Bam Lionheart Moving Forward

[Speaker 3] (0:00 - 0:07) You are now listening to the Here for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 2] (0:11 - 1:58) What's up, everybody? Welcome to episode 71 of Here for the Truth podcast. Today, we have an incredible guest, as always, Bam Lionheart. Yes, that's his real last name, and he absolutely lives up to it. Wait till you hear his absolutely incredible story. It blew my mind. Just before we get into Bam, I wanted to remind you guys that applications for round two of Rise Above the Herd are now open and it is filling up. So if you've been considering applying, please do. This is all about, I guess, really guiding you into fully stepping into your sovereign individuality, going through your individuation process, understanding and awakening the hero that exists within you. And it would be our absolute pleasure to facilitate for any single one of our listeners. All their episodes are available at hereforthetruth.com. Our free ebook, 55 Signs of Low Self-Esteem for Truth Seekers, is available there too. And we'll bring Bam on now, guys. Enjoy this episode. Bam Lionheart is in the house. Bam is a movement coach specializing in pain-free movement and helping people reconnect with their body's natural strength and resiliency. Bam's goal is to give people a greater ability to move forward through their life in pursuit of their highest purpose and dreams. Bam has spent his life pursuing movement in a wide range of areas, including martial arts as a cage fighter, weightlifting as a competitive Olympic lifter, rescue response as a river rescue technician, and strength and conditioning as a strength coach. Bam believes in the durability of the human body and a natural pattern of movement that is innate to all humans and seeks to reconnect people with their own personal healthy movement patterns that were developed in the early stages of their life. Bam, thanks for being here for the truth. [Speaker 1] (1:59 - 2:14) Dude, so pumped to be here, you guys. Thank you for having me on. And that bio was, Joel, when you read that, your voice is just so crispy clean, dude. It made it sound 10 times better. It's that Aussie accent too, man. [Speaker 2] (2:15 - 2:18) I felt that as well as I was saying it. I'm like, yeah, this is dope. [Speaker 1] (2:19 - 7:33) Yo, brother, first of all, man, it's so great to have you on. I've had the pleasure to work a little bit with Bam and get to know him. And he's an awesome human. And I'm just grateful for you to be here, man, for sure. Yeah, I'm here for what you guys are doing. I really appreciate and see what you guys are doing. And I like it. Really honored to be here to share whatever I can for you and for your audience. I guess just to start off, man, obviously, you know, Joel read your bio, your movement coach, you're doing the go to work with a lot. Well, your journey has led you to go to and everything else you're doing now. But can you talk a little bit about your major rites of passage in life, your own personal hero's journey, the things that have happened that brought you to who you are today, sitting here with the two of us having this conversation? Yeah, I'll just give a as brief as I can. It has kind of paralleled a, there's been like two roads. One road is my physical practice, like I've always had since as long as I can remember, an engagement with some kind of physical practice all my life, and always had that. Alongside that has always been this calling to serve and to help. In the very early stages of my life, it felt like very much like a hero complex, like wanting to legitimately save lives and rescue people. But it's just been this calling to provide as much help to the world as I can. And those kinds of paths have always paralleled each other. And I've used my physical practice to kind of bolster and strengthen my ability to deeply help and serve the people that I'm around. So I started doing gymnastics at an early age, gymnastics turned into youth football. And I quickly turned out that I was not an athlete. Youth football was extremely violent on my body. I was a very small kid and was getting hit a lot. I wasn't, I wasn't very athletic and was just trying to understand how to use my body. So it didn't really hit a growth spurt until probably sophomore year in high school, but at that time had spent so much time as kind of like the underdog, getting bullied on the football field, getting bullied on the school playground. So was fortunate enough to kind of grow into my body, feeling like I was physically inferior than a lot of my peers, which I think really humbled me to when I started to learn martial arts, I started to develop some big skills at the age of 15 on how to protect myself, how to be very violent in the world. I kind of remained this inner humbled kind of feelings of not being superior, but really looking at the people that were around that weren't very strong in the world. So the biggest crucible that happened was starting cage fighting at the age of 15, 16 and cage fighting really changed my life. Cage fighting, jujitsu, grappling, and just getting beat up by older dudes day in and day out. And it was probably one of the best things that I did. That was probably the first crucible. And alongside fighting in a cage was going to a private Catholic all boys preparatory high school. It was an hour away from where I grew up. I grew up outside of LA County, kind of in the ghetto Palmdale Lancaster. So there's a certain culture and certain people that I grew up with. And then I would travel an hour to an all boys school wearing polo t-shirts and Dockers with my shirt tucked in. It was like two opposite worlds. So it was like this crazy juxtaposition where at school, polo t-shirts, you're saying prayers before class starts. And then as soon as I left high school, I would go home and I'd go to the gym and then I would beat up people and get beat up. And that was kind of my life. That was like a humongous growth period for me where I had to play two roles. One role was like following the rules, doing what was right, saying your prayers, getting good grades in school. And then the other was this world where violence and physicality was the superior dogma in that world. There were two crazy different worlds, but being able to flip-flop from those world every single day really showed me the duality of who a person can be and how you can kind of work your way through these different areas in your life. [Speaker 2] (7:34 - 7:41) I guess one similarity between cage fighting and going to an all boys catholic school is that in both circumstances you can still get hit on by old men. [Speaker 1] (7:42 - 11:24) Oh my gosh, I just pulled that out of nowhere. That was good, that was good. That was a good one. Yeah, what a crucible and thank God that I didn't have to go through that one. Not everyone has been so fortunate. Yeah, but fighting was really when I look back on it after my second amateur MMA fight, I realized that it was just a rite of passage for me to be able to answer this question of can I stand in a cage with another person and just go toe-to-toe without fear in my heart and just kind of lay it all out on the line. It wasn't necessarily in love for the sport or wanting to achieve some kind of champion status, but really was to deal with this fear that I had since an early age of being afraid, walking around the world and being afraid and not knowing how to interact in the world. One of the earliest memories that I had that really sat deep in my heart, I was about five in the car with my father. We were leaving the grocery store on our way out and we're driving past the front of the grocery store. There's a man and his wife and she's pushing a stroller with their young baby in it. He just turns to her in a second, completely punches her in the face, decks her, and she falls down to the ground just immediately. This is a big dude. I was five years old. I knew this was not okay. I turned to my father and I looked at him and I said, what are we going to do? And he quickly turned his eyes because I don't think he wanted me to see that he saw and kept driving. I immediately got the message that he didn't know what to do. He didn't know and didn't want to engage this person. We just kept driving and just sat in my stomach. I know what I just saw wasn't right, but I also know that what am I going to do? Get out of the car and start yelling. I was just very confused, but there was something inside of me that was like, I wish that I at least had the ability to do something if I ever wanted to. Seeing myself get bullied, seeing my peers get bullied, always just sat in my stomach like, hold on, something's not right. But even more so was this feeling that even if I thought something wasn't right and I didn't even have the physical capacity to do something, that really kind of irritated me more than the wrongdoing that was going on in the world that probably drove me to pursue martial arts, to pursue jujitsu, wrestling, boxing, and cage fighting. Yeah, it's just amazing to see how an individual takes stock of what's going on in life and goes, okay, well, what do I need to do to improve myself? Like, okay, well, I'm being bullied. You know, there are challenges in life. I mean, we talk so much, Joel and I, on this podcast and our course about self-esteem. And self-esteem is all about being able to handle the basic challenges of life. And so, you know, you get confronted with something and then ultimately, you make the decision like, all right, well, I'm going to train. I'm going to learn some skills. I'm going to do what I need to do. I'm going to look fear in the face and move through it. And what is that but the heroic path, you know? Like, it's like feeling the fear and still acting in the face of it. [Speaker 2] (11:24 - 11:30) And like, feeling powerless sucks, you know? [Speaker 1] (11:31 - 11:34) I mean, especially as a five-year-old, you know? Yeah. [Speaker 2] (11:35 - 12:08) Even as