Aaron Alexander: Benefits Of Exercising Outdoors to Increase Creativity & Reduce Stress

Here’s a question for you, and be honest now: How much time per day is your phone in your hand?

According to smartphone usage statistics, the average smartphone user checks their device 63 times per day.

And get this, 22% of us are checking our devices every few minutes, while about half look at their phone a few times per hour.

Are all those bleeps and bloops interrupting your day and interrupting your story?

There are many things you can do to help improve the situation and adapt to this modern world. And to help us figure it all out, we’re here with our friend Aaron Alexander.

Aaron is a pioneering manual therapist and movement coach whose clients range from A-list Hollywood celebrities to pro athletes and everyone in between.

He’s author of the new Align Method book and host of the top-rated Align Podcast, which is way more spiritual than it sounds.

And on today’s show, we’re chatting about:

• The importance of good posture (and how to do it right)
• How to increase muscle growth without compromising balance
• Why you should get out of your chair and play like a kid
• And tons more…

Let’s go hang out with Aaron.

 
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Aaron Alexander: How To Responsibly Use Technology

Abel: Alright folks, Aaron Alexander is a pioneering manual therapist and movement coach, whose clients range from A-list Hollywood celebrities to pro athletes and everyone in between. He’s author of the new Align Method book, and host of the top rated Align Podcast. 

Aaron, my friend, thanks for being here man, this is going to be fun.

Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been paying attention to your stuff for at least five years, so it’s an honor to be here, man. I appreciate it.

 Abel: I wanted to start with this one, because it seems like it’s getting worse and worse, but it certainly can’t go on forever. 

In this modern dystopia of stooping and smartphones, people’s necks are literally crooked at this point and people are getting super jacked up.

When is it ever going to get better, and what do we do about it? 

Well, I think addiction to the smartphone is a symptom of something deeper.

The notifications and all that stuff, and needing to get to those daily undone tasks. Which is the Zeigarnik effect—when people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

So underneath that, when you are in a place where you feel supported by a community, and you feel like you have purpose, and you feel driven, and you feel lit up with your life. All of a sudden, the phone and the tablet and all that stuff loses power and you kind of forget that it exists.

When we drift away from that place of, like Joseph Campbell says “following your bliss,” feeling your own purpose, feeling connected with something more, then all of a sudden power gets puffed back into the phone.

So, that’s one aspect of that conversation.

And the other mechanical aspect lends itself to that, because the way that you’re moving your body affects the way you think and the way you feel. I have all the research about that in the book.

From there, we can use our technology responsibly.

And the way that we do that, is we don’t just collapse our shoulders and head posture forward, and kind of be pulled into the phone.

Like it’s like this black hole sucking all of our attention and our physical structure.

Something really simple that you can do as you’re using the phone, you can just hinge your hips forward a little bit as you keep your spine nice and long. And actually make it be almost like a yoga practice, in a sense, as you’re using your phone. As opposed just collapsing into it.

Abel: Right.

Another thing that’s interesting would be to put the phone down on like a counter as you’re using it, as opposed to having all that radiation and EMF stuff pouring into your wrist all day long.

So put the phone down for a second and get your spine nice and long, hinge yourself over that counter, and use the phone from that position.

And then, you know, there’s more.

Put the phone on airplane mode more regularly. Download podcasts and music, and all that stuff ahead of time.

Those are just a few basic options.

Abel: Yeah, I like the low-tech ones, too. 

I have an iPod Shuffle that’s got to be at least 10 years old. It doesn’t have a screen on it, or anything fancy.

I love how those older things just work.  And they don’t have to notify you and download new software updates, and hijack your internet, and all this stuff. 

It’s really gotten crazy. We find so many of us are serving the technology, instead of the technology serving us.

Do you have a feeling for how much worse phones are than, maybe, books? Because people used to be really freaked out when books took off, too.

They were afraid they would ruin our brains and turn everyone’s mind to jelly or apple sauce, or whatever the parlance was back then.

Yeah, I think it was Socrates or Plato warning against the evils of literature, and that it would take us away from our own capacity to memorize and be able to think for ourselves, because now we’re always going to be consuming this literature and memorizing the stuff on pages.

And so, it is interesting. Right now, I think the narcissistic tendency is for us to have the belief system that our generation is the end of the world.

You know?

Abel: Totally. Yeah.

So, right now, our experience is about the cellphone and the technological revolution, and all that stuff.

It’s like, “Oh my God!” It’s like this too shall pass.

You know, at some point we’ll probably look back and have these similar conversations about what they thought about books, in relation to phones.

But it is interesting, man.

There’s a book called The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan, that I’m sure you would really appreciate it, if you haven’t checked it out.

Abel: Yeah, I haven’t read that one.

So his big statement is that “the medium is the message.” And it’s the medium that you are gathering your information from.

For example, like being in a school system, where you are sitting in a desk, staring into a tablet now, or books or whatever.

Then you’re shuffling through these air conditioned rooms and halls under these artificial lights.

And all of those things, we think about, “Oh, they’re learning chemistry and mathematics, and history.”

But that’s, for the most part, just minutia, that’s just details.

The medium that’s truly teaching the students inside of that space is actually what’s forming their bodies, forming their minds, forming their emotions and everything.

And so I think it’s a very fascinating thing to just witness.

You know, the reason I wrote the book—which I appreciate you reading it—I kind of wrote it in Instagram posts.

Abel: Interesting, sure.

They’re like extended Instagram posts. But the longest section before you get to another bold point is maybe four or five paragraphs or so.

Because the medium of education that modern people have been exposed to is their cell phones.

“If I can’t get information from it that’s meaningful and impactful within, you know, 15 seconds, I’m out of here.”

It’s just very fascinating. Whereas, if this book was written maybe 100 years ago, it would be like, “Okay, let’s go long-form, baby. We’re going to go in on this.”

But it’s just very interesting to witness the way that we are formed by our environments.

And the cellphone is a primary kind of structural change that’s happened.

The Aligned Home

Abel: Yeah, and it changes the way we behave, what we crave, what we think. 

It puts us into a different psychological state. 

But I know that you’re a big fan of doing things in your environment that take you out of that kind of consumptive state, right? 

That frazzled, crazy, “What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? Well, I need to do this!” crazed state that so many people are in right now. 

We were talking before we started recording about some of the instruments that you have, for example, just like lying around your house. Talk about that.

Yeah. In one of the chapters in the Align Method book, there’s a section about how to Align Your Home for optimal health and creativity.

So you get into like aligning your travel situation, your office, and all that.

