Essentials: The Science & Practice of Movement | Ido Portal

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stamford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Ido Portal. Ido, thank you for coming here today. Over the years, we've been in communication and I've come to realize that you're a true intellectual of the topic of movement. And I define an intellectual as somebody who can understand a topic at multiple levels of granularity. To start off, could you inform us how people should think about approaching a movement practice? What is the first layer of any good It's an open system. It has no center. It's decentralized and it can be approached from anywhere. And uh that's its magic and that's that's the benefit of it. Some people uh find the body a good entry point and then playfulness can be an entry point an attribute or and this is so open. So I I don't want to limit uh people and limit their minds in the way that they engage with a practice but I also want to encourage the self inquiry. So when people enter movement practice, it is about education, bringing some awareness to the fact that they are living in a body that they are living in motion that their mind is a type of movement that their life is a type of movement. Uh bringing attention to the movement of the emotions as well. Bringing just attention to the fact that things are in motion. And this for me is the movement practice is is this examination and bringing this awareness into things. As we sit now here, I'm also aware of my body. I'm also aware of the way that things make me feel, the way that your face is communicating to me. And and I'm not just in some limited overly verbal state because it misses a lot of the beautiful flux. actually in anticipation of you arriving here today. I noticed that as I was going up and down the stairs in this in this house um that I was injecting a little bit of playfulness in the way that I might have many many decades ago but haven't for a very long time. And I asked myself whether or not that's what Eido is referring to as opposed to but of course not exclusive from just saying I have 45 minutes. I'm going to do movement practice before I shower and have some dinner. Could you share with us just some ideas to get people thinking about or maybe even incorporating movement practice into their day and maybe even touch on the the potential role of play or playfulness? One thing is this what you call wordlessness. I I have been recommending to people nonverbal experiences. The awareness of motion is a very good way to start to to bring awareness to that layer. And that layer will start to get clarified more and more and more the more you practice. And then it will enable for most people a safe haven away from many states and difficulties and will unlock a lot of potential uh attributes and strengths and freshness and a lot of beautiful things. Really uh one of the pretty perspectives about who we are comes from person who influenced my thinking a lot Moshe Feldon Christ the late Moshefeldon Christ and he talks about the body as the core three elements the core nervous system two is the mechanical system of muscle skeleton etc. And the third is the environment which is a unique way to look at it. And he talks about how the nervous system is both get receiving information from the outside and from the inside. And in the first years of life, you work a lot on differentiating those what am what is me and what is not me. And I think when you feel movement, you feel the movement of the outside that is of course arriving to you and receiving this and also your own internal movement. And the same can be said for stillness. So bringing the attention into those layers, it's a tricky thing. It's one of those elusive things to look at, but it's definitely of huge benefit to start to train it, start to practice it, to feel not our thoughts, not necessarily our body, but to start to recognize the dynamic nature, the flux, the motion, and it occurs in all these layers. You will need to find it in multiple occasions before you start to more and more make it your own. make it really yours. For example, simple pragmatic things. I used to do this. I spent some time in Hong Kong. I would uh need to get my practice in, but I'm I'm really turned off from commercial gyms and there is not a lot of nature accessible there. So, I would just strap on my bag and I would walk the streets of Hong Kong, which are very crowded. And then I would try to avoid touching anyone. And it would be like two hours of of just like mov involved fully involved fully in my body and experiencing beautiful things and enjoying and developing myself as well. So this is an example of a a way to to practice and then the way that we're sitting like these chairs for example our chairs are not very dynamic but there is rocking chairs right and this is something I recommend for a lot of kids like in schools I used to rock on the chair which is very common. I would make the chairs even more mobile and I would support more motion and then I would be able to bring attention there. But I would also be able to bring attention away from it into other things and it keeps refreshing me. So I don't become stale. The water doesn't stand. This is the beauty of of movement. So you can focus for long periods of time and do incredible things with the mind, with focus, with awareness, attention. Um and it's with skin in the game. So that's how movement keeps me very honest and humble in the way that I view humility and and in a way that protects me and and keeps me yeah keeps me fresh. What are the different domains of movement practice? And as I asked this, I realized I I am in serious danger of fractionating movement into a list of words like strength and speed and explosiveness and uh suppleness, a word that I've heard you use before. And yet I think for most people because we think in words often some of those categories can be useful. So let's say I was going to embark on a movement practice or a child was going to embark on a movement practice and either throughout the day or for a dedicated period of time. What are the sorts of categories of movement that I might want to think about? Ballistic movement, smooth movement. Maybe you could uh just enrich