Movement Practice to Strengthen Your Mind-Body Connection | Ido Portal

See Andrew Huberman live in New York, Los Angeles & San Francisco:

Discipline is very important, but it’s similar to the wall in learning to do a handstand. If you use the wall one way where you’re all the time pushing yourself off of the wall, try to catch your handstand, you become reliant on the wall. But there is a different approach. We can use the wall but pull off of it which comes from the other end from our hands from the connection to the ground. That does not necessitate the wall.

This is the correct way to use discipline. You should use it as a scaffolding as a way to get things going like write that book. But inside the process, you must make sure you don’t lean hard into it. You don’t leave everything for it to dictate and you bring some playfulness, some relaxation, some deep choice. I want to do this.

Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast, where we discuss [music] science and science-based tools for everyday life. [music] I’m Andrew Huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Ido Portal. Ido Portal is a world-renowned movement teacher and the founder of movement culture, which is an integrative practice for developing the self that combines physical and mental practice. Today we discuss how anyone can practice movement, deliberate awareness, and even language and other forms of communication in ways that explore and expand your capabilities and your understanding and sense of self.

[snorts] >> Now, Ido is not anti-ex exercise or anti-fitness, but what sets him apart as a movement teacher and why so many professional athletes, dancers, and people around the world continually seek out his teachings is his ability to show people unique ways for how to go about their daily life in ways that truly expand both their mind and their body as well as their athletic performance in the case of athletics. Today, we discuss unique meditation practices, ways to build discipline and access willpower. And by the way, what the difference between discipline and willpower is and how to use play as an extremely potent way to rewire your default operating systems in everything you do. If you like so many other people typically think about movement practices as for strength or endurance or mobility, well, today you’re in for a surprise because Ido explains how the transitions between brain states and physical states are linked and are fertile ground for extremely rapid neuroplasticity and that they can help you truly understand how your mind and body are organized and can function better. Today’s conversation is a truly special one.

I have to be clear. It’s not philosophical. It’s not theoretical. It’s a practical exploration of movement, awareness, language, and cognition that is rooted in science and has real world implications for all of us. Edo is a truly unique human being, teacher, and friend.

And it was an honor to host him again. So, prepare to learn. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors.

And now for my discussion with Ido Portal. Idor Portal, welcome back. >> Thank you. >> So happy to see you again, my friend. >> Good to see you.

You’ve aged backwards, so doing something right now. You haven’t aged at all. What have you been up to lately? I have many questions but I want to know what what what’s been your first thought on waking most consistently over the last you know year or so the same thing always the same thing the most important thing that exists that there is that that’s how my system operates but getting that that change that deep transformation in people in myself Why? Why are we missing it?

What is what is required that’s always been there and changes its face, but it’s the same one. When you wake up, do you open your eyes right away or do you ever spend some time in that liinal state between [clears throat] asleep and awake? >> I’m sometimes spend some time there. I experienced also sleep paralysis before and various inetweens >> where you’re wide awake but the body is still paralyzed. Yeah.

Yeah. When you sit a lot when when you meditate a lot and and other practices and somatic practices again you get to know the territory and you can stabilize fragile states more easily. So crossing into that boundary of the sleep it becomes a slow-mo journey that you can pause that you can you know spend time at any point in interesting I do yoga nidra non-sleep deep rest and there are moments where I can feel myself falling asleep and it literally feels like falling and then you can kind of catch yourself in these liinal states. Rick Rubin once said to me, he said, “If uh if you wake up from a like a bad dream, a nightmare, just move your body and look around the room. If you wake up from a dream you were really enjoying and you want to go back in, keep your eyes closed.

” And I think what he’s talking about is more or less what you’re talking about, the ability to kind of forward and reverse out of these transition states. Usually the the common way that people live and the common person has a very simplified perception of these states of this the granularity. >> Mhm. >> So they’re difficult to stabilize. So it becomes very binary black white sleep you know like you you relax someone they fall asleep.

That’s what happens when there is not a lot of experience. Everything is immediately going there. But there is a lot of benefit in heading to sleep and taking a sharp left just before. >> Tell me about that and how one might um practice that. >> Well, the sleep there is a kind of a way where we can inverse the relationship.

This is the sleeping state which is discussed in various authors and the waking sleep and then the sleep has a benefit because there is an openness towards something else. So heading directly to sleep and then navigating from there is very powerful to reset the system to change the schemes these rigid schemes that we sometimes have the rigid schemas the models that we’re running when they become too rigid when they’re surrounded by a hard membrane when they oversimplify and there is this bas basian reduction um you got to pop out of it somehow. So psychedelics is one way and there are other ways but the sleep every day is key because it’s a a very different status and way of being and way of experiencing which we experience daily and uh we can use that transition part and the thing itself as well. Do you ever intentionally get up in the middle of the night to just experience being mostly awake but somewhat asleep just to experience what that what that’s like? >> Yeah, I did before.

Various practices use that kind of instruction. Uh people uh some people might be familiar with the lucid dreaming or the the dream yoga or the sleep yoga what is called various practices and waking up in the middle of the night also allows you to appreciate something else something different. Sometimes it happens and you can manipulate it into somewhere and sometimes you can do it on purpose. Nowadays with all the longevity talk and all this direction we we sometimes don’t capitalize on such things but uh sometimes there is more to be gained with a bad night’s sleep than with a good night’s sleep. >> Uh in [clears throat] 2015 to 20 I would say 2018 I was uh very busy but I was mourning the death of my graduate adviser.

was very close with her um unusually close for a graduate adviser and student >> [clears throat] >> um very maternal her to me relationship knew her kids I’m friends with her husband and kids still and um she died in 2014 and I was really distraught about it and someone recommended t