Your environment forms you. @alignpodcast Share on X

You can think of yourself—it’s like you’re being pressed into a mold. So when you go into somebody’s home and you see a big coffee table and then a big couch, and then see a TV on the wall, and then a dinner table with chairs around it.

You have a sense of the shape of the bodies that will inhabit that space.

Abel: Totally.

Yeah, you’re going to be like “Okay, this will shape you.”

So, what I would recommend is in your place of inhabitance, wherever this place happens to be, is to make it more comfortable to spend time on the ground.

I’ll get to the instruments part, but to make it comfortable to be on the ground in your home, because then you’re naturally going to take your hips and your knees and your ankles through that full range of motion to get up and down, which circulates lymphatic fluid and blood and interstitial fluid.

It heals your body. It’s like an on-board healing mechanism that your body naturally has, just going through that up and down range of motion.

Not to mention it’s better for digestion, and all sorts of things.

But on top of that, you utilize instruments as a form of art in your home because it’s something that you can actually activate and you can actually utilize.

You want to interact with art.

So, in my home, I have a didgeridoo and I have a djembe, and I have a flute and I have a guitar and a ukulele, and I have this little shaker rattle thing.

Abel: Wow.

And there’s nothing that brings people together faster than connecting through music and art.

Through anything that’s sub-language, or under language.

Abel: Words are squiggly like that.

Words are very squiggly, and they can be very deceptive.

But what’s far less deceptive is the sounds that comes out of you through music, or through dance. Or through poetry, in your case with the Designer Babies Still Get Scabies book.

So the more that we can instill that into our lives, the better. And ideally, our environment is a form of medicine.

Just your existence in your home or in your office or in your travel or anywhere that you put your body, or your family’s bodies, it’s like, hopefully it’s healing you.

As opposed to us martyring ourselves for the sake of paying bills and becoming more powerful in the social hierarchy.

Abel: Yeah. You know, one thing that I heard you just mention that I also appreciate about your work is that you’re a big, strong, powerful dude, but a lot of the stuff you talk about isn’t just like, “Giant power lifts! And you got to do deadlifts!” and all this stuff to punish yourself.

It’s really about, “You got to get up and down off the floor”.

“You’ve got to take deep breaths. You’ve got to breathe through your nose.” 

So, why is that important in this day and age?

So for me, I realize that as a “content creator,”, or someone that creates stuff for people to listen to, or watch or whatever.

Abel: Thanks for not saying “influencer”. 

Yeah, right, exactly. I’m looking for deficits and I’m also looking for barriers to entry and what will people actually do.

And I don’t think people are going to start pistol-squatting with kettlebells over their heads, nor do they need to.

For the most part, everything that we need to heal our bodies is with us right now in the rooms that we’re in.

Everything that we need to heal our bodies is with us right now. @alignpodcast Share on X

If you put yourself in a blank room, or a grassy park some place, you have all the tools you need to heal your body.

Abel: Yeah, that’s cool.

I had a co-writer called Phil White, who also co-wrote with Kelly Starrett and who did the forward. And Laird Hamilton, all these great people who were a huge help with the book.

But the way that we created it, the first analogy in the introduction is that your life or your physical experience is kind of like a golfer hitting a golf ball.

And the club face, if it’s angled just a centimeter any direction, you won’t notice the trajectory change in the ball within the first 40 yards or so.

But within like 80 yards, now you’re like, “Oh wow, that ball is landing wherever it lands based off that very initial club face position.”

And what I see, and I’m sure you see as well, in the modern world, it seems like our club face is like a little bit askew.

Abel: Right.

And so with the book we essentially said, “How can we draw back and make these micro-adjustments in our momentary day-to-day life to have huge impact in not just today, but 10 years, 50 years, all the way through our lives?”

Why Everyone Needs to Hang like a Monkey

 Abel: I was glad, too, that you put the pull-up bar in there, even the doorway ones. Because I hear some people in fitness circles just totally rip on them. 

They’re just like “Oh it’s unstable, it’s bad for your doors.” Or, “You’re going to hurt yourself.” 

And I’m sure for some people that’s true, but at least for me I’ve had a pull-up bar for at least 10 years in different forms, all sorts of different kinds. And I think it’s one of the very best things. 

I’ve had back problems ever since I was too small to play football, which I did for a short period of time. 

I just got squashed and it kind of messed up my shoulder. And so if I don’t do the hangs and the pull-ups and those movements, and really strengthen the back instead of the front, I feel it. 

That’s one reason to workout actually, is because I feel so much worse when I don’t. I can feel my body being pulled into this different position that feels like it’s getting worse every day, instead of better.

Yeah, well, there’s a book called Shoulder Pain? by Dr. John Kirsch. He’s an orthopedic surgeon that he was seeing patients to do surgeries.

And he was like, “You know, I have a feeling that if you just took your shoulder joint through its natural range of motion on a regular basis and just de-compressed it with a simple hang of a minute a half each day.”

And I highly recommend people at home, try just for the next 10 days, hang off of something for a minute and a half in total. So that can be done by hanging for 15 seconds, 6 times. Or however you want to do that.

And what he found was that a staggering percentage of the people that were going to get shoulder surgeries for impingement, were experiencing all this debilitating pain, it would go away just by giving themselves a little dose of that, that decompression each day

Abel: Wow. Now, does that have to be weighted, or they can just move through that range of motion?

Well, for starters, hanging is a complex thing for a lot of people. But it’s not for any kid, ever.

But we lose that. And then when you do lose that, you need to maybe give yourself some training just to get back to that point.

I have all this stuff in the book, like the exercises and whatnot.

But you start just putting your hands up on the edge of a chair or something, and kind of hinging yourself forward, in like a Good Morning type position, to just take you through that shoulder flexion, or your overhead range of motion.

And then you could get a little stool underneath the pull-up bar to start off and do partial weight and then eventually do your whole body weight.

And then eventually, you could even put a weighted vest on, or something like that. But it’s not necessary.

Abel: I’m listening to this, and my parents are lovely and sometimes listen to the show, as well. But my dad, he will admit to this, he doesn’t go through those ranges of motion or do cardio. Especially now that he’s retired and his work was very, very physical. 

How do you get people on board especially to do this stuff that’s non-weighted, and they can do from home without any real equipment? 

How do you get them to actually do it, especially later in life when they might not want to?

There’s a quote that goes, “A person who persists in their folly will eventually become wise.”

If you continue down the path of going against your indigenous movement patterns, eventually pain and discomfort will manifest and you will need to create change.

At some point in your life, without a doubt, unless you die of some freak thing, health will become the most important thing for you.

At some point in your life, without a doubt, health will become the most important thing for you. @alignpodcast Share on X

Abel: Yeah.

