Ido Portal - Move or Die

Full transcript: Ido Portal on London Real

5:08 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ido Portal, who is a movement teacher from Haifa, Israel, who has studied capoeira, martial arts, gymnastics, yoga, circus, dance, and more, in a pursuit of a movement culture that represents a paradigm shift in physicality, moving us away from culprits in movements like fitness, as well as from the separation between health, aesthetics, performance, and art.

6:02 You have a worldwide following. You are here in the UK to teach a two-day movement experience this weekend, which I’ll be attending. Very excited about that. Millions of people have watched your videos on YouTube showing your movement, describing your philosophy, and hundreds of thousands have watched us talk. Last time you were here on the show, Ido, welcome back to London Real.

6:22 Thank you. Very good to be here. It’s nice to have you here. My girlfriend reminded me recently that I think I had an interview after our episode last year, and someone asked me if there was one guest on your show that you’d have to spend the rest of your life with on an island. Who would it be?

6:38 I forgot what I said, but apparently it was you. So, I’m honored, man. We’ve had some amazing people here, so that speaks volumes. I think, you know, it’s great to have you back. And it’s fascinating for me to always see where you are, and I think probably a lot’s changed with you in the last year.

6:57 But I was wondering, you know, you travel all around the world. I know you’ve been to China. You go to Australia, the US, Europe, and I’m curious: when you’re on the plane and there’s that person sitting next to you, and after a few minutes they turn to you and say, “You know, what do you do?” What do you usually reply? I directly say, “I talk about movement.”

7:18 Yeah. I start with the explaining, because it’s going to take a while, so I just started as soon as possible, and that of course pulls some other questions and, you know, requests for titles and definitions that are maybe more comprehensible. And that starts the conversation. Yeah, and from there you can describe a little bit. Yeah, you said last time we were here.

7:44 You said from the outside it’s hard to tell what we’re doing. And I remember you talking about one of the seminars you were going to do that weekend, and how people come in thinking they’re going to learn one thing and they come away with something else. And I was just wondering, from the outside, from what I see, what is it that you’re doing? Yeah, so we are I’m in the business of taking certain terminologies and pulling them out of specialized fields and teaching people from other fields and other areas to use those terminologies and to belong or to associate or sometimes to dissociate from certain things.

8:30 Since the movement umbrella is so big and it’s relevant to anyone, you know, so sometimes people ask us what is the prerequisite to attending an event or coming to learn. And one of my students came up with “owning a body,” so it’s so relevant for everyone. It’s more about teaching people why it’s relevant for them as well. Unless trying to find out whether it’s relevant or not, it’s always relevant as long as you live in a body, you are you should be occupied with movement to a certain extent, and if you’re not it’s gonna come up on its own like other things in our lives, but movement and the body is pretty big.

9:14 You said you went out searching to learn about movement when you were younger, and you found out that they weren’t actually teaching you about movement. They were teaching you disciplines, and I was wondering what you meant by that. It’s a bit tricky. They were teaching me movement, but they were not teaching me their movement, and they were teaching me movement through a disciplinary point of view and the isolated, specific ways to look at certain movements.

9:46 But nobody was talking in general terms. Now class is over and you find yourself still in a body but without any instruction, without any understanding of where to take this. How do I take this into my life? Okay, I’m doing a capoeira class, I’m doing a BJJ class, I’m doing some track and field, or I play basketball, but I don’t stop being a mover and a human being, and I don’t stop being in a body when class is over, when the practice is over, when the game is over.

10:18 So the movement approach is talking about that layer, because you were pure capoeira for 15 years. Yeah. Okay, it’s not only that. I was pure. I was known for the purity, the pure of the pure.

10:30 You know, I was my nickname was “the missionary.” I was the one, you know, promoting the religion of capoeira. I was the most radical one inside the club of radicals. So, I wanted more. And it was first just different aspects.

10:50 I wanted, you know, to climb the wall, to go to the rock climbing wall. I wanted to experience touching the floor with my knees. I spent 15 years of my life avoiding touching my knees to the floor or touching my butt to the floor. It was like almost painful, almost painful experience, because it means you fell down in capoeira. You dirty your clothes, you fell down, don’t touch these areas to the floor.

11:18 And it’s a taboo. And so yeah, it was just like, I need these different things, and then I started to dive into all of these things, and first I just allowed myself to do that together with capoeira. And they started to bring in all these knowledge and ideas and understandings and try to inject them back into capoeira to promote and contribute to this amazing world that I believed was one of the best you know realities to experience and to practice in the best tribes and families.

11:51 But little by little it was, like I said, it was too much. It was it could not contain it. The container was too small for this amount of ideas and information, and liquid was over, was spilling out. And I fought for a while with that until I realized I need a different container. And this container contains capoeira in itself, and that’s why I don’t feel I ever left it.

12:17 In many ways I just, you know, it’s a little bit like saying, “Yeah, you’re not now. You’re human, you’re not capoeira anymore.” No, it’s a bigger container. I was always human. I was always moving.

12:31 I just did it. I loved capoeira and I experienced that, but there is more that I love to do, and it does not take away from capoeira. It does not stop that practice and many other practices. And so what was next in your journey of movement or movement exploration? Yeah, in the beginning it was a lot of research into weightlifting and strength work, and to start to try to produce tools and better tools for developing capoeiristas, myself and my students.

13:05 I had hundreds of students, and I was the first one to basically take a kind of a box, a fitness kind of box, and combine it with the capoeira academy. It’s still rare. It’s still revolutionary, revolutionary in many ways around the world to do such a thing. And I was like doing cross training. My students were sprinting and doing weightlifting, you know, Olympic weightlifting and gymnastics work, and that started research into gymnastics, and that started research into yoga and into awareness and into ballet and into dance and improvisation.

13:45 Okay, just like, when did you realize, okay, this is an Ido Portal movement? When did you realize, okay, this is something, and it’s gonna, my name is gonna be on there like you said. Either way it was gonna be your name. And when did you realize that this is something that is me? Actually, I did not realize it completely.

14:09 It happened to me. I always talked about movement, and I remember vividly the early years, where I was just constantly saying you know, anti-commercial, like just saying, we’re doing just movement. And I actually kept doing that until today. But my students started to ask, what are you doing to each other, asking each other, like, what are we doing? What is that?

14:31 And people start to say, yeah, we’re doing movement, and then what kind of movement? What is that, Ido’s stuff? And then I said, okay, maybe it’s the least of the worst. Maybe it’s better to put some name on it to tag it, but still maintain the purity of the movement approach, and call it movement practice versus calling it in some new name. And that’s what happened, and just people made the choice for me.

14:58 Eventually they started to say Ido Portal method, Ido Portal movement method, Ido Portal movement practice, and even then they started to use the word method. I was not completely satisfied with that, because a method is just one small thing inside of it. The perspective is more powerful, and it’s a movement perspective, and later a movement culture that gathered around it. The method is just serving that bigger thing. Is part of you hesitant to describe the movement in words, because it’s changing all the time?

15:34 Or do you feel like if you write it all down in words of what we are, then you can’t actually be what it is? Words are not a good container for these ideas. Yeah, I’m not hesitant. I’m reluctant. It’s not good enough.

15:53 Movement is a cloud, and it’s something that you cannot find its limit. It’s a fog floating around, and it’s not something that we can define so easily. What I do is I use what I call my slice-and-dice approach. I slice it and I dice it through multiple perspectives until I get the most tiny piece out of the slicing and dicing that I can observe and look at. But even that, of course, misses the point.

16:26 You know, it’s just an attempt to map the cloud somehow, a little bit, to know something about it. Yeah, words are problematic, and like I said, we change words, we abuse them. You know, if you’re going to use movement for something else and you have a huge following, you abused my work and now I have to change my word because I don’t want to be connected to that. So look at what happens to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, all of a sudden there was a separation there.

16:57 Machado Jiu-Jitsu, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. They didn’t want to belong anymore just under this big title of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. People took their word, which they in the beginning used and, yeah, abused it in their eyes, or used it in other eyes. Yeah. So movement is not to be captured.

17:21 You try to hug it, it disappears. You look at it too, you’re zooming in too much, it disappears. You have to respect that. You have to be humble about it, and you have to embrace the concept, fade your eyes a little bit, peripheral vision, let it exist, let it feed you, work with it in a smarter way. Yeah, and there’s been so many attempts to try to define it, but they’re all failing miserably.

17:47 So I pulled my hands from that. I mean, just trying to write a description in the beginning for what you do, it took me a long time. And, you know, on your site you’ve done an attempt to kind of put some words in it, but I can tell you can tell that you don’t want to, and that makes sense. But from the outside, what we see, we see YouTube videos, don’t we? And we see not only yours, talking and moving, and they’re amazing to watch.

18:13 But I also see a lot of your students doing, I think you call, basic practice, which are, it seems to me, a certain number of moves that are to anyone untrained very impressive to watch, yet very simple. And is that a way you use to kind of introduce people to what you do, or is that a good way of describing what you do? Not really. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Yeah, it’s not a basic practice.

18:38 These are just basic patterns, specific basic patterns to the goal of getting stronger, for example. That is, it’s like one atom out of this whole cloud, and that’s a choice that I made to collect these patterns and to put them together, they make sense to me, and I view them as very basic linear ways to manipulate the body. But there is no basics to movement. Basics for what? What are you doing?

19:07 You don’t even know what you’re doing, so how can you come up with basics for that? There is no basics. There is some basics that you choose for your kind of movement practice, your genuine unique movement practice. And since people did not make that choice themselves or were unwilling or unable, lack of knowledge, lack of whatever, I came up with some things and I introduced people to those things, but I still keep it very, very real, saying those are not basics of, you know, everything.

19:41 Those are just basics in relation to this practice, not to movement, some movement practice. Yeah. And it’s very easy to support people around the world in their quest to do, for example, strength training or mobility work. So we start there and it creates something, and from there, you know, they’re becoming stronger, they’re becoming more mobile, and then we can start to play, and then we can start to move into more advanced stuff, and we meet them usually by that point in time in person, and we start some real stuff going.

20:17 So the online thing is just this basic, basic layer preparing you for some movements later on. It will not prepare you for everything, because there is no basics for everything. Talk to me about the tribe aspect, you know, of Ido Portal, and as part of that, influence from the capoeira background. But it sounds like all the magic happens when you get people together, because you really get people to improvise and feel and, you know, move without thinking about moving.

