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A | Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Ido portal. Ido portal is somebody who truly defies formal definition. He is, however, cr... |
B | It's a big question. I somehow left the definition, the very tight definition of it, out for myself, because I felt it was starting to constrict me and be around me. And I let the practice itself really define it. But I think part of our sense of everything is actually a sense of movement, and then the stillness in the... |
A | I heard you say once that we are not just a brain with a body, but we are a body with a brain, which I absolutely love, because as a student and a researcher of the nervous system, I never think about the brain as its own isolated thing. I think about the nervous system and the fact that the brain and the spinal cord a... |
B | Okay. Okay. So some thoughts. I will try not to answer any of your questions during this interview, but I will definitely give some thoughts, and then we can play with it. I think these definitions, and, in general, the limitation of words, ends up creating some kind of a corruptive process. The words corrupt us and co... |
A | I think most people who embark on a movement practice will first want to know which movements to do, right? Squats, planks, push ups, pirouettes. Pick your movement. It could be any movement. Are there any sort of just basic entry points that you believe everybody should walk through as they embrace a movement practice... |
B | So you touched the word movement. And it's important for me to separate it from the word movement with a capital m. Movements are the containers, and movement is the content. And the content cannot be carried in any way without containers. So the first entry point is to choose containers. And then the second thing to m... |
A | So could you help me distinguish the two a little bit further? I think I understand the difference between a sort of the noun versus the verbs. And in some ways, here we are dealing with the challenge of the barriers that language present to something that's physical, right? I mean, indeed, there may not be a. I have t... |
B | It begins with education. That's probably the most stable point of entry. Awareness to some. Something as a concept that it is a concept that there is a validity, or because sometimes people look for that to looking at this entity, this open entity. And that's part of the reason why answering questions is not something... |
A | Everyone wants to end on ten. Yeah. |
B | Which is because of the decimal system, etcetera. So all kinds of things like that is also important with the movement. Idea is to discuss, to examine to look, to taste, to try, but then also not to try to capture. Because if you like the invisible loop of Hofstadter, if you look at it too closely, it's gone. But if yo... |
A | I'm going to inject some or project some ideas, and perhaps you would tell me if they're ridiculous, potentially useful, or useful, as I understand what we're talking about now and what we've discussed earlier, is that movement can and should be incorporated into one's entire life. I've even heard you say that even bef... |
B | Yeah, those are some good directions. I think one thing is this what you call wordlessness? I have been recommending to people nonverbal experiences and the awareness of the body, which is not really the awareness of the body, as you know, not purely or not fully. The awareness of motion is a very good way to start to ... |
A | Common, I slide my skateboard underneath my chair and roll it back and forth. And the teacher would tell me to stop and just slowly, little by little, trying to get the most subtle movement I could without them telling me they were going to take it away or. |
B | Try, which is probably horrible, horrible advice and instruction. Just like sit up straight and chew with your mouth closed. Because they remove a lot of the self education and a lot of the self development and the practical discoveries that are necessary and even will damage focus and thinking processes in some ways. ... |
A | I love the example of moving through the crowded street with a backpack because of the way in which it's completely adaptive to the situation you happen to be in and highlights the fact that one doesn't need a gym or any specific scenario. Although we will certainly touch on ideal learning circumstances for movement an... |
B | Of course, the less of your own personal practice and understanding and knowledge you've done, the more toys you need, the more you've really worked on yourself. The more high tech you are, the more low tech are your tools, the more high tech you are. And this is the most advanced technology by far on this planet. With... |
A | To remind ourselves, a lot can be done with the body and gravity floor. |
B | A piece of floor, a piece of wool, a corner of a room, is a beautiful scenario which you can become, discover in, and play in. But we are not so developed, so we don't see those options. And this is something that I try to stimulate. And that's why I made it a point to avoid any of the big sponsorship and high tech too... |