100%.

And so it’s like, “Someone that has their health has many dreams. Someone that doesn’t have their health has only one.”

So the sooner that you can figure that out, the sooner that you can start to really enjoy your life in a sustainable way.

We were talking on my podcast right before this, and I mentioned that I much prefer to lead by example. I don’t think that it’s my right or place to push my ideas on anybody.

And I think that in general, especially in this modern world of influencers where everybody’s a brand, and even if you have nothing to say, you have to have something to say or there’s the mentally of, “What’s your worth in the tribe?”

I think a wise thing to come back to is, if people aren’t asking you questions, you probably don’t need to be giving people responses.

Abel: I think that’s fair.

And so, how do I convince people?

I try my best to practice what I preach and when people ask then I’m like, “Oh, here’s the book and here’s the podcast. Here it is.”

Abel: Yeah. Well it’s such a simple thing that people are so resistant to is what I’m trying to get at. Something as simple as raising your arms above your shoulders right? 

Putting your hands above your head or getting down into a deep squat. 

I’m shocked by, especially in the Western world, how few people continue to do that as they age. 

Actually, on your show that we were just talking on, I mentioned that on my wife’s side of the family there’s a grandmother and she’s 90 years old. 

And she is with it. She’s sharp. She’s moving around. Like, I’m sleepier than she is, it’s amazing.

But one thing that she said that she does every morning—and she’s been doing this for years, decades, I believe—is for an hour every morning she stretches and does yoga. 

She just goes through all the ranges of motion that she can or that she’s been trained to in that movement series.

But what she mentioned is that she’s losing a bit of balance and she’s not able to do a squat, and she’s not going through that position for some reason. 

And so, maybe you just need to invent the next Tae Bo, that really takes off and people get a hold of it and they’re doing squats all the time. 

But is it a fear of looking silly that people won’t get into some of those positions that are deeply primitive and that we all need to do, but you can’t really do in public right? 

Is that what it is?

Yeah, I think in part. And the feeling of shame that you’re maybe not going to do it right.

I think in large part people feel a bit disembodied in the sense that they don’t really know if they’re doing stuff right.

We don’t really get much physical education throughout school.

It’s like, hucking kick balls at each other’s faces.

Ideally, literally every class that you take throughout your educational experience is physical education because that’s the way that you communicate yourself.

Albert Mehrabian is a professor from UCLA that I reference in the book who created this thing called the 55-38-7 principle. Which is that 55% of our communication comes from body language and 38% is the tonality of our voice, which you know through music.

And then, 7% is the actual words.

So, if there’s incongruence in the messages that we’re communicating between our words, the other 93% of the time people will trust your tone and your body language.

Therefore, when you are learning to be an effective human being in grade school and high school and college, literally every class, from my belief system, ought to be an embodied class.

There’s all sorts of amazing research around how physical embodiment helps with consolidation of memories and creativity.

And so there’s another study—I promise not to just reference studies the whole time—I reference in the book of actually going through fluid movements with your hands which literally induces creativity, as opposed to just like say typing on a keyboard.

Your brain is not this organ that exists within a vacuum in between your ears. Your brain is your fingers and your feet and your sexual organs and your spine.

Abel: The homunculus.

Yeah, the homunculus is a representation of what the cortical real estate of where different parts are represented in your body. But yeah, exactly.

Abel: It’s really bizarre looking.

Yeah, they got like big hands and big lips and tongue.

So it’s interesting, within the homunculus, like you’re talking about, the hands are huge. And it’s fascinating that we have so much sensory information in our hands.

Maybe there’s something to that.

Like Reflexology, there’s all these practices like, “Wow, your hands and feet are represented throughout your whole body, and it stimulates your whole system.”

Abel: Yeah.

You would never wear big thick padded gloves on your hands all day.

Because you need to be able to process information with your hands. You want to have that articulation with your fingers.

Feet, somehow we missed the boat on that. Nike kind of got us wearing these raised heels on these big cushioned shoes.

And that’s fine for a little while, but what you do not use in your biological self will atrophy to whatever degree you outsource it.

So now what we need is to take back some of our own physical embodiment through small bits.

Which is why we broke the book down in these little tiny bits like…

• Practice hinging your hips more regularly
• Hang a little bit each day
• Spend a little bit of time on the ground
• Take more walks
• Notice your breathing

All those are things that we can literally do right now, they’re with us right now.

It doesn’t cost you anything, and with time, all of a sudden, you’ll gain enough momentum to do some more impressive stuff.

Skip the Swoosh and Go Barefoot

Abel: Even just going barefoot most of the time, or trying to do that intentionally, is such a massive thing for foot strength, and for balance and something that I really try to prioritize. 

It’s a challenge, though. 

We’ll often live in places for months at a time, and right now for instance, we have prickly pear cactus all over the place out there, and our dog gets it stuck in her pads sometimes, and it can be rough to be barefoot. 

But at the same time, you can wear a minimum type of shoe on your feet so that you can still somewhat sense the ground. 

For example, I kind of wear moccasin type slippers or flip flops that you can run in, that are strapped on there. So you can still communicate with the ground, to some degree. 

But how do you manage that? Because you need to toughen up your feet. 

You can’t just go out there and run barefoot on asphalt, which I’ve heard of people doing. But you can’t do that. So what’s your advice for people trying to strengthen their feet and shifting into that way of thinking?

I feel like one of the keys to life is figuring out the art of living right at your boundaries, and respectfully nudging them without blowing past them.

And that’s something we were talking about before, if we blow through it, it can look fancy on Instagram for a few months, but let’s talk in five years, 10 years, 30 years.

If you’re a person that just doesn’t respect your boundaries at all, it’s not very sustainable.

So with your feet, it’s just that.

What’s the hermetic stressor of maybe doing more minimalist shoes, maybe going barefoot sometimes.

Or if you have a standing desk or something like that in your house, maybe you could literally get a big cool rock and put it underneath your desk and you can alternate putting one foot up on the rock for a little bit and then back down.

Or it can be a foam roller or whatever, if you don’t want to bring a rock into your house.

Get some rocks for your backyard and practice just walking on those guys.

I moved to Hawaii when I was 18. I lived out there for a little while and we would rock-run up rivers to find waterfalls.

And you get good at it, and you see some of these Hawaiian kids that grew up there since they were little babies.

For one, they have these big strong Hobbit feet.

It’s almost like weird. You’re like, “What? Oh, that’s what feet are supposed to look like.”

Abel:  Right. Our feet are supposed to be hands?

That’s what they’re supposed to look like. I had no idea.

Abel: Isn’t that crazy? Yeah.

I think it’s an attractive quality, especially for a man, to have some calluses and to have paws, right?

I think women listening will like, “Yeah, I want a man that looks like he can chop wood.”

Abel:  Right. We are losing that though. A lot of people are getting a little too comfy these days.

A little too comfy yeah. But yeah, it’s a similar thing with our feet.

Our feet are built for that, and if you just throw a person in that situation it’s going to be too much too fast.

But something you could do to start playing with little drops of that, is just spend some time taking your shoes off, and walk around in the grass.

Intentionally walk on roots, which are really nice. They create this little massage contour.

And just make it gradual because you don’t want to blow it out. I mean that’s something takes a bit.

Actually it seems like, especially when I live in a colder place, like we’re living in the mountains of Colorado up at like 8,000 feet and have been for a while, so it gets cold in the winter. 

Then especially when barefoot weather kind of kicks back in, because it’s too cold for a little bit, at least for me and my little dainty toes. 

But then when you get back into it, it’s almost like getting back into shape. You have to toughen up your feet a little bit at a time.

You can’t have too much ego in it or else you’re going to set yourself back and have to take three days off or whatever. 

But I kind of enjoy that. It feels like a seasonal thing that we’re all supposed to do when we like reemerge from the cave, like the bears do.

Yeah, life is cyclical. I think it’s good to go through that with your diet, it’s also good to go through that with your movement.

The images that we see in popular media are, for the most part, jacked dudes or Victoria’s Secret women, in this peak form.

Time to Play on the Floor

There’s not a lot of Muscle and Fitness magazines that you’ll see a dude with his family sitting on the ground playing with Legos or something like that.

Abel: Right.

But there’s so much medicinal effect by that practice of community, touch, spending time on the ground, mobilizing your hips.

Cultures that do spend time on the ground, like Northern Africa, or Eastern Mediterranean, or Southeast Asia, in particular, they have minimal to no instance of osteo-arthritis of the hips, very low instances of OA in the knees, and pelvic floor dysfunctions is much lower.

Fall risk is just not even a thing.

Like, “What do you mean fall risk? Like, I’m up and down off the ground 100 times a day. What are you talking about? It’s like walk risk?”

In our culture, to be on the ground is more like, “Oh it’s childish or dirty.”

Yeah, the roots of our humanity are kind of childish and dirty.

Playing music and dancing and all that stuff, it’s like, “Oh, that’s like child’s play.”

But those are actually where the most healing aspects of our lives are.

You’d appreciate that the oldest, from what I’ve found, the oldest instrument was found in Slovenia, and it’s a flute that was made from the femur of a cave Bear.

I included that in the book. I don’t know how to say it, it’s like, Divje Babe Flute or something.

But I thought it was so interesting to think like, man, there was this dude or lady sitting in this cave, 43 odd thousand years ago.

And they’re probably avoiding predators, and they’re looking to procreate, and they’re looking to make food or figure out how to build a fire, or whatever.

And they’re like, “You know, I’ve got this femur… ”

Abel: “I was thinking about designing a flute”.

“I have this urge to make these pretty sounds come out of it”.

 Abel: Yeah.

And if you look at ourselves at more of a mammalian type level, like the subconscious kind of mainframe, what we’re riding on…

Abel: Chimps with flutes.

We're chimps with flutes, man. @alignpodcast Share on X

There was something to that that before they had any kind of YouTube videos on how to build a flute or before there was any like, “This will get you laid more” or whatever.

There was like this deep urge to create music. You know?

Abel: We all have that somewhere. Even the people who say that they’re not musicians, like the people who say they’re not singers, right?

Well, you’re always singing.

Abel: Is it like that with being a gymnast, too? Because all little kids are kind of gymnasts.

They don’t identify it. That’s the problem, is identifying the yes and no.

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard, particularly West African culture, like around dance, you’re always dancing. Life is a dance.

Abel: Right.

And it’s like it’s like, “Well, what does that mean?”

So dance is like this physical expression of movement. And so Albert Mehrabian, Western science, UCLA and stuff, is like, “Okay, well over half of our expression is from that body language.”

And dance is this expression through movement. Well, what is a conversation with somebody?

And what is the gesticulation with my hands or the positioning of my shoulders or my head or my neck or my hips?

Because when you’re communicating to somebody, what you are doing is, you’re dancing information to them.

What they’re listening to is the rhythm and the pace of your dance.

And so if you are more deeply in tune and connected and in yourself, in your physicality, naturally, people will be more drawn to that person.

People like people that are in themselves.

Abel: Yeah, in themselves, not into themselves.

But integrated with themselves, right? They’re aligned, if you will.

They’re aligned. They occupy all their nooks and crannies.

This might get a little weird, but have you ever smudged? Like a smudge stick? You know, with sage or whatever.

Abel: Yeah, sure.

When you do that, especially if you have some tribal Native American people do it for you, they’re pretty meticulous about getting all the nooks and crannies.

They’ll lift your foot up and get under the foot, and then when you’re going around the house, we get up in the corners and blow out the closet and under the bed, all these places that we’d not necessarily think of.

Like, “Wow, you’re blowing smoke under the bed. Interesting.”

You know, it’s like, “Yeah, we want to clear it all out.”

Well that room that you’re blowing that smoke through is essentially the way that we could potentially live inside of our bodies.

Where we want to actually go through all of those different nooks and crannies. And this could be with movement, it could be stretching, it could be breathing, it could be just intention and visualization like we were just discussing before.

Because that practice of visualization literally lights your internal circuits up at a neuromuscular level.

Abel: Yeah.

And there’s various different research where people become more effective at shooting free throws.

There was a study that we mentioned of the thumb strength, people that would just go through thumb exercises with visualizing it, not doing it at all, and actually doing the thumb exercise.

They found the people that visualize and actually did the exercise, would have similar gains in strength.

So you can internally cultivate more of a mindfulness practice, and literally start to almost smudge out all the different parts of your biological house.

I know that’s very strange.

Abel: We’re getting a little woo, that happens sometimes.

Let me ask you about this, since time has gone on, we’ve known each other for a little while. 

How has the idea of body image changed for you over the years? 

Not only as someone who’s just like an actual person, but also someone whose interacting with others, because, man, people are headcases more than ever about it in this selfie-culture we live in now, I guess.

Yeah, well I started out obsessed with bodybuilding and I wanted to pack on as much muscle as I possibly could as fast as I possibly could.

Abel: This was when you were like a teenager was it?

Yeah, in the book I described myself as a confused baby giraffe with a bowl-cut and buck teeth.

Abel: And that’s still what you feel like, don’t you?

Well, I’m also loving that boy.