adults, you know, if there's, like, I mean, think about everything we've experienced the last two years. You know, people have come up against a tyranny, which they feel just overwhelms them beyond any belief whatsoever. And they feel powerless in the face of it. And they basically succumb to that feeling as though there's nothing they can do to change the course of their lives, or to overcome this pressure, you know? And it's this inherent lack of control over the circumstances of our life, which ultimately keeps people, I guess, from actually tapping into that power and keeps them within mediocrity. [Speaker 1] (12:09 - 18:15) Yeah, 100%. Mm-hmm. So what your MMA fighting, what did that then lead you to? MMA fighting really liberated me to be able to feel free in social circumstances and professional environments. It really took care of a lot of underlying survival-based fears that I didn't know really existed. And until that weight is free from your shoulders of, I trust that I can take care of myself, even in the worst situations, it allowed me to start to think about what it is that I actually wanted to do. Because before that, it was like, how do I survive? And when you're coming from a survival mindset, you're not really thinking from the heart, thinking from, like, your truth. So when I started to think from my heart and think from my truth, I was, started to, more than anything, see what I didn't want. I got out of high school at 18 and I knew that I did not want to get myself in a shitload of college debt and have somebody control me and, like, have handcuffs. Like, I have to get a job. I have to survive. I gotta go to college so I can get a degree, so I can survive, so I can get a job. Like, that kind of mindset was, I was like, no way. No way. I'd rather pursue something like cage fighting or something else. So after high school, the only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to fight with my friends. And they were my friends. They were my peers. They were my mentors. These were dudes that would show up at the gym every day, just like I did, and they would 100% give me everything and I would give them everything. Fighting was, became this selfless giving that most people don't see. Like, there's a humongous gratitude for somebody that has the willingness to step in the cage with you and give you everything. There's almost this, like, you give me everything, I give you everything so that I can have the biggest mirror back to who I am as a person. So I was, I just knew that fighting was going to be something that was around my life, but I didn't know what I was going to do professionally. After high school, I had a very good opportunity, a very good chance happening. I graduated high school, maybe three weeks later, I got a phone call from Be The Match Bone Marrow Registry. And they were like, hey, you got matched with somebody who has stage three leukemia. He's 56 years old. And they gave him like three to six months left to live. Are you willing to donate your bone marrow? I was like, I ain't got nothing going on with my life right now. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm working and fighting like 100%. They're like, okay, cool. Thank you for saying yes. We'll give you a call back in a week if we still need you. They gave me a call back, and the process continued and continued and continued until maybe a few months later, three months later, I found myself in a hospital bed with two needles in my arms, just for eight hours, and was just there saying yes for eight hours, hanging out with my best friend. They can take your bone marrow out now through your bloodstream with the help of some medication called Neupogen. So this little bag, this tiny bag of my bone marrow stem cells flew from California, across the states to Florida, and was given to my now good friend Joe. And dude got cured of leukemia. And that day was so special to me. I felt like I received a humongous gift more than Joe, who now is a grandpa and cancer free and hard charging in life. Because I was in this place of uncertainty of what was going to happen next, but had this immediate feeling of there was a mission. The mission was, let's try and save this guy. Let's keep my body healthy so I can donate this thing. I had a purpose, like let's help save somebody's life. We'll give this person a chance. And I had like a plan of how to do that. There was like a set schedule. So all of a sudden I was like lost in free space after high school. And then I was grounded by this purpose. And then after that purpose, after I had done that thing, the conversation in my head was like, why would I spend my life doing anything else? This feels so right to me. So instead of going to community college, I got my emergency medical technician certification, and then got on an ambulance. So spent some time on an ambulance. I'm about 20 years old, just turned 21 now. And spent four years on an ambulance doing 911 emergency response, while my friends were doing the whole college experience. I was having a very, very, very different experience. People are out there like getting fucked up and getting high and drinking, and you're answering calls to like give CPR. And that's wild, dude. Yeah, it really was because there was a lot of that. There was a lot of drinking and driving going on, obviously around that time, in that time in a person's life. But I was seeing the ramifications of that, some deep, deep, deep ramifications. And so I was pursuing cage fighting and pursuing emergency medical response. I was spending time, like I was doing 24 hour shifts on an ambulance, dealing with blood, sick people, whatever that was going on. And then I would get off the ambulance, and I'd go train at the gym, do two sessions a day, maybe go down to LA and do a smoke or Muay Thai five, or do a jiu jitsu competition. And that was my life. I was like, dude, responding to 911 stuff, and then going and fighting. And I thought this was normal. I thought this was like a normal life. Now I look back, I'm like, dude, that shit was crazy, bro. Like, there was no off switch at all. [Speaker 2] (18:16 - 18:25) Right? Like, is there anyone more fitting of the last name Lionheart? That's incredible, man. [Speaker 1] (18:26 - 20:15) It was a really good time. But that was a time where I was really sinking my hands into doing in the world, you know, I was doing on the ambulance, I was doing by competing, I was like, really, like, engaging, where I felt like school, elementary school, and even high school, I was like, when am I gonna engage in the world? I'm only engaging the world through these like, second hand books. And the second hand teachings from this person standing in front of me, like, I want to be in the world. I wanted to grab my life with my hands. And it felt like I had that opportunity with the ambulance. And with fighting, it was like, it was on me to do all of these things. But underlying was to be in the ambulance world, to respond to a stranger's house and call 911 and respond and take care of my nervous system, take care of my body, take care of my mind, to where I could be cool, calm, collect, focus, and on task, amidst somebody having a heart attack on the living room floor, somebody getting, you know, shot in the head at a party, or somebody just thinking that they're dying when really they're just having a stomachache. Like, it didn't really matter. But I had to take care of myself. And then the same thing with fighting, I had to be fighting and trying to perform at a high level, but then also remain intact with, I'm getting punched in the face, but I can't like, get all aggressive about this. So I really started to learn the skills of how to control my nervous system and my physical body through mental talk, breath work, and different postures and movements of my body. Powerful. Good. I love it, man. [Speaker 4] (20:15 - 20:15) I love it. [Speaker 1] (20:15 - 28:44) I love hearing more of your story, man. There's something to say about being in life and doing as opposed to just sitting there and being an observer. And the fact that you started at a younger age, and that I would say that a lot, a lot of people usually do in the Western world. I mean, it's pretty cool, man. I just love hearing, I just kind of want to hear the story that brought you to go to like, I want to continue with it brought to where you are. I love hearing all this. But I know you spent some time in the military, I believe. And there's, you know, I'd love to hear anything that you're willing to share. Yeah. So it's this great kind of circular journey. There was one day on the ambulance where I had a call that was pretty brutal, drunk driver. And then there was a 23 year old girl in the back. And she had passed away immediately on impact. The car had, it was a Honda Civic, it was like three in the morning. The drunk driver had fallen asleep. And there was an 18 wheeler parked on the side of the road and the Honda Civic veered and crashed right into the back. So you can imagine Honda Civic low to the ground, 18 wheeler, the back of the 18 wheeler is about, you know, four, four and a half feet, whatever off the ground. So that back of that 18 wheeler was inside of the Honda Civic trapping the driver. And it had immediately killed the 23 year old girl who was in the back. I was a small guy and I was nimble. And since the driver was alive, I climbed into the back and had to hold C spine, which is like hold his head up, as he's going up and down in and out of consciousness, as firefighters were removing him from jaws of life, basically, to sum this story up as a very impactful moment in my life, because I was holding this guy's head. And I couldn't look to my left, because there was metal and glass breaking. So I had to look to my right. And I had to like constantly ask myself, should I continue to stare at this, this 23 year old girl who was staring at me, it's like her jaw was open, both of her legs had been flopped off, brain, cerebral spinal