A | You touched on mention of a few sports. Maybe it was Charles Polquin, or maybe it was another trainer that I heard once say that for kids, one of the worst things they can do is over specialize in a particular sport, the idea being that it leads to improvements in performance in a very narrow domain. But they raised th... |
B | Okay, first I'll address the first part that you mentioned, and I've learned from you about certain changes in the way that things develop later in life versus earlier in life. And you're right, this was something that Charles Poliquin also mentioned, and I learned from back in the day as well, from him, which can seem... |
A | Very helpful. Those different bins are very helpful. I really appreciate that you mentioned that people will often practice what they're good at as opposed to what they need. In gym culture, we refer to this as the guy that always skips leg day type person, right? Big upper body, skinny legs. Or you'll see people that ... |
B | Not only natural, it is necessary, but I want you to keep it on that side and to bring something to balance it. If there is not this challenge, the process will not work. It has to be this scale. And you're talking about scales of pain, pleasure, and this is another scale. And this discomfort, again, is necessary and s... |
A | Yeah. It was a striking moment for me earlier today when I was really challenged with one of the practices we were doing. And you said, this is exactly what I experienced this morning, Andrew, that's what you said. I couldn't imagine that you were having challenges doing the what I was attempting to do. And, of course,... |
B | Yes, contextualizing or recontextualizing that sensation is something I work a lot with. And I just reminded people, and I also reminded to myself, and if it wasn't difficult and we didn't need to redo it again and again, we wouldn't be again on this correct scale, which is dynamic and moving, just like rolling downhil... |
A | I've heard the statement before, we are just a meat vehicle, right? We're just a sack of cells. And I truly despise that statement, because first of all, it deprives us of all meaning of our lives. We can go down the route of philosophy as to whether or not there's meaning or not. But more importantly, it divorces us f... |
B | First, it's not important what I think, if it's possible or not possible, or if it's even possible for you or not possible for you. What is important is what you truly want to do, what you truly are after. And it's important for me because many times this way of thinking about things is already limited. I like to say a... |
A | And they want to get away from the ground. |
B | Yeah. The shallow hip socket, which allows one activity, but then the stability of the deep hips. Okay. The architecture of the hip, the femur heads, the q angles, the shapes, etcetera. So we are all unique and there are certain elements which, like, for example, my squat challenge is like, for most people, there is so... |
A | How do you remind people what the squat challenge is? |
B | The squat was my attempt to bring a new fresh state of mind into the word squat. Not as a strength element, but it's a fundamental resting position, really actually should be one of the most abundant ones. We replaced it with sitting, which is not, really doesn't work well if you're in a natural environment. It's not v... |
A | Given that humans can generate such a broad array of types of movement, run, jump, duck, squat, leap, all these types of movements, do you think there's value in observing the movements of other animal species? I know I certainly enjoyed the watching other animals move. I think one of the more spectacular animal facts ... |
B | Wow. |
A | Obviously, we can't do that. And yet I spent hours because they were in the lab next door watching videos of these little chameleons walk. And the articulation of these feet is incredible because they're literally rolling those little pedals along in a way that kind of defies anything else I've ever seen. I told myself... |
B | I think so. I think it's, first, it's inspiring, it opens up. But I will take it away from the romantic point of view. And I would offer another way to examine all these movements exist in us in ways, in certain ways, like the work of Grakovetsky on the spine, the spinal engine, and to see how these old ways of moving,... |
A | Yeah, people often hear the word mutation and they think, oh, mutations are bad. There are maladaptive mutations, and then there are adaptive mutations, for sure. |
B | And this places the word change in the heart of it, what it wants to do, change, so it does not want to become better. There is an inherent change in it, and then, of course, they become better. At XYZ, fittest is the secondary perspective that arrives in relation to certain things. But there is still a stronger, more ... |
A | You mentioned something that, for me, is an incredibly important concept, for a couple of reasons. And you mentioned these spinal waves. I have to assume that's taking the torso for us, movement morons that are, I'll just refer to in coarse terms, instead of thoracic spine. I mean, we'll stay away from the technical an... |
B | Ventral, side to side, rotational, as well as spiraling. |
A | Have you ever had the experience of yourself or other people engaging in those types of movements and experiencing particular categories of emotions? And I have a particular reason for asking this. There's no right or wrong answer, of course, but I'm just curious whether or not movement of the. Let's call it the core o... |
B | Evidence? I have none, but I have experience and I have some thoughts about it. Ida Rolf is known to have created rolfing, or structural integration said the issues are in the tissues and around the spine is us. As you know, you can take an arm off a limb. But the reason, there's been attempts, but there is no brainy a... |
A | I love the answer. Let me tell you a bit of why I asked. So there's a principle in neuroscience, but especially in neuroevolution, they call it evo devo, sometimes evolution and development, how those link, if you look at. So we have motor neurons, as you know, but for the audience that live in our spinal cord that cau... |
B | The pattern has been downloaded. |
A | That's right. And it's truly downloaded into the spine. And the connection between, in the spine and muscles. Now, the motor neurons that control the spinal waves, as you call them, are of a particular category. They have a molecular signature, a physiological signature. They were identified by. He's dead now. But a bi... |
B | The yogis actually do it to the side. |
A | Oh, do they? |
B | Yeah. |
A | I don't know if I can do that. Anyway, my spinal wave is weak, but I'll work on it. But what I find so interesting about these layers of, I don't want to say sophistication, but these, with evolution came the addition of more pools of opportunity. These motor neuron pools, as they're called, their opportunity to engage... |
B | The central orientation is mostly gone from our culture. We don't even walk, basically, these days. If you look at traditional culture, the amount of walking you do on a rest day, it's huge. So we started to create technologies to bring everything into the periphery, controlling it with the fingertips, etcetera. So we ... |
A | Some people, when you give them a ball to throw, you can tell if they've never thrown a ball, throw like a girl. |
B | That is often said here in the US. And it's of course unfair, but it relates to experience, right? That is less maybe promoted or offered for females. So you get this peripheral pattern instead of a central generated pattern that progresses towards the extremities. One thing I wanted to ask you is, I know an area that ... |
A | Yeah. Recently, we had a guest on the podcast named Eric Jarvis. He's a professor at Rockefeller who was offered a position to dance with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. So, an accomplished dancer and comes from a musical family, we chose to become a neuroscientist instead and study speech and language. But he said some... |
B | Wow, those are beautiful perspectives, and I definitely feel the same. There's a lot to say about singing and dancing, as well as also as a form of ancient programs of transmission. Sometimes there is this in some ancient practices, the mantras, and people don't realize that they are tantric practices. They contain a f... |
A | Yeah, it's good prediction. Yeah. Yeah. |
B | But we can go beyond. There is something inside of us that can go beyond. Hard to communicate. I can't offer it right now here, but I have the experience, and thankfully, I have a practice and a way to sense it, to feel it, and to re examine it, and then we can talk about it and have something from that. |
A | Edward Wilson, the great sociobiologist, he actually founded the field of sociobiology. Eo Wilson, they call him. Edward Wilson had this beautiful word and indeed named a book. Actually, the word was better than the book. Sorry, Wilson, but the book was a little bit of meandering for my taste. But then again, he's the ... |
B | Yeah, I think it's a product of those practices that are maybe not so aware or not so movement oriented in the open sense. And then you get this sensation with people. But alone, we do nothing, so much so that we're never alone, also on the inside. And we will manufacture and produce entities inside. So we're constantl... |
A | You mentioned about the opportunity for movement, perhaps even all forms of movement coming from deep within. It raises to mind in the neuroscience of motor systems, we talk about motor neurons, as I described, the ones that actually evoke contraction of muscles. And then there's this category of neurons that isn't oft... |
B | Ballistic, which is DNA, the same, turning off and on, but all the information is already there, right? And then the possibilities are just allowed. So I am allowed. I don't do free will already, but I am allowed to do. I am. There are possibilities, and I am dancing within that dance, but I am not the only dancer. So ... |
A | You said you're allowed. And again, I'm taking some of the language and I. What you report about your experience, and I'm trying to map it to some concepts that relate to neural circuits. In the principles of neuroscience, we talk about instructiveness versus permissiveness. There are instructive cues, like, for instan... |
B | Surfing it. |
A | Right. |
B | Surfing that current, or this current, or another current, or opening the window. |
