Fred Pinto Podcast | Shut Up and Move! A Conversation with Ido Portal

Age should be disregarded but aging should be accepted and worked with this is my conversation with world-renowned movement expert and thinker Ido portal I first discovered Ido as a UFC fan when Conor McGregor called him in for some help for a training camp and like many others I was super impressed with his virtuoso movement techniques and abilities but over the next few years I listened to him break down his approach And ideas on various podcasts and documentaries and it became clear to me that there was was a lot more to Ido than just a series

of impressive physical routines and exercises Ido talks about how rigid we become when we follow narrow performance goals the fact that movement and Stillness are always present in one another and how learning to move gets us closer and closer to the real core of who we are as humans there was clearly an approach to life there And an ethos perhaps that went beyond the benefits of one movement technique or another he may be in the words of Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Hu the world's foremost expert on human movement but his approach also transcends Athletics and points

to something else a system of ideas a a way of being perhaps that I felt could translate to other areas of life my goal in this interview was to better understand the ideas behind what's known All around the world today as the Ido portal method to really uncover the tenets of the Ido pel philosophy in true Ido fashion his answers were super usual and surprising bringing in Concepts and insights very differently from the way we usually think about these things opening up new avenues of exploration throughout he offers us a glimpse into what it means

to go through life not as thinkers or even as doers but as better Movers in short it's about movement as one aspect of the art of becoming our true selves I hope you all enjoy it nearly as much as I did this is Ido portal [Music] [Music] EO ptal welcome thank you so much thank you for having me yes so I first came across your work years ago as a UFC fan uh watching uh the whole Conor McGregor Bring you in as the movement master and started including you and your techniques in his fight prep

and then of course started digging more and more into movement culture this this eclectic an amazing combination of things that you created around movement practices workshops but also a lifestyle and and a whole sort of uh culture really that you've created uh as a result of this uh lengthy personal journey of experimenting with different forms of Movement like from capera to gymnastics to dance martial arts leading to your own Innovations and philosophies that you've refined over the years and it was clear to me from the beginning when I was hearing you speak that you approached

movement and you spoke about movement in a very unique way a very all-encompassing and and exploratory way and I remember like my wife and I listening to a lot of your interviews and we both got a sense that there was Something it was not just about the physical side it was not just about the physical movement but it was almost like a different way of approaching life more generally there was all was this this philosophy that you have and and this to me is what I find so fascinating about your work and so first of

all I want to thank you for making some time and for agreeing to talk to me today thank you so much it's my honor and pleasure and great to hear those Words and that the message can H can travel and to make make such an effect on people's lives absolutely so I want to start on a bit of a personal note out of a bit of curiosity I wonder how you found yourself engaged on this very particular Journey which is very kind of unique and very peculiar and detracts from the kind of the general grooves

that we have in society so you clearly deviated at some point from the standard route of you Know go to school find a job uh do what your boss tells you uh organize Leisure there's these kind of grooves that a lot of us most of us kind of follow at least early on your life is about as far from that as I can imagine I imagine there there were very many of these but was there any key moment or realization growing up where this very peculiar path that you're walking kind of revealed itself to you

when you realize that what you needed and what kind of moved you Internally was very different than what let's call it mainstream Society was was proposing to you and wow that's a it's a great way to to ask him to penetrate through it and I have been asked this question in many ways but not specifically in this way um really the heart of it maybe is related to my thinking process which is very natural and intimate and individual to me I don't know any other thinking process and maybe related to cynicism Maybe related to um

kind of a penetrating mind that is not a I don't mean in in essence in in the intensity of the thinking but more in the never resting kind of penetration and uh what I've been offered until a certain point in life I I saw through that it was um it didn't didn't make sense didn't didn't go the whole way there were always kind of a pitfalls and and issues Whether it was classical education or you know even marriage or or organized practices ER religion anything that was there didn't quite satisfy me and sometimes what was

offered was not really what the what I saw was occurring and happening and other times what was offered didn't even make sense to begin with so that slowly led me to to look into my own thinking process to look into my own Evolution my own Discovery my own growth and um one Of the first thing that became very clear is that this up here is a big trap and so I actually grew up in a in an environment ER that allows a lot the use of this Jewish and Israeli we have a lot of thinking

a lot of debating a lot of science a lot of analytical thought but um that was the first realization that okay this doesn't go beyond a certain a certain H glass Ceiling and that led me to the body and the body lies a lot less and it doesn't H it's it's very Frank it's very honest sometimes people say the body betrayed me but the body also tells you the truth in many ways and that slowly slowly developed beyond the body into concept of movement which is really not the body should be separated from the body

and uh movement as a concept is also larger than physical movement but even physical Movement is larger than the body it's often confused that was the beginning of the process and that continued to give me um the discoveries continue to give me Evolution continue to give me hope continue to give me um the next phase in my life every time when I needed that it continued to give me a way to practice myself not being satisfied with who I am and not being offered also alternatives on how to work on myself in many ways That

that was the process so it was really a thread that you you see why I I I I feel like when we're dealing with Ido we're dealing with a philosopher not just a a mover or a technician of this movement that movement people will try to reduce it to these different frames but it seems like it's really um a thread around okay understanding the kind of uh the over analytical overthinking the traps of the mind and then it's funny how how you phrased it Because a lot of times when people think of transcendence or transcending

the traps of the Mind they'll think of a purely let's call it Divine spiritual thing but entering the body is also Transcendent as you said it confronts you to certain limitations it confronts you to certain realities and then and then and then and then it's a whole beginning of a whole other exploration so you use this term a lot so movement practice and just the way you said it Now like it's not just physical movement it goes beyond physical movement of course the way the Mind moves will affect the way the body moves the way