fluid was just kind of everywhere. And I'm like, continue looking at her or close my eyes. And I was afraid to close my eyes to not look at her. And I was afraid to look at her. It was like this weird moment. But it was kind of like when you're just like in this dream state for like 15 minutes, I was back there holding this guy's head, looking at her. And then this feeling of like, I wish that this guy's head that I was holding was dead and she was alive. So that was it was just took me through a big loop that I've had to unravel for a long time. The very next day after that, you know, you get off the call, you kind of just do your thing. I go to my first practice session at the gym jujitsu. And that was the first time that I was on the wrestling mats and wanted to hurt somebody like deeply bad. I remember tapping somebody out with an armbar. And I was like, now I want to choke him. Now I want more. I want more. I want more, more. And I was in that session wanting to hurt someone so bad. And then found myself crying while doing jujitsu. And I was like, the fuck is happening? Like, these are my homies. Like why? Like, I was genuinely confused. I'm like, why am I crying right now? Like, this is a normal training session. I went back that next night. And the same exact thing had happened as soon as the volume turned up. Just like I had this big emotional rage response. I had to have a conversation myself like, hey, dude, I think we're having some kind of post traumatic stress things going on from this call. So I could not continue doing what I love and doing the thing that had really developed me as a person, which was fighting with my friends. So I had to find another outlet. I started doing weightlifting, I started doing CrossFit, I started getting heavy into fitness. And in a gym setting, like crying and trying to hurt somebody is like no go. It's like, get out of the gym like you can't be here. But you could go into a CrossFit gym, or even like a fitness gym, especially like these small boutique ones. And you could slam a barbell and you could yell while you're doing pull ups. And maybe you can cry while you're like sprinting your little heart out. And people are like, I don't know what's going on with that guy. But like that dude's getting after it. Like that's what's up. So like there's like a safe spot for me to like get these things out of my body and to start to process this post traumatic stress that I had accumulated from the ambulance in this call. So it took me about two years and every single day I'd wake up and I go to the gym and have this kind of emotional release process. And it was able for me to continue about my life. This was like the first time that I was like, oh my goodness, like movement is like movement is the thing that is allowing me to transform my body, allowing me to transform my mind and transform my spirit and allow me to grow. It wasn't necessarily just martial arts. Because in martial arts, it was jujitsu, it was wrestling, it was Muay Thai, it was fighting. But it was the movement of all of that. And I can find movement there, I can find movement in fitness, I can find movement in Olympic weightlifting, like there's a limited potential for movement. And movement can be a very, very powerful tool to deal with a lot of things that we struggle with as humans and our human experience, as well as kind of just develop ourselves. So using as a growth tool, but also using as a tool for dealing with a lot of things that we face. So I was having that understanding, as I was still working on the ambulance. And as working on the ambulance continued, and my tolerance for death, suffering started to really diminish, because it was just this hamster wheel of like, I don't feel like I'm helping people. Like for instance, that call with the girl who was in the back. It's like, why am I holding this guy's head, incurring all this post traumatic mental stress on myself, when this guy messed up, maybe I should just let go of his head, get out of the car, call it good. You know, why am I in this position? It really started to question. I started to question a lot of, you know, what it meant to be a rescuer, what it meant to be, you know, a hero. And I wanted out, I wanted out of the ambulance world. And what I saw was I wanted out and I wanted to continue to push, develop and coach people in movement, in a way that I had been helped, like deeply transformed from a kid who was scared, felt small, kind of meek into somebody who felt empowered, more fearless, able to go into some different places, and then even able to overcome different mental things like post traumatic stress by diving deep into movement. So I saw the power of movement. And I wanted to spread that in the world because it deeply helped me. And I wanted to deeply help people and I was like, I'm not doing that on the ambulance. So that led me to wanting to pursue movement on a deep level. So I opened up a gym in Portland, Oregon and started training in that gym. And at the same time that I was opening up that gym, I was training to go into the military for Air Force, I wanted to do special operations. This was just a calling that I had had since I was 15. And it was kind of like this feeling of this is going to be the final crucible for me as a man. Because there's something about even being in a cage or something about even showing up to a 911 response that was like, it still felt like a game. Didn't feel like actual real life. It didn't feel like actual life and death. I knew that there was a ref that was there, that was gonna, you know, pull a guy off me if it got to that point. And then even on the 911 ambulance, I was in that world of life and death. But I was kind of skirting on the outside, like putting my hands in and then like going around it. But I wasn't like a key player in that. And I was deeply curious about war, violence and suffering in the world and wanting to be a key player in that. So what's the timeline of this? This was from the age of 23 until 27 took me four years to get into the military. [Speaker 4] (28:45 - 28:45) Gotcha. [Speaker 1] (28:46 - 29:17) Because I would be training, be training, be training, be about ready to pull the trigger. And then would kind of back away and be like, No, no, this isn't for me. I'm doing this for my ego. I'm doing this for other reasons. Why am I curious about war? I don't, I had this experience with post-traumatic stress on the ambulance. Why would I, why would I, you know, incur more of that in my life and create more chaos inside of myself? Like what, you know, bam, why don't we just get an office job and chill out for a little bit? You know, you don't got to be doing something crazy. [Speaker 2] (29:18 - 29:22) There's got to be a lot of Aries in your shot, bro. I don't know what your birthday is. There's gotta be. [Speaker 1] (29:25 - 44:09) Just all fire, just double Sagittarius. But it took me four years of really mustering up the courage and also the physical ability to do that. So it was, it was making sure that it was in my truth to go and pursue a career in the military, but then also having the physical capacity to do it at a really high level. Cause I just didn't want to be any kind of normal person. So I could, you know, they've got a lot of physical tests for the, for the military. They've got, you got to swim, you know, do a lot of swimming. I would do a lot of breath holding. I'd be able to get drowned in a pool for like two hours straight and be chilling. You got to be able to rock for a long time. You got to do a bunch of pull-ups, do a bunch of push-ups, whatever. And you got to run and you got to be able to run really well. So I could at that time, because of fighting, because of Olympic weightlifting, CrossFit, martial arts, all the different river rescue technicians, I could crush everything and every test, except for when I got on the track to go run, I was, I was like top five in everything except for running. I was like bottom five. So there was like a huge disconnect in my physical ability around running that was like very apparent. So I had to search for people that knew how to help me run. And when I found coaches, I'd be like, Hey, I need help running. Can you help me? And they're like, yeah, let me just send you a program. And they would just send me another running program that was, you know, do run this amount on this day and this amount on this day and this amount on this day. But I knew deep inside that the way that I was running, the actual movement of my running was the reason that it was so difficult for me. So I stumbled upon GoToMovement in 2019 and began my movement recode, which was teaching me how to be a better mover moving forward and drastically reduced my run times until I was a hard charge and I could run a long time and I could run fast enough to pass and qualify for the test. So I was ready to rock and roll. And then at 27, which is only like a year ago, I enlisted for the Air Force and then was on my way into the military. I was training with, they had a development group for special operations for a couple months. I was training with them, doing their tests and just hanging out with them, getting prepared to go. And then in November of 2020, I went into the Air Force and you're awesome. You and I talked about that and this is why we kind of like really connected because I had spent so many years developing my physical ability to do this thing that I felt called to do my final crucible and making sure that it was in alignment with who I was as a person, making sure that it was not just this big ego calling, but it was actually something that I felt called to do by my heart. And on the third day of bootcamp, I made the decision that this was not the path that I was going to go down. And the reason that had happened was because of, it was one moment where I had to make a choice. And so on the third day, they marched us in front of the hospital building and kind of sat us all down in the early morning before