Lingen 30:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:38 ... on this podcast at various times, in terms of trying to help people make better choices.

Lawrence van Lingen 30:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:45 It's been very clear to me for a number of years that focusing on what we eat is important, but it could be that focusing on why we eat might be even more important.

Lawrence van Lingen 30:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:59 So if you're... You can, you can read that sugar or excess sugar is not helpful for you-

Lawrence van Lingen 31:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:05 ... and you can keep going on detoxes and two weeks where you give up, but it keeps coming back to where it was. Unless you've identified the root causes of why you keep going to sugar, why when you're stressed-

Lawrence van Lingen 31:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:18 ... do you go to sugar? Why do you have... You- you're not able to manage it in a different way, for example.

Lawrence van Lingen 31:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:23 So, so when it comes to breathing, something you said to me yesterday, which I, I feel is so profound, is this idea that cyclists, and many people know that-

Lawrence van Lingen 31:32 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:32 ... there is a coffee and pastry culture with many cyclists.

Lawrence van Lingen 31:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:38 You were sort of drawing the link between that and mouth breathing. Can you talk about that for a second?

Lawrence van Lingen 31:43 Yeah, so, so cycling's interesting. One is you, you exercising in a very flexed position, okay? Um, and sort of leaning forward. But you can cycle for a long time relatively to running. You know, I, I kind of like to think of a 3:1 ratio. A 30-minute run is probably the same as a 90-minute cycle.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:00 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 32:00 So people go out for hours, and typically they mouth breathe, and it really, really lights up your nervous system. So if you mou- if you take a sharp... Well, not a sharp, if you take a generous breath in through your mouth, you'll feel your, your ribs move up and your shoulders move up. And if you take a generous breath in through your nose, you find- you're far more likely to feel that the breath goes deeper, or you, you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:20 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 32:20 ... draw air down into the bottom of your lungs. And so mouth breathing tends to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, or your, your fight or flight or freeze or fawn system, right? Your, your emergency power through the system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:33 The stress part of your nervous system-

Lawrence van Lingen 32:34 The stress part of your nervous system

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:34 ... as opposed to the relaxation parts.

Lawrence van Lingen 32:36 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:37 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 32:37 And so, you know, you can go for a bike ride and, and, you know, they... There's loud mechanical noises, there's cars that come past you, you'd probably a little bit of fear of downhill or risk or, you know, and plus this apical mouth breathing. You can really sensitize your sympathetic nervous system, and then it's interesting that you become wired but tired, and then you go to, you want more stimulants. And so you, you end up with a coffee and pastry because you're feeding the dysfunction.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:02 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 33:02 And, and it's really interesting, is like a lot of people that are stuck in a sy- state of sympathetic overdrive crave drama and crave stimulants because that's the only thing that keeps them going. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:13 I think that's much of the modern world. I, I think many people, uh, who just heard you say that will either recognize it in themselves, or I think-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:20 ... more likely, they, they might recognize it in someone close to them.

Lawrence van Lingen 33:24 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:24 'Cause it's easier to see these patterns in other people than ourselves-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:28 ... right?

Lawrence van Lingen 33:28 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:29 And, and again, just tying that back to what I said about sugar, yes, you know, in inverted commas you're a running coach, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 33:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:37 But you're so much more than that, because I think you just help people have their whole body and their nervous systems move more efficiently-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:45 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:45 ... more together in harmony. Which, yes, will improve their running-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:50 ... but I believe a lot of our behaviors that we're trying to avoid, let's say sugar and alcohol-

Lawrence van Lingen 33:58 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:58 ... or, or, or reduce.

Lawrence van Lingen 33:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:01 And I've been thinking a lot about this, 'cause it's the topic of my next book basically, but I think the reason we can't stop, even though we have the knowledge, is because we don't know, we don't fully understand what that behavior is doing for us. So if you're a chronic mouth breather-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:20 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:21 ... and you're blowing off carbon dioxide and you're activating your sympathetic nervous system, so your stress-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:26 ... part of your nervous chronically-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:27 ... you're going to naturally need more things to soothe that, whether it's caffeine-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:33 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:33 ... whether it's alcohol-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:34 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:34 ... whether it's sugar.

Lawrence van Lingen 34:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:35 Right? So again, coming back to what you said was one of those root cause things that you deal with with everyone, breathing-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:43 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:43 ... if you learn to regulate your breath, breathe in a more, uh, optimal way-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:47 ... you're naturally gonna calm things down-

Lawrence van Lingen 34:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:49 ... and you'll naturally be able to reduce your alcohol consumption, your caffeine, and your sugar.

Lawrence van Lingen 34:54 It's easier, for sure.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:55 Yeah. Would you agree with that?

Lawrence van Lingen 34:56 Yeah, for sure. It's easier. I wouldn't... You know, um, habits are really, really hard to change. Um, extraordinarily hard to change, and like I say, you know, pe- we're riders on an elephant. Our nervous system kind of dictates what's going on, and I, I say to people, "I'm not actually treating you, I'm treating your nervous system" Which is n- your rational brain, you know, we're having a conversation, but your nervous system often dictates your habits or your behaviors or the way you talk or... It- it's really, we're on autopilot.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:24 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 35:24 And so again, it's that if you're a drowning person, they can't think, they can't make decisions. There- there's no rationality to their behavior. Um, the lifeguard is trained, secure in that environment and, and they're thinking, and they've got this. And we definitely want to shift towards, towards that state, and, and breathing is a massive portal of entry into creating a change betw- or a space between the stimulus and the response, and that pause-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:50 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 35:50 ... and then you can make decisions. And a, a lot of this is you actually become self-aware.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 35:55 And the amount of people that I work with that s- suddenly become self-aware will go, "Oh." And it's almost like you wake up, and you realize like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:04 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 36:04 ... "Oh, you know, I, I was asleep before" or, "I was on autopilot" or, "I, I was not in charge of my life" and it is, it's pretty profound.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:12 Yeah, I completely agree. We see the world through the state of our nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:17 We interact with the world through the state of our nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:20 And until... It's amazing, like I can imagine many athletes saying that to you, 'cause I also feel that there was a time in my life where I was asleep.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:29 And then you... It's not even sudden, but-

Lawrence van Lingen 36:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:31 ... you just suddenly realize, "Wait a minute. With every single external event-

Lawrence van Lingen 36:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:37 ... I have a choice in how I react to that."

Lawrence van Lingen 36:40 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:40 Right? But until you realize that, you think, "No, I am a victim to- The external actions in the world, things happen, people talk to me a certain way, my boss says something, of course I'm gonna be reactive to that.

Lawrence van Lingen 36:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:53 But at some point, and I think breathing and other things that you recommend, which we're definitely gonna go through loads of practical things for people, I think it helps people develop that awareness to go, "Wait a second-

Lawrence van Lingen 37:04 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:04 ... there is time here for me to choose a response."

Lawrence van Lingen 37:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:09 So another nervous system, you're, you're, uh... when you treat someone in pain, you're essentially treating their nervous system, right? So let's just talk about, um, how emotions or trauma, I guess, get stored in our bodies and affect the way that we move, because I think it's really, really important. 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.

Lawrence van Lingen 39:02 Yeah. And, and this is layers, and it, and it, it goes deeper and deeper. So, so I like the example of, of your tailbone. Um, you can fall and, um, damage your, your coccyx, which is at the top of your sacrum, right at the bottom, your, your tailbone. Um, and typically, that'll tighten up your pelvic floor, and you'll splint and guard if it's painful. And that can so profoundly change your gait pattern because basically what you lose is extension in your, in your gait because you sort of... you know, your butt's sore, and so you, you don't really want to take a big step going forward-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:37 Right

Lawrence van Lingen 39:37 ... or you can't leave your... It, it changes the pattern and firing, um, and it also creates a asymmetry. And just from that, from having a, a tight pelvic floor, which affects your breathing, which affects your central nervous system, which affects the way you gait, you c- you can literally see, you know, athletes... I mean, I, I gave you the example of a water polo player that, that was, you know, just exceptional, um, went snowboarding, fell on their tailbone, and had fear and guarding. I mean, she became, um, asymmetrical from it, and she actually complained of a knee injury. And I was like, "No, no, no, no. [laughs] There's... What happened to you?" Because, you know, luckily I'd seen her before, and I knew this was not her normal state. And it, it affects the way you move so profoundly. Like, think of a, you know... We're- are extraordinarily good at picking up people's body language and signals. It's a survival mechanism. So think of a dog with its tail between its legs. You know, "Well, that dog's cowardly or fearful or running away from us." And then you think of a dog wagging its tail. I mean, you know, it's two different things. And so you can have a system just from a trauma where you suddenly got your tail between your legs. You're not as confident as you were. Your balance has decreased. Your movement patterns have decreased. And you can just totally see someone's sort of almost world erode around them. Um, and, and that's just on a, on a, on a structural level. But generally speaking, for a human being, if they have trauma, any sort of trauma, emotional trauma, physical trauma, you can diet them, put them in solitary confinement, play really loud noises, shame them, kick them, do whatever you like, you will go into a fetal position, and that's one of this sort of relationship between extension and flexion. And flexion is pretty much where we hold our deepest traumas and fears. We go into a protective guarded state. And a lot of what I'm doing is extension-based running is to extend and run and open up and, and get out of that and into our sort of the best version of ourselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:28 Yeah. You did an interview, uh, with this wonderful chap, Floris-

Lawrence van Lingen 41:32 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:32 ... on his podcast, which I saw a few weeks ago. And in that, Floris talks about how you did some work with him-

Lawrence van Lingen 41:43 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:43 ... and then the following day, he went for a run, and he broke down in tears-

Lawrence van Lingen 41:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:49 ... and left you a message, which he very openly shared-

Lawrence van Lingen 41:51 [laughs] Yeah. He's very brave

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:53 ... on, on that video.

Lawrence van Lingen 41:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:54 Now, I think it's, it's... I, I really wanna pause here 'cause I think there's something really quite profound here to talk about. Again, I appreciate that you are, in inverted commas, a running coach, but you're so much more than that. In fact, even calling you a, a running coach feeds into the reductionist mindset that we-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:12 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:12 ... now have on everything-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:14 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:14 ... because you, as you say, you, you just help the whole being function better.

Lawrence van Lingen 42:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:20 Many people have been traumatized in one way or another, whether it's significant trauma from their parents or-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:27 ... someone when they were growing up, or just frankly at school when a teacher said something-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:32 ... really, uh, offhand-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:34 ... and they contracted and felt guilt or shame, which they've-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:38 ... carried through-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:39 ... for the rest of their life-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:41 ... until they become aware and start to change it, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 42:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:43 So we've covered that i- in many different ways on this podcast over the last few years. But what's really interesting to me is this idea that we We hold it in our bodies, right? It, it drives us into a more flexed position, a curled position-

Lawrence van Lingen 42:59 Yeah. Often, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:00 ... right? Yeah, often. And then we often talk about healing from trauma through therapy.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:08 And there's a whole variety of different modalities, right? And, and many of them are fantastic-

Lawrence van Lingen 43:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:13 ... and, and kind of utility for different people.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:16 Right? There's no question about that.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:18 But I have felt, and, uh, because I've experienced things myself over the past years working with Helen-

Lawrence van Lingen 43:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:23 ... and I've shared a lot of that with you, it is amazing how much of your trauma gets processed through opening up your movement in places that were previously tight.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:35 Certainly that's my, uh, impression of it. How would you describe it? And, you know, you know, I guess Floris was open about it on the show, so I'm, I don't think I'm talking about anything that's private information.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:44 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:44 It's out there on his YouTube channel.

Lawrence van Lingen 43:46 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:46 You know, can you just describe that and, and share how better movement can help us process emotions?

Lawrence van Lingen 43:56 I, I think the easiest way to... 'cause this is really profound. I mean, I've seen many, many situations like Floris and, you know, unfortunately people say, "I want that," and then it, [laughs] it doesn't happen. [laughs] You know, sometimes they're pretty serendipitous to have that powerful a release 'cause he had a, this powerful just upwelling of emotion and liberation and sort of things come off his chest. And, um, very brave of him to share that publicly. But that doesn't, that's not the norm, but it certainly does happen. But I think the way to think about it is, um, if I smell lavender and talcum powder combined, I just get taken back to my gran. Like, back to a place in time. I ju- I can literally feel my gran's presence in the room if I smell those two smells. And so let's say, you know, you, you, you, you were a teacher's pet or something, I don't know, you had this crush on someone and they totally knocked the wind out of your sails. Or, like, if I think of myself at, you know, my mom passed away when I was 11, and I got uprooted from my environment and sent to a pretty basically a toxic boarding school. Well, my perception of the boarding school was pretty toxic. I was certainly, um, it, it was rough. You know, there was caning and bullying and it was, it was pretty rough. So I'd gone from this loving, nurturing, sort of safe environment. My mom died. I now go to a boarding school where, you know, I, I, you know, I don't know, someone whacked me on the bottom so hard I couldn't sit for a week because I'd got the date with the, when the country was founded wrong. You know, like sort of swapped the letters around.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:22 Right.

