Daniel Vitalis (00:01.962)
Well, I've got a really special guest today, someone I haven't seen in probably in person, I bet it's been 10 years. And that's Erwin Le Corre from most famously from Move.net, old friend of mine, somebody who's really inspired me and somebody whose work, my work and his work have kind of been on parallel trajectories leading people from the hyper domesticated built environment back into nature. And I'm just so excited to see what he's doing today. Erwin, welcome to the show.
Erwan (00:31.458)
Thank you, Daniel. So glad to be here.
Daniel Vitalis (00:33.322)
It's such a pleasure to see you again and to talk with you again. I wanted to say, just in the background behind me, I've only got a handful of books there on the set, but I've got all my shelves over here, but your book is actually on the shelf back there. Let me go grab it.
Erwan (00:50.702)
Thank you, that means a lot to me.
Daniel Vitalis (00:51.946)
for people but highly
You know, and it's funny because I remember when you were just finishing putting the finishing touches on it and you were telling me, you know, I've been working on this book for a really long time. And when people say that, a lot of times the book comes out and you're like, they, they maybe got lost along the way. And I remember it coming out and being like, wow, you know, like you really it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book. So for people into movement, people into exercise is something you want to have on your shelf, but
I'd love to hear a little bit of the backstory, man. Catch me up to modern times. How'd you, tell us the path that led you here today.
Erwan (01:30.776)
the path of being a kid who was lucky that I grew up close to a woods like the woods were right there outside the door. And those woods were special because they was really lots of hills and also lots of boulders. If anybody does rock climbing and knows the Mecca of rock climbing or bouldering in France called Fontainebleau, it was like a mini Fontainebleau right outside.
And I believe that that's what in a big part led me to what I do today because I was playing natural movement, climbing, jumping, balancing, crawling, doing all these things from an early age. Actually, my dad encouraged me to go there, showed me a few moves too. And then it always stuck with me.
the naturalness of the words, it made me feel, how capable I felt, the self-esteem that came from overcoming some of the obstacles that I pushed myself to overcome. And as an adult, I wanted to live a conventional life, To me, was, no, this thing is going to kill me. It's going to be a slow death.
Daniel Vitalis (02:58.986)
Yeah.
Erwan (02:59.124)
And so I had that maverick mindset. Ultimately in my thirties, I discovered that in the past, there was a whole history of physical education, basically that was mostly based on those natural movements that I was practicing. And I studied that, that past and, and I realized that I was maybe in a good position to bring this back to the world.
and that sounded ambitious or impossible and yet by the grace of God I managed to make that happen in the form of what's called today the move that method and that term natural movement that I've coined back in the days because nobody knew what it was.
It's organic, it's intuitive. It happens maybe non-linearly on the surface and maybe very linearly under the hood. don't know.
Daniel Vitalis (04:03.112)
Yeah, well, that's what's neat about the book is you see sort of underlying movement patterns and structures. You that's what I learned in your workshop as well. And then you can sort of organically freestyle those things. But, you know, it's like the body only moves in so many different ways. And so I appreciate how you cataloged that so effectively.
Erwan (04:22.862)
Yeah, exactly. That's a very good point. did want it to, let's say, map this territory. In fact, I wanted to give it a name like natural movement and then the movement being the the method for natural movement. But why natural movement? Because back in the days when people said natural movement first, so first off, nobody talked about natural movement back then. But even when I did talk about it, they thought, that's maybe yoga or Tai Chi or some kind of
oriental, eastern type of discipline. And I said, no, it's actually what we all do when we're kids, universally on every continent. It's we crawl, we move in those instinctive ways. We learn to stand, but then we jump and we land and we hang and we climb and we throw things and we balance and do all these movements. So it's really universal to
all human beings, we all have done it, all of us when we kids. And I thought, how come that there is no name for it? And because there is no name, how come there is no recognition? It's like something that is not even valued when it should be put on a, it would be at the top of the hierarchy, basically at the top of the pyramid. So I wanted to name it to
not catalog maybe but to map it, to systemize it because yes you can do it instinctively again we all have done it as kids but then because of my background in martial arts and other sports I realized also the importance of technique of systematic training and I wanted to merge both
Because otherwise, if you just say, all I have to do is go in the woods and it's going to happen, you're going to unleash your wild self. And it doesn't happen that way. It's not true. Especially in modern humans. So I wanted to bring an effective, efficient method to inspire people to do it, to practice it, but also to teach them with progressions.
Daniel Vitalis (06:29.972)
doesn't know it doesn't.
Yeah.
Erwan (06:47.126)
and with that martial artist mindset which is seek high efficiency don't just jump like a jackass there are diverse techniques all of them can be mastered you can improve your skill and your physical conditioning at the same time if you
Learn to be mindful in the way you move and highly technical so I started to do that in the woods myself That's the way I trained and then I started to train people that way and Almost two decades later. We're still at it. We're still doing it
Daniel Vitalis (07:26.25)
How many people have you guys run through your programs over the years? you even have a sense of it? mean, it's the number must be huge.
Erwan (07:34.561)
That's thousands. We have probably 2000 people who are certified around the world. That's in many countries. We have Japan, have whatever. So it has not yet reached, let's say, it's still an approach that a lot of people still scratch their head about.
You know, because they want to go to the gym. They were told that fitness, real fitness happens in a gym. And there's a whole industry that, that perpetuates that, that idea. And, it's basically, David versus Goliath, you know, it's metaphorically, it's, it's true. It's a reality that,
Daniel Vitalis (08:22.066)
Yeah.
Erwan (08:31.672)
Society has expectations that that have been shaped a certain way and made in a certain way because of the multi-billion industry the interest of that industry are and so you know they are using powerful marketing machines to keep Having people think that that's how they exercise go to the gym Use the machines to you know isolate your muscles
And then isolate your energy system. So do strength on one side, do cardio separately. But, but then like, aside from us, nobody tells people, you know what, you could move naturally the way you were designed to the way you used to when you were kids. It's, it's phenomenal. It's fun, but it's challenging. It's liberating. You become physically capable for the real world.
It gives you amazing self-esteem. can change your body too, but most importantly, it gives you a fantastic mindset, a great experience. You feel free. You can do that outdoors most of the time.
I don't know people you know it's we do reach a lot of people but we don't reach a majority of people because majority of people still think that they have to go to the gym to do their biceps curls and their and their glute
Daniel Vitalis (10:01.643)
Right. I heard you recently saying that the sorry that last part what'd say?
Erwan (10:07.456)
And their glutes and what not, know, whatever body part or muscles that seem to matter more than other muscles, you know, like the glutes matter lot, the abs and the pecs and maybe the shoulders.
Daniel Vitalis (10:09.643)
Yeah.
Daniel Vitalis (10:21.151)
Well, you know, it reminds me of like the filters people use where you're trying to enhance what you assume either the opposite sex is attracted to and or what, you know, your sex is impressed by, right? I think the biceps are less about the ladies and more about the other guys, right? And women do a lot of things that are less about the guys and more about the women who see them. So we have this like social sense of how we should look. And having done that kind of training growing up, my experience was it created so much
so much dysfunction, of course, because you isolate a body that doesn't move in isolation. And next thing you know, you're picking up your groceries like a bicep curl and instead of fluidly moving. So that's one component. But I want to go back and say I first the first time I ever saw you, you know, was probably 1213 14 years ago, you had a video that must have just I mean, it blew up. It was like you doing park what most people think of like parkour type movements, but outside and
At that time, I'd only seen parkour in the built environment, which is interesting. But I saw you moving and it was like, this is like trying to run behind a chimpanzee or something like how's this guy doing this because even though when you see parkour athletes impressively moving through urban environments, it's still on flat surfaces, 90 degree angles, predictable textures, predictable, everything is predictable and known because you're in the built environment. I have this model when I teach
seminars, I'll talk about like three worlds. One is the natural world. One's the built environment. And one is like the artificial digital environment. And people are kind of living in all three of these. But most people have lost the ability to be in the natural world. They're just so often in the built and digital environment. They go into the natural world and they don't necessarily even understand what they're seeing half the time. It's like a wall of green and they don't know how to disambiguate things or what's what. So
Seeing you move like that, I remember being like, oh, this is what humans are capable of. But I also wanted to say what I liked about how you teach it, like you said, it's not just going to the woods, go crazy. It was very systematic. The way I've learned anything else that's skill-based, breaking it down, working repetitions, linking the broken parts together until you get fluid, I mean, it was very systematic in the approach. And I really appreciated that too. So I want people to know that about it who aren't familiar that it's a
Daniel Vitalis (12:44.988)
It's not a willy-nilly approach, but it's done in environments that aren't predictable, because that's the real world. And I happen to be somebody who likes gyms, but I've listened to you quite a bit, like pick on the gym environment, which I totally understand, because it's a boring environment, and it's an information-poor environment. So I was wondering if you could break that piece down a little bit, because the indoor built environment, even if you have a lot of complexity, is always massively truncated and simplified compared to the natural environment, which has
almost infinite variables. You must have grown up with friends who were doing parkour in the urban environment and you must have peeled off at some point and said, I'm gonna go do my thing outside. I'm kind of curious about that and how those unconventional urban athletes saw what you were doing because I'm sure even they were like, I don't wanna try to do that, that looks too dangerous.