sunrise. The first thing they did was they took our blood. And the first kind of red flag was one kid like passed out and they kind of like dragged him to the side of the corner and just like sat him there. And I was like, there's like some weird things going on here because I've been in the medical world for a while. And the way that we're being treated right now, it's kind of like, it's very not professional. It's like not, it's not locked up. It's not on point, but they were sitting in front of the hospital and they gave us all a little plastic cup with two pills in it, a blue pill and a yellow pill. And then said, Hey, here's this cup. And they pass it out. And then every once in a while, as they're passing out, they're just saying, Hey, this is an antiviral, this is antiviral, this is antiviral. There were two pills in it. And I was looking at these pills, these little black numbers. I was like, what is this? Like, actually like, what is this? But before I could really understand what it was or what they were saying, they said, hold the cups above your head, put the cup and the pills in your mouth, swallow the pills, stick your tongue out. And they were like walking around, like checking our tongues. And I'm like, this is like, okay, I'm an adult. I know how to take pills. Like, this is like very strange. This is very strange the way that they're going about it. And my physical body was telling me like, I don't want you to take pills right now. Like, this is weird. Like, please don't take these random pills. But I was like, hey, chill out. We're going to be okay. The very next thing they did was line us up to go inside and get vaccinations. And it was the same kind of thing, except this time they didn't tell us what vaccinations we were getting. They were just kind of like pushing us in, you know, like getting inside, getting in line, like, go, go, go, go, like, you know, like, fast, go, go, go, go. And I looked in front of me and just saw people just getting shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. You know, it wasn't like, hey, here's this paper. Like, these are the things that we're going to be doing to you today. We're going to give you some pills. We're going to give you some vaccines. You sign right here. And we're just going to continue this process. You cool with that? You cool with that? Cool. Like, let's get going on with the day. But it was just very much like this, like, machine of, like, putting us through this, this process where there's, you know, like 150 kids. And like, they're just kind of constantly funneling this. So I understand that there's a, like, doing a lot of medical things is difficult on a logistical scale. But having a medical background and then having such a strong grounding in my physical body and, like, who I was and that being my home, that being my, who, like, who I am and, like, a lot of my identity, seeing the people in front of me, like, taking shots and not knowing what I was going to be putting my body and then already having this conversation internally of, like, my body telling me, please don't put unknown substances in me and just, like, take them unwillingly. I was looking at my feet. I looked up and then had this, like, out of body experience where I just kind of turned out of line and just beeline straight to this doctor, the doctor who was yelling at us. Maybe the doctor's guy wearing scrubs. And I just looked at him in the face and told him, like, I'm not taking any shots today. Because that was the only thing that I could comprehend was whatever is happening right now in this space, I'm not okay with. Like, I'm not taking any shots today. And immediately when I said that to him, he's like, what? You know, started yelling at me and then some other drill sergeants came over and started yelling at me too. And I just kept repeating to these guys, like, I'm not taking any shots today. Like, I'm not taking shots today. I don't know what's going on. I'm not taking any shots today. I'm yelling at me until I was, like, in a corner, like, crouched. And the only thing in my brain was, like, okay, like, fighting, like, shots come on. Like, how am I gonna, like, get some needles away from my body? Because I was just in this kind of panic mode. Like, holy fuck, what is happening? I'm not okay with this. They didn't know what to do with me. And they took me away to a separate room. It was like a patient waiting room where a female major came in to greet me. And she was, like, what's going on? And I was, like, look, I don't know what's going on. I come from the medical world. I don't know what shots you're giving me. I'm just saying, I don't know what's going on. I'm just letting you guys know. I'm not taking any shots today. I don't feel comfortable. Don't feel comfortable what's going on. And her response to that was, well, you know, we can put you in prison, right? And I knew that that was, like, a scare tactic for me to get me to, like, do and comply. But the way that I am is, like, someone tells me that they're gonna put more restrictions on me. I'm, like, oh, hell no. Like, you said what? Like, now I'm really not okay. I'm just saying I'm not taking any shots today. And now I'm getting threatened with prison. And it was kind of in that moment where my feet walked, where I had a conversation with myself that was very, very important. And the conversation kind of went like this. It was, like, I don't feel comfortable with this. And I was, okay, you don't feel comfortable with this. You can either, you have two options. You could continue with this and allow them to vaccinate you with whatever it is that they want to do and continue down this path that you've been trained for for four years and that you've dedicated your life to. And this is just going to be the first of many, many, many, many, many instances where they're going to ask you to do something with your physical body that you may or may not be okay with. And if you go down this route, you have to say that that is no longer my option. You know, I'm no longer going to be the one, the only one that's going to be having dominance control and sovereignty over my body. Or you walk the fuck out of this line and you say, this is my body. Nobody else gets to say what to do with it. And I knew that I had those two roads and I could have chosen either one. And I chose to walk out of line and do that. And then when I was met with now, Hey, we're going to put you in prison. I was like, Oh yeah, I really am glad that now we're now I'm really not cool with what's going on because I'm, I'm here to serve. I'm here to help. I'm here to like, like, Hey, I've been training for a very long time and now I feel like I'm being treated like sub human. So that wasn't sitting well with me. Um, and then just to continue on with this story, uh, is right during the, when COVID was going on and the air force is the only branch that was actually going through with basic training. Every other branch was shutting down. And one of the reasons why is because so many people were getting tested positive for COVID were getting sick and tested positive. And so the military was having to comply with that with social distancing, physical education, or like physical, uh, training was like great, greatly diminished. So we weren't exercising. We were all wearing masks. We were all doing six feet social distancing and people are getting sick because we're sleeping in these bunkers and, um, passing this thing around or whatever. I got tested positive a few days later. So they had to quarantine myself and quarantine my whole entire little unit of 40 guys in a hotel room by ourselves. And again, logistically, I understand we've got this unknown virus. People are testing positive. We got to do something. We got to keep these kids healthy. What are we going to do? If you get tested positive, we're going to stick you in a hotel room, lock the door, don't open the windows. You're going to be in there for 10 days until this passes. So logistically, I can kind of understand, but me as a person, me as an individual, having my own individual experience of reality, getting this positive test and getting on a phone call where they're like, we're going to put you in quarantine. All I'm hearing is we're going to put you in a hotel room for 10 days. We're going to lock the door and you're not able to leave. It wasn't like, Hey, are you, is this okay with you? Is this anything? It was like, this is what's happening to you. We're going to put you in a hotel room for 10 days. And the feeling of when I walked into the hotel room and then they locked the door behind me and knowing that I was just going to be in this little hotel room for 10 days was like the second thing that I was like, I was like, had a conversation with someone like, man, like, dude, how the fuck did we get here to where somebody has the ability and power over you to tell you to go in a room and be there for 10 days. Now there might be some people listening or whoever you're in the conversation. How my parents are like, yeah, we, we, what do you think it's military? They like, they own you, but how do you know what it feels like to be owned or controlled by something that you've never really been owned or controlled? Like, I didn't know that they could do that. I didn't know what it felt like for someone to tell you, like go in that room, be there for 10 days. So it was really extremely eyeopening to me to have that experience to say to myself and to say to drill sergeants and in front of 150 of my peers, I'm in control of my body. I'm a sovereign being, and I'm not okay with what's happening. This isn't happening. No. And then to have this experience of being kind of like put in, locked away in hotel room for 10 days and not being able to like, be like, oh, I'm not cool with that was like those two experiences deeply rooted inside of like my chest. And I was like, I had a whole new outlook on life, a whole new outlook on freedom, personal responsibility and sovereignty