How to Master your Nervous System for Productivity and Joy - Jonny Miller | Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

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Every time you think you have a decision to be made, like a big decision, it's usually an indication that there is actually an emotion to feel or emotion that you are avoiding.

But if something actually lands in you, it's like a signpost that there's like an exiled part there that is wanting like love and attention.

This episode is a conversation between me and my friend, Johnny Miller.

Now, Johnny is an expert in the nervous system.

He teaches a course called the Nervous System Mastery, where he's taught over a thousand students how to regulate and take control of the nervous system to enhance their productivity and performance, but also their joy and general enjoyment of life.

I'd say that there's actually an art to the feeling part of feeling good.

Joy comes from or emerges on the other side of being willing to welcome and feel the full spectrum of our human experience.

He specializes in teaching people how to access and work more skillfully with their emotions, which is something that I am very interested in.

Now, Johnny's introduction to these topics is quite interesting and also quite sad.

I was engaged to an amazing, actually junior medic, junior doctor, the name was Sophie.

She had bipolar disorder.

And on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life.

That journey that followed into and through grief was what unlocked all of this for me.

Hey Johnny, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing? It is great to be here.

Well, thank you for coming on.

I was hoping to talk to you about the nervous system because you're the nervous system guy, at least on Twitter.

You've got a course about it.

You teach this sort of stuff.

And we were talking on this retreat earlier about how my whole shtick is that to be productive, you want to feel good.

You want to find enjoyment, enjoy in the thing that you're doing and then you'll be more productive.

But your whole shtick is that in order to feel good, you should master the nervous system or something to that effect.

Like what's going on with that?

Yeah, totally. So you've been to medical school.

You've studied the body physiology.

Most people think that we are victims of our nervous system state.

So we might get triggered in a certain situation or we need to use coffee to stimulate or alcohol to relax.

What I've learned and what I've realized is that there are these physiological levers that we can use to upshift or downshift our state depending on what is appropriate.

And learning these allows us to show up in ways which are way more appropriate and we can be way more productive or way more relaxed without needing substances to change how we feel.

Okay, so what do you mean by state?

So the nervous system has very different states.

You can be in a flow state, you can be relaxed, you can be overstimulated and we have what's known as a window of tolerance.

So everyone's tolerance is bigger or smaller depending on our capacity to be with intensity.

And one of the things that I teach is by increasing our window of tolerance we can show up in more stressful situations, we can go for longer and also be able to downshift more effectively afterwards.

And these different states are, the important piece is that we have a dynamic nervous system so we can be adaptable to the situation.

Okay, so if I need to run away from a tiger, I should be in a sympathetic, highly heightened state because I need to fight or flight, I need to get all of the blood flow into my muscles rather than my gut and my brain and just run right away.

And that's quite stressful but it's a good stress to be in if you wanna run away from a tiger.

But if I'm trying to relax with my spouse or chill out on the beach and I'm feeling that heightened sense of anxiety about what if my business crumbles when I'm gone or whatever, that would be inappropriate for that moment.

Is that fair to say?

That's pretty much spot on, yeah.

And there's various ways in which you can upshift or downshift your state depending on what you wanna do.

Okay, so upshift is more towards fight or flight, downshift is more towards relaxing, broadly.

Okay, that seems reasonable.

So yeah, so in this podcast I was hoping we could dive into the specific practical things that me and viewers and listeners can do to downshift and upshift our state and stuff.

But firstly, why does it matter?

Why should we bother?

Why not just go with, what's the difference between someone who has, I guess, mastery over their nervous system to whatever degree, you can't have mastery over your own nervous system versus someone who doesn't who just sort of goes, who has never heard the word nervous system and has never thought

about state or anything, any of that.

Yeah, totally. So the frame that I have, I have a framework called Rise Out of Reactivity.

And I think this for me is the key of a lot of what I've learned and a lot of what I teach.

And it's this idea that a good life is a life that is lived intentionally.

And I think this is something we're very much in agreement on.

And what takes us out of intentionality or what kind of on the other end of that spectrum is reactivity.

And there are so many times in life where we might get triggered, we might be overwhelmed, we might be procrastinating, and that kind of takes us towards the reactivity side of the spectrum.

And the set of practices that I teach with nervous system mastery and breath work and things bring us back into that intentionality side.

So you can think of Rise Out of Reactivity as like a pyramid.

The bottom is R, so Rise the acronym, R is reactivity, I stands for interoception, S stands for self -regulation, and E stands for emotional fluidity.

And we can get into what each of those mean.

But the basics are, the first step is you need to be able to be in touch with how you're feeling, which is your interoception, your interoceptive capacity, is what is actually going on in my body, what feedback, what data am I getting from my physiology that I can then pay attention to and make decisions

from. The S, self -regulation, that is basically how do I shift my state using top -down bottom -up or outside -in strategies to be appropriate.

And then the emotional fluidity is how can I welcome the full spectrum of experience, welcome all emotions kind of like we were doing in breath work yesterday.

How can I just be with whatever's happening without trying to fix it or change it?

Okay, so let's say I am really struggling with procrastination.

And there is this thing that I have to do, let's say in my case it's filling out my tax return or something something to that effect that I've been procrastinating on it for months, how might I use these rice principles to beat procrastination?

Yeah, so firstly, the interoceptive piece is, tuning in is like, what is it that you're actually feeling in your body?

So if you think back to when you were feeling out your taxes, the story you had was I'm procrastinating, what do you think it was you were actually feeling or what were you not wanting to feel at the moment?

Yeah, so I think there was a sense of like, there's a lot of random shit that I'm gonna have to email the accountants, I'm gonna have to dig up the freaking, figure out, is Ali Abdaal YouTube channel actually owned by the company, owned by myself, which requires me to go through my emails from like

2006 all the way through 2017 from Google to find out, oh girl, there's a lot of work, can't be else to do this, let me just do it some time instead.

Yeah, so in that state, it sounds like there's, like the state is one of almost like stagnation and maybe lethargy.

Yeah. And so in that example, I mean, one option would be, drink like double espresso caffeine and just like blitz through it.

The other option, which is more of like the bottom up option would be something like Breath of Fire, which we can demonstrate it's basically rapid exhale through the nose that will create more energy and aliveness in your system, like more arousal energy in the sympathetic branch.

And you will have more energy to do the thing.

Yeah, tactics is a tricky one because it's like, like no one kind of wants to do it.

You kind of just like have to sit down and get it done at some point.

Yeah, no fair enough, like my strategy around that is to, you know, I've got an hour on my calendar next week and I'm calling my admin party, where I'm going to have some music in the background, I'm going to bring some friends over, we're all going to do it together.

It's a waste to make it feel good.

Yeah, cool. So that's a really good point.

With the self -regulation strategies, there's basically three approaches to changing your state or three broad categories.

The first is top -down, which is like cognitive reframes, CBT, like telling yourself a different story, maybe in the taxes example, it's like, actually this doing this allows me to keep running a business, which allows me to keep doing what I love.

So it's actually really important.

That's like a good like top -down reframe.

Outside in, I love the example of like playing music and then inviting around your friends.

So inviting around your friends actually has this like co -regulation effect.

So you get, you feel like more chill, more grounded, more safe.

There's a greater sense of embodied safety.

And music as well, like music is an amazing state shifter.

So I was just offering like, and in addition, there could be a bottom -up practice, which is basically using your physiology in some way.

The breath is the easiest lever, but it could be moving, could be dancing, could be playing music and kind of shifting the state to create the vibe that you want.

Maybe vibe is a better word there.

And so given that procrastination is really when we are trying to avoid some kind of negative emotion by using intraception, we sort of check in with our body and figure out like, okay, what is the emotion that's coming up for me when I'm setting down to do this task?

Then self -regulation and self -regulation is where we can regulate ourselves using these different strategies.

And then emotional fluidity, what does that mean to it?

So emotional fluidity is, this is almost like the, this can take a lifetime to learn.

It's also what Joe Hudson, who I know you've spoken to recently, teaches a lot.

There's an example where, that I like to use, where every time you think you have a decision to be made, like a big decision, it's usually an indication that there is actually an emotion to feel or emotion that you're avoiding.

Otherwise, it would just be the next most obvious thing.

It would just be like, we're making choices or I'm making a choice to drink or not drink water.

It's just like, we're just doing things.

But whenever, often it's fear, whenever there's some kind of emotion that we don't want to feel, we will like get paralyzed.

There's almost like the kind of like internal tension that you feel.

And that's usually completely dissipated by like tuning in.

Like, oh, actually I feel like a little bit afraid because if I make this decision, then it's gonna lead to this consequence that I'm afraid of.

And welcoming that sensation actually allows that tension to dissipate.

And the next action becomes obvious.

Ooh, that's fun. Yeah, that's pretty good.

So whenever we are making, Hm, whenever we're making a decision, it's cuz oh, whenever we feel like we are gonna need to make things as a big decision.

Now you think there's a decision to be made?

A big decision or any decision?

Could be any, could be big or big or little.

If it's a big one, the next most obvious thing might just be, oh, I actually need to do some more research to figure out what, until the choice becomes obvious.

Yeah. So like you coming on this podcast and us having this conversation, there was no decision there.

It's just like, oh, it's just, yeah.

It's just the next thing to do.

Makes sense. Which makes perfect sense.

Yeah. But if someone who was a friend of mine who didn't have something that they were an expert in and was not charismatic on camera was to ask me, Haley, can I come on Deep Dive?

There would be a decision there.

Right. Of like, do I say yes or do I say no?

Great example. And the feeling is like, oh, I don't wanna disappoint them but also I don't wanna, I just don't want to be valuable for my audience and also like, and there's this thing that I'm not feeling.

Beautiful. And I would probably just ignore the WhatsApp message.

And I hope they go away rather than actually...

Like how would you respond in that situation if someone says, hey Johnny, I wanna come on the podcast and you're like, I don't think you're the right fit.

Yeah, that's a great example.

So this has happened to me a handful.

I have a podcast too.

This happened to me a handful of times recently.