20:47 Is that that what you’re trying to get people to do? Yeah, it’s a big part of it. Yeah, it’s not the tribe of Ido Portal. It’s the movement culture. It’s a tribe of movement.

20:57 It will exist without me and after me, and be, you know, in many ways it existed before me, but maybe I was there to shine some light and say, hey, we belong together. We are more similar than different. Dancer, BJJ guy. They share so many similarities, but they don’t realize, so they sit at separate tables, and I was the person coming in saying, come, come, come, going to the floor, have a look at these patterns. Hey, have a look.

21:27 It’s almost the same. It’s almost the same. Yeah, the goal is different, but so many different learning opportunities here. So that’s That’s the movement culture, and that’s the tribe that gathers around it, and it’s definitely my capoeira background put a lot of input into my head, like the importance of community and tribe, and practicing together, and sharing it together, and collective, collective knowledge, collective brains, collective everything. Fashion, you know, it happens whether you like it or not.

22:01 It starts you know, yeah, super important when you want to build something together. The personal practice is many times cannot lead very deep. We have collective knowledge. It’s a huge jumping, you know, jumping point. It’s somebody who denies that.

22:30 It’s pretty hard to go deep these days. You have to embrace it. So as a culture we produce body of knowledge, and we research it together, and we dive into it, we influence each other, and of course some people are more you know, in different points in this game, doing different roles. But without the culture it’s And everything you’ve built is built on collective knowledge? Yes, yes.

22:56 Everything that anybody built, you know, I believe there is very little new, new stuff these days, you know? Genuinely new. Boom. Anything from spirituality to everything has been said in many ways, but not in the combinations that we are coming up with today. And, you know, like even the technologies are just like, ah yeah, you take this technology, you take this technology to get a wall, but really inventing the wheel again.

23:28 It’s a very hard thing to do. You said humans were, we’re the original generalists, right? We’re the generalists of all animals. As humans, and yet so many of us go to specialize and we accomplish so many great things as being specialists. But as a specialist, you almost rob yourself.

23:47 The beauty of being human is that. Am I kind of summarizing some of the things you say accurately that way? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you know, we started to value specialists. We were able to save lives.

24:03 We were able to grow our population and do incredible things, creating incredible things, and because of specialists and specialization, so it became promoted. Yeah, it became the right thing to do. You know, what your mother wants you to do, you know, become a doctor. I’m a doctor, right? Some specialist, some medicine.

24:27 And yeah, but we paid a certain price of living a more diverse, flexible, healthy life. You know, it’s a little bit like, also in movement, very similar concept, where many people come to me and say, hey, you’re training so many hours a day, I train six, eight, ten hours a day, so this is not healthy anymore, you’re destroying your body. Well, if you look at it through the eyes of a specialist, definitely. If I’m doing BJJ for eight hours a day, for sure, but the variety of practice that I do is so divided all across these joints and all across different qualities, softness, hardness, and complexity and simplicity, and all these things coming together, that it allows me to do a lot more and to live many different sensations, feelings, emotions, mind states.

25:28 So this is the generalist perspective, and generalist may be a misleading word a little bit. It becomes again abused. And lately I’ve heard, I read a thesis by a dancer called Rasmus Olmeny. I really love that he sent it to me, and I really, really was influenced by what he was saying there, and he is basically talking about dancers, and he’s saying, you know, nowadays to be a generalist dancer cannot be, doesn’t exist, because there’s so many types of dances so what actually we became, and that corrected it in my mind.

26:04 We became a fingerprint, from specialist to generalists to our own unique self, to our collection of things, because we cannot be everything. It’s not like I can be the hunter, the shaman, and the gatherer and the builder. Now there is so many titles. You can’t be everything, but you choose what you want to do, what you want to be. For example, you have a very unique combination of things.

26:35 Yeah, you’re interviewing people, but you’re also doing all these weird other things that usually, traditionally, someone who does interviews, such a journalist, does not do. So that’s a very unique fingerprint, Brian, bob. And that’s what I’m moving towards with myself and with my students, is exposing them to a lot of general practices, but then saying, one day, okay, it’s time to choose. Okay, so there is a choice to make. There is a choice to make, because there is so much.

27:07 There is too much collective knowledge above and beyond what one person can take, but you’ll be surprised at how much we can take still. Okay, you talked about movement there in the last year. Can you remember that one day where you had in your mind the best day of movement for Ido Portal, and could you describe what that day was like? You know, you said there’s soft movements, there’s hard movements, or movements that make you feel this way or feel that way.

27:34 Could you walk me through what that day might look like? I can definitely not remember one day, because there’s are many, and it’s a point of mind to live as many such days, and definitely I remember many such occasions, and it’s all about awareness. Yeah, it’s about being aware, being present, and still being in many other ways quiet and allowing. And it happens to you. Yeah.

28:11 You know, Bruce Lee again. It does, it happens. It jumps, it hits, it moves, it’s soft, it’s hard. And yeah, and those are the best days. It’s just this sensation, and all the time this calm happiness underlying, this knowing that everything will be okay.

28:33 You know, you can’t get injured in those days. It’s very hard. You have to really do something extreme. You’re aware, sensing. And yeah, and it’s not about one thing.

28:47 It’s not about drinking a coffee, taking a stimulant, and lifting heavy weights, but you lose all of your sensitivity, or your heartbeat is too high, you can’t sit down and talk clearly. It’s about being good in everything. It’s about being in a zero point, that is the same distance from all these things around you. I’m exactly in the center. That allows me to touch everything in a very accessible way.

29:15 Yeah, because I had, like, very strong days, I had very mobile days, and sometimes the lazy days are very flexible days. The body is very flexible. But yeah, in a movement perspective, to be good in everything, it hints that you’re standing in a neutral point. And a day like that, will you go to the beach and do some movement? Will you go to the park and do some movement?

29:40 Are you always moving? Are you always squatting or hanging? Or will you plan that day when you have eight or ten hours of movement? Like, where would you do that? Or do you always think, I’m gonna have a ring, and or there’s gonna be some rings associated with that?

29:53 Or how does that look? I’m a lot outdoors, because first, because I love to be outdoors, because it’s a very movement-promoting thing, and second, because I don’t find a lot of good indoor supporting, inspiring places to practice movement. There are some better places, but nothing really perfect. Yeah, and I’ll, it’s every day. It’s every day.

30:24 I’m out there. You know, I I don’t even have, you know, like rest days. You know, I’ve had a rest day in 1984. You know, sometimes I tell my students I don’t really do any more rest days. It’s like my rest days are still a lot of movement in some forms or another, but it’s not a training session.

30:46 It’s not about, like, you know, now I’m training, now I’m stopping. It’s all throughout the day. So in the end of the day, you know, in front of the computer working or whatever, I’ll be on the floor, you know, with the computer between my legs, and I’ll move around, and I’ll squat, and I’ll kneel, and I’ll change positions, and then, you know, I’ll stand up, and oh, I feel my back a little bit, so I’ll do some spinal waves or some movement and mobilize certain areas, just being aware of this.

31:13 What I call “dip,” that “moved” sensation, deprived of movement. You know, it’s like I’m hungry, I need to eat, but people are not realizing, like, oh, I need to move now, because if I don’t move now, in a few more hours, it’s going to become a problem, and in a few more years it’s going to become an irreversible problem. So learning to recognize that and constantly shaking things up, and it takes a lot of time to build this awareness. You know, like maybe your back right now is screaming for certain movements, but you don’t have the terminology yet, and you cannot recognize these sensations.

31:51 Maybe your shoulder is calcifying as we speak, but and you need to hang, you really need to hang. But yeah, you don’t. Yeah, you have to develop that. You have to educate people about it. Last time you were here, you looked around this place and you said, Brian, you need a place to hang.

32:08 And I get really anxious if I don’t train for, say, 48 hours. I mean, I can notice it in myself. After so many years, I think when I was younger I just didn’t notice it, and I would just take it out emotionally on people. But a lot of people know that: now I need to go to the gym for an hour and get paid, my personal trainer, and then get back to work, or maybe they even might play a game of football on the weekend, and then go back to that position. You try to defeat that mentality, is that right?

32:39 Yeah. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s okay to do that, to, you know, live that, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and I want to open people’s eyes towards other alternatives, and first owning owning the body, taking responsibility, stop handing the keys to someone else to drive that car around, because, you know, like, buying the vehicle is part of ownership. If you cannot operate it, it’s not really your car. You understand what I’m saying?

33:19 If this car sits down there and you’re waiting for your driver to take you around, it’s like you don’t own the car. You might have paid for it, it’s not yours. So the body is very similar to that, and we like to hand the keys, and we don’t have time for it, and whatever we can’t afford that, and it’s just, it creates so much suffering, it creates so many problems later down the path, and you’re switching practices, and you know, you’re getting older. You know, you’re 30 or 40 now, you have to switch your practices, because when I was 30 I did BJJ, but now my body, I’m 40, I need to do these different things.

33:52 When you’re 50, you’re doing yoga and this and that. Actually, you can always tailor yourself a perfect suit for yourself, fingerprint, exactly what you want, but it takes education, it takes knowledge, and that’s where you have to start. And it’s not about doing a workout, you know. It’s about living a physical lifestyle, respecting the body that you live in, constantly addressing it, being aware of it, just as much as we address the psyche. And there it’s very, very immediate.

34:27 Like, I’m unhappy, something starts to happen here, but the body is constantly unhappy and we ignore it. We ignore it. We shove another cheeseburger, you know, down the throat, and we don’t move, and until it’s way too late, you know. And some people do the same thing with the psyche, and, you know, ignore signals and abuse, and yeah, the weakened warriors trying to resolve, you know, years and years of stuff with a single dosage, because they don’t want to devote the time to, and the thinking to that problem.

35:00 They just want a quick fix, a microwaved meal, but it’s never the same quality, it’s never the same thing, and it doesn’t hit us, and yeah, by the time it does, it can be too late, and then you’ll be praying to all gods in existence that you will receive back 10 percent of what you had. It’s like a moment after you know, it’s when you look at the fitness industry. I mean, say in America, that’s where I’m from. I always look over there first. Is that, is that make you optimistic or less so?

