Welcome to another episode in this series highlighting previous podcast episodes!

It’s been so much going back through old shows to select the most memorable moments, so I hope you are enjoying these throwback clips as well—if you want to send in any comments or request topics for an episode, email podcast@bradventures.com.

In part five you will hear eye-opening quotes from past guests like Xero Shoes founder Steven Sashen about living a barefoot lifestyle, best-selling author and manifestation king John Assaraf, Andre Obradovic on nasal breathing and The Oxygen Advantage, and Dude Spellings, who gives great advice (always backed up by scientific reference) on general everyday health practices, like walking, hiking, taking a stroll after dinner, and cold plunges. 

TIMESTAMPS:

Over the years we have been constricted in shoes that actually weaken our feet. Minimalist shoes are getting very popular. [00:00]

Why do modern athletic shoes look the way they do? Runners get injured every year caused by their shoes. [03:51]

The way feet are supposed to work (bend, flex, move, and feel) doesn’t work naturally in today’s modern shoes. [09:11]

John Assaraf explains: Do you want to change? Be grateful for where you are and what you have now, but then head in a certain direction with positive self-talk. We have to understand how to manage the emotions during change. [14:39]

The skill of earning money is a skill you can learn. [26:14]

Andre Obradovic and Brad talk about intentional breathing which relates to minimizing your breathing during your athletic performance. Most people breath too much. [32:37] 

When we are told to take a deep breath through the mouth when we are stressed, we are told this will increase oxygen delivery to the tissues.  It is actually the opposite. [37:39]

There is more oxygen uptake when we breathe through our nose. [38:38]

Dude Spellings talks about the benefits walking, an activity that is super underrated. [41:33]

Dude talks about how to best sanitize your cold plunge. [45:29]

Acupuncture is not voodoo medicine. Dr. Jannine Krause talks about functional medicine. [47:23]

Squishy balls have a very important role for people to work on their dexterity. [51:20]

Parasympathetic breathing should come five minutes after your workout when you lie down and put your legs up onto a bench or chair. Just chill and get your cortisol pumping. [54:38]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• John Assaraf Podcast
• Oxygen Advantage
• BOLT score
• Andre Obradovic
• Dude Spellings
• What’s Up with Acupuncture? 

LISTEN: 

We appreciate all feedback, and questions for Q&A shows, emailed to podcast@bradventures.com. If you have a moment, please share an episode you like with a quick text message, or leave a review on your podcast app. Thank you!

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to another episode in the series of highlights from previous podcast episodes. It is fun for me to go back and choose the great memorable clips from these wonderful guests, and I hope you are enjoying the series. Also, uh, give us feedback anytime by emailing podcast@bradventures.com. And here we go with our first clip. This is from Steven Sashen. He is the founder of Zero Shoes, X E R O, a wonderful minimalist footwear company. And it is so cool to see the growth of the minimalist footwear movement over the last, uh, nearly 20 years. Really cool that Mark Sisson just started a new company called Pelkuva, P E L U V A, and he’s got a line of minimalist footwear that has some style, some fashion to it, and also the i dividual articulated toes which give you the most authentic barefoot experience, but with the support and cushioning provided by the shoe.

Brad (01:07):
So it’s a nice in-between something that you can wear around for fashion as well as workout in when you gradually build up your competency. So in this interview with Steven, we talk about the rationale and the benefits of a barefoot dominant lifestyle. That is also the topic of one of the e-books that you can download at bradkearns.com. If you haven’t already, please go and click the link to sign up for the email newsletter list and you’ll get an assortment of wonderful e-books on many different topics of healthy living. But I, especially ilike the barefoot book that Mark Sisson and I put together a while back because the lifelong constriction and weakening of our feet by wearing shoes is a major problem. There’s a huge percentage of adults that suffer from, uh, chronic foot pain, and there’s a right way to extricate yourself from this doom, and that is to get your feet strong again, uh, but not rushing into it and doing things crazy when you haven’t been adapted because you’ve been wearing shoes for years.

Brad (02:13):
So when I first got my, uh, my first pair of minimalist footwear back in 2006, you know, I would put ’em on, I would jog around a little bit and then of course, wear my cushiony shoes for, uh, let’s say the duration of my running miles. But as the years went by, I started to adapt better and better. And now I think they’re the best shoes to wear for sprint workouts, for strength training sessions in the gym where you wanna really feel and get that proprioception increased. That’s the awareness, the kinesthetic awareness of your body and space. And it starts in the very nerve-sensitive feet. That’s why, uh, Asian Chinese medicine emphasizes acupuncture and pressure points in the foot. So when you are wearing a minimal issue, or better yet barefoot, when you’re really strong and adapted, that’s when you have the best balance, the best mobility, the best kinesthetic awareness.

Brad (03:08):
But again, it takes some work to get to this point. So that is a long tee up for a nice clip from Steven Sashen. And if you go back and listen to the entire episode, it’s really cool also that not only is he an executive of founder of this great company, uh, but he’s also a competitive master’s track and field sprinter. So we have a lot in common there. I loved hearing about his athletic endeavors and it’s also cool that he’s walking his talk and he’s the real deal putting his athletic performance on display in the really short sprint. So he’s like a 60 meter, a hundred meter specialist when he is not making wonderful shoes from Xero shoes. Enjoy Steven Sashen.

Steven (03:51):
Yeah, no, that’s exactly it. And so, you know, backing up to the point about, about big shoes, there are a couple things. Let’s start with something that most people don’t know, and this is really important. Why do modern athletic shoes look the way they do? Most people think it came from research and these big companies have done a lot of work to make them, you know, to, to make them better. Well, if you look at the research on running injuries prior to say 1970, there is none. It just wasn’t happening. There wasn’t enough of it going on to warrant research and back. Oh, so we talked about this before we started. There’s a Facebook group, I don’t remember which one it is. There’s a bunch of ’em about running shoes. And someone posted a picture of a running shoe from 1970 ish. It was an Asics marathon shoe, and it was a minimal shoe, flat, thin light.