I think that the key thing there is not making myself responsible for someone else's emotional reaction or their disappointment in order to stay true to my own sense of integrity.

So in that situation, it would be, I think the, let me shoot into that for a moment.

The emotion would be a sense of guilt or feeling bad that I'm making myself responsible for them, whatever their reaction is, if I say no.

As opposed to, if I'm like, okay, they might feel a sense of lack of self -worth or a sense of rejection, and I am not responsible for the way that they should.

So there's a sense of taking ownership over your own emotional experience and not making yourself responsible for someone else's.

And as long as I'm able to do it in a, share that no in a kind of kind loving way, in a way that still creates connection, then I don't think there...

And oftentimes I've done this and there's been a sense of like, oh, I actually appreciate that.

I appreciate the way that you said that.

And often it's like, this doesn't feel like it would be a good fit right now, but maybe down the line that will change, which feels true in my system.

I'm not lying, I'm not making anything up.

It just doesn't feel like a good fit and this might mean a bit.

But thank you for your interest.

This thing around taking ownership of your own emotions and actions, but not feeling responsible for other people's emotions.

This is something I'm struggling with and have done quite a lot because I think I take a lot of, like I, I think I take probably an unhealthy amount of responsibility for the emotions of the people around me.

To an extent, if those people are people I care about, like my mum or like my partner or whatever.

And so if I, for example, do something that feels authentic to me, that I know my mum will be disappointed or angry about because it doesn't vibe with her values or whatever, I feel this sense of guilt and or shame that like, I'm being selfish, I'm being a dick to my mum by doing this thing.

I don't really have to do the thing.

It's not the end of the world if I don't do the thing.

So like, why not just do the thing that makes my mum happy and I get into this kind of weird thing.

Any thoughts? Yeah, I know there's a lot there.

I mean, firstly coming back to maybe like your core values and principles, like you strike me as being a very intentional person.

So, like one question is how does it feel if you were to do that many, many times over the course of months and years, how would, what would be the long -term cumulative effect?

Oh, that would be bad.

So that's like a not good outcome.

Oh yeah, okay, nice.

And then on the other side, a principle or something that I've learned is that, and this is particularly relevant in my partnership, I'm married, not taking, like I'm not responsible for triggering or not triggering my partner.

And there's a way in which that is actually very freeing.

Like there's a way in which, if I was to change what feels true for me in order to keep someone else happy that I care about, I'm kind of caretaking them.

And the reason that I'm doing that is because I'm avoiding the way that I would feel if I was to say something that, let's say upset my wife, but it was true for me.

And in the short -term, it might create more disharmony, but in the long -term, you're creating a trust and safety and actually genuine connection.

Because if your connection is based on an implicit agreement not to say things that trigger each other, then there's a way in which that relationship is superficial.

And you're missing out on the deeper levels of connection, which maybe there's a period where, let's say you said something to your, or you did something that made your mom, or that your mom reacted to in a way that she was disappointed, maybe in the short -term, but as long as you were able to share like

why this was important to you and maintain like connection with her, my sense is that it would actually, it would be net positive in the medium term for sure.

What do you mean by maintain connection?

What would that look like, let's say in an argument with a parent?

Okay, so this actually ties in with something we were talking about earlier, which is around prioritizing the nervous system.

So if you're going into a difficult conversation, if both of you are in a place of, you're like outside of your window of tolerance, that we talked about earlier, if you're triggered, if you're in a reactive state, there is a very high likelihood that that conversation won't go well.

Correct, like it's almost guaranteed.

It is almost certainly guaranteed.

So like a very practical note, and this is relevant for everyone listening is, if both of you are in that state, then hitting pause, walking away, doing something to reset, maybe it's like walking in nature, maybe it's doing some breath work, maybe it's listening to a nice relaxing track whatever it

is until you feel like you're back in your body.

And this kind of ties back to the interception piece.

Like if you're not aware of how you're feeling in your body, if you're not noticed that your system is really activated or maybe shut down, and there's actually these two modes of reactivity.

So we all tend to move one way or the other generally.

One is kind of, and I'd be interested to hear what your take on this is, but one way is like people will go towards anger, frustration, like aggression, and the other is more like collapsing shut down, withdrawing, and just becoming like numb.

Those are two ways, like two protection strategies.

And so firstly, like think which, what is your default reactivity tendency?

What does that feel like in the body?

And then from that place, like once you notice the early warning signs, like for me, it might be, oh, I'm noticing this like heat in my chest, I think I'm gonna get angry, I'm gonna take a moment for myself and just like step away.

And then coming back to your question, meeting in a place where both of you are like grounded and calm in your bodies, and you can actually have a conversation where that connection is maintained.

And tracking, this is actually a really useful point, particularly for podcasts, like even right now, like tracking yourself, like is your awareness, is your attention, is it more on yourself or is it more on me?

Usually, like for really empathetic people, they might be entirely focused on the other person's experience.

This might be your, you might be totally focused on my experience.

And you could switch that, so now you're like, okay, I'm aware of like, oh, there's like a tightness in my lower back or my throat's a bit dry, et cetera, et cetera.

And then you can bring to kind of meet somewhere in the middle so you're aware of both at the same time.

And that speaking from that place, almost like regardless of what you're saying, that creates a sense of connection.

And speaking from like first person experience, so like right now I'm noticing, like my mouth is a little bit dry, but I'm feeling cool.

And just like speaking from that, what you're actually feeling as opposed to projecting stories and things in the head creates a lot more connection.

This is a very long answer and it's an interesting tangent that we're going down but I think I feel like there's some answer.

I like how you sort of, I had a bit of a dopamine hit when you mentioned that there's these two different states because in my mind I've always equated being triggered with being angry.

And I don't often get angry.

And so I guess I sort of told myself, oh, I don't often get triggered.

But actually now that you mentioned the second one in terms of like withdrawal and shutting down, I have had it mentioned to me in the past that if I'm triggered, it will feel as if I am like a stone statue or something to that, or I become really cold.

And my voice will be very calm.

But like the person I'm speaking to will feel as if there's no warmth, there's no connection, using that word connection.

Yeah, so I think that's probably my default state.

And so if I'm, for example, having an argument that my mum, it is very rare for me to get angry but it's very common for me to get more into that state where I'm just like, I sort of withdraw from, I don't, I sort of disengage from the conversation.

Is that kind of what we're talking about?

Yeah, totally. And I'm exactly the same for the record.

My response is, has historically for like 25 years, I was like, oh, I'm just a calm person.

I'm not like, I am stoic.

I don't get angry. And it turned out that I did get these like micro frustrations but I would then kind of push it down and which creates what I call accumulated emotional debt which over time builds not only resentment towards other people and other situations, but it created this like health challenges

and just like a lack of aliveness.

And this is something that I see in the work that I do that people who have a healthy relationship to anger, there's also more aliveness and more capacity to set boundaries, more capacity to say no.

Like, it's actually a really healthy energy when it's not kinked.

And often we learned, I learned when I was younger that anger was bad.

I was angry and I hurt people or people were angry and they hurt me.

And I was like, okay, anger is bad, avoid anger all costs.

And even though that wasn't conscious, that's a story that I believed.

And so I went through these, I did hundreds and hundreds of breathwork journeys and at some point along the way, my teacher said to me, you are loved in your anger.

And I just like rage came through and then I just bawled.

I just like cried and cried and cried and cried.

And there was this like deep grief there for me because I'd had shame around my anger for my entire life.

And yeah, that was a fascinating part of my journey.

And so a big part of my journey has been kind of going through these, like anger was one, shame was another.

And then learning to not be ashamed of shame itself and just feeling the sensations of shame as these like swampy kind of like that like, oh, like gunky, icky things and be like, oh, that's shame.

Like, oh, what does that feel like?

And not then having the thing of like, oh, I shouldn't feel shame because shame is bad.

But just like allowing everything to come through.

Hmm, nice. Yeah, this is some of the stuff I was talking about with Joe Hudson yesterday.

So I think we'll probably put this episode after that one in the running order.

But we were talking about how, you know, I avoid reading any reviews of my book because I don't wanna read negative reviews.

And there was one time I did a podcast episode with my brother where we were reading comments on this Celebrity Gossip Forum that were about me in like a mean way.

And I was sort of like convincing myself that I wasn't really feeling anything even though it was clear that I was like nearly in tears.

And he could be like, bro, like, come on.

Why are you insisting that you are the stoic fucking sage who never feels anything but actually, come on.

Everyone could see it.

I was like, oh shit.

Because I think I've also drank the stoicism Kool -Aid with the true stoics would probably say that like, no, this is not actually true stoicism.

But I think I identify quite a lot with the idea that I tend not to experience negative emotions.

So that when I do, it's like, I feel the thing.

And I'm like, oh, well, the story you tell to yourself about the thing is blah blah.

You know, I can't control what someone says.

And it's like this cacophony of voices from like Tim Ferriss and like William Irvine and Derrick Brown and like Ryan Holiday and freaking Seneca are all like in my head that's like telling me, no, it's all good, it's all good, it's all good.

Change the story, change the story, change the story.

And then it's like, oh, that emotion is gone.

Yeah, gone into better commas, totally.

So this is a really interesting thing to speak to, which is that there's something known as the self -regulation paradox that I talk about.

And in any moment, let's say, let's say like you're reading a negative review, like in certain situations, it actually would be helpful to be able to self -regulate away the challenging emotion.

So I typically teach like breathing practices or awareness practices, it can be bottom up, or it could be a reframe.

And maybe the reframe is like, oh, actually, some people are just like angry all the time and it doesn't matter, like, either way, and that emotion starts to kind of go back down again.

In the short term, that can be really helpful because you can then continue doing the podcasting, whatever you're doing without any issues.

However, every time that you're self -regulating away and kind of like pushing back down a challenging emotion, that is adding to that pile of emotional debt that I mentioned earlier.

So it's like, you can imagine most of us have like two, three, four decades of accumulated emotional debt.

And this emotional debt in scientific terms is allostatic load.

It's basically chronic wear and tear on the body, which creates fragility in the nervous system.