35:37 If you look at the way it’s changed in the last couple years, are we going the opposite way of where we should, when it comes to the way we look at physicality? And no, no, it makes me optimistic. Okay, yeah, I, we are moving towards more movement more and more movement, and yes, sometimes we overdo it. We dive into certain things, but definitely we are moving towards More movement. People are moving more than before in the fitness industry, CrossFit, functional fitness, you know, MMA getting bigger, you know, white-collar MMA.

36:15 It’s huge now. In Asia, you see a lot of it, and this is good stuff. People are moving more instead of sitting on some pec deck machine, you know, Yeah, the calisthenics, the street workout, all, do you know this? urban gymnastics kind of phenomena. It’s great, people are moving more.

36:35 It’s not movement, it’s just some movement, but it’s better, and it’s moving us towards that direction, and people need to climb up the ladder of memes to reach the higher meme. It’s not, you cannot jump from Global Gym to movement. It’s too much, it’s overwhelming. You don’t understand what the f*** does that guy, you know, even talking about, but when you go from Global Gym into some functional training, into some CrossFit training, into some gymnastics training, and then you’re starting to see the similarities, and you’re starting to see the bigger picture, and then you start to relate yourself with something like maybe a movement practice.

37:13 And it’s pretty hard to come up with a bigger dogma when it relates to the body. That’s why I chose it because it’s the biggest one out there. One perfect, perfect Ido style. So tomorrow morning I’m walking in, and I’m gonna be in your in your seminar for two days, and in true Ido form, you sent me an email and you said, Brian, it’s full days. It has challenging moments, and it’s long hours.

37:37 So if you do it, do it all. No half-assed visits, and you made me smile with that, and I would expect nothing less. What can I expect to happen to me tomorrow? Is it, are you trying to shift my paradigm and make me just think differently, or, but I know it’s also very intense. So without divulging, what should I expect?

38:00 Yeah, paradigm shift. You’re familiar with my, some of the ideas, and, but it’s about to put it into context, and that’s very beneficial. Paradigm shift, meeting some demons, meeting some difficult moments, not too many, some will come, some less, meeting some injuries, discovering, like, oh, there is a whole door here that is locked inside my house, like my right knee. Oh right, so it’s avoiding movement because it’s worried about an injury, and that’s changed the way I’ve moved the whole my whole life.

38:37 Or, man, that’s more the kind of, like, the yeah, that’s a very common kind of chiropractor’s kind of, you know, breakdown, but I’m talking more about you can’t do whole layers. You cannot practice beautiful practices because certain things have been neglected. Yeah, it’s not approachable. It’s a closed door, and, like, most people, they don’t have, you know, all this back-back reality, you know, that acrobats and capoeiristas have, you know, right? This thing, right?

39:07 And it’s there. I don’t have fear from that, right? You know, I can go there. And this provides so many options, for example, in MMA. You see people, like, you remember that moment where Rickson is being flipped over the last time?

39:22 Yeah, we tried fighting. Yeah. And you still see nowadays, you see people like Conor McGregor. You see people with a general, better movement perspective and understanding, and the door is not locked. You want to flip me back there?

39:34 No problem. It’s familiar, it’s known, and the options and the freedom that comes with it. And then the other side is realizing oh, all this stuff is locked, and actually I’m missing a lot of freedom. I wasn’t aware, and so that, that is probably the thing, and there would be a lot of shifting mindsets. This is something I talk a lot.

39:52 There is no one mindset. You’re coming in to work hard, you’ll be destroyed. You’re coming in to be sensitive, soft, realizing things, you’ll be destroyed. You need to be able to shift mindsets from moment to moment because the subjects are so diverse. I give you something, and by the time you get comfortable with this toy, I take it away and I put another toy in your hand, and that’s, that brings it into the higher umbrella.

40:19 You have to jump into the higher layer which is movement, the movement layer and understanding. Wow, it’s so many things. One moment I’ll request, request certain sensitivities and very isolated, fragmented thing, and another moment is like, I push you and you have to do something really hard, and the skin rips, or whatever. And you have to be able to shift these mindsets because you’re not a dancer, you’re not a fighter. You’re a mover.

40:46 It’s everything. And you’ve worked on this process for many years and perfected it and seen the results and changed it around until it’s something that works for you. Yeah, improved, perfected. Not yet. Tell me a bit about the people around you, you know, the close circle, and then the bigger circle of the thousands of people that really spend their time learning, that fly around the world and go into your seminars.

41:13 Like, what is the culture like? A culture of hard workers, not a culture of talented people, first and foremost, although many people would think from the outside, but they don’t realize what goes into it, and they don’t realize the starting point, and they don’t realize how much hard work is there. We have a few talented people, but I don’t need to take my shoes off to count them. Really, a culture of very supportive community, being stripped down into the beginner mindset.

41:47 So many times it will do that to you. You’re empathic, you’re supportive, you’re helping others because you suck all the time, because the toys are being switched around, so you cannot, you never lay back on the laurels, you know, I’m a black belt now, you know, I reached the black, but now there is no black belt here. Every week is a different white belt, so you’re just constantly being very humble in your approach. A culture of people who are not very young but not very old.

42:26 We have a huge following from the ages of 30 up to the age of 50. And we have also people in their 20s, and we have also people in their 60s, but yeah, there is a big following there. It’s a certain maturity that, I guess, this climbing the ladder of memes and ideas and certain maturity that comes about. Yeah, these are some of the characteristics. Okay, yeah, a lot of ethics.

42:55 I educate a lot of people about being a student. What does it mean to be a student? And a lot of this is martial arts ethics. I grew up on it. It’s very important for me, and I think it’s valuable if you want to be pushed by someone to areas and you want to be helped by someone into areas that are completely concealed to you.

43:17 So you have to lean back into it and allow that person to take you on a journey, because you don’t see where it’s going. You have no idea, especially in a movement practice, you have no idea where it’s going, so you have to trust. You have to respect and honor that it’s a gift that you can never return. You know, I can never return the gifts that I received from my teachers. It’s something that is would never be answered.

43:42 You saw, you told me last time, when you find a good teacher, then you should just learn from them regardless of what they have to teach you. True, I believe in that. People don’t like to hear it, but it’s very true, and I’ve had this many times, met people, and, you know, maybe the original knee-jerk reflex was like, I don’t even want to learn this, but something about that person, some something, maybe, maybe it can be conceptualized into, oh, this person is so special, I admire him so much, he must know something more than what I’m seeing right now, so I’m going to go with what he has to teach me here, and I’m going to trust.

44:27 Do you get to meet those people anymore? I mean, you’re running around the world teaching everybody, everyone’s looking to Ido. How can you ever find your teachers? I make it a point, I go and seek new teachers, and I meet some of my old teachers, not all of them, but some of them. I’m in good contact with, and it’s important to have teachers for me still.

44:49 I’m, yeah, I travel all around the world and looking for pieces of information. Sometimes it’s not about finding a teacher, it’s about finding pieces of information through some person, but at other times I’m more interested in finding teachers. It’s rare, but it is more than just information. Yeah, there is the information brokers and there is the teachers, something else. It’s not about, I don’t, I don’t just want the information that you have.

45:19 I want wisdom. I want something else, you know? Data, data, information, knowledge, wisdom. Okay, data I can find alone. I’ll open my phone, you know, information is a bit higher level already, certain, certain filters on the data, and then you have knowledge, what you know, and then wisdom, how to act upon this knowledge.

45:48 And, you know, and it’s kind of, some of the definitions are intersecting. You know, you’ve said something about information in the past, and on, on my TED talk that I gave, I said research is procrastination in disguise. And you once said information is toxic and it’s addictive. We run after it, we have this thirst for it, but at a certain point it turns on you, it paralyzes you and freezes you, and it doesn’t allow you to apply and learn, and it’s no longer a contributing factor for your development.

46:19 Do you still believe? Yeah, yeah, and more and more, the more time passes, the more I believe in that, because of the this crazy era of misinformation. It’s not the era of information. It became the era of misinformation, and the new game is how to find good information. And it’s much more tricky, because now it’s hiding in piles and piles of, you know, disguising material, disgusting and disguising.

46:49 It’s very hard. Then maybe this should be the new kind of direction that we take our education system, teaching our children how to find the better information and not how to find information per se. Many years ago you had to learn how to go to the library, do research, find any information about the subject. Any, you’re good. Nowadays it’s open Google, everything is there, so how do you know what’s good and what’s bad?

47:21 And that’s the new game. Everybody can say a right thing, but very few people can say the right thing. You said you hate and you won’t train with vegans. At one point people jumped onto that. Do you still get asked about that?

47:38 Yeah, all the time. Yeah, my, some of my vegan students, they love this. They are priding themselves, you know, as being the only vegans, but they don’t know there are so many other vegans in there. So it worked, it worked, it engaged them in a conversation. Yeah, for sure.

47:53 Yeah, any kind of conversation or publicity or talk. And yeah, yeah, they still don’t impress me at all. You know, like, you know, sometimes people bring me this, you know, anecdote: look at this crazy guy, he’s vegan. You know, so what? I had in the military a guy with me who used to smoke, you know, two packs a day of cigarettes, and used to run 2K in under six minutes.

48:15 So what? What do I learn from it? That, you know, this guy or that guy is doing this or that? It’s, as a community, I meet a lot of people with different practices, and I allow myself, as a human being, to have my judgments and to have my ideas, and to agree to disagree, to see beyond what they’re presenting and into the reality, etc. And definitely I’m not impressed, you know, and I know they’re amazing movers.

48:41 Some of my students are vegans and they’re doing great, but I see more that are not doing great, and in general you’re still not impressed. You’re not impressed at all, and you said last time they’re the most hot one of the most hostile communities in the world. Yeah, yeah, which is great to engage in conversation, you know, or at least in a war, if not in conversation, and they fight back as well. Yeah, okay. But you get along with the CrossFitters somewhat.

49:09 Yeah, okay. Didn’t always, but these days you do. No, no, no, no. I was always supportive of CrossFit and loved it, and for what it is, it took a different route, and you know, like we’ve kind of drifted apart, but I still definitely support a lot of their work, and I enjoy a lot of the stuff. Everybody eats off the breadcrumbs of CrossFit, and we’ve talked about it last time.

49:31 They’re creating a lot of stuff. You can buy a pair of rings these days, you know, because of them, in 30 bucks. When I bought my first pair of rings, it was 270 bucks. So they’re doing a lot of great stuff, and we, it’s starting to take different shapes, and the practice and the culture starts to take all these different, you know, perspectives, and people start to realize that there are prices to the CrossFit game, and to pushing hard in these specific areas.