us with some of the uh some of the landscape around that. One thing that does seem to to to appear for me when I look around is this the concepts of unique postures. Uh and I think this is true for postures of thought, emotional postures and movement postures. You take someone who moves in a certain way and you teach him all these new sports or techniques, but essentially if you look deeply and you're sensitive, you see it's the same postures that he will have to work with till the end of his life, the same thinking postures. And this this is really problematic where we are we are not freeing the mind beyond this uh scaffolding of thinking and we are actually letting go of the content. We we we get more and more focused on the the way of thinking versus the thinking itself or or habitual ways and forms of thinking associative thinking etc. And emotionally the same we are constructing these emotional postures and then we have to go through the rest of our lives working with that. So this is the dark side. But of course there are always possibilities um both I think invading this early system to some extent even if it's 5% or 7% or whatever percent. and also on the freeing yourself of going beyond all postures period working with the postures you have but towards a postureless way of doing things. So this is something interesting uh to work when you when people work with movements but finally are able to go into movement and this magic starts to happen and then the techniques fall apart and something appears um and and it's a phase change. It's it's a binary moment. There is a jump there for sure and it's very rare to see both in thinking and emotionally and and other ways. We have many names for it and some talk about enlightenment and some talk about all kinds of processes related to it and I think most of them are shadows of the sun but it's not the sun itself really. Yeah, those that exploration of degrees of freedom is where the opportunity for um uh real advancement and expansion of skill shows up. As I think the way it's been described to me is that we go from unskilled to skilled and then there's mastery and then there's this top tier which is this beautiful thin layer that so few people occupy which is virtuosity in which the practitioner invites variability and chance back in as an opportunity to do truly new things. As long as you're not out of this sleeve, you're still within the boundaries of achieving the result that you're after. And then there there is all this adaptation of all these elements inside to keep you in the sleeve. The sleeve is not constricted as we once thought. Oh, beautiful technique. There are many ways to skin a cat. Um and and that experience and that variety, that diversity goes into virtuosity. It's true freedom because your focus is on the right thing. You don't point at the moon, look at your finger and and and that's really in essence being a virtuoso for for me like mastery, let's say, if there is such a thing. I'd like to talk about vision and the eyes. We have this incredible ability to adjust the aperture of our visual window. We can focus very narrowly or we can focus very broadly. When you begin a practice or and as you move through a practice, do you apply a regimented uh way of focusing your vision? Are you in panoramic vision? Are you in in a very narrow field of view? Or does it entirely depend? And for the person who's a true beginner, a true novice like myself, how should I show up to the practice with my eyes? We do not move the eyes as well as we think we do because as long as you can see and move the eyes, people never think about it that it can be trained that it can be improved etc. And the effects of it are farreaching. The eyes lead to the inner eye. You can think of it in a beautiful metaphorical way and it's a representation of the way that we use various cognitive and mind processes and also of course affect the body. For example, you when when you teach boxers how to bob, usually it's not done in the way that I I believe it it should be done. They teach it from the feet because they have the idea which is correct that you'll need to do it in spatial conditions in movement. But in reality, the head will organize the feet for you. Because if I'll pull your head now to the side, you will immediately start to organize your feet under you. That's how I would teach someone something like this. So, it's a very powerful way to address movement. Not the only one. You need to start to have some kind of a checklist of what you're looking to do. And then by this, you can start to tailor the way that you use your eyes. The same thing I do for posture. The same thing I do for stance. The same thing eventually I do for state and there is different flavors. There is no correct way to use the eye. Sometimes it's very peripheral soft open awareness orientation. Sometimes it's very focused. Notice that I'm pulling these two opposites awareness and focus which is often put together and confused. And then the eyes are the immediate and the easiest entry point into that. Another thing is the placement of the head and the eyes. Like for example, when we lower our chin, we seem to to see better. When we raise the eyebrows, there is too much exposure of top light sources. And so people would usually when looking into the distance will tilt their their chin in. And in many scenarios, tilting of the the chin to the side or placing just like listening with the ear, placing a certain eye or dominant eye depending on various scenarios. And this is all like information that I can come in cerebrally and think about and jump my practice forward instead of just letting the experience teach me that I'm using some kind of a thinking process to improve. And this is not cheating. This is great. There are two separate clusters of neurons in the these cranial nerve nuclei that when eyes are up, it increases our level of alertness. When our eyes are down, we go into states of more calm and quiet. When we are in this more panoramic soft gaze as um and broad awareness, big big swaths of visual field as we say, the neurons that control that come through a pathway called magnosellar pathway. In any event, those neurons are much thicker, thicker cables. They transmit much faster. Just