Lawrence van Lingen 45:23 Um, which didn't help my math after that, [laughs] by the way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:27 Funny that. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 45:27 You know, funny that. [laughs] So, so anyway, so if you, if you go back, like that really knocked the wind out of my sails, right? And so it is really interesting is like you can then... and so you have this, this crestfallen posture or your chest fallen posture, um, you don't look particularly inspired. And you can open up that posture and correct it in adulthood, and what'll happen is oftentimes you'll actually get taken back. So, so when I did correct my posture and open up my ch- my sort of my chest and my posture, there was a massive sense of, of revisiting some of the past traumas and going through them. Um, when this happens with people, I'd say, "It's fine. It's like a bad smell leaving the room. Just d- don't hold onto it. Don't question why."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:09 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 46:09 It, it has significance. So these... your brain is gonna wanna process those emotions because remember, the last time your chest had that position was before the trauma.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:17 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 46:18 So you get taken back in time. So 11, big trauma, chest fallen. You open up that chest as an adult, your brain tags the last time that that happened with memories. And, and that's really a cool, uh, I think a way of, of, of thinking about how this trauma sort of leaves our body through, through physical movement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:37 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 46:38 It's very healing and it's very, very powerful, and it's very complementary to any work that, that anyone's doing. You know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:45 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 46:45 ... it does not work in opposition to, to any other-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:48 No. It's just... I remember, um, maybe two or three years ago, um, I was working with, uh, my own movement coach, Helen Hall, who-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:02 ... uh, has been on the show a couple of times, and w- we've gone through various things in, in, in my body over a period of time, and what we were working on at that particular time was, you know, again, I don't wanna misrepresent what Helen-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:19 ... said to me, but essentially something you talk about as well, about leading with your heart.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:24 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:24 Right? So running and even walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:27 ... but leading with your heart.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:29 And what was really interesting to me is that I've always felt previously, because I'm-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:34 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:35 ... I haven't measured myself in a while, but-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:37 ... I have been 6 foot 6 and a half for a while, although I feel I'm taller now as I've-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:42 ... done all this movement work.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:43 And the stuff I've been doing with you this morning I think is making me taller again, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 47:46 Yes. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:46 'Cause it's incredible. So I'm probably 6'7" at least now, and I've always felt that, yeah, Rangan, you know, you were tall at 16 and you didn't wanna stand out-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:56 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:56 ... so that's why you've got a flexed posture.

Lawrence van Lingen 47:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:58 And that's why you-

Lawrence van Lingen 47:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:59 ... you've got a rounded back.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:00 And, and of course that makes sense. You go to university, you're trying to... you're out in bars, you're trying to make friends, you're trying to talk to-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:05 You're hitting your head on the roof

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:06 ... trying to talk to girls.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:07 You know, all this stuff. You're coming down, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 48:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:08 And, and, and, um, I real- these days my posture is so much better than it was. That, I remember that session with Helen so well because we worked really hard on that, and I felt that my posture has mirrored my internal demeanor.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:29 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:29 So now, you know, I've had a public presence for about 10 years now.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:36 Right? And I feel like many people at first when they have a lot of public eyes on them, you, you sort of, it's, it's quite intimidating and you-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:45 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:45 ... you don't wanna say anything wrong or you don't wanna offend anyone, and, you know, trying to keep the peace even though I'm-

Lawrence van Lingen 48:50 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:50 ... talking about things that maybe were not quite as conventional as they are now when I started.

Lawrence van Lingen 48:55 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:55 But I feel these days that I'm very calm Positive or negative comments don't really bother me. I feel that I'm much better able to express who I am-

Lawrence van Lingen 49:07 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:07 ... and not really-- It's not dependent on whether I get a positive or negative opinion. I'm like, "No, this is me."

Lawrence van Lingen 49:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:13 Right? So I feel my posture has very much, uh, mirrored my internal demeanor-

Lawrence van Lingen 49:18 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:18 ... if that makes sense. I reckon to you it would, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 49:20 Yeah, totally. I mean, how could it be any other way?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:22 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 49:23 It's not s- maybe. It's how could it be any other way? If you're open-hearted and the courage to open your heart and reveal your true authentic self and express your true au- authentic self. You know, I think Gabor Maté's been on here before, and he'll tell you that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:36 Four times, yeah. Many times

Lawrence van Lingen 49:37 ... yeah, so, you know, when a child is unable to express itself and doesn't have unconditional love, it affects its nervous system, and it's a trauma. And as an adult, if you've learned to express yourself, who you are with confidence, and find your true voice, that will be coupled with an open-hearted emotion and an open-hearted posture, and then that's really, really what this is about.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:58 You're skilled at looking at the human body.

Lawrence van Lingen 50:00 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:00 Do you think that from watching somebody run, you can get an insight into their personality?

Lawrence van Lingen 50:09 Yes. I, I-- So here's an interesting thing. People ask me, like, who's really good examples of this and that? I don't... Well, one is, if you're gonna work with people as a system, you need to hold the space that they're whole and perfect, and you're gonna walk with them and help guide them, so you're not treating anyone. You're walking with them towards a more whole and perfect state, and there's a relationship, and whatever I learn from you, uh, y- you know, it's a two-way communication. We both learn from each other, and I can pay it forward with others from our experience. But I don't, I... And this is really interesting. We talk about running, it's like we take dis- help a person solve dysfunction in their bo- body, which frees up movement, and then they run better. So I don't give running cues, and I very rarely like to judge someone's running. And a lot of the time, one of the ways I learned patterns of movement is I'd put those patterns in my body and see how it made me feel. So I, you know, I could totally sort of mimic someone's body and posture, and then how does that make me feel? You know, not that great, you know. I feel, um... And so having an expressive body or chameleon body, where you can actually take on personas and change it, can give you a really good insight of how they're feeling. But I, I typically don't judge people, and I don't look at them-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:21 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 51:21 ... and I don't evaluate people. And so I, I don't have opinions about different people running because I don't-- It's not my place to, to judge them or to say what they are. But when I do, yeah-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:32 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 51:32 ... you can get a real strong sense of what's going on in their life and why they run like that. And you run the way you run for reasons.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:37 Yeah, that, that's, um, massive for me. In terms of practical things then that people can do, the two I feel that are quite relevant here from what I've heard you talk about before are backward walking and the flow rope.

Lawrence van Lingen 51:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:50 Can we just go through them? Because I, I, I wanna, as well as all this interesting theoretical stuff-

Lawrence van Lingen 51:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:55 ... I, I wanna make sure people have something practical they can do-

Lawrence van Lingen 51:58 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:58 ... straight after this conversation-

Lawrence van Lingen 51:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:59 ... to start experiencing some of this stuff.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:02 Let's go with backward walking. What-- Why is that so important? Why are you such a fan, and how can that affect our nervous system?

Lawrence van Lingen 52:08 Um, so it seems as though there's a very strong relationship between what we call the anterior chain and the posterior chain in your nervous system. And so just like apical chest breathing will excite your sympathetic nervous system, anterior chain movement will kind of feed into sympathetic nervous system for some reason.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:28 Okay, there's three things you mentioned there, anterior chain, posterior chain, and nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:34 Right. So I think we all understand the nervous system. We've been talking about that throughout this conversation.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:39 Sympathetic and parasympathetic, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:40 Sympathetic is the stress half of the nervous system, as it were, and not technically half.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:45 Uh, parasympathetic is the relaxation-

Lawrence van Lingen 52:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:48 ... part of the nervous system.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:49 Okay. And now, now just explaining what anterior chain and posterior chain please in this case.

Lawrence van Lingen 52:53 So anterior chain, and, and this is again descriptive terms, you know, don't get too caught up into it, but it's a, it's a way of describing something that's going on. Anterior chain would be if you had to visualize at the front of a horse. So you, you're sort of galloping along. With your back legs, you'd kick.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:08 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 53:08 So posterior chain is more visualizing the back of a horse, like the extension.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:12 So can we say for a human-

Lawrence van Lingen 53:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:14 ... it's probably an oversimplification, but can we say anterior chain is the front of the body and posterior chain is the back?

Lawrence van Lingen 53:20 Yes. You, you can, and there's, there's a little... I can actually go through the muscles for you, you that are technically-minded. The anterior chain's not quite where you think it is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:28 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 53:28 Yes, anterior implies the front, but it's your posterior tibialis muscle, okay [laughs] , um, and then it goes into your medial, the two inside hamstring muscles and your adductors, and then what it does is it gets up onto the front of your spine, which is why it's the anterior chain. It goes right up your spine, along your psoas, sort of through your diaphragm, through your thoracic spine, and up through your neck. And so, um, and that's flexion. So if you had to flex, if you had to do a sit-up, you'd use your anterior chain in your core, but your adductors and medial hamstring's also involved, which is, is kind of important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:03 Okay. And, and just linking that to what you said about emotions for a minute-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:06 ... you mentioned that when we experience a degree of trauma, we often go into a more flexed or fetal position.

Lawrence van Lingen 54:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:13 Does that mean that many of us who are adopting those positions are anterior chain dominant?

Lawrence van Lingen 54:20 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:21 Okay. So a- across society now-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:23 ... let's say a modern urban society-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:25 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:25 ... where we sit down all day, and-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:27 ... we live stressful and pressured lives-

Lawrence van Lingen 54:29 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:30 ... you would say the, the vast majority of people in your experience are anterior chain dominant?

Lawrence van Lingen 54:36 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:36 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 54:37 You, you need a little bit of latitude with these. So we, we're talking descriptive terms, like this is gross simplifications.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:43 Yeah, sure.

Lawrence van Lingen 54:43 Okay? And so, and a breathing pattern disorder tends to make your anterior chain dominant because your diaphragm is tight, your psoas, which is an accessory breathing muscle, gets tight too, and for different reasons, right? So posterior chain, um, is more the back of the horse's extension. Th- the-- There's three big muscles you need to sort of really get your head around, and they, two of them are the biggest muscles in your body, your glute, glute max, and your latissimus dorsi, your lats. Okay, and then-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:09 So the big back muscles

Lawrence van Lingen 55:10 ... the big back muscles, and then the, the outside hamstring muscle, your biceps femoris, and that's, that's your, they call it your oblique sling, your posterior oblique sling, and that should be the driver of, of running.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:22 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:23 Healthy running.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:24 Healthy, efficient running-

Lawrence van Lingen 55:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:26 ... is driven by the posterior chain.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:28 Chain, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:28 Got it.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:28 And it should be extension based. So specifically what that would mean is when your knee is behind your hip and your ankle is behind your knee, so your knee's bent and your knee is behind your hip, running, the power for running should come from you straightening your leg at that moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:42 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 55:43 And, and so that you actually, when knee is behind hip, your leg then straightens. And what a lot of people do that are anterior chain dominant would be their, their knee is bending throughout the gait cycle. So in other words, you're pulling back with your hamstring, anterior chain, and your knee is getting shorter and shorter, your knee angle is getting shorter and shorter through your gait cycle.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:04 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 56:04 And that would be an anterior chain dominant pattern. Whereas we want knee behind hip, then you straighten your leg. And this will tie back into breathing and the pause and the response, because running should be land, travel forward, then drive, and so you have to have space in your running in order to do that. If you're reactive and quick in nature, you'll put your foot down and pick it straight up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:25 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 56:25 So y- your running becomes rushed. You don't have a sense of time. All amazingly efficient runners and competent runners will describe landing, they'll describe it differently, but they'll describe at least two or three or four phases of running. So land, traveling forward, then driving, then floating their toes maybe. Whereas people that are... we're often taught, pick your feet up or, or increase your turnover or increase your cadence. You know, as your foot hits the ground, you think the next thing I gotta do is pick it up. But you have to have a pause where you're traveling forward on a connected leg and then you drive. So there's that delay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:57 My understanding of the pose method-

Lawrence van Lingen 56:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:59 ... which many people talk about, is-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:01 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:01 ... um, that you pick up the foot.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:04 Right? And I've tried it for a bit, and it, it just didn't resonate with me at all-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:08 ... if I'm completely honest.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:09 Like, I felt this just feels totally unnatural and wrong to me.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:13 I understand there may be people listening who found that helpful.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:16 I, I'm not at all criticizing the method. I'm just saying for me-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:18 ... I didn't find it helpful at all. Um, are you familiar with the pose method?

Lawrence van Lingen 57:23 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:23 Which I [laughs] you know, correct me if I'm wrong-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:26 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:26 ... but I think a, a large part of that is about, um, uh, leaning forwards-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:31 ... preventing yourself from falling-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:33 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:33 ... and you're sort of picking up your-

Lawrence van Lingen 57:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:35 ... using your hamstring to, to pick up your heel.