50:01 Also not to be confused with movement practice, and many would say not to be confused with fitness, with being fit, but definitely movement practice, not to be confused with being the game winner in CrossFit doesn’t mean s*** about the movement practice, and I’ve seen it many times, you know, like you will lack so many different, you know, movement practice can be dictated by your sensitivity, kinesthetic awareness, all kinds of small combinations of traits that have nothing to do, zero, vice versa, the opposite with CrossFit training, right? So just because you’re a great CrossFitter doesn’t mean you’re a good mover, because you might be able to bust out the workout of the day and do your, you know, kipping pull-ups and your deadlifts, but that doesn’t mean that you can, could do a lot of stuff, right?

50:57 Yeah. Crawl across the room. What’s that crawl that you do, and am I going to learn that this weekend? Yeah, yeah, we’ll play with that. Okay, what’s it called?

51:04 The, I think you’re referring to the lizard crawl? Yeah, okay. So that is, is that a good example of a movement? That’s a good example of a movement that will be difficult because of range of motions, thoracic spine mobility that will be limited in most of the cases, but it’s much more human than that. You know, like squat down and wait for the bus for 30 minutes.

51:30 A CrossFitter with a 250-kilogram back squat might not be able to do that, to rest in the squat for 30 minutes, because the body is being made too specialized to lift heavy loads in the squat, but that’s not the original intention behind this position. It’s a resting position. You’re using it to collect berries, to wait for someone to eat, to s*** and this is a very basic human layer. Yeah, we have toilets, but if we go on the toilet for too long and we forget to squat, we pay with knee pains, we pay with ankle problems, we pay with digestion issues, because we need that folding of the body to fold it every day.

52:13 Yeah, so this is just small examples. It’s infinite. You have to remain humble. These practices are not about movement. The dogma is different.

52:25 It’s about building a very specific engine for very specific tasks. What about all the organic movements? What about this movement? It’s very beneficial, but it cannot be conceptualized inside CrossFit because it cannot be measured. It’s not loaded, but maybe it’s the best thing that you need right now to heal a certain area in your body or to solve a certain kinetic puzzle, some riddle of movement that life throws at you.

52:53 Getting strong, yeah, you get strong. You have some balance. You have, you’re doing some tricks, you’re running, you’re doing there is a lot of good stuff in CrossFit. It’s not about movement. It’s about CrossFit.

53:03 We talked about Dorian Yates earlier, and you’ve said that aesthetics is reverse engineering the body, and when I see Dorian Yates, and he was here just a few weeks ago, he seems like such a polar opposite athlete to you, or a person to you, but yet you respect what he’s done, but what he did was obviously build an aesthetic mass by doing physical practices. What comes to mind when you think about bodybuilding or you know, fitness models? Yeah, I was there.

53:36 You know, I was there many years ago. I was doing the thing, you know, I was 82 kilograms, huge, like maybe, you know, 17 kilograms more than now, very big, over 30 pounds. You know, I have all the ripped skin, you know, in the back, in the arms, to show for it. I was there, I was doing it. I was following people like Dorian in the ’90s and stuff.

54:02 I was lifting, I was doing it, but it was leaving me very empty. Eventually I realized it was motivating me. I did the whole thing, but the awareness was leaking. And I love Dorian because of his mindset. It can be something completely opposite to what you’re doing, but his approach, the way of doing things that I appreciate.

54:23 And one last thing about it: where is all that mess nowadays? Where is it? It’s gone. So what is left? Ideas, awareness that you developed in that practice, and maybe didn’t develop much because it’s bodybuilding, versus superior practices for developing awareness and understanding and relationship with the body, stuff that will last you a lifetime.

54:48 Actually, nowadays Dorian is doing yoga and climbing up those mountains and hiking. He’s doing movement these days. He’s doing movement practice. He’s living in a smaller body because it’s more economic and sustainable, and he’s preparing himself for more awareness, and he’s more aware. So I love his example and his fire, and what he did in bodybuilding is amazing, and I appreciate him coming on and talking about other things, because it might be a risk.

55:21 It might be dangerous for him. Maybe people don’t want to hear it. Maybe people just want to hear about the gold old days, you know, and babbling on about that and the stories, you know, the Arnold stories, and you know all this, you know, pumping iron for the million times, and you know what? It doesn’t do it for me anymore, and I had to stay real with that and continue to develop myself and find the same fire I had for those things, but in a more deeper, level, sustainable level into older age, and still maintain certain aesthetics, which I believe are very important for our image, for the way that we move.

55:59 They’re connected with who we are. We’re not just a brain, we’re not just a body, we’re also an image of the way that we look, etc. Right? This is part, so aesthetics aren’t unimportant. There is a place for them.

56:11 Yeah, I never said they are important. It’s the people who want to take the black and white thing and present it as a, you know, gimmick. I never said that. I said just aspiring for aesthetics is reverse engineering. You are aspiring for those aesthetics because it hints of a movement functionality.

56:31 Oh, that body can fight, can move, can climb, can push, can pull, but actually not necessarily in Dorian’s case. He was still one of the last, you know, strong bodybuilders. You know, he was deadlifting some serious weights. He was pushing around some serious iron, but even that is just a small perspective of movement. You know, it might be a certain, you know, relaxation that allows you to throw the arm in speed and hit someone more efficiently versus contraction.

57:08 Yeah, I just made me think of martial arts when you threw that punch out there, and, be, you know, and like you said, it, it’s this movement pattern that it can’t be quantified, and so a lot of times it’s not practiced by, you know, by certain pieces, and if there’s no aesthetic component, then it’s then it’s what is it? So, and that’s, that’s your land, and what is your path now? Like, what is your next few months like? And what do you wake up looking to do?

57:29 Is it grow as fast as possible? Is it get the message to as most people, or the right people, or is it for you to learn? I’m still, I’m still trying to create my practice physically, and trying to bring together a lot of these elements that I want to be together. Like I said, the move, I will never be the polyvalent mover, the one who can do everything, because it’s impossible. So, I’m trying to figure out what I can do, what is the size of my skill set, and then, and that’s what I’m recently working on, just fortifying, that exploring, that researching, and at the same time I’m continuing to support my students and work with closer and closer relationship with the students.

58:16 I’m, I’m looking to increase the general pool that is coming into feeding into the movement culture, and then destroy and decrease it, increase and destroy and purify. By doing that, a lot of people come in from the wrong reasons, you know, like, if I take my shirt off, some people will come because of the six packs or the look of my body, or some of my students were, you know, beautiful bodies, incredible movers. It’s the wrong reason to be there, and it will, we, it will fail down the path.

58:50 You will not be able to sustain a movement practice around that. So yeah, just doing that and getting more and more quality in our crowd, and little by little growing that crowd, but nothing, nothing huge, viral, because I’m aware of how it feels to run such a community. I’ve been there. I, I went there. I, I saw what’s coming.

59:12 I looked out of my window. It’s not fun. I don’t want to be there. I’m, you could see all the people wanting to come in. Is that what you mean by it?

59:20 I, I see I saw the messes, I saw the, so many different mindsets coming in and the wrong reasons that you can’t do much with it. You cannot. It’s not fun, it’s not interesting for me, it’s not, it’s not what I want to cultivate. It’s not my mindset, and it’s not the movement perspective that I want to support. So well, it was, it’s pulling you, you know, it changes you.

59:42 You try to change the world, and the world changes you as well. It’s a constant relationship. You put something in people’s minds and they distort it, and I can say, for very honestly, that my work has been distorted many, in many ways. Like, most people don’t know many of my closest students, they would say things, you know, like, I’m, I’m hiding, you know, like oh s***, you know, I’m ashamed to hear like, like, what they’ll just like, they’ll be asked in some interview somewhere, you know, about the approach and the practice and some of them will just copy-paste, and I prefer that they do that, you know, properly, and some of them will say things that are, you know, showing their true intentions, which are sometimes misguided in my eyes.

1:00:28 They’re not really movement aligned, they’re a different dogma, or present something that is, you know, not my style of doing things, and I’m just a simple person. I love my style, and I don’t try to, you know, I don’t try to be everything and to, to, to be able to contain everything. I don’t like kitsch. I don’t like the, the mannerism, but when you run a big community, a fair amount of it comes in the door: inspirational clips, and some of them with me, you know, I was part of them, but the end product, I don’t feel connected to, sometimes.

1:01:08 And yeah, I think I like Dorian because of this sense of rugged piece of reality. It’s like, it’s like a small, you know, you walk on the street and you bang your foot into this lamp, and it’s a bit rusty, but it’s beautiful. You know, it’s not this shiny fake thing, and I love it. He’s real. London Real.

1:01:34 Yeah, he’s really, he’s a real sense of, and I, I want to, I want to also do something similar in my way. And yeah, it’s, it’s fascinating because you’re known for so many memes: the one-handed handstand, the planches, those short videos on YouTube. And we talked about this last time because it’s, it’s like I think you said something like, I infect you with the virus, and then you get the message, and so in a weird way it’s frustrating for you because people like, oh, Ido, he’s that guy.

1:02:08 Yeah, but at the same time it proliferates your message to the right people. It’s more accessible, it’s powerful, it opens the door for a lot of people, and then you have to start the real process of education of what we are really doing here. One-arm handstand is the media captured. It, you know, I did it. I played that game.

1:02:31 I was that slot, you know. I was, I was using those tools to promote my ideas, but in, in my real practice, in my real approach with my students, we were, it was just certain pieces of our practice. Very similar thing happened to the parkour world, where the media took on these huge jumps, but it’s a very small piece of the practice. It’s a very small piece. So, yeah, we used it, and we cannot b**** and moan later on for being misunderstood.

1:03:03 We just have to educate and the ones who came into the door. Yeah, just educate them. Last time we were here, we spoke afterwards, and I went away thinking, you know, Ido is a passionate man, and you had conflict in you, because I feel like you want to get this message out there, but it has to be done the Ido’s way, you know, and like, you, and you don’t want to sell out. You don’t want to take that sponsorship. It just cannot be done that way.

1:03:36 And there’s something I find really attractive about people that are conflicted, because it means they, they care about what they’re doing, sometimes so much so that it consumes their life. Is this accurate description of you, or you a year ago? I think so. Yeah, I’m becoming more and more comfortable with, I’m, I’m free. I’m free in many ways to make the right choices for me, so I’m less conflicted.