like thick uh pipes can carry more water more quickly. And your reaction time is four at least four times what it is in this awareness mode than it is when you're narrowly focused on something. When we drive, we're in this peripheral vision and our reaction times are much much faster. And I think what you and I I hope agree on, correct me if I'm wrong, is that exploring these different extremes and everything in between is where the real value is. Another pragmatic bit here if I can offer is um um since our culture has been more geared and pushing us towards focus the the focus use of the eyes and primary language reading and and other things we have less opportunities to work with the more open panoramic one. So it would be smart to start to balance things out a bit more. When you're in nature, you don't look at each leaf. Everything is moving and you are kind of immersed in that and then something attracts your attention. Oh, it's a bird and you focus and you go back into the general state, the basic state which is open awareness. Here we switch things around. In our modern culture, we are mostly focused and then we size daydream which is maybe some kind of a some kind of a balancing act that comes from deep within. I don't know maybe you can you can share some information about that but I see that many time people need to the focus is overly done by far in our in our lives. Earlier you mentioned the cone of auditory attention, the other sense that we can play with in our practice. Where is your hearing when you approach your practice? Another set of parameters to to think about and to play with and to be aware of. I have the experience that some people are uh better at using this system or that system and uh and you would be amazed how differently the same results seemingly outside results are done by different practitioners and different scenarios. This goes into this mutation and change ideas. All of our culture and practices and success puts us closer and closer to each other. So we have the same opinions everywhere around the world becoming more and more the same, less and less different. But the real hope comes from the different. We have a difficulty promoting that. Um and so this is another thing that can be promoted with the right practices, the right, for example, I I I I work with corporates or even worked with governments before to bring in some of that freshness with simple habits in the workday or in the education of children or in in in companies increasing productivity. I don't really give a [ __ ] but I'm there to give what I view is important. And what is important maybe increases productivity. Um, but it's more important to me that it improves people's lives who are involved. Thinking about here, the way that people use their ears, the way that people use listening, again, we can talk about placement of the head and posture. Um, sometimes angling as well, sharper angle, chin down. Some people tend to use the the shape of the ear. Uh, people with different ears closer or further out. This is it's if you're very sensitive and you're looking around, you would see uh this uh is affecting people's motion. Even the shape of our face like the development of the vocal cords and speaking will totally change how we are how we look but how we listen also will do the same. Uh people will even make their ears bigger. I mean a lot of people don't realize that's actually why we do this is to capture more sound waves right the localization of sound is based on a simple brain stem calculation of interoral time differences. the time in which something the the brain intuitively it just knows because it's a pretty hardwired circuit that if a sound arrives first to this ear then that ear that it's likely coming from over here whereas if it's dead center arrives at the two at the same time it's um it's almost you know ridiculously simple when one hears it no pun intended but um it's it is uh an incredibly valuable way of thinking about how the architecture of the body changes our experience When I see people walking, I sometimes, you know, sometimes I think, "Wow, they really move in a strange way." People come in different shapes and sizes, short torsos, long arms, etc. Um, do you think that if people have a a body type that facilitates certain kinds of movement and not others that they should intentionally try and move in the way that is right at the edge of the kind of friction and challenge in order to um shape new possibilities or do you think that they should lean into the smooth execution of what comes most naturally to them? Yeah, I think a good practice is to have many walks. There is a lot of emotional things related to walk like how I'm walking into a business meeting or how I'm walking out of a bad situation. There is a lot of beautiful things to to research there practically with yourself. trying to approach someone with the chin slightly down, very linear, very efficient in the straightest line. Or trying to approach someone a little bit more rounded from the side and you and tilting your head and you will see totally different results, totally different communication that happens over people's heads. But if you're sensitive, you realize that wow, this opened the door, but it's it's part of the approach. You can affect that. So this is um something to play with and to work with. And then you have of course body proportions and ways and and we have all these like technical invasions, mathematics and trigonometry and architecture. They invaded our bodies. They invaded our nervous system. And now our walk and our physical practices they look linear and efficient. The path between two points is a straight line. It's not. This is biomechanics. It's not mechanics. Nothing there is given. This is no gospel. So the walk is sometimes have to go around or sway from side to side and there is coiling uncoiling and there are moving bits and what about the the coordination of my breathing with my walk because if I walk too linearly there is less pumping of the air naturally in and out so now I have to forcefully bring it in and out. I I'm wasteful. And that's why you see in last years these incredible runners uh especially in long distance doing things we never thought were possible. pronation and and