Master the Creative Process | Twyla Tharp

You have a reputation for having risen early and gotten to the gym by 5:00 a.m. for two hours, day in after day out. Tell us about that ritual. And uh do you still enjoy it? It's not a ritual and I never enjoyed it. It's a reality. And uh you do it because you need an instrument that you can challenge. Just set the mechanism for the day you're going to have to do it. It's kind of boring and it's kind of losome. Could you give us a bit of insight into your inner dialogue around days when you don't want to go? Is there a selft talk or have you learned to push aside the the voice that says maybe not today? It's simple. It if you don't work when you don't want to work, you're not going to be able to work when you do want to work. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science [music] and science-based tools for everyday life. [music] I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stamford School of Medicine. My guest today is Twilight Tharp. Twila Tharp is a worldrenowned dancer and choreographer. Her onstage and film works easily place her not just in the top 1% of all choreographers of all time, but also among the top tier of all creative artists, past and present. I knew I wanted to host Twilight on this podcast after listening to her book, The Creative Habit, where she spells out how to build a schedule, habits, and routines that make your best creative expressions come to life. What I love about it is it's direct and it's actionoriented. There's nothing mystical about it. She explains in her book how even for people that have just one hour a day to write or sing or draw or paint or whatever to get the most from that time in terms of creative output. Then, as I learned more about her, I was also super impressed that even in her 60s, by the way, she's 84 now, she could deadlift more than 200 pounds, which is more than twice her body weight, bench press her body weight for three clean repetitions, and was taking up boxing to keep her movement and reflexes sharp. As you'll see today, she is a phenom, and it comes by way of hard work. She's still in the gym every single morning at 5:00 a.m. for two full hours. Today we discuss how to build self-discipline in and around your creative mind. And we discuss movement as a language. There's this new idea emerging in neuroscience that bodily movement, then music, and then speech is how humans came to communicate with each other. We discussed that and how movement can help us process and explain our emotions and our ideas. We also discussed Twilight's life growing up on a farm and how that shaped her mindset about work and community. And we also talk about what it means to have and express your unique creativity and how to evolve your sense of taste. Oh yeah, and we also discuss telepathy. You'll notice the rapport between Twilight and I is very different than is typical for other Hubberman Lab podcasts I've done. She is a real firecracker and we had a ton of fun exploring and challenging ideas, mostly her challenging me. It was a true honor and pleasure to learn from such a virtuoso of the arts and frankly of life. And as you'll soon learn, we can all learn a lot from Twilight. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Twilight Tharp. Twilight Tharp, welcome. Thank you. Huge fan. Huge, huge fan. and [clears throat] love love love your book. The creative habit. It's just an incredible book and it's taught me so much and I want to talk about that today. But I want to talk about a bunch of things. Let's start with what a spine is. I think this is such an important component of the book and this concept of a spine. And the way I think about this is that many many people feel they might have something inside them that they want to put into the world. They want to access their creativity or they're creative and there's so much information out there about how to go about that. But this notion of a spine is really critical because it keeps us on track. Otherwise, it can be a wandering in the desert. Suddenly, you're swimming in the ocean. And suddenly the phone you get a text and please explain what a spine is and why this is such a vital concept for anyone that wants to create anything. Spine means focus. Spine means concentration. If you think about it geometrically, spine is the center both laterally and vertically. So if we're talking physically, you have a right and a left side. You have a top and you have a bottom. And these elements are connected through the center, right? So, uh, they have to be coordinated. You simply cannot function. If your right side is going one way and then your left side's going this other way, you're going nowhere. So, you have to move off your center in terms of how you organize information. There's also a center to it. It's like okay over here you have this and this and you can transfer what you understand from this arena to inform this side but it has to pass through a common point and that common point is the center and until you feel that or one anyone working either physically or let's just use the word very broadly and generically artistically until you know where you are grounded where you feel the most confident that you are what you said you're at sea you could be going this way that way unless you know how to navigate from the stars which few people do anymore you're screwed so when I think about a spine in a like a scientific paper I was taught there can only really be one major conclusion maybe two but one major conclusion of any paper even though the data set probably points to 50 different things that are potentially interesting in terms of a podcast or a movie or a book. It's sometimes not obvious to the reader or to the listener or to the observer what the spine is, but my understanding is that the creator has to understand what the spine is going into it. So could you give a couple of examples from your own work and maybe if they come to mind a couple of examples from visual arts or movies or something where it's clear to the creator what the spine is but it might not be entirely clear to the person watching or consuming the content. I am a great fan of Agatha Christie and Jonathan Car. Okay. And the reason why is because from the get-go, you know, there is one conclusion, but that their job is to keep you away from that conclusion for as long as possible. Who did the crime? Who did the crime? Who's the killer? Who? What a what a what is the crime for starters? and they'll delay as long as they can in their singular, you know, style definite u modes. I mean, Agatha Christie has her format is practically that of a sonnet. I'm I'm sure you could actually count words and I've never seen a study that show a long Okay, she's going to do red herring number one X words in and this is where she's going to throw in the extra crime to push the tension up to get it to go to here. But we all know we're playing the same game. Uh I think that anyone who is successful in communicating to other people gains their trust, gains their confidence that you're not going to screw them. How much do you think it's important to get into the audience's mind about what they want or is the spine coming from the solely from the creator? Is it is it about the creator's relationship to the work or are you thinking about what the audience wants and what they need? The question about audience and intention is a is sort of sensitive one because it's okay. Are you manipulating the audience? And are you there just to take advantage of them? Or at the other extreme of that spectrum, are you doing it because you're in an ivory tower and you're off here doing your own investigations? And maybe they connect, maybe they don't. Who cares? Right? Those are the two extremes. Total manipulation of audience, total disregard of audience. And depending on who I'm working for or with, I do both. To me, it seems like it's one of the toughest things as a creator to both want to honor your audience's wishes, but you also have to have something that you want to communicate. And we never know how things are going to land. But for somebody who wants to create something, maybe we could orient them toward their own spine like or to the o the spine of the work. What where does that start? Well, I think that uh the word intention which is you know so vague these days uh but why are you doing this? What is your purpose in doing it? What's your interest? Why do you want to do this? What's what's in it for you? Are you to learn? Are you uh is this a contract signed? Do you have an obligation to be successful to a producer who's investing a lot of money? And that's a given going in. that's going to determine a range of possibilities for you, right? And unfortunately, the bottom line controls a lot of this issue. At least for me, it's given if I've signed a contract to deliver a specific result. That's what I'm doing. It doesn't matter what I want. It's do I get that accomplished or not. It's in a way a kind of sacred bond. Okay. you honor your contracts. On the other hand, if I am not in a singular position of earning any money, I can do anything I want or anything not that I want but anything that I think is important. Okay. So, how do you determine the parameters of important because that helps with intention in the olden days which dates as in before 1979. Anything before 79 is the olden days. In the olden days, that would include the 60s. We did things because we wanted to change the direction the earth rotated. End of story. Good luck. Tell me more about that. It simply meant