that, you know, obviously to this day is like, has been a humongous gift, but was at the time, one of those crucibles, one of those trials where you're just like, all right, this feels like a low, this feels tough. Bro, first of all, man, thank you for, for sharing your story. Thanks for being vulnerable and being honest and open about the experience that you had that. Yeah, man, it's pretty wild when you think about it. But I, I get when people say that, like, well, the army owns you, you know, but you don't know it at the time, you know, you have a dream, you're like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go be part of this, I'm going to serve, etc, etc. And then you get faced with the reality. And it's, it's pretty wild. But to have the internal fortitude, to, to stand up to social pressures, to stand up to authority of that in that way, to be in line with 150 people just going through like, kind of bringing cattle to the slaughter, and in a sense, you know, that visual. And to just to say the simplest two letters, and the most powerful two letters that exist, I think, in the English language. And oh, like, no, this is this is not I'm not doing this. I'm choosing something else. [Speaker 2] (44:09 - 44:17) Like, it's pretty, it's pretty awesome, dude. So absolutely incredible story, man. I'm curious. So do you know what the pills were? And did you take them? [Speaker 1] (44:19 - 45:47) We did. And I took those pills. And that was that was like, I think one of the things that really like sat in my stomach, like, I don't, I don't, I don't feel good. Why am I taking these pills? And kind of like, set me up for like, Oh, now I gotta take shots. But the joke, the joke was, after that, guys would come up to me and be like, dude, like, have you had an erection since you got here? It's like, no. And and people like, those were those were anti boner pills, bro. Like, those reduce our testosterone, they needed to like, and that was like the running joke that was going through because everyone's like, what were those pills, dude? Those were anti boner pills. And everyone's like, I haven't gotten a hard on since I've been here too. And then someone's like, no, it's in the mashed potatoes. That's the reason why you're not getting it. No, some of those like, no, it's the water. But the general consensus was that they're anti boner pills. And I that's where I've kind of laid my hat on. Because there's also rumors that the females had to take one pill where the man had to take two pills. So the second one was anti boner pill. The point of the story is, nobody knows. And nobody was having a good time. It's just it's just ridiculous. And this just shines a light on the whole like informed consent thing. You know, you come from the you come from, you know, the healthcare world and in certain ways, and to be able to not be able to communicate, hey, this is what's happening. This is what you're going to do. Like, these are potential side effects, like none of that. It's like you do this or else. [Speaker 2] (45:48 - 46:04) But like, you were literally being herded like cattle, like they just created this, this circumstance and this atmosphere where it's almost like you did it. They didn't want you to have the opportunity to think about things in any kind of rational way. They just created this, this atmosphere is like, okay, this is this is just what's happening. You know? [Speaker 3] (46:04 - 46:04) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (46:04 - 46:16) And even the pressure from the drill sergeants for anyone that would step out of line or anything like that. It's like it wasn't even an option. Like this is just what we're getting done. This is the job we've been asked to complete and it's happening with you guys like it or not. Like that's fucked. [Speaker 1] (46:17 - 55:19) And the military is all about following orders. I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's about chain of command, following orders, and everyone just doing what they need to do. Whatever the person above them tells them to do. So the person who came in, the woman who came in is probably just like, listen, I was she was probably told it, but you're gonna go in there and you're gonna say yes to this or you're going to prison. Right. Yeah. Going along to get along. And I'm so grateful for really my experiences with martial arts and cage fighting and with the ambulance, because in both of those environments, it's complete chaos. It's complete chaos. And in that chaos, you have to find your center and your grounding so that you can be aware in the world. And a lot of those kids were 18 years old, like going through that. And they're just like, they're like, what's happening? Like, I'm not sure. And so many kids came up to me afterwards. And they're like, dude, that was crazy. What happened? They wanted to know. They wanted to hear what I was saying. And what I was saying was like, guys, did you know what they gave you? Like, I didn't know what they gave you. That wasn't cool. Cool with me. And that really was it. Like I might be on a completely different path if they would have just said, hey, this is what we're going to give you today. This is what we're going to do. Here's the schedule today. Let's go on with it. Like a super simple conversation that would have made me feel slightly, you know, humanized instead of not. So I'm really grateful for those experiences on the ambulance and fighting that allowed me to, you know, during whatever chaos they kind of put you through to still have rational mind and clear thinking. Yeah. Dude. Well, first of all, thanks for the whole story, your background, rites of passage. I mean, it's just incredible, man, like to be in that position and to think about the choices that you made early in your life that prepared you for that moment, you know, to have the sense of strength, inner strength, to have a nervous system that can stay somewhat grounded while you're surrounded by that. I want to pivot, man, and really get into your mission now and talk movement, your views on movement. I know God has had a huge influence on you, what God is and anything else that you want to share around that and how it's helped you and how it can help others and give us a little rundown. Well, it's interesting because I feel like when you have a calling inside of yourself to pursue or do whatever it is, it's very important to go do that thing. It's crucial to do that thing and not silence that. I spent from 23 to 27 juggling that, like, do I do this thing or not? When I told my friends that I was going to go in the military, they're like, that doesn't seem like you. That doesn't seem like fitting with you. But I really feel like my person or maybe my subconscious or some higher being was guiding me into this experience. And while I was going through it, I was understanding that it was an experience that was crucial to my now mission. It wasn't about pursuing this dream or how I was going to look in my head. But understanding three things deep in my bones. The first one is sovereignty of the human body. And I am willing to fight, protect and advocate for individual sovereignty of myself, for my friends, for my family, and for anyone, any human being for their right to have sovereignty over their body into what goes on with their body, into what they'd like to do with their body in any ways. And I knew that at a little bit of a level, but it was solidified when I said that to my drill sergeant and in front of other people. And then the second thing was freedom. Freedom. I want to protect, I want to fight for, and I want to advocate for the freedom of myself, my friends, my family, and any human that's alive. I don't want anybody to be locked in a hotel room for 10 days. That shit sucks. It's not okay. Not okay for you, not okay for your brain, not okay for anything. And yeah, we can grind our way through whatever people go through 30 years in prison, but why? We don't need to be locking people up, removing people's freedom. We need to be kind of developing humans, not putting them in cages, putting them in rooms, like shutting them away. It's completely not okay. So I needed to experience that so that I can say to myself in the future and to anybody else, not okay, not good, not all right. And then the third experience was after I got out of the hotel, they put me in this interim building, which was kind of semi-purgatory of like in the military, getting out of the military, but it very much felt like prison as well. I spent 21 days in this place. Yeah, a little halfway house. So you had people that were medically injured, people that were having mental problems, the military didn't know what to do with, or people that were on their way out. And I was in this weird boat of like, it was just an administrative kind of reason. But I spent 21 days here in this space. And the really interesting thing was because of COVID, I had been given what was called a dead man's waiver. And a dead man's waiver was given to me by a medical doctor who cleared me from COVID after my hotel stay and said that I was not allowed to do push-ups, I was not allowed to do pull-ups, I was not allowed to do jumping jacks, I was not allowed to run, I was not allowed to lift things over five pounds. And they demanded that I carry this dead man's waiver in my pocket at all times. So for 21 days, not a long time, it was not allowed for me to physically exercise my body. And the whole conversation I tell you about like every single day, I'm spending hours of my life engaging with my body in a physical practice. And here I was in a place where I had to sneak out of the building with my homie, find where the video cameras were and find a little pocket in this little gym that was on the side and find a little space where we can get after it and do like a workout. And if I got two workouts in that like in a day, because I took every day, you didn't know when you're going to get out of this place. It was like this weird