A | Exactly. And if you look at the formal study of movement and improvement of movement, the most basic example I can give is like a tennis serve. And if you just. They've done this many times over, you map the trajectories, and in a novice, the lines are all over the place. It ends up looking more like a tangle of rubber... |
B | Let me inject something here from an old neurologist. You can say Berenstein, the Soviet, and he talked about degrees of freedom, and they did, in order to increase productivity in Soviet Union. I don't know if you've heard this story. He was brought in to examine the movement habits of the workers, and he collected so... |
A | The example you give fits very well with the one that I described before, because I'm recalling the experiment. If people want to look this up, it's a paper, we'll put it in the show. Note caption a guy also happens to be at Harvard named Benso Olevsky. Hungarian. I'm clearly pronouncing his name wrong, but I know Bens... |
B | It made me think many years ago, this kind of thinking about, so what is that entity? Because obviously it's not technique. And it wouldn't even be honest to say it's a movement pattern. There is too much diversity there. I started to talk about, I called it movement sleeve, or meta technique, but the word technique is... |
A | Do believe there is such a thing. And I'll flatter an attempt to embarrass you by saying I think that I'm not alone in viewing you as a virtuoso movement. I think that's what comes to mind, because there's this notion that not everything is pre planned, that even you might not know what you're going to do next until th... |
B | The eyes are a good starting point, as you help a lot of people to understand. And when you encounter difficulties with other layers, it's very powerful to start with the eyes. Another thing important to understand and to experience. You can't believe me, or you got to examine it for yourself. We do not move the eyes a... |
A | Yeah, I love that you mentioned chin down, because we all have a natural reflex. When chin goes down, eyes goes up, and the opposite is true. When head goes up, eyes go down. And there are two separate clusters of neurons in these cranial nerve nuclei that, as we call them, when eyes are up, it increases our level of a... |
B | Another pragmatic b tier, if I can offer, is, since our culture has been more geared than pushing us towards focus, the focus, use of the eyes and primary language reading and I, other things, we have less opportunities to work with the more open, panoramic ones. So it would be smart to start to balance things out a bi... |
A | I couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of. I'll even venture so far as to say that a lot of the visual deficits that we now see in young people, myopia, literally nearsightedness, occurs because if we look at things that are too close to us as children or as adults, the eyeball actually gets longer. The lens focuses ... |
B | Another set of parameters to. To think about and to play with and to be aware of. Also, I have the experience that some people are better at using this system or that system. And you would be amazed how differently the same results, seemingly outside results, are done by different practitioners in different scenarios. ... |
A | Well, people will even make their ears bigger, right? We try and become like little fennec foxes or something. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that's actually why we do this, is to capture more sound waves, right? And the leaning is the localization of sound is based on a simple brainstem calculation of interaura... |
B | Yeah, I think a good practice is to have many walks because they're required. And of course, there is a very efficient and endurance, stamina oriented thing that. But if you have the experience, it will naturally develop and unravel, and if not, you can get some collective knowledge and improve. And then there is a lot... |
A | As you're describing this, I'm smiling because one of my favorite neuroscientists, he's out of the University of Chicago, was in a meeting, and there was an argument about evolution of the nervous system. And he said at the end, and people were arguing about whether or not this gene in one animal was homologous to this... |
B | And hence I want to offer something that is relating to you. We should be wary of defining the mechanisms and putting certain meaning with certain processes and ways, because just history and experience shows it doesn't work well for us most times. Or it becomes like this much more elaborate thing, even if we were some... |
A | The space pen, yeah. No, I don't know. |
B | I think it's a. An urban myth. I don't know if it's true, but I like it, so I use it. So there was this, of course, space competition, and the Russians put the first animal in space, and the first. |
A | It was a macaque monkey or something like that. Yeah. |
B | And then Laika. And they put the first sputnik, the satellite, and man in space. But Americans took the man on the moon, and on the way, a lot of technologies got developed. And the Americans, because of lack of gravity out there, developed the space pen. With a huge investment, the Russians used the pencil. So I don't... |
A | I love the story. Whether or not it's a legend or not, it's legendary because it's fantastic, as you say in the laboratory, whenever someone takes on a project in my lab, I always say, you have to ask yourself how much technical detail and challenge you want to take on. Because with more technology, advanced technology... |