This fragility leads to health conditions, burnouts, and like chronic creativity.

So you can probably think of someone who just like, at like a hair trigger, they will freak out or they'll, they go from burnout to burnout or they have some kind of chronic health condition.

That in my experience is a result of this accumulated emotional debt.

And so the other path, let's say in that situation, is maybe not in the moment, but so that like later on in the evening, maybe when you're with your partner, you share this thing and you allow yourself to actually like feel the thing that's there.

And just to kind of like we were doing in breathwork, right?

When there were lots of people having different emotional experiences, that emotional debt was being like repaid.

Okay, I'm skeptical about this.

So, you know, allostatic load, emotional debt.

This all is starting to err into like woo territory.

And we didn't learn about any of the stuff in med school.

And I like to think of myself as a fairly scientific minded chap.

I guess the first question would be like, in terms of people who you've worked with, can you give a sense of like, well, what are some examples of emotional debt and how it's manifested in people's lives and what they've done about it?

Just so I can get more of a picture in my head of like what this actually means.

Yeah, so, let's see.

I mean, so one example comes to mind.

I work with startup founders in a coaching capacity.

And one of my former founders went through a pretty intense burnout experience while he was working on his startup.

Probably, you know, not uncommon.

And although, and that burnout then led to an eye condition where he almost went blind.

When did it lead to that condition?

It's challenging, it's like point to exactly what it was.

But he, the blindness and the eye conditions started directly after the burnout.

So, in his mind, it was like this was related.

I was so stressed, my body was shutting down and even my eyesight started to go.

Okay, and this is the thing, like we know there's all these correlations between amount of stress you experience and loads of health conditions.

Even though no one's quite been able to figure out exactly why.

Something about inflammation, something about immune systems, something about something or other.

But we know that there's a really strong correlation between this stuff.

So, there's a study that I can share for the show notes in the list that shows, I believe it's an increase in static load has a 60 % increase in energy expenditure in the body.

Meaning that 60 % more energy is being wasted just by kind of keeping this out of static load going.

Yeah, it's like walking around with like a big ass backpack on your stones.

Exactly, yeah, big full of rocks.

Yeah, exactly. So, in the case of the startup founder, he both was really afraid of his own anger.

And so like working through that created a lot of aliveness.

And then once that kind of that cycle went through, we then went through a phase where he actually, he was afraid of going back into the burnout again.

And he hadn't allowed himself to feel the hurt and the pain in that burnout himself.

He'd just been disassociated like the entire time during the burnout.

And that's another common thing.

And it connects to the numbness that people feel.

Like people just check out of their bodies and they lose connection.

So, by kind of working through and allowing him to like feel the shittiness that was there during that burnout experience, he then stopped being afraid of it and was able to kind of continue working in a healthy way, sick.

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Okay, so if this happened to be a one -on -one coaching session where, you know, you charge a lot of money for this, I'm sure, but like if I were to hire you to help me work through stuff, is there anything we can do on air that could demonstrate this for me?

Like how might I understand where are my emotional, where's my emotional debt and what can I do about it?

Kind of interesting.

So what would you say, what is something that you're like challenged by or stuck on slightly, like what kind of comes to mind?

It can be an area that you don't show up in a way that you would like to show up better, it could be, you know, where you get that kind of like withdrawn response.

Yeah. Okay, so if I'm, you know, in my relationship with my mom, if I'm doing something that she disapproves of, then I kind of feel a bit like weird.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, so, I mean, firstly, I think our parents are the most like juicy source of triggers.

And there's another frame that I wanna mention as well because I think it's important is that at a certain point when you start to go down this like, I think of it as like an inner adventure, it's like really understanding like how we work and how we operate, and it can be really challenging at times.

And parents are often like the kind of boss level version of that adventure.

So that's the context.

The second thing is a certain point, when you feel that kind of shut down response trigger in your system, that's actually in some ways, it's like a gift because your mom, let's say, is perfectly positioned to kind of elicit that trigger and that way in which you are not free, that way in which you

are kind of contracted.

So that all of that is kind of framing.

In terms of how you could approach that situation, it kind of comes back to having that intercept of awareness to be able to notice like ideally in the moment when you start to feel a certain way, as opposed to like four hours later, like, oh, I just realised I've been shut down and frozen for all of this time.

So part of the work is like decreasing that half life so that you can catch it earlier.

Once you catch it, the second stage is creating a sense of, the best phrase for this is embodied safety, which sounds a bit woo, but it's basically do I, like how safe do I feel in my body and what can I do to, maybe more at ease, and ease is another way of putting it.

So it could be like a relaxing song, it could be sitting on a sofa, it could be just stretching, kind of getting more into your body.

And then once you feel like you're kind of regulated in your body, then lying down, bringing back an image of the specific thing that you said to your mum or that your mum was disapproving of, and like bringing that image to mind and actually tracking in your body what is happening in this moment.

So I have a practise in my training called somatic surfing.

And it's basically, so somatic means like body physical.

So we could do that, we could do this right now, let's try it.

Bring to mind that image of maybe your mum's face disapproving of Ali for something that Ali's done.

Once you've got that image, drop down into your body and just notice what is happening.

Like what are you tracking right now?

What are you sensing?

What do you feel? Is there like, if there a tightness, is there a heat, is there a, what are you noticing?

Is there anything that feels like it might be connected to that image?

What are you doing?

Yeah, there's a sort of like pressure type thing over here.

Yeah. Like whenever I've done these sorts of exercises, which have like three times in my life, I've always kind of felt like, but like, I mean, I've just had some washers, maybe I'm just getting on an abdominal extension from just having a wardrobe kind of thing, but there is a sort of tightness around

here ish. Also roughly, but the stomach is.

Yeah. Okay. And so if you stay with that for a moment, like say and you can maybe like put a finger on it.

Yep. And just like bring a sense of like, whatever your, whatever your sense of like loving presence, let's say, like, say there's a part of you that is just bringing a sense of, of like appreciation for that part.

And just notice if anything shifts in your, in your experience.

I think it's gone. It's cause the water has probably gone through my system.

Yeah. Yeah. So like, I've, is, is this what people are doing?

Like I've seen Tony Robbins and other type, this sort of sort of like bring out the emotion.

Imagine it's in your hand.

Now I imagine pouring love into that emotion and all that stuff.

It seems to have like a visible effect on people.

And I've always been a bit like, is that person a stooge?

No, surely not. Surely not.

Like, is that kind of what we're getting at?

Yeah. So I mean, in the breath work circle, yesterday is probably a good example where the breath work technique just creates intensity in, in the nervous system, which, and it also shifts the state of consciousness, which allows that subconscious material to arise.

And that was a lot of, a lot of website and stuff.

What do you mean by state of consciousness?

Okay. So by breathing in, in this circular way, it creates changes in the blood chemistry.

Yeah. So you're hyperventilating, so your CO2 levels go up, go down, go down, go down.

And sometimes it can be tingling.

And this, like the actual scientific mechanism hasn't been like, hasn't been shown, but from a kind of like, and like N of, and it probably like 200, this is kind of what happened.

Like I've seen this many, many, many times.

In that state, memories or these incomplete reflexes is probably the most technical way of describing it.

Okay. So every time we, an emotion arises, it is a mobilization response in the nervous system.

What can happen? What do you mean by mobilize?

So it's like, like, like when you're running away from a tiger that's a mobilization response.

Okay. So your system is mobilizing to do something.

Okay. Cool. What happens when we make any of these emotional experiences bad or wrong, is that kind of cuts it short.

So it's like this mobilization response doesn't get to complete.

It is an incomplete reflex.

Incomplete response.

So it's like, if showing, if I'm, as a kid, I'm feeling anger towards an authority figure and I get told that it is not allowed, I can't express anger towards any authority figure because that would be disrespectful, then there's an incomplete reflex there.

Totally. And every time subsequently, every time that that thing arises, it's then cut off and it's just like, like, no, not now.

So should, oh man, should we let kids scream at their teachers and stuff or if they're feeling anger or like, like, what?

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think the way that Joe Hudson raised his kids is a great example where his daughter, I believe he's, he's telling me the story.

She comes home and she gets angry as soon as she gets home because that's where she feels safe.

It's in the house where that anger is actually welcome.

And so Joe and his family create a space where that anger can actually be released and it's well -mannered as a teacher.

She's not releasing it at the teacher because that would be destructive.

She's really releasing it in a safe place, being able to rant and rave about the teacher.

And ideally in a school situation, there would be spaces where anger is welcome, not at other people, not at teachers or at others, but just where they can be angry and just be with their anger.

Okay. Okay, that makes sense.

Which I think would incidentally make the world a much better place.

Okay. So it doesn't get our kings in other situations.

Okay. So we've got, we're talking about incomplete reflexes and there's like an emotion that wants to mobilize through the body, like anger or like grief or sadness or shame or whatever.

In the case of my reading negative reviews, there's an emotion that wants to, and I'm like, pushing it down.

Totally, totally. With the socialism head top down approach.

Yeah. And the art of this is really just getting out of your own way.

So maybe a question for you right now would be like, what would be a reason that you wouldn't wanna feel or read and feel the associated emotions of the negative reviews?

Cause I'm worried they are right.

Okay. And what would that mean?

That would mean that, Oh, good question.

What would that mean?

That would mean that they're right.

Yeah. If your book was actually shit.

Yeah, if my book was actually shit, that means that this thing that I've poured loads of time and effort into was actually a waste of time.

And I should never have left my stable career in medicine to be a YouTuber and to have the audacity to think that I could do this thing where I share my thoughts and publish them on the internet or in book format and stuff.

And therefore, the life path that I'm on doesn't make sense.

And something, yeah.

Beautiful. I mean, it sounds like there's a bunch of different emotions that could be connected to that or like feeling states that could be connected to that story of like, I'm doing the wrong thing potentially.

I made the wrong decision.

Maybe that's kind of what it could come down to.

Yeah, made the wrong decision.

I'm stupid. I'm dumb.

I'm dumb thinking that this could be a, this is weird.

I don't usually have what others describe as negative self talk.