I think that’s a really important thing, is not to say, “Oh now I’m a big man.”

It’s like, “No man, love your child as part of you.”

Every moment that you existed in this form, ideally look back and embody all of that and love all of it.

I know we’re venturing out into “the woo woods” here.

Abel: This is good stuff.

Okay. But yeah, so I started off, I felt kind of perhaps a little bit more unstable in my home environment.

My dad got into drugs, and he ended up going to jail and all these things.

And what that translated to was this need to over-compensate in my biological environment, and pack on to my biological house, so that turned into lots of bodybuilding and lots of imbalance in the form of fitness.

Then there’s the process of having to unwind all of that stuff to come back to a place of being comfortable in your own skin.

And so that’s the really fascinating thing is, sometimes we temporarily think that we’re getting past our insecurities by buying the new car, getting the watch we can’t afford, or packing on muscles, whatever your flavor of that is.

But eventually, there will come a time where you’ll have to unwind all that if you want to get into something that actually feels more comfortable.

Your body is your home. It’s the most valuable home that you’ll ever have.

Your body is your home. @alignpodcast Share on X

 Abel: Yeah.

So at some point, ideally, you want to occupy a home that you can kind of kick your feet back and lay and twist and turn and have people over and party and you want to really enjoy that occupying yourself.

So that’s been the process of unwinding all of the patterns of just packing on muscle for the sake of people loving me, essentially, and getting into more of a place of actually nurturing and self-care and self-love and all that.

Abel: How does that work and what are you aiming for?

I think gaining a relationship with my thoughts is very valuable. Because your thoughts create your form.

Like the pull-up bar you have in your house or the squat rack or kettle bells, or whatever it may be. That started off as a thought.

Abel: Yeah, Totally.

Or the postural patterns that you express.

There’s been various different research around how postural patterns impact the way that we think and feel.

Like one in San Francisco University, they did some research with two groups of students and one they had them hunched over into a position. In the book, we call it the mopey archetype.

So they’re hunched over in that position. And then they say, “Okay, I want you to think back into some memories and kind of see what comes up.”

And they found that when you’re in that kind of hunchy, slouchy, morose type position, “Oh wow, you access more depressive memories, imagine that.”

Now when you are in more of this upright, we call it the aligned archetype position—Super Woman pose—like the Amy Cuddy Harvard research stuff with the testosterone and cortisol.

I think people are familiar with that, that it was affected the way that people produced various different hormones, in their posture patterns.

All of a sudden they go into more like optimistic uplifting memories. Wow. Crazy.

You know this with music, there’s certain songs, I know Abel, that will make you feel a certain way.

Abel: Absolutely.

And it’ll tap you back into like, “Okay cool, maybe before a podcast I put this song on. Or before a football game I do this.” Or whatever it may be.

Public speaking, I’m like, “Okay, I got my song, it psyches me up, it anchors me into like I can do anything.”

Abel: Yeah.

And then maybe you have your sensual music, whatever it may be, it anchors you to those sensations.

Well your postural patterns are also anchoring you to physiological states.

Tony Robins and Neuro-Linguistic Program. All the stuff gets into this.

I did a Tony Robbins event recently. Before you walk on the coals, he’s like, “You got to do your move.”

He goes, “Show me your move!”

Abel: What’s your move?

I hit my chest a few times.

I felt kind of stupid doing it, but I did it.

Abel: It works though. The chest thumping, it actually works. 

And I was in like Tony Robbins’ line going through the coals, and he’s like, “Alright everyone, show me your move!”

I’m like, “Alright, Tony!” I burned my feet.I don’t think I believe in it.

Abel: Everyone does a little bit, right?

No, some people don’t.

But within that though, there’s relevance in this, we’re circling back.

That move is a postural pattern that you are anchoring to this physiological state to put you in this ready place to be able to walk across these coals and not burn yourself, which is a practice that’s done I think particularly in Polynesian areas.

It’s like a ceremonial tradition. Is it Polynesia? Am I making that up?

Abel: As I understand, if you go back far enough, it’s from a lot of places.

Right, yeah. But anyways, it’s a rite of passage. It’s an example of a great thing that we don’t have in our culture.

Abel: Getting your smartphone is probably the biggest rite of passage that people have nowadays. 

Yeah, right. Exactly. It’s true.

Abel: It’s really crazy to think about. It’s like, “Yeah, I don’t want a car, just give me my smartphone”.

Really? Come on.

Yeah, how do we know that we’re adults?

Did you have a moment in your life where you’re like, “I’m a man. I think I’m a man?” Have you experienced that?

Abel: It comes and goes. But, no, not really.

That’s the weirdest part. Actually, it was on the podcast years ago, that I asked Melissa Joulwan something about that. 

And she brought up how, I think she was 49 at the time, and she’s just like, “The weird part about putting years on is that you still feel like a kid. And no one tells you that you never stop feeling like that.”

Embracing Your Weird

Abel: And so that’s really cool to embrace that as the years do go on. 

But what you also realize, and what I was getting at is, you start to change your archetype over the years, you have to. 

Because you can’t always be the young football player who has all this muscle, and is just shoveling pizzas into your mouth. 

You’ve got to evolve, you’ve got to adapt to the way that the world is. 

You need to undo some of the damage that comes from stooping and looking at phones, right? You’ve got to go back and do all of the opposite things. 

We have to engineer our life to undo the damage of our environment, at this point. Which is pretty tricky. 

But one thing that I think you’re good at—and take this as a complement please—is being a weirdo.

Being willing to be the different one in a group of people in a room or in a movement or in a whatever, that’s just willing to stick out. 

You’re tall and muscular, so you stick out anyway.

But really embracing that weirdo quality is something that you mention in your book, and I bring it up over and over again because if you don’t do that you’re going to be steamrolled by all of the questions, criticisms, and judgments that come from eating vegetables in public or doing a deep squat when you’re not in the comfort of your own house. 

And putting your hands above your head. And people will be like, “Why are they doing a yoga pose? Oh my God, is that a tree pose? It’s so weird.” And it’s so not.

The thing is, it is weird. And I think that we could take back the word “weird.”

Abel: Yeah, let’s take it back.

Well, literally the original meaning of “weird” is an old English word, it’s W-Y-R-D, and it means fate or to be in control of one’s fate.

So, if you’re a weird person in a culture. I was talking with a friend, she lived in Israel for 7 years, and we were just talking yesterday, she was saying that the word in Hebrew for crowd, I don’t remember what it is exactly, but essentially translates to a group of ignorant people.

So when you have a crowd, naturally, you’ll have this kind of like rave of people.

Abel: Herd mentality.