all kinds of things like our technical thoughts were totally misguided and wrong and and somebody comes in and does it in some way that is totally wrong and he he gets results we could never get and that's that's the beauty of playfulness experimentation change being different one of my favorite neuroscientists he's out of the University of Chicago he said one of the major jobs of evolution is to take existing cell types and circuits and give them new functions. But that can only be done through the playful exploration of new possibilities which I think maps very well to what you're saying that at the extreme thresholds of technical execution you know mastery mastery mastery you you're obviously performance is very high but the opportunity for evolution of the sport or the music or the dance or the intellectual endeavor is is limited because you're not introducing variability in the attempt to get proper execution. you're limiting oneself. We are the biggest improvisers around like that's that's what made us who we are I think and this is incredible what what we can do with it and there is something about this openness that we humans need to keep and also maybe something for our leaders to be more of less specialist and more in this openness less capable in this or that way but more capable of doing the whole thing by the way I think that scientists get it right it's where you transmit the knowledge out of the scientific field because science have debate and everything you're not so connected. Of course, this can happen as well, but then when it goes out and the the simple person without the experience takes it more as a gospel, as a fixed thing and then it was just a report, right? I was just reporting some functions here and play with it. see what it does for you. Because with all the greatest information that I can give, the person will examine it and it might be not useful at all for him. This is the practitioner. Make it your own. Go practice. Try heat, cold, light, movement, awareness to this, awareness to this. And this is up to you to make it yours. But we don't like to have this responsibility. No, people prefer to have the this will work the first time every time and uh will serve you best compared to everything else. And and while there are more reliable tools than others, in my mind, the more reliable tools tend to be ones that are grounded in our innate physiology um as opposed to some I don't like the word hack. In fact, I loathe the word biohack as I we were talking about again earlier. Um because it the a hack in my mind is is something that is designed for one purpose that's used for another. It's not the most efficient use of that tool nor is it naturally the best solution. Whereas biology has some very good solutions but they don't always work. Not every time. Earlier today we did a practice in which um which involved uh invasion uh shall we say of perpersonal space. we were close enough together we could touch one's torsos and we were doing that as part of this practice and uh you encouraged me to pay attention to you know how does it feel to have someone in your prairie personal space and then this notion of reactivity I know a lot of people suffer from anxiety just being in a face tof face conversation some people have a lot of anxiety about being physically close to people whether or not they know them or not and many people are reactive they are in that anticipatory state of something is going to happen you um talk about that a little bit more. Touch, proximity, all these things. Um also taking very it it takes a very uh I think limited place in our lives. People are not touched and they don't touch enough. There is certain bubbles of perpersonal space according to culture, according to environment, what is right, what is wrong. And then came all the of course politically correctness and harassments and all kinds and this is a problem. It's a problem to navigate all this scenario and I think we are there is definitely this side which is suffering proximity being able to as you said remove certain reactivity and to learn to control that um that volume control over how reactive I am and in other scenarios how do I remove this reactivity altogether is very important for performance and also for our lives for clear thinking etc because everything is moving through us and is being monitored by us. So everything has the potential to detract us from a certain direction of exploration or and and if you're reactive, you're a slave and it becomes worse and worse and worse. Or as for example, a fighter or a football player etc has to know what to take, what not to take. The fact that you can sense more doesn't mean you should react to it. the and the practice helps that by bringing people into these scenarios but often times disarming them like when we were working closely today and because you have a certain background with boxing or fighting I can tell you you are missing some kind of a way to be in that space that is not martial so you carry a certain tone although you're a very kind person but often times you held me without realizing you're holding me with a lot of strength for example and and uh it just it was clear to me you're not fully aware of what is unfolding and it's just of course a question of experience. So to be able to be in this scenario but do something else which is not geared towards winning losing competition or just being able to play with another person like for example contact improvisation took that and played with that and the work of Steve Pton for the ones who are not familiar it's very important to explore many ways of being within different distances and spaces from other people and touched in different ways and not contextualizing ing it always in the same way. I can touch your chest uh in one way. I can touch it with the exact same pressure and speed but it will feel very different. the parameters I'm not sure certain intentions certain combination of postures or ways and this is beautiful exploration and again I would encourage you and others to explore the discomfort for example certain discomfort to be with a man in certain scenario or with a woman and trying to see what is that because if we are truly strong we are not afraid of anything and this will