Steven (04:38):
And almost every comment with someone saying, oh my God, I’d get shin splints if I ran in those shoes. Well, how come none of the guys running in those shoes back then got shin splints? It’s not about the footwear, it’s about the form. It’s like we said at the beginning of this thing. So the modern athletic shoe didn’t come from all this research. In fact, the way it happened, Bill Bowerman, uh, from when you started Nike was sharing a building with some podiatrists. They might have been either orthopedic podiatrists or sports podiatrists. I can never remember that. I’m not good for very specifics. I’m good at the big points. And Bowerman came to them one day and said, I got these runners who are getting Achilles tendonitis. What do you recommend? And they said, oh, well, clearly they’re achilles of shorten from wearing higher heeled dress shoes.

Steven (05:19):
So make a higher running shoe. Like put a wedge of foam in there to accommodate that. And that idea sold really well. And the footwear industry, now that I’ve been in it 12 years, I can tell you it’s just a bunch of copycats. It’s like if someone starts selling something and it’s going really well within a few years, everyone’s doing it cuz they’re afraid they’re never gonna make any money again. Like when the Barefoot Thing kicked out and kicked on in, uh, kicked in in 2009, 2010, running shoe companies were putting out all these articles about how if you round barefoot, you’re going to step on hypodermic needles. You’re gonna get Ebola, your kids won’t get into college. You’ll forget how to dial your phone number. I mean, you know, crazy things because they were terrified. No one was ever gonna buy a pair of shoes again.

Steven (05:57):
Well cut to 30 years later, after this whole idea of the wedged heel came out, and by the way one of the best running coaches ever, Arthur Liddiard from New Zealand had more world champions and Olympic champions than anywhere else coming from a tiny little country. Liddiard apparently said to Bowerman, those shoes you’re making are gonna kill people. Mm-hmm. And Bowerman’s answer was, we’re selling a ton of them <laugh>. So these pod one of these podiatrists was that attract me with a friend of mine, a guy who worked directly with Bowerman for years. And my friend said, what do you think about the fact that your idea, the padded elevated heel has become ubiquitous? It’s like every modern athletic shoe. What do you think? And the guy said, biggest mistake we ever made. We didn’t have any evidence for this Achilles shortening thing. We had no evidence that adding a heel lift was gonna be helpful.

Steven (06:46):
And we see that it’s been the opposite. I mean, to this day since in the early seventies when more people started running, and it’s not just about numbers, it’s about percentages, 50% of runners and 80% of marathoners get injured every year. And that hasn’t changed despite the fact that there’s a massive incentive for these big companies to make a shoe that could help in that regard, if you could, I said to a guy from Adidas, we had a panel discussion, it was me, a guy from another minimalist and a guy from Brooks and a guy from Adi. I said, if you could make a shoe demonstrably better than the guy sitting next to you that’s worth billions of dollars a year, and you’re telling me you haven’t done it, cuz it’s really difficult and time consuming and expensive to do that kind of research?

Steven (07:29):
It’s ridiculous. But here, check this one out. So Nike put out a study, this came out pre-COVID and then they kind of pulled it and then they re-released it just a few months ago. It was a study they say was independent. They designed it, they paid for it, someone independently did it, whatever. I’m okay with that. And the way the study got the results of the study got publicized was new Nike Shoe reduces injuries by 52%. It’s amazing. And if you look at the research it did, they had like 260 people and they split ’em up in a half marathon training program. And the half the group was in the Zoom structure, 22 Nike’s best selling motion controlled arch support, elevated heel padded shoe. And the other half were in an issue. The React Infinity run. And it’s true, in the people in the React Infinity run 52% fewer injuries.

Steven (08:20):
But then you have to look at the numbers. When you look at the actual numbers, that’s when things get interesting. In the Zoom structure, over 30% got injured in 12 weeks in the React Infinity, only 15% did, let’s do the math a little differently. 15% is about one outta seven. And let’s call that 30 ish percent, two outta seven, just to make it seem like a week, seven days in a week. So this is like me asking you, which restaurant do you want me to take you to for dinner every night this week? The one where you get food poisoning twice, or the one where you only get it once, you know, it’s the same analogy. It’s like natural movement is the obvious better healthy choice the same way natural food is. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the research is unequivocal there. I mean, Dr. Isabel Sacco in Brazil took a bunch of elderly women, put them in minimal shoes, their knee osteoarthritis went away because they weren’t putting force into the joint by overstriding and heel striking.

Steven (09:11):
And, cuz your body is designed to do like, anyway, we can dive into that. We don’t have time. But suffice it to say it does take, it does take a, let’s call it a bit of intellectual courage to recognize that we have been sold a bill of goods for the last 50 years by companies who are promising instant solutions. And ironically, the instant solution is the one that we had before they started telling us that story. You go to places where they don’t have footwear and they don’t have these problems mm-hmm. <affirmative> that people are getting treated for. Uh, again, back to Dr. Irene Davis from Harvard, she said to me at one point, if we just got kids wearing minimal shoes like yours in 20 years, we wouldn’t be treating adults for the billions of dollars of problems they’re trying to get cures for now. Cuz they wouldn’t develop these habits. If you wanna see something, and we’ve all seen this, go watch little kids run again. They, they’re smiling, they have amazing form, they have just the right amount of lean. They put their feet underneath them, they’re having a good time, they stop when they’re tired. They start again a second later when they’re ready to go again. And then you watch what happens when they start putting on big, thick shoes. And it all changes.

Brad (10:15):
And, and sitting around all day in school and in and playing with video games. I’ve read where the, um, the, the, you know, the, the, the ideal natural runner is like five years old and that equates with kindergarten and then when you get to first grade, you start to get more academic. Yeah. And they, they lose it. And they’re, they’re, you know, developing all these kind of movement patterns that are leading to dysfunction over the years.

Steven (10:40):
If you, if you, just, to your point, I said this at that panel discussion, it was at the American College of Sports Medicine that I mentioned earlier. I said, um, to the guys from Brooks and Adidas, I said, look, the more you understand about feet, the more you look into how feet are supposed to work, what they do, bend, flex, move, and feel, the more you look at the research on natural movement, cuz there’s quite a bit of it, it becomes impossible to conclude anything other than the design of the modern athletic shoe is just fundamentally wrong. And, XAnd next on the panel, let’s hand the mic over to the representative from Brooks to Stevens comment. Hold on,

Steven (11:15):
<laugh>, there’s a long pause and the guy from Audi says, yeah, but not everyone’s gonna switch to your shoes right away. <laugh> like, wow, that’s the best you’ve got, right? Well, yeah, they’re not because you’ve convinced people that they need your product and they haven’t had the experience of doing something natural. And all I can say is, you know, anecdotes do not equal data, but we’ve got almost 40,000 reviews on our website from people saying, oh my God, these are so comfortable. Oh my God, they changed my life. Oh my god. You know, et cetera. And you don’t see that from Nike and Brooks and Reebok and, you know, we have the number of people who own more than 10 pairs of Xero shoes is very high. You don’t hear that from people, people who aren’t collectors. You don’t hear that from people who are, or you know, who are looking for something to wear all day every day. So it’s just a whole different game once you get used to doing what’s natural. Y you can’t go back be, I mean, my wife said it. She goes, I hate that we own this company. I said, why? This is years ago? She says, because I’ve been looking for a nice brown leather boot and I found one that I like, but it’s got a quarter inch heel mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and it feels like I’m gonna fall my face when I’m wearing it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so we made her a brown leather boot,

Brad (12:20):
<laugh>. Oh, how nice. Without the quarter inch heel, you just take exactly this hacksaw to it, and then there’s your prototype.

Steven (12:27):
Well, you could do that. Or we just built one from, actually we couldn’t even do that because it also had a pointy toe and squeezing her toes together. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, that, look, that’s the simplest thing I say to people when they talk to me about shoes. I go look at the shape of your shoe, the toe box, and then look at the shape of your foot and then look back at the shoe. Look back at your foot, look back at the shoe and ask, why are you trying to put something foot shaped in something not foot shaped? I mean, or think about babies when they start learning to walk, you can see that they’re working the problem. They’re, you know, we love baby feet and they’re, you know, trying to flex and move their feet. And they can, you can tell they’re trying to feel things and make it all work. I mean, you would never like squeeze their toes together and elevate their heel and mess with their posture or put something stiff underneath their foot so they couldn’t move or feel. And if you wouldn’t do it to a baby, why would you do it to you?

Brad (13:13):
Well, they, they used to bind the feed up in Asia. Right. So that’s

Steven (13:18):
A great Idea.

Brad (13:18):
That’s, that’s, you know, the, the ancient, uh, ridiculous notion today. But we’re doing it to kids as soon as they get their first pair of shoes.

Steven (13:26):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it just doesn’t, and and part of the reason that it doesn’t make sense to people is they didn’t have an option for the last 50 years. Mm. Right. I mean, it’s the last 45. It’s only since 2009 ish that this became even an option. And again, in Europe, we don’t have an argument about whether this is legit or not. In Europe, they’re all on board. There’s brands basically doing this for 250 years. Not as well as we are, I would argue. But, the same basic idea of natural movement is part of, uh, European culture is part of Asian culture. Mm. As well. They just don’t have these arguments there.

Brad (14:01):
Steven Sashen killing it today. This is so fascinating. I think we’re all, we have to be convinced at this point to at least grab a pair of shoes and try ’em out and integrate a meta rate that you you’re interested in easier.

Steven (14:14):
Just take off what you’re wearing now. Walk around barefoot first, see if that’s enjoyable. And if it’s not, if you can’t do it, it’s only because you haven’t let your feet do it’s natural for a while. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, give yourself little doses. Do a couple little foot exercises, look up foot strengthening on YouTube mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then, you know, because you take your arm out of a cast, you can’t start throwing baseballs right away. It takes eight weeks so you have some strength again. So, you know. That’s right. Do a little strengthening and then if you feel like you wanna try it, that’s why we’re here.

Brad (14:39):
Next up, one of my favorite and most inspirational podcast guests ever, it’s John Assaraf, best selling author, brain-training expert, and starring in the movie The Secret. He is the king of manifesting the story he told on our first interview, not the one exerpted here, but the earlier one about how he was doing the recommended vision boards. You know, the dream board where you go into the magazine, you cut out the pictures of the Ferrari, or the beautiful house, or the horse or the, uh, the fit body glistening with sweat and, uh, rippling muscles. And then you put it on the wall and you look at it and you think about it and you eventually manifest it. And the most amazing story was that he cut out this awesome house from some magazine he doesn’t remember where, uh, with orange groves and fencing here and a terrorist lawn here. And, then he actually bought the very house that he cut out of some random magazine years before that. That’s how strong the power of manifesting has been in John’s life. And if you are like me and at first glance, dismiss this kind of stuff as woowoo, because it’s often misinterpreted and misappropriated where, uh, the, the classic example of, um, trying to manifest my, my dream boyfriend who has a slight razor stubble and a red Ferrari, and he flies in a private jet. No, no, no. That’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s talking. He’s talking about, uh, being grateful for where you are and what you have now, and then just forming the intention to head in a certain direction and think about it and write about it and tell yourself about it with positive self-talk. That starts to make really interesting, logical sense because look, wherever you are right now, you thought about it and dreamed about it first, all the successes that you’ve had to date, think about that for a moment.

Brad (16:42):
So when you get rolling with this guy, he’s such a professional. He’s so smooth, so powerful. As a speaker and a presenter, I’d love for you to watch the YouTube interview so you can see John, visually, but please go back and listen to the entire episode and dig this really cool clip where he’s talking about the power, the skill of earning money, how simple and easy it is for everyone. I’m like, okay man, tell me more, tell me more. And also a little bit of, uh, brain research and brain science. That will be a wonderful quick takeaway. John Assaraf,

John (17:16):
We need to understand how to work with our brain instead of against it. And most people just have never learned the process. When we talk, for example, about, you know, is it possible to double your income or triple your income in 12 months? Of course it is. There are people doing it all over the place. But if you’ve got a habit of earning a certain amount and you’re in a comfort zone of that amount, even if you’re miserable, and in order to earn two or three times, you have to change some of your habits. You have to change some of your thinking. You have to change your emotional control abilities and skills. It’s like, I prefer to master disappointment versus mastering change cuz disappointment is something I already know how to do. Hmm. So when we’re dealing with the neuroscience of this, it doesn’t matter if we’re looking to make more money, get away from a relationship we’re not happy in, ask for a raise, start a business, write a book, learn a new skill,

John (18:20):
our brain is consistently looking at what is the cognitive load and the metabolic expenditure for that. And if there’s any risk of failure now it’s like, oh my God, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try and fail and therefore I’m gonna be disappointed anyway. I’m gonna, I’m gonna maybe be embarrassed or ashamed or ridiculed or judged or rejected. Like, why the hell do I wanna do that? So now the capital expenditure not only is around glucose, which is what our brain is regulating, and obviously all the other salts and, and, and, and neurochemicals, but now there’s a chance that myself worth an identity are gonna be challenged as well. So like, uh, you know what? Let me watch a Netflix movie. Oh, my friend’s gonna meet at the bar. Oh, let’s do that. I’ll come back to this later. Now, what allows us to make advancements is to increase our level of awareness of here is what’s happening, right?

John (19:31):
And then come up with counter strategies for when this happens, right? So if I said to you, Hey, you wanna get in shape, great. You know, you’re gonna need to, let’s, let’s say, let’s just focus on, uh, the proper nutrition and proper, you know, beginner exercises. And if I just left you at that, you’d have to figure it out. But if I said, okay, proper nutrition, and here’s what you’re gonna have for breakfast. Here’s your snack, here’s your lunch, here’s your dinner. Okay. And here’s the exercise regimen. And when you are hungry, if you are hungry, eat this and do this. And when you don’t feel like exercising, do this instead of that, and object X says you might be a little bit sore. So take this. Okay? Now, if I give you an easy framework to follow and give you some of the support, it makes the change easier, not easy, but makes the change easier. Why? Because I have set you up to succeed. I’ve set you up to not have to win all of that stuff. Right?

John (20:45):
Right. Then we take the cognitive load that <inaudible>, and then if I pre-frame, we call it, I let you know what the experience is going to be like. And I get you to pre-commit to overcoming the challenges before you even have them. Now I’ve created a map or an experience of something that you are going to experience. So most people are just ill-equipped with the right process for change. It’s not that they can’t, they just don’t know how to, and then you try to use willpower, which becomes very, very weak as a neuro muscle by three, four o’clock every day. Mm-hmm.

Brad (21:34):
I like that analogy of the map where you could be looking at your route driving over the Colorado Rockies and describing how tough these mountains are gonna be on your car engine and, and get ready. And then it gets really cold up there and you’re gonna have this challenge and that challenge. But when you see it in front of you, oh my gosh, it’s so much more, you know, comfortable to, to go and take on the challenge.

John (21:58):
That’s right. Yeah. So, um, you know, when we’re talking about, you know, change your brain, change your income, first we have to change how we think, right? And what we focus on, then what we’ve gotta do is understand how to manage the emotions during change. And then we need to know what are the right behaviors, so we’re not wasting time figuring it out. And then if we get ourselves in the right environment, that fosters growth, boom, that makes it easier and it happens faster,

Brad (22:33):
Change your thinking, manage your emotions, put the right behaviors in place, and create the right environment. Simple as that. Yeah.

John (22:41):
And that’s what, what, what that gives you is predictable results. Sure. So the natural reaction of our brain when we are outside of our comfort zone is resistance. Okay? So think of a rubber band, right? If we take a rubber band and we stretch it, we feel resistant. That’s what it’s supposed to do. So whenever we feel resistance, instead of allowing the resistance to control us, why not ask why is the resistance here and not here? Like, what is causing the resistance? The resistance is an effect, right? So think about resistance as stress, right? Resistance is a form of stress. Now, what is stress? Stress is simply when the demand exceeds my current capacity.

Brad (23:41):
Hmm.

John (23:42):
So the resistance we feel is when we are getting to the edges, okay? Of our mental or emotional or financial or physical edges. So the resistance isn’t the problem. The question should be why is the resistance there? And is there a way to expand me so that I don’t meet the same resistance points?

Brad (24:09):
Right? The obvious example of getting fitter, where now you can pedal a bicycle for 30 minutes, no problem. And six months ago it was seven minutes, you were out of breath.

John (24:19):
Yeah. Walking was hard. Hmm. Right? And so, so, so the key to understand resistance is a signal just as fear is. So, I don’t know if I shared this the last time we talked, but imagine you’re driving your car, right? And the light pops up on your dash. Have you ever taken a hammer to hit the light <laugh>?

Brad (24:42):
Not, not to date, no. Just attempted to.

John (24:45):
Why would I do that? Right? It’s actually there to say, Hey, you’re low on air in your front right tire, or you left a trunk open, you know, the back window’s open, you’re getting outta the car. So it’s beeping. Oh, thank you. Resistance. Oh, thank you. What’s causing this resistance that I need to move so that I can have more capacity? Right? So there’s nothing wrong with fear. There’s nothing wrong with resistance. There’s nothing wrong with stress, right? There’s nothing wrong with anxiety. There’s nothing wrong with any of the signals that our brain sends out for us to feel something. Now, certain feelings, right? Are constructive positive mm-hmm. And move us forward and other feelings, okay? May put the brakes on and cause us to retreat right back into safety. So the question is, why? Like, am I not taking action because I’m afraid of being rejected? What’s causing that to trigger? Like, what’s causing that to trigger? Do I not think I’m worthy enough? Oh wow, maybe I should work on upgrading, expanding my self-image and self-worth so the rejection doesn’t affect me.

Brad (26:12):
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John (26:14):
Right? If I’m afraid of taking action, why? Oh, cuz I’m afraid of failing. Why? Well, cause if I fail and I lose money, I won’t be able to pay the mortgage, and it’s gonna put a lot of stress on my children and wife. Oh, okay. Is there any way I can protect that from happening? Right? So there’s nothing wrong with the feeling. The feeling should give me a place to move forward in my understanding and in my strategy. And when I can learn how to be more aware of my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings, my sensations, my triggers, my move towards behaviors, my move away from behaviors, now I can be deliberate and responsive versus unconsciously reacting to all my old patterns. When we’re talking about money, the skill of earning money is readily available to anybody to learn. It’s a skill no different than chess or checkers or knitting or playing, you know, tennis, it’s a skill.

John (27:35):
And for somebody who is committed to learning the skill, they can get better and they’re gonna be clumsy beginners act first. And then with practice, they can get better as long as they’re practicing the right things. But if you keep practicing the wrong things, you just get better at the wrong things. So it’s not practice that makes perfect, it’s perfect practice that makes perfect. Too many people are repeating patterns over and over and over, language patterns, emotional patterns, behavioral patterns, and they wonder, I wonder why I keep seeing scarcity. But that’s the pattern. You’re, you are practicing and is there scarcity? Yes. For the people who believe in scarcity and is there abundance? Yes. For the people who believe in abundance and for people who do things to connect with and resonate with the abundance. And you know, where it all starts right in there, right in between your two ears.

Brad (28:48):
So the language patterns, what’s an example of maybe wanting to change from scarcity to abundance?

John (28:57):
So language patterns and what we say activate chemicals that cause us to feel a certain way. When our brain releases certain chemicals, we’re either in a motivated state or unmotivated state. We’re moving towards trying to find, you know, and, and finding what it is that we want or not. So, self-talk is critical, like self-talk is critical. Why? Because every sentence that you speak releases the neurochemical associated with that sentence. So are you releasing the neurochemicals of scarcity? So if you say there’s never enough, think about this. If you, if you typed into your computer, okay, there’s never enough memory in this computer and that was an instruction for your computer to make that a reality, the computer would say, sorry, can’t save this. Not enough memory. What would you type into the computer? There’s always more than enough, right? So what do you think our brain is? It’s a bio computer. Now when we say there’s always more than enough and it’s easy for me to find it, your brain says, okay, let me make that a reality. When you say, there’s never enough, I’m so tired of being in debt, your brain says, okay, okay. You just, you just said what, what I am.

Brad (30:43):
Hmm.

John (30:44):
So there’s a part of our brain that is extremely literal.

Brad (30:50):
This goes for unspoken thoughts as well, I would imagine.

John (30:54):
Of course, of course. Yeah. Yeah. We have about 6,200 thoughts a day according to the latest research has just come out. Not 35,000 to 50,000 is,

Brad (31:02):
Hey, that sounds more reasonable. Okay, 6,200, people.

John (31:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And most people’s thoughts are limiting and negative most people’s thoughts. So they’re reinforcing, limiting and negative thoughts more often than not. And so then the neural networks that cause us to see, like, think about this, right? In any given second, when your eyes are open, about 400 billion bits of information are coming in through your eyes. And yours in my brain deletes and distorts 99.999% of it. And it only allows you and I to see for the most part what we are conditioned to see. It’s looking for a match between the map and the reality out there. And it deletes anything that doesn’t match the map. So if you are consistently living in scarcity with not enough, or just enough it deletes and distorts all the abundance and shows you just enough, right? Or not enough. So our brain is, as much as you think, and I used to think that we see, you know, with our eyes, we don’t, we see through our eyes and our brain’s actually projecting the patterns back onto the canvas.

Brad (32:37):
Next up is my main man from under Andre Obradovic. And he is a popular health and fitness coach, sort of a life coach, fitness coach character from Aussie land. He’s got a lot of colorful things to say. I love interviewing him. I love engaging with him personally. He’s helped me in his role as a business coach. And he’s really, uh, good at getting your entire act together. So make sure you’re firing on all cylinders, not just in your workout regimen, but also how you organize your day and how you prioritize your daily tasks. He’s a very focused, organized person because he comes from this military background. But in this interview clip we talk about the fascination, our mutual fascination with the emerging science of intentional breathing. And that particularly relates to minimizing your breathing during athletic performance. I think you’re gonna love this clip.

Brad (33:34):
And also the book that we referenced, the Oxygen Advantage from Patrick McKeown. We both digested that strongly and put it into action. So he’s talking about a bit of the research here where you get, uh, increased red blood cell production from getting into nasal diaphragmatic breathing, and then also how to get started, uh, gracefully. He boasted to me before the show that he could do, the BOLT score, that’s a breathing test of how well you can tolerate carbon dioxide. And he says, oh, I can do 50 seconds easily. And I’m like, come on man, that, that’s like superior off the charts incredible. And uh, there we are on zoom from U S A to Australia, and there he is chilling in his chair holding his exhaled breath for 50 seconds without any trouble. And it seemed like a miracle to me when I first started, cuz I could barely make it to 20 seconds on my first BOLT score.

Brad (34:29):
But with devoted practice over the last couple years, I am now up to 50 seconds at my very best and routinely 40 seconds. So I went from so-so needs to improve to the superior category, doubling that time. And again, I’m talking about holding your exhaled breath. So if you wanna see where you are right now with your BOLT score, what you do is you take a few gentle, normal breaths through your nose only. So closing your mouth, then you exhale all of your air and pinch off your nostril so your mouth is closed and now you are pinching your nostrils closed and you sit comfortably and see how long you can comfortably last without needing to pull a breath. So you don’t want to game or cheat the test by going until you’re about to pass out. It’s when you have that first strong urge to breathe and then you check your time. And if you simply practice the BOLT test frequently, you will notice that you have better and better carbon dioxide tolerance, which has a tremendous impact on athletic peak performance as well as overall health. You’ll improve your carbon dioxide tolerance. Let’s learn more from Andre Obradovic.

Andre (35:44):
Well, so my experience with breath started in, you know, where I wanted to really advance my athletic performance. And initially I started looking at Wim Hof, I started to do his online course. But what I found was that, you know, his approach was, and tell me if you think I’m wrong, but his approach I found was more about stress management and how to influence his immune system and improving his mental health cuz of some of the things that happened in his life. But, you know, I wanted to breathe less and improve my capacity to run and race at a lower heart rate with a faster pace. So I then, and because Wim Hof’s breathwork is a lot more through the mouth and using all these other techniques, um, I wanted to look for something different. So then I started to follow Patrick McKeown.

Andre (36:32):
So I read the Breath book by James Nester and I started following Patrick McKeown.. And he, he was trained in this method called the Buteyko Method , which consists of a series of breathing exercises and guidelines specifically designed to reduce over breathing which is what he calls chronic hyperventilation. Because the fact is most people breathe way too much. And this alters the natural levels of gases in the blood. It reduces oxygen delivery, to our tissues, organs. And in, sometimes, sometimes it can cause constriction of blood vessels and airways. And this can have lots of health problems, you know, mouth when we, when we, you know, breathing, breathing volume becomes normal and we can switch from mouth breathing to nasal breathing, which helps alleviate all these health problems. And there’s a lot of science and evidence around that.

Andre (37:39):
Patrick McKeown. started to look at this guy called Dr. Buteyko, which, I think he was Russian and he was looking at sick people and found that all these sick people, you know, breathed really hard. And he sort of thought about, well, is the sickness causing the hard breathing or is this hard breathing through the mouth, causing the sickness? The other thing is, you know, so Patrick McKeown sort of followed this and researched all of this and really had a big interest in it because he himself had a breathing problem where he was always breathing through the mouth. And one interesting thing is we’re told, we are told, we tell people when they’re, you know, not feeling well or they’re, uh, overstressed to take a big breath through the mouth. And the belief is that this will increase oxygen delivery into their tissues. Well, it actually is totally the opposite. And this is all around this thing called the bore effect which I’m sure you, you know, you could talk about a lot as well.

Andre (38:38):
But this method called the Buteyko Breathing Technique, talks about soft breathing, light breathing, and breathing through the diaphragm where we use the nose to breathe. And, and that using these techniques, we increase oxygen delivery to the cells. And this is where we’re really gonna transform our health. So there’s a whole reasons why it’s important. I can go through those and then maybe we can talk a bit more about what we actually do. But yeah, as you say, James Nestor and Patrick McKeown, in my opinion, are probably two of the biggest and most successful and educated people that talk about this. But a couple of the benefits and why it’s important to breathe through the nose is that there’s more resistance when we breathe through the nose. Um, and there’s more oxygen uptake when we breathe through our nose. It warms the air and removes the germs cuz we have hairs in our nose.

Andre (39:41):
During exercise, you know, you can breathe through your nose and work at an aerobic level to increase the oxygen that comes into our muscles, improves blood flow, blood flow, and that increases our ability of our mitochondria to function. And, I guess the last two are that the nose acts as a reservoir for nitric oxide. Now there’s an important bit to come about where nitric oxide is as well. And, and therefore, you know, with breathing slowly through the nose, takes the nitric oxide down into the diaphragm and the deep part of the lungs. And that improves oxygenation of the body. It also improves vaso regulation, which is the opening and closing of blood vessels, which gets oxygen into our body better. And the important thing for men is it helps with erections because in Viagra, nitric oxide is in Viagra. So it’s a very important part for all of us to think about.

Andre (40:50):
So they’re just some of the things that I didn’t know about that I now know about. And I even take a nitric oxide supplement as well in liquid form before I exercise to help. So really what we’re doing by breathing through our nose in everyday life and when we’re exercising, whether it’s in the gym or on the bike or running, is we’re building our tolerance to handle carbon dioxide buildup and we’re able to work at lower oxygen saturations. So it’s, it’s giving us this like e p o effect, um, like high altitude training, but it’s legal.

Brad (41:33):
Next up is my main man living the incredibly healthy and fit lifestyle down in Austin, Texas. He was there before it became cool. He was born and raised in Austin, and his name is Dude Spellings. That’s right dude, spellings, excellent speed golfer and all round fitness enthusiasts with tremendous results and performances even past the age of 50. He’s the guy who jogs three miles in the wintertime to a pond and goes in for a 20-minute cold plunge experience, 20 minutes in 50 degree water, and then jogs home to warm up. So he is out there on the cutting edge of peak performance, and he has a great scientific grasp of all the health and fitness matters of the day. He has a regular job as a, a career technology guy. But I said, man, um, you know, you gotta get into the, the health and fitness scene.

Brad (42:28):
So he does offer some coaching, group coaching programs you can learn more about by looking up Dude Spellings. We’ll have a link in the show notes. And here we’re talking about general everyday health practices that are super beneficial. Things like hiking and walking taking a little stroll after dinner. And I love the flavor of his commentary where he’ll give you practical, everyday insights, but always back it up with some scientific reference. He made a great contribution to my ebook taking the cold plunge and the online course where he talked about the science of mitochondrial function and what happens when you expose yourself to cold and cool the cells off and they work more efficiently and you actually get a aging reversal effect from cold plunging. So lots of information from dude spellings. Here we go.

Dude (43:18):
You know, hiking and walking are, are walking is super underrated. You know, I mean, there’s all kinds of studies that show that just even like a 15 minute walk after dinner regulates blood sugar, um, people’s sleep better. Like there’s all kinds of benefits to e even not, not just lowers blood sugar, but lowers A1C as well if you do it regularly.

Brad (43:46):
Yeah. And like on on this topic that we, we noted we wanted to discuss, uh, some of the things you wrote, uh, are pretty enticing. Dr. Ron Rosedale’s claiming that the more fat you burn during your life, the longer you’ll live. And that’s because, you’re making fewer free radicals. The fat, um, can, can be burned with, uh, mitochondria protect the protective benefits of mitochondria versus if you’re a glucose burner and you’re winded when you get up a flight of stairs, that that sensation of being winded also implies that you’ve switched over to you know, glucose burning and your, your conditioning is so poor that now you’ve, uh, turned into a carbohydrate dependent human, uh, because you, you can’t even get through the bare bones of daily living getting out of the parking lot and, and entering the store without kicking into glucose burning. So the better you get at burning fat, and we know that there’s two channels here. One of ’em is through exercise and one of ’em is through proper dietary choices. But it, it’s, it’s clear that we need both to excel rather than just eating cleanly and then getting winded going up a flight of stairs.

Dude (45:03):
Yeah. And so I, I think what Ron Rosedale was getting at when he says, you know, the, the more fat you burn during your lifetime, the longer you’ll live is that, how efficient is that electron chain transporting your mitochondria? Right? If you’re whipping electrons through there super fast, you’re not gonna be winded when you get to the top of the stairs.

New Speaker (45:29):
And something another thing that’s a little bit interesting, I didn’t, I haven’t mentioned this to you, so we’ll see, see how this goes. But so I got my cold plunge, right? I got my chest freezer all set up and everything. Ooh. And, um, you know, I had to do a bunch of research on how to keep it clean and sanitary and all this stuff. And, I discovered one of the, so there’s a couple different ways to keep it sanitized, right?

Dude (45:59):
So, um, just for the listeners, clean versus sanitized clean would be like a filter that keeps out the dirt and stuff. Sanitized would be like chlorine that keeps algae and stuff from growing in there, right? Bacteria and stuff. So there’s a couple different ways to do the sanitation. One is chlorine and chlorine is toxic and a lot of people say you can absorb it through your skin. So I kind of wanted to, to search for other ways, right? I found this video of this guy, that uses ozone for sanitation in a cold plunge. And he explained it really well and really what he was, what it boils down to is that the reason that chlorine and the ozone both work is because they add extra electrons to the water, which disassembles it’s able to, I guess, disassembles the right word, but it’s basically the charge is strong enough that it disables the stella membrane on bacteria.

Brad (47:23):
Next up we have Dr. Jannine Krause, one of my favorite Instagram accounts cuz she films these wonderful short healthy lifestyle tips and tricks. And in our interview she’s talking a lot about the book that she published recently called What’s Up with Acupuncture, where she describes for the casual interested enthusiast what it’s all about, how it works. It’s not voodoo medicine, it’s only a few thousand years old and time tested and proven to have great results. And she tells us just why that is. Um, Dr. Jannine is an expert in functional health functional medicine, and if you’re not familiar with that term and that entire field of healthcare, they’re looking at function instead of a disease model. So it’s really helpful for times when you’re just not feeling great or you have, uh, especially problems with your gut function. When you go to the mainstream medical route, they’re gonna say you’re fine or perhaps give you prescription medication to try and address the symptoms. But functional medicine goes looking for the cause and trying different lifestyle interventions as well as supplementation. So, oh my gosh, I’ve referred many people to Jannine in recent times for gut health concerns, um, recovering from pandemic illness and getting all the way back instead of dealing with these nagging little issues. So she’s a wealth of knowledge in the progressive health space. And here in this clip we’re gonna learn a bit about the beneficial effects of acupuncture.

Jannine (49:03):
Absolutely. So just kind of thinking around those things we’re talking, I’m talking about what can happen to the nerves and the compression of, of the nerves by muscles and not getting the right firing too. And so because I’m an acupuncturist, I love, love, love to look at down the spine and see what kind of nerve root ending, so where the nerves come out of the spine there, those are gonna go to the muscles on the backside of you and the ones that come out there and go towards the front, they’re gonna go towards your abs and things of that nature. So another question that I would be thinking in terms of your case is what’s going on with the core? And we know you have a good core, I’m not go, I’m not even arguing that. My question is, do we have one side that’s a little bit more dominant than the other?

Jannine (49:42):
And so that could be something to, to look at as well with videos and, and doing a shirt off kind of one as ladies will be like, look at that, Brad, Brad with the shirt off. Um, but I think it would be, I think it would be a good thing to think about in terms of balance there. And then with the landing, looking at balance now going back to those nerves. So have you heard of like myotomes and where the nerves go out to the muscles and the nerves go out to the skin? Mm-hmm. Ooh, okay. So these guys can get impinged. So like when someone needs a chiropractic adjustment, and I know a lot of folks are on either side of whether chiropractic is useful is not, in my opinion, it’s, you know, whatever works, is gonna help. And there’s a lot of great data with the vertebrae when they’re out of alignment, they can mess with the signaling to your muscles.

Jannine (50:31):
Hmm. So a lot of folks might have muscle imbalances that aren’t necessarily a full strength issue, but more of the nerve not firing like it should, causing trouble with being able to keep the balance in the body. And then we end up with the cascade of injury because we’re not keeping the right muscle tone, we’re not getting enough of the firing to get the most explosive activity, or we’re not getting enough muscle activity and tone to help balance the body while we’re going through these motions. So something, something to think about in this case. So it’s just one of the fun things that I experiment. And so a lot of times in my office I will needle someone that’s having trouble in a certain area in terms of imbalance and then we’ll have ’em go lift and then we have to come back and then go, all right, do we get that corrected?