you you use it is is much more General than the typical let's call the physical activities we're exposed to growing up which are usually structured around more precise goals or uh performance objectives you know playing a sport or going to the gym or getting faster even sports like gymnastics that appear to be More free and more open they have kind of like set routines and certain moves that are considered proficient and that are considered like V virtuoso and that are kind of recognized in the field you you use the concept of movement in a much

more open multifaceted way it includes performance but it also includes play it includes Aesthetics it includes testing boundaries in different ways playing with Stillness with Rhythms you you've said that even using the word movement constricts you and that you like to let the practice Define itself you even said once that you see the inevitable end of the word movement for you that that if you look at something and Define it too much it vanishes but if you look away it can function so because we're kind of like we're testing the the limits of of language

here and how it constrains us sometimes but it could also be a useful Tool and help us kind of share a broad understanding of something what would be a helpful simple frame for us to think about what movement is in your terms in this kind of really General way because clearly it's not just about performance it's not about one particular goal it seems to be all these different goals colliding and feeding each other all at the same time yeah that's a that's the million dooll question and um in in many ways uh It's impossible to

answer um because the entry point doesn't matter and any entry point should be used into this nebulous term but then where it's going to evolve to might not be anything related to to your entry point so I entered this concept um through very simple doors in a in a relatively younger age and so for me it began with physical movement it began it began with the body it began with seeing the pitfalls of the the mind and the intellectual and the Discursive thinking process and wanting to get deeper but then it evolved to wow so

many different layers and things so we we should first separate where we start and where it can go where it can go we can discuss but to have an experience of it that's something totally different which will require practice you've said ER that often people think of transcendence um in in a Divine way but actually there you cannot out you cannot Think your way out of thinking so Transcendence is just another concept but when you are in motion and when you are communicating by being in movement with a certain Stillness which is always informing the

movement then you are already unpacking an experience a nonverbal exp experience and I say often that that's what the doctor prescribes since the age of men but especially these days nonverbal experiences the verbal experience is Limited and and and it's always also from its nature non-coherent it's the the one of the weird phenomenal the the Cockiness and the snobism of of intellectual thinking is that things are going to make sense but of course the nature of things they're not going to make sense they're non-coherent our knowledge is based on extrapolation on um simplifying something ungraspable

and making it small those Words so actually our knowledge can NE can never be really coherent it can never really grasp truth it should be pointing it should be facilitating it should be helping us but then the experience does not try to grasp anything but it is much more honest with the nature of things as they are so movement is that for me is to be in in the Bliss of things and that's also again very much related to Stillness it's almost the same thing and whether you begin here or you begin there or whether

you don't begin any place or you try to balance it out from the beginning Etc but then how do we enter this uh big concept well with simple practices wherever we are Joe Denny Tommy timy whatever you think you think something shiny in the beginning and you start to work with it uh it can can be the shape of your body it can be um certain beautiful movements it can be A technical approach it can be improvised um and you start to unpack the education will take you further and the thinking about movement in this

General way will take you deeper and further and it will start to pull you into these deep Waters at least in the way that I am approaching it and doing it but I'm fully aware that the entry point can be very simple and I respect it as well because also most people they also not only have a simple entry point They also have as soon to be discovered exit point and and this concept you know is entering this washing machine and working with it and many people will not work with it Beyond a certain point

and that's perfectly fine and it will give them whatever they're willing to to invest and take others will take it further so for me that is that is where it goes is this very open very nebulous very Undefined uh experiential embodiment you can use the word embodiment although it's not in the body I dislike this term um it's more connected to the essence of movement and also the sensation of ourselves he um not long ago I had a I had a little talk with Professor huberman from Stanford University and he he he he said something

to me he said I wonder what is your experience of life as you are experiencing so much you are Targeting and ex the the experiential part of movement and whether that is actually closer to the nature of the nervous system closer to the nature of life itself than to live inside words H which is more the kind of predominant experience right so for me that is movement H interesting so there there's always the theme of um a very authentic encounter so from the individual right so even doing the same movement for me and for you

will maybe mean different Things or we're encountering different different boundaries but there's also obviously the theme of openness and exploration that comes back over and over with you it it seems like almost an ethos for you like a way of being more than just about trying this movement or practicing this or that routine you once gave the analogy and I thought about it now when you when you describe you know one individual just starting to explore with their own body you give the analogy We can learn to make better chairs or we can learn to

grow the tree right so growing the tree obviously is uh much more open it corresponds to an inner logic right where it's connected to Nature whereas is making the chair is more like we're making nature fit into the shape of a functional mental model which of course has some utility but in a way also violates a kind of inner nature of what the tree itself wants to become without any mental model at all And it's this idea of leaving it wild letting it go more and more until until you say an Essence is revealed because

it was already there so in the west obviously we live in a performance culture right and we're used to being told what to do how to do it to excel that's what everybody's kind of very using all of their words around a lot of times it's it's it's these performance standards and very early on in school and then in the workplace but also in Athletics right playing sports like doing it the right way in a sense that's what we're all kind of trying to figure out what's the right way what's the right way of building

a company what's the right way of getting clients what's the right way of playing this sport or that sport in a sense the opposite of growing the tree what does the tree want to become right uh we just mostly want to become better chairs and even then sometimes our Chairs uh are pretty bad and cheap um so I want to ask you how do we how do you approach this this growing the tree as tree so letting it Loose opening it up to the its inner potential is that something you can even train for or

or or maybe invite in certain ways are there maybe a set of tools that you use yourself to keep kind of ready and open to allow things to unfold according to their inner logic or am I using too many words and am I trying already to create The next prison of trying to Define it h well maybe it's the best use of ambition and to to turn ambition on itself right and to De ambition ourselves and and and to well I think like maybe the the the most important thing is a realization that just doesn't