B | By the way, I think that scientists get it right. It's where you transmit the knowledge out of the scientific field, because science has debate and everything, you're not so connected. Of course, this can happen as well. But then when it goes out, and the simple person without the experience takes it more as a gospel, ... |
A | No, people prefer to have the. This will work the first time, every time, and will serve you best compared to everything else. And while there are more reliable tools than others, in my mind, the more reliable tools tend to be ones that are grounded in our innate physiology, as opposed to some. I don't like the word ha... |
B | Yeah. Touch, proximity, all these things. Also taking very, it takes a very, I think, limited place in our lives. People are not touched and they don't touch enough. There is certain bubbles of peripersonal space, according to culture, according to environment, what is right, what is wrong. And then came all the, of co... |
A | Neck breaks or something, kicks to the. |
B | Face, trauma, various violence. I've explored other martial arts and boxing. I was involved with MMA and BJJ, but I tell you, the most violent arena. Is that why? Because it's unknown. One moment it smiles. Another moment it's something else, and it's uncontrolled. There is no categories, no weights, and it's a street ... |
A | I love the idea that through the exploration of a range of physical contacts, provided one knows they can always return to their center, so to speak, then there's a lot of opportunity that opens up. I wish there was more of that encouraged in children's play, but also, as you mentioned, in adult environments, because n... |
B | And I think maybe also important for discharging, discharging certain experiences, remodeling, reframing. So it's like touch is very powerful in that if you're touched and you're touching a lot, you're unpacking and you experience that touch that maybe has been traumatic and you're reframing it, you have the opportunit... |
A | So in Israel, they'll say, that didn't feel good to me, or that felt good, or that was fine. |
B | Yeah. It would be more common here in the airport. The guy's telling me, I'm going to slide my hands up towards your crutch until I meet a hard stop. And then he does this in a way that is supposed to show me I have no enjoyment in that. And for me, it just feels aggressive. But his intention is good showing me. But if... |
A | It is something to talk about, and I'm glad you raised it, because I think that it's so clear to me that much of the value of a movement practice involves this dynamic interaction with somebody else. So, as you pointed out, it can be performed on one's own and practiced throughout one's day. But the unpredictability is... |
B | I think impressions are very useful here. Also, when stepping into an area in which trauma can occur. And then by going through the impression that it already occurred, you create some kind of a thermal layer of protection. So I've already been hit when I'm entering that space. So beneficial, or I've already been touch... |
A | Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned running scenarios in your head. I was been curious all day as to whether or not you do visualization or mental rehearsal of physical movement. It seems to be a popular idea in the states. People are always asking me, can you just imagine a movement and learn it better than were you to actua... |
B | Yeah, the word visualization is not good. Obviously. It has to be experientialization in a very complete way. Not just visually, of course. And unless you already developed certain experience, tangible experience that has been. That has benefited from feedback, from outside feedback, it is not a very useful thing to do... |
A | I love it. For many people, they approach movement in the form of weight training or yoga or running. Yoga is a bit more dynamic, but fairly linear types of exercise and movement, peloton rowing, these kinds of things. I think most people will probably not depart from those practices entirely because they like them. I'... |
B | It's definitely a problem and it's approachable. People want a quick, people want to hack, people want the icing. There is no cake. There is no cake. And it's just like industries of icing, icing, icing on what? What are you putting it on? So for me, that's why I'm going towards this side. It's like I have my life now.... |
A | Love it. I think that's a wonderful message. What I keep hearing from you over and over again is that people should explore, explore, explore and listen. I want to thank you for your time today, first of all for the incredible teachings here at this table, but also the introduction to a movement practice. Although now ... |
B | Thank you very much. Thank you. |
A | Thank you for joining me today for my discussion about the science and practice of movement and movement culture with Ido portal. If you'd like to learn more about Ido and his workshops and other aspects of what he does, please go to his social media. His Instagram handle is portal portal dot Ido Ido. You can also go t... |
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