When you get groups together that herd mentality. It’s like, “Whatever!”

Abel: No one is smart in a stampede.

Yeah, you’re just, “Bro, go.”

And if you’re the weird one, you’re in control of your fate.

You’re saying, “I don’t know about this stampede running off the cliff right now.”

And if you look at normalcy, there’s a Mark Twain quote. He said, “There’s lies, damn lies, and then there’s statistics.”

Abel: That’s right.

So, I never know about statistics, but nonetheless, the echo chamber of statistics that I happen to occupy, resides around statistically Westerners are becoming obese at scary rates.

And they’re becoming anxious and depressed with suicidal ideation amongst adolescents, and all these things. It’s scary.

So that’s the crowd. And so for you to be the weird one is actually a high compliment.

And it actually puts you into a position of, again, this is pretty grandiose, but somewhat of a revolutionary.

If you’re the person that’s willing, in a culture that’s peeing their pants with adult diapers exceeding that of baby diapers, at like a scary rate.

And you’re the person that’s going through a deep squat while you’re at the airport, instead of hunching over your chair staring into your cell phone, you’re very weird.

But you’re also, potentially, setting an example for the rest of the people in that room to create space for them to explore their own body in a way that’s actually very healing and could, in a more immediate level, prevent them from creating a blood clot that could kill them.

In a more global, long-term level could just start instilling more playful habits into their lives, that makes them feel more embodied.

Abel: Dude, that’s such a great point. Especially, I’m imagining you doing a deep squat at the airport right now. But a cool thing happens. It’s almost like the first person clapping, right?

It’s like no one’s clapping and it’s not happening, and then you’re just like, “Maybe someone should clap here.” 

And someone starts and then it just becomes like uproarious. Similar thing happens, if you notice, we all are always scanning for threats in crowds and whatever. 

And we’re just kind of looking around, whether we realize it or not. 

If you see someone standing up and just doing some stretching and loosening it up and doing some squats, then someone else starts doing it, right? 

And then someone else starts doing it, then it becomes a safe space, you might say, to like move freely and just kind of get loosened up for a minute. And that’s a really cool thing. 

And you do realize that, I think, being the weirdo. Different people are paying attention, and then if you’re doing it right, ultimately, you kind of do become that leader by example. 

But you have to take that hit, at first, because the first thing they can see is going to be the judgment.

The weird questions and people seeing you as a threat because you’re different from the crowd of lemmings that are jumping off a cliff right now.

In some ways, have it easy because I happen to have been birthed into a form that is accepted culturally as being symmetrical and fit.

And so I’m in a position where if I am doing stuff, it’s like, well, there’s a good chance that I’m in, as far as how it would be perceived, like, “Oh, that guy’s in good shape, perhaps what he’s doing is working.”

Abel: Sure. 

But what about for the people that are just getting on this train?

The people that aren’t in really good shape, and they don’t have six pack abs and all this different stuff, and they’re going in that weird direction.

Like, I have a lot of empathy and compassion for that person.

It’s like, “Man, I want to get on this thing and I want to start respecting myself and kind of like occupying myself in a deeper way, but I don’t just fit into this form.”

So the judgement feels much stronger, because maybe I don’t even know if I’m necessarily doing the right thing right now.

And I think that’s where the book comes in, or books in general, you know.

Kelly Starrett did a good book, a good book, The Supple Leopard book and Deskbound.

There’s a lot of different people out there that have been taking cracks at this stuff and I think getting that information from reputable resources that you can trust and learning that stuff, like investing in knowledge, so that when you are in those situations you’re like, “I know that you think this looks a little funny, but I know my stuff.”

Abel: Right.

And I think that if you know where you’re going, or at least you think you know where you’re going.

Like that rite of passage into womanhood or manhood, I’m still playing with the idea.

Abel: Well, even this morning, I went out in the sun and did my Chi Kung moves that look really silly from the outside looking in. 

 If you do that at a public park, or like even where we are right now, we can be seen by people if they want to look out their window, they’re walking their dog or whatever.

And it’s like, “What is that guy doing shirtless in the sun when it’s like 30 degrees or whatever? Just like doing these weird moves. What’s that about?” 

And you get more people just kind of looking at you. 

But what I’ve noticed is that if you stick with that default, those people who are just looking, it’s like, “That’s weird.” 

A lot of these people can’t really get out of their cars. 

Like if you go to the grocery store or something like that, or like a parking lot, just notice, this is a weird thing that I do that I’m sure you do too. 

Like you were saying, you walk in a room and you see the furniture, it’s like, “I know the shape of the people who live here.”

Yeah. Absolutely, man.

Abel: Or you just, you know, you go to a parking lot, it’s like, “Man, people are about my age, maybe even a little younger and getting into and out of their Sedan looks like it’s a real rough time.” 

That’s where we’re at right now.

Yeah. I have an online program that’s also called Align Method, and someone that was a user of it recently sent me this message saying, “Man, it’s really great. I love it. I would really love some type of addendum for how to take care of a child. Like the postural patterns of holding a child because I have this neck pain and shoulder pain.”

And I’m like, “Well, yes, I can do that.”

I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of this neck pain and shoulder pain and headache and whatnot that you’re experiencing is in large part, stress induced because that stress in your life and not getting sleep and all the different things, financial stressors, very well likely a possibility.

All of that ends up manifesting in a physical way.

And so people can start to bend their perception of what this physical experience is beyond just biceps, pull ups and tricep kickbacks or whatever.

And get into like, “Well, the way that I use my eyes could actually be the difference between me being in a really sympathetic kind of fight-flight stress state or more in this parasympathetic kind of calm-rest-digest type place.”

And so there’s a chapter in the book about sight, and how we’re literally moving our physiology just with the way that we use our vision.

When we’re looking out into the distance taking in the panoramic view, we’re literally putting our whole physical form into more of this place of like, “Okay, cool.”

Abel is calm, he’s looking over the Savannah. He’s taking it all in, okay, it’s a good time to rest.

It’s a good time to repair muscles, it’s a good time to go in and kind of like get into that backlog stuff.

But if all of a sudden Abel is focusing in on a predator or prey, maybe he’s pulling his bow back and he’s putting all his intention right into that point, it’s not really a good time to work on repairing some type of tissue damage.

It’s not the time for that. I need all hands on deck. We’ve got to get that animal, or zucchini or whatever.

You know, and in our modern world, we are statistically, it seems, pretty stressed out.

And physically, mechanically, it seems like we are staring into screens in this myopic way.

It seems like we’re inside walls that are closing us in, so our vision is always kind of a little bit contracted. Most modern Americans spend 90% of their time indoors.