I think just most thinkers don't go all the way through you know as OSU said in order to go beyond you must go through and I think like very often in Terms of thinking about things especially now in popular culture we have deep thinkers but not all the way through thinkers so what we get is we get an illusion of what I want to do the goals doing it right Etc none of this has any any any kind of connection to reality it doesn't matter what you want to do And and also your goals don't

matter at all what happens when you reach your goals well Fred I'm I'm sure someone like you already discovered because those who actually reach their goals discover that the red race of of of running after these goals is exposed in the moment of reaching them and you can other goals um but it will be limited so anyone who really goes through and chain you know seemingly through doing some kind of a doing which is another subject Al together but any who had success sees the the downfall of those goals you know okay I want to

be an amazing musician so I end up like Court Kuban we know how that finished so what is going to happen when you get the money what is going to happen when you get the skill what is going to happen when you get the wife so all of this really doesn't work which has been talked about and discussed by religions and by PR Practitioners since the age of men but we still don't get the message and then you turn into empowering something other than yourself a concept bigger than yourself that can provide you back with

a certain power of evolution expanding your boundaries because as long as the concept is within yourself you're the one calling the shots you're all the time very limited and you cannot grow as The tree grows but when the tree is informed by Nature around it then this naturally unfolds for me that's the concept of being in practice or being a practitioner and that that also relates to movement but here let's say the most the big focus is on the word to practice to practice is not to do handstands to practice is not to play the

violine to practice is not to bake bread all of These are practices and they can be used as a self- practice but we are lacking something much deeper a human practice a Fred practice an Ido practice so for me that is what I'm talking about that is what I'm sharing that is what I'm teaching how to evolve ourselves to grow ourselves by empowering the practice Beyond ourselves the first stage is to see our incapacities our weaknesses our issues the things that we believe we Possess but we don't really possess like uh the ability to do

and you know real uniqueness and um and stability you know and the these are things first to connect to to see that maybe they're not there maybe we've assumed that they are there and we we were raised to think that they are there but truly even successful people like you or me we know that we were allowed to succeed in certain scenarios and if the scenarios were a bit different we would not be Allowed to succeed and um I as been in a lot of extreme scenarios as that this became very clear and I I

think of myself as as a very hard worker I think of myself as a doer well I used to think of myself but in reality that's far from the truth and once you see that you start to okay you start to let go to soften your approach your hold of performance and goal setting Etc and you start to look into something else and to soften it into it to be ambition Yourself to to start to receive those powers and funny enough what happens is you start to really do in relation to before you start to

really receive you know it's things just come to you they unfold and and and and skills success people whatever and and that that is very powerful and that that is what I think we should teach our children and what we should give our you know our loved ones And ourselves it's funny because you know when you ask these questions you're kind of hoping for the uh the little checklist the little clear checklist but the thread the thread that you just pulled was just so clear to me from step by step first of all with so

many things you said but when you say about the um the success when you achieve the success and and then the experience that you have with it I I actually wrote a novel About 10 years ago and it was about this this problem it was the problem of not a failure because failure protects you because when you fail at the goal you can always tell yourself oh I haven't found the answer but that's because I failed when I do find the answer I'm I still have the I'm I'm asking the right question and I still

have the right goal but what happens when you succeed and you don't get what you're supposed to get that's the real existential Despair And it's something that happened in my life over and over as a result of having the false goals or having Ju Just let's say reducing life to maybe certain performance goals or career goals or just having the wrong goals as you say the self-contained goals and for me where that exploration led me is exactly when you mentioned the tree when the tree starts to realize it's part of a forest let's say or

part of a community it's the interdependence it's The contribution is being embedded in something way broader than just these little goals that we tell ourselves or that we received from a teacher or that we received from a school and that that's the only place that that can go and then and then when you say about starting with seeing our weaknesses and our incapacities I've often had this thought that um it's funny you hit all those notes in in that little little um Exploration um it's very hard to I I feel to transcend a limitation if

you're not aware of it so for that reason I've always felt that humility is the first rung of transcendence yeah it's POS it's actually impossible because you believe you possess it so how are you going to get it if you already think you have it right exactly exactly and so I was literally getting chills when I was hearing you go go through that that that Exploration and it's very uh it's very very very powerful in a way the tree does not decide how to become a better tree as it's becoming a better tree it's just

fully invested in that that inner process and it's not defining before being so there's there's there's a clear approach there I find and let me let let me add something just just to because I I believe people are going to of course immediately have some some inquiries I'm not suggesting something that turns into This passive thing there is no you know no kind of activity no no we're not talking about that we're not talking about some kind of a new Aging for example I'm the guy who is out there I'm training physically eight hours a

day if you include my Stillness practice it's like I don't know 12 hours a day I'm reading 3 to four books a week and I have been for many many years so sing I'm not I'm not talking about some kind of a new AG Disconnect from whatever I'm talking about not falling into the traps of thinking you are in control so it means I'm not sitting on the River Bank I'm jumping in the water but I'm also not trying to roll my way Upstream because there is no chance to roll Upstream because the stream is

so strong moving down so I navigate my little boat down stream so it's fully active but it's also aware of the powers that are Surrounding us and our incapacities to really deal with it so instead of falling into delusions of doing and delusions of achieving Etc yes you set goals in the traditional sense but you are also involved with those goals in a much more deep and complex relationship than I'm going to do this many times the goal will be taken away from you and another goal will be presented to you Etc yeah it's much

more of an additive it's it's You're adding you're adding colors to the the pallette you're not restricting yourself to these these these these limiting goals I I have another frame to propose to you and I wonder if this this is something that you see in movement culture and with the people that you work with sometimes I feel like what you describe as part of a let's call it a developmental Arc for people so early on we all have to fit in to some degree in society we have to be recognized by so Just to survive

to make a living and so we make these big decisions on let's say what we're going to do for a living or or who we're going to be in the world and then inevitably and sometimes there's a lot of utility to those decisions you have to make those decisions you have to turn yourself into something before you can explore being nothing and then and then what what are your truly becoming so there's like stages of development and then we Inevitably end up paying a price for these decisions of what we're going to be and how