improve our culture tremendously. Of course, there must be agreement. You never force yourself, but you meet someone who is also interested in that exploration and then you do it moving together in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it's walking together, but sometimes it's a all kinds of it can be game, playful, it can be romantic and there are many shades. Sex doesn't start here and end here, right? It's like continuum and we don't even need to define it in that way. So with time I think it unlocks a lot of things. People become much stronger in a good sense in sense of becoming being and uh we abuse less and we can approach uh yeah other aspects to us. For many people they approach movement in the form of weight training or yoga or running. Yoga is a bit more dynamic but fairly linear types of exercise. and movement uh pelaton rowing. One thing that I have started doing on the basis of some of your teachings um and I just sort of created this idea is rather than statically standing there and lifting weights actually walking from as I alternate repetitions it occurred to me that I had never done uh a curl a bicep curl with one foot in front of the other and then I had never actually switched that up and it's a kind of an odd stance to be standing in parallel and curling one's arm is kind of a ridiculous movement when one thinks about it. So I started incorporating some of that. you get some strange looks in the gym, but I just give them strange looks back. So, what are your thoughts about these very linear forms of exercise? And um and do you encourage people to expand the play space um as it were for these kinds of exercise? Yeah, it's definitely a problem and it's a it's approachable. People want a quick people want to hack. People want that the icing. There is no cake. There is no cake and and it's just like industries of icing. Icing. Icing on what? What are you putting it on? You are movement. There is a dynamic entity to you. The body is a huge is a huge part of it communicating. You have genetic layers. There is a personalities that got developed and built around various influences. But then there is also some kind of an essence. So I think these practices they're very good but they are not designed for the goal that we think they were designed to it orients towards something else. For example yoga there is a good book called the yoga body which will destroy a lot of people's yoga practice. Um, and it goes into how did we get to this yoga, the influence of Swedish gymnastics and Mongolian contortionists, western the west affecting it and then the ancient practice which was barely asa related posture position. So actually you said yoga is less linear. Yoga is very linear these days. These lines look at all the traditional dances they look like nothing like yoga. Look at Thai dance. Look at Chinese dances, martial arts. It's all rounded. It's all curly. It's like nature. What you see in nature and the movement of the animals. So where does it come from? These are things to understand because it designs you now. It it shapes you. You're placing yourself in these forces of change and these streams of change. And you have a good intention. You just want this or that. But the joke is on us. And this is the movement practice for me is first education. Let's start to think about this. I have nothing that I can just sprinkle now some magic powder that will help resolve this because it's a start of a deep investigation. Let's talk pragmatically because what you described is not about you placing the foot in front when you're curling. It's about the examination. This is why it is a very good direction. And then you will need another one and another one. Don't get stuck on that foot in front of but and try to do with the eyes closed or with a different head posture and you will see things arrive unrelated things because the associative mind the thinking this relates to this doesn't get to the heart of it. Never. This is a playful approach and this is a researcher approach. Um I don't try to fit my truth into something. I'm there to examine. I don't have a motive yet. Why? Because I'm fine. I don't depend on that to define myself. I'm a human being. But if I don't have that sense of worth, I I'm already like geared towards I need to do this. I need to prove this. I have this agenda. And this is how we get all the lies in the world and all the the problems and difficulties. So these practices they are related to it to prove this that this way. um why we need muscles for XY Z and a lot of the reported outcomes are often from my place is like funny I hear about something like I I heard you say about gratitude practice if somebody tries to feel gratitude just sit with the eyes closed or watch a movie and sense the gratitude there it would be clear to you one is very difficult to do and the other is very easy. Hence if gratitude is achieved easier this way that's why it works like that although all the traditional practices are about you and by challenging yourself to sense that gratitude yourself way training the benefits or the way that the hormonal effects the effect of cognition etc. When you open a bit and you go far out, you see certain things. Not the truth, but maybe less delusion. If you don't get the weird looks, you're not moving in the right direction. You already know the result of that direction. Let's say at least that. What happens when you do it with a smile? The same workout. And when you do it with a frown, love it. I think that's a wonderful message. What I keep hearing from you over and over again is that people should explore, explore, explore. You know, the the greatest compliment that one can give in science is the one that I'm going to tell you now because it's entirely appropriate, which is we say you're an N of one, right? And you truly are. I don't think there's anyone that has been as willing to embrace existing practices, evolve them, create new practices, and and um and to share so broadly to really be willing to give and teach. so much knowledge. You know, earlier you made the mention of your your goals of uh in part of being wild and wise, and I'm here to tell you that you are both wild and wise, and so thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.