So all that time that you’re indoors there, your eyes are partially contracted those ciliary muscles is what they’re called, are partially contracted to refract that light, so that you can bend it, so you can actually perceive it.

When you look out into the distance those muscles relax. When we relax muscles at any level, we relax muscles at the other levels.

And so just the simple act of going outside, looking up into the trees, looking up in the clouds, maybe allow your creativity to kind of bend a little bit and maybe imagine the cloud is a zebra or giraffe or something.

Allow yourself to be more playful from the inside out and flex that those visual muscles and all of a sudden you start to heal yourself at a physical level, you know.

So that’s a form of fitness.

Fitness doesn’t just need to be CrossFit workouts where I’m sweating and I’m puking at the end of the workout.

Fitness can literally be like, oh, I checked my emails on the ground, like sitting on a poof on a comfy rug, on like a low coffee table.

And then I took eye breaks and looked out the window, and then I even stacked some more variables and I opened the window so I’m getting that full spectrum of light coming through and I’m getting all the phytoncides and all the good chemicals coming off the trees to help boost my immune system.

Abel: Yeah, this stuff works.

It works.

All I’m saying is we have opportunities. We have a whole plethora of opportunities all the time.

And we, for the most part, weren’t constructed or built or educated with the eyes to see them.

I started the book with the Joe Campbell quote, you know, “We’re fishing for minnows while we’re standing on top of a whale.”

And like the whale that we’re standing on is some of the things I just mentioned, but I would say movement is a primary one.

I would say we are moving ourselves into a more depressed state. Depressed in the literal sense of the word, “pulled down” state, and depression is the number one leading cause of disability worldwide.

It was supposed to happen by 2020, but it already happened.

You know, and so it’s like, “Okay, cool. Well, is that the phthalates or is that the EMF or is that the GMOs?”

Why isn’t anybody talking about the mechanical part of it?

We’re literally moving ourselves into a position that if you take the phone out of people’s hands, you photoshop it out, a photographer did that.

And you look at people as they’re hanging out of their bed with their partner, as they’re sitting at a bus stop, take the phone out, you look at that person, they look kind of like sad.

Abel: Yeah. It’s a really interesting thing. 

And at first, actually, when I started doing the podcast I noticed that, and I thought maybe people didn’t like me. 

But what they’re actually doing is they’re getting Skype going or they’re getting their computer, you know, they’re just like deeply concentrating and that looks like a scowl at first.

Right.

Abel: Yeah, it’s a weird thing. We feel it though. It’s like, “Oh my God, they’re scowling at me.” 

For example, you’re sitting on a hotel bed with your significant other and you’re looking at your phone and you’re frowning, you have to get out of that frown to look at them without them thinking that you’re disapproving of them to some degree. 

Yeah, we feel like we need to take it off.

Abel: Realize that you’re in this shape, you need to get out of it, change your state before you can start actually interacting with real people, right?

Correct.

The Social Impact of Cellphone Culture

Abel: It’s a very bizarre thing but people’s social skills are kind of like stagnating and then getting worse because they’re not being practiced.

Because people are like startled by actual human interactions now.  

You know, you walk up to the counter at Starbucks or whatever and they’re just like they can’t even talk because they’re so startled to see an actual person. 

I don’t know if you’re seeing that where you’re at, but it’s crazy. It’s like people are getting more and more socially awkward as time goes on.

Yeah, I mean, what you’re saying, I think, is immensely powerful as far as the potential impact if we do start to pay some closer attention to that.

There’s research of when you put a golf tee in around your eyebrows and so that it forces you to create that scowl position, you literally perceive the world in a little bit more of like an angry kind of annoyed type way.

Similar thing, by putting a pencil in between your teeth, it forces a mechanical smile all of a sudden. It makes your lips curl up a bit.

Abel: This way, versus that way.

Right, exactly.

All of a sudden because you’re mechanically turning all those muscles on in that position that you’ve anchored over at least your lifetime, likely millions of years, when you go, “Ah,” it’s an indication like, “Oh, I feel… I feel kinda good.”

It’s just like, “I’m happy.”

And so when you turn those muscles on in that way it causes people to all of a sudden smile back.

It’s like, “When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles back at you.”

Abel: So stop scowling at your phones guys and gals.

Well, stop staring at your phones and we’re always attuning to each other, you know, mirroring ourselves.

When you send me a face of some sort, I’m going to process that in the way that I am able to actually really create deep rapport and connection, this is a great tool for connecting with people. People trust people that are like them.

So if you have more physical adaptability—I call it the fitness of empathy—so if you have more physical adaptability with your facial expressions and your postural ranges of motion and the fluidity within them, then you’re able to connect with a larger group of individuals as opposed to the person that is, say, like all they do is yoga or all they do is CrossFit or all they do is like military crew cut guy or whatever, or Buckmaster rifle guy, or what have you.

If that’s their thing, they have that one kind of somebody personality identity type, it’s really easy for them to get along with people in that genre of avatar, but once they go out of that they feel very uncomfortable.

Well, those are physical patterns they haven’t really adapted themselves to.

But if you can speak dance and you can speak yoga and you can speak improv and you can speak military and CrossFit, you can go into those worlds and find this common thread of connection and rapport with anybody.

But it’s actually a movement conversation, amongst other things.

Abel: That’s really interesting. One thing that’s cool about living in the Rockies is you get to see a ton of animals, not just to see them but see them interact with each other. 

And herds of animals, like we had the herd of elk bugling and coming through the other day, it must’ve been like 200 of them. Just amazing. 

But you start to see humans that way, you can’t help it. It’s just like you see crowds of humans and herds and humans kind of the same way.

We are.

Abel: And you see that they’re all definitely doing this little dance together, and a lot of times it’s pretty ugly because they don’t know, they’re not aware of it, right? 

They haven’t embraced that thing about, “Oh, we are all dancers. We’re all singers. We’re all integrated.” 

We’re running out of time, but one thing you also mentioned in your book that I really appreciated was the whole part about singing and speaking and the integration of all that. 

And James Lugo, who was a coach on American Idol and I’ve taken some singing lessons from him, he’s also been on this podcast, he talks about it as being just as simply as being placed in your voice as it’s all integrated. 

It’s all one.

And you do that really well. It’s one reason you have a good voice, and I think it’s one of the reasons that people listen to you.

But you have to be standing up correctly, as a singer almost, in order to place your voice correctly. 

And if we’re in that stooped-over position, now I’m in the stooped over position, it’s collapsing my diaphragm, right? 

And I have lost the power of my voice. I sound much weaker. 

Now I’m back in position, and can place my voice again. 