Lawrence van Lingen 57:38 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:38 What's your take on that?

Lawrence van Lingen 57:39 [laughs] Well, Rangan, um, I, I basically don't work with anyone that wants, wants to run on anterior chain, and the reason is because I can't keep them healthy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:53 So is the pose method an anterior chain method for you?

Lawrence van Lingen 57:55 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:56 Got it. So you're basically saying that you don't feel that anterior chain dominant methods can help you keep your athletes and your clients healthy in the long term?

Lawrence van Lingen 58:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:07 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 58:08 And, and, and I, I don't... You know, this is not an opinion ba- well, I'm obviously I have an opinion. This is not opinion based. This is because if you run with a posterior chain and extension-based gait, every single mark of your nervous system health will improve. Your a- your heart rate variability will improve. Your blood lactate threshold will drop. Your running economy will improve. Your body starts to open up. Your nervous system opens up. Your sleep scores will improve. And so from all of those point of views, like I whole... that's what we're looking for. Are we making the whole system bigger? And so I can't keep people that run on anterior chain. I ca- I can't keep their joints aligned. I can't keep them healthy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:47 Yeah. What, what you just said there-

Lawrence van Lingen 58:48 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:48 ... I think was so profound-

Lawrence van Lingen 58:51 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:53 ... and worthy of a pause and a repeat, right? Okay. A lot of people wanna improve their sleep.

Lawrence van Lingen 59:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:04 Right? A lot of people wanna improve their heart rate variability-

Lawrence van Lingen 59:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:06 ... a marker of, you know, how well their nervous system is responding to the environment and their, and their sort of life circumstances-

Lawrence van Lingen 59:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:14 ... at any given time, right? They want better heart rate. They want a better lactate threshold to be-

Lawrence van Lingen 59:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:18 ... uh, fitter and more efficient, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 59:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:20 They want those things.

Lawrence van Lingen 59:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:24 And they're often, I would argue, based upon what we're talking about, looking at downstream markers, right? And they're, they're trying to fix their sleep, which is a good thing.

Lawrence van Lingen 59:35 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:35 You know, improving your sleep is definitely a good thing, and-

Lawrence van Lingen 59:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:38 ... I guess what you just said there, which I think is kind of an overarching theme throughout this conversation, is this idea that when your body is moving well and efficiently as it has been designed to-

Lawrence van Lingen 59:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:54 ... you're not only gonna run and walk pain-free and better and faster, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:00 And compete better, if that's what you wanna do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:03 Your entire nervous system is gonna change.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:05 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:06 I don't think most people understand that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:08 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:08 I think they feel the nervous system is different.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:10 It's a separate thing, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:12 No. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:12 That you work on separately.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:13 But you're saying become a better, more efficient runner-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:16 ... with extension-based running-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:18 ... and you're gonna find your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your nervous system-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:21 ... your sleep is all gonna improve. Can you just-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:24 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:24 ... reemphasize that point?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:26 Yeah, I, I mean, it-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:27 And you've seen it with your athletes, haven't you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:00:29 Yeah. Well, so I mean, some of the athletes-- So I work in triathlon, right? And some of the athletes, because they all cycle and run, and there's also, there's a lot of emphasis in, in, let's say you come from a swimming or cycling background and you wanna learn to run, it was kinda over-engineered or over-taught and, and there's, there was a, a cultural, there was a cultural meme, as it were, in the correct use of the word meme, [laughs] that, you know, you really needed to work on turnover, 'cause that was the, the hallmark of a, of a really good runner, is all runners have high turnover.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:59 Also known as cadence?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:00 Cadence, yeah. Um, and but that's causation and causality, right? If rich people drive Bentleys, buying a Bentley doesn't make you rich. So you, you can't mimic- Some things you shouldn't try and mimic because they're not for you yet. You know, that, that, that would be my take. But anyway, so these n- two of the athletes that just went to the Olympics now for USA, you know, when I met them, they were insomniacs. They just didn't sleep. I mean, then I think the one person said, "I haven't slept for six days, so excuse me if I'm a bit jittery." And this is high performance. This is like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:30 They're, they're at the Olympics.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:31 Yeah. These, these are Olympic level athletes, and so, um, yeah. And, and it, it goes way, way deeper than that, is that people that change their nervous system, change their gait, make it more healthy, their personality shifts, and they become ... You'll have seen this. When you become true in yourself, and you trust your movement, and you trust your body, and you become more authentic to yourself or more expressive of who you are, and you, you find your voice, relationships radically change around you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:59 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:01:59 Because a l- a lot of these athletes, you get pretty dogmatic coaches, "You gotta do it this way," or you get pigeonholed, and it can be quite disruptive because someone will basically stand their ground, find their true authentic self, start expressing themselves. They start to trust their movement and their body, and it can be a lot because, you know, someone might have been injury-prone. Now they're not. Someone might have been fearful for the future or, you know ... And, and you can actually see quite strong improvements in personality, and that change in that system is often more disruptive for the people around them than for the person themselves. But that's how powerful it can be. And I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about this, 'cause this is life-changing, and I, I want to help p- change people's lives and movement for the better in a sustainable, long-term way. I want people to move well until they're very old. And if you can ... If y- it is like a bit of a holy grail, and ... But now I feel we have a, a way of teaching it, and making it sustainable, and making it, um, and easily, easy to get across, 'cause this sounds really complicated, and if you go back to backward walking, it's not. It's really, really simple. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:04 Yeah. I, I'm ... It really is, guys, right? So we're ... I'm just trying to set the scene-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:09 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:09 -for all the practical stuff that people can do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:12 In relation to what we've just been talking about then, let's talk about backward walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:15 Right? 'Cause backward walking is something that most people who are listening to this will be able to implement and at least play around with.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:24 Now, I know on your YouTube channel-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:26 ... you've, you've got all tutorials on this, and I, I really would recommend, guys, you check out the YouTube channel, which is the Innerunner?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:31 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:32 Yeah? And your website-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:33 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:33 ... is, that's innerunner.com.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:35 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:36 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:36 With one R in the middle.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:37 With one R in the middle.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:38 For some reason. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:39 Okay, Innerunner. But for the purpose of this conversation, let's go through backward walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:43 And yeah, explain what it is, how do you do it, and why it's so impactful.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:03:47 So, so in this notion of hip extension-based gait, what we wanna do is safely basically still be in full contact with the ground once your knee gets behind your hip. And most people have already picked their foot up at that stage or certainly their heel off the ground. So on one level, backward walking, when you take a step behind you, you put your heel down on the ground, and you learn to trust the weight of your body through that leg, and that's what's missing in your running. So you're basically just putting in a good movement pattern and teaching your brain to trust your leg, your knee behind your hip, and your whole way through that body. And, and so your, your brain says, "Oh, that's something that I can trust and relate to." In elite athletes or people that run high mileage, it's a really, really good idea because if you start to powerfully change the way you run, you end up loading your Achilles deeper and your calf complex deeper, and backward walking is a really good way of, of prepping, um, those tissues for the demands that's gonna come, which is increased range of motion.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:44 Uh, can I just, um, make sure that everyone knows that this backward walking that you recommend is not just for elite athletes, as it's-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:53 No, it's for everyone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:53 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:54 So everyone-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:55 Yeah, everyone

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:55 ... even if you just wanna get around your local parkrun-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:57 ... or just walk around your block-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:04:59 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:00 ... in a much more efficient way, you feel that backward walking is one of those free, accessible tools that can help most people.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:06 Yeah. Uh, yeah, and it comes with a sort of a government health warning, is like if you ... I can tell you now, if you, if you normalize your breathing pattern and you backward walk, your life will change, and you need to understand that change is coming. Like, no one that, no one that does breathing like you did in the morning and backward walks, life is not gonna change. You look back in two, three years, and you'll say, "Yes, my life changed, and my environment changed, and it's life-changing." It ... You need to understand that, because some people are very fearful of change, and I'm just telling you, it's, it'll change your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:38 And it won't just change your life through the lens of better movement.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:44 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:44 It will change-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:45 Everything

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:46 ... your reactivity.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:47 Your ability to stay detached, become non-reactive.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:52 Deal with stress in the moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:53 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:05:53 Sleep better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:54 'Cause I was talking to a, um, a mate this week who I haven't seen in ages. I was going, "How you doing, mate?" And I was like, "I've gotta be honest-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:04 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:06 ... I'm fantastic." Like, genuinely-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:08 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:08 ... that's how I feel about my life these days.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:10 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:10 I feel life is great.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:12 You look fantastic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:13 But I think even since the summer, 'cause I, we ... As I explained to you-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:16 ... we, we were in Kenya for a few weeks, and every morning I'd get up early. I'd go, I'd make my coffee, and I was literally backward walking nonstop-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:24 ... for a good five, 10 minutes every morning.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:26 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:26 I, I was doing your breathing stuff and doing that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:30 And of course, I had a break as well, but I would say even this side of the summer now-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:36 ... and we're recording this in September, I just feel really good and calm. I had a conversation with my wife a few nights ago about some-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:44 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:44 ... kind of important stuff that we both needed to talk about.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:47 And it just went so beautifully well.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:50 Because, you know, from my side at least, I can't talk from her side-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:54 ... but from my side, I just wasn't getting triggered.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:06:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:59 I was feeling calm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:00 I was non-reactive.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:01 I was just dealing with things and, you know-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:03 Well, first you gotta connect heart to heart.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:05 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:05 And then again, we talk about open-heartedness and getting the weight off your chest and- And the courage to express yourself, and then you connect properly with people

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:12 Yeah. I'm just trying to echo what you said-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:14 ... which is if people commit to breathing better-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:17 ... and doing backward walking, you're saying very confidently, with a, with a kind of quiet confidence-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:22 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:22 ... not an arrogant confidence, with a really quiet-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:24 Let's call it a knowing [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:25 With a knowing, yeah, that actually your life is going to change.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:29 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:29 Right? So back to backward walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:07:31 Again.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:32 Okay, so how do they do it, you know? To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:08:02 C- so there's two components or two cues. One is to take a step backward, and it's best done barefoot if you can. And o- please be careful and safe with this. So the, the... w- I do it with elite athletes often in, like, let's say a big gym, and they will, th- they will think of... Or any athlete of any level. I really don't want to, people to think I'm super elitist. I work with all people, and I've worked with very many spheres of, like cycling, rugby. Um, I used to be an expert witness in whiplash and trauma and lots and lots of l- and I used to specialize in back pain, failed back pain cases, chronic pain. But anyway, e- even, like, elite athletes will walk into things because they're so concentrating on the movement, and it's novel, that they lose... Th- they, they have a narrow focus, and so you'll walk into things. So please walk backwards in a safe environment. You're gonna walk into a pole. You're gonna walk off a sidewalk. You're gonna walk into something that you shouldn't walk. So generally speaking, the best, the safest place is actually just to walk on a treadmill because it, it doesn't go anywhere, and you can-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:00 How would you do it on a treadmill? So you're, you've-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:02 You just turn around.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:04 You turn around. So it's quite slow.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:05 Yeah. Yeah, so about 1.2 kilometers an hour, or under one mile an hour is, is the, the right pace.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:10 Okay, so it's that slow, so if something happens-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:12 ... you, you-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:13 ... you're not traveling fast enough where something's gonna happen.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:15 Yeah, and here's one of the big secrets of the world is if you want to change a habit, do it slowly. If you do it quickly, you'll do it reflexively and the way you've always done it before.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:25 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:25 So if you wanted to change your handwriting or your signature, you have to learn slowly, 'cause if you do it quickly, you'll go back to your automated process. So we, we deliberately want to work on backward walking slowly because you'll learn much quicker. It has a much deeper impact on your nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:39 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:41 So how-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:41 So you're walking backwards slowly. So, so the first cue would be soft toes, heel down, and preferably barefoot. You're just gonna get so much more proprioceptive feedback from your feet and, and the skin on the ground. It just really, really helps. It helps with balance, with stability, with connection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:56 If you're on a treadmill at a gym-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:09:57 Mm. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:58 ... uh, some people are gonna not want to go barefoot. So I, I heard you-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:02 ... in one video say, "Listen, barefoot is best, but doing it with shoes on is better than not doing it."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:08 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:08 Yeah?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:09 Yeah, I think that's the important message.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:10 So just get the work done.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:10 Get it done.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:11 Just get it done. You know, the work that gets done is the work that gets done. It doesn't have to be perf... And one of the big things is progress, not perfection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:17 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:18 You know, just get the work done, and just do a little bit, and it doesn't matter as long as it's done. Just, you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:24 Even a minute or two-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:25 ... like in your house, like-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:26 Ah, totally