Erwan (13:38.958)
So it's a method. The method is important when you said it had to be systematic and it still is systematic. A method is important because otherwise you just ask yourself if you don't know what to do you just ask yourself what should I do? You may go to the woods and not know exactly what to do or try a jump and slide and hurt yourself. don't know.
but not knowing what is the most efficient way to approach your training. So in that regard, being outside is not necessarily, or in nature, is not always the first step because it's just like every, the training of anything complex.
For instance, you are a samurai, you're not going to go to battle straight up as a young samurai because that's the way you learn. No. As a kid, you're to years of training of variety of out of context movements. So learn to learn before you even handle a sword, you handle a piece of bamboo and you learn to
Daniel Vitalis (14:47.467)
That's the way you die.
Erwan (15:06.23)
correct angle, correct timing etc. So basically you take the movement out of its most challenging context which is the only way that a beginner can learn to do it before the environment, the outside of the person becomes challenging. So if you apply that to natural movement then it's perfectly fine to bring the practice
to environments that are predictable, are stable, that are safe. Why? Because first you learn the efficient behavior. The movement is a behavior. There are patterns to it. There are techniques to it. It can be explained. It can be taught. It can be duplicated exactly the same way for optimum efficiency. And you can do that a way
from the complex environments, those that you cannot control, those that have such a variety of variables, texture, know, like mud, ice, sand, rocks, different shapes, everything. This is...
This kind of environments, wild environments, they are either an absolute bliss for the person who loves them and they're a nightmare for those who are not trained for them, who don't like them, never exposed to them. So we can train complete beginners first controlling their movement behavior, the techniques of their natural movement for efficiency starting with the
Daniel Vitalis (16:38.923)
Hmm
Erwan (16:56.674)
breathing control in control or semi-control environment. And as they become better, then they start to go adapt, practice and adapt those movements to more challenging, wilder, more natural environments. So that's the process. it's not either or, it's not all outdoors.
or all indoors, it's a matter of method who is being trained with what level, with what expectation, with et cetera. So that's the way it works. As for the difference between that and what's done in gym environments, well,
Since we're talking about behavior, imagine that you are filming a person moving in nature, moving naturally in nature, not just hiking. And then a person doing their workout in the gym. You film that and then with AI or something, you remove the background.
Erwan (18:12.856)
So imagine now what you see. And then you could even like remove the human likeliness and you just have segments and angles. So you do a biceps curl so you would see like a stick figure sitting and just the biceps going like this and
Daniel Vitalis (18:25.833)
Yeah.
Erwan (18:36.482)
That would be it. But then you would see the person moving in nature, jumping and then moving all fours and you would see all these stick figures, all the variety of movements and the variations and the transitions would be mind blowing in variety compared to what you would see in the gym setting. And by the way, between movement, between sets, what does the person in the gym do?
They either sit or they stand.
Daniel Vitalis (19:07.603)
or go on their phone.
Erwan (19:09.806)
Exactly. In nature it's very different. And that's just from the movement behavior perspective. But what we understand is that it's absolutely not just physical, Because what is the device that makes the body move? It's the brain. And the brain that trains the body.
and basically controls the body and orders the body to do this variety of movements. Movements themselves being way more complex than in the gym. Since the gym, it's also a lot of machines that literally limit and shape your movement. So it's very segmental. It's very compartmentalized. In nature, it's way more full body movement. So not only those movements are more complete,
Daniel Vitalis (19:55.199)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Erwan (20:06.57)
are more complex and on top of that you're going to perform them in environments that are not controlled. are non-symmetrical, are non- often they're unstable or they are they change a lot.
How do you handle those movements? Well, it's actually through the body but it's with the mind. And it's with the mind which is attention and it's also the whole nervous system. So it's way more complex. the last point that I want to make Daniel is even from the neurological perspective.
Daniel Vitalis (20:33.033)
Yeah.
Erwan (20:50.828)
not just the physiological perspective, but neurological perspective, natural movement done outside has way more benefits for your physical and mental health. And if you want to go into the biology and know that you're extremely well versed also in all these aspects of health, of physiology and biology, then you have the grounding, you have the sunlight, you have the energies of nature, the plants, the, you know, the...
the green light, the electromagnetism, so many sources of energy, how the diverse smells also will activate parts of your brain, including your memory. It's a place of absolute vitality that you can really re-energize your whole being physically, mentally and literally spiritually as well.
So to me, it's a no brainer. I'm not going to spend much time if any ever in a gym to under artificial lights, all artificial air that I'm electromagnetic, you know, no, thank you. No, not interested.
Daniel Vitalis (21:59.852)
you
Daniel Vitalis (22:05.779)
You
Daniel Vitalis (22:12.556)
Well, it's I used to tease the biohacking people all the time because they would be like, they would break all this stuff up, right? So it'd be like, well, I go do my exercises, then I've got to go get my fresh air. Then I've got to go get my grounding in and then you know, and the my watch is saying I'm not feeling good. So I guess I shouldn't train today, you know, and they're doing all of the everything's like all broken up. And I would point out when you go, one of the things I loved, I love about hunting and fishing and foraging, because I'm going to just get food, but I'm getting
fresh air, I'm getting the sun, I'm getting the grounding, I'm getting the exposure. It's like what you're talking about, you're getting it all in one package so you don't have to try to stack a whole bunch of dysfunctional blocks together and create a whole, right?
Erwan (22:45.262)
Beautiful.
Erwan (22:54.03)
Exactly, Daniel. It's not compartmentalized and biohacking compartmentalizes everything. And in the same way, normal conventional modern life compartmentalizes everything. When you go back in nature to move, you're not compartmentalizing. And when you are going in nature like you do, not just to move, but to forage and hunt and procure food, it's even to me, it's even
Daniel Vitalis (22:59.061)
Yeah.
Erwan (23:24.046)
It's the next level. It's a different emphasis, but in the end You need food and food is more important than it's a movement mastery even though Of course having great body control and and movement mastery in nature which by the way movement mastery even You know in the end one mistake and nature defeats you with that
Daniel Vitalis (23:31.263)
Yeah.
Erwan (23:53.375)
even fighting you, it's just you defeat yourself. And you know, watch YouTube, sometimes you see videos of absolutely wild animals trying a movement and messing big time and falling like and it's hilarious because you would not expect such wild extremely
well-trained animals to ever miss a movement and yet they do. So it's also normal and natural to also fail your movement the same way you can fail a set or a rep in a gym. definitely, ultimately, you can't go wrong when you shift more of a natural way in whatever
is your pursuit that it is movement or hunting foraging or learning about plants and animals or just just being in nature is just being surrounded by nature doing nothing wanting nothing just being there you can't go wrong right maybe if it's in middle of a blizzard and
Daniel Vitalis (25:07.339)
Yeah, wanting nothing. That's a great way to say that.
Erwan (25:15.128)
There's a huge grizzly next to you or something bad like that, but otherwise when the weather is agreeable and or you're well equipped and you know what you're doing, but you know what I mean. Anybody can just go if you have a backyard, if you're fortunate, you have a backyard and you have a lot, you have some land there, have even if it's not even one acre, but you have dirt.
Daniel Vitalis (25:19.124)
Yeah.
Erwan (25:44.825)
You have maybe grass, maybe you have one tree and then you have a horizon and then you have the air, fresh air and then you have sunlight. You're wealthy man because you can absorb all this energy every day. All you have to do step outside and put the phone aside and the screens aside and just reconnect.
Daniel Vitalis (25:59.595)
Yeah.
Erwan (26:12.671)
Renaturalize, rewild, whatever term you want to use, it's the same idea. And by the way, we talk about the natural world as if it's only and exclusively something that's outside of us, not remembering that we are it. We are that natural world. The whole biology is made of it, all our cells. Even if we live in artificial environments.
We need food every day and that food comes from where?
Daniel Vitalis (26:46.442)
Yeah, living creatures, man, from nature. Can't synthesize food, not yet.
Erwan (26:48.527)
Yes, exactly. Right, exactly.
Daniel Vitalis (26:54.614)
Yeah.
First, I want to just comment on what you said about being rich on just a patch of dirt with some sunlight in a tree because I'm thinking about all these famous, you know, Playboy billionaires that we know about now and and some of them you see starting to actually try to get in shape and that I not commend them for that but but that doesn't look like wealth to me. It looks like power but it's like there's a
There's something missing, you know? And it's so interesting how I think you could be a happier person with nothing than, I just don't see those people and think they're winning. think like, man, they're sick, they're sad, they're struggling to maintain power and control constantly, they are surrounded by security, they can never be alone. It's just like, ugh, I'm just, I think I'd be happier with that patch of dirt, but I also wanted to get your take on something.
Looking back through history, you know, unless you were maybe in the warrior class or you were an acrobat or something like that, like most people wouldn't have trained exercise and movement that intentionally their lives demanded so much work physically, that, you know, people weren't developing the so called diseases of civilization, the degenerative diseases because their day to day life was so full and the environment was so much less polluted.
You had so much more fresh air. The skies were still clear overhead. know, like you were eating organic food by default because there wasn't even chemical application invented yet. And so people were living just healthier lives just in an integrated way. And then we have the industrial revolution and we use machines to replace labor. And the idea is, this is going to be great. You're going have all this free time. And really, as we all know, what happened is your workload doubles because you're now expected to do more with that time.
Daniel Vitalis (28:48.832)
but also the machines take over the labor and people stop moving. And overnight, what do we just get this epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, neurodegeneration, because like you said, the brain needs to be moving the body. Okay, so now we're trying to recreate through recreation, recreation, we're trying to recreate all of the movement again. And I've heard you say recently that the gym environment's like essentially a failed experiment, like that's not gonna yield.
that's eventually gonna, it's not sustainable, it's gonna die off. But we're trying to figure out like hamsters on a wheel how to move again. Now we're being handed a new technology, AI, and it's going to think for us. And so I'm curious how you see that landing in a world where machines replaced labor and people got sick and fat and had to learn how to move again. What do you see happening with our minds? Because I know in my own lifetime I experienced
the loss of the memorization of phone numbers, the loss of quick recall on math. And that was just because of my basic calculator on my phone and my contact page. Now, people are walking around, chat GPT, what should I eat for breakfast? Chat GPT, when should I go to the bathroom? not knowing how to even think anymore, their watches tell them how they feel when they wake up and if they're recovered or not. And I know that a lot of your work is leaning towards consciousness and control of the inner environment and the mind.
and I'm wondering how you're seeing these new tools and what kind of impact you think they're gonna have and then what should we, can we be doing because I keep joking like you're gonna see mind gyms where people are gonna go do math problems instead of bicep curls. How do you see this playing out?
Erwan (30:36.399)
It's very interesting question.
Erwan (30:41.919)
It's like trying to be a fortune teller. But yeah, it's a very good analogy that you made, which is that when through and thanks to the industrial revolution and then electricity, there was such a surge of power, electric power was huge. All of a sudden you either didn't need all this labor, all these people.
Daniel Vitalis (30:44.907)
Yeah.
Erwan (31:12.227)
for a given job or you could have your output and your production multiply tenfold or more thanks to electricity. So whoever had access to electricity first and was a capitalist was in a position to generate a lot of energy out of that energy to produce a lot out of that energy and therefore to capitalize.
And this is exactly what happened. Yes. You mentioned you mentioned billionaires and are they are they actually winning at life? Are they actually happy? I see where you're you're where you're going with your reflection, which is what actually matters in the end is. Is life the the intangible?
Daniel Vitalis (31:42.648)
make a lot of currency. It's like a lecture currency turned into actual currency.
Erwan (32:11.497)
or seemingly intangible side of life which is basically consciousness and is that consciousness happy is that consciousness actually conscious it is aware is it worth it is it meaningful is it purposeful is it does it have qualities to it is it worth pursuing or being lived
beside what we call reality, what we call the material world. But when we really think about it, what really matters in our lives is that consciousness. Because what we remember about, instance, anything we've lived, we may remember the places, the people, the aspects of the context. But most importantly, what we remember is how such a such event
made us feel.
Erwan (33:07.939)
We don't remember primarily if we think of our memories, the most important memories of those that matter the most to us.
those that meant the most, either in a positive way or negative way, pleasant way or unpleasant way. Those are the main memories. Why are they the main memories? Because there's always an emotional intensity about that. There's an emotional intensity about those events. Therefore, they have the most value. They have the most meaning to us.
Is this tangible? It's absolutely tangible. it does show that beyond whatever is in our bank account or the car we own or the house we own or don't own or all these material aspects of life, our diet, our fitness routines, all of these things. What we are truly pursuing is specific experiences that we value and specific emotions.
the way those experiences make us feel. Alrighty, so back to the industrial revolution. A lot of jobs disappeared. A lot of jobs were created. So there are consequences. Some are not so good.
Some were probably investigating maybe a lot of people lost their job because electricity changed everything production change the price of things that were normally made by hand
Erwan (34:58.637)
went down significantly, but at the same time, many more jobs were created. So with AI, I suspect that something similar is going to happen. I do work with AI. I am interested in AI because I find it very stimulating intellectually. It actually by...
working with AI and understanding how I need to train it to make it work the way I want, it mirrors some of my own cognitive processes and makes me reconsider them. And when I demand specific behaviors from the AI that I train, then I reflect on myself and the, how about the demands on your own cognitive processes?
Daniel Vitalis (35:52.813)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (35:53.519)
So it's very stimulating. It makes me think not more, it makes me think better, which is one of my pursuits, is consciousness. But that's because of my approach to it. That's because I'm demanding on my own cognitive system. So basically,
Daniel Vitalis (36:12.813)
Right,
Erwan (36:18.467)
You mentioned AI as now people are asking what they should eat and what they should do. So they're asking basically AI to do the thinking for them. So they start to externalize their thinking. They externalize basically their also their, their decision making their the strategy for the personal life. So it's not just memory. So memory already being a big part of it.
But now it's literally cognitive processes, more advanced cognitive processes that we normally have to handle ourselves within our own mind. Now we can delegate to a technology in our pocket or on our desktop. How is this going to impact basically our intelligence, our own cognitive system? If you are not
discriminate already, it's very likely that you will lose cognitive abilities. You're going to be given answers to your questions by a system that pretends to know you or understand you but that is not actually a human mind and certainly it is not your mind.
and to take it for at face value. So your critical thinking goes, as we say in French, through the window. And anything that isn't trained is always meant to shrink and then to disappear. You put an orca in a swimming pool and they still look at an orca 10 years later of captivity.
but some of their, like their fin have shrunk some of their ability.
Daniel Vitalis (38:14.299)
Flop's over.
Erwan (38:16.971)
Exactly, because you don't use it, you lose it. So whenever you ask AI to do thinking for you, starting with for instance, write this for me. Okay, and you think it's just a petty task, but you don't realize, wait a minute, to write a text, this is high cognitive function, because it has to do with words. Therefore it has to do with meaning.
The four has to do with intention, expectations, concept, insight, name it, philosophy, strategy, all of that. It's not just text. It's basically what is text. Text is printed or digital.
Daniel Vitalis (38:43.991)
Yeah.
Erwan (39:02.859)
speech and what is thinking it's silent speech thinking people think i'm thinking i'm not speaking you are speaking speech in your mind that only you can hear you're the one who talks and you're the one who listens that's what thinking is about so now you normally do the thinking yourself and now you're asking your technology to do the thinking for you what do you think is going to happen to your thinking
Daniel Vitalis (39:04.332)
Mmm.
Daniel Vitalis (39:13.741)
Mmm.
Daniel Vitalis (39:17.613)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (39:33.295)
So this has a tremendous implication. So what I believe is that the people who are not critical thinkers in the first place will suffer from the cognitive perspective because they are relying on an artificial cognitive system, which is an LLM.
They're not doing the work themselves anymore.
And so it's meant to dumb you down. Right. But people who are thinking
in a different way can actually potentially improve their own cognitive system.
And in any case, simply leverage the advantage or the power of AI to improve the work, to learn, to advance the projects faster, better. And that is indeed happening. So how you use it is the most important question. is not, is it good or not good? Is AI beneficial, not beneficial?
Erwan (40:58.849)
It depends how you use it. Most importantly, are you aware of how it may impact your mind? And the last question is, were you even aware in the first place of how you have been impacting your own mind? The mind that you are?
Daniel Vitalis (41:01.291)
Hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (41:10.509)
Yeah.
Erwan (41:23.257)
How has that mind that you are been impacting itself all along for those decades you've been alive and therefore aware conscious and thinking and operating that cognitive system that you are? Because if you've never examined that, why are you talking about AI and the problems or whatever? Have you already investigated the mind that you are? That's question.
Daniel Vitalis (41:25.517)
Yeah.
Daniel Vitalis (41:29.997)
Yeah.
Daniel Vitalis (41:36.619)
Hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (41:50.796)
Hmm. Yeah, that's a really big question. And it you know, you're making me think about the idea of bifurcation of our species a little bit. Because if you're already somebody who isn't taking care of your physical body, and then you're also now going to let your mind go. And then you've got another group of people who's like, I'm to not only maintain my fitness, but I'm going to leverage AI for a more powerful output, but maintain my cognition.
you're gonna end up with some radically, you know, you can already see, you have to be so careful saying these things, but you know, there's certain giant department stores spread out throughout the United States where you could go into them and see a class of person who hasn't really cared for themselves, cognitively or physically, and you can see like, whoa, where are these folks headed? You know, and then you can go into an environment where people take care of themselves and you're like, whoa, it's like a, you know, it's like as different as, as,
two different types of breeds of dogs are in a sense, even though they're the same species, they, you know, we're heading in like radically different directions and it just seems like, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people who don't know how to think anymore. I have been doing things like math workbooks, I've been doing things like playing chess, I've been doing things like, you know, memorization games and tools, not games, but memorizing scripture really is what I've been doing because I feel like I just need to keep these circuits.
Erwan (42:50.062)
Yes.
Daniel Vitalis (43:17.261)
functioning because as somebody who's since I was born I have been obsessed with learning I just can't I'm fiendishly I can't stop and that used to not be such a problem because I had the access to information was so was the aperture was small so go to the library grab a stack of books you just could only learn so much it was hard now it's a non-stop you know
freight train of information and I have to be so discerning because I want to gobble it all up. I want to learn everything and it's like I have to really be careful and the reason is I'll burn myself out and that leads me to want to take this conversation a slightly different direction now which is
I okay, I like it when I get my cherished ideas destroyed because I like finding out that my paradigm was wrong. I enjoy it. But sometimes it's hard and I saw a post of yours today that had three three you were claiming three fallacies of thought that we have going one was that co2 tolerance forcing you to breathe is a myth. The other one was that there's better methods than conventional meditation. But the third one was that was the idea of nervous system regulation, which is something that I'm
thinking about all the time. Many of the practitioners I know are thinking about all the time. How do we regulate the autonomic nervous system because we're in such a constant state of, you know, this sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight stimulation. And so I met constantly having conversations with people about this. And then I saw your post today and I was like, I have to ask because from where I'm sitting in this, maybe it's still the old paradigm or maybe there's an integration there but
I'm going like, hey, this is really important because otherwise I'll be living on adrenaline and burning myself out. So, you my meditation, my prayer, my reading, my sauna, whatever it is that brings me back down to a baseline seems really important. And I wanna just take that and hand it over to you and see like, how are you thinking about that? And, you know, leave it to you to go into this area of breath control and make a bunch of discoveries that under.
Daniel Vitalis (45:27.808)
undermine a whole bunch of old thoughts, you know, like I love that, but I want to hear like how you're thinking about that.
Erwan (45:33.347)
Okay, so first off, there's nothing about what you said that I feel compelled to destroy on the other on the opposite. want to applaud you for being so
diligent about keeping yourself let's say not just healthy but also competent and meaningful and purposeful at all levels of energy I would say physical, mental and spiritual as well. I like to say
that life is the practice of energy. And I'm not saying that from the perspective of some mysterious chakra energy or something like that. Indeed, all we are is energy and in fact we're systems of energy within an energy system. And so they all need to be understood and learned and practiced or at least regulated.
That's what you do when you read a book. When you learn something, you may not see that as a regulation by the way, Daniel, but it is a form of regulation. see regulation is not just when all of a sudden maybe you feel a little overwhelmed or too fast or maybe you experience a slight bout of anxiety or whatever it could be and then you think I need some exercise like a breath exercise.
to regulate, feel good and centered again. You're already doing that when you read a book. You're already doing that when you memorize a scripture. You're already doing that when you learn how to process that specific fish or whatever it is that you're learning and doing, right? In everything you do, you are actually mindful. It's very reminiscent of
Erwan (47:40.739)
the practice of excellence by the Japanese people and their culture like the samurais none of what they do was actually done casually because once they understood the importance of mastery and how deep any practice could be brought to how high and deep in understanding and refinement
Daniel Vitalis (47:44.973)
you
Erwan (48:10.541)
Let's say they would do that with the sword, but then they would do that with their body, would do that with their mind and they would apply to anything they would do. And this is a sign of high level intelligence as a matter of fact, because it's a whole, it's mindfulness, not just applied to a moment where you sit and you meditate, it's mindfulness in motion.
in everything that you do.
So it's a beautiful thing. There's nothing to be destroyed here on the contrary. This, to me, this kind of approach to life has to be honored and celebrated. We wish more individuals were to operate the consciousness that they are at this level. Because there are levels to this game. I know it's...
politically correct to say we're all the same, we're all equal, we all have the same value, etc. But I'm sorry, who really just eats junk all day and maybe does drugs and scrolls on stupid things all day on the watch TV and all these things, there's zero examination. There's zero challenge. There's zero
elevation there. So you can't say that this is equal to somebody who has a very dedicated, devout, preset of high level integrity and high level meaning in their life. It's not comparable. And if we thought one second that it is comparable, then that means that we are
Erwan (50:10.391)
We believe that there's no hierarchy in life in the sense there's no values, there's no right and wrong, there is no good and bad, there is no superior in theory. I know, I know. But that's the idea because when you start to believe that then
Daniel Vitalis (50:18.637)
Well, I've been hearing that message on CNN for like since 2015.
Erwan (50:30.819)
Why would you ever pursue any form of excellence or even improvement for yourself? No. And the more people believe in that bullshit, the more you can dumb down the whole society to, you know, levelling down, levelling down, levelling down, levelling down. And then you can start pointing at the one or the few who tries to elevate their game, their consciousness, their understanding, their cognitive abilities, their physical vitality, their physical capability, all of that.
They pay a price every day with decisions. They make decisions, they organize, they commit, self-discipline, they question, they adjust. It's a person and they start to tell these people, you're some kind of an elite, you think you're special, you're... No, why don't you level down physically, biologically? Why don't you eat shit? Why don't you consume the stupid shows all day? Why don't you do drugs? Why don't you...
How about you know complete life debauchery and then finally you'll have some value finally you'll be you'll be vol
Daniel Vitalis (51:39.577)
Be one of us.
Erwan (51:40.963)
Right? Exactly. So you see, that's a big trick. That's a, that's an, you know, in nature, can trap game. Predators will trap you, even if they don't make traps. Predators will use strategies to deceive you so that they can catch you and consume you. Right? There is a whole system out there that is doing exactly that.
mass scale, trapping people, deceiving them so that they can consume them, so that they can bring all levels of their energy down, down, down, leading to ultimately to depression, to powerlessness, to very low self-esteem, and to compliance.
Daniel Vitalis (52:36.847)
Probably how an animal in a factory farm feels.
Erwan (52:40.591)
precisely. So once you understand that exactly, because at first maybe you're interested in, what can I do to lose weight? Or what can I do to be more in shape? Or what can I do? Can I meditate so that maybe I think a little less? Things like that. Looking for little patches, looking for a bit of medicine in the world or in a system that is literally engineered to make you
Daniel Vitalis (52:41.784)
also to be consumed.
Erwan (53:10.383)
suffer through pleasures and conveniences. And you start with that and that's fine, right? But then you start to unravel the whole thing. Ultimately, you must unravel the reality that the whole system is not your friend. Like McKenna said, culture is not your friend.
So once you understand the culture is not your friend, you must cultivate something else. You must cultivate a different culture. And it starts with you because you cannot rely on the existing culture to support your endeavor. And what people like you and I do Daniel is that not only we've been doing that for decades because we've been aware for that long.
But on top of that is that we've designed systems or ways to communicate and a podcast or a book and products, all types of, the whole ecosystem because our heart is not just to know these things and have this awareness and just save ourselves only, we want to help others.
We may have questioned even a bit, you know, what's going on and why is it that they struggle? Why is it that they suffer and what can they do to live a healthier life and a happier life and more free life and a stronger life? And whatever we've learned along the way, we are eager to share. And so we've organized our day-to-day activities and our professional activities to find a ways not only to just serve our personal endeavors.
but also to serve others back in the sense of, have you thought about that? Have you considered this? Have you paid attention to this? Are you learning this? Are you doing this? This would be good for you if you did. And so it's a mission, but that comes from the soul, that comes from the heart. And there's nothing we can do about this. We have to do it because if we weren't to share what we believe we know with the world and that is helpful to others and can help them be healthier.
Erwan (55:36.257)
and happier, then we would feel very lame and very selfish. So that's something we must do. All right, so back to the regulation. Everything we do is regulation.
Daniel Vitalis (55:41.263)
you
Erwan (55:55.765)
and everyone is regulating all the time. So when we hear about nervous system regulation,
we think of some whatever protocol, whatever meditation or breath work that we need to do.
Daniel Vitalis (56:10.256)
Yeah.
Erwan (56:16.463)
Everybody has a nervous system. Why? Because everybody is a nervous system.
Hello, that's where we are. So that nervous system is constantly regulating itself.
So when we eat, we regulate. When we don't eat, we also regulate. Because we're digesting. When we move, even if it's standing and walking a few steps, we regulate. When we walk the door outside, we regulate. We don't just regulate the dog, we regulate ourselves too.
Daniel Vitalis (56:52.304)
Yeah.
Erwan (56:54.381)
And then when we sit, we regulate. When we think we regulate, when we want a distraction through a show or something, we won't be free of concern. We are regulating too, because at some point thinking means being concerned and concerning ourselves. And then it become overwhelming and we're like, wait a minute. Okay, I was trying to regulate.
my situation and my life and my relationship and my job and my future. I was trying to regulate it with my thoughts and now I'm overwhelmed. I need to watch a show so I can be free of concern for a moment. That's regulation, my friend. We are constantly regulating. And so when we observe people who live differently and think differently,
Daniel Vitalis (57:41.52)
you
Erwan (57:49.463)
A typical response to that is, well, that's stupid, or I would never do this and whatnot.
we can be judgmental about the way others regulate.
Daniel Vitalis (58:06.384)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (58:07.235)
But the thing is that everyone regulates according to a conscious and most importantly and most often an unconscious way of surviving. It's all about staying alive. Survival. And then you say survival because you can do more in surviving. You can actually thrive. But when people seem to
make bad decisions and have toxic behavior.
We think, that's really bad. These people are bad. Why are they doing this? Et cetera. But we must understand that from their perspective, they're doing the right thing. From their perspective, they're regulating themselves, their actions in the way that currently at this stage of their life and their existence, they believe is the ideal way to survive.
Daniel Vitalis (58:56.88)
Mmm.
Erwan (59:10.185)
ideal way to regulate. So everybody has their own way. So it's true that it's not that we cannot judge. We can judge because we have the rights to have different views and different ways and a different understanding.
Daniel Vitalis (59:26.478)
Discernment too,
Erwan (59:28.749)
We can at least observe and have an evaluation of how others think and how others behave and how others live and say, well, not for me or not as good as mine or not as desirable, not as fruitful. That's totally fine. But in the end,
You can't live these people's life on their behalf. It's their life the same way nobody can live your life. So the question is not the diversity. The question is to find the principles or to remember the principles. Because you find them when you remember them. You remember the principles.
that are universal to all of us.
A very simple way to start is to understand biological principles.
If you understand that there are biological principles that apply to everybody's health. So if you don't breathe good air, if you don't sleep enough, if you don't eat enough, or if you eat too much, or if you don't have the right kind of food, anyone will agree that, yeah, if I do this, my health, therefore my biological self is never going to...
Erwan (01:01:01.199)
deprive or to suffer universally deprive anybody from sleep and they will crumble very fast okay
Daniel Vitalis (01:01:08.88)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:01:12.943)
Can anybody say, no, not me, I'm different? No. There are rules, there are principles. You cannot reinvent yourself biologically because there are laws. And if you mess with them, you can. It's your freedom. It's your free will. But there will be consequences for you if you understand that from the biological perspective.
Would it be surprising that the same applies to the mind? And that the same applies to the spirit? Spiritual life? It's exactly the same. There are principles. Either you understand them, you learn them, or you remember them, and then you respect them, or honor them, and apply them, and you will thrive. And if you don't, then you will suffer. Hello, it's just, it's so simple. So...
before you think about the details, should I eat more meat, less meat, should I sleep more, what about circadian rhythm, it's great.
Principles, principles, principles. Understand that base. So, yes, nobody is gifted a manual for life at birth. Yeah, there's so much we need to figure out. But once we figure out, it's not just a consideration like, you you read a self-help book and you find it interesting and you put it back on the shelf.
And you never applied any of the tips or drills that were in there. You must apply and you must apply not just once, but every single day, even at night. Even when you wake up, you need to remember yourself of who you are, how you should live and what you're here for. Program yourself, constantly program yourself, constantly impact your own mind.
Daniel Vitalis (01:03:10.597)
you
Erwan (01:03:20.121)
because we are ruled by programs, but we're ruled by programs and beliefs that if they are unquestioned, they rule us. And in every single day, we're going to make thousands of decisions except we don't consciously make them.
So if you want to change your life.
obviously in the direction of an improvement.
Erwan (01:03:54.859)
and knowing that nobody is going to do it for you.
You must do it to yourself. So you must know the direction. You must know the how to. You must learn it. You must investigate. You must self-examine. And once you realize, this is good, but this is not. This is exactly what I need to improve. I need to change if I want the improvement that I want. Next to self-examination is then self-ministering.
You've got to minister yourself or coach yourself, whatever word you want to use. You must make the decisions. You must commit. You must discipline. That is a lot of effort. And that effort is going to lead you to a new, better, but also unfamiliar version of who you are now. And that's where most people will crumble because they are intimidated by a new version of themselves.
not because it's not desirable, improvement is always desirable, but because it's new and unfamiliar. Therefore, it's a threat to your current consensus, your current state is something that unconsciously we all preserve. So it's very hard to evolve. So regularly,
Daniel Vitalis (01:05:13.868)
Hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (01:05:21.777)
It's also a threat to the people around you very often too. And so you have to navigate outside voices who don't want you to change because either it highlights something that they also want to change but aren't, or maybe it threatens their worldview or whatever it is. But you've got yourself to contend with and the outside world to contend with too.
Erwan (01:05:39.032)
Yeah.
Yes, this is why we feel threatened when people have divergent or diverse ideas, different ideas, because their worldview threatens ours. Unless if we are extremely secure with who we are and how we think, then it doesn't matter whatever whoever thinks whatever, we'd never feel threatened by it because we're very secure.
Daniel Vitalis (01:06:03.173)
I thought I was very secure till I got married and then I started to realize, there's all kinds of things that trigger me because I'm not as secure as I thought, you
Erwan (01:06:13.431)
Right, well that's one of the beautiful things about such a relationship is the mirroring effect.
Regulation is what we do every day.
recalibration is what I was talking about and it's completely different because in when you recalibrate you shift the baseline and that can be physiologically that can be at the level of another system or spiritually
And what I'm talking about is not just managing the moment because that's what regulation is about managing the moment. I'm talking about shifting the baseline. I'm talking about permanent changes for good. You don't go back to the old self. You don't go back to the old behaviors and the old struggles and the old beliefs and the old whatever. You don't go back to the old experience.
that experience that you didn't like and that you wanted to change. Instead of just regulating it briefly, temporarily, and then going back to your baseline and having to do the regulation again. You can't do that for the rest of your life. You've never changed anything because the problem comes back because you have not changed to change as in permanently, not just about a regulation.
Erwan (01:07:52.193)
It's recalibration we're talking about and it's an entirely new concept or different concept. I'll talk about it. I have a whole chapter of my new book dedicated to it. So, you know, when you were saying, well, my friends, we talk about nervous system regulation. I do talk about nervous system regulation too, but I'm not, I'm not really interested in it.
because it's too temporary for me. I'm interested in permanent changes. You know, it's like if you are a spiritual person, then you have a real epiphany, or then you make a real choice and make a real commitment. You don't go back to your old self. You don't go back to your old ways because that's it. You made a commitment.
So it's life changing.
You do not want to return to what it was because it would be so... You would feel extremely disappointed in yourself. Right? You'd be like, no, back to square one. And in truth, that's what everybody wants. They really want a true change and leave aspects of their old self, not the whole old self, because a lot of it is good.
But the thing is that we don't complain about what is good about ourselves. And unfortunately, we all have goodness in ourselves, but we complain about what we don't like. And we keep complaining as long as we haven't found the way to leave that behind to make it part of an old self. So it's the renewal of the physiology.
Daniel Vitalis (01:09:16.987)
you
Erwan (01:09:38.241)
Is the renewal of the nervous system, the renewal of the spirit that we're talking about, all levels of energy, we need them all.
Daniel Vitalis (01:09:46.631)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (01:09:47.887)
to be complete.
Daniel Vitalis (01:09:50.483)
Talk to me about how, well, I guess I wanna talk a little bit about the relationship of breath here because my whole life now, I've been hearing this message that the thing that connects sort of like the mind and the body or what connects the spirit to the body is the breath, know, and that this idea of.
something that's autonomic and also something that can be taken under conscious control, you know, it's a really unique process and You know if we were looking at yoga or something, you know, you got all these breath practices and pranayama or something But I've seen you talking a lot about breath holding and most of my exposure to breath holding was around free diving but not as a I think for a different reason and so I saw something you wrote recently that
think you said that holding your breasts like a willpower gym. a lot of what we were talking about before, making changes, one thing I've noticed over the years as I've made changes in my life and grown and grown and grown and walked up the steps of the pyramid higher and higher and higher as I go, when I was younger I'd be like, why is no one else interested in this? It seemed like everyone around me just didn't wanna grow. I was so confused. And one thing I've learned is a lot of people just struggle with willpower. mean they just.
They want to make changes, they know the change, they make it a couple days, they fall back and they just can't seem to lock in. And other people seem to be able to do it better and have more willpower. I don't know, like I just don't know how I developed mine. I certainly can't take credit for it. I think a lot of it was like the hard knocks of my childhood were just really bad and it forced me to have to be able to.
make decisions and stick to them and think my way through things because I it was like a survival thing and I I'm I'm grateful today I didn't grow up easy because I I see that that's actually one of the things that can Not always but can really hold someone back is like too much ease. Well, you talked about it before it's like we kill ourselves with comfort. So Yeah, i'm curious this idea when I you know, when I hold my breath a long time It's uncomfortable It's uncomfortable man, and there's You've got something in you scream
Daniel Vitalis (01:12:03.027)
You know, if people think running's hard or they think exercise is swimming's hard, it's like, try holding your breath. mean, the signals come very fast to stop. I wanna explore that and I'm curious in the big picture way, it just seems like this practice has transformed your life. I mean, I've been watching just on the edges over the last few years and it's like, wow, this direction seems like it's been profound and I've watched it change over the years. I'm just so curious about
Erwan (01:12:30.095)
True, has really been a game changer for me and the...
the evolution I wanted that I was consciously or unconsciously pursuing finally happened at that stage of my life through rediscovering breath holding in a new way and where should I start because there's so much that I could talk about here but we're talking about regulation we're talking about recalibration
talking about how change is hard and your assessment was that people lacked willpower and I have a different view on this Daniel but it's true willpower is very important
of what's going to enable change because willpower will ensure the continuity of the effort necessary for that change. We understand that change is sometimes easy but most of the time it is not.
So it's not that we want to make change not easy, but it happened to typically not be easy. Therefore we need commitment, we need endurance. Therefore we need self-discipline and well-power is the foundation of self-discipline. But there is something else which is value.
Erwan (01:14:20.781)
which means that we need to value the change we truly want. If we don't truly want it, it's very likely we will quit. Not because it was too hard, but because we didn't actually want it hard enough. If you truly value the change that you say you want, you will find a way, not an excuse. You will...
harass yourself or obsess yourself until you find that key and unlock that door and step into that new room where you can experience that new better version of you. I'm kind of speaking metaphorically here but so how much value it is the most important because
then you basically have a covenant with yourself.
Erwan (01:15:22.231)
that this vision you have of you is what you pursue and that you will achieve no matter what.
It is not a habit you are concurring.
Erwan (01:15:40.469)
It is a new, more desirable experience of who you are. That's what you want.
Erwan (01:15:53.679)
commit to that vision of you that is a future you and yet it already is the version you have chosen to be and to experience. You're not going to let go of that expectation until the outcome is experienced. Now that's where willpower will come from.
because now you are plugging your willpower into the real source of power which is very strong, very healthy desire.
Daniel Vitalis (01:16:26.803)
you
Daniel Vitalis (01:16:30.3)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:16:31.735)
And I know how much crap is being taught, said about desire by Eastern philosophy and I call it bullshit because desire is the most important...
Daniel Vitalis (01:16:42.867)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:16:47.983)
Process in life if you don't have any desire. What are you a plant in a pot?
Daniel Vitalis (01:16:54.899)
Heh.
Erwan (01:16:56.291)
waiting for right amount of sunshine and the right amount of nutrients and the right amount of water and you have no other agenda but to wait. I'm telling you that even a green plant in a pot has the desire to be healthy and to stay alive and to proliferate and to thrive. So someone who doesn't have desire is a highly depressed person.
Daniel Vitalis (01:17:24.051)
Yeah, well said.
Erwan (01:17:25.935)
and maybe a suicidal person. person who said, you know what, there's no interest for me. There's nothing in this weird thing called life for me. I'm not interested any longer in nothing, not in meeting new people, and nothing. Who, unfortunately, some people are trapped in that mindset, in that...
Daniel Vitalis (01:17:43.474)
you
Erwan (01:17:54.009)
condition of the psyche. It's terrible. It's terrible for themselves and it's terrible for the people who are around them. Because this is not a meaningful way to live life. Life is a beautiful opportunity to thrive, a beautiful opportunity to learn. And yes, there's gonna be difficulties and yes, suffering will be part of it. But nonetheless, it's worthy. Nonetheless, it's desirable. Nonetheless, we are in it. We're in the game. So we'd better do the best.
we can with it about it. therefore desire is what? Desire is inviting an outcome.
For what? What is the outcome? The outcome is you. The outcome is a specific way to experience that experience that you are. That's why we want things. Why do you want to quit smoking? I want to eat healthy. I want to regulate and learn that nervous system regulation. I want to meditate. I want to do breath work. What is it that you want?
Exactly. you want the experience that comes from it. You want to have that experience. Yeah, you want to be that experience in the moment. You want to be the experience of a slimmer person, of a stronger person, of a more capable person, maybe of the richer person, maybe of the kinder person.
Daniel Vitalis (01:19:12.755)
you
Erwan (01:19:35.331)
maybe of a more spiritual person. You want to be the experience of a calm mind, of a happy heart, of a clear soul. Those are the experiences that you want not to have, but to be. And this is why you're plotting with yourself and life and the world, because you have a desire to invite those outcomes.
And those outcomes are those, that diversity of desirable experiences, because that's what you call life. And that's what it is about. It's not about the new car. It's about how you feel when you drive a new car in the neighborhood.
Erwan (01:20:24.715)
It's not about, in fact, the game that you catch. It's about like, achieve this and I am feeding me and my family and my pets and it's real and it's raw and it's authentic and it's the experience. It's how you feel. How you feel. All right. So back to desires. We have desires.
Daniel Vitalis (01:20:46.771)
Hmm.
Erwan (01:20:54.765)
Desires are good. Healthy desires are healthy. Good desires are
And so that's what we pursue. That's why we do everything we do. So back to the training of the breath holding. Why would I want to torture myself, depriving myself from oxygen and for minutes at a time? Because just in case, probably most people in your audience don't know I've broken the US national.
record for breath holding with the CMAS organization three times. Current record is at 7 minutes 29 seconds but I've held my breath up to eight minutes.
Daniel Vitalis (01:21:33.172)
Wow.
Daniel Vitalis (01:21:43.858)
What are you talking about? That's crazy.
Erwan (01:21:43.977)
it's not a record at all, nowhere near a world record, but it's, it's beyond the time performance.
Time does not really matter. It's what it does to you as a practice, a practicing in a skill.
So you see when you say, hey, pay attention to my food and then I memorize things and I pray and then I do these games and I train my mind and I train my body and all. You're treating yourself who you are, the entirety of who you are, Daniel, as a skill, as a range of skills within one skill, the skill of being, of being that worthy being, of being that worthy life. Also because you're a believer and therefore you believe that it's
It's your duty. It's a spiritual duty. It's a moral and spiritual duty. I like to say movement is a biological duty. Eating well, sunlight, sunshine, nature, all of that, they're biological duties. But in fact, keeping your biology, your God-given biology that's hopefully inherently perfect from birth is a duty. It's a moral duty to maintain that biological health.
and biological competency, but the same applies to the mind, to the cognitive system that we are, and the same applies to the soul, because it's a spiritual system as well. And it's not meant to be like a green plant in a pot waiting for circumstances to be good. And if you're lucky, you have a good life. And if you're not lucky, you don't have a good life. That's complete bullshit. Where is will power? Where is free will? Where is intention? Where is the beauty of intention, intention in action?
Erwan (01:23:35.435)
intention in motion, readjusting every day through choices, conscious choices, assessment, examination, self-ministering. That is why we are here. Nobody is ever going to do any of that for you.
Daniel Vitalis (01:23:52.243)
Right.
Erwan (01:23:54.679)
You are in charge.
Daniel Vitalis (01:23:57.461)
That's why I hate when people talk about privilege. you know, it's not that I don't understand what they mean, it's like I didn't have those privileges growing up, but I wanted certain things so bad. I had that desire for experiences and for life, and that caused me to overcome many challenges and to go do things that I could have easily said, well, that's out of reach. I don't have the privilege. But when I hear that from people, again, I understand what they're trying to communicate. I know it's harder for some than others, but.
You got a lot of opportunity here. You just have to want it and then do all those steps you're talking about to get where you want to go.
Erwan (01:24:32.003)
Yeah, we are all born with circumstances that do play a big part in making or influencing who we become later in life. But ultimately, there is also so much that has to do with our understanding and what it is that we pursue, what is it that we want and the beliefs we have about ourselves.
and then the decisions we make and then the effort we put into making what happens into making the experience that we are happen with the contrast that we've chosen where we live with who we eat with the music we listen to the hobbies we entertain the profession we choose all these things all these are
It's the contrast, it's what's really unique to each of us, the way we look, the way we think, our activities, our decisions, all of that. But ultimately, what is truly universal to all of us is the scope of emotions we go through and then the principles that rule us or that should rule us or that we should regulate and rule ourselves.
42.
Erwan (01:26:04.941)
And that's what makes a difference between people who tend to thrive and others who tend not to. And then also the people who whine. So when people talk about privilege, those people are whiners. The problem is that they are disempowered because they believe that whatever advantages they perceive you have over Vom is because you're lucky and it was given to you and they were not lucky and nothing was given to Vom and therefore, you know, they can't make it.
they can't be successful in life. Well, that is victim mentality that is extremely disempowering. I worked in factories, car factories. I've picked up potatoes in fields.
among other shitty jobs that I've done. If I compare my life to my dad's he was a heavy smoker and he didn't care about what he ate and his exercise was to go walk. He walked a lot, that's good, but he did not exercise or anything and he struggled his whole adult life with health issues and I know that he was
smart but he was not happy. So there are decisions that he made that negatively impacted his physical health, mental health and spiritual health and I've observed that and I've learned from it. Because sometimes you learn thanks to or because of. So you have kind of examples. So you need to be again discriminate.
Daniel Vitalis (01:27:45.791)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:27:52.505)
So there's critical thinking about ideas, but there are critical thinking about everything. Critical thinking is just intelligence, just intelligent thinking. Leverage the power of your God given intelligence to make your life better. And it's not just making more money. It's way more than that. So much more than that. And the biology is a foundation for you to thrive. But then...
The spiritual side is just like hello if you don't understand that in fact
Erwan (01:28:36.483)
There's no switch off spirituality. What is that? Spiritual life, well, I don't really care, or maybe later, yeah, maybe if I go to Bali, to Ashram, then I'll have, maybe I'll have a spiritual moment, but otherwise I'm not a spiritual person. But what are you even talking about?
Daniel Vitalis (01:28:46.195)
Yeah. Right.
Erwan (01:29:00.107)
Every moment is spiritual. Even the criminal is a spiritual person. No, they're bad, they can't be spiritual. The question is never are you spiritual or are not spiritual? The question is how spiritual are you? In what kind? The bad kind? The mean kind? The mindless kind? The cynical kind?
Erwan (01:29:30.271)
or the spiritual kind which is like right it's like yeah you're attentive to the processes of the intangible that is actually that are actually extremely tangible when you pay closer attention to that so when you ask people do you have a soul
and most people will say yeah I do. My next question is where is it?
Did you leave it at home? Is it in your car, in your backpack, in your drawer? Where is it? Because you have one, right? So it's like one of your possessions, one of your belongings. There's no place because you don't have one, you are one. Once you realize that, you are a soul, therefore your whole experience, everything that you are is primarily spiritual, of spiritual nature. Okay.
Daniel Vitalis (01:30:10.773)
Hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (01:30:17.599)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (01:30:29.259)
Once we understand that, now you tell me where is the switch?
Daniel Vitalis (01:30:35.817)
Yeah, there isn't one.
Erwan (01:30:37.571)
There isn't one. There's no on and off. It's always on. So even when you're mindless, you're spiritual. When you're mindful, you're spiritual. When you're kind, you're spiritual. When you're mean, you're spiritual. It's not a matter of yes or no or to be or not to be. It's you are. The question is how.
Daniel Vitalis (01:30:54.985)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (01:30:59.087)
and therefore how do you operate that spiritual energy that you are?
And so that is way beyond just considering is a ketogenic diet good for you or not.
Should you peptides or not? And what peptides? Think of peptides for the soul. What is it? Prayer?
Gratefulness, good deeds, all of that. Those will make you thrive in a way that peptides will never make you thrive. Those are priorities. There's the top of the pyramid. The rest is below. right. So hierarchy. There's always a hierarchy. There's always like, you know, values and you know, what's
Daniel Vitalis (01:31:38.229)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:31:57.017)
higher and what's lower, it's real. Those are real considerations. All right, so I don't even know where we really were going and what was the origin.
Daniel Vitalis (01:32:06.518)
Well, I was asking about, guess what I wanted, you're stimulating kind of a new question. Okay, so as we become more aware that we're spiritual beings and that every experience is a spiritual experience, then in the same way that when I realize I have a physical body, maybe there's things I want to do for the health of that body. If I'm an emotional being, if I'm an intellectual being, if I'm a sexual being, then all of those things have inputs and outputs that are important.
How do you perceive, I think I'm especially asking this right now because the world's reaching this inflection point. It's getting crazy out there and it's getting hard to interpret what's happening. And if people aren't really well founded and grounded in something spiritual, this is a tough time to navigate. And I think especially, you you mentioned like sort of almost like psychic or spiritual predation that's taking place. Like we're in a spiritual ecosystem in some.
might be a way to say it. And people are becoming aware like, wait a second, a lot of these things that I thought were there for my good are actually not there for my good. And people are, there's sort of an awakening happening. But also the people are overwhelmed with this moment in time. so, right, cause it's like AI, it's UAPs and aliens, it's, my God, they're eating babies. It's just like all this stuff, like all at once. It's like coming.
bowling us over. How do you see caring for your soul? Because I think that's what's coming out of this conversation. It's like we talked about caring for your body, how we care for our minds. How do we care for that soul? Or like how do you see that? How do you do that? And I hear from you as you speak, I talk to a lot of smart people, I wouldn't say I talk to a lot of wise people.
You know, lot of intelligent people, but not often a lot of wisdom, right? And you hear these tech gurus, they're very intelligent, but it's like they have not even have the wisdom of a child sometimes. So I perceive wisdom in you as well as intelligence. And so I know that comes from cultivation. don't just, know, wisdom's not easily won. So yeah, like how do you see the development of the soul and keeping the soul healthy?
Erwan (01:34:30.095)
I realized that I also owe you an answer about why breath holding, but I'll get back to you.
Daniel Vitalis (01:34:30.28)
in a difficult time like this.
Daniel Vitalis (01:34:36.827)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:34:44.143)
So I'm a believer, I'm non-religious believer.
I believe in God.
Erwan (01:34:54.903)
and
verse with God all the time and acknowledge Him and His presence.
Erwan (01:35:07.351)
all the time if i wake up at night when i wake up in the morning during the day so it's an ongoing relationship
Erwan (01:35:20.941)
that I discovered later in life.
Erwan (01:35:29.768)
Are today's time more preoccupying than in the past?
maybe, maybe not, maybe in a different way, in a specific way. Let's imagine you would be alive during World War I or World War II.
and not knowing what the world would become and then the Cold War meant people were afraid that there would be a nuclear world war and that everything would be wiped off the planet. do you even, how can you enjoy, how can you have happiness or, you know, start a family, have children thinking about such a possibility? So is it different today? Not really.
But it is in the sense that the technologies are placing devices in our hands and in front of our eyes and basically are flooding our minds.
not everybody, but most people a lot. And there is a discovery for most people about some of the...
Erwan (01:36:58.211)
horrific systems at their own groups and what they're doing and it's been revealed publicly.
I've been a conspiracy theorist almost my whole life because I was reading books about it the few that one could find back in the days talking about you know I was 20 years old I'm pushing 55 so that's more than three decades ago that I already knew about a lot of that I was literally going to movies in my 20s
Daniel Vitalis (01:37:18.238)
Right? Yeah.