that whoever the practitioner was was completely exposed to everything. Say you're a painter. you're completely exposed to everything everybody is doing and you see another way of going about it and you do that everybody is plugged in to that same mechanism and if they swerve into your area you shift again you have to continuously be altering perception as an artist that notion does not seem so relevant these days perhaps why do you think that is because uh you could live cheaper in the 60s. You could live very cheap. Now you cannot live very cheaply as a as an artistic force. You're paying bills, lots of bills. I've long thought that the best work that people do is at the beginning when they don't have any feedback yet and they're just being themselves. It's hard to stay connected to that early energy of uh just being one oneself without the notion of contracts and feedback and per you know perception of feedback. Do you think it's important? I've never been of the persuasion that my understanding was the greatest when I knew nothing as when I knew more. I've always been of the persuasion that the more you know, the bigger your challenge. If one looks at lives uh of artists uh for example Beethoven take Beethoven early work take Beethoven late work very different different challenges um there is argument to be made depending on your particular set uh of the coherency of the classicism of the earlier quartets as opposed to the late quartets and the total disillusion that he was able to accomplish at the end of his career totally taking the sound world apart uh that he could only actually do because he was deaf. He had developed uh during the course unfortunately of a very long time, decades, the awareness that he was losing his hearing and by the end he genuinely basically was completely deaf which forced him into his own world and there he looked at himself across the ages. So in a piece I think of the Diabelli uh which is the last thing he wrote for keyboard after the sonatas and he actually had started the diabelli 15 maybe even I'm forgetting my details here but 15 years earlier than when he came back to complete it and he got bored with it initially because to a younger composer it wasn't challenging ing enough when he came back to it later. He had a humility about him that said that theme which I used to poo poo because it's like you're kidding up yada yada up count in half drop it back down ya da de he's going what and later he comes back and he says right not stupid simple I could never have written anything that simple or that useful full and he finished it and it's arguably the greatest set of keyboard variations in the entire repertoire. Which do you want? The earlier Beethoven, the Beethoven who has passed way through many different works, a mass, an opera, many quartets, and returns to it with this new information to look at it again. Fascinating. There's something about the more you know the bigger your challenge but totally if I may from what you just said maybe also the bigger the opportunity. Totally. But the more kind of distracting it is and the harder it is to focus. Part of that's physical uh but part of it is also that there are many more options available uh with accomplishment if you will but you have to be selective about what you have available to you to work with. In the earlier phase, you'll take what you can get. And now, if you take what you can get, you will be very wildly distracted by everything. I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PASES or forever chemicals are still found in 80% of non-stick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before on this podcast, these PASES or forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So, it's very important to avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of ourplace. Ourplace products are made with the highest quality materials and are all PAS and toxin-free. I particularly love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it uses pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and does not degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it always puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean, and it's even dishwasher safe. I love it, and I use it constantly. Ourplace now has a full line of titanium pro cookware that uses the firstofits-kind titanium non-stick technology. For a limited time, ourplace is offering an extra 10% off their current holiday sale on their titanium cookware. Visit fromourplace.com/huberman and use the code save hubman10 to claim the offer. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can try this fantastic cookware with zero risk. Today's episode is also brought to us by EightLe. Eightle makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3°. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about 1 to 3°. Eight automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an eightle mattress cover for nearly 5 years now and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. The latest eightle model is the Pod 5. This is what I'm now sleeping on and I absolutely love it. It has so many incredible features. For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called autopilot which is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. If you would like to try eight, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to get $450 off the pod 5 Ultra. This is part of eight's extended holiday sale, which goes from now until December 31st, 2025. Eightlee ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eight.com/huberman to save up to $450 now through December 31st, 2025. Recently, I listened to a conversation between my good friend Rick Rubin. We were talking about earlier, who's a big fan of yours. You inspired his book and he wanted me to tell you that. Thank you. and he was speaking with um Gwennneth Paltro who's a you know of course an actress and um has done incredible things in health and wellness business etc. And she said something very interesting. She said, "People generally like to keep you where they found you." And it's an interesting statement uh that I think taps into something that again that as a creator or as a consumer of creative content feels very true that we encounter somebody like somebody goes to one of your dances or we see a great movie with Gary Oldman in it or something. You see a Bos for the first time and it either impacts you or it doesn't. But if it does, there's this tendency to want to keep that person and the work they do in that place. It's like we we think we own the creator in some way and the work and in this very naive and selfish way. Do you think that that creates a real problem for anyone that's trying to put things into the world? Because as you stated, with time the creator gains knowledge, you evolve your craft, but your fan base, the people that love you, they love you for something that you're not really any longer. You're evolving cuz Somewhere over the rainbow syndrome, right? Uh Garland always was asked for one song or Elvis John anyone is always asked for their hit because everyone wants to touch upon that which seems to somehow be their greatest accomplishment. Um it's aggravating. I mean obviously it's called cubby hauling. Um and you for the person doing the work there are artists who work serially right who work in series and who make incremental changes and they kind of have in a way a stab at the best of all possible worlds. But there are others who feel that okay you got that I got to go over here. Uh and that's because in a way they're right because if you want to constantly be gain it's a game. You want to be gaining the attention you do it by change. You don't do it by reinforcing that just creates a comfort zone and it can build a reputation. It can build a career that it it it gives you more and more of what you expect. Uh, but for the person who's making the work, that can kind of be deadly. Did you know Jean Michelle Bosia? You No. Okay. Uh, a different generation. I I knew the painters, the downtown painters in the 60s. Could you give me some examples of Oh, you want to know the famous names? No, I don't want to know the names. I I just have a question about Tony Smith, Frank Stella, Motherwell. Okay. I The reason I ask is Reinhardt. The reason I I ask is that um earlier you were saying that there's a time or there was a time when a given field everyone knew each other and what they were doing and I I like Boss. I'm not like obsessed with them or anything that there's a wonderful scene in the movie Bosia with him and Benicio del Toro or the actor playing him and Benio Del Toro about this notion of fame. We'll put a link to it in the caption so people can see it. And it's just a wonderful example of how people will love you, then they'll hate you for how you change, then they'll love you for how you were, and then it it's a hilarious and and um again, for a consumer of content, it's it's perhaps even more interesting than somebody who's a creative. But uh the point being that nowadays, I feel like there's so much stuff out there, art and music and dance and Instagram puts it all on, you know, smorgesborg display for us. And it's kind of harder to know where one sits in a community of creators. And so to what extent do you think that being surrounded by other creators like visual artists or other dancers then versus now was was or is useful? Yeah, the early era also age is a factor here. I was very young. I was just out of college. Um and uh I felt very much the student. Uh it's a different deal now and it's a different kind of responsibility and the work's going to be different. In the early era went to see absolutely everything. Now I go to see absolutely nothing. Uh and it is partially a matter of time but more importantly it's an awareness that you want to feel isolated in a way because you are and that's the truth. So you need to operate from a truthful place. Um, and when you talk about this plethora of information that is out there, I do try to inform myself to some degree about different areas of culture. Uh, but I do it through a media perspective because that's how the consumer is receiving it. Consumer is not at the individual exhibition or at the individual performance. They're getting it through media. So in looking at it through media, I already have a double perspective on it. I have the artists perspective, but I have the journalists, if for lack of a better word, we'll call podcasting journalism. Will we be forgiven? Sure. Podcasting is a weird thing. We could talk about later what it is and what it isn't. Okay. We'll wait till this is off to discuss that, right? Sure. But the uh the challenge for me becomes, okay, in all of this swirl of stuff, what do you believe? Forget who. You can't believe anyone. But what what can you believe? What is really grounded uh in a way that's productive? Um and uh in thinking I you know I've just come off if you'll forgive me for diverging here for a moment two really hard years of working. uh a 60th anniversary tour uh that uh was a very big culmination of a long long working process um which put a lot on the line and which was unfortunately very successful because success is much harder to follow than failure. So here you said, "Okay, babe, you've done it all. Now what?" And so where do you go? And you don't go around asking other people for the answer to your question. One has to find a way of rerouting without abandoning who you are and what you believe in order to just make change. Really, how does that work? So it's an extremely um attenuated place to be. Not many people make it this far. Not many people are looking at their 61st year of work, right? So that's like, okay, so show us. Well, maybe I don't want to. Maybe I will. Who knows? You said that um coming off of a success is much more challenging than come off coming off of a failure. I think that uh will surprise a number of people uh because people myself included probably feel like when you do well you get the confidence that you can do well again. There's that also whereas when you fail you're like uh like you can do that again too. [laughter] Do you tell your dancers that? No, because my dancers don't fail. M that's why I work with dancers who want to work as hard as I do. Let's talk more about that process. In your book, you talked about failure being critical, failing a lot a lot in private. Yeah. That had a big impact on me. Uhhuh. I think that the this notion of making lots and lots of failures and mistakes Yeah. privately. When you're working, you don't know if it's a failure or not. You only know if it's useful. You know if it's exciting. You know if it generates a next question. That's useful. You don't know if it's good or bad. Let's go back to your dancers and and how you put them through uh the paces, so to speak, because I think it also frames up this notion of rituals very very nicely. For the uninformed like myself, give us an example of your day and a day in the studio. the top contour of that it depends on where you are in this wonderful word called process if you are uh at the beginning it's all more fluid um and while the one key ingredient I I have always found to doing work is you got to be able to do a schedule you got to be able to tell people what time they're coming and what shoes to bring okay that's already actually made a lot of choices is for you. Uh, and that's that I think is a good thing. I mean, there's no point in just saying, "Oh, we'll work whenever you get here and you know, bring whatever." Whatever is not my favorite word. So, choices get made. Uh, and a schedule gets done. And ordinarily, uh, again, it depends on what the project is, but, uh, if it's, let's just give as much range here as possible. If it's uh me making a new piece, I will set a schedule. Dancers come in, they will have done class themselves. They will come warm. Okay, that is not a part of my day. I have my own work to do in preparing for that rehearsal, but in in also maintaining my own physical instrument to the degree that I can because the more I can bring into the studio, the more I can give them and the more I can expect them to bring in. So I have a tandem path going on here with the dancers and we meet up, we join um and I usually will come with a certain preset sense of where we're going with this thing and then see how it actually works in real time in real space which is a very um useful and tough mistress uh and eliminates a lot of fantasy very quickly. Who decides who gets to work with you? I do. Well, that's actually not true. In a way, they do. The dancers that uh I work with, I obviously audition, but I also screen from the perspective of who wants to work with me, who's going to come and say, "Yeah, I'll go through that wall. Is that what we're doing? I'll go through the wall." And you want to know that you have that in the room. you're not going to ask them to go through the wall all the time, but you know, if it seemed like it was an approach that was going to be useful, you got to know that that commitment is really solid and that's best indicated by their desire, not your finding them totally appropriate, but their desire. Are most dancers uh living with the understanding that it's going to be very very long hours and probably very little pay for a while? For sure. very little pay and forever wild world crazy crazy and to my way of thinking not acceptable because you know I'm all in favor of the folks who do the work and the training to accomplish physically and I don't make a clear distinction between either folks who are in business or athletes to me it is all the same enterprise but dancers have nowhere near the uh possibility ility of uh earning a living that a great athlete has not even sort of kind of in the ballpark, not even in the parking lot, not even on the highway to the ball game. How did this happen and why does it continue? It raises interesting questions how we support the arts or don't support the arts. I think are we taking over your show for the next two and a half years? if if if we must, you know, this conversation no doubt will draw some additional attention to dance. But the the larger issue of of you know, people being able to make it in the arts as not just as a as a luxury, but as a like critical piece of culture and life. I mean, I love beautiful things. I love beautiful dogs. Most all dogs are beautiful. Um, even the bulldogs. Uh, but I love beautiful things. And it and it enriches life in more ways than just feeling delighted. I think there's immense carryover from uh the arts to other areas of of culture. And uh so we could make an economic argument about that, but it's part of the reason you're here. But just sort of return to the this business of of of ritual. Can I interrupt you before you go there? Because I'd like to take up two things. One is the notion of the reality being that when we do a successful performance, I measure it by did that audience leave in a better frame of mind than it came in with. In other words, we provide a service and we provide a service that gives them a sense of optimism uh yay verily I might even go to joy uh to the belief that they have that they too occupy this body that does these phenomenal things and thank you Lord okay that's a service [clears throat] I think dancers should be paid more for that service and that it needs to be acknowledged the other point that I want to bring up is you've used it twice now. I didn't stop you the first word. Beauty. What is this? It could be something I see or hear that um it stirs a some set of emotions in me that carries forward. And what you just said a moment ago about the audience leaves in a different state. I mean, it's the word that came to mind was like it's like really great therapy, but it's in some sense it's better than that because um I was also thinking that perhaps in the top 10 of all my favorite memories are several live performances that I which I was the observer. It's like those things really stick with us and I think they change us in in in meaningful ways, especially when we're in the audience with other people, not just watching on a on a screen. They can be transformative for sure. And in a live audience becomes of course a whole another thing about cost and and expenditures, but that it confirms that that not only do you feel a new righteousness for yourself by a performance, but that you sense others do as well. And that creates a community uh bonding. And you know, okay, football games, you know, everybody is very rowdy about it. Uh most performances people are not. But that doesn't mean that it still doesn't take that hold of people who are experiencing the same thing in real time. We tend to dismiss that which is familiar and that that sense is actually not all that familiar but it feels very intimate and it is uh but it actually is quite rare and the rarer a piece of art and I will call a performance a piece of art is the more value it has and the more that is compensated for culturally and economically. There should be a price point on beauty. Let's put it that way. Well, there is for everything else. Well, I