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:27 ... like I don't have that much room-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:28 ... in, you know, where I do it downstairs, so I'll, I'll be able to take seven or eight steps-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:32 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:34 ... and then I'll turn around and take seven or eight steps back, and then I'll turn around and take seven... Like, I create a space-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:38 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:39 ... move the ironing board, the clothes-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:40 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:40 ... horse, where the drying clothes-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:42 Yeah. Yeah, that's fine, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:42 And I just do that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:43 Or outside on the lawn, on the grass, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:44 If you're lucky enough to have a garden-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:46 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:46 ... or lawn, you can do it there.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:47 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:47 Or in a school field or just anywhere.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:49 And so here's the thing. So people do that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:50 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:51 ... and I would direct them to your video where you go-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:53 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:53 ... through the two key steps.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:55 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:55 Um, one, I think the first one, as you said, is soft toes.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:10:58 Heel down, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:58 But then it's also figuring out-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:00 Contralateral movement, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:01 ... contralateral movements. Why is that so important?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:04 Um, we, neurodevelopmentally as a baby, we kind of fire up one leg and then the other leg, or your right arm, your right left leg, and we don't really have sort of, uh, l- there's different terms for it, like lateralization or contralateral movement. We don't, we don't sync up our right knee with our left arm, which is really, really important, until we start crawling. So the crawling, we get a crossover crawling pattern. Um, so neuro- like when we go into a state of trauma or you can have stuck movement patterns, a lot of people will default to a hom- more homolateral gait. So that'll be, I call it... Well, I actually didn't, um, make up the name, but it's grizzly bear walking. So it's same side, same side. So as your, your, um, your belly button should point towards your lead leg when you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:55 Your front leg

Lawrence van Lingen 1:11:55 ... your front leg. Yeah, the f- the lead leg, the front leg or the standing leg when you walk forwards and when you walk backwards, and we want that pattern in your body. It's really, really important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:04 Yeah. What's interesting, and I shared this with you before-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:06 ... is that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:10 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:10 ... we want contralateral movement, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:13 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:13 But I think you said that most people, the first time they do it, are in homolateral-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:20 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:20 ... uh, movements-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:21 ... or, or gait.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:23 And, you know, in the four of us in my family-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:27 ... three of us-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:28 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:30 ... did it, in inverted commas, the wrong way-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:33 ... initially-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:33 Yeah, yeah [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:33 ... myself included, right? And one of us, who has got exceptionally good natural movement, did it the right way-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:40 ... which is quite interesting to me.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:43 Um, but I've, I've now conditioned myself to do it the correct way. I've-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:46 ... you know, and, and it, it feels really good actually when you're doing it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:49 It feels very freeing.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:12:51 Yes. So, so that's, you know, that's also, like you're putting your s- your nervous system in a state of, of sort of how it's supposed to be, and it likes it. And these are, you know, n- a lot of the movement patterns are preprogrammed into us. Like, if you buy a new computer and you flip it open and you switch it on, like the software's already there. You know, like everyone learns to walk. Everyone, or more or less everyone. But you figure it out yourself. You know, you lie on a b- on your back, you move your arms and legs, then baby go, and then, you know, like ... So these n- these deep-seated nervous system patterns, when you start tapping into them, the nervous system really, really likes it, and that's why it's so good for your autonomic nervous system. I mean, I know people that walk backwards in the evening 'cause it helps them sleep better. It helps your digestion. So, you know, people go for a walk in the evenings, I have athletes that walk backwards on the treadmill 'cause it helps them digest and sleep better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:39 Yeah, I think that's really-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:39 And it's just calming, and it, it does feel good because it's ... Like, a lot of what I, what we talk about, the sense of knowing, you go like, "Oh, oh, well, that feels good," and it's really authentic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:50 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:13:50 And you can start trusting, and then that's really important. You need to trust your movement. And so a lot of this is about building trust. And so backward walking, you're learning to trust your leg, you're learning to trust the shape of healthy running, and you're somehow reintegrating your contralateral movement patterns. And if you just backward walk, your running will change for the better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:10 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:10 You don't need any cue. It will change.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:12 Yeah. And there's, there's a couple things I love about that. We've already mentioned how important our nervous system is. It influences every aspect of our being, our health, our happiness, the way we see the world. Two things that you mentioned about digestion-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:25 ... and sleep.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:28 Well, many people struggle with digestion and sleep, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:31 I, I don't mean together, but-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:33 ... yes, together as well as separately-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:34 ... right? I think, uh, there was one survey done recently. It said 80% of UK adults experience some form of gastrointestinal issue in any given year.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:44 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:44 So that's most of the population.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:47 We know that many people struggle with their sleep.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:49 Their, their, they can't switch off.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:14:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:51 Right? And we've touched on some of the reasons for that, earlier on, including mouth breathing. Um, and you're saying that backward walking is a tool that helps you calm your nervous system, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:04 So it's gonna switch off the stress part of your nervous system and-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:07 ... promote relaxation.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:09 So of course, if you're, if, if that helps your nervous system be more relaxed, well, of course it's gonna help your digestion, because you wanna be digesting food not in fight or flight when you're rushing around.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:20 You wanna be calm and relaxed.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:22 Of course it's gonna help you sleep, because one of the commonest causes for people not being able to sleep is they can't switch off.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:28 Right? So that interconnected nature is, is massive, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:31 Yeah, yeah. It is. And, and, and to be able to walk and move through life in a way that's complimenting your body, your mechanics, and your nervous system, if you can figure that out, it's really, really powerful. You know, not everyone has the same response. So some people walk backwards and they don't, it's not gonna help them sleep. It's, for some people, it really does. And, and flow rope, actually swinging, uh, you know, the, quite a few people end up using the flow rope in the evening 'cause it helps them sleep and wind down from the day, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:56 Well, so-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:15:56 So, but it, these things land differently with different people, so that you gotta kind of manage your expectations.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:02 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:02 Or not ... It's not a prescription for better sleep, but you might-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:08 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:09 A, a lot of people will say, "Oh, wow, I feel a lot calmer and a lot better, and I, I notice better sleep."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:13 Yeah, but here's the thing, right? If your sleep's already good, it's probably not gonna help you sleep, 'cause you're already sleeping well, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:19 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:20 If the reason you can't sleep is because of the temperature in your bedroom-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:25 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:26 ... well, actually, this ain't gonna address that, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:28 So it's, I think we get waylaid a bit sometimes these days with, well, what's the prescription for sleep? What's the prescription for better running? What's the prescription for better digestion?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:37 Without realizing everything's connected. The prescription you need depends on what is the root cause of that problem for you.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:16:44 Yeah. So one of the things as well is, as your nervous system calms down, or as you get ... So a lot of people will run and they'll feel like herky-jerky, or there's many different parts, where it's really complicated and technical. As you start to integrate and move better, running becomes simpler, and, and, and most athletes will, will get to the point where they say their body disappears, or they don't have any moving parts, they're just a consciousness running, or this, this sense of really, really being connected. What the interesting thing is, is as you, as this sort of system starts to get better, it's easier to figure out what's wrong. So you, then you'll notice the ambient temperature in my room is not applicable, or-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:22 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:22 ... oh, I noticed that this thing ... Because it starts sticking out like a sore thumb. And so-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:26 So your self-awareness is getting better.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:28 Yeah. Well, there's less noise.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:31 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:31 And as things calm down, it's easier to pick up, well, what is in juxtaposition to what I want to do?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:37 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:17:37 It, it, it becomes easier. And so for the athletes, when a ... Like, let's say you're working with someone, and this doesn't have to be an elite athlete, their intuition starts getting better. Their sense of trust and knowing their body gets better. And often athletes will come in, and they'll, they'll totally nail it, whereas, you know, in a complicated athlete with a dysregulated nervous system, I like the word frayed. It's sort of frayed. It, it, it, it's, it's got lots of ends, and they're all stimulated. [laughs] They can't make head or tail of what's going on. But once you start creating some sort of structure and organization, and the noise calms down, they have a deep appreciation for life. It's easier to be present and in the moment. And what happens is they'll start to come in, they'll say, "You know, my knee's, my knee's sore, but I think it's coming from my hip or my foot." Or they'll have a really good sense of knowing in their body what's going on. And, um, and, and, and it extends into other areas of problems. Like, it, your, your sense of intuition and knowing improves, whereas a lot of people, like you say, the drowning person, you don't wanna trust his intuition, [laughs] you know? He wants to drown you to save himself. And then as, again, as you sort of, as you come out of that, your sense of gut instinct improves, or your knowing-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:46 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:18:46 ... improves, you trust your body. And I think that's ... Either you're the author of your journey and your life, or you're a victim, or, you know, or life's happening to you. Are you happening to life, or is life happening to you? And this is a very powerful way of starting to take better steps through, forward through life, with better instincts, with better ability to figure out what is the problem. So we start off with a really, really complex- At the beginning of this conversation, they're like, "Oh, wow, how do I start? This is overwhelming. I don't know." And then after a while you go, "Oh, this is clearer,” or, "Oh, I understand that." Or you can receive the good better and you can reject the bad better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:22 Mm. When I think about root causes for better lives, root causes for health and happiness, I think one of the most important decisions you make consciously or subconsciously is whether you're gonna be a victim to life-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:37 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:37 ... or in charge of your life.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:40 I was talking to my kids about this over dinner last night, 'cause I, I, it's such an important point that I want them to absorb-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:46 ... as kids, that things are gonna happen. Things are gonna happen that you may not choose to happen.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:19:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:54 But in those moments, you have a choice as to whether you take a victim mindset or whether you go, "What can this moment teach me?"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:01 "What can I do now?"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:03 You know, kids are going back to school at the moment-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:06 ... after the summer break. Uh, and again, I was chatting to them yesterday and I said, "Hey, listen, guys, um, if you get put in classes, right, where your friends aren't this year, for whatever reason-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:17 ... right? And initially you may not like it. You may wish, 'I was put in classes with my friends.'"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:24 Right? I say, "Okay, but let's think about this. What's the opportunity here?"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:28 Right? What does this situation offer to you that you would have not otherwise been able to see?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:34 Right? And so I try not to give them the answer. It's like, "Well, yeah, I guess I've got an opportunity to make new friends."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:39 I was like, "Yeah." So that's a principle you can apply to everything in life.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:42 And I kind of feel that is sort of what you're saying through the lens of movement is that, you know, are you gonna be the author of your own movement or not?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:53 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:53 Are you gonna be the author of your own life or not?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:20:56 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:57 It's really, really quite profound. In fact, you have said that Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act, is the greatest running book-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:21:04 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:04 ... ever written.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:21:05 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:05 Please explain.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:21:07 Because, well, one is change requires courage, and it re- it requires courage for your kids to go into a new environment with new friends, but out of that, goodness will come. But to be creative is, is, is to be courageous. I did a po- a poll on Instagram once and I said, "Which do you fear more? Change, a creative act, or feeling? Which do you fear more?" 55% of people respond- well, about 55, 56% responded with that, that they fear feeling more than anything else. Feeling. And so the courage to have feelings, to deal with your feelings, to express who you are is extr- it, it takes courage. You know, it's, it's The Wizard of Oz, you know, the, the cowardly lion [laughs] didn't have a heart. [laughs] You know, your heart is your... So, you know, Rick Rubin's just extraordinary in this, in this worldview, um, uh, and, and how to deal with creativity. And, and what I try and do with athletes is we talk about mastery, not medals. So mastering your craft, mastering yourself, mastering a sense of self, and the medals will come to you or they won't. But you, your identity's not attached to, to, to the results, and I think that's really, really important. And Rick Rubin, uh, he's just an extraordinary human being and, um, he sees things very, very clearly that, that... You know, a lot of what we need to do is we need to see the world as it is, not as it's been imprinted on us, and that, that's a victim mindset. You know, to, to not be a victim takes-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:30 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:30 ... courage initially, but it gets easier and easier. And I can tell you, like, you know, I'm not sure, I've got a picture of me before my mom died in v- when I was kind of in a happy place, and my posture was horrific. I mean, it looked like someone just put a fist through my chest. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:44 What, before your mom died or?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:22:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah, before. So I, I often thought like, "Well, why would I look like that? Why would a young, happy sort of kid look like this?" And, and I think there was probably in utero trauma or, or really early trauma in my life, or gen- I don't know. Whatever. You know, trauma is trauma, but something stuck in me. But when I got to boarding school, I mean, it was extraordinary. I was a victim. I had a victim's posture. Um, and I was bullied mercilessly because I'm a soft target, and it's extraordinary. It's like [laughs] you know... And then I lived my whole life as a victim. And, and you, you, you don't, you know... And when you're a victim, you tend to be like, it's like a rescue dog. You know, you, you can be snarly, you can be reactive, you can't like... People want to help you. People wanna love you. Uh, you know, you don't trust them. You put your hand out with a snack, he's gonna bite you. You know, you have such an inappropriate, um, relationship to the world because you just can't trust and you can't receive love. You can't receive anything because you're in this reactive, defensive, guarded nature. And it's one of the things, a little bit of a segue is be really careful of cues that make you reactive, guarded, or defensive or braced because you, what you're bracing for impact and, and because of this whole emotional, sort of psycho-emotional or motion in motion.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:59 Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:01 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:01 I think it's really, really powerful. Um, as we're recording this, the episode that went live yesterday on my podcast was with Professor Peter O'Sullivan.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:12 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:12 And-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:13 What fantastic work he's doing. Oh, my word.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:15 Yeah. What fantastic work. But you were just talking about this psycho-emotional component, and one thing that me and Peter discussed was how dangerous or potentially dangerous it can be to scan someone's back.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:34 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:34 Right? So-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:35 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:36 ... you know, very con- common scenario, especially where you live in America, where it's a private system, where-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:42 ... you know, I don't think you have the same checks and balances over who gets scans as we might have in the UK and the National Health Service-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:49 ... for example, where-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:50 ... it's not that easy to just go and get a back scan.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:54 Right? The problem being you're a 35-year-old chap with lower back pain.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:24:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:01 There's no what we would call red flag signs-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:03 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:03 ... right? Yet you get a scan.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:06 And then the scan says you've got a bulging disc at L4, L5.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:10 Right? That's the cause of your backache.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:12 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:12 Despite the fact that there could be 60, 70% of your age group walking around with a bulging disc-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:19 ... without any back pain.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:20 Yeah. Totally asymptomatic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:21 Yeah. But the idea has been put in that person's head-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:25 ... that the reason you have back pain is because of your bulging disc at L4, L5, and you see this-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:31 ... everywhere. When I used to play golf, people talk about these things as though they're fact. "Oh, you know, my back's hurt."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:35 "Yeah, yeah."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:36 "I got a scan."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:37 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:37 "Yeah, I've got, I've got a disc at L4, L5."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:40 It may or may not be the cause, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:42 But what we believe about the source of our pain-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:46 Yeah, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:47 ... it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so we're-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:49 It's like a mustard seed. You know, you, you plant a mustard seed and it grows into a tree.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:52 Yeah, which is why I think as, as healthcare professionals-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:55 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:55 ... we have to be so careful-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:57 Careful, mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:57 ... about what we say to a patient.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:25:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:00 And one of the things that I love about your approach, which very r- very much echoes the approach I have always taken with patients in the past-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:09 ... is I want them to feel a sense of agency.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:12 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:12 I never want a patient to walk out the door feeling as if they're dependent-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:19 ... on my advice or what I can give them.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:21 Yes, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:21 Like, even if, you know-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:22 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:22 ... in the past if I had to give something-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:24 ... to help them with like a medication-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:25 ... with a symptom-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:26 ... I would always make sure I gave them something that they knew they could do-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:31 ... that will have an impact.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:32 And I, I think you very much share that philosophy.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:34 Yeah. Your job is to, to wean patients off you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:37 Exactly.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:26:38 You know? And, and when I... I- it is interesting, um, I, I, I found a quote once where it said that's one of the hallmarks of a profession is to, to... Like, if law works really well, we need less lawyers and less laws because it's more efficient, and it's done better, you know? So, so if you're doing your job, your patients should le- need you less and less and trust themselves more and more. And, and it... I, you know, I tell athletes, like, "My job is to not make you dependent on me." You, you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:04 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:05 ... to empower the person. What's really interesting is, like, you know, athletes that you work with that really do start to trust their body and start to be empowered or, or non-athletes or anyone, often become a bit of a handful to treat because [laughs] they don't like the way a normal, let's say, physiotherapist that's reductionist and telling them, "Oh, you have a weak core" th- they're just like, "No, that, I don't, I don't acknowledge that." And then it's really interesting is that we talk about it. So how you present and how you show up is the sum of your entire life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:34 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:27:35 Okay? And most of what happens to you in life is beyond your control. You can't choose your parents. You can't choose your genetics. You can't choose where you're born. You can't choose much of the environment that you're being put through in life. I mean, you have agency, but not a, not as much as you like. So if you look at someone, and you say, "Oh, you know, uh, Rangan, your posture's not great," or, "You have a weak core. You have a glute medius," or, "You need to stand up straight," you've basically judged the entire person's life experiences-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:06 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:06 ... and said that they're inadequate. And I mean, how dare you? How, how do we get to the point where... Then that's why I say I don't judge people's running. You gotta be very, very careful. I... Because how you run is a reflection of your entire life's process up until that point, and who am I to judge you? And, and just changing that relationship just there is, is so profound. And you know, we had an incident with one of the athletes at, at the Olympics, and she fell and hurt herself really badly, and she wants to sort of, you know, she's got other races to get on, and you know, we just sat on the table, and before we started sort of treating or helping her, we both just sat there and cried a little-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:47 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:28:48 ... because this was not great. [laughs] This ... And to acknowledge that moment and to, to just be vulnerable and present and acknowledge that, okay, this is not great, and this is not how we want to, to, to go forward, and just be human and have a really human connection, then after that, you can, you can start painting your way out of the corner. But what happens is we're like, "Oh, well, you know, you gotta focus on your next race, and you gotta put this behind you" or" You've got to [laughs] focus on these things or these" ... You know, you have to acknowledge where people are at the moment and see them and connect with them as a, as a human being, and it's so powerful, and you know, then, then things get better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:24 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:24 And that's why I love your podcast and the work you're doing is it- it's such a voice for good and reason and a- refreshing for what's out there, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:35 Thank you. The Olympics, how was it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:38 [laughs] A lot. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:41 So you were, were you in the Olympic Village?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:43 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:43 Or is that reserved for athletes?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:44 No, no, this time I, I wasn't part of a federation. I just went on my own, and I worked with athletes. Um, and then-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:51 Now, what's it like being at the Olympics?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:53 Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:54 Does it sound more-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:29:55 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:55 ... glamorous from the outside than it actually is in reality when you're there with athletes you have to coach?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:00 Yeah, th- I think if you're really invested with athletes, you gotta understand it's gonna be a roller coaster, and it's not all great. I mean, you know, people ask me about the Olympics, and I say, "Look, you gotta understand. There's, there's an athlete on the top step who's got a gold medal, and they're very happy in the moment, but 48 hours later, they might have found that that gold medal didn't fill the hole in their soul that was probably [laughs] driving their high performance as much as they would like, or they're totally sick of answering the same old question, 'What does it feel like to be a gold medalist?' because you've done extraordinary amounts" Or it's kinda like y- you know, once you have enough money t- for f- to take care of your basic needs, after that, money can amplify problems in your life. You know, and suddenly you realize, I have a gold medal, and the attention, the media, the opinions, you know, your social media account blows up. The comments, the opinions blows up, too, and a lot of people aren't actually equipped to deal with that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:48 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:49 And again, mastery, not medals. Seek mastery of your craft. Don't attach your value-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:53 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:53 ... to your medal, you know? And you'll see everyone, "I'm double gold Olympian." That's your identity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:57 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:30:58 And it's not your identity. You ... First and foremost, you're a beautiful human being that has every right to be loved. You don't have to do anything just to be amazing. You are enough, and you have enough. That's your identity. And so, so anyway, that's the gold medalist. The silver medalist is wondering like, "What the hell could I have done to get gold?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:16 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:16 Then the bronze medalist's happy. The fourth person's questioning their life choices, and it's just a, a range of emotions all the way down from that, and you gotta take the good and the bad, and- Like, I think as a spectator, let's say you watch Faith Kipyegon win, and, you know, it's just the stadium erupts, and there's just love and compassion, and it's electrifying. But there were a whole lot of other people in the race that didn't have the same experience, and you gotta ta- you know, there's injuries, there's people dropping out. So I think Olympics is a lot. It's, it's... The highs are high, the lows are low, and you're gonna swap between them pretty darn quickly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:53 I mean, you can see why you're such-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:54 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:55 ... a wonderful coach for people because it is the whole person, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:31:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:59 Um, I love that phrase, mastery, not medals. I think we can all apply that to various aspects of our own life-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:07 ... whether we're, you know, budding Olympians [laughs] or not.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:11 And that story of winning the gold and then suddenly not knowing who you are or what will... what's next. I mean-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:17 ... how many times do we hear this story-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:19 ... over and over again, you know?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:21 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:21 About three years ago, Jonny Wilkinson was sitting where you're sitting.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:24 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:25 And literally, you know, was he 20, 21 years old when he-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:29 ... kicks... He, he, he literally-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:31 Won the World Cup and beat South Africa