But when I think as we're working through this, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah.

Obviously that's the reason I'm not reading these negative reviews and why I never look on that celeb gossip forum or whatever.

Because like, if someone tells me that I have a slow typing speed, it's just obviously not true.

But if someone tells me that like, actually the stuff that I write is really just recycled from other people's stuff and I have no original thoughts of my own and like, you know, what does a fucking 29 year old have to teach anyone else about productivity and like, he should have stayed in medicine,

like, oh man. I've had many of these thoughts many times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful.

I mean, I think it's so, it's a really helpful almost like guide to see what criticisms of you actually land.

Because like this slow typing speed thing, it's just like, you just don't care.

It's like, all right, it doesn't matter.

But if something actually lands in you, that's, it's like a signpost that there is something in there, like some, another way to put it is like, some part of yourself, if you subscribe to the Intel Family Systems model has been exiled.

So it's like, there's like an exiled part there that is wanting like, love and attention.

You can basically like, boil it down to that.

And that exiled part will usually have an associated emotion.

So if you think of, you know, Allie as like, multiple parts, multiple ages, when someone writes a cutting book review that actually is like, articulate and like, makes a good point, that's like hitting a part of you that is then like, shit.

And your, so the invitation there is whether you do the somatic thing or whether you go into your room, is just like welcoming that part, whatever it's feeling.

If it's feeling shame, if it's feeling helplessness, it's feeling like all of the shitty stuff that we typically spend our lives avoiding.

Like the freedom and feeling good is ironically on the other side of feeling those discomfort, like feeling the discomfort.

And the secret, like the, maybe the joke at the end of this is that the feeling that we think is bad is actually our resistance to feeling it.

It's not the feeling itself.

It's the discomfort is caused by my resistance to not feel anger.

That's, and that's what most people think of as anger.

Like when anger is actually welcomed and clean, it's like determination.

It's like, no, it's like clarity.

And so like it takes time to kind of like iron out those kinks that we all learned throughout our British childhoods, where we, you know, we both come from an emotionally repressed culture.

I think that's a big part of why I got into this work is I was numb from the neck down for the first 27 years of my life.

Nice, same. Great. And it's been, it's been an adventure kind of thawing my internal experience in the last seven or eight years.

Sick. Okay, how did you get into this?

Like, how did you end up being like the guy for this sort of stuff?

Yeah. So I mean, I had a, I had a kind of tragic journey and the commonality that I've noticed between people in this world and honestly, people kind of carving their own intentional careers is there was some form of crisis that was like the thing that caused them to question everything they were doing.

With our friend Paul, it was Lyme disease.

With other friends, it's burnout.

With some friends, it's like getting a divorce.

For me, I was engaged to an amazing, actually junior medic, junior doctor, her name was Sophie, she had bipolar disorder.

And on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life.

And that, that journey that followed into and through grief was what unlocked all of this for me.

Like, I didn't even realize that I was someone that didn't feel my emotions anyway.

I just, you know, I was a happy guy, I was chill, I was calm, I was generally pretty easy going.

And something about the both like having the courageous curiosity to feel into the grief as it was arising and allowing the, what felt like these like tidal waves of emotion to kind of, it felt like they were like obliterating a part of me.

In a way they were because, you know, I had this like entire five year vision of what our life was gonna be, it was like mapped out.

You know, we were gonna have kids, we were gonna move to Bristol, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all of that was just like, it was like gone.

And so that journey kind of brought me progressively inwards initially, meditation, then breath work, then plant medicine, and then like deep nervous system research in science and combining them all into a curriculum that I wish I'd had when I was, you know, in my teenage years ideally.

Wow, thank you for sharing and I'm sorry you had to go through it, I cannot even imagine what that's like to lose someone that you love like that.

How did you find out and what were the feelings kind of that were arising in you at the time that you were surprised by?

So we just, we were on a holiday in Portugal climbing and she went home two days early to start work again.

She'd taken time off work.

It was her first day back on a Monday morning.

I found out I was shaping a surfboard in Portugal and I had a phone call from her sister's partner, Mungo, who called me up, told me, and I just, I collapsed into this giant golden retriever dog that was like right by there and just sobbed.

Got on a plane, flew home, met with her family and then, you know, really the first like few days and weeks were just like a blur.

Like it was too much to possibly take in and comprehend and it really wasn't until her memorial and like the weeks and months afterwards where there was, what I'm so glad that I did was basically just like stopped working for that period of time, just allowed myself to feel, to process and in those

weeks and months afterwards, that's when the, it kind of comes in waves.

I don't know if you've experienced grief much and something about meeting specific people or like going back to places that were very meaningful to us, just like surfaced up like a fresh new wave.

Yeah, and it's, I actually, I ended up giving a TEDx talk on, called the gift of grief.

And in that, there was a point in which I was, it was maybe a year and a half later, I was kneeling by her memorial bench in the coast of Leo Sattins in the UK and feeling the intensity of this grief like pouring through me.

And at a certain point, I felt so much like joy and bliss and love.

And I was like, I was confused.

I was like, but wait, I'm meant to be feeling sad.

I'm meant to be feeling, this is meant to be a bad thing.

And I was actually experiencing this like, just raw aliveness and sense of like, whoa, like it just felt like an overwhelming amount of love was the experience.

And that kind of, yeah, that moment really opened me up to a lot of what then followed of like trying to understand what the hell was happening from a scientific perspective, from a Eastern mystical perspective, from my own lived experience and trying to understand what was going on.

And that was probably like one of the inception moments, I would say.

So where did like, how did, how do we go from that to you becoming interested in this, the stuff that was broadly labeled whoo.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I studied philosophy at university.

I've always been just like very curious about what it means to live a good life.

Yeah. Kind of like the big question, the big questions of meaning.

I then went down a deep meditation path, did 10 day retreats, spent 10 days in a dark room completely on my own.

Why meditation? Like what made you, meditation, I mean, it was kind of like, this was in 2018, it was kind of alive in the zeitgeist to some degree.

And the, is the books that I was reading?

Well, like meditation is the answer.

Meditation is like the path to feeling good.

What kind of books were they?

So this was like reading Ramdas, reading Shin Dan Young, who is like, has an incredible scientific mind and was able to explain meditation to me in like a very non woo mystical way.

So very kind of, and that's, I come from a background of like appreciating science.

And I've been skeptical, and I'd say like my woo threshold has been increasing gradually over the years.

But I started out as like firm atheist materialist, just like very skeptical of everything that looks like that.

And then. So what was this guy's description of meditation that vibe with you, that made you realize, oh, there's something here.

Yeah, I think it was framing meditation as, this actually is very similar to your book.

It's like, here are some experiments that you can run for yourself and use your own lived experience, like be like an interior scientist, right?

Run these experiments and see what the effect is.

And if it works for you, keep going or do something else.

If not, you can ditch it.

There was no, nothing else attached to it.

It's like here's something to try.

And then I think the other, the next big unlock for me was, well, psychedelics was a big piece.

And then doing a free diving training and experiencing breath work for the first time.

So free diving really connected me to interoception, which is this word we were talking about, where you take a huge breath of air, you start diving down underwater, like pulling yourself deeper and deeper down.

And this was like 35, 40 meters underwater.

And as the ocean pressure increases, the tightness and tension in your diaphragm, because your lungs shrink to a third of the normal size at that depth.

And in order to get deeper, you have to tune into your internal experience and just soften and relax.

So that is the secret.

Yes, it's taking a lot of air, but really it's about being able to equalize as the pressure increases as you go deeper and deeper.

So the competitive part of me was like, wow, if I can improve my interoception and learn how to surrender into it, I can do really well in free diving.

I can go down to 40, 50 meters.

And this is a bit of a long story, but my teacher, a free diving teacher, guided me through my first breathwork journey.

And during that I had an experience of profound bliss, grief, just like intensity, kind of similar to what some people experienced yesterday, that I was like, what the hell was that?

Like what the hell just happened?

Like I want to understand what was going on in my body and why I felt so incredible afterwards and the next like three days.

Wow. So your free diving instructor, did he call it breathwork?

Yeah, he was trained separately and he was biodynamic breathwork was his modality, but it was many different approaches.

And what's the title of that book that you read by the guy that?

Xin Zanyang. Yeah, The Science of Enlightenment, I think is one of his books.

I also really love Ram Dass as well.

I read all of Ram Dass' book.

Oh yeah, you recommended Christopher the Milch and I'm still going through it.

He's using a lot of words that I still quite understand and like, interesting.

Yeah, and his approach, he was a Harvard psychiatrist essentially.

And so really speaks both languages in a way that resonates.

Okay, so you get into meditation, or you stop reading these books and they all all relate to meditation pretty much.

Or like a large number of them anyway.

And then you start experimenting with like 10 day retreats and like the dark room stuff and then what happens on meditation specifically in your journey here?

Yeah, so I actually, I started moving away from meditation.

I think there's a number of traps that are very easy to fall into in the meditation path.

There's ways in which you can meditate and be in sometimes blissful states, but in a very disembodied way.

So a lot of people, a lot of very intellectual people get into meditation and they will still stay in their heads and be almost like ignore everything in the body, which is ignoring this emotional debt that we kind of touched on earlier.

And so this is why I believe you see meditation masters, people who are like supposedly enlightened will come to the West and they'll be these like big scandals.

Like they'll have sex with their students or they'll do all this.

And it's because there's still this unprocessed emotions that are kind of like the, it's not technically true that the body keeps a score, but the body is the scorecard.

I think that's a better way of framing it.

Allegedly it's actually in like the bottom of the brainstem.

It's like the cortical map where that stuff is stored.

But I do believe that meditation without a kind of somatic emotional component actually creates this like dryness and this lack of aliveness and this lack of connection.

So my approach now is really trying to combine the two where there's obviously a lot of good stuff in meditation, but if it doesn't have this kind of somatic component where you're also exploring from the neck down, there's a way in which you can kind of get stuck there.

Okay, so you doubled all the meditation stuff, you got introduced to breath work through the freediving instructor and you were like, oh shit, like what just happened?