like place where it was like, oh, who's getting out today? Like we don't know. Like when I got in there, they're like, oh, okay, we're going to get you out by Thanksgiving. And the first conversation I had with somebody, I was like, how long have you been in here? He's like three months. And I was like, oh, fuck, this is going to be a ride. But that place was that there was a final third lesson or thing that I needed to experience was the power of physical exercise. I knew the power of physical exercise by martial arts and development. I knew the power of physical exercise by overcoming post-traumatic stress. But now that it was actually removed from me and I was engaging in a physical practice that was like, literally legitimately illegal. I was like, oh my goodness, this means so much to me. This means like so much to me, like, that like, I'm willing to act like a criminal and do whatever I need to, to engage in this thing that has been such a grounding thing for my entire life. So I saw going to the gym, I saw fitness, I saw playgrounds, I saw those things as crucial for the human body, for the human experience. And then I started to see how chairs, office works, you know, concrete, the inability for humans to have this engage in a physical way was greatly diminishing our ability to engage with ourselves in the world. Like a lot of people didn't understand that. And I didn't even know the level of depth that a physical practice could have until it was removed from me and told that it was illegal. And so that process was okay. If I was able to get two workouts in a day and do my meditation in the morning, I was all right. You know, I was like mentally and spiritually sound. [Speaker 2] (55:21 - 55:27) What was their reasoning for limiting your physical practice? Because you had COVID? [Speaker 1] (55:28 - 57:57) Yeah, because of COVID. It was because of COVID. And the second reason is because you're getting out of the military and you're a liability, and they didn't want you to get injured as you were like on your way out. So it was very important that like, you know, you didn't do those things. But I'm like, it was interesting. So those three things, really, personal sovereignty, a human's ability to remain free, and then also a human's ability to engage in a physical practice, whatever that means. I saw those three things as like, I want to spend the rest of my life advocating and fighting for those three things and cultivating that in myself and other people, because I see the importance of it. So immediately when I got out of the military, I knew what the mission was. And that mission was movement. Movement encapsulates all those three things, I was able to pull myself out of the line and walk in a different way. Because I knew how to walk, I knew how to carry my body. And I knew how to carry my body into a cage, I knew how to carry my body into emergency situations on the ambulance. So I knew how to walk myself out of line into somebody else and say no, I don't think that people have the physical ability to do that, because they haven't practiced that. So there's an actual movement practice of moving towards what is your truth. And if we don't move toward that, it's going to be hard. So the actual movement of that, the actual movement moving towards freedom, physical freedom means moving towards less pain, more ability in your body to express yourself, more ability to body to move freely towards the things that you want to pursue that make you full of joy, feel alive and those types of things. And then being able to cultivate and kind of change people change the perspective of what it means to engage in a physical practice with somebody that going to the gym, doing fitness or engaging in physical practice is not just like, okay, I checked that box today, I'm doing some good for my health. But it's like a fucking, like, we need this as as humans. And all of those things are the movement moving in the gym, moving in fitness, moving forward towards the things that fill you up and moving towards personal freedom and sovereignty. Which is now just kind of what I do, I just help people move better. [Speaker 2] (57:58 - 58:28) It's incredible, man, like just the story and how all those experiences that you had actually led you to be so firm in your mission and where you're headed now, you know, and this is why so often we say there's no coincidences, and you can't really regret any part of it. You know, if you're if you're living consciously, and if you're living authentically, then eventually, it all does make sense all those experiences, you know? Let me ask you on a basic level for you, like, what is the correlation between I guess, you mean, bodily movement and psychological well being? [Speaker 1] (58:34 - 1:06:15) Well, I don't think that there's a disconnection between the mind and the body. Like when you're stressed, you feel it, you feel the tension in your body, when you feel um, when something happens, and you're like, oh man, I had that experience, and it just made me sick to my stomach, like you actually feel sick to your stomach. So we know that there's a lot of negative or painful or discomforting feelings that we get that are directly correlated to our psychological state at that time. And so if that is truth, and we can acknowledge that, then the opposite is also true. That the feelings of pleasurable feelings, the feelings of ease, the feelings of peace, the feelings of good feelings in our physical body are also correlated to those same things in our brain. So cultivate if, if something negative can happen psychologically, which causes my body to have a somewhat negative or discomforting feeling, then something positive in my physical body can have a psychological positive benefit, and vice versa. So there is really no disconnect. And so if I'm having some psychological trouble that day, through my physical body, and through a physical practice, I can start to ease my mind, or bring some sense of peace. Or if I'm having some physical discomfort, I can do some mental practices or mental things that are going to bring some physical peace and ease into my body. Hmm. Hey, man, obviously, when you when you talk about fitness and movement, there's so many ways of doing things. And there's things that people do, because this is just the way it's always been done. You know, people who go to the gym are working out the same way people today that they did 40, 50, 60 years ago. And so when you think about it, when you think about movement, as a philosophy, you know, what is your philosophy? You know, as a practice, what is your practice? Like, what has what has inspired you? What has shaped your thoughts on the ideal way to move? And how can, like you said earlier, okay, I can't run very well. But then you found a system that supported you to run better. So can you just talk about that? Because, you know, you got people just go to the gym, do bicep curls, do squats, all that stuff. But like, what, what's your opinion on everything about around that? To me, it's very simple. And it is that the quality of your movement and the quality of your life are almost directly on par with each other. And when my quality of movement diminishes, my quality of life also diminishes. And, you know, let's take an example of I've got back pain, or I have a back spasm. You know, many people have experienced like I had a back spasm, I was on the couch for three days, what is your quality of life to where you're on a couch for three days? Like, it's pretty poor. And that's a direct response, because you can no longer move. It's like you're in prison, dude, you know, it's like you're in prison. So if that happens, if our when our quality of movement decreases, and then our quality of life decreases at the same time, the opposite of true, when my movement quality increases, my quality of life increases. Very simple. That's, that's what that's what happens. And then you say, like, well, what life would I like to have? What things would I like to do in my life? Whatever it is that you want to do in your life, it requires movement. In order like even the simplest things like this podcast, each one of us had to move ourself into this position in front of this computer in order to have this. And if we didn't have the ability to walk, sit, breathe, do all these basic fundamental things, we couldn't have this podcast. And so movement is ever pervasive through our life. And so when you get down to the nitty gritty of what, what is it that I actually want to do? What experiences do I want to do? Then you say, wow, okay, this is what I want to do with my life. Now what movements are going to be needed for me to do those things. And then if you take those movements and say, okay, I'm going to do those movements really, really, really well, then the chances of you having that experience and the chances of you having that experience at a really high level is like going to be directly like related to each other. But whatever it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you want to pursue, let's pursue those things that are really high quality. Cool. So what's, what's the ideal way to move? Like, you know, if someone goes to your Instagram page, you know, they're going to see you doing some funky shit. Like, yeah. What is that? What is that all about? I, you know, a lot of my Instagram is trying to take these three things that I learned from that last experience in the military. And like, how do I express that through my physicality? Which is like, I'm going to move in some crazy ways in some crazy places. It's going to kind of change people's idea around movement and what is possible. But the underlying thing that is extremely important for all of us to acknowledge is that our primary function as a human is the ability to walk forward. So walking is the most crucial thing that is the backbone of our life and our movement. So you want to be a black belt, high quality walker. Like that's it. The conversation