we're going to be we develop in yian terms let's call it a shadow right we we we become a little bit aifi we develop blind spots there are parts of our potential that we do not tend to there are potentialities inside of us that we neglect as a result of the decisions that we've made of who we're going to be and how we're going to show up in the world and then I think we Maybe reach a point and this is what I want to kind of investigate with you is this something that you've experienced

personally or with the people that you work with where we start almost like hearing the call of our lost potential of all the things that we've chosen not to be of all the potential that we left behind and we're called to wake up that dormant potential and we can't just access that by doing more of the same by performing Harder by putting your head Down and working harder you're not going to get there by working harder we have to get humble we have to maybe like breathe through the belly a little bit we have to

open ourselves we have to become a beginner again at certain things we have to fail a little bit more than our egos are comfortable um letting us fail we have to suck a little bit and then we could maybe start to enter a different phase of life where um we can activate some of that lost potential and That was made dormant by our survival decisions early on and maybe become a fuller person even if that comes at a price of being a less good version of the performance you that you were you got in that

the first half of the journey is this something that kind of rings a bell something that you experience something that that the people you work with experience yeah yeah it's a common Journey um maybe related To to be a lesser version of a very strictly defined and limited concept of yourself that was there before but a much more Fuller version of a closer idea of a really of of of of a real deep essential view you can say so we tend to think in very constricted terms especially earlier in life that's who I am you

have those titles ER I'm Israeli I'm a male I'm this age I do this I do that I'm short I am tall I'm you know a muscular I'm not Muscular all these titles keep on kind of you you place them in front of you they most people they you see them entering the room these titles enter before them and and then so when you let go you are like letting go of that limited you you get them you get a much bigger gift but that's first unknown so you keep on hanging to that constricted thing

by the way for me it was something very much related to Skill so we're talking about I'm when I experienced it I experienced it in relation to skill so I have this skill and then okay is that skill who I am I I don't want to lose the skill I don't want to lose the skill but it's like okay that's what what am I losing by holding on to the skill by maintaining the skill what else am I losing I'll give you an example H in North America you have Those H refuse to age ER

older usually gentlemen somehow women are not so which is very interesting is are less common in this phenomenon recently and but all kinds of successful people males h i see the the anti-aging the Fountain of Youth or the old bodybuilders the prune face with the 16-year-old body and okay so you can hold on to your muscle mess and you do the hormone replacement and you do this and you do That but what else are you losing what this is Not For a Moment conceptualized For example to look yourself in the mirror and to see the

aging process daily and to connect to it and see how many beautiful blossoms come from that or to feel the fatigue of older age and to practice and to work with it and to give birth to incredible things because you had to face it or to see the wrinkles in the mirror instead of Performing another immediate Brox or plastic surgery but by seeing that beauty how the Japanese say the sabii connecting to a deep sense of beauty which is completely untapped in the in the west well it stepped a little bit because people will appreciate

you know a Theo or will appreciate a um you know I don't know Gary Oldman but but then for themselves no no that's not you know that's not connected So maintaining things also too strictly I'm not talking about the alternative I'm not offering an alternative of you know neglect but I am talking about connecting to the FL the flow around us as you said the nature around the tree so that was a big thing for me I didn't really give I didn't have too many facts to give about how I look or whether you know

this I have more white hair or less but I did have a lot of relationship to my skill which was Hard-earned I didn't give too many facts about money that I made I could very easily let go but then I I really cared about you know the health of my body in in when it was threatened in some ways this is another form of prce practice so again I don't offer any kind of neglect but I am offering to connect to this beauty and to empower yourself Beyond disease and into death even in this beautiful

way of exploration and Being for me the practice should address that the practice should not just offer more and more tools to maintain and to hold this is great and it does that I I still have my sixpack and I still you know protect my joints and my body moves well but I'm also discovering deeper and beautiful things inside of myself and outside of myself which I would have never discovered if I was holding on to tyy so the tree is not trying to look like the young tree that it was at a Certain age

or the image of what a tree is you keep evolving and I always wonder like these people that are heavy into the let's call it the denial of Aging or the desire to to you know to stay young and to be how they were when they were young I always wonder you also see sometimes people that are they may they maintain the discipline they maintain let's say healthy eating they maintain a lot of movement they they seem to look like a more graceful version of an older Person let's say than some of these like I'm

in denial and I'm trying to cover up the Aging there's almost like an acceptance of of what is which is the chronological aging but in a way you can still stay in very good shape um but but in a way that kind of accepts the process of Aging as opposed to trying to deny it so that's what I what I hear when I'm hearing you and it's almost like you're now back on the path of exploration because now you're in a Place that you haven't been before yes yes yes and I say to people even

in relation to age I I I said I said before to people I offered age should be disregarded but aging should be accepted and worked with so it's like to think of yourself in terms of that's my age that's another definition that is now now I'm not doing this because I'm older you're again limiting yourself you're again setting yourself in into threes but then aging is a a process that is Unfolding in Us by by the way it's not aging it's called the process here is not called living it is called dying that's what we're

busy doing here we are dying here so if this what because the process called living is not so honest and it hints at the way out which doesn't exist but the process called dying informs every moment the end of the journey informs the journey so actually we Should call it dying not living yeah yeah to to I totally get the point and and I think uh part of the difficulty here is the reward Loops that we're exposed to in society for being a certain version of ourselves or being let's say like having these restrictive definitions

by sight of what beauty is so beauty is this so now I must be this if I want to be bestowed uh the feeling of being let's say looking good or being good this is what it is so now I have to Comply and it's the same thing in your career as well you know when you were talking earlier I was thinking of these like reward Loops that we get like with that you get with the skill let's say a lot of people will be like wow wow wow and of course it's very difficult to