Yeah, I had my first breath work experience, which you and Kelly facilitated yesterday.

And I also kind of, AI had the sort of kind of vibration hypocapnic response of like the tettany kind of thing, which was like, oh, that was new, that was interesting.

But also as towards the end of the experience, had this, and it's gonna sound woo, but like profound feeling of like bliss and joy.

And that actually everything was perfectly fine as it was and I don't need to strive for money or status or all this shit because actually happiness is found in the present moment and stuff and I don't know to what extent all of that was just me sort of parroting the stuff that I've read, but I did

in that moment have a, what I can only describe as a internal bodily sensation that that was true.

I was like, oh, this is interesting because it didn't require any psychedelics, it just required lying on a floor and like breathing, listening to some cool music and I was like, oh, like I've long struggled to get into my body or connect with my feelings or connect with my body and all that shit.

But this experience of like an hour of breath work made me think, oh shit, is this what people are talking about when they say connecting with the body where it's like, and like being out of the head.

I was like, oh, this will be out of the head me.

Okay, that's useful to know because I now know that like, if that's the feeling that we're going for when people say get out of your head, go into your body, connect with your emotions, blah, blah, blah.

Like, oh, there's something here.

Is that kind of, did that sort of vibe with your experience of breath work at all?

Yeah, I mean, I would say, I would say it's very similar and I mean, what you just said, like it sounds like it was actually very powerful and there's maybe still a part of you that's like questioning the experience and like was it, how real was it?

And that's kind of what happened to when the mind comes back online, it then starts like question everything, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just something to be aware of.

I say the other thing that's maybe worth mentioning is I spent a lot of my twenties with this question of like meaning of like, of like why, like what is the meaning of life, what is the purpose of this, like blah, blah, blah, blah.

And in the state that you just described, I tried asking that question and the question just felt stupid, it felt irrelevant.

It was like, that is a dumb question because the meaning was so inherent in the experience and in the moment and in what I was feeling.

And so I think that was another pivotal point for me where it helped me to kind of soften the very heavy left brain intellectual way in which I was like firing through life, which was like, you know, like what is the purpose of this and into a much more experiential of like, how can I create the conditions

for these experiences that are drenched in meaning to just arise and how can I create the conditions for those states of being to just be more common in my everyday life.

I like that you use the phrase drenched in meaning because that was, you know, the phrase, the phrase spontaneously arises in me it's like everything is dripping with meaning when I had an ayahuasca experience a few months ago and also sort of on this breath work thing, it's like, oh, of course everything

is meaningful just because it is.

There's just like a real knowing with a capital K that that's true.

And how would your life be different if you were in touch with that sense on a more regular basis?

Yeah, it's a good question.

Yeah, I have the memory of that sense, but I don't have the feeling of that sense.

And if I were, then I would be a lot more relaxed about growing the business.

I would probably still wanna grow the business because why not, but it would be coming from a place of true why not and joy and stuff rather than currently where it's partly that, but it's also like a sense of should, a sense of scarcity and all that stuff.

I would probably be more okay with, I'd probably just like eat food more mindfully and just actually appreciate the sensations of food and stuff.

I'd probably give myself more time to just relax and go for a walk around Hyde Park or Regents Park or something rather than thinking the point of the walk is to listen to audiobooks, recite thoughts into VoicePal an app that I'm building to help create content ideas, to upgrade the business and get

my 10 ,000 steps while I'm at it, which is currently how I think about going for a walk in Hyde Park.

And occasionally there are moments where I'm like, I'm listening to an audiobook at three times speed while walking in Hyde Park where I'm like, hmm, I don't want to listen to this audiobook and I'll just sort of like put it away and try to experience the whatever nature and stuff.

But post breathwork in like the sort of 20 minutes afterwards as I was like walking, I was wearing this nice farm in Northern California at the moment, but as I was walking around and even actually this morning, I had the memory of what was happening post breathwork.

And this morning when I went out to grab my bag and stuff, initially my hand reached into my air pods and I was like, hmm, no, actually.

And I could almost like feel my foot on the ground and looking around and it's like such a nice day and stuff.

And I don't normally have that pure feeling of like, ah, it's such a nice day, what a time to be alive.

I generally have an intellectual like, oh man, my life is sick, like, you know, we made it.

Totally, totally, totally kind of thing.

But this was like a more experiential version of that thing.

Beautiful. And as I say all this stuff and thing, like if me two years ago heard me saying this now, they'd be, they think I'm on drugs and off my rocker and like, you know, what's wrong with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think if I were able to connect with that feeling of like everything is dripping with meaning, everything is fine as it is, there's never any reason to worry.

The universe is perfectly designed, blah, blah, blah.

That would be a nice way to live.

Yeah. How do I do that?

I mean, it sounds like your book and the conclusions you came to with like feel good productivity was very much like the first stepping stone.

I'd say that there's actually an art to the feeling part of feeling good.

It's like easy to like feel good based on the checklist of things that you've accomplished, which you've nailed.

You have ticked a bunch of those boxes in a really impressive way.

I feel like the next stage is like actually receiving and feeling how good that is and how good it is in each moment.

How good it is that we're in a beautiful location with amazing people, with people that we love.

And you know, that's not a journey that, you know, it can take a lifetime.

But I think that feels like the, and there's ways that this can be practical in the same way that I think one of your takeaways was this idea of focusing on enjoyment over optimizing certain metrics and how by focusing on enjoyment, the outcomes happen anyway.

But in a different way and the process gets to be so much more enjoyable.

And something that I think about a lot is like, how can I create the conditions for my desired state to arise?

So a good example that everyone can relate to is like sleep.

Like you don't do sleep.

No one, like if I said to you, like you've got to sleep right now or I'm gonna just like, like shoot you in the head.

Like it's really hard to actually do sleep but you can create the conditions for sleepiness to arise.

And I think the same is true with creativity.

Same is true of like forms of productivity.

Same is true of connection.

And so a question that I ask myself a lot is like, how can I create the conditions for maybe enjoyment to arise?

And what is, and those conditions are always gonna be, there's gonna be some internal conditions and there's gonna be some external conditions.

And you have, you can be the architect of those and you can shape those and make it increase the surface area for that to hit and get that to land.

In your life personally, how do you create the conditions for enjoyment or joy, let's say within your work and within your life?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

I think the answer changes all the time.

And I think it's something great.

It's a great one to reflect on journal on end of every week and of every quarter.

I think what comes to mind now is location and environment obviously matters a lot.

So my wife and I just moved more into the countryside, into nature, we kind of live in a canyon.

Really prioritizing meaningful connection with other people I think has been a big one.

So I'm starting men's group, for example, attending events like this, which aren't easy to get to, but the reward and the sense of connection and enjoyment that comes from that is just so worth it.

And I think being really intentional around how I'm designing my days and weeks and what my calendar looks like is actually a key piece.

Like if I try and bite off too much or cram too much in, it's actually very hard to find enjoyment without some spaciousness, right?

So I think that's good.

It's hard to find enjoyment without spaciousness.

Building and like really prioritizing some spaciousness.

I mean, today's a great example, right?

We've just had a really intense like three days, like the insights per minute that were shared in some of the talks was just insane.

And now we have like two or three days of spaciousness to let some of that like breathe and feel the enjoyment of all of the like nourishment that we've just had.

And then maybe a third one is, yeah.

I mean, it comes back to coming back into my body and actually like, what is the enjoyment feel like?

What is the actual sensation of enjoyment and like amplifying that?

And that can even be a practice.

It can be part of your morning meditation.

It can be while you drink to your coffee in the morning, after you journal.

So I think that's just something that builds with time.

And my experience is that my capacity for enjoyment and joy has actually increased a lot over the last few years.

And I love this quote that joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens.

And so I think like having that as something that I come back to and just knowing what joy feels like is it's just become more of a default state in my life.

Very nice. What advice would you have for someone who wants to create the conditions for joy, but who has a real job?

Yeah. It was always difficult for you and I to speak to.

My condolences. There's a belief that I feel strongly about, I have conviction in that joy is actually our default state.

Joy is when the anxiety, when the rumination, when everything else kind of falls away, joy is just there.

Whenever we are resisting some aspect of our experience, it's very hard to feel joy.

So my advice would be, to what degree can you first intentionally, even orient towards, joy is actually a priority.

Like, which for a lot of people, that sounds ridiculous because it's like, no, I have these things I want to do with my life.

Like I have ambition.

I want to create, so actually prioritizing joy.

And yeah, I mean, it comes back to allowing yourself to feel the emotions.

And so one thing that a lot of students come to me with that we work through in the course is struggling with anxiety, which I think is, you know, more rampant than ever in the last two or three years after COVID.

And something I learned recently is that the word anxiety, the root or the etymology of that word is to constrict.

And I think when a lot of people, what they experience as anxiety is actually the constriction of a certain emotion.

And so by kind of welcoming and relaxing into the feelings and trusting that, you know, it won't last forever, I think a lot of people are scared, you know, if they start crying, they'll be crying for the next like five years.

It's like, that's a fear, but when you're with a sensation, the life cycle of these emotions is between 10 to 20 seconds.

It's really, it's short.

And so I guess like the deepest answer that I can give the question is joy comes from, or emerges on the other side of being willing to welcome and feel the full spectrum of our human experience.

Nice. You mentioned men's group.

What is a men's group?

Yeah, and why is it good?

What is a men's group?

A men's group, it sounds like it sounds very kind of culty and bro -ey.

I've been, I started a men's group, gosh, eight or nine years ago.

It is a, and I've been part of many at this point, one in Boulder right now.

Currently, the way that I've set it up, there's six of us.

We meet every two weeks for two hours, 6 a .m.

on Thursday. And it's basically a place where we can be seen, heard, celebrated and challenged by four or five other men who there is mutual love and respect for.

So our former, if that would be interesting to share, we have a checking round.

Like how am I doing mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually?

And there's then a intentions round or we actually call it integrity round where we say, am I in or out of integrity with myself?

Am I in or out of integrity with other people?

That can be the group, can also be relationships.