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:32 ... achieved the schoolboy dr-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:33 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:33 Yeah. Okay. So sorry if it's fable, but the schoolboy dream.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:37 Right? In the last minute-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:39 ... of the World Cup final-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:40 ... you kick the winner.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:42 You couldn't dream up a-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:43 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:43 ... better scenario for lots of young boys who like rugby.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:46 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:46 But he did it, and he, and he said, and I've never forgot this, even before the ball had gone through, and he'd scored, even before-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:57 ... he was starting to go down.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:32:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:59 Right? One of the things he had to contend with is achieving his dreams at a young age.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:05 Because the question then is, what's next?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:06 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:07 What's driving me now? So we know.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:08 You, you may know this more being very close to Olympiians.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:11 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:12 But how many of them right now in September, like, have lost their sense of who they are-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:18 ... and their purpose? Like, the Olympics was four weeks ago now.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:20 There's no more media coverage.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:22 There's no one asking them for interviews.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:24 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:24 Like, that's hard.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:25 Yeah, yeah. And you, yeah, you need a lot of compassion 'cause they're humans. And, and, you know, people judge on In- on Instagram-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:31 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:31 ... or in posts. Like, "You could have done this better," or some armchair expert.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:35 A- and maybe they could have done something better.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:37 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:37 But it still doesn't take away from them being a human being who was-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:40 ... trying their best.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:41 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You did the best that you could in the moment, and nothing will ever be perfect. It's very, very rare that you'll have a perfect performance. A, you know, and what we don't understand is a lot of the gold medalists can win with a subpar performance.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:53 Yes.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:54 They're that good, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:55 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:33:55 And there's a, there's a notion of dysfunctional, high-performing dysfunctional dys- w- um... You know, like, Lance Armstrong is one of the best examples of a, of a really, really, really high performer. But like, you know, once it was revealed, it was just totally dysfunctional.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:09 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:10 And, and so there is... It- you know, from the outside, you can celebrate those successes, but that might be... I mean, Mi- Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time at the time, massive depression afterwards.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:22 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:22 A massive identity crisis.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:23 I think s-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:23 And it is interesting-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:24 ... suicidal ideation-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:25 ... I think. I think.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:27 You know, this is... And again, it, it, for me, the wider point is be careful who you look up to, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:32 So do you really wanna be these heroes that you think you wanna be? Maybe, maybe not. Um, but I think, I... I mean, I've just written a chapter on this-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:42 ... for my next book. I'm, I'm really passionate about this idea of, you know, you think you wanna be your heroes, but maybe you don't.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:49 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:49 Right? Maybe you don't.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:50 No, maybe you don't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:50 And maybe having that hero worship-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:52 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:52 ... potentially is problematic in driving a lot of your behaviors.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:34:55 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:57 This whole idea of mastery, not medals, it, it's really fascinating. When I spoke to Eliud Kipchoge a couple of years ago, um, one week exactly after he broke the world record at that time-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:07 ... in Berlin at the marathon, one of the things I said to him was, "Do you think you'll still be running-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:14 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:14 ... when you've retired?" And, and his response was just so beautiful because he, he was almost, or it appeared to me that he was almost shocked at the question.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:27 Like flabbergasted. He's like, "Yeah, of course."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:29 Like, "What would it say about me if I stop running when I can't be the best anymore?"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:33 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:34 And, and I really love that because it really, it really intertwines with another idea I've been sort of tossing around in my mind over the summer, which is, you know, people say that, uh, athletes should retire at the top, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:48 Or they went on too long.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:49 Someone was criticizing Tiger Woods-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:51 ... I was reading about. They were saying, "Oh, you know," One, one elite golfer-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:54 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:54 ... was saying-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:55 ... you know, "Tiger's just embarrassing himself now."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:58 "He should've given up long time ago."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:35:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:59 You know, "What's he doing to his legacy?"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:02 And I thought, well, that's a really interesting way of looking at things. Well, it depends what your purpose for playing golf is, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:09 If Tiger's purpose is, "Every time I go on the golf course with my limitations, my injuries-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:16 ... with my capabilities at that time, my job is to perform-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:19 ... to the best that I can"

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:20 Yeah, he's probably enjoying golf more than ever.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:22 Exactly.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:23 Because he, because the, the process is bigger. The puzzle is more engaging.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:26 I think it is for Tiger.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:27 It's more complex. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:27 I think, I think it is

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:28 ... yeah, he's totally immersed in the process.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:29 So people say, "Oh, he's trashing his legacy." Like, well, you're-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:32 ... judging Tiger through your own lens-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:34 Lens

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:34 ... of what you think someone else should be doing.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:36 Should be. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:37 Why should he retire at the top and then no longer play?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:41 No, he's earned the right to totally express himself, do whatever he wants, and he's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:45 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:45 ... probably happy. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:46 But that's the societal narrative, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:48 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:48 That, oh, they've gone on too long.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:50 But it depends. Like I always say, it's the, the energy behind the behavior that's more important than-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:55 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:55 ... the behavior itself.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:57 Right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:36:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:58 What's your intention behind that behavior?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:00 Why the hell should peop- if, if people are focused on the process and not the outcome-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:06 ... well, why the hell does it matter when they retire?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:09 Do you know what I mean?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:09 Totally. He's, he's a golfer, and he's the greatest golfer that's ever lived. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:13 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:13 ... he gets to golf, and yeah. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:16 It's interesting, isn't it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:16 And, you know, he's probably happier. So I, I spoke to a young mountain bike, and she, she came fourth at World Champs now, you know. And she was, she was on the p- on the hot seat. So in other words, she had the fastest split at some stage, and then she was bumped down to second, and then you th- you're hoping that second's gonna be enough, and you get bumped to third, and you're like, "Oh, please, someone make a mistake, or don't go faster than me." And then she ended up fourth, right? So you have a glimpse of what it could be to win, and then it gets You know, pegged down the sort of, the rankings

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:42 Mm-hmm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:37:42 And she was a little crestfallen, and I said, "The interesting thing about fourth is you know you can improve, and you're coming for people, and you have a sense of purpose or fire in your belly, and you, you hustling." And I said, "Probably, I know it's, it's hard now, but probably when you look back, this will be the best-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:00 That time

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:00 ... time of your career." Because you- there's almost no doubt that she, she has the ability to be a world champion, and it will come one day. But then it changes, you know, then you've got a target on your back, and then you judge, then you've got to defend, and your whole mindset starts to change around it. And it's... I really think it's really, really important that people frame sport in a healthy way and have a healthy environment. And, and one of my pet loves is the, the response of mitochondria to environment and creating a safe environment where athletes are, it's totally okay to fail because that's how we learn. So there's no judgment on failure, and, and creating a supportive environment where they feel you have to be able to be seen, expressed, and you need to be heard.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:42 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:38:43 And a lot of coaches talk over the top of athletes. They don't listen. They don't first relate to the athlete and then t- like it's, you know, we'd use the example of trying to hurry a four-year-old up. You can't talk at them. It just distracts them, or it just gets worse, you know? You have to connect with them. And once you've seen that butterfly that they're obsessing with and, and spent a moment with them joyfully looking at a butterfly, then they'll totally go on, and you can get them to school on time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:09 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:09 But you try and say, "Hurry up. Stop doing this," and we talk at people. Um, and in that, in, in a safe environment, people's mitochondria flourish.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:17 Right.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:39:17 And it, and so you'll often see, like say an athlete's not thriving under a coach, and it, and it's no blame on the coach. It's the environment that the athlete's in for whatever it might be. Someone else in, in the coaching environment might just be, I don't know, and sometimes people just move on. But they'll be languishing, so they'll, their run times will be bad, their swim splits, they're not making terms. They're tired. They're fatigued. Sometimes they didn't wanna go to training. Um, you know, had this situation with an athlete, and I said, "Well," um, you know, 'cause the, the coach was at the pool deck. And I said, and she just says, "I, I, I think I have a virus. I need my blood tested. I've, I, I'm exhausted. I can't make my times. I feel terrible. I just wanna sleep all day." So I said, "Well, tomorrow morning, why don't you go for a ride? Skip swimming." She goes for this ride. She says, "Oh my God, I'm, I'm, I'm fine. It must have been a 24-hour virus. I feel..." Or, you know, short term of it. "I feel amazing." Okay, so, okay, we're off to swimming the next day. "No, no, no, it's back. I need a blood test." [laughs] I said, "I think, I think you might find that if you s- swim on your own or skip swimming for a while, you might feel better," you know? And, and, and she ended up leaving the coach, and this happens like clockwork. The next day, some of these athletes are hitting their lifetime best numbers once they're out that environment. And, and s-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:33 Once their perception changes.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:40:35 Yeah, but yeah, your mitochondria are so linked to your energy profile and your mood. You know, they're, they're the powerhouse of your cells, and, and, um, it- they are massively influenced by your environment. And again, so for people as well, is, you know, first you need to sort of change and look after yourself and create some sort of agency, but also you need to start moving into better environments and realize we are just pot plants. And high performance is oxytocin, which is sort of feeling good and love and bonding and trust, and it's an environment where you're safe and secure, and no matter what you do, you, you, you're loved and held, and you can make mistakes safely, and that is optimum healthy high performance and not an attachment to medals. Like attachment on the process and the hi- that is true healthy high performance, and I won't work in any situation where that's not present.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:23 Yeah. On a personal level, I understand that you are working with some of the best, uh, uh, like some people who've won world championships, like-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:32 ... and a lot of people are raving about you in that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:35 ... in that world, about the more root cause approach you're taking-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:39 ... the kind of more holistic approach that has proven-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:42 ... so, uh, beneficial for so many people. But trying to tie this to the kind of topic of this conversation, in essence, the reason why it's worth people paying attention and trying to improve the way that they move-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:41:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:59 ... is because improving the way that they move is gonna improve the way that they live.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:04 Yes, and I, and I think you, you're starting on a journey to find your purpose. So many people s- like, I know my purpose. My purpose is I'm put on this Earth to help people move better. That, I mean, it's my purpose. I, you know, I know it. I don't... I'm not second-guessing. It's not me. It, that is my purpose, but it took me a long time to come to that purpose. But I think once you start, once the noise settles down, once you start being more authentic and expressing yourself, your purpose will find you, and a lot of people don't feel like they don't have agency or don't have a purpose-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:35 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:35 ... or they're overwhelmed in the world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:37 But, but also another way of looking at it is we can often only see what is defined by the constraints that we put up, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:50 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:50 So we're in a podcast studio at the moment.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:42:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:53 Right? So I can look around, and we can imagine how we might want to renovate-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:00 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:00 ... and change the look of this podcast studio, as we often do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:06 But we're limited by the size of this room.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:11 Right? So we can only see what's possible in the dimensions of this room.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:16 Right? If we had a different space-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:18 ... we'd see all kinds of different possibilities.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:19 Right.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:20 What, what the hell has that got to do with what we're talking about?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:22 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:22 Well, let me try and, uh, connect it. If you're struggling to find your purpose, and you're stuck in a certain movement pattern in your body, right, and you think that's who you are-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:38 ... you don't realize that's an adaptation to something that happened in your life-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:41 ... right? You can only see And feel emotions-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:46 ... to the extent to which you can move.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:50 So in essence, if you broaden and expand the movement possibilities within you, if you get out of a flexion-based gait-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:43:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:00 ... and more an extension-based gait, less anterior chain dominant, more pos- posterior chain dominant-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:07 ... then the way you see the world around you, the way you might-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:11 ... visualize your purpose and what-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:12 ... you're here to do-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:13 ... well, that's also gonna change.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:15 Yeah. And how, how you see the world changes and how the world sees you changes. Because someone walking around, like I said, I had a victim posture and I was just mercilessly bullied, and then you get out of a victim posture, no one messes with me anymore.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:28 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:28 And, and, and, you know, so how you see the world, like, you know, oh, Rangan, you know, like I said to you, like, "You look amazing. What's going on in your life? I, I know it's good."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:37 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:37 You can just see it. It just radiates out of you. And you can see someone that's really, really depressed. You know? If you see someone with sort of their head forward and their chest collapsed and really low energy, you don't tell them to stand up straight. You go and ask them, "How are you doing?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:50 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:50 "What's going on in your life?" You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:53 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:44:53 But as, as you express your authentic self and as you move better and feel more secure and trust your body, then other people will trust you, so all your relationships improve and how you see the world changes, and how the world sees you changes. And it is interesting, like athletes that swap from anterior chain to posterior chain, often, you know, coaches don't resonate-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:13 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:13 ... with them anymore and life just starts to change around them. It's a really interesting-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:17 Yeah, it's fascinating

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:18 ... topic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:19 The practical tools we mentioned so far are, uh, breathing.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:23 And I will direct people to that video-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:25 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:25 ... um, because I think it's, it's, it's just really simple, really easy to do-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:29 ... and can be very, very impactful very quickly. We've spoken about backward walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:34 And again, you've got videos on your-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:35 ... YouTube for that to help people. You mentioned the flow rope.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:39 Um, I know what it is-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:41 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:41 ... because I've had one for three weeks because you told me to get one, and you've said, "Don't use it until I see you."

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:48 'Cause you wanted to see me use it for the first time, so I-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:50 ... disciplined myself to not use it. So we've had, we've had a play around in the garden, which is great.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:45:54 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:55 Um, what is it, and why are you such a big fan? Sorry to interrupt. To make sure you are taking action after watching this video, I have created a free special guide to help you improve your sleep and reduce fatigue. Now, in my clinical experience, most people who are struggling to sleep are doing something unconsciously in their day-to-day life that is negatively impacting their ability to sleep at night. So in this free guide, I share with you five of my very top tips, tips that I have seen transform the lives of many of my patients. So if you wanna get hold of this guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:46:40 Um, so the flow rope, I hashtagged on Instagram [laughs] head over foot, and I noticed, well, someone else has been posting head over foot, and then so I was quite interested, like, well, there's a lot of posts for head over foot, and I came across this guy called David Weck, and David Weck's basically the originator of the flow rope. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:00 And the, and the inventor of the Bosu Ball as well

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:02 ... and the Bosu Ball, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:03 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:03 So anyway, I was watching, um, David Weck, and I looked and I just thought, oh my word, this guy is really, really onto something. I use the flow rope a little differently from David Weck. For me, it's just a tool and it's a segue, like an entry portal, but the, the important thing about the flow rope is you can learn the sensation of anterior chain versus posterior chain, so you can learn what posterior chain feels like. Some people are neurologically trapped in an anterior chain pattern, and they'll ... So you're never, ever gonna expect that to show up in their running. So cyclists in particular are very an- often very anterior chain dominant-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:40 Because they're flexed over the bike for so long

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:41 ... because they learn to generate power in a flexed position. Yeah. Knee in front of hip massively is when you drive down on the pedal.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:47 So that helps you in cycling, does it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:49 Or does it help-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:50 So it helps you in cycling, but potentially is-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:52 ... problematic for your running.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:47:53 Yeah. Yeah. And remember, you know, I really work with triathletes, and they can often have a hard time, because they're so anterior chain dominant, they can really have a hard time running well, and some people just don't have access to the neurological patterns of posterior chain. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:06 So you get the rope, which is-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:07 ... I mean, first of all, just my experience-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:09 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:09 ... of using it this morning was it's so up my street.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:14 It's so much-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:14 ... fun, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:15 And you can see-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:16 ... kids wanting to do it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:17 I'm gonna be doing it every day, I'm sure.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:19 Yeah, it's great, it's great biofeedback, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:20 And so there's, there's these figure of eight patterns.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:23 You can do it forward or backwards.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:26 And, and I think you're saying that some people, and you've had elite athletes who can do it one way but not another way.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:31 Like, the brain just doesn't-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:32 ... compute how to do it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:34 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:35 And so why ... If the brain doesn't compute how to do it one way-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:39 ... what's the benefit of learning that?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:42 Well, one is neuroplasticity and balancing out your brain. And so, so ... And it is interesting is, is most people, I've never seen someone that's totally posterior chain dominant and can't do anterior. I've only seen it the other way around, where people are so strongly anterior chain or chopping down with the rope-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:58 But can't go back

Lawrence van Lingen 1:48:58 ... but can't go back figure of eight. And often they'll be, like, dyslexic or have real problems with math, which is interesting, 'cause your cerebellum is math and your frontal cortex. So there's, there is a bra- i- there is a, um ... You know, gently putting, you probably don't have an integration through your cerebral, through your cerebellum and your frontal cortex.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:18 Are you saying you can have some degree of difficulty learning-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:21 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:22 ... when you can just do it anteriorly and not posteriorly?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:25 So it, it can affect the way your brain acquires information?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:29 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:29 Yeah. 'Cause I mean, you, you know, your brain is just processing information, but if I see someone that's strongly anterior chain and cannot swing it posteriorly, often say, yeah, that, you know, I'm really bad at math, or excellent in one department but, but-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:42 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:42 ... compromised in another department. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:44 So it, to me it seems like it's a really beautiful-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:46 ... uh, way of just getting balance between-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:50 ... left and right sides of the body- You know, front and back

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:54 Front and back, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:55 ... the brain, the cerebellum

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:56 Yeah. Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:56 It feels like all these things you're just gonna start integrating together.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:49:59 Yeah. So you're starting to integrate sort of movement patterns and healthy movement patterns and, and, you know, one of the, one of... It's a tool, and the tool, one of the tools is to, to get a sense of what's is your posterior or anterior chain. Um, and then also when you swing the flow rope, you always, it's always moving away from you, and so you start moving from the center out. And a lot of people, if you're stuck in, let's say, you know, rescue dog mode, you, you're reactive, and you tend to defend or guard or brace or move from the outside in. Like, a visualization would be, like, a really novice golfer will hit the ball with their hands, and their torso is very, you know, very s- stable. So they're sort of whacking with their hands and not rotating their torso. Whereas really good golfers will lead with their hips, so their hips come past the ball first, then hands and club. And so y- you end up with, with the flow rope, you end up learning to create movement and generate movement at, from a central pattern, and then it flows out to the extremities, and that you really want in running because a small, powerful movement in the hip almost whiplashes through your foot. Whereas you can move from the outside in and you can say, "Well, I'm really focusing on my hands and my feet," but then you're creating central tension. So the flow rope really starts at some stage to start... It animates your spine, and it's really, really good at rehabilitating your spine. You've got lots and lots of... At every vertebral segment in your spine, you've got these sort of crisscross muscles, and the flow rope starts to animate your spine. And most people get taller after swinging the flow rope or regain their true height, which is kind of your true potential.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:32 And it's also very playful.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:34 Yeah, it's fun.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:35 And play is something that-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:36 ... we need-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:37 ... and we often lose-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:39 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:39 ... as we become adults and get-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:40 ... weighed down with responsibilities. It's... You feel like a kid again.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:43 Yeah, yeah. I mean-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:44 Which I think is a really good thing

Lawrence van Lingen 1:51:45 ... and again, and that's also returning back to, you know, with trauma. Like, so, so we touched on this earlier, this notion of you can have a childhood trauma, and it can affect you for the rest of your adult life. Often, if you move, if you wake up the patterns that you never had before the trauma, or you start to be able to express yourself, many, many times people will reframe their whole childhood. So they'll be in victim mode. They'll tell you, "Oh, this happened to my childhood, and this happened," and they'll remember the bad things, and this can happen with people that went through very serious emotional trauma or personal trauma. And once you sort of release that trauma out of the, their body, they often look back, and they start remembering all the good parts of their childhood and all the joyful and happy. I mean, I had-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:25 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 1:52:25 ... one lady was swinging the flow rope, and while she was swinging the rope, she had this overwhelming sense of love just flood through her body, and she says, "What's that?" And she says, "Oh, God, that's my mother's love." And she, her mother had passed away, and she had a very antagonistic relationship with her sister. And so [laughs] I mean, you gotta understand individual results may vary, right? But so, so she's swinging the rope, and she says, "This love," and she says, "That's my mother's love." And she realized that her mother used to knit for her, and you can't knit angry or, or be- because the knots become too tight.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:57 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:52:57 You have to knit with love, otherwise the garment's misshapen or... And she says, "My mother was always l- knitting for me, and she loved me, and that was the sign of her love," and totally healed her relationship with her sister. And so you go like, "Oh, okay. Well, that's really interesting." So, so yeah, it wakes up and balance and integrates your brain, and, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:17 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:17 ... it's just pretty wonderful. But for, for, as a tool for running is m- you l- start to learn to move with length and space or from the center out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:25 Yeah. Once you've purchased a flow rope, that's it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:31 Everything's free, right? You can-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:32 ... you can watch online.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:33 You can go to your YouTube channel or your Instagram-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:35 ... to figure out what, what-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:36 ... sort of drills to do.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:38 Is it, is it something specific about that rope or, you know, could people, like, fold up a skipping rope and do it?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:44 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:44 Or, or is anything?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:45 Anything. I think David Wake apparently started with shoelaces. I do it online with sweatpants, a towel, a jacket.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:51 Oh, anything really?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:53:52 Jeans. Yeah, just anything. Um, TheraBand cords, anything.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:56 Oh, wow. So y- this w-... I mean, if, if we really break it down, I mean, it's been a pretty deep conversation about all-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:02 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:02 ... kinds of different things, but there's, for me, there's three clear practical exercises we've spoken about-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:09 ... that people can start experimenting with and exploring-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:13 ... immediately. So there's a breathing practice-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:17 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:17 ... where people are initiating the breath from the diaphragm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:20 And I don't think we covered it, but I know on your video you mentioned that sometimes it's helpful to, um, just sort of 50% of str- c- you know, block your nose with your-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:30 ... you know, thumb and index finger. It just... It really helped me. It really helps you-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:35 Initiate your diaphragm, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:36 Yeah, it helps me not finish my in breath too quickly actually for me.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:39 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:40 It's how I felt it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:40 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:41 Um, we mentioned backward walking.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:44 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:44 Another thing that's free, right? So, so not-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:47 ... asking anyone to get anything.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:48 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:48 And the third thing is a flow rope-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:50 ... which, yes, you can buy. I bought from weightherope.com-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:53 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:53 ... I think in the UK.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:54 And I think there's some places in America-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:55 ... or Germany that you recommended as well.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:54:57 Yeah, in Europe, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:59 But you can just use a skipping rope or a towel or anything to start-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:02 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:02 ... getting that motion.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:03 That's what I love, that these things are-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:05 ... very accessible. People just need to kind of do them, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:08 Yeah. And, and try not to do too much too soon. Just start small because it's gotta be sustainable. I mean, you know, you... whatever you start, say, "Can I continue this for a while?" And then, um, you know, 'cause it's just one foot in front of the other.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:22 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:22 And there's no hurry. And, um, hurry slowly, be patient, progress, not perfection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:27 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:27 Yeah, and they're free. And what I like about backward walking, I think, is that it'll profoundly improve your running, and you'll learn that you didn't have to think about it while you were running. Your running will just change, and, and that's, that, that's in itself is a lesson.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:43 Mm.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:44 You know, you, you, you do the work, and the things come to you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:49 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 1:55:49 ... rather than me saying, "Hey, your running's wrong, and this is what you need to do to fix it." And, and, and that, uh, if you can just learn that lesson, you're off to a really, really good start.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:00 Changing topic slightly, I wanted to talk to you about super shoes.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:06 Yes. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:06 These new inventions-- oh, well-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:08 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:09 ... I guess relatively new, uh, that maybe people are familiar with, like elite marathon runners using.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:15 And, you know, I've read stuff that, you know, for the right runner, it can maybe improve times by up to 4%. That's maybe high now.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:23 You, you probably know it better than me. Um, I have a bias towards people, uh, day to day, um, wearing or at least experimenting with minimalist shoes-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:34 ... for a variety of reasons. That-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:36 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:36 ... you know, you know, more connection to the ground.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:38 No, I'm totally on board with that. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:40 Yeah. So people have heard me talk about that before, and I know you share a similar philosophy. However, one thing I was really struck by is your assertion that the super shoes actually for running-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:54 ... so not for walking around-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:56 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:56 ... to the shops or anything, but for running-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:56:57 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:57 ... can be a fantastic educational tool.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:01 So you're the first person who I've heard say that, and you're the first person who has made me even contemplate whether occasionally-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:09 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:09 ... for a run on concrete or tarmac-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:13 ... I might benefit from using a super shoe.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:17 Please explain. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:57:18 So a super shoe is, you know, they've created a carbon plate and then really h- um, sort of like s- reactive foam that sort of when you, when you compress the-- when you bend the carbon plate and you compress the foam, you sort of catapult it out of that, that stance. And I really, I-- Super shoes have, has improved running a- across planet Earth, it, it, profoundly and in a positive way. Um, and the reason is because it's a biofeedback tool. So you learn to land, compress the foam, and then use elastic energy out of that foam. And that implies that you're using the stored elastic energy in your, in your body, which is a very good thing, 'cause a lot of people think running is primarily a muscular or strength-based activity, where it's actually y- it's, it's a-- one is it's a whole body experience, but you really are using your body as a, as a elastic store of energy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:14 You want this elastic recoil, don't you?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:16 Like your fascia. Yeah, yeah, your Achilles is the biggest spring in your body, and you need to use it appropriately.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:20 Yeah, so it's less about muscular tension.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:22 And so-- yeah. You're starting to see people really starting to get that, oh, there's an energy return system. It, it's efficiency. It's easier. They're not, they're not working for it all the time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:32 Is it fair to say that if you already have really good running mechanics-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:37 ... let's take Kipchoge as an example-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:38 ... 'cause I believe-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:39 ... that maybe the Nike, uh, shoe was designed around him to break sub-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:43 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:43 ... to go under two hours-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:44 Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:44 ... which he did in that sort of-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:45 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:46 ... you know, one fifty-nine event that was put on. Um, yeah, a number of things here. If you've already got great running mechanics and you're using the elastic recoil of your tendons-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:58 Mm-hmm. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:58 ... and your, and your ligaments-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:58:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:59 ... when you land, a super shoe is gonna help, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:04 A super shoe is gonna almost, uh, allow you to do what you're already doing and kind of put a rocket underneath it.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:11 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:11 Is that fair to say?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:12 Yeah, it'll amplify your, your natural really great m- running mechanics.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:15 If you've got, uh, poor running mechanics or-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:18 ... suboptimal running mechanics, is there a risk that going in super shoes will get you injured?

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:23 Yeah, so you've gotta be quite careful for the... So, so if you have poor running mechanics, super shoes might actually help improve them, and they'll-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:30 'Cause they'll teach you.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:31 They'll teach you. So it's a feedback. It's just... It, it's a tool. You know, we don't wanna get emotional about this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:35 [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:36 It's a tool that might be appropriate for you at a certain time and might not-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:38 And it-

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:39 ... be appropriate for you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:39 Yeah. It might, it might not.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:40 Like every tool, guys.

Lawrence van Lingen 1:59:41 Yeah. So, so what-- Yeah, [laughs] like every tool. So what'll happen is you're quite high off the ground, and, and the foam is pretty spongy, so they can be unstable. So if, if you're inherently really unstable in your ankles, you might find that you roll over too much in the super shoe, and then they are not for you. And you're pretty-- You, you, you probably figure out pretty quickly that your sort of mechanics are breaking down in the super shoe, like your ankle's rolling in, or your knee hurts, or, or it's just-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:06 So that-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:06 ... you feel clumsy or inefficient.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:07 So that might be a signal to say at that moment-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:10 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They're not for you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:10 ... this is not the right tool for me.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:12 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:12 Okay.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:12 It's time to work on your, your foot mechanics, and, you know, and, and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:16 Other things

Lawrence van Lingen 2:00:17 ... other things, right? Um, but generally speaking, for, for not a fast runner, you'll start-- They help you with the timing. So they've got a massive, it's called a forefoot MetaRocker, which is just a fancy name for a big slope from your foot to your toes. And so as you run in them, it, they-- as you roll forward over that, it helps you with that land, load, release, which is h- hip extension-based gait. So you're rolling off this forefoot, and you sort of spring off. So it helps you with the timing of your running. And so one of the things we do with the flow rope is teach you the timing and shape of running, 'cause running can be perceived as timing. You know, you'll say, "Oh, well," you, you have hip drop 'cause your glute medius is weak. You shouldn't be in that position in the first place. And so you can change your whole posture by changing your timing. Or, like, we understand that with, with golf, right? Your hand should not be ahead of your hips when you hit the golf ball. Your hips should be ahead of your hand, and that's really hard to teach. Really hard. I mean, only the pros get it, [laughs] sort of. So the super shoe teaches you land, compress the foam, and then you bounce out of it, and you roll off your forefoot, and those can be really tricky to teach people how to do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:28 So it's a natural biofeedback mechanism-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:30 ... where-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:31 ... for some people-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:32 ... simply going on them-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:34 ... and paying attention will automatically start to change-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:39 ... the way that you stand-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:39 That timing and, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:40 ... and your timing-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:41 ... and how you move. You, you drew an analogy before, uh, before we started recording to women wearing high-heeled shoes, I think.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:01:47 Yeah, like stilettos. Yeah. You have to put your ankle-- So that's the other part of it is because they're high off the ground, um, it tends to amplify misalignment of joints. So it-- You know, if you put a pair of stilettos on, you have to put your ankle down in neutral. Otherwise you're gonna roll your ankle. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:03 So is this something like women who are listening who-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:06 ... have worn high heels or still-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:07 ... do wear high heels, they will naturally have had to figure this out-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:11 ... so that they're not gonna tip- topple over when-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:14 ... they're wearing high heels.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:14 Yeah, they're not gonna-- Yeah, it, it's sort of the same analogy as like if you don't wanna sprain your ankle in high heels, you better put your ankle down properly. When you're high off the ground, you actually need to correct your biomechanics, otherwise you'll roll your ankle. And then so from that biofeedback point of view as well, I've, I've seen years ago, HOKA, when it first came out, I've seen an athlete, you know, she, she was in a pair of pretty maximalist shoes. I, I've never ever seen someone's joint mechanics improve, and it happened in 30 seconds on a treadmill. She used to have really rolling on her ankles, knocked knees, just, you know, really disconnected running, and she put a pair of HOKA on, and she ran on the treadmill, and everything just, for her, cleaned up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:55 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:02:55 You know, it's extraordinary. And but that's not the case for everyone. But generally speaking, you know, we are-- we're visual learners. I like visually what I see in running at the moment. I think running is getting better and better, and I think a lot of the performance breakthroughs we're seeing is, is better practice compounding on the fact that the shoe actually makes you run in the moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:14 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:14 And mechanics are improving, and I like the narration that like I'm hearing commentators at the Olympics say, "Oh, that's a fast, relaxed running form," or, "Look how relaxed they are." Whereas I promise you, 15 years ago-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:25 Right