attain that skill and then at the same time you have the reward loops and then that makes it so much harder to let go of for me it was uh you know be being a lawyer uh always being very precise and Very logical and aggressive and being connected to these different outcomes and the world like the market loved a certain version of me that was very good at achieving certain outcomes and then I got I got caught up in those reward loops and then it was like okay more more more more more like the the

business people discovered a tool that they liked and then they just wanted more and more of the tool and in a sense you become instrumentalized by society's Definitions of of of of what it looks up to or certain outcomes that are valued in society and then it becomes then you become that version right like you you'll become the skillful Ido that does the one-handed one-handed headstand and everybody's like okay that's Ido oh my God when is EO going to do that move you know and then all of a sudden you become you become kind of

um uh imprisoned in that one version of yourself that is Al also an authentic version of yourself And and takes a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears to achieve but then there's all that lost potential and as you say it's like okay but what are you not exploring what are you maybe losing by by by staying attached to that and you know I'll take your example as being a lawyer and being for example on time MH and you know here is another this complex little relationship you've you know you're a successful lawyer and you're always

on time but what happened if you were not On time maybe you would have become a greater lawyer maybe at certain scenarios I'm very punctual Ido I'm very very punctual I that is you you hit it on head it's like and when other people are not on time it drives me crazy it's like I fully understand so let me complete the thought so maybe missing one train or bus would have gotten you to a place which impossible to get by being all time and but but if that becomes an Excuse for weakness that is an

error so if you can be on time be on time work on yourself practice yourself cherish it but also if it is impossible to be on time and something happen learn to let go to enjoy that and this kind of fine line I see 9% of the people falling on both sides but very very few people do their best not use anything as an excuse like this new AG crowd and just be Let It Go you don't need to do anything you're Already an immortal Soul you're floating you know but on the other end total

lack lack of working on oneself dealing with the Deep demons hard work you can be on time be on time make it important but if you are not allowed to be on time the whole world does not collapse and you might even discover that this is the only way to go to the next level to let go of that or to [ __ ] up something or to have a Skypey jump a COR jump in the middle of a podcast yeah It it this is this is where we get the draw you hit something you

know you hit something with me I have to admit my my you know my wife is also my dentist and she also always tells me like you're like my worst patient because you're used to being in control you're used to being in control it's like in my profession I have to control control every single micro detail in the chain it's very subtle you know achieving these outcomes very very subtle and so There's there's a there's like a side of me that's that's that's developed through that that is very much about the the self-control the discipline

the detail and but I like that sometimes you're not allowed so that's good it's good and then when it's not there also just accept it also like flow with it yeah 20 years from now Fred you're not going to care you're not going to care and you know what you're not going to car about these little mishaps because They don't they're not important but 20 years from now you are going to care that you cared to be on time that you worked hard on yourself not caved to your weaknesses that's the balance that's the balance

and we can see it with the Eagle's eye but sometimes in the day today we forget so I think we've revolved around this te but now I want to kind of tackle it head on I'm very interested in how your your your very open exploratory Approach to movement in all its forms clearly we're not just talking about the body or doing this or that I I think that you've almost used the body as a launching pad to a much broader philosophical exploration of movement and all of its forms like we just explored it now with

uh being on time or or or or being punctual um I'm very interested in how it intersects in your mind with the concept of Mastery so doing something usually a very limited Set of things extremely well right in view of a particular goal or purpose when I think of your opposite I think of someone like jro I don't know if you you've seen the great sushi master in Japan who he's got this this little restaurant and after Decades of making some of the best nigiri in the world he still makes it every single day dedicated

to this one task and he says I still haven't made the perfect nigiri okay so like that really really narrow Narrow version of of of Mastery as we've already explored it's great we sometimes pay a price for it we start acting in a narrow Corridor we can become over specialized true but it seems to me that it can also be part of a broader process of gaining Freedom okay so so there's the way I see it there's different kinds of Freedom there's the completely Pure Freedom of the non-master like the amateur having fun like all

childlike play all Exploration and then there's the freedom of the master so the person who has acquired a lot of skill even in a very narrow area and they're like not the same form of Freedom so so you for example you've gotten to this point physically by mastering a lot of different disciplines I know that you went really really deep into capoa but you also studied dance you also studied martial arts there's a freedom of motion that you acquired through that that Let's say I don't have with my body right my more limited set of

physical practices the freedom of a rock climber on a mountain right or the freedom of a Picasso on the canvas in other words a structure can also provide us with freedom it could increase our range of motion and our access to different potential moves on the chessboard when I listen to your teachings and I look at your life I don't want to put words in your mouth But your philosophy reminds me more of the Chinese concept of WOAY I don't know if you ever heard of that but it's it's the concept of not trying so

it's something like um skilled effortlessness right so the effortlessness of the master who SE seeks self-expression maybe something like what people talk today about a flow state where you you want to bring in more novelty and growth to an area where you've you're already extremely skilled H H how do you see this this generally this approach of exploration and Novelty interplaying with Mastery like this extremely precise but also limited set of tools and I think a lot of these concepts are distorted also in the west when they're translated and transmitted and we should be very

careful and I I'll give you another thought that maybe that Sushi master and me were not so different actually Actually this is where the the the extremes connect um well you can study everything from anything one thing knowledge of one thing leads to knowledge of all things this is a possibility it's installed in nature in the essence of things you can see it in the shapes of the galaxies and all the cliches and and you can approach it by making sushi or baking bread and it Becomes a self practice there is a possibility to do

that now even most religions are based on some kind of a concept like that especially the earlier ones the more ancient ones some kind of a door that leads to everything very simple practice concept Master this and you get you know riches but then this possibility is almost Always never fulfilled or used even by those who are offering it and are depending on it as their livelihood Etc but when you actually go to the heart of it you discover that that sushi chef ER will be very unskillful in another life scenario M and that is