1:04:04 I I’m not being attracted or seduced so easily. But it’s still a challenge in other areas, you know, attention and all kinds of things, but it’s definitely a big, a big piece of, you know, like, this is, this is my legacy. This is, this is my name is connected to it, you know, it all I do. I want to do it right. I want to do it in a genuine way.

1:04:32 I want to do it in a way that I feel I can stand behind it, and for many years to come, and my whole life is, you know, and I want to do it in the right way for other people as well, to not promote, you know, something I don’t believe in. You’re 35 now, 55-year-old Ido, is he here in this chair on the same tour of Europe and Asia and America? In 20 years, what’s he doing? What is it, what is, what does idoportal.com look like? Probably still traveling, and I’m traveling a lot less than before.

1:05:16 I’m doing it in a good way, but I’m still all over, in all continents pretty much, and moving around. I enjoy that. I love this nomad thing that makes you constantly re-adapt. Adaptability. This, okay, new chair, you know, spill myself in the form, London, you know, like getting here, you know, okay, subways, this, that, okay, it keeps you engaged, and you’re not too comfortable, and you don’t sink into, you know, old age, and so this is one thing, and definitely the movement thing, it’s very interesting for me.

1:06:02 I think about it often. You know, how will it be and yeah, I’ve had in the last movement camp, I brought along as one of the guests and lecturers a guy named Steven Jackson. He’s 74 years old, and he’s a mover. He’s, you know, juggling three balls, standing on a rola bola, and throwing and catching things. He had a very viral video on YouTube called “Never Leave the Playground,” and I saw a little bit of a glimpse of what it means to be practicing movement in this age.

1:06:45 But it’s not my style. I love what he’s doing. I respect a lot of it, but it’s related to certain areas in movement. I would like to do something even more diverse, and it’s interesting. Do you think how you’re going to be moving when you’re 74?

1:07:06 How will you be moving different, smarter, for sure? What do you mean by that? Do you do things that are not smart now? Do you take chances on things that can hurt you? Not so much.

1:07:20 No, I was always the coward. You said that last time. You’re a coward. You don’t seem like a coward. Well, I don’t take, I’ve seen people take risks, you know.

1:07:29 I don’t take big risks. I take calculated risks. I do a lot of stuff that might seem crazy for people, like, you know, but for me it’s not dangerous. It’s calculated risk. So I keep my body, you know, better than I was at 16.

1:07:48 I’m I’m not one of those guys that you will discover the problem with a few hours. You’ll see tomorrow. It’s like you’ll discover, it’s like, yeah, I’m doing great, everything is great, after a few hours you start to see, oh, you’re not doing so great, because you cannot spend time, like an hour squatting down and moving around in low gait. Your joints are achy, and you brush your knees, and your shoulder is bothering you, and you have weakness. You cannot place weight on your hands for a long period of time.

1:08:18 So I’m, I’m I don’t have almost anything. I kept my body in very, very good shape, and I saved it from all the unnecessary dangers. I took risks, they were calculated. I enjoyed dipping in the chaos, being taking that bullet, effect of it, but not doing too much. It’s very important.

1:08:41 You do a little bit of boxing, maybe some sparring here and there, and then step out, because if you continue, you’re gonna pay the price the rest of your life. You know, it’s going to be, it’s going to be there. If you’re going to be competitive, you’re going to pay a price. BJJ people, you know, let’s look around. You know, herniated discs, you know, fingers, swollen fingers, you know, cauliflower ears, knees, knee problems, hips.

1:09:12 But if you do it in the right way, in the right dosages, you dip into the curves, you get the knowledge, you get the good effects, and then you move on, and you still maintain that with you. So that is what I’ve been doing, and I’ve been healing my body from all the injuries that I did have, and into using movement, you know, the biggest healer out there, and I hope I can continue and maintain that while still practicing so much, because I love it and continuing to develop myself so much, because that’s the one thing that, you know, is constant in my life, and I love it. You’re known as a ruthless instructor.

1:09:54 Have you gone softer over the years? Should I expect that tomorrow? Like you said, sounds like you’re gonna put us through all these positions, and I think you were alluding to, yeah, you might think you have it for the first 15 minutes, but after an hour or two, if something’s not right in your body, you’re gonna feel it, right? So you’re pushing people to pain limits sometimes. Yeah, I, I like to redefine the relationship with pain, and it’s important for us.

1:10:20 We’ve been sensitive, over-sensitized by our culture’s practices. We’re inside this cotton, and we can take, you know, 10 degrees up, it’s too hot. 10 degrees down, it’s too cold. People are not made of sugar, right? Yeah, we’re never satisfied.

1:10:37 We are, we’re never satisfied. It’s a ridiculous state. It’s like, yeah, we talk about the weather, you know, like, yeah, it’s a bit too cold today. You rarely hear, it’s perfect, and even if you hear it, it’s not for a long time. So I like to redefine it.

1:10:53 I’m not a ruthless person. I’m very empathic in the way, because I felt those things, but I also provide a certain type of support that might be viewed as ruthless, and it’s exactly the opposite. It’s an empathic way to look at things, where I’m saying to people, it’s not a big deal, breathe through it, pain will come, we don’t stop, and re-establish a healthier relationship with it. Pain is not as simplistic as people put it out to be, you know. Pain is a signal telling you to move away from it.

1:11:29 It’s far from it. The pain science has been completely changing. We are changing our way of how we look at pain and pain feedback loops, and all this stuff, and yeah, it’s a very complex phenomenon, right? And we, well, even we’re probably doing it, you know, a disservice, because we use one word, pain, and yet there, I’m sure you have felt so many different kinds of pain at so many different levels. Yeah, yeah.

1:11:59 What is your prediction of the fight, pain? You know, clever leg they just gave him one word, you know. So it’s too simplistic. It’s not even a good word, because it’s coming from our mechanoreceptors. It’s not coming from pain receptors, you know.

1:12:16 We’re changing the way that we look at it. It’s it’s something, it’s some signals, and we put it into context. We make it pain by defining it, so we have to re-establish it and we have to work with it. I’m not saying ignore it. There is a lot of information there.

1:12:33 Any information, don’t ignore information. Information is good, that’s why you have input systems, and you are, in a way, information and input. You are your input. No input, you have nothing, you know. Yeah, so that’s the thing that might look to some people as ruthless or something, because I’m not phased out by pain.

1:12:55 Many people, you know, say, oh, I have pain here, stop, stop, rest, rest, and decide, you know, don’t do it, and I sometimes want to investigate that with that person. Let’s, let’s dive in here, and let’s look at this pain. Let’s, what is that exactly, and what can we learn from it? And I don’t stop, maybe directly, maybe I’ll stop at a certain point, but maybe not right up, right away, because that fortifies the pain, that closes it inside this palace, and now you cannot access that point.

1:13:25 It’s a problem in and of its own. Do you get emotional people in your workshops? Do people cry? Do people get angry with you? Do people storm out?

1:13:37 Never stormed out. Anyway, maybe it happened. I don’t know, and I wasn’t aware never stormed out. I think people get angry, and directly feel other emotions coming up as well, so it kind of balances it out, and I’m trying to do that. I’m making people angry, but I’m also providing some support there, directly, and letting them deal with that anger in a better way.

1:14:03 And people get emotional. People burst out crying. People send, you know, messages, bring letters to the second day, bring you know, send me emails, you know, changed my life, saved my life. I just received an email just three days ago. Somebody watched the first London Real interview.

1:14:21 He had very, very bad upbringing. Parents died early on. He went between foster families, eventually reached his grandparents in the age of 16. After two years they got dementia. As a 16-year-old person he had to take care of them.

1:14:37 Like, all of his life went down. This, you know, super depressed, and then one day he saw this clip and just like, boom, you know, meaning movement. Yeah, that’s something that he connected with, you know, in that moment that changed life. So, yeah, these emotions are part of the paradigm shift. They are it’s hard.

1:15:05 You meet some demons. You meet some things maybe you didn’t want to hear. You’re very good with it. You’ve dug into your demons before using all kinds of approaches and ways, so I think you will find this interesting for sure. It’ll be interesting, because I dug into them, but, you know, it’s funny when you go and do it in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or in a fighting context, everything is in a fighting context, so you kind of know there’s an ultimate aim, and it’s usually an aggressive aim.

1:15:31 And so, as opposed to what I think you’re going to challenge me with, just different, you know, patterns and physical emotions, I’m not going to understand, like, why is it asking me to do this in a fight class. You kind of know why, which, probably makes it less interesting to a certain extent. I give it certain context, and I give it certain, but ultimately it’s about revealing that concealed truth. It’s about bringing this awareness inside there. There, anyways, anyways, anything that you do, you know, has no value or truth in it unless it sheds new awareness in it.

1:16:10 It’s like no activity has any interesting value, you know? It’s around us unless it sheds light of awareness, and the movement thing is through the body, the first medium, you know, directly into that thing. The yogis knew it all. These traditional cultures, they were mind-body. They were working through the body.

1:16:33 It’s very nice to think we can, you know, just sit and do that, but yeah, we discover more and more it doesn’t quite work like that. The Cartesian error, this disconnect the mind and the body. They’re connected. The feedback loops with the heart, with the stomach, gut feelings, neurotransmitters being sent everywhere. You’re not going to make it without your body.

1:16:56 Very few people have the ability to make it without their body. It’s possible, it’s a huge, huge task, and it might need, you might need certain gifts, upbringing, specific upbringing, or, yeah, to be able to do that, but I think most people can, through the skin-in approach, quicker. And like, for the last 200 years we’ve been taught that it all happens here, right? And it’s all about the knowledge gain. You should figure things out and not feel things from your body.

1:17:26 And now we’re knowing more that the gut is always telling us messages, and the body’s always telling us things that we’ve kind of chosen to ignore. You know, traditionally, yeah, yeah. Even in those 200 years there were still some saints trying to give the right message, for trying to promote this message and not ignoring the body completely. Right Right, right. How does Ido Portal relax without moving?

1:17:57 Without moving? Yeah, well, it can be a lot of things. It’s mostly related to movement, like, still, my relaxation will be through a gate of movement. Okay. It’s very hard not to move, you know.

1:18:10 You’re sleeping, you’re moving, you’re doing, you know, the chemistry is moving constantly. We are moving. We’re not moving, we’re done. It’s death, you know. This is the big, big spectrum.