that I had, I was recently just with working with a golfer and it was like, he would introduce me like, this is my walking coach. And I was like, fuck yeah, I'm his walking coach. Like I'm not your strength coach, like trying to get you strong as hell. Like I'm here to help you walk straight. And walking straight is actually a very difficult task for us. If we grew up in the modern world, sitting in chairs at an early age, we started to lose that ability and we're starting to lose that ability on a global scale because of the environments that we're in and the lack of traveling, the lack of walking that we're doing. So what is the optimal way to move? The optimal way to move for the human body is always organized around our ability to move forward. And we move forward by walking. That's what we do. We don't swim. We don't climb. The human body walks forward. So you want to be the highest quality of walking possible. The people who walk at the highest quality also have the least amount of pain, the least amount of compression in the joints and connective tissue, the least amount of back pain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This idea that the strongest people are the ones that are the most durable in life has a complete hogwash. We've seen that. The bodybuilders, power lifters, the Olympic weightlifters, I've felt it, I've seen it in my body. Those people sometimes are the most broken people. Strength is not related to our ability to move forward through our life pain-free and for a long, long, long time with health. Walking is the underlying thing that makes a human a human. And it's such a simple and it's so blatantly obvious that we completely just kind of forget about it. And so part of my mission is kind of bringing that to people's awareness that your ability to walk is paramount, completely paramount for your ability to go forward in your life. [Speaker 2] (1:06:16 - 1:06:19) Yeah. How does one become the Michael Jordan of walking? [Speaker 1] (1:06:20 - 1:06:35) Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. And I just want to piggyback on that is that because when we started working together and I plan to continue working with you, you had me videotape myself doing a bunch of basic movements. And our first session together, you did... [Speaker 2] (1:06:35 - 1:06:37) And you made me watch them. [Speaker 1] (1:06:38 - 1:12:31) Yeah. And our first session, you went through shit like such slow-mo. It was like slow-mo of every aspect of how I looked when I was walking forward, walking away from you, running towards you, running away from you, squatting down, running in place, walking in place, etc. And so with that said, and Joel's question, how do you become the Michael Jordan of walking? Talk about that a little bit. I know it's a lot easier to show it and as opposed to just to talk about it. I mean, we're talking about movement. Usually you want to show movement or be engaged with movement, but we're on a podcast, so we're going to talk about it. Obviously, I go a little bit philosophical, so it's really important too to acknowledge that each one of us, myself, your husband, Joel, we taught ourselves how to walk. Independent. We looked at the people that were walking around us when we were babies, but nobody, before language, before anything, we had to actually teach ourselves how to walk. This is extremely important because it is a testament to the nervous system and our ability to learn the neuroplasticity of our bodies, that every single human has this experience where they are immobile, they're unable to move forward, and they figure out from zero to nine or maybe even one and a half years, the ability to go from lying on your back to upright on two feet, walking and running. It's insane, and it's an absolute miracle that we can do that to ourselves and that we can teach ourselves that. The moment we teach ourselves that, we're like, cool, got it, forget about it, on to the next thing, on to the next skill. That skill set of teaching ourselves how to walk better, if we did it without language, if we did it before YouTube, if we did it before having an educational online course or a coach teach us how to walk, that means that that system of self-education, self-regulation, self-awareness, and understanding is always, always, always there for us, and we are always have the ability to go back into that process and to walk better or to teach ourselves a better skill. So now you have people like myself and other hard-charging coaches that are using our rational brains and language and video and slow-motion evidence to make this process faster, but it's very important for me to acknowledge that the ultimate thing that I, you know, say my blessings to and bow down to is the human body and the natural intelligence of the human body that allows us to teach ourselves how to walk. So the saying, crawl before you walk and walk before you run is extremely, extremely valid. If you have trouble walking, get back on the ground and start crawling and crawl every single day, and by crawling, you will figure out how to walk, and you walk every single day, you will figure out how to run, and you go back into that process of what was it like from starting on my back to going to my belly to crawling to walking and then to running, because ultimately, my slow-motion video, like you're asking most of the things that we did and illuminate that issue is just to get you bought into this thing, just to get you bought into this concept that, hey, I need to go back to the beginning, back into this process, I need to get myself on the ground, I need to figure out these things that I did before so that I can do. If you go into preschool or any kindergarten playground and you look at those kids, they are sprinting and running around like Olympic sprinters, and they're doing it barefoot in the grass without a care in the world, you know, and they don't even know they're sprinting, they're just like doing it, and then around third grade or fourth grade is when it starts to break down and we start to lose it because that's how long we've been sitting in chairs and had sneakers on our feet and other things like that. So how does one become a world-class Michael Jordan walker is you need to walk, you need to go back into this process, maybe that means you need to start crawling again, but if you want to get better at something, you have to do that thing. And right now, there are many people that don't walk more than half a mile in their day-to-day life, because they just walk to the car, from the car they go into the grocery store or into work, and from there it's just like house, car, car, grocery store, like our ability to walk and our need to walk is being outsourced by automobiles and other types of things. So I really encourage people to engage in a practice of walking, and when you engage in a practice of walking and you bring this awareness to your physical body, your body will tell you like, that doesn't feel good, please stop doing that with your right leg. You're like, oh, I can just do this. It's like, yes, and your body will say, yes, I would like you to do that better. You're like, oh, no big deal. Got it. That same language, that same relationship that you had when you taught yourself how to do is always there, but you have to put yourself in that space and you have to give yourself that time and that awareness to have that deep conversation with your body. When your frontal lobe and your mind stops working, the language and the inner dialogue shuts down so that your nervous system can start to talk to you and it talks to you in pain and pleasure, signals and green lights and red lights. You were going to say something? [Speaker 2] (1:12:32 - 1:12:59) Yeah, I was just going to say like, I mean, particularly we try to, I've got two daughters, three and one, and we tried to make sure consciously that they crawl properly before they start walking out to bypass that process. Because I think there's studies that there's actually neural development delays if children skip crawling as well. And I mean, that goes back to the correlation between bodily movement and I guess our psychology, so to speak. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:13:00 - 1:14:48) Yeah. And a big reason why is because parents want their kids to walk, so they're grabbing their hand and they're like bringing them up or they're putting them in little chairs instead of letting them be on the ground for a long time. Or the kids are on the ground for a long time, but the house has this beautiful hardwood floor or marble tile and it hurts the knees and it hurts the feet and they don't want to be there. So they want to get up off their feet because it doesn't feel good to be on that beautiful hardwood floor. It's kind of taken away. They want to be outside on the grass. They want to be in the mud. They want to be on the carpet or whatever. Going to like a grocery store, it's a common thing that I've seen throughout my life. The word a kid just goes, he's like in a public space and he's on the ground and the parents get embarrassed and get off the ground, you know, like, you know, pull that kid off the ground. The kid's like, yo, I'm chilling. I love the ground. Like what's going on? But we're kind of reinforced at an early age, get off the ground, get off the ground, get off the ground. That's not where you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be standing on your feet with shoes on your feet, you know, acting like a good adult. Yeah. You know what I find interesting too? And I think it's when a child's older, but very often I see like a child walking next to their parent and then the parent has certain biomechanical patterns or issues. And then the child like has the same exact ones. They just look identical, you know, or the young teenager or someone who's nine, 10 years old. You know, I even, I'm seeing it even younger, man. I'm seeing like, you know, kids who are younger than like, let's