very clear I'm sure to people but it will not be so clear to them with their favorite spiritual teacher sometimes sometimes I wish to expose some of that not out of a desire To harm some someone out of a desire to De illusion this to to to remove this illusion and to to take the false hope that the people are crushing upon daily I think ELO what you say there it's um in behavioral psychology they have the concept of the halo effect when somebody's extremely good at one thing will assume that they're also extremely good

at the next thing and the and sometimes just a little bit outside The corridor they're actually not not nothing special you know we we see it in the professional world all the time but like we see it in the world of politics this person did this amazing thing therefore they're going to be a great leader correct it's like no doesn't necessarily cross over that way yeah so and and you know this is very easy to confuse people we all tend to think of ourselves we are not the average public we cannot be Confused but in

reality almost anyone I ever met can be confused easily and I have done it myself to test and to see often many times with people any effect can be confused if you give them an effect so this is very easy to do and and and and by the way if you go to just go to see some kind of a magic show a David bla and you'll see that you don't see The beginning of it the middle of it or the end of it and this is just just a little attempt a little investment in

convincing you of something confusing you for an effect so for for sure if it's a documentary about veganism it's going to convince you if that is the goal there or you know there is these seminars in Israel by Orthodox Jews that you know we often challenge ourselves as teenagers go there for this weekend I want to see you come out and uh not not Go go deep yeah because that's all based on that now because of this by the way in in fighting for example this still happens to this day even though there is a

laboratory of fighting and the laboratory of fighting is called MMA but it's also called boxing and wrestling and Judo and fencing and it's also called YouTube clips of gas station fights and Russian stre street fights and and in all these laboratory funny enough all those traditional martial Artists don't do well and there is no no no chances where they are showing that their art is truly there yet there is still a huge market for this and I and I can very easily uh present it take that martial artist talking about embodying the warrior and play

pingpong with him forget about fighting play Pink pong and you'll see that there is nothing there because if there is an an inability to deal with the chaos of pingpong what makes you Think that there is an ability to deal with a chaos of a fight but the the effect can be confused for any effect so if he makes me if he makes me take a step or if he if he show me a certain technique or if he's so fast that I can't see him move I assume this is the fighter now at least

in fighting there is some kind of a downto earth Joe Rogan kind of a approach of like hey come on come on guys but in other fields like spirituality this is totally Non-existent do you feel Ido that uh it's funny because I ask you these questions that you you hit me with a concept that I wasn't I wasn't looking at but but it's something that I've thought of very very often do you think that sometimes what we will call expertise or what you call you call just now creating an effect okay creating an effect do

you feel that a lot of times it's a function of because that's what I'm hearing but I want to get it from You uh that's a function of certain people or certain practices being protected by a set of rules okay so even the U example of the magician or the example of The Mentalist or the example there are always assumptions and rules that create a frame an implicit frame around the activity the classic example of this is in Jujitsu Sports Jujitsu where hick and Gracie says you know it's not self-defense anymore when you can have

you're trying to get somebody on Top of you and and you intentionally put yourself in a position where they could give you five elbows to the head but you have the advantage it's like it's not real right it's just a it's a function of of of a set of rules do you feel that sometimes a lot of these expertise these forms of expertise or these effects that we create are really just a function of the games the bounded games that we play and the rules that we decide to put on and then and then in

reality sometimes You get hit with a little bit of chaos and all of that just crumbles almost instantly that is part of it there is other parts where if you take something and you show it and then you present the idea that let's take this and perform multi mplications of it it's going to look the same only multiplied but actually it transforms into something totally different so if I make $1 I can make a million dollars actually it doesn't work that Way as you try to make more and more money you're going to be ER

meeting totally different scenarios and set of rules all right the same thing for example in fighting I can perform something in slow mod and then I convince you if we accelerate it it's going to be still working but at a certain point the acceleration is going to transform it into something else now having said that I'm going back to your original question sorry for the long uh TRS and so because of this the nature that I just describe of things I gravitated away from putting all my eggs in one basket in terms of Mastery what

you call so instead yes there is a possibility there is an inherent possibility to split the atom and to have this effect but in reality this rarely happens so instead I preferred a way that examines through many many things the same Essence instead of one thing that contains the Essence examining the similarities in many different scenarios where that Essence bubbles to the surface that is my way of practicing now it suits me very well and it helped me evolve certain ER certain attributes inside myself certain certain manifestations of myself let's say um and I think

this this is like people people very simplify it that they took this thing that they talked about generalism and Specialism but it it is the the generalist is another special Specialist of course it's often you know mentioned and and this and the specialist must become a generalist in essence so really what is the heart of all this the heart of all this is becoming not not trying to do to master something but becoming an entity that is capable of doing that thing that is closer for me To the word the original intention behind the word

Mastery than the actual word Mastery which I I make fun of you know I make fun of this word because there is no Mastery I never mastered anything and I don't think highly of people who use the word master and I sometimes people call me master maestro I but this is even better to be called Guru because of the original the original meaning behind this word the removal of the remover of Darkness the One who sheds the light but but the Mastery itself this is really not honest I never felt a master of anything I

never completed the journey I am in an attempt to master myself with which means I am in an attempt of becoming myself okay and I think some people may disagree with you and actually consider you a master of certain things for for me the concept of Mastery is hand in hand with the concept of specialization It's Mastery at what and and I think the problem becomes when we want to start generalizing when we do the master to Guru move I think that's when we get into all kinds of the halo effect and those issues you're

assuming that somebody who is perhaps a master at this very limited set of things maybe you take jro and you put him in a a traditional French kitchen and he's really nothing special you know I mean we see it as as as lawyers we see it in The professional world you see it in even uh in the world of writing somebody who's amazing at writing in a particular style you just move them 30° to the left and they're like they can be lost they can be like a child it's a completely different configuration but the

