Evolve Move Play Podcast

This week my guest is Mark Walsh teacher of the Embodied yoga principles and embodied facilitator course. We dive deep into the intersection between, somatics, movement based therapy, yoga and martial arts and what embodiment training is all about.

Check out all our podcasts at www.evolvemoveplay.com/evolve-move-play-podcast Jozef Frucek is of the most inspirational movement teachers I have encountered and Fighting Monkey is an incredible practice. He was on fire in this interview. We were all over the place with too many ideas thrown out to track completely. Fighting Monkey and Evolve Move Play are very similar conceptually and contain many similar elements, with the differences arising partially from our different movement backgrounds, as well as our personalities and philosophies. One of the key ideas in movement practice and indeed in life is the balance between form and formlessness. When we create order and structure we give ourselves a scaffolding to work from and a goal to work towards but we constrain our options, constrain what we can perceive, how we can act. Conversely, with formlessness the potential is limitless but direction is difficult. The biggest difference between FM and EMP seems to be in the balance found here. The Fighting Monkey practice leans towards formlessness, to the way of having no way, whereas EMP focuses more on trying to articulate an optimal structure. This theme I think runs through our whole conversation, while touching on many specific aspects of practice and movement philosophy. Specific topics covered include: 1. The balance between the movement practice and bringing in new elements 2. Jozef’s 40/60 rule 3. What is the right “why” for movement practice 4. Heroism and meaning 5. Effective and efficient practice vs. diversity and variability 6. How to develop creativity in movement practice 7. The Heroic archetype and The Iliad and Odyssey, balancing Achilles vs. Odysseus 8. Why you should listen to other people less and listen and to yourself more 9. How we need space and time to allow the development of a practice 10. Jozef’s teachers and background 11. The importance of rhythm; my approach to conceptualization of rhythm for parkour and Jozef’s ideas on how to develop rhythm 12. Why we need to start with improvising, with acting out the thing we want to do 13. Why you want to be a street rat not a lab mouse 14. Specialization vs. general movement practice 15. Longevity and motivation 16. Why the game is more important than the tricks 17. Key things to study to support your movement practice

Stephane Vigroux can speak to this personally, in 2001 right before parkour exploded into mainstream consciousness Stephane tore his knee during a shoot for Nike. This was one of the earliest commerical shoots for parkour and at that time Stephane was one of the top athletes on the orginal Traceurs team. The Traceurs were the team David Belle had founded after leaving the Yamakasi. Stephane had been training day and night with David for years attaining an incredible level, but on that day he did not listen to his body telling him it was done he took a jump he knew he should not and tore his ACL, the surgery was badly done and had to be redone. He was unable to train and largely abandoned by his friends in the traceurs. It took years for Stephane to fully recover but he did! He regained his level began training with Williams Belle and the Yamakasi and then co-founded Parkour Generations the first group to popularize parkour coaching on a global scale and who reintroduced the Yamakasi to the global community. Currently Stephane is the director of Parkour DXB which is bringing parkour to Dubai. In this episode we dig deep into. 1. The history of parkour 2. What parkour is 3. How it evolved 4. How it was once a much broader approach to movement 5. How parkour is way of seeking truth and uncovering your own charecter 6. The why of training 7. How to overcome big challenges through the breaking the jump process A. Feeling the call of the jump B. Assessing the jump C. Feeling the Fear D. Overcoming the fear E. Deciding F. Acting 8. How to know your aligned in taking a jump and in your life 9. How to overcome your fear 10. The concept of task based training & why it is important in movement training Mentioned in the episode Julie Angel's The Monkey is Back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4mZf... Julie Angels Breaking the Jump https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Jump-... Parkour DXB http://www.parkour.ae/ Parkour Generations http://parkourgenerations.com/

"There is no better way to keep good people weak, then to tell them they will magically become bad people if become powerful."" This weeks podcast features a second sit down with celebrated self defense author Rory Miller. In this episode we dig deep into. 1. The problem of orienting effectively as finite creature in an infinite world. 2. How we evolved to be powerful 3. Why our education systems are set up to prevent us from becoming strong 4. Why we need to become powerful to be virtuous 5. Principles based training 6. Social scripts why we need them how the limit us and how to step out of them to achieve your goals 7. And the balance between the lizard, monkey and human brain and whether reasons or emotion and intuition are our greatest guides.

Last week we introduced our new podcast season with discussion of nutrition from a brain based perspective focused on food but looking at how products in general hijack our reward centers. This week we are looking at nutrition and the problems of the modern world from the perspective of movement, bio-mechanics and movement ecology with Katy Bowman! Katy Bowman has been a huge influence on my thinking about natural movement, so it was pleasure to get a chance for a quick discussion during the Ancestral Health Symposium this year. Enjoy the interview and please share your thoughts and questions below.

Why do we get fat? Why do we overeat? Many people think it’s because of too many carbs, others claim it’s due to much fat. The answer is more complicated and it has implications that stretch far beyond diet. We get fat in large part because modern industrialized foods are designed to hijack our reward systems and create addictive responses. So says our first podcast guest of the new EMP podcast season Dr. Stephan Guyenet. Dr. Guyenet is the author of The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts that Make Us Overeat, and is in my opinion the foremost public expert on the neuroscience of overeating. The food reward hypothesis that Stephan and I discuss in this episode has implications far beyond what to eat and how to manage your weight. It also helps us understand some of the main mechanisms behind the mismatch between our modern lives and our evolved nature. If you understand how the food industry has hijacked our reward system for profit, you can begin to see how this basic principles applies to many aspects of modern life and is one of the many reasons we are suffering despite historically unmatched level of affluence.

Simon Thakur is one of my absolute favorite thinkers in natural movement. It was an honor and pleasure to recently get the chance to teach with and learn from him we sat down and recorded a few days after a camp he runs that I guest coached at. Topic covered include The importance of the deep time evolutionary perspective on human movement What neurobiology tells us about how the brain adapts to movement and meditation The importance of story telling and myth to physical practice. The Worm, Fish, and Lizard layers to human movement.

Tom Weksler, a movement artist and teacher, shares fascinating insights on minimalism in coaching and the beauty of imperfection through the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi. He discusses how ancient mystical traditions intertwine with modern training practices, advocating for introspection in personal values. The conversation also highlights dance's role in movement culture, the impact of competition on creativity, and the importance of kindness in experiential learning. Weksler's thoughts encourage deeper connections and a more fulfilling practice in movement.

This one is going to be controversial. Like it or not violence was major feature of human evolution, to understand ourselves and the movement capacities we have its a vital thing to study and few people have seen as deeply into that world as Rory Miller. He has been huge influence on my understanding of violence human nature and movement for 10 years and it was an amazing pleasure to interview and train with him. Our apologies for the poor sound quality one of mic's wasn't work we thought the content was worth sharing anyways.

Frank Forencich of Exuberant Animal was one of the really early influential thinkers on applying the evolutionary paleo perspective to movement practice, one of the first great play advocates and great author.