say first grade and I'm watching their movement and you know, they don't have heal away all day. You know what I'm saying, dude? It's just curious to see. So I'd love to hear your comment on that a bit, you know, in terms of like, I guess, is it subconsciously the child's mimicking? Is it some genetic factors? Is it a combination of the two? Are they just living in the same environment? And that's just fascinating to think about. [Speaker 4] (1:14:49 - 1:14:50) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:14:50 - 1:15:34) Well, real quickly, let me, let me just talk about for me for a second. So when I was a kid, I always sat in that, like the M position, you know, like where my legs are out, like why? No. So my W sitting, they call it W sitting. Yeah. Or W I guess I say M because I look down and I see an M, but yeah, someone looking at me is W. And so, but so I know that's that along with who knows what else caused a little bit of issues. So when I like, when I run, I'm like my right leg, especially kind of comes out. It's a little like funky looking. I played tons of sports, crazy, you know, but I had injuries as I got into like high school and later on, you know, so anyways, I said a bunch of things there, but I'd love to hear you talk about it. [Speaker 2] (1:15:34 - 1:15:37) Yeah. I remember the slow-mo zooming of that, of that right ankle, bro. [Speaker 1] (1:15:42 - 1:15:45) Oh, crucial. It's crucial to see it cringe. [Speaker 4] (1:15:46 - 1:15:46) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:15:47 - 1:15:55) But the, what I would say, you know, you know, if I get sciency with it and don't quote me on this, but it's mirror neurons. [Speaker 4] (1:15:56 - 1:15:57) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. [Speaker 1] (1:15:57 - 1:19:25) That's what I was thinking. Which is, you know, again, it's the human nervous system that is doing a really good job. It's, we're supposed to mirror the people that are around us because the people that are around us are supposed to have a really good way to move about our environment. But if our environment is sitting on couches and like, you know, getting in and out of cars and then sitting at a dining room table and like, there's like, isn't any movement, we're going to mirror that. But in our, the reason that the human nervous system is a blank slate when you're born is because you might be born in Siberia or you might be born in Jamaica and those are two different lifestyles. And it's crucial for you to be able to adapt as quickly as possible to those things. Our ability to adapt is what makes us such powerful species ability to change and mold. So that is a kind of a gift and a curse because now we can adapt really rapidly to some really bad movement patterns. So unless our parents and our kids, like our friends and all of them are moving really well, most likely you're going to adopt some very similar poor movement patterns. Yeah. It makes sense to, you know, you talk about it regarding the nervous system because I tell people, I've told clients of mine as well, where it's like, you know, these children, they're modeling, you can say whatever you want to your child, but they're modeling your nervous system, you know? So if the parent isn't functioning from a more regulated place, you know, how's that going to impact the child? So again, for movement, if the parents in a chair all the time, driving a car and, you know, they don't have the most ideal posture, you know, it's going to rub off. Yeah. I say rub off, like that's not a very scientific term, but you know what I mean? Rub off, yeah. And the great thing about this is that we don't have to get super complicated with it. It becomes an awareness game, it becomes an educational game of saying, like, hey, it's really important, like Joel, you're a great example, is that you had this, somebody told you, or you found something about how important it was for your children to be able to crawl. So in their development years, you just made it a point that they spent some more time crawling on the ground. Maybe that meant that you spent some time on the ground with them so they felt comfortable being down there, they didn't have the social pressure to stand up. Or maybe it meant that you bought some nice wrestling mats, or, you know, took them to the park and let them, like, crawl on the ground. Like, you consciously provided an opportunity and an environment so that they could have that. And all that took was somebody telling you, or some piece of literature, or something that you, an original thought, that gave, that completely changed the game and maybe changed the trajectory of your children's life, like, for the better. You know, so it becomes this, like, it's very simple stuff. We need to crawl for a long time, we need to walk, we need to do some very basic things that fulfill and satisfy the human animal so that we can be strong and durable. It's, like, super simple things. You don't have to take your kids into 24-hour fitness and get them doing barbell deadlifts, like, at seven years old. It's, like, no. We need to just be walking and crawling and moving about our environment at an early age, early and often. It's not super difficult. [Speaker 2] (1:19:27 - 1:20:23) Awesome, man. Dude, I absolutely love your philosophy. And, like, with all things, man, I think people can easily get, like, overwhelmed and over-complicate, you know what's right. And most of the time, it is just this, the hardest part is just learning, or just listening, and just coming across the information, just hearing it, you know. Oftentimes, we refuse to do the work because we get mentally overwhelmed thinking, oh, how am I ever going to get back to that place, you know. But really, man, it's just a matter of, I guess, learning at the end of the day. Bam, it's been such a pleasure to share the past 90 minutes with you. Your story is absolutely incredible, and so grateful to have heard it myself. And I'm sure audience is absolutely going to love it as well. Let me ask you a question, man. Do you, like, do you work with mere mortals? How can our audience find you? Or is it only for Michael Jordans and Tom Brady's? And you're awesome. [Speaker 1] (1:20:25 - 1:22:52) I actually really enjoy working with everyday people more than high-level athletes. High-level athletes are oftentimes princesses and need a lot attention and care. I like working with everyday people because they have stories, and they have normal lives. And you can help somebody move better and get out of pain, and that will, like, directly, like we said, improve the quality of their life. So I work with people online right now. I'm in the process of developing some educational courses. So within, you know, maybe in one or two months, that's going to be available. And I'm really excited to start to share this knowledge and make it accessible to people. But the best way to get in contact with me is through Instagram. Send me a message, or in my link, you can schedule a session with me, and we can get you assessed, and we can get you started on this path. And if I'm busy, I can direct you to somebody else who's doing the exact same work for you, you know, and myself and other coaches that do the same work. We work with children. We work with, I work with my grandma. You know, we work with anybody and everyone. The way that I would train, you know, a Michael Jordan is the same way that I would train my grandma, because they're both humans. It's very important. Will your grandma be able to take off from the foul line and dunk it? Hell yeah, she will. It's a hard time. You don't know, fuck. We'll have your information on the show notes and everything. But if you wanted to say, what your Instagram is and anything else. Yeah, Instagram is GoToBam, G-O-A-T-A-B-A-M, GoToBam. Hit me up, send me a message. I'm just going to tell you to get back to walking. Yeah, get back to walking. I love it. Are you walking? What did you say? I got to start. I have to start walking more, man. I mean, now that, you know, we planted some fruit trees, I'll be spending some more time outside. And, you know, I got to get on my practices and just, you know, like Joel said, it's about learning. It's about doing the work. It's about showing up every day for yourself. No matter what it is you do, you have to show up for yourself. The more you show up for yourself every day, you build more self-esteem, you have more confidence to keep showing up for yourself, to keep doing the things, to improve in all the different areas of your life, whatever that area may be, you know, whether it's movement, whether it's your career, whether it's in relationships, whether it's whatever, showing up for yourself. So, Joel, we get a final question for Bam or are we good? [Speaker 2] (1:22:52 - 1:23:11) Okay, we got a final question for Bam. Bam, if you had the entire world of social media's ears pricked and they could hear a single message that you would have to say, everyone that ever used social media is going to see this message, what would it be? [Speaker 1] (1:23:12 - 1:23:13) Walk every day. [Speaker 2] (1:23:14 - 1:24:08) There we go. There we go. Walk every day. I love it, man. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I hope you got the message and we'll see you next time. Take care. Wow, what an incredible story Bam has and what an incredible human being. Truly, truly heroic by all means. Guys, this is an organic grassroots podcast. So, if you enjoyed it, we'd really appreciate it, you sharing it with your friends or on social media or wherever you share podcasts and wherever you're listening, please rate and subscribe and it really would mean a lot for our growth and for us to continue to get the word out there to others that are here for the truth. Also, feel free to drop into the comments at any time, let us know how you feel about the episode and we're always going to respond to you. That being said, have an awesome week and we'll see you next week. Take care.