other side would be that maybe that sushi chef you would move him to the French kitchen and he will take all his meticulous details and his cutting skills that have been perfected and he will make amazing French treats so I I I don't want to present only only one side of the picture I'm just trying to balance things out mhm yeah ex that's that's that's the sense I'm getting and I wonder to what degree this is connected to your approach to learning you you've talked about learning in a way that's very different than uh learn

learning in general is is is something that I'm very passionate about um you've talked about And people talk about the difference between um learning as the filling of a cup versus the lighting of a fire but you talk about it in terms of Decon sealing Decon sealing something so stripping away the layers and this was the first time I heard that approach to knowledge because you're assuming again like the the the the analogy of the tree you're assuming that there is an authentic real natural process there happening as opposed to the tabula Raza Of a

very technical form of knowledge you know today we're very in love with technology we're very in love with technique we're very in love with hacks and tips and that kind of stuff and it it it suggests that you just have to learn about it you have to learn the technique now we have to learn about AI we have to learn about generative AI we are EMP of the knowledge and then we have to we have to fill the cup right that seems to be kind of a modern um Approach to learning how you sad it's

sad so I like your words about this you say that in truth secrets are everywhere so you assume that there's already something amazing inside of this there's already a a a um a universe of potentials inside of us and it's the process of Decon sealing these secrets that is the act ual practice you say people want to Spill the Beans give me the truth but this is useless because it does not contain the process of getting There which is the real gold so this is a very very um unusual I think and and and original

way to kind of think of learning as kind of maybe rediscovering something that is already there or perhaps um lighting up a potential that has been muted so what can you say about this process of getting there or the stripping away or the Decon sealing um about that whole approach to learning ER for me it's very usual and you know none of these ideas are my original thoughts It's things that I it's I think we're just not exposed maybe to the right sources and we've moved a little bit in another Direction I'm repackaging this stuff

I'm an information broker of sorts as well yes I have my thoughts on the matter and I play with them but for me this is a basic it's basic you know we we the the North Americans complain about the the Chinese creativity and the way of conducting Things but how far are they really from that you know and then take something like the the the Jewish phenomenon in in in terms of you know thinking creating coming up with things you know the statistics are pretty substantial in that matter Nobel Prize winners the cut of the

population where does it come from is it a genetic thing I don't think so not for a second we're not really we're not really That blessed in our genome but there is something very inherent in the in the religion and in the way of the people what is that debate debate there are two big de debate cultures the Jewish one and the Indian one both of them excel in terms of creation thinking Etc and of course there are many others I'm just giving an example and please excuse me for you know narrowing things down to

there it's to make a point Um so I think this first what's the Magic in learning something I don't know it now you're going to give it to me wow now I know it what's the Magic The Magic The Magic is that you are going to do it to someone else later it's a complex of superiority it's an aggressive action and you know what it's a small big action it's it's a way of being and doing which is we should See further than that but then relearning is about you going through a metamorphosis and coming

out different on the other side now what is really happening when we learn something deep the sense is I always knew that already that is why many people often don't give credit because they even forget where they got it it's so make sense that it's theirs and that's that's the nature of things so this is really exposing that Concealed deep truth inside of us because something inside of us already knows and already made all the C calculations this is maybe close to the concept of aash if you know the akashik records or this I think

it has been taken to an isoteric level but there is a much more downto Earth level of it which we can start from so learning through be through this playfulness Playful becoming is much much more powerful than learning otherwise M felden CH is known to give the example that a 2-year-old child learns more in a year than all the career in high school ER ba ma and PhD degrees put together in one year if you look at how much a child need to learn in the first two years of life in terms of all the

movement capacities eating walking talking words definitions cross Connections and how is that done Fred through play there is no coffees late coffees to hold yourself studying for the test this approach is lowlevel high level high level learning is Albert Einstein is the playful man is the homo luden so learning is much more connected with that Essence and that is that is much more powerful mode of us as a culture developing ourselves also and you see it with good thinkers it it's It's was always there from Edison to you know Tesla and excuse me the two

camps fighting each other and to to you know Rolan John and and great mathematicians and thinkers and everywhere everywhere and and and even you know those practical thinkers that are like Russian invention inventions and things like that which are really simple simple and work it seems to me also you know like when when you say that the playfulness and the two-year-old it's it's also very And the debating also very very much connected also to the ethic of like pragmatic learning so experimentation tinkering like you're saying this works okay let's try it out what if I

do this what if I do that and then you can slowly slowly kind of unearth like hidden assumptions or blind spots or things that work only because there's a another variable that was there that we didn't fully realize was there so this tinkerer approach of almost like having No sacred cows right not accepting the word of the master as the final say but accepting the word of the master almost as a challenge right it's like okay you're saying this what about if this what about if that what about if I look at it from that

perspective what about this what happened in in in this distant part of the world was it is it not another kind of concealed um U aspect of the social structure that was creating the conditions that this would be that So almost like this um not accepting things as they are not accepting the sacredness that comes from above but saying okay you know what this is revealing itself to us as human knowledge we're allowed to play with it we're allowed to deconstruct it we're allowed to challenge it and if it is truly true it will uh

withstand the test of all of that pressure yeah yeah that is allowed that is allowed for a child the child tries to eat yogurt and they Put the spoon in the forehead and then the next spoon is on the chin and then the next spoon is on the side of the cheek and then finally it's in the mouth and that's how the child learns so much more than us and that is also connected because it's allowed but all of a sudden at a certain point we don't allow ourselves and we don't allow others God forbid

we experiment sexually God forbid we experiment in this way or that way or we like you say we break the balls you Know like we need to you know we need the we need to crash those cars we need to crash those cars even even with a price of injury and lost of Life at at certain points because there is no other alternative so it's again it's not to be confused with neglect of life or with harm on purpose but it is a calculated risk a calculated thing inside the process of learning you're going to