And we then set commitments or intentions for the next two weeks.

So I might say, I want to get my first YouTube video published in two weeks' time.

I want to have this difficult conversation with my partner.

I wanna blah, blah, blah.

And then we go into a 40, 50 minute kind of topics or challenges round.

So each of us will say, number one to five, how important I might be like, I'm thinking of moving country.

I'd be like a five out of five.

Someone else might be one out of five.

We then go through kind of like the mastermind we've just been to, we'll share, this is the challenge I have.

I would love reflections.

I would love advice.

I actually would love to just be seen and witnessed in this emotion that I'm struggling with.

And then we just close.

And we do that every two weeks for like two hours.

And it's one of the most life -changing things that I've done, honestly, because it prevents that emotional debt from building up, right?

Because often I'll go into one of these men's groups, not even realizing that this stuff, this stuff are life for me.

And then when it comes to my turn, I'm like, oh actually, I'm feeling this thing that I'm really worried about, or I'm feeling really angry, or I'm like, I'm really annoyed at this person.

And it creates a space where, again, kind of like the breath where guests say, where there's just this permission, and there's like a safety that everything is welcome.

And that's actually pretty rare in most people's lives.

So if you can either join an existing one or even design your own, and I can share a playbook that I have for this format, it's game -changing.

Yeah, it's a real, real game -changer.

Why is it men's group rather than men's and women's group?

Sure. Yeah, I think that, for me at least, growing up in the UK, there was a resistance to forming deep male friendships.

I don't know if this is true in your experience, but I really struggled to kind of form, I guess like intimate and deep friendships with other men.

And you certainly could do this with co -ed, with both genders.

But there's something about it being other men that changes the energy, and particularly around the integrity as well.

It's hard to say, but I've really appreciated, and I think also, unless there was a deep existing connection between the people, there would be some censoring with what gets shared, particularly in a relational context if there were women there as well.

So I'm all for this format in both, and it would work with just women as well.

I think it's a different format, and it's what's worked for me.

Yeah, because there seems to be a lot of articles written about this epidemic of loneliness, in particular amongst men.

Women tend not to be as lonely, because I don't know, for whatever reason, women tend to be more sociable, and make friends and stuff.

But it seems like men, especially once you get into your 30s and 40s, it's very easy for the only people you know to be your spouse, and the only people you hang out with are supposed to be like, I don't know, your couple friends rather than your solo friends, and I wonder if that misses out on something.

Yeah, I think it does.

I mean, what's your experience with that?

Does that feel true?

Yeah, not yet, but I am quite mindful of it, because I think I've had pretty strong male friendships for a, because I went to a boys school, and then at uni, most of my friends were dudes, just by the way things turned out, and beyond uni, a lot of the creators and entrepreneurs that I hang out with also happen

to be dudes, because I think those fields skew male anyways, so it's like, I feel like I've got a good group of male friends, but now being in a relationship where, you know, if I wanna get married, and stuff where it becomes less, I guess, relationally acceptable to be always on lives trips and stuff

like that. I can see a lot of my male friends who have gotten married, in particular, who then stop hanging out with the boys, especially when kids come in, and I'm like, okay, that's a default inertia that is basically going to happen unless I do something about it, and so I'm trying to figure out

like, so I like the idea of a men's group.

Totally, and I think there's something powerful about committing to that group for the long term as well.

Like, it's been challenging with the amount that we've moved in different locations, but I would love to be part of a group that's together for like eight, 10, 12 years, and I think that there is something different between like hanging out with the lads, and like a kind of like a men's group, like

they might be the same people, but in that space there's an explicit permission for the deeper vulnerable things to be shared, that in a lads trip you're probably not going to talk about.

And I think that's where the real juice is.

It's like explicit permission to say the thing that's scary, and to actually ask for support, which is really hard for most men, because we want to be seen as being strong, meaning that independent, like I got this.

But actually, we all need support in different areas, right?

And asking for that support and giving that support is often what creates connection, which is what everyone is like fricking starved of.

That's the nourishment for most people is creating that connection.

Yeah, that's so true.

Yeah, sometimes I will hang out with a lot of creator entrepreneur type people, and one thing that I notice is some have a significantly higher ability to be vulnerable than others, and those are the people that I want to hang out with more.

Because if I kind of get a sense of someone's fronting, or they might say to me that hey, their YouTube channel sucks and they're failing at it, but then when another few creators arrive at the table, it's suddenly like they're trying to impress people by pretending to have their shit together when really

they don't. I'm always like, bruh, like, you didn't realize that actually you opening up about how much imposter syndrome you're feeling about how much you hate your analytics or about how you're thinking of quitting YouTube is actually what everyone else is thinking as well, and it really connects

people. Whereas when you have this front of like, I've got my shit together, no one connects with that.

Like, weirdly. Yeah, it's like this armor that creates that barrier between people.

I mean, this weekend's a great example, right?

Where Joe opened up with an exercise that was like basically eye gazing with a stranger, sharing what is most scary for you in that moment.

And that, and then the breath work that we did yesterday and the day before, there was a real sense of like, a vibe shift, right?

Before and after, of like after this is like, wow.

And then the quality of conversation and the things that people shared about what was actually going on below like the surface level persona stuff that we all put out to the world.

And that's, I think, part of what made this weekend say magic.

Yeah, definitely. I took some inspiration from you for this men's group thing.

And I started a men's mastermind a couple of months ago in London.

Because there's all these mastermind groups and stuff that happen in the US, but there are so few that happen in Europe and the UK, it seems.

And so initially me and the friend Chris, who's been on the podcast, we were thinking, oh we should start our own mastermind.

And then as we were making the invitee list, we thought, you know what?

Actually, let's make it a men's mastermind.

And it's not because we hate women or any of that.

It's just because there are so few opportunities to hang out with a group of guys who are all facing similar challenges where a lot of the conversation, half of it was about business and the other half was about life.

And I agree, had there been even a single woman in the group, people would have been a lot less comfortable sharing struggles they're having in their relationship, for example.

Because then there's always this sense of like, oh, it just feels kind of weird.

But that was really effective, so thank you for the inspo on that one.

Amazing, I'm stoked that you're doing it.

Yeah, I hope it continues.

And the playbook that I created, I've designed to be open source.

So I would love if 5 ,000 men's groups were created as a result of this conversation, this playbook, and passing it out there.

Because it's so easy, it's such a low lift.

Anyone can do it. And it makes such a difference.

Nice, we'll put a link in the show notes and video description.

Is there an easy URL for this, or something?

Or is it like a funky whip, or else?

It's a Google Doc, so, it's gonna be fucking weird URL.

We'll put a link in the video description, that's all good.

What have you personally seen as the differences between yourself, how old are you, 35?

35. 35, so age 35 versus age 25, in the last 10 years, as you've been on this arc of personal development.

Obviously a 25 -year -old is quite different from a 35 -year -old, but I guess, what are some of the key differences that you'd have been surprised by age 25 that you are, you are right now?

Yeah, I mean, holy shit, just, I feel like, it feels weird to say, but I feel like I'm a, just a different human, or a different, just a very different personality, type of person than I was eight or nine years ago.

I think some of the tangible shifts that I can point to, there's a sense of like, maybe one of the biggest shifts is the sense of like, deep trust in myself, and a trusting of the wisdom, or whatever it is that's coming through me, if it's an emotion, if it's an idea, if it's a thought, the trusting

that like, this is something to pay attention to, and that actually, I can show up in spaces where, whether it's this podcast, or whether it's like an unknown group of people, that like, I've got this, there's a sense of like, I'm good, and there's so much more ease in life, in my system, I would say,

like, in my twenties, I went down the startup path, we raised funding, you know, we did the whole startup thing, went through Techstars, and there was this sense of like, ambition, but it was really me trying to prove myself to other people, and being like, I'm worthy, like validate me, like we raised

all this money, et cetera, et cetera, and, maybe the most concise way to frame it is, that ambition went away for like, two or three years, actually during the Greece process, but on the other side, it's almost like, it's almost like the fuel source got changed, so like, when I was younger, the fuel

source was mostly, if I'm honest, oriented towards validation, and like having an impact, right?

But that having an impact was like, me wanting to be seen and look good, and I think now it's shifted much more to, my baseline is I'm inherently good, like life is amazing, and I feel excitement to do these creative projects, to teach in the world, like I love teaching, the work that I'm doing with Nervous

System Mastery is just, is like so enlivening, and I keep learning from it, and it becomes a, comes my vehicle for having interesting conversations, for developing new frameworks and techniques, and doing things like the breath work that we did, which actually has this like, I feel like I'm deeply of service,

I guess, and that feels very nourishing to me, and so, yeah, I think the ambition is still there, maybe it's even higher than it used to be, but it's like, what is fueling that ambition is now very different, I'd say.

So let's say someone's listening to this, and they feel like yeah, what's fueling them is desire for, I don't know, status, or to be seen, or to be validated, or whatever.

Are there any quick routes to getting off that mountain, and moving on to the proverbial second mountain where the fuel is service rather than status?

Yeah, yeah, go through a crisis.

Upon a quick way. I mean, I joke, but we used to, I used to run an accelerator program called Escape the City, and we would joke that our purpose was to accelerate people into their first, called life crisis, and something about that actually really humbles people, so yeah, I'm not saying create the conditions

for a crisis, but a crisis is definitely something that can drop you in.

More broadly, I mean, I think contemplating death is obviously a good one, I know you've spoken about.

If you think about, in the long run, think about your eulogy, think about how would you want to look back on your life?

What would make your eight -year -old self happy, and what would make your 80 -year -old self happy?

That's always a good frame of where am I coming from, and not judging the way that you're, not judging the fact that part of you wants to be seen about it, but maybe the real hack there is what is the thing that you want that's beneath that?

What's the thing that you want beneath having 50 ,000 YouTube subscribers or 10 million in revenue?

What is that a surrogate for?

Or what is the feeling beneath that, that this goal, you think this goal will give you, but you can actually give yourself in a much easier way?

Ooh, that's very nice.

I wanted the feeling beneath the goal, but I think the goal would give me, but I could give myself that.