1:18:20 This is the big, you stop moving, you die. You move, you increase life, life force, right? But if you’re referring to the more traditional point of view on movement, is yeah, I will do a lot of research, working through my curiosity, so I will devote a lot of time to reading to researching, to getting new ideas in, and trying to re-feed, you know, my practices through that. I would do I would meditate. I meditate more and more with the years that pass.

1:18:56 I started over a decade ago, but did not give it the same value as I do these days, and did not realize yeah, what it holds inside of it. Morning practice, nighttime practice, one year at a time, it all, all over the day. It can be in the end of my first session, which I will do a little bit of meditation, all kinds of ways. It can be in the end of the full day. It can be in the middle, in between the breaks, and different types of practices, different types of meditations.

1:19:28 Yeah, I just had this moment a few years ago, and it really kind of started to bubble up in the last year, where I felt nothing. I feel nothing. I don’t feel anything. It’s done. I I don’t feel anything.

1:19:48 The bigger the things I do, it’s like the less I feel them. Like huge events, you know, like changing people’s lives, reading emails, you know, like that. People close, I can’t feel anything. It loses all the meaning. You know, there is a leakage somewhere of meaning, of and then I realized I need to stop.

1:20:11 I have to stop, and I started to, I just, it happened intuitively. Just I started to meditate. I started to stop, and it directly released me a little bit, and then I dived into it very, very deeply lately, and just had some realizations, and yeah, about awareness, about its importance, and now I interlace it into my sessions, and regularly. And the warning signal was because, you know, these big things weren’t affecting you in a way that normally they would have.

1:20:47 And so you said maybe I need to take some time and go grounded myself in meditation. They were not affecting me at all. They were not for the good, not for the bad, nothing, you know. I, in one of my meditative states, the deepest one, I had this thing come to me, and I thought, emotional flexibility. This term just appeared to me, you know.

1:21:09 I lost my emotional flexibility. I had no, no emotions. Nothing’s happening, almost like a complete blank, you know, like I’m doing this crazy stuff, but I’m, it just washes over me. I don’t gain anything from it, right? And I had to mobilize because that’s not healthy, right?

1:21:29 Not having emotion is not healthy. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s not healthy. You put a title on it. Another title, like that’s not healthy, that’s healthy, but it’s it’s, yeah, it’s more about, it’s not, it’s not aware.

1:21:44 It’s not aware, good or bad. That’s another title, that’s down the road, but aware is the first thing. It’s like, no awareness. I don’t know this. I’m not aware of what’s happening to me, I’m sitting here in an interview, and I want to be here with you doing this thing.

1:22:01 I don’t want to be in my thoughts somewhere else, or let it wash over me, another V on my calendar, or whatever. And that takes stopping regularly. You have to stop, and you have to do to empty, to empty, to mobilize certain areas, to let certain things sink etc. And the other realizations, the deeper ones, but they are a bonus. Okay.

1:22:30 I saw your pictures of China. You went there, I think, after you were here last year, and you had a bunch of realizations of what it was just like to be there, and I think you realized that the people there are very tough, because they live in some, would say, a toxic environment, and yet they still, they’re, they still have resolve, and you were noticing these things, and you said it, you know, it in the s*** storm that is China. You know, I found if a day of peace, or a day of realization here, what did you learn from that trip?

1:22:59 Oh, I learned so much. It’s a different universe, almost. For us, coming from a Western perspective, it starts with the language, which the biggest thing is, the words don’t mean one thing. It’s a huge, huge change. It’s a huge difference when a word is being given out.

1:23:22 You have to absorb it. It’s like coffee, it has all these tastes inside of it, but we are just drinking this oxidized, dark, dark roast with no, you know, one taste. So you have to develop this, first, the palate, to understand their meaning, their words, and the translations must be requested again and again and again until you get a few for you to start to realize what it means. And yeah, just seeing, you know, how people live in very, very difficult things.

1:23:58 For us, like the toxicity and the pollution and the food, which is terrible in these rural areas, in these industrial cities, and still finding a lot of similarities, still human things, and kind of asking yourself, you know, oh, this is a human thing, must be, because it’s still here, just like back home. Yeah, what is, you know, what is coming out of our DNA, and what is like conditioned, and, you know, social more? Yeah, was an interesting trip. Definitely hardcore.

1:24:35 Yeah, you did a lot of training, a lot of training. Very monotonous training. You know, nobody tries to gratify you with training there. It’s like you’re getting a task, mostly you’ll get one or two exercises or tasks a day, and eight, nine, ten hours do those two drills. It’s more difficult here than even in the body.

1:25:00 It’s hard on the body, but it’s difficult here. The first day I was there, I saw this girl, you know, came for a first class, first ever class in this martial art facility. You know, there is the, some of the national Sanda people there. There is some, some people from the military in China training there, and she was, she, somebody taught her how to jab and put her on the back. And, Brian, I swear to God, two hours she was jabbing non-stop, because nobody stopped her.

1:25:31 They just taught her how to jab, and she was just a girl from the street, you know, like first class, but you could see the type of, you know, mind, just like jabbing two hours straight. No change, no wiping the sweat, no nothing. And just after two hours, okay, come back next time. So that’s something in the culture. So when they’re assigned to something like that, that’s just what they do.

1:25:57 Yeah, I don’t, you know, China, huge, huge population. I don’t want to put titles on the culture, but that’s what I saw there, specifically in this place, and it’s something that I recognized again and again there. Yeah, eat bitter. You know, they say in martial arts, can you eat bitter? Okay, you know, first they make you eat bitter, because if you cannot pass this, we can’t teach you anything of, you know, true importance.

1:26:24 You know, some of the Chinese, they say first five years pain, after vacation, first five years is like the basics, getting the basics done. It’s like pain, a lot of practice. What else do you learn? What are your other favorite places to go? Where’s home for you?

1:26:41 Is it Israel? I’m still, I’m moving around so much, so I spent some time in Europe, I spent some time in Israel, I spent some time in Australia and Asia. I still don’t really have a home, you know, moving around the whole time. But yeah, other places, all over. Every place has its, you know, very interesting stuff.

1:27:03 I, when I was younger, I went to Russia many times. I was very interested in the physical culture and this type of, you know, type of and the culture in general. I have many friends, Russian friends, who are still like very good friends, and we have very good connection. You said it’s very similar to Israeli culture, as the no b******* culture in Russia. Yeah, is that, is that is that what you said when you first got there?

1:27:26 Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, it’s, it’s very non-bullshit. It’s in your face, it can be rude, different rudeness. But yeah, you know, 19. What is 91?

1:27:38 You know, we were in school, all of a sudden these kids came. You know, who are these kids? You know, they can’t speak Hebrew, and they grew up with us. It was like one million people coming into a five-million-people country, you know, and we grew up together, so we are very Russian also. We were very affected by them, and we created friendships, and we learned, you know, never to say a bad word about the mother of some ethnic groups, and we learned, yeah, we wrestled together, we fought together, we made friends together.

1:28:12 I yeah, I had many good friends I grew up with from Georgia, from Russia, from, from all over, Azerbaijan, and they brought a lot of knowledge of sports, of boxing, a lot of culture, a lot of music, a lot of art, and they still stayed very close within themselves, and still their children and grandchildren still speak Russian in Israel. You know, they can speak Hebrew, but they still speak fluent Russian, as if they were born in Russia, in Soviet Union countries. Their culture was so powerful compared to this 50-60-year-old country that they maintained their identity very strongly.

1:28:53 They had their ghettos, you know, supermarkets. It’s written in Russian. Wow. Does Ido Portal start a family any time in the future? Not so sure about that.

1:29:08 It’s not on the map. It’s not on the map, but you love things that aren’t on the map, right? True. It might get on the map, you know. It might get suddenly on the map, but it’s not on the map.

1:29:22 Yeah, right now I’m way too occupied with my, you know, self-egoistic development and internal world, you know, to bring, you know, another person into this world. And also I’m not so sure about this world in general. So it supports that kind of direction. What are you sure about in this world? Are we going in the wrong direction?

1:29:50 You know, I think we know that we’re going, you know, in very bad direction in many ways, and in other ways we’re going in good directions, but yeah, it’s a complex reality to bring a child into, you know. It’s not, I don’t know what will be, what will be here when I’m 55, like you said. Yeah, hopefully technology will enable us to change our mindsets. I don’t think the technology will save us, as many hope. I think it might enable us to change our mindset in a deep enough level.

1:30:34 You know, yeah, and what directions are we going in that are wrong? Do you think as a world, is it from a humanity standpoint or resources, or we’re not first, we’re not becoming more aware. It’s what we said. We we’re moving away from awareness. You know, some farmer you know, thousands of years ago was more aware than a broker in New York, and that creates a whole host of other problems, which are children of that original problem, because when you’re not aware, yeah, you start to hurt, destroy.

1:31:20 You don’t notice it. It’s not the evil as people treat it. You know, the evilness of it’s more lack of awareness. Yeah, you know, it’s a Viktor Frankl, you know, like the opposite of love is indifference. Indifferent, unaware.

1:31:40 Yeah, there are evil forces out there, but not the biggest evil force. The biggest one is this lack of awareness. You mentioned Conor McGregor and mixed martial arts. We talked about the UFC a bit last time, but, and I mentioned Conor funnily enough, and that was before he became a big star. This was like 14 months ago, but it’s been fascinating to watch him, and the way he moves, like you said, he’s not afraid to give his back up, and I’ve watched him closely, because along with his style comes a bravado and a way of speaking that’s just really, I mean, I don’t think Ali was even at the level Conor’s at.

1:32:15 So, but I’ve watched his movement aside from the talk, and it’s fascinating to see, especially when he goes up against you know, career-defining moments, the way he stays relaxed and stays moving and gives his back up, and just seems to kind of be very in the moment. And you know, we both know from the, you know, MMA and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu backgrounds, there’s these memes that you build up to where you don’t even know you’re doing them, but you are actually rigid in what should be a fluid environment. Do you watch him?

1:32:46 Do you get inspired by him? Yeah, I love it. I love it. I love his stuff. I love his fights.

1:32:53 I love his point of view. I love how he took a lot of my ideas and applied it in his field, and mentioned a few times, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What kind of things? I would love to meet him and do some work with him, and I think he’s, he’s taking this generalist movement perspective inside fighting, and he’s definitely applying that, and there is so much you can do with it, because he is not most fighters are standing there with their English or their Russian or their Portuguese, their language, and they’re waiting for you to ask them this question, but all of a sudden you come up with some and there is no answer for that specifically inside the techniques that you were taught.