But that’s one thing that you teach throughout everything that you do, that it’s not all these separate parts that we need to go down these rabbit-holes, freaking out about things.

It’s like, “No, we need to come back to center”.

Yeah man. That was the goal of the book, was to break it down.

Realizing that every aspect of your life is a form of movement, and there’s basic fundamental principles that you can integrate and learn really quickly.

And you can start to instill those principles into most things, activities that you do.

You don’t need to learn a new program for every room that you’re in or exercise that you’re in.

There’s basic principles that we can utilize and those principles stem into exactly what you’re saying. Of literally just communication in general, but the tonality of your voice.

Like if you think of a guitar, if you were to collapse the body it would completely change the sound of that guitar.

If you bend it, twist it, turn it. You are a guitar. These vocal chords, it’s the oldest instrument that we’ve had access to.

And so you can augment and change the sound of the music that you produce through your body based off of your structural inhabitance, the way that you exist inside of your body.

Abel: Yeah, get a good “Ohm” going. You’re going to feel it. When it’s a good well-placed “Ohm,” it’ll take you places.

That’s real stuff, yeah. And then as that gets into all the resonance and sound healing type stuff, but also some people find that stuff a little bit more challenging.

I understand that, but what’s less challenging is just long exhalation.

There’s no argument there that long exhalation, a sigh. You do that you’re like, “Oh okay, parasympathetic. We’re kind of going into this rest, chill, let go of stress.”

That was a “let go of stress” sound.

Abel: We do that and our dog lets out a big sigh, too.

They’re contagious, in a good way, usually. As long as they’re not taken the wrong way, don’t sign at someone in a wrong way.

Well, that’s the thing, everything is contagious. 

The thing that struck a chord with me as you were talking about being on your cellphone and then looking over at your partner and then giving them that scowl…

What the heck do you think happens when you are stuck in your computer screen all day long, and then you come home and you’re with your kids?

Abel: Right. Scrunch face.

It’s a huge deal.

Like, your kids do not care what you say, they care who you are.

They care what you do, they care the way that you organize your house, they care that their home feels safe, they care that you feel passionate, that you feel like you’re following your bliss in Joseph Campbell terms.

If you can teach your kid to live following their bliss which it might be a funny thing to say. But if you can instill that quality into your children, that’s an education that is absolutely invaluable.

And at at some point, your health is going to be the most valuable thing.

At some point, following something that feels more deep and true to your nature, your heart, your truth, whatever words work for you, at some point that will be the most important thing.

It could be turned into a mid-life crisis because you’ve packed it down for so long, or you can start doing little drips of that today and be playful, connect with somebody in a meaningful way.

Abel: You’re a great example of that, Aaron. 

Where to find Aaron Alexander

Abel: We’re out of time. Please tell folks where they can find your book, your work and also after that, it would be great if we could end with a quote, because you’ve got so many great ones in that book

Feel free to share one or two.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much for doing this man, I’ve really appreciated your stuff for so long. So it’s like truly an honor to get to share this with you, man.

And for you to have actually read my book, or to whatever degree that you did, it sounds like, from what you’ve said, it seems like there was a meaningful amount that you got in there.

Abel: You should see the dog-ears.

Good, I love that. Yeah, just that means the world to me and that’s the most humbling flattering thing, so I appreciate it.

And so, for people I would say grab the Align Method book, would be my one thing that I would suggest.

Yeah, there it is. Man it’s crazy how the mail system works, it just gets right out there.

Abel: Yeah, I got this one fast. Look at how vascular you are on the cover.

I know it’s a little creepy. So I guess, I don’t know, Amazon or bookstores, any place you get your books it’ll be there.

And then we just finished the audio book, which includes a little podcast interlude between me and Phil White who help with co-writing.

And so between these section, we did this kind of just organic, free-flow conversation of what the chapters meant to us and stumbling blocks.

And then obviously, jump over and check out The Align Podcast with Mr. Abel James, which I’ll just release on the same day.

Abel: Righteous. Alright, quote time, what do you got?

Oh, quote. Well, the one that we were talking about. I looked it up in the book really quick. And this is from Rosa Luxemburg.

She says, “Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” 

And I just think that’s such a poignant idea in this “normal” world that we live in.

When you do get out of that normal kind of mode of sitting in the couch and looking at the TV screen and doing all that stuff, and at first it feels a little uncomfortable to maybe go wiggle your hips a little bit or do a little shimmy or dance or whatnot.

You’re just like, “Oh, I don’t know, this isn’t me.”

And then you finally get out of the way of yourself to do that and you’re like, “I’m alive!”

Abel: And everyone looks at you like you’re crazy.

I think that’s great, man. You want to be crazy in this world.

Abel: That’s true.

We could just leave it at that. I think that’s a really interesting thing that if you do not move you won’t notice your chains.

And it’s wise to kind of be liberal with exploration and just notice where there may or may not be binds that you might not have even realized.

Abel: Yeah, love it. Aaron, thank you so much for your work. Really proud of you with this new book right here, The Align Method.

Thank you!

Abel: Go check it out, everyone.

Appreciate it, sir.

Before You Go…

Here’s a note that just came in from Danielle. She says:

Hello my name is Danielle and I wanted to say thank you so much for doing what you do!

I stumbled upon your podcast and it completely changed not only my life but my husband’s also

I have 5 different autoimmune diseases and a panic disorder. My husband was a type 2 diabetic.

We have been at it for 6 months, I’m down 30 pounds and my husband is down 40 pounds. I currently have no trouble with pain and have not had a panic attack in a long time. No medication needed either!

My husband is no longer diabetic and off all meds.

Our hardest part was our job because we deliver trucks all across the country. The food options were terrible!!!

So we bought a cooler and have found that it really works well for us. We also bought a crockpot that plugs into the truck that we plan to start using as the cold months set in.

I am so thankful to have all the info you and your guests have given me! I can only imagine how many lives you have saved and will continue to save with what you do.

I may have not been in a hospital bed dying, but we were killing ourselves slowly and you have definitely helped turn that around! Thank you again!!!!

Wow – Danielle, that is just incredible.

30 pounds down, and your husband is down 40 pounds and off all his meds.

Great job implementing these strategies. And really good job packing your own food for the road.

We roadtrip across the country on a regular basis, as well, and I definitely hear you about the terrible food options out there.

Bringing a cooler with your own food is a great way to go. And how cool that you even bring a crockpot that plugs into the truck.

Thank you so much for writing in, and sharing your strategies and successes with us.

Keep it up! Your husband and you are doing an amazing job.

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What did you think of this conversation with Aaron Alexander? Drop a comment below to let us know!

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