know. Yeah. You know, there is a price point for beauty in terms of people could say, "Well, the sunrise is free and the sunrise is beautiful, but seeing it in certain locations costs a lot more money than seeing it in other locations." That's for sure. Right. And that that brings up another thing because in a way it's a kind of horrible thinking to go, "Yeah, it's a privilege. You know what? You can't pay me. you can't bite me. I don't have a price. And that I'm sure is one of the things in great dancers who are certainly not paid as I've said before and I'll say at least 300,000 times more commensurate with a great athlete. That is probably one and I've never actually I never brought it up directly with a great dancer. How much is it your own sense of independence and liberty that makes you the artist that you are? I think the name that most people probably associate with dance is probably Berishnikov. If they don't know much about dance, they know that name or it they it's familiar to them. What was it about Mikuel Berishnikov that sort of had him break through the common consciousness that way? First of all, Misha uh Moore these days actually is remembered by younger generations from his later cultural input, i.e. Sex in the City than he is as a classical ballet artist. All right, let's just start there because he showed up in Sex in the City as a as a character. Yes. And that's and that's how he is often recognized by younger audiences, younger, you know, folk. Uh what was he in the beginning? He was actually there was a chalice, then there was Nuraf and then Misha. He politically he came across the line. It was Russia, America. He chose America. He's our hero. Plus which he was gorgeous. He's unquestionably, in my opinion, in that era, the possessor of a technique that was a culmination of the 20th century and that will never be matched. And to see him work at the bar or to see him in the uh absolute interior realm of what the classical ballet was was an unbelievable privilege. But not many people saw that. Not many people saw him at the bar. Uh which is where you build your your chops. Okay. He also was capable of taking those chops and expanding on them, breaking through their boundaries, trying it this way, do it that way, but utilizing the power that he had from that simple classical base to take it outward. Lots of inventiveness in that regard. And the guy was gorgeous. What can I tell you? His his looks. What does that mean? But what does that mean? It means a wide ranging interest that you feel includes you as you the spectator. You feel he's including you in his wideness of vision. Where does that come from? from the intellect, from his musicality, from his training, from his personality, uh from his cultural breeding, Latvian. Uh and it is a singular commodification, one of my favorite words that drives people up the walls when I use that word in relation to the arts of performing. Um but he was very very very astute in many different areas starting from uh an athletic ability through to a poetic sensibility. It's interesting you said that because uh he was attractive that people felt that they were a part of it in a way that was not we all want to be godly. We all want to be a part of the sublime. Few can give us that. So when they say, you know, artists or I include dancers, I just broadly speaking artists are are like portals. Is that what you mean? I would accept that. Years ago, I went to a Philip Glass concert at UC Berkeley. I'll be honest, I didn't understand it. I left there in a different state mostly of a confusion um that people were willing to pay for that. I'm sorry if I'm insulting any Philip Glass fans, but this is my podcast. I'm going to be very direct. Okay. I was told I maybe hadn't seen the right Philip Glass concert. I was very confused. Why? You know, I'm not a musician. I'm not um but when I like something, I I know I like it and I tend to really like it. But it it's rare for me to encounter something that's like it just felt like um it felt extremely experimental at every at every part of it. And I and I couldn't tell whether or not people were telling themselves that they liked it because it was him or whether they really liked it. What year is this that you went to this concert? Gosh, this must have been 200 eight. 2007 2008 that's very late okay so Phil obviously has been working uh since the 60s and I've done one major collaboration with Phil and one recent collaboration um and in the beginning uh the audience for minimalism right uh Reich Riley glass uh came gradually and so when the initial piece called in the upper room was done. Uh it had a power and a force that involved also discovery. Now the later piece which is called slactide fills a known commodity and was addressed slightly differently uh rather than I mean you know Phil it's percussive the lyric element has been reduced okay and you're a sensitive soul you think of the word beauty and that does not mean total elimination Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It means inclusion. Uh, and so the later glass work was done in conjunction with a Chicago percussion group called Third Coast, who Phil's worked with a lot and who he trusts to do iterations, if you will, on the work. And we iterated with a flute. Flutes don't do this. [applause] Flutes do this. So we put a stream on top of that that's in the music. I mean iterations are a study in and of themselves, right? What makes something different from and yet still the same as Good luck with that one. Uh but that that was the different range. I dare say if you go and look at because Third Coast is uh produced a recording of this work, you listen to Slack Tide and then tell me your response to Glass. But but basically minimalism took uh the lyric element uh and reduced it to just the temporal passage in time. What's interesting, because of all the concerts I've seen, this one still sticks with me as like a a stimulus to learn more. Because one thing that I'm totally fascinated by and perplexed by is that with the exception of comedy, the more one learns about something, the artists, what went into the art, the dance, what went into it, typically the more one likes that piece or that genre. Like the more I I learn about something, then the then I can listen to it with a different ear. I can watch it with it with a different eye. Comedy is the exception. If it's not funny, learning about the origins of the joke don't make it any funnier. Learning about the comedian doesn't make it funnier. It just it sort of just like falls further and further. See, I think that's true of your other art forms, too. I think you're confusing, forgive me, knowledge with instinct. I mean, instinctively you're responding to the humor, but instinctively, uh, a a piece of art can can reach you, but you can be baffled by it. But we don't like confusion. So, we might call that something we should learn about before we can acknowledge liking it. That's one of the things that is, I think, really difficult and something I think a lot about, which is, uh, not only protecting but refining instinct. Tell me more about that. I know. It's fascinating, isn't it? I can't tell you about it because I could be writing a Oh, well, Rick Rubin, um, who I feel, even though you haven't met yet, you share a certain kinship with, talks about taste all the time about this, you know, a sense of taste and trusting your own sense of taste as a consumer and as a creator, right, is so key. That's why I brought up the Philip Glass thing because I'm not writing off Glass on the basis of one one concert. But I I didn't walk out of there thinking like maybe I'm an idiot. Maybe I didn't get it. I thought and I didn't think they're all idiots. I just thought I guess I'm just different because everyone else here seems to really love this. And this is like I just doesn't hit me right. It's like a I don't like sardines. [laughter] Never like sardines. You give me a 100 sardines, I'm going to hate them 100 times more than the first sardine. I promise. Because I've eaten a hundred sardines. It's just But I don't care that I don't like sardines. You just I'm I'm over it. I was over it from the first sardine. Right. Phil's on the cusp of the avant guard. The avant guard is a smug place to be and can be very aggravating and can also be not that bright and very indulgent. There might have been some sense of that to it. The avantgard can confuse itself with originality and vice versa. Do you think it's important for dancers to be classically trained before they get into other forms? To be classically trained, absolutely. You want to be a musician and not understand the circle of fifths, the harmonies of construction of all music. No. Ballet is a format for the human body moving in space that has evolved over many centuries and has got a head start on us. And if you want to learn about how you move, you might as well try and jump a little further forward by studying ballet. I don't care ultimately if you're arabesque, which is one leg behind, one leg under, right? if your arabesque is aligned in a perfectly classical manner unless it's a perfectly classical ballet. But I do care you have that gear and you can reference it in terms of where's the leg going to move from and does it get to that point. Can it stop right on its center or not? That's what ballet can do. If there's a proper way for a movement to be done, the limb, the every element within the limb has to move from point A to point B in a certain trajectory. And people come in different sizes and shapes and you've got multiple dancers on stage. How do you reconcile that? You don't. Uh, and the word is properly. Properly. What What is proper? Uh [sighs] I had the experience of of working with the Kira off uh in St. Petersburg and I went to their school and uh the children are lined up and they are exact replicas and they have a huge selection mechanism throughout the country for picking those 10 or 12 kids that are going to be in there of whatever age. Um, and I saw one group of little little boys, uh, less than eight years old. There were probably eight or nine of them in their little black shorts, their little white shirts. And, uh, I just came in briefly and they were being, you know, as they do. It's a part of the tradition. It's wonderful. Uh, they're being very respectful and it was like, oh, come in and you will sit here and they will continue and then we're getting moved to the next class. And one little boy came out and said, "No, no, no. We want to do more." So we went back and they started jumping out of sequence because the ballet class is very carefully constructed to warm up the body and also to develop the training. So you're working both laterally and in depth in every technique class. They went out of sequence so the boys could jump, which is usually not done till the very end of class. And this little guy had real what we call bowel. He could go up and he could like for moments just it seems like he's able to suspend. He knew he had that and he knew I wouldn't see that at the bar. So he wanted to but he was [clears throat] what we call pronated. His feet were hyperextended to the outside. So he's not going straight up through the metatarsal. He's going up through the outside of the leg. And uh you know I pulled the teacher out and I said, "You know that kid's phenomenally talented." And he said, "Yeah, we know." Uh, and he said, "But he's pronated." He said, "We know that, too, but we have eight other ones." Like, we if he doesn't figure that out, he's out and we'll bring in another one. And this can be the difference between a child who grows into an adult with a career and a life and one who's lost. So, parents are very protective of trying to get this opportunity for their kids. And it's heartbreaking. And the way they are trained is they are wrenched into these positions. And I saw in an older class of young girls uh an arabesque and one leg was not slightly behind. The teacher came and literally pinned the leg behind with one arm and drew the shoulder out this way. Literally pushed her and then released her. And that's how they teach. You think that's going to happen in America? I don't think so. And that's what it takes to create a line of people who at the bar hit exactly the same arabesque. It's both a thing of extraordinary beauty and a thing of incredible lack of choice because that arabesque is going to be set for life in that one angular demarcation, right? And you know, heaven knows here in the west we like to encourage all kinds of wanderings around which is hard to get through the head of a child who's been trained in this way to stay within those parameters. And it says something also obviously about the political situation, right? Those kids don't have a lot of choice. They tow the line. So is the goal to get that uniformity? Absolutely. Uh and and it's a I mean for a person who works sometimes to what's called unison, there are times when you want I don't do it that often. It's a lot of work and I don't like what it says about democracy. But if you need to have unison, you want unison and that means an exact agreement on time and space. Now your other question about what about different body types and so forth. I can accommodate that uh because I can gain my unison from the center. What we're talking about the ballet here it gains it from the periphery from the exterior point from the broad reach. I'll accept my broad reach is not going to be actually in uniform but my center is going to be and I'll make that comp. It's a compromise of sorts. It's not really a compromise. It's an agreement. I'll make that definition because I want them to work from an interior purpose and the visuals of it are your problem. By now, I'm sure that many of you have heard me say that I've been taking AG1 for more than a decade. And indeed, that's true. The reason I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, and the reason why I still continue to take it every single day, is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. What that means is that it contains not just vitamins and minerals, but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens to cover any gaps that you might have in your diet while also providing support for a demanding life. Given the probiotics and prebiotics in AG1, it also helps support a healthy gut microbiome. The gut microbiome consists of trillions of little microorganisms that line your digestive tract and impact things such as your immune status, your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more. Taking AG1 consistently helps my digestion, keeps my immune system strong, and it ensures that my mood and mental focus are always at their best. AG1 is now available in three new flavors: berry, citrus, and tropical. And while I've always loved the AG1 original flavor, especially with a bit of lemon juice added, I'm really enjoying the new berry flavor in particular. It tastes great. But then again, I do love all the flavors. If you'd like to try AG1 and try these new flavors, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. Just go to to get started. I'm going to ask a couple of questions in the frame of biology. Okay, that I think um I'm hoping you you might find interesting, but I you certainly have the information that I'm seeking here. First off, uh you may know this uh but if you don't, there's a great Nobel Prizewinning physiologist, his name was Sharington, and he said the final common path is movement. That basically the movement of an organism, especially mammals, is is really what the nervous system is constructed for. And you know more modern theories are that you know movement came and dance came then song then language you know but that that movement is the foundation of of everything as it relates to evolution of a species finding mates finding food. Can I interrupt you please? It is even more basic because movement is the first thing we're going to do. And you don't make any sound until you can move parts of you. You don't feed yourself until you can move that hand. You don't write anything, language, music or nada without movement. Why do we therefore stick movement way down here under the bottom of our cultural heap as somehow shameful or what? What is it with the aspect of dance that makes it a less kind of revered format than sculpture or painting or music? A secondary handmaiden to the arts really. Well, I certainly appreciate movement and I know that um and I like to think that people's obsession with athleticism in some sense reflects that too. Totally. I've been wanting to ask you this question for a very long time uh since I heard your book even though it's not about the creative process and and here goes uh I'm going to keep this as brief as possible um just to give the the raw materials for for your uh response. So the motor neurons, the neurons that control movement, uh they control movement of the trunk, they control movement of the fine digits of the fingers that are the fingers, the digits as we call them in science, right? Nerds speak, the wrists, everything. So we say from proximal to distal like from center out there's this incredible thing that's been discovered over the last 20 years or so which is that the molecular identities of the neurons that control the movement of my trunk and your trunk forward and back and side to side are exactly the same as the neurons that control undulation in a fish. The neurons that control the movement of the proximal limbs, like the upper arms and the thighs, are molecularly identical to the neurons that exist to control fin movement in fish. And that what evolved was progressively more and more motor neurons so that we as old world primates can manipulate the fine digits in like so. Okay, so that's fine. And that just tells you that there's this kind of primitive to more evolved structure of neurons that control movement from center up. What's fascinating to me is that while I'm sure there are people who can move their trunk at very high frequency, you know, undulate very high frequency, that's a hard thing to do. That that generally has to be learned. Like I can move my trunk slowly from side to side, but it's hard to move it very fast from side to side, but I can move my fingers very fast. And so there's there's basically a frequency map from the center out on the body. So now when I look at the way people move I think because I'm a neuroscientist and I have this knowledge in my head like they're they're communicating frequency and frequency in the visual in photon space gives you very interesting you know wave we have wavelength we have also frequency like we we in sound you have high low and high pitches low to high pitch and in other domains you also have this and so to me first of all I'd love your thoughts on this. I'm not I'm not asking for validation of a theory. This is just is what it is. I didn't come up with this. But I wonder whether or not consciously or unconsciously when you've choreographed dance, whether or not you're making music with movement in a way that maps on to this idea of a frequency map from center