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:25 ... no one was talking about relaxed running. It was tight, engaged-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:28 Yeah

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:28 ... muscling it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:29 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:29 Just a couple of things there. One is that you've really made me think about whether I should try them. 'Cause I'm interested now to know-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:37 ... well, what does it feel like? What-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:39 ... biofeedback will I get about my-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:41 ... own body?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:41 You know, what are, what are the finer things I'm trying to tweak and change?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:44 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:45 Well, perhaps that'll do it automatically, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:47 So it's interesting for me.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:48 Secondly is what you said about relaxed running. One thing you always notice of the elites in any sport, and running is no exception, one of the things I enjoyed about the Olympics this year-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:03:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:57 ... watching the track events was some of the runners, it was just the most beautiful sight-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:06 ... to watch effortless speed.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:09 You know?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:10 And some you could-- You know, I was with the kids, we were watching, saying, "Let's have a look at the start," like at the 1,500 meters.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:15 We would look at the start. Who do we think might win, and who do we think is gonna struggle based upon, um, who looks relaxed-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:24 ... and whose form and posture are we drawn to 'cause something doesn't look-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:28 ... quite fluid?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:29 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:29 And it wasn't 100% at the time, but often-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:31 ... we'd go, "Well, that person just looks super relaxed."

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:34 Whereas that person, just for whatever reason, doesn't, and it looks like it's an effort.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:38 So that was really interesting, and I think just trying to bring this conversation to a close, many people who listen to this podcast do Parkrun. It's a phenomena-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:49 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:49 ... in the UK-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:50 ... and, and in many countries around the world now.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:52 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:52 And if you go to any Parkrun, which is a 5K-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:55 ... uh, in your local town on a Saturday-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:04:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:59 ... where some people walk it, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:01 Which is great. But it's great. You get a community together. Everyone's supportive of each other. It's a-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:07 ... wonderful environment.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:09 You know, they have a-- I think the catchphrase is, you know, no one ever comes last-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:12 ... 'cause there's always a tail walker who will-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:14 ... technically be last, so it's just-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:15 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:16 ... you know, you talk about the environment and it being supportive-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:18 Yeah. Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:18 ... for us. It's w- it's wonderful.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:22 But there'll be many people listening to this who'll be like, "Yeah, I go each week." And if you go each week, you'll kinda see a whole variety of different forms and postures. Like, people are completing it, but some people are completing it efficiently.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:37 They look compact. Some people have got, you know, really quite interesting postures and styles-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:44 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:44 ... of running, which just shows how incredible we are as a species. We can-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:46 How diverse we are, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:47 Yeah, it's incredible to watch.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:50 But some people look as though they've really-- they've struggled. So let's say they- they're getting a good time, if that's what's important to them.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:05:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:57 But their shoulder's by their ears. They've really been pushing, right?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:01 Can you speak to that person who might think, well, everything's fine? 'Cause you're basically saying, I think, Lawrence, that-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:09 ... if they just apply themselves a little bit-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:13 ... away from Parkrun-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:15 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:15 ... to things like the flow rope-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:16 ... to backward walking-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:18 ... to a daily breath practice-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:20 ... you're kind of saying, I think, that actually that Parkrun could be much more enjoyable for them.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:28 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:28 Is that, is, is that, is that a good way of framing it?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:06:31 Yes, I think so. You know, 'cause, 'cause-- Well, there would be this notion of some people can't accept ease or, or can't accept talent or, or can't accept goodness 'cause you had to work so hard for everything. So a lot of time, people actually work too hard [chuckles] on the thing they're doing. So please, you know, for everyone is like we have the saying, "Don't crush your dreams in a tight fist." [chuckles] You gotta hold, you know, hold your dreams lightly in your hand, and you get this reframing of mastery, not medals. Um, and, and I think a really helpful way of thinking about asymmetry, 'cause we're talking about asymmetry, what makes-- I mean, a lot of the world-class athletes are extraordinarily symmetrical compared to other people, right? Um, is we tighten with the twist, and we let go and relax, and things fall into place. And, and a certain sense of ease comes into your life and in your movements. And so, you know, you practice these things, and you need to graciously accept that running might become easier, and have, have an okay relationship with that. 'Cause some people don't. Some people want it to be hard 'cause they, they feel they didn't deserve it if it's not really-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:35 Mm. Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 2:07:35 ... really hard, and they, they overstruggle. But yeah, totally, you can-- You, you will start to hopefully, you know, have a better relationship with your running. It should feel easier. It should feel like you move better. I don't know. You-- So with Jan Frodeno, his movement changed so powerfully. He did a track session, and then he struggled with this as well, and he said like-- So he did, I don't know, like quite a lot, like eight by 1Ks, and he says, "That's not enough." And then he, he did some 400s, and he says, "No, I wanna do more." 'Cause he was so used to being beat up- After eight by one kilometers, and he says, "I don't have that sensation that I've beat my body up."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:11 Oh my God.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:11 "I, I want it." And it was like, yeah, well now you're an efficient runner, and good things come to you, and you have to graciously accept that you're more talented.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:18 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:19 And, you know, and, and you have to... He had to totally reframe his relationship with running and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:23 So powerful

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:23 ... that you're not that beat up. And, and I have this discussion often with athletes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:27 Yeah. For people who've never heard of Jan Frodeno, can you just briefly explain who he is?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:31 Yeah. Um, so Jan Frodeno's a, a, a good friend of mine now. Uh, he's a, one of the greatest triathletes of all time. He's, he's an Olympic medal, uh, short course world champion multiple times, and a-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:43 Okay

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:43 ... Ironman multiple times-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:44 Thank you

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:44 ... winner. He's, he's acknowledged as sort of the greatest of all time in triathlon.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:47 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:47 A one-off.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:49 It's interesting, as you were just-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:52 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:52 ... talking about this idea that sometimes you have to feel that you've really worked hard-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:57 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:57 ... to actually deserve something.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:08:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:59 Oh man, I've felt that in my life. [laughs]

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:01 For sure. And again, part of this evolution of how I feel I am and how I show up is, I think I, my relationship to working hard-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:12 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:13 ... or not even working hard, the feeling that you've worked hard and pushed has-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:19 ... has dramatically changed. And one question I've been using for a number of years is, what would this look like if it was easy?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:28 And it's been so profound for me because I'm also used to, or for much of my life I was conditioned to, if I didn't really work hard and push and stay up late and actually-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:38 ... have the stress, it, it, it can't be good.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:42 It's not worth it.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:44 But you know, last week I submitted the final edits, um, for my sixth book, which comes out in January, and it was a very relaxed experience.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:53 That's amazing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:53 Like, because I've trained myself to-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:54 Well, now I wanna read it. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:55 Well, but it's also-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:56 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:56 ... but it's also, it, it doesn't have to be hard.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:09:59 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:00 And I don't think people fully understand that-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:01 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:01 ... when your movement becomes more efficient-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:03 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:04 ... you can actually go and run quite fast and it not, and not actually feel that hard some of the time.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:11 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:11 You know?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:11 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:11 It's, it's beautiful.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:12 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:13 People think running has to be hard, but it doesn't, does it?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:15 No, it doesn't. No. Well, uh, well I think as, you know, we just need to acknowledge that I think sometimes things have to be hard so that you can appreciate when they're good. And, and you know, everyone's got a... I, one of these notions is, I haven't read the book, there's a book called The Hero's Journey, but for me, the hero's journey is, um, is interesting. It's like, you know, you, you, you have to struggle, you have to sacrifice. You all go through periods of stress because if you don't, I don't think you appreciate once you start to resolve things. So, you know, my message to everyone listening is wherever you are at is perfect, and you're good enough, and you are enough, and you have enough, and it's okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:57 Mm-hmm.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:10:58 And just this notion that the, you can move past and into a, a, a period of more ease. And we were talking earlier about like, you know, when you're talented when you're young, you often don't appreciate it. And it's often very difficult to get talented people to work hard. I mean, it's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:13 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 2:11:13 ... extraordinary how talented some people can be. You know? Like when, when people are properly talented, it's, it's insane. I mean, I don't know, like Mozart was composing at four or two or something-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:25 Mm

Lawrence van Lingen 2:11:25 ... ridiculous, you know? Um, and so, but often you don't appreciate it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:29 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:11:29 And then when the gift gets taken away, and then it comes back again. And I, I, you know, talking about this with, with talented people is I say, "It's not your gift. It's, you're not talented. That's a gift that you're curating." 'Cause in running, the only certainty we know is one day you, you'll have run your last best time. [laughs] You'll just start slowing down at some point. And so it's not your gift, it will be taken away from you, and so don't attach your identity to something-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:56 Wow

Lawrence van Lingen 2:11:56 ... that's transient. And um, you know, so I think yeah, there's multiple sort of layers to this whole conversation.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:02 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:02 But-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:02 You can say that again. I mean-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:04 ... what, what started off as a conversation about better running and breathing-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:08 ... has turned into how to heal from trauma and deep philosophical thoughts about the world and-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:14 ... who we are and our place in the world. I, I-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:16 ... I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, Lawrence. I, I honestly think that the work you do is incredible. I love it. For people who wanna kind of follow you and keep up to date, I've mentioned your YouTube and Instagram.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:31 Uh, there's also your website, innerunner.com.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:33 Just, can you just go through where, where people can go and what kind of you can offer them?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:12:36 Yeah, I think, I think that would be at the, the innerunner.com. Um, and we have a community on there. We do live classes three times a week when I'm not traveling too much. Um, and then yeah, I'm, I'm busy putting together like a run workshop. Um, so there's a ton of resources on there, but that's like-minded people get together and talk, and, and talk about running and go through it, and we do a Monday mobility class and a Wednesday mastery class, of course, mastery, not medals. And then a Thursday breathing class.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:04 Wow.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:05 Um, and then yeah, just Instagram and I, I don't really know what happens on Facebook, but I, I have an account. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:13 Lawrence, I really appreciate everything you do. I appreciate you making the journey to come to the studio. Uh, the work we've done as well, I think is gonna-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:19 ... beautifully complement the work I've done with Helen. Um, I very much resonate with both of your philosophies, as I've said, you know, very mu-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:25 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:26 ... very holistic, very root cause. Uh, just to finish off, for, for someone who has listened-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:33 Yeah. Thank you. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:35 Yes. Thank you. They know there's something in this conversation that is important for them.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:41 Right? There's something that they'll go, "I've not heard things being spoken about like that before. I know this applies to me." For that person who perhaps always has pain when they walk or run, and feels like they've tried everything-

Lawrence van Lingen 2:13:55 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:56 ... and feels that actually movement or running no longer fits into their life, right? What would you say to them?

Lawrence van Lingen 2:14:07 Um, there's always hope. Just because you haven't met someone that can help you doesn't mean you can't be helped. And it, it's very okay to walk or, or do what you can in the moment, but keep doing what you can. And, and, and it's amazing, you know, like what does Rumi say? "When, when you start on the way, the way appears." And I think so just putting one foot in front of the other, literally the metaphor of just walking and, and, um, you know, walk with me, walk with you, walk with people that, that care about you, that are offering you solutions. And it's amazing how many resources there are out to help you, whereas I think sometimes we can get blindsided by how many things are going wrong in our life or, or again, you know, how stuck we can be. But just start with walking. Walking is, walking is... We could have a whole podcast just on walking.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:58 Yeah.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:14:58 Um, walking is one of the most healing, natural, um, integrative... It, it's good for everything, PTSD, mood disorders. You know, and movement, movement is so, so powerful, so just put one foot in front of the other. Don't try too hard. You know, it's just do something. And just, um, even if the do something in that day is just acknowledging that I'm going to do something, that's a step in the right direction.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:15:24 Love it. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for coming on the show. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, and I cannot wait for our part two together.

Lawrence van Lingen 2:15:30 [laughs] Thank you, R- uh, Rangan. This has just been absolutely amazing. Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:15:35 [upbeat music] If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one.

Guest 2:15:39 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