So I mean, what would be that, like right now, you want your business to make 10 million in revenue each year, what is the feeling that, let's say, six months from now, you hit that, you nailed the goal, how do you feel?

Hmm, the first word that comes to mind is safety, distinctly, because I have in my mind the idea that if we can get the business to a point where, not even 10 million a gig, it could be a lot lower than that, but if the revenue generation of the business is not actually tied to me as an individual coming

out and sitting in the chair and making YouTube videos and doing podcasts, that is now a true sense of safety, whereas the sense of safety I feel right now is only the illusion of safety, because it's like, well, if I start making YouTube videos, the whole thing comes crumbling down, and I've never

really sat down and run the numbers on this to see, like, okay, how much money do I actually currently have, and even if I did stop making YouTube videos, would it come crumbling down, et cetera, et cetera?

Never really sat down to run the maths on that.

So the first thing that comes to mind for 10 million is safety.

The other thing, and I kind of flip -flop between how much of it is safety -oriented versus excitement -oriented, is just that, it's just kind of fun.

It's like, you know, I play Horizon Forbidden West on very hard difficulty, and once I beat the game on very hard difficulty, I'll probably switch to New Game Plus and play on UltraHard, because, like, why not?

It's like the same video game, the video game of entrepreneurship, which is really fun.

Just play it at a higher difficulty level where the stakes are higher, and as long as I can approach that with more of, with this sense of joy, and like, actually, I'm loving this process, then, ah, 10 million is an arbitrary goal.

Great, let's go for 20, let's go for $100 million exit, just because why not?

It's just kind of fun.

And over time, I think I've shifted more from wanting safety and security, more towards that excitement and joy from just playing the video game at a higher level, but there's still definitely a part of me that has that desire for safety, if we can make the revenue to be correlated with me, all that kind

of stuff. So I guess I'm chasing, in a way, a sense of safety, but also, in a way, a sense of progress, maybe?

Yeah, both. Yep, beautiful, I mean, just to reflect that back, it sounds like you're both, both of the fuel pipes are driving you right now.

There is this side in which there's playing the infinite game, just because it's fun, exciting, and you just love doing it.

And why not go for $100 million?

That feels great. And there's also this piece around seeking that sense of deep embodied safety, which I'm glad you mentioned that word, because it's actually what is often underneath a lot of people's desires to make money, is a sense of, I want to feel safe.

And what I would offer is that there's actually no amount of money that will make you feel safe internally.

There are, I've seen them, there are billionaires out there who don't feel safe in their body.

They don't feel like they have enough money, they feel like it could go away tomorrow, it could be killed.

And that cultivating that internal safety, is a, it's an inner game.

Like that is where the interior work gets done.

Part of it is the emotional work.

And frankly, part of it is, this is one of the things that shifted for me actually, I didn't used to feel safe in my body, and now I feel deeply grounded.

And there is a way in which breathing down into the lower, like lower band of your belly, where a lot of the parasympathetic fibers are, it creates a sense of embodied safety.

There is a way that you can breathe, that you will feel safe in the moment.

And this is actually underneath a lot of what I teach.

Like a lot of the workshops that I do for consultation, it's about helping people.

It's about creating the internal and external conditions for people to feel safe.

And it's, you can think of it as like a muscle that can be trained.

So I'm glad you mentioned that.

And my like challenge for you would be, how can you increase how safe you feel, regardless of the income for your business?

Because we could tear apart that goal where like, even if your entire business disappeared next week, you're a smart dude, like you could find a way to make that back pretty quickly.

And there's another scenario where you could be making 20 million a year and something could happen and it could all get taken away.

So really like content, and maybe we can talk about this more off camera, but like there are things you can do that can really embody that sense of safety, which most people project onto money.

Like money is just like, some people project like power, some people it's safety and money becomes this thing.

If I get enough of it, I'll feel safe.

And that story is bollocks.

There is some truth to that story though.

Like if you're struggling to pay the bills, then getting more money makes you feel more safe in that sense that you don't have to worry about where rent's coming from.

So where's the point where it tips that way?

Yeah, so actually I don't, like I've met people on the streets of Sri Lanka and on the streets of like people who have literally almost no money at all, but they feel safe.

Like often they have relationships and they have connections and they have community, but they have materially very, very little money.

Now I'm not saying there is anything at all about, money is great.

I love making money, but this, the safety actually isn't correlated.

Oh, that's controversial.

Yeah, cause I guess when we were doing the breath work yesterday, one of the things I felt was a sense of safety.

I mean, I wouldn't quite have described it as that.

But like now that I think back to it, we were in this beautiful barn, the sun was shining, there were trees outside.

And I was thinking, you know, if I lost all my money and I just sat in a, I just had like a wooden cabin to live in or I could just write and make videos, life would be pretty goddamn good.

And I was like, huh, I don't need a lot of money for that.

And it kind of made me realize that like, I had this deep sense that my happiness is actually completely de -correlated from money and status.

Like I could lose all my subscribers overnight, could lose all the money overnight.

And actually like in that moment, I felt very safe in my body.

And I guess over time that's, is that the sort of feeling that you have all the time?

I mean, maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time.

Yeah, a lot of the time for sure.

And at the same time, like playing the infinite game of growing businesses and creating and doing awesome videos.

That's amazing too.

And that can kind of add to it.

But I think the point of like really questioning and like deeply questioning for yourself, like is that connection true is pretty profound or it can be.

One of the things, you know, you work with a lot of startup founder, executive type people.

Do people ever worry that if they become all nervous system mastery, they're gonna be so zen to the point that they won't actually have any ambition to do big things in the world or whatever?

For sure, I mean, that's a huge concern.

I think people are afraid they're gonna lose their edge because up until now they have been driven by that like anxiety or fear or need to prove, desire to be validated et cetera.

And you know, some very successful people are, but in those cases, I wouldn't want to swap places with many of them because often it's their relationships, it's their health, it's their internal state, their internal monologue that suffers.

And you know, most people can think of public examples where that would be true.

I've worked with the CEO and founder of a rocket ship company who kind of went through this journey himself.

His name's Ben, I'm sure he wouldn't mind me naming him.

And he has become a far better leader of his company through doing a lot of this work.

Like he is something that I believe that like the nervous system of an organization is a mirror or is a reflection of the nervous system of a leader.

So as he became more grounded, more centered, made decisions from a clear, intentional place, was less reactive, the business outcomes were fantastic.

Another example that comes to mind is Joe Hudson, who you've just had on the podcast, who I would say Joe is one of the most ambitious people that I know, but Joe also isn't being driven by anxiety, fear and scarcity, greed, like any of those things.

So there are plenty of examples in both camps and I would rather kind of focus on the enjoyment and the joy and trust that the other like material, external things will come in due course, which they are for me, like I've had an incredible couple of years and it seems to just like it's going in an amazing

direction. And do you do yoga and how does yoga fit into this world of like stuff that we're talking about?

Interesting. So traditionally, yoga was the asanas were seen as a means of creating the conditions for meditation to be easy.

That is like one of the foundational principles of hatha yoga.

There are certain postures and movements and like ways that you can do poses which will shift the state of your body.

So to give an example, backbends can be activating, they stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, forward folds, especially if they're held for like two or three minutes, they're very relaxing and calming.

So if you're looking to, let's say downshift and relax, doing something like pitching pose or just like holding onto your feet and maybe even doing some humming at the same time is a great way to downshift at the end of the day.

I still practice yoga every two or three days.

Part of it's just to feel good in my body and part of it is for that like nervous system shift as well.

Nice. And so like, this bucket of like yoga, meditation, breathworks, psychedelics, energy, there's like this whole starter kit which has like a whole spectrum of it where you can go really woo.

And there's more like socially acceptable woo and like something like a meditation is not really considered woo anymore.

But it was like 20 years ago.

It would have been a while ago.

Is all of this stuff leading to enlightenment or some like, where's this all going?

Where's it all leading?

Because you can imagine a world where, and I'm sure, you know, people like this who are so in the weeds of the stuff, going after energy here with this, energy here with that, like doing all the meditation practices, like what does it all lead to?

What's the point? Yeah, so it's a great question.

I think that is up to frankly, everyone to really decide for themselves.

There is a way in which like Bali, for example, we've both been to Bali.

Bali is like an adult woo Disneyland.

Like you can do like breath work, combo, like sound healing, like all the things.

And whilst I think there's a time and a place for like experimenting with all of that, you can also kind of get stuck on the merry -go -round of just doing the things over and over again.

I think that the key thing is to actually have that experimental mindset, like form some kind of hypothesis of like, if I do breath work four times a month in this way, like how do I feel afterwards?

Is this something that actually serves my life?

And keep running those experiments for yourself, tracking how it changes your internal state.

And I think the same is true of any of these modalities, whether it's forms of meditation, whether it's empty germs, blood medicine, men's group, breath work.

It's really like, what is it that you're looking to feel more of?

And is this supportive?

And the real, like, is it working?

It's like, how do you then show up in your life and in your relationships afterwards?

I think that is like the most honest measure of is this working?

So for me, doing hundreds of breath work journeys in a three or four year period, that had dramatic changes on how I showed up in relationship with my now wife and allowed us to get through some of the like really rocky periods early on and stay in love and connection and kind of get to the other side

and build that trust.

So that would be, and I think this especially applies to plant medicine.

Iowask has become very popular these days.

It's very easy to get hooked on, maybe even addicted on chasing those peak experiences because peak experiences feel good.

And if when you come back down, nothing has changed, if nothing has literally rewired in your nervous system, that hasn't integrated, then you can keep doing that until the day you die and nothing changes.

And so it's really important and that's where this spaciousness comes in that there is time to actually integrate, reflect on, feel the changes of this thing that you did, whether it's a meditation tree or breath work or whatever and be like, okay, how, like, do I feel different to last week?

Did anything change?

I put in and trust your own experience.

Nice. I like that. That's kind of how I approach all personal development and productivity advice as well.

Great. Experimental mindset.

Great. You know what?

Let me try working out every morning for the next month and see how that compares.