1:33:42 There is no specific technique to match that, and that’s where he shines, by asking those questions and by answering these unformed, mutated, but beautiful answers. It’s a true expression. He’s doing the Bruce Lee thing in many ways, expressing the art of expressing the human body. He is, he is just genuine self. Yeah, you can say for good or for bad, but the style, the actions he is bringing, something very genuine yeah, yeah, and you see his opponents not being able to, like you said, answer the question, because they don’t know what language.

1:34:25 They don’t know what, what, what is that, right? What even is that? And he is contributing something to the collective knowledge by bringing in his unique self and building on top of the work of others, but bringing something genuine, and I appreciate it. I’ll tell you something else that I appreciate. I appreciate loudmouths.

1:34:45 I appreciate them. They can directly shine a mirror in your face that reflects your own ego, and of course create a lot of reactions with people, but if you get over that you understand that he’s a risk taker. Loudmouths are putting it out there and taking huge, huge risks, and yeah, just, I appreciate it. He’s confident, but more than that, as confident as you are. You have to either do it or do not, and he’s definitely doing it.

1:35:24 He’s going for it. Yeah, yeah. There is a lot of, there is a lot of good stuff in the movement that is happening, and I see that he’s taking some patterns and he’s mentioning some terms that I’ve been using regularly in interviews, and I am very honored to see that he’s getting that information. And what kind of practices did he adopt from you, or what kind of, I saw some patterns of movement on the floor that I played with, and they became kind of known through my work and the type of mobility work that I’m doing, which is very specific, and to how I look at things and ideas about movement and about talking about movement and general movement and move and the heart of the human body, movement.

1:36:11 You know what does he mean? He means this language. You know, this is an arm, and if I don’t perceive this arm as punch, elbow, but I perceive it as an arm, I am much more able to respond to what this arm can produce than through the technical language perspective. This principle approach is like a master key. It opens any door while the other opponent is fumbling around with a bunch of keys, trying to, trying to find the right key for the door.

1:36:42 It’s a principle, superior to technique, principles much higher than technique. They produce techniques instantly, whenever you need them. What do I need right now? I just make it, and he was talking about movement a year, two years ago A lot of people started talking about movement after you started talking about it. You know, we live in a world of intellectual property and patents and trademarks, but you can’t do any of that, or is that a game?

1:37:11 This is really not worth fighting, because that can drive you crazy, can’t it? You know, you talk about practices and routines. I’ve even seen things that people grab from you, and I’m not even looking. How do you deal with that? Is that person who creates sometimes, sometimes it penetrates the armor and can hurt, and can, you know, ignite.

1:37:32 Other times you left it off, you know, I’m mostly not impressed by unoriginal thinking and unethical, you know, use of, you know, others’ ideas. Like, I’ve used many ideas just talking to you now, and I made it a point to mention the authors, whether they’re known or not known, or these are things that are important for me. So yeah, I just, sometimes I deal with it better, sometimes worse. With the time I’m playing the game a little bit better. I think, I hope you mentioned you like Conor being a loudmouth.

1:38:10 You were a loudmouth when you were younger, and you maybe still are. I hope, has that changed? And do you pride yourself in being that lab mouth, because those are the guys that take the risks? Yeah, yeah, I definitely. I’m standing where I’m standing right now, and because of being a loudmouth, and yeah, saying things as they are and putting some pepper on it, and of course also, like, counting, you know, like, I really believe in the intelligence of the audience.

1:38:37 I don’t degrade the intelligence of the audience. I will, I will use sarcasm or even if it will be misunderstood by few, because I believe it upgrades the audience. It pulls it up with you, your ideas, and everything, and if not, they’re not worth it, and they need to climb up more rungs on the ladder to reach the, the place where you’re talking or saying, or maybe it’s not rungs up the ladder. It’s laterally. Maybe it’s a different place.

1:39:07 It’s not better or worse, it’s just a different place, so being a loudmouth and having humor and, you know, not being politically correct all the time, and, you know, it’s rolling with the punches and having all this. This is very real for me. It’s very important. I’m not perfect, I’m a human being. I, you know, I have white hair and wrinkles, and I, I have you know, I wake up sometimes on the left side and sometimes on the right side, and it’s, it’s something I want to remain connected to.

1:39:38 Don’t want to present some pictures that, you know, is not real. I always ask everyone here a few questions about success, and I was wondering if you could answer just a few. The one that I want to ask you more than anything is, when you think of the word successful, One of your closest students is here with you on the trip. Odelia, is that right?

1:40:25 Yeah, One of your maybe disciples, you might be. How would she describe Ido to me? That would be interesting. I have no idea, actually. After all these years, she’s not only a student and disciple, she’s also my teacher in many ways, and she’s one of the closest people to me, you know, ever, and but it’s very interesting, actually, what she would say.

1:40:50 I think she would say something about my strength right off the bat, not physical strength, about my support because I’m holding on, people, I’m supporting a lot of people, the close people to me, and we went through a lot of stuff together. You know, she went through a car accident. She lost the kidney. She broke her back. She went through three knee surgeries that your sister performed?

1:41:15 Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, so I’m just like family. You know, I’m very much about the family. It’s family. If it’s not family, we either didn’t develop it well enough, or we can’t really do a lot of crazy stuff yet together, you know, as a tribe, it must become this family thing, and that’s how I do things.

1:41:39 You know, I know that many people don’t do it like this. They do it through very far-away things, but I don’t want to live my life like this. I want to touch people. I don’t want to live in a bubble, disconnected alone. So that’s how I do things.

1:41:54 Great things without this, I cannot do much. Great things, I can support, I can help. You will get this trick, that party trick, but to really absorb yourself in the movement practice, it goes deeper. How does that work with her? The last few years, I mean, you talk about she teaches you things, you teach her things.

1:42:10 I mean, how would you describe that to someone? It’s a real student-disciple relationship, teacher-teacher, disciple relationship. Like, I’m leading the process in many ways, but I’m also pushing for individual squeezing out of them, you know, individual expressions and self-research, and work alone and cultivating it. I’m older than these close students, and if I’m not older by, you know, almost a decade, then I’m a I’m much, much older in the experience in the practice.

1:42:49 I have also older students that are coming in, but this 20 years of practice that I have is just like making it seem so. And we are, yeah, we’re just researching together. We dive into fields. We’re practicing every day. We’re meeting up every day.

1:43:06 And we just start to practice, and I lead some form of practice, and then, you know, I send them into doing some things and researching and trying to see what happens, and and then maybe they come with insights and they develop pieces, and I look at it and say, I know that’s s***. You know, say hello, this is great. Show me again. Do this. Let’s do this.

1:43:24 Okay, change this up. Let’s do this. So I’m kind of leading from a little bit of experience that I have, and also my personal orientations, because I just love certain things, and I’m in that case the leader. Yeah, do you write all this stuff down, or is it all in the brain? Some may write, some is in the brain.

1:43:48 Yeah, the writing thing is also a trap. I try not to get into it. I used to, like, try to document everything, and it just doesn’t quite work well, and sometimes it doesn’t allow you. You’re just spending a lot of time doing that instead of sitting and developing the ideas, you know, like chewing up the ideas in your mind, right? So I do both.

1:44:11 When’s the book coming out? Not sure yet. Yeah, yeah, I’m still, I’m still working on the one page, you know, one page that I will be forever satisfied with. When I get that, I’ll get to the second page, etc. So you have been writing?

1:44:29 I’m writing some stuff down, and I’m sure I’m gonna put some book that I’m not fully complete with, forever, but I’ll put it out there at a certain point. I will say okay, it reached certain maturity. It’s not perfect, will never be. It’s enough for me to put it out there and spread certain seeds that I can only do through a book in that form. Yeah, but right now it’s more about, I want this connection.

1:44:56 I want to touch people. I want to work with them, touch physically, and touch with my ideas, and that takes, like, very, very personal contact. You know, how many people do you touch physically in the next year? Thousands. Yeah, my, all of my teachers received the instruction to touch every student physically during the weekend.

1:45:19 Everyone must receive at least, like, way to go, or, let me show you, move the hand like this. This contact is super important, and it’s another thing that is not in our culture so much, and you know, it’s getting lost, and it’s important for us to bring it back. It’s almost, you know, it’s like the movie Fight Club. You know, everyone has all, they get to where they are and they crave this tribal touching realness of what we’ve lost, although everyone isolates themselves, including, I’m guilty of this too, to where you don’t have to do that, especially with people you don’t know, and yet then we find ourselves doing it.

1:45:56 Yeah, going into it, you know, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practice, which is basically the same thing. Yeah, yeah. We cannot disconnect from certain things. You know, you cannot suppress certain things. We’ve tried.

1:46:08 We’ve created like crazy ideas in our culture and our social, you know, systems, but some things cannot, cannot get, you’ll die if you, if you don’t get touched for enough time. You’ll die in pain. And it’s, we are, yeah, we are coming from there. It’s impossible. No culture will survive.

1:46:33 Of course it’s obvious. Not only touch, put a penis inside a vagina, you know. It’s like this stuff has to happen on so many different layers: fighting together, training together, cubs of lions, you know, playing together, so one day they can protect and can do and all kinds of physical contact, you know, care, support. Another thing that happened because of, you know, we took a different angle: sexual harassment and stuff. People stopped touching altogether, and it created a new problem.

1:47:08 We were not expecting it, but it created a huge new problem. So I’m more up for, like, establishing the boundaries before we start to work, and then going to work. But if I can’t touch you, can’t work with you, right? You mentioned sex. You talk about movement.

1:47:26 Sex is a big part of human movement. Do you talk about it much? Do you have ideas about it? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s very connected with movement, and you know, Desmond Morris’s work, you know, original thinking about, like, Paleolithic kind of perspectives of sexual behavior and movement, and Moshe Feldenkrais talked about it, and a lot of movement perspective is connected with sex.

1:47:50 It’s mentioned here and there. It’s definitely a movement practice, a human movement practice that contains a lot of good movement, like a lot of good stuff happening inside there, for your joints, for your spine, for hormonal systems, for all kinds of things. Very interesting. There is a lot of traditional, ancient, thousands of years old knowledge about it, and there is also new pieces of information. and orientations, fetishes, all of this stuff is very connected to movement, into our society, to our culture.