cut salads at a certain point in life you're going to cut a finger this happened to All of us so does it mean that I stop cutting salads because if I look at it statistically no one can reach the age of 25 cutting salads without cutting a finger at least once this is ridiculous this is ridiculous and you see it in the way that we deal with Wars you see it the ways that we deal with all kinds of Crisis natural crisis H pandemics Etc we are being led by whom this is not going to

work well for Us we need to completely yeah we need to reink this thing and we need to start with education because we're not going to we're not going to get a solution so quickly we need to think of ourselves our loved ones we need to start from that that's what I'm trying to do I'm trying to look inside myself and to be that change as the cliche says but to start with my own education my own practice and then from there I widen to the bigger Circle the circle around me And from there onwards

and onwards trying to make my contribution and I think if we all do that and we communicate well as we're doing now me and you having this conversation recorded we make another little contribution and maybe someone some one person out there will have a light bulb going on and that will Cascade things onwards and I think it it happens you know I don't I don't see things in a very posimistic way I think that things Should reach a certain critical boiling point before they can the pendulum swings the other way but I think it can

happen any moment definitely you know I know I know we very very very well said um I we're coming up on time a little bit I just have a couple of of small ones for you sure uh one of them is um I'm going to use the fact that you're in front of me a little bit selfishly uh in terms of movement um you know the the J I grew up Playing sports basketball boxing you know the going to the gym as you've noted it's it could be a very constrained space and so I'm trying

to go from traditional Sports to a bit more a bit more movement a bit more exploration one of the activities I love as as boring as it sounds is simply walking I just find it's obviously something that everybody does but there's so many modalities to it there's you know walking is a no extra time Activity you could do it while listening to music listening to a pocket you could visit from one neighborhood to the next neighborhood there's different ways different pace you could push yourself a little bit you it's such a beautiful multifaceted um um

practice um I I know you've talked a lot about you know the hanging the squatting the squats challenge that you have you've mentioned a couple of things in interviews I've heard about walking but I'm just curious to know what would be um maybe a little bit uh a very quick advice or pathway that you can offer to the Walkers out there it's something we can do for our entire lives with again all these multifaceted modalities I've heard you say a couple of hints but I I have you here what what can you offer us about

a quick pathway or advice or or or Doorway to the world of walking for the Walkers out there good good good please feel free and well I love walking and uh It's one of the those deep original forms out of which we really transcribe all human movements from so if I can transform my walk I can transform my tennis game I can transform my fighting fighting is walking dancing is walking um so let let's talk a little bit and and this really depends nowadays on education on getting good stimulus that's what I'm offering people when

they come to me I kind of give them a certain structure to work with one way One of my favorite things to do when I I used to spend a lot of time in Hong Kong in the past is if you're living in a crowded place like New York or Hong Kong is to try to walk through crowds without touching anyone and this in and of itself in and of itself will create a very interesting practice which will soften the body be Mak you hyper aware it's very playful it's fun and it takes you from

point A to point B while being you know Undetected not interrupting anyone and not looking weird but they just enjoying you know a walk and this is something I used to do I used to strap my my backpack close in and go through the crazy crowds of Hong Kong and just move like a ninja in between the people so that's one way that like one example out of hundreds of practices of walking that I do another practice is ccal attention practice um and that's another very Interesting offering to hold your attention on a body part

for example your right hand while you're walking and feel the Arc of the right hand as it swings in space and then to your left foot and then shift the attention again to your head and after a certain amount of steps 50 100 steps or even just 10 steps shift the attention somewhere else for example what happens every time you shift the attention you're actually transforming and changing your walk And you will see that you cannot walk the same way when your attention is placed in different places and slowly this will start to actually evolve

your walk in all kinds of ways but this requires already a certain skillful attention of the body but it can be started by anyone so that's another example I'll give just another short example um another example is the Japanese nanba walk the samurai walk so the samurai used to walk with a Different gate than the normal people and that walk is more of an Ipsy lateral walk instead of the normal contralateral walk and many years ago I used to practice this H for long stretches so you put your hands in your pocket in order you

need like pants with pockets so to not look too weird and whenever you're stepping forward with your right foot you kind of press your hand on your thigh gently inside the right po the right hand inside the right pocket so it Makes the one side move forward and then the other side now it will draw some attention if somebody is perceptive are you pressing against you're you're you're pressing against the leg that's moving forward yes you're pressing slightly again gently okay just gently downwards just to connect that whole side and what will happen if you

do this for a while first all of the inner connections the connectivity of your body is going to completely shout alarm Alarm people you can get like back pains from it you can get a lot of weird stuff but there is a candy on the other side these pains are not going to be any injurious pains they're going to be a a calculating route recalculating route kind of pains they help the body find new connections and new ways new efficiencies so they can actually alleviate back pain later on you might experience on the short term

and one little episode that I'll tell you when We used to do it many years ago there was one student of mine here also with us her name is Mariana she's Mexican very dear student of ours and she was she had a baby her daughter named Gali now she's older and she was a baby and she used to carry her in the and and carry on and we used to go on this walk Five Five Mile walks every time she used to do the n walk she would start to cry the baby would start to

cry she would go Back to a normal walk she would relax calm down and fall asleep so she would recognize something about the pattern is changing and she would react to it so those are some ideas I can give you more and more this is endless and I invite to to to to investigate further love it thank you so much Ido it's it's always so insightful hearing you break down how you see life how just the way you kind of frame things forces us to reexamine a lot of Our static Concepts and a lot of

our kind of received ways of seeing our bodies and their relationship with with with our environments but but also our thought patterns and all the different connections within them so it was um extremely fascinating very educational to listen to you and and opened up a lot opened up a lot of doors and a lot of ideas to keep kind of getting deeper into these different practices and explore these different practices and Get more and more committed to the journey even if it's not in relation to these traditional goals that we have so I want to

thank you was a real pleasure and honor yeah yeah yeah what an absolute pleasure [Music] [Music] [Music]