out. Maybe in part, no. Sweetness, my love. Did we not discuss already much earlier the importance and um specifity specificity specificity of center. Now what you're saying about the different rates of the tendrils, the neurons, the cellular Yeah. the neurons that control the the trunk versus the upper arms versus the the Yeah. that this this is this is got more uh choice can make more choice than this can make. Mhm. Do I think about the parts of the body as sometimes in other words the legs can be working at one rate of speed say half time of what the uh the arm is doing and they'll be on the same metronomic base but they'll be operating at a different speed certainly I would think of that uh what I think about power uh that sometimes uh you can isolate through the center and there'll be like a huge impact from the top but that the body the lower body will be fluid sometimes. I mean, I've ripped off Tai Chi forever. It's okay. Uh, so we're doing Taichi and suddenly and then we're back into it, right? Uh, so it's like just like a jolt goes through it and I suppose that's a change in your neurological construct. I mean, what interests me in what you're saying is a part of the nightmare of my life, which is dance has difficulty. And one of the reasons it has difficulty in being registered by many people in our culture is that it doesn't have easy access to being documented and recorded in the way that music does or language does. What you're saying, I've argued for many years, should be a way of documenting movement that people could read and then they could read the dance and then they would feel grounded in that tradition and understanding of that tradition. They could under they could study that tradition. That's not now possible. I'd like to talk about the creative process a bit in a way that perhaps people can, you know, structure uh some of their own creative pursuits. At what point do you know the spine? The beginning and the end. Okay. What do I mean? In the beginning, uh you hope for it. Uh and you have a little taste of it or you wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to start uh without the tiniest little indication there's something there that's actually going to hook in. And that's going to allow me to start building. And this is where process becomes very reassuring. You start building the wall. You're just mixing the mortar and putting the brick in. Mixing the mortar, putting the and the wall grows and it develops all of this stuff happening and you're just doing the mortar and the brick and it's very not menacing and extraordinarily rewarding in the place you want to live. But you can't because you got to finish the work and let it go. a dismal moment. Maybe we put this into example. Let's say I want to write a a short story. I realize you're a choreographer, not a writing instructor, but we we say like what's the would you say? And then you say, well, someone says that they want to write stories or books. So, what's the spine? The first thing is what's the idea? The first thing is where where is the where's the story? I mean, some writers have to know the end before they can start at the beginning. Others want nothing to do with the end until they've at least reached the middle because they want the work to find itself. Uh that all is, you know, that's a part of the privilege of being a writer and the pain of being a writer. Um but the uh construct of starting sometimes it's simply habit and discipline. Um, and uh you are going to go in and you are going to start at let's say 6:45 every morning and you're going to give yourself you've only got an hour and a half. Okay? I'm not talking about you're a professional writer. I'm talking about you're a person uh who maybe wants to become a professional writer but who's got at least one other job and maybe two and probably a kid to deal with. An hour and a half is a lot of time for in that life. So starting you got to start with something and either there's an idea that you're that you really are uh energized by or just you know you start writing something gets something on the page and bit by bit it becomes a habit and maybe that habit evolves and maybe it doesn't and maybe you give it up and maybe you find that you then you get an idea you find something you keep returning to and it pulls fles you. It It hypnotizes you. Uh it makes you want to follow it, see where it will go to, see how it will develop and then at a certain point it's done. It's it's played out. Uh maybe you can guide that so that it becomes more exciting and you learn how to build as you're going along and you learn how to direct it so that it's going to get to either a surprising end where it has to end and the reader is going to say, "I should have seen that." or you're going to say, "I should have seen that." Or you're going to go, "No way. You're a liar. I'm not going to buy this book." But the showing up at 6:45 consistently is the is the is the the brick laying that's essential. Yeah. Because it allows you to think that you could be a writer. Sort of living into a a a delusion that could be a reality. Could be. And maybe it's not a delusion because maybe what you start to write immediately is a very interesting sentence or two. Some days maybe some days. Yeah. You can't expect a good time every day. You might want to quote me on that. You have a reputation for having uh risen early and gotten to the gym by 5:00 a.m. for two hours, eating three hard-boiled eggs postworkout, day in after day out for a very long time. Uh tell us about that ritual and uh do you it. It's a reality and uh you do it can challenge and in order to challenge something you got to know how it stands. I mean I could challenge you wouldn't want me to the centering of this but I can only do it if it's already grounded then I can try to throw it off. You can't just throw things off. They've got to be set before you can throw them off. Right? So that is you just set the mechanism for the day you're going to have to do it. It's kind of boring and it's kind of lonesome. I would rather go to the gym than brush my teeth. I'll tell you that. Could you give us a bit of insight into your inner dialogue around days when you don't want to go? Is there a selft talk or have you learned to push aside the the voice that says maybe not today? Yeah. No, no, no, no. Uh it's simple. If you don't work when you don't want to work, you're not going to be able to work when you do want to work. End of story. Were you always like this? What do you mean like this? I didn't [laughter] mean that in that sense. And you know, I didn't. I don't. You know, I didn't. You know, I didn't. I meant were have you always been this disciplined and had this uh this clear view of the necessity for hard work. My mother was an extraordinary force in anybody's life. She happened to be in mine. Okay. I was trained as a very young child to practice. Uh whether anything everything had to be practiced. It had to be scheduled to be practiced and time is limited and you don't waste it and you work very hard and you try to maximize that period of time because otherwise you're being wasteful. And while I said I'm from San Burdue, I am, but I'm not. I am from the Midwest. I was born in Indiana um and left when I was eight. Uh but up until that point I had the extraordinary good fortune of being on my grandparents' farm uh for long stretches of time without my parents and these farms were in uh Amish territory and the family's Quaker and the land was the land period. There was no electricity. There were no phones. There was plant the seed, grow the seed, kill the hogs, ring the check chicken's neck, and you work or you don't eat. Yeah. The Midwest sensibility is something to behold. I have a lot of friends from the Midwest. There's a real decency out there in terms of how people communicate with one another, who they do and don't know. And there's a real thing to farmers. at Stanford uh when I was a posttock there was a MD PhD student in the laboratory she had grown up on a mushroom farm not the psilocybin mushrooms the kind you eat and don't hallucinate on a mushroom farm in rural Pennsylvania and her work ethic and this is at Stanford school of medicine where people are very driven not just on average but her work ethic was unbelievable and her cheerfulness about it was also unbelievable. It was spectacular. The delight in fact. Yeah. She had a bike accident on a few people will know who this is. She had a horrible bike accident on campus. Knocked out all her teeth. Someone had stepped out in front of her with at she was back in the laboratory with falsies in and working. I think within like 48 hours. This would have put anyone else out for a much longer time. I haven't kept up with her, but I'm sure that she's a spectacular physician uh scientist wherever she is. But there's really something to the the the farming piece. It is communal and it is the sense that while these farms are very isolated, I mean, you know, 100 acre plots that are divided by tree barriers from one another, uh uh [clears throat] that somebody has your back all the time. I still have my grandmother's quilting frames and the they uh when established it require eight women, a four to a side and the quilt gets done and then you make eight of them and each one gets a quilt. Uh and you you know that to do the big job, the barn that's got to get up, you you have to utilize forces outside yourself uh in order to accomplish this. and that you owe you owe them and you want to it it's not an obligation it's a sharing and you understand okay I'm getting that barn I owe services here for seven more barns or whatever this is an excellent thing and I do try to think of dance that way and I do think a well-made dance is a good community It's society as it ought to be. It works the way we should work together. You mentioned Quaker. I've been to a couple Quaker meetings. Silent meetings. Yeah. Every once in a while someone would stand up and say something at a friend who was a there's a Quaker house near where I used to live when I was finishing my masters and I got became friendly with a guy outside because we would drink coffee the same coffee shop and chat and he was like you should come to a meeting. You might find it interesting. And I I knew I was in a a benevolent place when I walked in because you know in Berkeley, California, if somebody says, "Hey, you should come to a meeting." And you're like, [laughter] like, you know, like you don't know what you're getting into, right? Um but they had a a picture of the Quaker Oats uh guy on the wall as a joke. I knew like, okay, these they can poke some fun at themselves. So yeah, someone would stand up every once in a while, say something, there was some reflection, and then at the end, everyone kind of like said goodbye and took off. It was it was it was interesting. Yeah. That those in in those days for me were Wednesday evenings and they were silent meetings and there would be meetings where no one had anyone to say any anything to say. They were silent meetings and simply you can help me out here. They were not using language, but surely neural rays were going out. And probably if there had been a catastrophe in the culture, you know, some kind of huge fire or something awful, you know, that people are thinking, you have a sense of what that thinking is. And that there was and is and can be a kind of nonverbal communication. That's not even a physical. You're not using sign language to communicate. Uh but that you have a sense of what we called in the day in the air. In the air and that that is a very powerful form of communication that we don't really respect anymore. And how potent is it neurologically? This last year um the podcast series telepathy tapes was very very popular. I haven't had a chance to watch it in full. I listened to a little bit of it. It's about how kids who are non-verbal perhaps can tap into this and it's gotten some criticism from the standard scientific community, but also less than you would have anticipated if it had all been complete BS. So, I think there's, you know, it's it's gotten partial acceptance there. Um, this brings us back to the notion of a center. Believe it or not, fish have lateral lines. They sense the electrical fields of other fish and other things near them. Um, I mean, there's many, many examples from the animal kingdom of, you know, like the platypus with its uh electric it people call it an electric sensing bill, but it sends out these electrical fields that then it can detect things in its environment because its vision is very poor. M um somebody once said uh Ed Yong the writer said that so many animals rely on smell. We sort of smell with our eyes which sounds crazy but we use our eyes the way that other animals use their noses and that gives you an insight into how they use their noses. But most animals have a sense of how close or far other members of their species and other things are. We tend not to think about that unless you live in a big open space and you get on the New York subway and like suddenly you're like, "Whoa, this is pretty, you know, this is different." Um, but we have these, we don't really have a lateral line, but we have remnants of things that are similar. They're beautiful studies showing that if you look for in an experimental context magneetto reception in the human brain, people perform above chance. In other words, we can detect magnetic fields. People are going to think I'm crazy, but this is published in Science magazine. Yeah, we can sense electric fields, but we sort of have to train ourselves to do it. And perhaps some people are just naturally leaning that way. So, there absolutely is, when I say energetic, neural communication across space that isn't just words, sounds, sound waves, and vision, uh, photons. So, there's stuff happening at a distance and smell. I think we we vastly uh you know underestimate the extent to which pherommones and odors of people who are upset or you know there's a study showing that human tears of affect hormones and people around them. You need to have a 16-year-old boy around you when it comes to the sensitivity to smell and [laughter] perfumes being sold commercially these days. Oh my goodness. But the thing about distance is something that I'm very very interested in. I mean the awareness is mostly visual for dancers. Uh and it's usually established again in class. If you have a crow crowded class, you the distance can be the next one would be out here from this point. But a really crowded class, the distance might be out here. In which case, you're going to be angling yourself to the diagonal. So you're able to get full full reach which is going to impact on design right uh but there are also ways and it's very demanding actually and it requires a lot of trust on everybody's part where I can get dancers to work very close together and that has a real visual impact and it becomes a physical sensation of the person watching it can become an anxiety oh don't step on the she's going to get stepped on and it it you know there I'm kind of using it crassly and but it it's interesting to push people in uh into what's called one another's space uh and be able to condense the amount of area that people feel comfortable in or require which could be a very good thing culturally speaking because we got less and less space. Yeah, it's interesting that the the this notion of communication across space. If we could just continue down this path a bit. Last year I had the great honor really to do a lecture about music in the brain with Renee Fleming, the the the great opera singer. And we got on to this topic of the fact that the opera singers will capture an emotion. They're using their diaphragm in a very particular way, getting a certain frequency of vibration in their body, obviously using air, you know, shaping the air as it leaves their their lungs to to sing and how maybe that's actually impacting the same sets of neurons in the audience, but they're not singing. Okay. This is kind of interesting idea that we're you're feeling the emotion of the singer because your your frenic nerve, the nerve that controls the diaphragm, it might be vibrating at a similar frequency. Yeah, absolutely. This gets back to this like more I don't want to call them primitive but more fundamental aspects of language and communication. Yes. I wonder with dance and perhaps with athleticism too, like on a football field, when we see somebody move or people move in a certain way, whether or not there we don't realize it perhaps, but that there's almost the illusion that we're moving like that. Like we're accessing this idea of a portals like art as portals that we're we're actually sensing at some level what it would be like to move like that. And of course, I can't absolutely. I mean, you know these ocular glasses, right? That you believe that you're projecting yourself into that item up there and actually feeling it. Hello. Right. [clears throat] That must be what is is working, what's creating that illusion. You're not really inside that item, but you feel and believe as though you are. Yeah. I've done a VR where it's a you think you're in a different body. It's right. Really weird and kind of cool, I guess. So I I I'm a little terrified to deal with it or also I haven't taken the time to really expose myself to it. Um it definitely is of interest, but you know, when you talk about soccer or an athletic event, you know, you you can feel in boxing, you can feel the impact. You can feel how much poundage is behind that punch. Yeah. You boxed. Yeah. with Teddy Atlas as your trainer. We have some friends of Teddy Atlas around here. Uh what motivated that? I was in my early 40s and uh the Olympics were in LA and I was making a new piece and I wanted to compete. Uh but there are no competitions for what I do. I mean a dancer's range is much more than um and and athletes not to the same degree in specialization but across the border speed flexibility uh you know maneuverability in air uh coordination flexibility dancers got all of these components to a very high degree. So no events for uh me at the Olympics. uh but I could make a piece that would be highly athletic and I wanted to be in the very best possible shape I could be in. Uh so uh I decided uh that the training that was involved in a boxer being in shape uh was more extreme than what I was doing with my dancing regimen. Uh and that the you know the rope coordination, the stamina being involved, the power coming off the punch, the uh grounding of the body so that you had a punch, uh the willingness to take the blow in exchange for the unwillingness to go down. You would not go down. You're not going down. And we don't do that in dance. So I figured, well, I'll go where they do do that. So Teddy, we we were running steps backwards. This is a very good thing. I mean, you know, uh and the shadow boxing, it's a great great training format. Yeah, I agree. Um you know, as a neuroscientist, I have to put a call out against sparring for anyone who's not trying to make it a profession and maybe even for those that are, that's their choice. But um but speed bag work and um the vis the visual coordination that's involved is also incredible. near far, but also just switching from peripheral to central vision is I imagine it it improves the brain in many many ways except for the getting hit in the head part. Well, probably. And you're also well known for being quite strong. Tell us about your deadlift. Uh well I mean no uh it's I I was training with uh in a real weight gym with competitive weightlifters u and was very serious uh from the time I was probably in my 50s until mid60s say um and that you were nobody in that gym if you didn't do your body weight for three on the bench I mean you know what are you in here for right so it had that kind of uh require environment to it. Uh, which is very encouraging if you want to lift heavy weight. Uh, and also snapped ammonia, right? Which is like, okay, I actually never did that. But the jolt of pulling more weight off the ground than you really can do or you have ever done really does sound send a rush to the body that is unique. And what was your personal record? 227. 227 deadlift. Yep. Awesome. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, you just do it day in day out. And I wasn't, you know, you can't train day in day out, but training rigorously and continuously for probably eight or 10 years. Yeah. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So, to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an element packet dissolved in it. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So, if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's to claim a free sample pack. Several times you've mentioned the bar. Um, I think most of us understand there's a bar along the wall with a mirror sometimes behind it, etc. What for the uninformed like for me um what is what is bar work really about and what and could you give us an example of a few I mean is it designed to improve flexibility is it for what what is this notion of the bar? All the above. A bar is a set regimen of exercises that are developed to strengthen uh the structure of the body to basically approach the jumps to gain height in the air for the men, for the women if they're working on point. the strength in the legs and the torso to be able to support that weight in the little area down here. Uh and so it's developed essentially from bars evolved but basically their format is brilliantly designed uh and begins with uh usually pa uh which the terminology is French which means to fold. So you're folding the body in the pa you're folding, you're going down and the positions are first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. Okay, first you have actually one center that comes off of here and here or you're off to this side or you're off to that side. But if you're working very rigorously, you're working to develop that single center in first. Second is a much more evolved kind of higher muscular kind of situation where it's being supported from the torso and the leg muscles more than from the feet. The third position is never used because third looks like a bad fifth. So, it's just been eliminated, which is kind of too bad because I I actually do use third. Uh but not if I think it's at a moment where it could be judgmentally determined. Actually, it was an uncrossed fifth. Oh dear. Uh but in any case so third weight is somewhere between openly distributed and cross through a single center between the two legs. Okay this is the fourth right and the fifth that fourth is closed so that it's just a reduced even higher center. Okay. In these positions, first, second, usually not third, first, second, fourth, and fifth. Pa, first to bend, to fold. Uh, next tandra to stretch, to reach out from that base. Not so far as you're going to fall, but far enough so that you have to evolve and occupy a little bit more space each time you do it. And you will go first from the tandu to a pa to a tandu to a pa and then tandu to a straight leg which by drawing in you're pulling the center even higher and so therefore it comes later in the series of exercises. They're designed to evolve right. Uh after the uh the stretches comes the ranjam. One of the few exercises actually that's circular. Most of ballet comes from fencing. It's very linear. It's the attack. It's the retreat. But it doesn't have a whole lot of that going on unless somebody's gotten very ambition flamboyant with their fencing styles. Could be. I don't know. But in any case, random is the circling of the leg from a full fourth forward all the way to an open second all the way to a full fourth back all the way back to your second all the way back to your fourth. Forward and down. full rotation. Both sides, by the way, you're always reversing. Even the ones that are in a symmetrical position, you still reverse right and left because, as I'm sure you're well aware, right and left occupy your body all the time and are constantly arguing with one another. We have an interior conflict going on that makes almost anything else in life impossible. But so, we have right and left, which we're always trying to balance. Okay. After random you can have pat, which is little throws. Little throws. So from your fifth or from your first, you're reaching quickly out. Little darting movements, right? Then you can have frappe, which is to beat frappe. Uh, and so from the ankle, it'll be a flex foot that extends boom and boom. And all of this is about developing rev to lift to rev right uh up to the metatarsal as high as you can get pulling up through all of this rev. And this develops the strength that you need to jump because from the pa down you're going to drive up and the more power you have down here the more you can get up. That little extra eighth of an inch counts. Okay. Uh so frappe after frappe is grom botma the big botma the big throw all the way up and down but not all the way up changing the angle of the hip so that the rotation is going to alter the line holding the hip straight through up e up e up either through fourth or through second or through arabesque and back. Those are the fundamentals. Now, if you're Merse Cunningham, you can operate in all of the interstases through all of that, but you still have the regulation of the body's map. And that's what the ballet has already done. Amazing. Not amazing. Just very highly evolved in terms of how to control movement in terms of strengthening and developing the body. Did the people that developed this um care about the underlying physiology or they just and I'm not saying they should, but it seems like an incredible intuition at least that they came up with it. You'll forgive me for saying something stupid like this. The body is very smart. And one of my problems has always been what knows what first. Okay. Does the body already get it brain? and we're trying to educate you or is it brain telling body what to do in the case of the classical technique I think it's actually the body that feels that it could get a little higher if only its rotation were a little more open so it urges that that I don't think brain is going well you know what if you actually could open that leg out you go higher and you're going brain I don't know about that what does that You don't know what it means. The body knows what that means. I've heard it said, you know, we think that we're a brain with a body, but perhaps we were a body with that later got a brain. There are certain sophisticated movements, rhythms and so forth. I mean, for example, great composer is a great mathematician, right? um and the indications and um the divisions of time um uh I would accept is coming you know particularly because of how you see the notation and how the um note can be subdivided it's a very visual thing once you're into the eye you're into the brain I mean you know it's like do you know what I'm saying this is more about the body and this how the toes are going about its business down here are very much involved about the body. Yeah. Thinking sometimes is really overrated when For sure. Yeah. Yeah. As human oldw world primates, which we are, um, we got a bunch more machinery up front in the prefrontal cortex, which let us think and plan and reflect and strategize a lot more. Also allowed humans to do bad things a lot more. trickery and things like that, but also to plan really incredible wonderful things, but I do think it in many ways it was at the expense of some of the machinery involved in these I I hate use the language lower let's just say more fun fundamental intuition. I year I'm not I don't want to give a too many anecdotes but years ago I developed an obsession with comparative neurology. There's this beautiful journal. hundreds of years old called the journal of comparative neurology. I was fortunate enough to participate with that journal but you know for a while reviewing these papers which for by for modern science people don't really care about these they're like what is the cerebellar vermish shape of the you know what of the atlas turtle I don't even know if there's an atlas turtle but I just guess we were talking about teddy atlas of the whatever right of the of the two toaded three toes whatever all these weird species but no single paper teaches you that much except about this really arcane thing about the malard duck hypothalamus or something. I'm sure that paper's in there, by the way. But when you start comparing the nervous systems of these different animals and the way they move and the way they think, because there are…

Transcript truncated. Watch the full video for the complete content.