1:48:27 There is so much to be said about it. That’s the second book, maybe, maybe, maybe. You know, I always ask everyone here a couple questions right at the end, and I asked you last time, I’m going to ask you again, and a few people wanted me to ask you, you know, if you could go back to that young Ido and his teens, and with all the knowledge you have now, you know, tell him something or give him some direction. What would you tell him? Awareness.

1:48:58 Do everything as you did, continue on and continue doing your stuff, but also stop and appreciate practice. The awareness practice. Don’t expect the awareness to work. Don’t expect it to be you. You will not, you know, you will not iron the water into quiet water.

1:49:24 You know, the wavy water must be observed to be calm. You have to observe it, and you have to. That’s it, because I was expecting it to work and it didn’t work, you know? I was practicing my meditation, I was doing stuff, it didn’t work. I got very little, and then I realized, like, no, it is working.

1:49:46 I just need to give it a chance to work. I have to observe the water for the waves to come down and for something else to emerge, and it’s practice. It’s training like anything else, and there you don’t get immediate gratification and that’s very important, and that’s something that I could have practiced earlier. Right, be more aware and listen, because the message is there. Yeah.

1:50:11 Best advice you’ve ever received over the years? Although you don’t mention mentors very often, but you mentioned that capoeira gentlemen that brought capoeira to Israel, but you don’t talk about mentors per se or people. But I was not mentored in my field. I was mentored in other fields, and those, those teachers are out there. My dance teacher was my partner, Shaipharan, who exposed me to improvisation, and work.

1:50:36 My mother who taught me so much. Like, she’s a therapist, and she worked with narrative therapy and psychologists. And yeah, my, my first, you know, Hong Kong teacher, you know, Chinese martial arts with Iran, and from a very young age, like, he instilled in me all kinds of stuff that is part of me until today. Capoeira teacher, first capoeira teacher, and my capoeira master. All these teachers are super important, and yeah, I got a lot of advice, but very hard to pinpoint one piece of advice.

1:51:11 You know, definitely it was something probably coming from my mother because my mother was way ahead of the curve with all this stuff compared to me, the awareness, and she’s she’s practicing a lot of this stuff, and Buddhism, and looking into Taoism, and she went through a course in Israel that is called The Last Year of My Life. It’s basically a year of focusing as if this is the last year of your life, and this is super interesting, you know, kind of like traditional practices from Zen Buddhism, Japanese, you know, Musashi meditating on your death every day, etc. Today is a good day to die, etc.

1:51:57 Yeah, I didn’t receive one piece of thing, but that would probably be it. He always told me empty the cup. You brush your teeth. We have, you know, deodorants and creams for every part of the body, but we don’t take care of the soul, like we don’t stop to do the basic thing, like you wash yourself every day, wash the inside as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:52:21 You know, I didn’t listen, and she was patient enough to observe me and let it calm down, and I came around, and you know, today you know, we are very much more even more connected through this observation, realizations. Empty the cup, empty the cup, meditate on your death. Also beneficial. Yeah, yeah. You know, there’s so many people that are watching us right now, and they’ve heard what you said and they’ve heard the message.

1:52:53 They probably just heard it, though, which is what I called our last show, just move. but you know, they’ll turn this off, and they’ll watch a movie on Netflix now on that computer, and they might not ever get to it. So, you know, what can you tell them as far as something that can promote this kind of movement, which is not just a physical practice? I mean, this is essential in our development as a race, right? About a lot of the problems we’re having now.

1:53:21 What do you tell them? Something they can do if there is anything inside of this stuff that is picking your interest or calling your name in the smallest voice ever? Simply pull on the string one step further. That’s the one thing you can do: educate yourself one step further. You kind of understood it, but not so much.

1:53:42 Okay, pull press the next link, you know, use, just continue to unravel because you, you have this intuition coming in. This intuition is calling you. This intuition is wanting you to do it, but sometimes we ignore it. I think you made me pull the string last time, because I went into my muscle-up era where I worked on that for like six months, and it must have been because of you, because I think I told you I was bored with my physical practice, and this is great timing for you, because I’m going to be with you this weekend, and I’m probably at another crossroads of my physical practice, you know, and I mean, a lot of these things you talk about.

1:54:21 I mean, I go and train, and I go to the gym, and I meet my trainer, and we train, and I go home, and sometimes I’m doing that bent row with 45 kgs, and I’m like, why am I doing this? Ido would not be impressed with it. No, I’m not expressing myself. I’m not learning I’m not challenging. Sure, it’s hard, and it might be painful, a very low level, but I don’t feel like I’m being better, you know?

1:54:44 And so, I think last time you helped me pull that, and I went after kind of that whole idea, studied the muscle-up. And so. So it gives you, I think it gives you enough for you to continue to do that. It does give you things but when your philosophy and your practice and sensations and emotional content all me together, it’s an atomic bomb and that’s where most people are never stepping into that realm. It’s like you’re doing this bent-over row.

1:55:17 I did them the same, you know, and you feel, you feel your body, and you feel better, and you have some elevation metabolism, and you build some muscle, and it plays all kinds, but it’s not sitting with your philosophy. It’s far from your philosophy. You’re so much more evolved in the way that you look at things. And when those two meet and they’re under the same umbrella and under the same practice, it’s a, yeah, boom. Okay, so you’re gonna set up some atomic bombs for me tomorrow.

1:55:44 We’ll try. I’m very much looking forward to it. We’re gonna have Luis who’s here come and, you know, take some footage, so we might release a few minutes of that, if that’s okay with you, for people to see. You know, I’m going, when I get emails like that from you, saying be ready, Brian. You know how fast I’m looking forward to it, and, you know, I’m really excited about it.

1:56:05 One thing I wanted to ask you. We had a bit of an argument, I believe, about talks and TED talks and that kind of thing, and I wanted to get your thoughts, because you know we were going to have our event and have a TED talk, and you know we disagreed, and I think it’s always good to have a healthy disagreement, and you, and you were, you said, Brian, you know, a regiment to talk is not what I’m about. You know, I’m about more than that, and I, I disagreed and said I still think that’s a great kind of a communication meme, which I know you love and hate at the same time.

1:56:39 Can you just tell me more about what you thought about that? I, I didn’t, I didn’t view it even as a disagreement, but I actually got your points, like, I really, you know, valued them and cut them across but it was more about, it’s not how I want to do it. It’s not how I want to present the message. It has to be delivered in a certain medium and when we’re, we’re standing there and we are, we are discussing, and we are, we’re rolling around things, and I’m able to really find interesting angles, and I bounce it off of you, and you throw the ball back into me and we have this thing.

1:57:23 This is like a lot, so much better for me to present my ideas than sitting and designing. And I appreciate the effort, and of course it also comes from my unwillingness to sit my ass down and to do that because it’s nothing. It’s not enough for me to drive myself to do that, you know. Yeah, but I completely got your point across, and, like, hey, hey man, you’re lazy, this is why you don’t want to do it, and you’re right, you’re right. It’s not laziness.

1:57:56 It’s a laziness to do something that I don’t feel it will rock my ideas so well as having a genuine man-to-man talk. Yeah, like this, I sense it. Yeah, you’re, you’re, I think you’re at your best probably when we’re talking and moving. That’s why this is such a counter-intuitive way to show you Ido, because I’m not even allowing you to move, so I think that’s probably your best. The next is probably when we’re bouncing off ideas, and this whole TED talk format that I was talking about for our masterminds is when you get up and present, like, 18 minutes of your thoughts, which is probably like the last thing that is you, because you are, let’s flow, let’s play, let’s do this.

1:58:36 It’s true, and yet my argument, as I remember, was someone’s going to grab your Ido meme and present it to the world, and it’s going to be in this video, this piece, and so they, they construct your message, and I was saying this is a chance for you to construct it. So, to be continued. I love a healthy debate, and, and yeah, we’ll see where that goes. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I guess I should bring what with me, an open mind?

1:59:00 What should I come tomorrow prepared? As there is no preparation, there is nothing. Bring your body and yeah, that’s it. Comfortable clothes. Get ready to dirty the walls, dirty the body, dirty the hands no supporting gear.

1:59:17 We’re moving away from all this stuff, you know. No dry fits, my feet, no, no special shoes, you know, it’s like 15 buck shoes, and yeah, just get ready to upgrade what’s important, you know. And work on work on your body, work on your mind. You’ll be very tired in the end, more from listening and moving. The combination is very tiring.

1:59:42 It’s one, one thing that to do, to dial in one mind state by jumping between the two and listening for long stretches of time and then moving. It’s very hard, but it’s good. I think you’re going to enjoy it in the end. Good. The more you describe it, it sounds like I’m, just, I’ve been hurting myself by not adopting something, a physical practice that’s congruent with my mind, and the way my mind is curious, then my body should follow that piece.

2:00:09 For sure, there is a huge, and, and you’re not the only one. I see so many. It’s like there is a huge gap, you know, and this is the time this time that we’re living in where we can bring all these aspects together, you know. Like Nassim Taleb, one of my most favorite authors. You know, I, I’m going to meet him next month in Zurich, and some, one of my students set up a meeting, and I’m very, very excited to, to go, to go meet him, and I know that he does some weight lifting, and he does some fasting, but I’m sure he’s just, like, from pure lack of time, he was unable to develop his ideas in the physical realm to the same level that I’ve used his great, great, great ideas.

2:00:53 Original thinker, unique in this time, because you know of, again, focus and specialization still in my field. Right, so, so you know you can teach him things. I know I can teach him things, because, and that would be a great honor for me from someone I’ve learned so much from you know, I just have the highest appreciation. And yeah, so There are so many such examples, you know, great artists with no sense of, you know, how to handle basic hygiene or great models, amazing models, who did not develop the inside and the, in the, the philosophy and the mind, or great sports people who did not, you know, take care of their basic economical situation, you know, for we, this is the time where we can pull, and we can bring this real general quality into every aspect of our lives.

2:01:57 What we eat, our relationships, our, you know, movement, our business, our everything. The collective knowledge, the collective knowledge. In many ways, I love it as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. You are a man constantly on a journey. That’s what I love about it.

2:02:14 Thanks for coming back and seeing us. Let’s do this again in a year and find out where we both are sure. All right, thank you very much. All right, thanks for having me.