Cool, let's try doing it in the afternoons or evenings.

Oh, the morning is way better because in the afternoons and evenings, I just don't do it.

Okay, morning it is.

Yeah. Let me see what it's like, you know, if I were to write my goals out every morning because I heard someone say that's a good idea.

Oh shit, that actually really works for me because it helps me feel more connected and more purposeful in whatever I'm doing.

Let me try the Pomodoro technique.

I don't really like 25 minutes.

I prefer 50, you know, that kind of thing.

And you know, one thing with our new product, the productivity lab, productivitylab .com, one thing that we encourage with our students is, you know, don't take anyone's word as gospel, especially not mine, because like, you know, the law of equal and opposite advice, something that works well for one person,

the exact opposite thing will work well for another person.

And so what we're really trying to get our students to do it to encourage is this experimental mindset with anything related to any advice at all.

It's like, try it out, see if it works, if it does great, if it doesn't, great, that's fine.

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.

I love that. And the thing that I'd add to that, and this is maybe something that's changed for me, is when I'm looking at the results of my experiment, I am tracking my, like my intraceptive response as much as I'm tracking Excel as well.

So if something, let's say I'm thinking about taking a new project, I will be like, does that feel like expansive and exciting and interesting?

Or does it feel like there's some kind of contraction, like, oh, like maybe not.

And even if I don't know why, I will take that data from my body into consideration.

And there's, you know, there's actually four times more neurons going from my body to our brain than from my brain to our body.

It's like a super highway going this way, and like one lane of traffic going this way.

And I think that's a helpful reminder that actually our body is tracking so many more things than we're consciously able to process.

So I think that's like, so if you're running an experiment, if you're not actually taking in all the data coming away, then it's a shitty experiment.

Damn, that's really good.

I'm gonna start doing that.

Yeah, because I almost never asked that question.

I think I subconsciously do it, but not consciously in the sense that I have found that having a team retreat where we all get together once a quarter is expensive, but it's also like really enlivening in like a feelingy kind of way.

Right, right, right.

And even if we can't measure the impact on the bottom line, it's like, oh well, it's enlivening in a nice way, so we're gonna do it.

Totally, totally. There's like one frame for that, it's like head, heart, gut, like how does it feel in the head?

How does it feel in the heart?

How does it feel in the gut?

And they might have different answers.

You can journal this down.

Ooh. So this nervous system stuff.

If someone has gone to the end of this episode, what are some tangible, practical, actionable things that you or anyone else could do to help, I don't know, shift our state towards something that's more productive or more intentional towards the thing we actually wanna be doing?

Yeah, beautiful. So let's see.

Yeah, I have a practice I call, If This, Then Breathe.

So if, like, if this and that, like if blah blah blah, it's like this automation thing, if you feel lethargic and sleepy, do espresso breath, if you feel anxious and overwhelmed, do breath of calm.

And we can maybe demonstrate the breath of calm now.

Yeah, absolutely. As an example.

Okay, great. So get comfortable, see it.

Kind of actually feel your body, feel your butt on the chair.

And we'll begin with a very brief awareness practice.

So, and you can do this if you're watching or listening, get company in your chair, you can have your eyes open or closed for this, whichever you prefer.

And start by just being aware of the space behind you.

So like being aware of in your case, the rocks behind.

Noticing that there is even space behind you.

Being aware of the space behind you and now awareness of the space below you, feeling gravity pulling you down, feeling your butt on the seat.

And finally above you, awareness of the ceiling, just feeling this like expansion in this like awareness bubble around you.

And we'll start off with a couple of sighs, so full breath in and then sigh on the exhale.

Ah, nice, one more.

Ah, beautiful. All right, so opening up the eyes just to watch the demonstration.

So gonna do something called alternate nostril breathing.

This is one of the fastest ways of activating the parasympathetic, i .e.

relaxation nervous system.

It creates measurable changes in blood chemistry.

Those changes in the endocrine system then make their way into the nervous system, which then changes the thoughts and feelings that we're having.

And that cycle kind of continues.

So do this by raising right hand.

Your thumb's gonna cover your right nostril.

This ring finger is gonna cover your left nostril.

And we're gonna be breathing to account of inhaling three, holding three, exhaling six.

And then swap sides, so I got you three.

So covering the right nostril, inhaling three, left, two, three, holding both, two, three, exhaling right, two, three, four, five, six.

Inhaling right, two, three, holding both, two, three, exhaling left, two, three, four, five, six.

One more round inhale left, two, three, holding both, two, three, exhale right, two, three, four, five, six.

Lowering it down. And then we'll finish with two single breath hums.

Inhale all the way.

And then a hum on the exhale.

And then a hum. And then a hum.

And then a hum. And then a hum, and then a, and then a hum, and then a hum, and a hum, and a hum, and then a hum, And inhale, And take a moment to close your eyes and just notice if how you feel internally has changed at all.

Maybe there's like more spaciousness behind the eyes and see if you notice any difference in your state.

Yeah, I actually feel more...

I want to use the word light.

But the word light is an imprecise word but yeah, light.

And yeah, like there's more like space around me or something or that like my awareness has expanded or something.

Yeah. Great. Yeah, beautiful and that was like what, a minute?

Yeah, a second. And so you can obviously do a few more rounds, you can combine them, you can just do one of and I can link to some of the practices that people can follow along to if they want to try it.

Okay. So in what context might I use this thing?

So I mean, I've used it sometimes like intense social gatherings.

I'll do it in the bathroom.

I've used it before going on stage for talks or almost always before podcasts when I'm at Zoom at home.

And then because it gets you more relaxed?

Yeah, it kind of like if there's a lot of like energy in my system that's like let's say I'm nervous before like an important interview, then it helps to like calm and ground the energy.

And like you said, there's a sense of like expansiveness and lightness that is there.

So I can think more clearly and not be like, huh.

Yeah. Because this feeling of like, huh, when the awareness has contracted is like it's really hard to think clearly, be productive, feel good.

That constriction like is the opposite of what you're going for.

So these practices help to feel like, ah, I feel like, I feel more useful, I feel good, I feel just like relaxed.

Oh, that's great. This supervises my whole feel good productivity thing.

Because like, you know, it's like the evidence shows that when we're experiencing negative emotions, it constricts our attention and everything, which is occasionally useful if you're running from a tiger, but not normally helpful chronically.

Exactly. And if we're feeling positive emotions, it expands our awareness and helps us be more creative and think outside the box and feel less stressed.

And there's like, they've done studies where there's like measurable differences in people's heart rate, breathing rate, like physiological parameters by virtue of watching a nice film, a feel good movie clip rather than something that makes them feel bad.

It's like, ah. So because people have often asked me, it's like, okay, well, how do I actually do that if I have a day job or whatever, if I can't control my calendar.

And I've never really had breathing exercises as part of my repertoire, but I can feel the impact where it's like, oh, just doing this for a minute actually just makes me feel lighter and a bit more like.

Totally, totally. Yeah.

Like I love that. And the feeling good piece is the releasing of the constriction.

That's kind of what's so much this.

It's like whatever you can do to get out of that, the constriction and what people think of going back to what we were talking about earlier, negative emotions, that is actually just us constricting against the emotion.

In that state of like, I feel relaxed and at ease, it just passes through and it actually feels good.

So the feeling bad is the constriction.

What enables us to feel good is just opening and like softening in.

And these breathing practices humming, non -sleep deep breaths as well as a really powerful human talks about a lot.

How does that work?

So it's a form of yoga, yoga nidra.

It's like I have a 14 -minute playlist where you lie down blindfold and you do a kind of guided body scan, different parts of the body and a progressive muscle relaxation exercise.

And in 14 minutes, you just feel rejuvenated, like recharged, re -enlivened.

And it also builds that introceptive awareness.

So it's like a good practice for working that as well.

I'll add that to my list of experiments to try out.

Great, amazing. And we'll put a link in the video description and show notes wherever people are listening to this.

Cool. Nice. Johnny, thank you so much.

It's been wonderful.

Final question is, I am about to turn 30 in a few days.

Any advice? Wow. Yeah, I would say my reflection of you, Ali, is someone who has really mastered a lot of things in the outer game, from building businesses to publishing in New York Times Bestseller to networking with incredible people.

The invitation I would give you is, what would it look like if you were to master the inner game and the inner world?

And yeah, what experiments can you run that might move you towards feeling good, feeling that sense of deep safety, 95 % of the time instead of 5 % of the time?

Sick. That's a great question.

Cool, thank you. Where can people learn more about you and the work that you do?

Yeah, so I run a course twice a year called Nervous System Mastery.

I also have a self -assessment, which is at assessment .nsmastery .com, which is probably the best way of getting a sense for a lot of the stuff we've been talking about and also gauging your own benchmark for what is your inter -reception levels, what is your self -regulation levels, what is your environment

like, and getting like a concrete score with specific protocols that are tailored to the answer.

So that's probably the best place that I'd direct people to is assessment .nsmastery .com.

Nice, cool, that's fun.

I'll try that and we'll put it in the video, if we do a video about this.

Nice, and on Twitter, website, what's your...

Yeah, so Twitter I'm Jonny Miller, J -O -N -N -Y -M -1 -L -L -E -R, wish I could get the actual handle, set up a conversation.

I also have a podcast called Curious Humans, where our conversation might be coming out soon, and I have many conversations about the, I say that in a game is kind of the theme of the podcast these days.

Lovely, thank you very much.

Thank you, this has been so great.

Yeah, it's been so fun.

Alright, that's a wrap.

Alright, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive.

Thank you so much for watching or listening.

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Bye -bye.

[Mastering the Nervous System: A Path to Emotional Fluidity and Intentional Living]-[How to Master your Nervous System for Productivity and Joy - Jonny Miller]

📋 Summary

Mastering the Nervous System: A Path to Emotional Fluidity and Intentional Living

The Core Framework: Rise Out of Reactivity

The Concept of Accumulated Emotional Debt

The Path to Joy Through Grief

Practical Tools for Daily Life

Conclusion: Redefining Ambition

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript