Hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com and today I've got special guest Jen and Carden and they just recently published a book yesterday actually at the time of this recording called The Secret Language of the Body. We dive deep into the nervous system and how to optimize nervous system health to truly cope with any lingering illnesses, autoimmune issues, stiffness, ailments, joint discomfort, things of that nature.
I mean really just take the focus to the nervous system as opposed to the mechanistic, you know, muscle or tendon or ligament side of things. But more so actually going to the core, to the brain, to the nervous system, to the vagus nerves, things of that nature. So very interesting conversation. I need to definitely do more, you know, self healing work myself as far as like being proactive with recovery and things of that nature, actually relaxing breath work, stuff like that.
So this is very insightful. I've got no doubt that you will take something from it so that further delay, sit back, relax, do the conversation with Jen and Cardin and we are live Jen and Cardin. How are y'all doing today? Very well. Thank you. For having. US. Hey, glad to have you. I got to give you all Congrats because at the time of this recording, it is the 10th of July. Y'all's book publication date was yesterday. So congratulations on that.
We'll just hit the guy running with the title of the book. We'll just start right off the top here. So the secret language of the body, how long has that been a work in progress? So we started writing the book a little over, I'd say a little over a year ago, and the book actually wasn't in the process of being written until Harper Collins reached out to us and asked us to write the book. So that was really interesting and really cool.
A lot of our content was resonating, especially around nervous system regulation, using and sharing accessible sizes, vagus nerve exercises, and also just the whole nervous system regulation accessibility kind of videos. And they really resonated. And so, yeah, they asked us to write a book. They gave us literally 100 days.
And, you know, I'm sure we'll talk more about it, but the language of the body is a secret until you know and learn how to speak it, and then everything becomes more clear. Very nice. And I, I know just in the little bit that we were talking prior to hitting record that you've got experience as a professional dancer ballerina, correct? Yes, I was a professional ballet dancer from a very young age. I left home to go to an Academy abroad.
I'm from Africa, Italy, America, Germany, England mix but abroad means I was in Germany and I was dancing 8 to 10 hours a day. I would wake up at 5:00 AM, do Pilates, Feldenkreis, Gyrotonics, or gyrokinesis, and then we'd go into a 2 hour class. Then we'd go into the rest of the day and then, you know, at night time we'd have performances depending on the season. And I was one of those people who was often injured.
I am hypermobile, but hypermobility doesn't necessarily equal injury unless you understand more of how the nervous system governs muscles and tendon and ligaments and movement. And from a young age, Robert, I had anxiety. And I think that a lot of the anxiety patterns that were keeping my nervous system stuck in a state of fight or flight was really showing up in my movements. So some of my teachers were very, very abusive verbally and emotionally.
And so, you know, my body couldn't be but tense all day. And, but at the time, you know, I didn't make those connections. I, I just got really interested in, in, in anatomy and movement rehabilitation. Later on I went to study physiotherapy. And for me, it was, you know, maybe it was my technique, my hypermobility, But I don't know how much you want to know, Robert.
But, you know, once you dip your toe into the lake of nervous system regulation and the like, how it all works and how the brain and body speak to each other, it really all becomes very, very, very clear. That the root of a lot of my chronic injuries, especially tendonitis, especially fatigue around muscles causing ligaments to tear quite often in certain times of my career. Yeah, how it's all connected to
the state of my nervous system. And once I learned that later on, it was too late 'cause I had a big injury that unfortunately made me shift, or unfortunately or fortunately, 'cause now I do what I do but led me to shift careers. And yeah, so here we are now with all of this knowledge and yeah. Well, this is probably the first time I've ever even heard the term hypermobile. I'm assuming that's kind of like akin to just extreme flexibility. Yeah, hypermobility.
There's actually a range of hypermobility. I have what's called Euler's Danlos Syndrome, which is just a different way that the collagen protein stacks in my body. So a lot of people who can bend their fingers all the way over or can do the splits, but have never really practiced the splits. Essentially a an extreme mobility around a joint, not necessarily flexibility of the muscle, but mobility of the joint is, you know, what a
hypermobile individual has. And when you're a dancer, it can be an advantage. But when your muscles are not contracting and relaxing harmoniously, that can lead to injury and tears and tendonitis and stress fractures and so on and so forth. Yeah. Robert, growing up, you and I would have called these people double jointed. Gotcha OK that makes a lot more
sense. I feel like I I mean I could do the splits and I've been able to do the splits without any practice since I can remember, but that's like the only hyper mobile spot on my body that I'm aware of because everything else feels relatively stiff most of the time. Yeah. You know that that can also be just like if what Jen is definitely talking about the hyper mobility, the EDS model of that hyper mobility is a is a
body wide phenomenon. But you know also just just based on movements that we kind of do compulsively or over and over again as children that can compromise or change some structure and mobility around particular joint structures. So it can be kind of imposed or it can be in, I guess, genetic. Got you. What? What about you? Do you have any background in in dancing at that Gordon? I guess no, I, I, I've, I've, I'd like to date dancers and I that kind of thing.
But no, I'm not myself. A background in dance. My, my background, when I first got into this work, I'm a body worker and I was a body worker and a functional movement practitioner. And I myself was not a professional athlete, but worked out CrossFit, had my share of all sorts of injuries and always trying to find better ways to
recover and heal my body. And of course, as a body worker whose job was to help people get out of pain because that's what I really specialized in. I was always focused on basically structure and quality of movement, right? And so how can I get a body better aligned so that it's so that it's the way it's quote supposed to be? And how can I get it moving cleanly? Because if it's moving cleanly, then it's not going to get
injured. And so you, you might be able to relate to this and your listeners, you can be really, really focused on that good movement, good structure, good recovery. And you can still get injured and you can still be in pain and you still have to release your muscles into your stretches day after day after day.
And where, you know, where my practice started to evolve is that everyone looks at these problems in the tissue, let's say just tension or tightness and say, ah, that's just the way I am. I, I'm tight or it's from, it's from this like slight deviation and how I'm doing my squat that my QL or that my iliotibial band is, is getting tight. And then what are we going to do? We're going to stretch or like shove massage balls into that
tissue. And although I still actually really love doing a lot of that work. And it's where I've come from, the organ that is dictating the tension levels in your muscles, that is dictating the length of them, the shortness of them, their willingness to go to a new range of motion, how they respond after being, let's say, exposed to workout or difficulty. The only organ responsible for all of the way those muscles are responding is your brain and nervous system.
So at if you're working on your tissue as it's as if it's just some kind of like a mindless mechanical system that you have to squish and stretch, you're missing like the heart of all of it. Because what your muscles are doing, how they're clamping down, whether they're too elongated, whether they're having pain signals, whether they're chronically coming back into a contracted state so that you have to over and over and over and over again mechanically
release them. It's when you start understanding the secret language of the body and working from a nervous system centred approach that you can actually fundamentally and lastingly retrain how that muscle and tissue is responding to life. OK, on that notes, I just had an epiphany and I might be totally a bark at the wrong tree here, but let me know if there's any, any, any truth to this. So most people as they age, they notice that everything seems
stiffer. They have decreased mobility, takes them longer to kind of get warmed up throughout the day to be able to move as they normally would. And I, I've noticed that myself, like I'm 32 and I've noticed that I'm not nearly as limber upon waking as I was 10 years ago. I'm very active, I'm training all the time. I'm I'm doing all the right things, quote UN quote. But I've also noticed that as I've gotten older, my stress and responsibilities in life have
also significantly increased. And that may be the primary correlative or causative reason I'm having this stiffness. If if what I'm hearing you say is, is what I'm kind of bleeding from here, is that more so a result of just my my sympathetic more so than parasympathetic state right now, which is the overall stressors that I'm experienced rather than the lack
of mechanical mobility? You know, Robert, I, I, I love that you, that you bring that up and you're, you're already thinking from that nervous, nervous system centered place. So, you know, before we, we started here, you were curious about like, what, what the heck is nervous system regulation and what's this all about? And so your brain and nervous system basically has one mission and one mission only, which is
to keep you safe and not die. That's the if there were, if there was a binary zeros and ones, a spectrum of the only thing your Organism cares about is am I safe or unsafe? Do I need to respond to this as a threat or not? And whether it be your training regimen, your responsibilities as a father, as a as a as a husband, your credit card bills,
having to take out the trash. Every single input that comes into you from the outside or your own thoughts into your body is passed through the single question of safe or unsafe, dangerous or not dangerous. And then based on a hell of a long time of evolution and adaptation. All of those things, the body only has a very limited amount
of responses. You brought up parasympathetic and sympathetic, but whether it be your credit, credit card bill or your spouse being mad at you or not enough time to go to the gym, the moment that stress hits, it is going to use some blend of some kind of sympathetic act activation, which in its most extreme is a fight flight response, right? Or it's actually going to use more ancient.
Believe it or not, there are parasympathetic survival responses that go down a different pathway called the dorsal pathway, the Vegas. And those are going to look more like shut down, disassociation, low energy, fatigue, depression. When both are on at the same time.
When you've got the gas in the brake defensive patterns on at the same time, parasympathetic and sympathetic, you go into more of a freeze response or a functional freeze where you are still moving through the world, but your body's almost kind of stuck and everything takes effort.
So I just want to say again that at 32, the amount of inputs coming into you from the outside in and from your mind down into your body that your survival nervous system has to navigate and deal with has increased exponentially, most likely from your early 20s. And Jess, Jen and I find
consist. I'm 39, I'm more mobile and comfortable in my body than I fucking ever have been because of the quality of the state of my nervous system and how I work with it. To not always be stuck in one of these spectrums of a survival response. That's what I want to get to, so enlighten me on that process. Oh, I have no idea how to do it, Jen. Maybe you could tell us? Enlighten you on the process of survival. Yeah, I want to feel better now than I did 10 years ago. Or or.
Maybe how? Yeah. How to get at it. How do, how do we help Robert feel? Feel 10 years, 10 years less stressed? Yeah. Nice that's going to be our next book feel ten years younger. Yeah. So I I've been loving this conversation so far. I love that we're hitting like all the different aspects of the human body and brain and
everything movement. And so, you know, to get to a place where you're dipping into a body and a brain and a mind that is feeling in a state of thrival, a state of balance, a state of, you know, increased capacity for stress.
Cause what I'm hearing, you know, you say Robert is, you know, I'm 32 and there's more stuff on the table now, but it's going to keep getting more and more and more because, you know, we're going to keep piling up things and we're going to get older and ultimately there's nothing we can do about that. What we, we can do is increase our capacity for dealing with, with it by building better patterns to move through stress.
So right now your nervous system, my nervous system card and nervous system has a way to deal with stress. For some of us, that's sending us into a state where when it's a little bit too overwhelming, we dissociate and maybe we decide that we're going to scroll on social media or, you know, distract ourselves with maybe going to the gym for a long time. Or, you know, these patterns where we're not actually tuning into the body and checking in and asking it like, wait, what do I need?
What emotion, what need here is unmet? What is it that I need more of in order to feel that I can handle this? And it's interesting 'cause our nervous system is a energy saving system and it starts with the brain. Our brain has so much, so many tasks that it has to carry out in every moment of our life. So the way in which our brain functions is to save patterns from the past that have worked and help us, helped us survive, and then replay them when a pattern that is similar or the
same shows up again. So if we learned that emotions of or, you know, experiences of stress are too overwhelming for us to cope with, then our nervous system may have shut us down. And then we find ourselves at 32 with a lot of responsibilities and financial responsibilities. And maybe, you know, our, we have our own business and all those things. Our nervous system is like, OK, you know what, Robert? This has worked for 32 years.
But now I think I need another strategy 'cause it's getting, it's, it's getting too much. And the way in which, you know, whether it's too much or not is your body sends you messages like you might, you know, you might feel a little bit of brain fog at times or your performance isn't up to par as it normally is. Like, wait, I'm training, I'm
doing all these things. And why, why is my performance plateauing or declining or gosh, I'm, I'm always getting this headache in the morning or my motivation is low. You know, there's all these messages that our body sends us whispers. They begin with whispers and when we ignore them and we don't know what these are and we we just push it through. Later on, they become a scream like, you know, like when someone throws their back out at
the gym. It's like your body is telling you to either slow down or change something. So going back to how to feel better and how to be in the best body and brain, as we age, it's really about increasing our awareness and tuning into the patterns that we're using. So Robert, my question for you is, what do you think one of your patterns is when you feel stressed? How do you cope with stress? Oh I am 100% a bona fide workaholic. Like I just don't sleep and work
more which is not good. Yeah, yeah. And so, so just me asking you that and you sharing that when you tune into your body for a moment, you know, just just play that in your in your in your mind, in your mind's eye, like I'm a workaholic. What that actually looks like, like waking up early, non-stop, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, nighttime sleep, wake up, repeat. What feelings and sensations does that give to to your body? If you tune in, does your heart start beating faster?
Do you start to get anxiety? Like, Oh my gosh, you know what, As I'm thinking about this, there's so much stuff I have to do and you can go right back into the cycle. What happens as you TuneIn? I typically just go right back into the cycle. Like I've had a few legit panic attacks, not too many, but like I've always trained and eaten well in the context of that hyper stressed moment. So that allows me to kind of keep going forward.
If I didn't train or eat right, then I would totally just fall over in a heap. But that is kind of like my coping mechanism in those times of extreme stress. But I, I, I know I need to just remove some of the stuff from my plate, but I like doing things. I like doing too many things. Oh, Jen, should we? Should We should. We should. We blow, should we blow up his
spot for a second? I was never going to say just want to just want to offer that like we have thousands of clients who have burned out doing what they love. Yeah, I totally get it, man. Like I see, I see the writing on the wall from people. You know, 10 years older than me. I am I crashed with multiple chronic not this is not going to be you, Robert. This is this is my story, not yours, but yeah, I was definitely one of those people too.
I'm I'm I'm a a pusher as well. Yeah, You know, I just, I don't want to hop in for a SEC because it's so good. And Jen, Jen, forgive me because you know, I'm just, I'm just a bull out of trying to shop sometimes. But what I like to say, you know, Robert, there's a, there's a lot of lifehackers and a lot of biohackers who have designed their life around an endless amount of performance and doing. And that's, you know, that's incredible.
But it's like for every new Lifehacker biohack that they gain, instead of seizing back time, life, joy, pleasure, presence being, they just pack more fucking doing into the same 8 to 10 hours. And whereas like they've increased their productive productivity by 4X, but they've
seized back zero freedom. And besides that, Robert, the other thing is I like to say we've had thousands of people actually like most, like at least half of the people that are our clients, burned out doing what they love. If you think of your beautiful, capable body as a bridge, and that bridge over a river is rated for, let's say 1000 cars at any given moment, first of all, it doesn't care if it likes
the cars or dislikes the cars. It's just suitable to carry a load of 1000 cars at any given time. And then when it starts to have 2000 cars on it again, it doesn't care if it likes the make and models of the vehicles driving over it or hates them. It's begins to stress that structure, stress that structure. And it holds on more and more and more. But then there begin to be cracks and cracks and cracks and we hold on tighter and tighter and tighter.
And I think where where we come from is that no matter how much a human being wants to ignore their Physiology, their Physiology and their nervous system will make it very clear in the end what it's capable of and what it does and doesn't want to do. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And I feel like now I don't know if y'all have kids or not, but like I've got a 2 year old and having a 2 year old kind of brings light to that reality as
well. Because like, I love business, I love entrepreneurship, I love bodybuilding, I love, you know, networking, brain creation, all of those things. But he doesn't know what any of that stuff is and he doesn't care yet. So like when I sacrifice time with him to do those things, I'm taking away time with him and I care about that more than anything at the end of the day, so. That. Brings me. Yeah, that brings. Me, I, I. Didn't make catch you out there, Jane? Go ahead.
No, no, sorry. Go ahead, Go ahead. Yeah. I was just saying that that that brings me that kind of grounds me because at the end of the day, like I, I'm not going to be on my deathbed wishing I had made another business deal. I mean, maybe, but probably not. But I could definitely see myself wishing I had spent more time with my son when he was still living with me, you know, So I, I can't that that is always kind of like the rock that I have to question things with now, which I think is.
Good. I love that too. Love it. We're both parents. We're both parents. Yeah, Robert, I have a 2 year old and actually today I spent a moment to, you know, just acknowledge and be grateful for my husband on this journey of, you know, writing the book and our business. And you know, when Harper Collins DM Ed me, I was three months postpartum and I was like what, where do I go from here? Like how what happens next? And, you know, it, it all worked
out in the end. And we have this amazing book, but it took a lot of support. And I think that in every moment, I just love what you said so much because in every moment that I have felt some form of urgency or some, you know, like deep dysregulation in the moment when I switch off and I go and be with my son and my husband. Do you know like 99 .9999% of it melt away, melts away completely. And I have a 2 year old as well. And it's just just learning to be present and being with them
in those moments is so precious. And, and I hear you on that, you know, on, on what you shared with wanting to be with your with your child. And yeah, I think that there's definitely a good balance to strike there. And it's, it's interesting, 'cause like if, if it wasn't for having him, like I would never be able to justify sitting on the couch and doing nothing for 30 minutes like that, that would
never fly. But now that I have him, if I just sit on the couch with him for 30 minutes and like read him a book or, you know, do something, doing nothing but doing something with him, like I could easily justify that as time well spent. So it kind of like secondarily forces me to actually take a minute, which is probably an advantageous physiologically for me. And if I'd say so that's that, that's, that's actually the
biggest flex, right? Like you are crushing it as a human, a man, a father, a husband, an entrepreneur, when you can actually have unpolluted time with your children or anybody that you love. And what I mean by unpolluted time is like, you also know what it's like, Robert, when you're really with your son versus when you're with him but thinking about work. Yeah, totally, totally.
And it's easy to do. Like if you're, I mean, as you all seem to be on this conversation, like when you're a, you know, type A very much go, go, go type of person. Like there is no shutting down. Like there is no clocking out for the day. Like it never stops. Like I wake up thinking about things I've got to do. I go to sleep thinking about things I have to do.
But being with your son, daughter, child like you, you, you recognize that there's no use in thinking about the bills you got to pay or the the books you got to reconcile in that very moment. Love that. Yeah, that's so true. So, so true. I love where this this conversation is going even more, Robert. I mean, connection and movement and body and nervous system. So great. Yeah. I am going to jump in and also say, you know, Robert, we the the children are a really
amazing access point. But what you just said about being a type A go, go, go, it doesn't stop. So, you know, we, Jen and I are very similar or we're recovering. We are recovering incessant, you know, productive perfectionists. And what we find with people is that although they, the, the people that do that end up they, they often have a lot of energy that they want to distribute, distribute. There's there's a question of
like, why can't we sit still? And the why, why can't we sit still is largely because our nervous system is using an endless amount of productivity as a coping strategy to help us deal with dysregulation and the experiences inside our bodies that we can't be with, that we haven't ever been able to be with, that we've been sort of contorting and avoiding around
our whole lives. And that is something that we support people in in that awareness step of really getting to feel like, like for me, I the more question is like, why? Why is it so difficult for me to just sit here doing nothing with my child sometimes? Why is there this endless draw to the other thing, the next thing and seeing sort of not only how dysregulated that is, but we are most of what we're teaching our children is non verbal.
Most of what we're teaching our children is in the our tone, our, our, our, our posture, the movements of our body, just our resonance and our vibration. And you know, my kid knows when I'm when I'm actually present with them or not.
And so a big important part of I think that we try to bring to people is that when you can get down into the language of your body and you can actually be like, whoa, what happens if I were to really question this pervasive behavior of endless productivity and, and look at it and see like, what is it instead of what is it trying to do? What is it trying to avoid? There's there's a lot to be discovered.
Down there, No, I totally agree. So, So what are some like actionable, you know, routines or practices that y'all incorporate on a regular basis to make sure that you keep things in the rails and you don't, you know, kind of resort back to your never ending To Do List ways. I'm going to, I'm going to pass it off to Jen in one SEC because we kind of both have different elements. But, but what we teach people is a framework first, right?
Because I, I love framework because there's something that people can really adapt for their own needs and bring them into their lives. But the framework we teach is called the AIR approach, which is AI IR, which is awareness interruption and redesign. So the techniques we teach is that you know you cannot manage or change what you're not aware of, what you're not clocking, right? You can't the first step in recovery is acknowledging that
you have a problem, right. So awareness is the first step of actually as Jen kind of guided you a little bit earlier. Like if I just have you close your eyes for a moment, Robert and everyone can who's on unless you're driving can do this. You close your eyes for a moment and I just have you notice your chest. Only your chest, which concludes your breath and your heart. And I have you think about your e-mail inbox. Did anything happen in your chest when you thought about your inbox?
I mean, a little bit of stress, but I've, I've really committed to getting that knocked out every single day. So inbox zero has been my daily goal for quite some time now. I've been successful with it. So my inbox isn't my main stressor, but it it often times is. So I totally get where you're going there. Right. And but that's actually interesting, right? So you've come up with a behavior Inbox 0, which helps you eliminate the implicit stress that comes up when you think about it.
Yeah, totally. Right. So although I really applaud inbox Zero and sometimes I show off, sometimes I'll get to inbox zero, right? Like two or three times a year I'll screenshot it and put it on my Instagram. Like, it's a fleeting thing, right, 'cause Inbox zero is like a hamster wheel and and our brother would be like whoa for someone to even notice that their chest constricts a little bit, that their breaths, their breath tightens and their heart rate increases just when they
think about their inbox. That's where we start. Then in the interruption step, instead of taking on a behavior immediately like inbox zero or crushing through the emails, it's like, whoa, what happens if we actually use some vagus nerve techniques, some breathing techniques to get the body out of the stress response that was initiated by the stimulus and bring and start teaching the body that it doesn't have to go into a fight mode or a freeze mode or an immediate behavior to
solve what it's feeling. It can actually just feel safe and OK. Now to regulate. Now to down regulate in the moment. That's the interruption step. And then from the interruption step, we move on to redesign, which is how can I teach my nervous system ongoingly to not respond to these everyday stressors as if my life depended on it? Yeah, so. That's the AIR framework. But Jen, do you want to speak a bit to some of your routines, your processes? Yeah, that was great.
What, what Cardin shared is, is the approach that's in our book and it's a really complete work to helping you not just overcome, but really rewire that pattern so that you're automatically connecting and you know, and doing the new way. Once you've practiced that the new the new pattern. So, so basically, if you can check in with yourself a few times a day and ask yourself, you know, am I meeting all of my, am I meeting all my basic needs?
Have I had enough water today? Have I had too many coffees? Do I need to slow down a little bit? Do I actually just need to sit down for a moment and just take a deep breath? So right now, Robert, I'm going to ask you take the deepest breath you've taken all all day and let me know how it feels once you've taken that big exhale feels. Pretty good. I should probably do that on a regular basis for sure. Yeah. What did you notice about your body, Your posture? Maybe your breath?
Every time I actually mindfully focus on breath work, I noticed just much more clarity. Like one thing I've been incorporating is after I train every day, I try and have a like 10 minute moment of meditation before I eat my first meal. And I kind of incorporated that when I was in my prep and I was super depleted and hungry all the time.
But just like allowing myself to, to center and relax has a pretty, pretty monumental impact on just the stress, anxiety levels, you know, acutely, but then also throughout the day. So that that's been key for me. I love that they're also some really good vagus nerve exercises.
I don't know if your audience is familiar with them, if you've talked about them on your your podcast, but there are some really great simple ones that can really help you sort of discharge that pent up energy in the body that leads to anxiety or leads to, you know, a coping mechanism or spiraling, especially when you're triggered. So one of these is just a vocalization.
So when you have a moment to yourself and you have space to to breathe loudly and say things like vuh ah EE, the invitation is to inhale through your nose in one exhale, say vuh ah EE, and whilst you're saying it, tapping on your chest. So inhaling vuh ah EE. And you're more than welcome to
try this as I'm explaining. But what happens is the vocal cords, which are innervated by the vagus nerve, stimulate the vagus nerve, stimulating that parasympathetic response in the body, allowing your body to go from a state of sympathetic activation or shut down, bringing about that ventral vagal parasympathetic. Because although the shutdown response is a parasympathetic response, what Cardin was saying earlier, there's the dorsal and the ventral.
And when we use our voice, not just breath work, but actually the voice, as we exhale, we're stimulating the ventral state inner body, which allows us to not only feel calm, connected and grounded and empowered and and centered, but also helps release that pent up energy in our nervous system. So those beautiful vocalizations, you know, we recommend to do them a few times a day, especially if you're feeling particularly stressed or activated.
And three minutes of vu ah E and tapping on your chest at the same time is so, so powerful. Another one that is really easy is just stomping. So literally standing up and taking a minute to stomp your feet on the ground and then shake your body is if you had water, you know, after shower and you're like shaking your hands and your legs as if you
didn't have a towel. That shaking and the stomping sends messages to the brain that stimulate the nervous system to again release that pent up energy, bringing you in a state of regulation. So there are many exercises that you can do, many accessible free things that you can implement in your day, as well as the very powerful holistic framework that Cardin was talking about earlier. I. Feel like a good sledgehammer on a tire in the gym would would probably emulate that in some
form of fashion. I might have to throw that into my mix as well. But now and Robert, when you do it, I'm we're we're very serious about this, like to actually allow the emotional messages from the body to hold the hammer. Yeah. Right, There's something about South exercise is just such a phenomenal way to process and metabolize emotions, but we actually have to be present and feel some of those.
But I would, I would, I would invite any of your listeners who normally, let's say, have tend to have a lot of chronic tension and will, you know, do foam rolling or lacrosse ball work or whatever that here's the invitation instead of doing that next time. Focus on the areas of your body that tend to be tight. Just take my word for it. When you're noticing the tightness, ask yourself, does this area of my body does this piriformis muscle? Does this quad? Does my tight shoulders?
Do they have a mood to them? Do they have an attitude? If they were, if they were a Pixar character, what would they look like? What's their facial expression? And then let that attitude, that mood, that sense of emotion or sensation in that part of your tissue, let that pick up the hammer. Let that move you. Let that do 10 to 15 minutes of a workout. Don't let your mind get in the way. Let the emotional experience in the body lead and the tension
will be gone when you're done. Yeah, 100% Think that like resistance training in which you allow your body to just act in its native emotional state is probably the most therapeutic thing I've ever experienced. Like if I did not have the ability to do that, I would be, I, I don't even know what I'd be. I'd probably be like suicidal or like a threat to society or something. Oh. Hell, hell yeah.
Having that is is, yeah. So I, when I, when I was a, a personal trainer and I would get clients, you know, all ages. But there was this particular man who I remember he was Aceo very high up in a, in a very, very famous television production company in, in the world. And he would walk in we, we, I had a session with him every morning. And when he first came to me, he was like, I, you know, I just, I just want to, I just want to put on some muscle, OK? And he was in his 50s, late,
late 50s. And then I couldn't help but notice whenever he walked into the gym, he was, he had slouched shoulders. He just had this look about him that, you know, it was like I, I had to pull him off the ground, you know, through the exercises. My goal was always like, right, let's lift him up, let's get his body to shift the state in his
brain. And whenever he would pick up those heavier weights, whenever he would get his full body moving, you know, I, I'm, I'm talking like dead lifts and just the heavier weight moving through the whole body. He would actually have a little bit of this response where he would be a little bit angry for maybe like 20 minutes. He would. I could see it. He was furious, not necessarily at the he thought it was at the exercise I was giving him, but it wasn't, I could tell it was
from it was his body. His muscles were like, wow, there is a lot of anger in here. There is this emotion that is coming out right now. And as we were moving through the exercises and then coming down towards the end of the session, a couple of times when especially when we were by ourselves in, in, in a part of the gym where no one else could, could see him because he was, you know, he's that type of man that wouldn't want to be seen crying.
And he, he, he bawled his eyes out and he was so confused and he didn't understand why. And you know, those moments when he did it was this full body restoration. It's like, you know, through movement. And I know you know this, Robert, because of what you do and how you use your body. Like there's so much unconscious unraveling of the brain of emotions. And you know, it's it's great when we have that awareness on top of it to know what's actually happening.
But sometimes a lot of healing can happen just through our body, through movement, through letting what Cardin was saying earlier, our muscles, you know, really express that emotion that is being repressed in our body and that hasn't had a chance to come out. So yeah, I thought that was such a powerful moment for for this man. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people that I mean, we all, we
all have some stressors in life. We all have responsibilities, We all have things that weigh heavily on us. And for those that don't have an outlet, they don't train, they don't have, you know, some, some medium to release that energy, those are often times the ones that I see turning to some form of dissociative behaviour like substance abuse. And then it just becomes this downward spiral of pent up energy that eventually, you know, breaks them.
So I think if you have that ability to release it in a healthy manner, IE weight training or something similar, you can just bypass or mitigate the need for that, you know, addictive in a negative sense, dissociative behaviour. I totally I, I totally agree. I I really do. You know that we had a when I was in massage therapy school, the kind of covert slogan was move or die. Yeah. Right, just move or die.
And we are an Organism, one could say organized completely around movement as like our primary means of being in the world. And so yes, yes, yes to movement. And I don't think these are your listeners, but like, cardio ain't enough, right? As Jen just expressed, as you expressed, those muscles need something juicy and resistant and meaningful to interact against. Yeah, 100%.
So when it comes to I mean, y'all have quite a bit of experience in, you know, body therapy, V card and Dance Gin and then all just the cumulative experience that you'll have when it comes to people that are, you know, doing weight training, that they are using resistance loads, they are working out. Where else can they place emphasis? I mean, what what, what is the most bang for their buck? Is it getting routine deep tissue massage? Is it going to a chiropractor? Is it doing, you know,
structured mobility work? What are some tangibles that are low hanging fruit that are going to provide, you know, the the most bang for the buck? So not my sorry, this is almost sort of, I'm almost say not my sort of outside my scope of practice, but I'm going to say it anyway. So I'm always looking for is there something that I can remove or not do for example, that will then as a result mean that I don't have to add practices to compensate, right?
So. So what I'm getting at here is when I do exercise with those loads, I tend to, you know, I don't go to failure or quite to Max. I don't go to failure. I don't go to Max performance too often. I almost always leave enough in the tank at the end of any session because I know that if I take, if I go to the end of my tank, either in terms of my strength or or my cardiovascular capacity, I've now just put a really big recovery demand on my mind and my body, which either
needs. Which means I'm going to need more rest, more nutrition, more body work, more something because because I went past a limit. If you look at animals in nature like I, I loved Kelly Starr. It's book, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, called Becoming a supple leopard. Are you aware of that one, Robert? Yeah, so it's called becoming a
supple leopard. And when you think of the mightiest predators in nature, they only go to their maximum capacity when it's absolutely necessary either to hunt and kill, to flee and survive, or to beat a competitor. And the rest of the time they are moving, well, they are resting. And so I like to think of myself
as that supple leopard. So for me, I just want to say like the thing that I really want to offer is if your training revolves around too much fatigue, whether it's in again, your strength capacity, your power capacity or your current vascular capacity, there are ways to design your programming where you get a huge amount of benefit and forward progress and growth and whatever, you know, kind of metric you're trying to increase without always taking the body
to a place where it's in deficit. And that's that's what I would say. Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like they're like I, I try and train with a really high degree of intensity, but I try to exclude excessive, you know, quote UN quote junk volume because I feel like that is often times what leads to, you
know, increased recovery times. So like I've structured my training around like a five day full body split, but I'm only training like I'm training everybody part once a day, five days a week, but I'm only doing one exercise for that body part as opposed to doing, you know, 6-7 exercises, 4 legs in one session. And I feel like the increased frequency is beneficial, but I'm having ample recovery time from a given session that it's not overloading things, so that
makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. I I love what you shared. Cardin and Robert, what do you do for self-care to to feel good, to feel better, to feel good? Like what really sort of refills your tank other than spending time with your your child and yeah. I'm pretty bad about self-care honestly. That is definitely one of my short stroll. I do like I'm actually getting a deep tissue massage tomorrow. I do that like once a month, so
probably not frequently enough. I during the winter time I have a like a stock tank that I do cold plunges and I love doing a daily cold plunge. That's probably more from a psychological standpoint than a physiological, but that that's pretty much it. I don't really have any, you know, structured self-care routines, per Southeast. Yeah, and if you could like what? Let's say you had the time and it was necessary and you had to choose one thing. What would it be?
I would go outside in the morning and sit in the grass barefoot, drink a cup of coffee and read a book unrelated to anything to do with work or business or just like a pleasure read basically. That's probably. Oh man, how good is that? How good does that sound, Jen? Yeah, Robert, you just made me smile ear to ear.
So, but for me, you know, how did your body, you know, I, it's so funny, Robert, as you were saying that I, I didn't even have to see your face or look at your body posture, but I can tell that it something shifted you the tone of your voice. You were talking slower. You were like on a different sort of a different level. And what happens when we commit
to self-care? You know one thing a day or you know, if you don't have anything ever, you can start with one thing a week and see how you know how you can try and fit it in. But committing to self-care means committing to your nervous system. It means giving your nervous system the chance to like slow
down and actually restore. You know, be the orchestra director of all of the organisms in your body that it wants to be, not just at night when you're sleeping, which is super important, but also in these pockets in your day where you're actually telling your brain now we can restore now. We can relax now. And because, you know, for a lot of us, it's hard to just relax by relaxing, right? Because it's really hard nowadays, especially when you have your own business and you have goals.
And you know, as Carden said was saying, when you're not necessarily aware of why you're pushing so hard, it's hard to just relax by relax. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think you've got in. Your day, Robert. I Yeah. Oh, we were cutting out a little bit there. What was that last thing you were saying? No, no, I was, I was just, yeah, if you could commit to the that one thing, you know, your nervous system will really, really have the chance to find
some ease in your day. And that's really important for, for everything for muscle growth and repair, you know, from that to your heart, to your brain health, to your organ health, to your hormone levels, cortisol, just everything in your body. No, I totally, completely agree. I'm actually, I'm going to Brazil for 10 days on Saturday and I'm going to bring a lots of
work to do there. But I'm going to actually bring a pleasure book as well and try to carve out some time to actually do something relaxing so I can hopefully use that trip as a catalyst to just set the right routines in motion for when I return. Yay. Amazing. I think that's terrific.
That was such a nice thing. But yeah, I would I would agree with Jen to the the way the entire body responds to actual pleasure and rest and joy is probably better than any kind of like other recovery technique we could suggest. Yeah, no, that makes total sense 'cause I mean, I'll do these things like I'll do stretch work and I'll, I'll, you know, use the cross balls and I'll foam roll. I'll do stuff like this sporadically whenever I feel the need. And it's, it's always fleeting.
Like, yeah, I probably should be more consistent with doing it, but I don't ever really feel, you know, significantly different afterwards, if that makes sense. And and one more thing, have you know, have you all ever met an an animal other than a human that needs to stretch or use a foam roller? That's a good point. That's a good point. Right. So I just just want to put it out there.
It's usually because it's the only animals that are actually stressed out and have physical problems like humans are ones that live with humans and especially dysregulated humans. And you've seen it. Who here knows that anxious person who has an anxious dog? Yeah, no, it's a good point. It's a good point. I feel like we as a species have we're we're so smart and so dumb at the same time. Yes, Sir. That that is the truth. Well, tell me. I want to be respectful of
y'all's time. We're almost an hour in here, but tell me about so you got the book, but you've also got a program course. Like talk to me about y'all's umbrella of different activities. Yeah, so we have. We had. Cardin, did you want to go? Nope, Nope. I'm happy to listen. We have a company called Somia Robert, and it's this wonderful platform for healing.
You can find us on Instagram at Somia International and at Somia we have a program called Heal and Heal is a nervous system regulating program that gives you all the knowledge and tools and healing that you need to recover from a chronic illness like anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorders, long COVID, chronic
Lyme, chronic headaches. So from a chronic actual diagnosis to to chronic symptoms like gut sensitivities, you know, not responding to supplements or being really sensitive to certain foods all of a sudden not knowing why. Also things skin things like acne or psoriasis flare ups and all of these illnesses and symptoms are under this big umbrella of nervous system dysregulation. So rooted in that mind body connection being out of balance.
And we teach you everything you need to know in 10 modules, how to heal yourself. And we've had over 2000 students take the program and countless hundreds and hundreds of full recoveries. And then we have our book, The Secret Language of the Body, which just came out. And it's already a number one best seller in the US, Canada, UK, and it's being translated in a bunch of languages.
And we couldn't be more excited. And you can find Carden and I on Instagram. I'm I am Jen Man, and Carden is Carden Rabin. Awesome, awesome. I probably should have asked this in the very beginning. I'm kind of going backwards here, but how did y'all's two paths cross? Like how did y'all get in contact with each other? Oh, oh, this one's this is a
good one. So, you know, it's, it's made, you know, we've, we've been talking this whole podcast a lot about, you know, nervous system, but also about being type A, being workers, being people that achieve all the time.
And something that I, that I also love to reflect on is how many of the most special things in our lives kind of happened to us, arrived, stumbled into US instead of us just like kind of grasping or seizing, you know, like that's just those, those synchronicity moments that propel us forward. But it had nothing to do with kind of what we were doing. And I find those moments to be magical.
And so back in 20 in the winter of 2021, Robert, do you remember the, the, the app clubhouse that was around for a hot minute? Yeah, yeah. Is it still around? Who knows, right? Obviously, I mean, it may be, but it doesn't exist in any meaningful way anymore. But during that, during that time where it was sort of the the IT thing, I was on there with a colleague of mine, wonderful man named Charlie Merrill.
And we were hosting a, a room called Ask the Pain Guys where we were discussing and helping people solve their chronic pain issues from this nervous system and brain centred approach. And I'm here in America and Jen is over in London and she happens to log into the app and find her way into the room that Charlie and I are having our chat with. And she's like totally on board with everything we're talking
about. She has her own experience of how nervous system centred work is, helped her recover from being literally bed bound for a year and a half of the constellation of chronic illnesses to having her life back. And so we bump in, we bump into each other absolutely randomly in this brief moment on Clubhouse. And then we end up following up with each other on Instagram in Adm just to continue to kind of talk shop. And literally the rest is
history. Went from this random, never should have happened in a million years encounter on an app that barely exists anymore to becoming friends, partners, colleagues, business owners and authors together. Awesome Fate is pretty cool like that. Totally unpredictable, but moves mountains. Yes, I love it. I love it. Well, I will most definitely link out to everything that you threw out there. Make it easy for people to find. Y'all. I'm going to be following along
as well. I'm super excited about the book launch. Congrats again on that. I published a book as well and it's no small feat. So kudos to y'all for putting that together. I hope it's a wild success for you. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you and congratulations on your book as well. I'm I'm definitely going to check that out. Appreciate it, appreciate it. Well, until next time, y'all have a great one. There's everything I can do for y'all. Definitely let me know.
Keep me in the loop and keep keep changing lines. Keep keep being the supple leopards. Heck yeah. And you keep being present with that son. Will do 100% and y'all as well take care.