Jannine (51:20):
Then sometimes we can get it really good, sometimes it’s a little bit more, sometimes I’ve gotta do a little, little bit of these neurological drills to, to get things changed up with folks. So it kind of all depends. Now we talked a little bit about dexterity and this has nothing to do with your jumping or your hamstring injury, but I figured I’d mention that a little bit. And then I’m gonna segue if you’re cool with it into talking about the body tempering. Cuz that was something that I was like, maybe this could be useful for you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it might actually be something that can help those muscles to regulate. So dexterity, I’m holding a squishy ball. A lot of people have seen these little stress balls, they give ’em out at like, when, when we used to have

Brad (51:58):
Conventions, <laugh>

Jannine (52:01):
Yeah. Like you, when there were conventions and we could all hang out together, these, these stress balls with everyone’s logo on ’em. We like kind of leave ’em around and we’re like, I don’t know, give it to the dog, let the dog chew it up. But actually these could be really, really useful for you because most of us as humans have trouble with things like carpal tunnel, have trouble with actually feeling things with our fingers. And same goes with our feet. I like to do dexterity stuff with our feet too. And this could be something that could help prevent folks from having the plantar fasciitis issues as well. Don’t do this while in a flare, by the way mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, you’ll hate me, but when you’re working on post, post flare up, this could be something they consider. But the idea is taking that squishy ball and squeezing between the thumb and the first finger, and then this thumb and the second finger thumb and the fourth thumb and the fifth. Now I learned this from Justin Fransen. Do you know him?

Brad (52:52):
No.

Jannine (52:52):
He’s a, he’s a coach, has a book called Athleticism and Yeah, yeah, yeah. The squeezy ball. And so instead of just squeezing like squeeze, squeeze it, like, you know, Brad’s showing me a squeezy ball, by the folk, by the way folks, and I’m holding up my squeezy ball here, but a lot of us will just squeeze it like this. We have this motion down <laugh> as this is why this que

Brad (53:14):
We can make the fist motion. Yes,

Jannine (53:16):
We can make fists all day long. What we need to be doing is more stretch and more individual. And you can see like even with my pinky, I need to work on this still. And this, this has been something I’ve been working for for a couple days, um, days, weeks, <laugh> and squeezing, squeezing. But if the more dexterity you have in your fingers, the better you can grip strength things. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for those of you that are, are bar athletes and, and folks that like to do lifting, but also rock climbers, folks of that nature, all this dexterity great for that, but for life in general. Now this is gonna prevent you from having injuries where you can’t open jars and we’re having to ask other people to help us, things of that nature. And then the reverse of this is working on stretching your fingers back out.

Jannine (53:55):
I didn’t bring my rubber band down here, but I take a nice rubber band and put around all of my fingers right at those like distal joints. And then I stretch out my fingers and then I bring it back in, kinda like a starfish stretching out and then bring it back in. That’ll help you to work on the opposite motion that we don’t do very often with our fingers that we absolutely can. So folks, what I’m talking about here is dexterity. That helps with neurological balance in terms of your fingers being able to grip things, hold things, grocery bags, whatever it may be. Because if the fingers get off and we can’t feel our fingers in space, a lot of people have numbness in their fingers now we’re gonna mess up how the elbows work, how the shoulders work, and go all the way up into the neck. So the more we can work on dexterity on the end points, the better. Same thing goes with the feet.

Brad (54:38):
I want you to describe one of the favorite things I’ve, I’ve heard outta your mouth as soon as you said it a couple years ago. I implemented it immediately and it’s been really, uh, a wonderful component of my, my overall training regimen. And that’s this, uh, parasympathetic effort that you do, uh, following a high intensity workout where you’ve stimulated fight or flight, you’ve worked hard, you’ve, you’ve done your reps or your, uh, your your sprints or whatever it is. And then you come home and take a little time. So describe that, that, uh, sequence that you, you recommend.

Jannine (55:12):
Yeah. So positional parasympathetic breathing, I got that from Dr. John Rossen and he literally was like, five minutes after your workout, try this out. I’m like, okay, cool. So you lay down and you put your legs up onto a bench or chair, whatever you can do where you’ve bought your calves up there and your heels are on the, on the table or chair and you’re literally breathing, just chilling. And what that does, that five minutes of time stops that cortisol pump. Mm-hmm. Cause after a workout we’re pumping pump and pumping the cortisol. And if we go on to like the shower, the car, the next thing, we’re gonna keep that cortisol pumping and we’re gonna waste a lot of our energy that we could use for other things during the day. And so having that cutoff at the end of the workout to tell the body like, Hey, workout’s over, we’re gonna move into the next thing. It Is huge.

Jannine (55:59):
It will help you ease into recovery, but it’s also gonna help your neurological system know like what is stressor and workout and what’s like, chill now when can we stop being in fight or flight mode? And this is really kind of a extension of, or my or my talk today about all the different nervous systems stuff is an extension of helping the body feel safe and helping the body get into parasympathetic mode. Cause unfortunately in the world we live, live in, we are in sympathetic mode more often than not. So our nervous system is kind of always trying to figure out like, am I safe? Am I in balance? What do I do? I don’t know. And so doing the positional, parasympathetic breathing tells your body the workout’s over stop being in fight or flight and pump mode. Let’s go into chill mode.

Brad (56:39):
Yeah. It’s a big step beyond the cool down, which we know is so important to bring the blood back to the, the core from the extremities and lower your body temperature and your breathing. But then I’ve generally found a lot of times coming back home and feeling a little bit wired to the extent that I’m gonna go clean the house now and then I’m gonna go do some yard work because I’m on this artificial high from the fight or flight hormones pumping through my bloodstream, uh, from the recent sprint workout. And so, boy, if you can kind of, uh, piggyback a proper cool down with this positional parasympathetic breathing, I love that. I love that description, then you can kind of, uh, come off properly and recalibrate. And of course that’s accelerating the recovery process cuz like you said, we want fight or flight to be short, temporary, extreme and helping our performance tremendously. And then turn that switch off just like in the ancestral experience where we run for our lives and then we’re safe and we calm down and go back to hunting and gathering, uh, you know, chilling.

Jannine (57:45):
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it, it’s something that unfortunately we don’t do the primal response as well anymore. We we’re on full on sympathetic and being able to tell our body like, we’re safe, we’re cool, everything’s over. We’re gonna go into parasympathetic mode is huge. I mean, I think it’s possibly one of the key things for longevity, being able to get into parasympathetic mode more often.

Brad (58:07):
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