Erwan (01:37:38.017)
especially science fiction movies like Total Recall with Schwarzenegger and all whatever movies like that always thinking they are preparing us for what they are preparing the way they are designing the world to be for us they want to wipe our memory they want us to have a chip in the brain and all these things
Erwan (01:38:02.633)
You know when COVID happened, that's when people started to question and that's when things started to unravel and then the people started to be more vocal about these realities were ostracized. was part of them.
And now you have people who do entire business just out of, know, being conspiracy theorists that they make a lot of money out of it. Good for them. But yeah, the world is.
Very wicked.
Daniel Vitalis (01:38:45.398)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:38:46.369)
Okay, so you must spiritually shield yourself.
Erwan (01:38:54.031)
So what you do is that you read the Bible, you pray, you learn scriptures. Either you understand that this is real or you don't and if you don't, well good luck. It's that simple. So there is that and then it's I believe in grace.
Erwan (01:39:23.693)
So I believe in a self in, okay. In the world of psychology, you have terms such as self-induced mood induction, self-induced moods. Basically you can choose what your mood is.
Daniel Vitalis (01:39:45.15)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:39:45.999)
They said, thank you. no, that person told me that and I'm pissed. that's gonna happen. I'm anxious
Daniel Vitalis (01:39:52.338)
I have no control over my feelings.
Erwan (01:39:54.383)
I'm like driftwood on an ocean of emotions. Sometimes there's no wind, sometimes there's storm and depending on that I'm drifting in the currents and I have no control on my inner state. I believe in grace and therefore what actually breath-holding practice has taught me is exactly that.
Daniel Vitalis (01:39:58.44)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:40:24.279)
I'm actually going to bridge the question you just asked and the one you asked before. In breath holding, I hold my breath for minutes at a time. So you can imagine the level of stress that I have to handle because physiologically it's horrendous. Anybody who's tried knows how difficult it is. And yet I can meditate through those states. I don't do the conventional meditation, okay, because that's it doesn't work. Just observe your thoughts and let them pass. That's bullshit. It doesn't work.
Erwan (01:40:57.721)
That's not the meditation I do.
My meditation, what I call meditation is extremely clear intention and impeccable attention. To what? To the experience that I want to experience. Therefore to the experience that I want to be in the moment.
What is this physiological stress going to do? Physiology becomes neurological. Neurology is the cerebral part of physiology, basically. It's the physiology of the brain. It's still biological.
And then the higher level of hierarchy is the mind, the conscious mind. And what the mind wants and what it believes and what it establishes. stress is going to make me what? It's the perception of threat. The body knows, dude, if you don't stop this madness right now, we're all going to die in here, okay? We're running out of oxygen. We've calculated you have, you know,
three minutes left and after that, boom, done. Which consciously you already know that it's not going to happen because you know that there's a point where you will breathe. It's called the breaking point. So no, you're not going to die. But explain to me, how can you...
Erwan (01:42:31.627)
meditate in the presence of stress, a stress that normally you cannot stop, that actually increases in intensity by the second. And you cannot do breath work to soothe it, to regulate it. You cannot leverage breath work, which normally is like, you need to regulate your nervous system work.
Daniel Vitalis (01:42:58.125)
because it'd normally be your number one tool, but it's out the window because you're not breathing. that's interesting. Wow.
Erwan (01:43:03.509)
Exactly.
So how do you regulate? Not through a breath, since you're not breathing.
So if you're like a breath work facilitator, you're like, oh my God, I'm out of tools here, I don't know. I try to relax. Yeah, don't try to relax. Relax. How do you relax when you cannot dismiss the stress, you cannot stop the stress and it keeps growing in intensity and now you cannot do breath work to do anything about it. The answer is,
through pure intention.
You do not need breath work. You never did. It's a placebo.
Erwan (01:43:54.573)
Because if you want to regulate your mind, my friend, instead of doing breath work, which actually up-regulate your nervous system, it's a stressor, it's an activation, it's like shifts you into the aroused state more. It's not going to relax you if you hyperventilate, but there's also like slow breathing. Slow breathing would be way better, except if you hold your breath, there's no slow breathing. There's no breathing at all.
So the only way to do it is through pure intention and it works. So when you are feeling agitated, you may do breath work and maybe it's gonna work or you may do Tai Chi or yoga or slow dancing. You may maybe play some reggae and dance some reggae and you know what? If you believe
Erwan (01:44:50.361)
that it will calm you, then it will. Because placebo is real, because what is placebo is the power of belief.
Erwan (01:45:02.669)
So when I experience impatience, and you will see how this Daniel is completely spiritual in the end, because we may talk about psychology or neurology or philosophy. There are just different words for spirituality, for talking about consciousness. So when you become impatient, because obviously you want the breathful to stop,
I mean, at least if you're a beginner, see, you make a decision. I'm overriding my autonomic nervous system. So I stop breathing. Otherwise you would keep breathing, obviously.
You made a conscious decision. You know it would put you in a state of alarm of physical stress, physiological stress, neurological stress, emotional stress, mental stress. You know you're getting for stress. Why would you even do that to yourself, my friend?
There's no point. So either you were told, well, just do it. It's good for you. And you're all, well, it's supposed to be good for me. So let's do it. And you try it. It's hard. then you'd be like, there's probably like more pleasant things to do are good for me than this. So you need to understand that you are going to leverage the stress as an opportunity for growth, for physiological growth.
Daniel Vitalis (01:46:21.639)
You
Erwan (01:46:36.687)
neurological growth, mental, emotional, spiritual growth. That's what you need to understand. In other words, you have to be deliberate, intentional, strategic, methodical, but you're not doing that for no reason. You're doing that because you have decided to expose yourself to a stress that is supposed to cause you, oh my God, I'm impatient, it's hard, I don't want to do it anymore, how long is this going to last, and I can't do this, and whatever.
and being agitated in always again physical, physiological, emotional, mental. And now you created the perfect position or situation or opportunity.
choose how you behave, to choose who you are and how you experience yourself not because of external circumstances that happen to actually be internal physiological circumstances but because out of your pure intention.
So you want to be patient because you feel impatient. So you're like, my God, I wish I was patient, but I got to wait another 30 seconds. Okay. How are we going to have patience? You can't download it online. You can order it on Amazon. You can't take a pill to be patient. So how will you have a quality, which is patience?
Daniel Vitalis (01:48:04.599)
you
Erwan (01:48:14.839)
And how will you experience a state which is the state of being patient?
The only way you can is to do the patience, means to produce it, to generate it. And once you do, once you induce that mood, the mood of patience that you've selected for yourself, that's your desirable experience. That's your desire. That's the outcome you invite and you produce it. Then you become it.
And nobody can do that for you. You get what you give. In order to get what you give, you need to give first. So you need to produce. How do you produce it? Complete belief and intention. I call that the antidote.
Erwan (01:49:17.101)
So the more you train to do that, the better you become at it because it's just like practicing a skill, except that it's not the skill of tennis or shooting or something that's to a degree external to you. It's not fully external to you, but you know what I mean? It's the most...
It looks like the most intangible thing, but in fact it's the most tangible. Because when you really look at it in life, what is it that we need to be successful to have a good life or a pleasant life? We need all these qualities. Because difficulties come at us. External variables that challenge us, that threaten us, that bother us, that disturb us. And when those happen from the outside, we need what? We need to be patient. We need to be clear. We need to be...
have resolve, need to have resiliency, we need to be composed, we need to be kind also and compassionate sometimes, etc. All kind of values. How do we ever train them?
Erwan (01:50:25.881)
So you hold your breath, you create a physiological stress that you expose your mind to and your emotional self and your spiritual self, and then you get to work. The work of practicing the desirable version of who you are because of your chosen responses. And now you start to shift your baseline because you're not just regulating in the moment, you are regulating in the moment.
Daniel Vitalis (01:50:51.938)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:50:53.753)
But because you do that so consistently, it starts to become a recalibration. And now you shift the baseline. And now patients come to you way easier and relaxation and trust. Trust is the pillar. Trust is like, how do you hold your breath? What happens when you hold your breath? The question is, what do you choose to make to happen to you?
Daniel Vitalis (01:51:08.12)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (01:51:23.149)
when you hold your breath. Well, it's about you need to control the mind. Okay, who controls the mind?
The mind that you are controls itself. But you want more than just survival. You want more than just, my God, it so hard and I was impatient and I was agitated, but I made it to one minute, woo hoo. No. It's better to do 30 seconds, have that time, but to be composed and clear and in trust while there was there, because of the triggers of physiology, there was a temptation.
multiple times to quit, multiple times to not commit, multiple times to be agitated, multiple times to be impatient, multiple times to have negative thoughts, multiple times to basically be a non-desirable expression of a spiritual energy that you are. That's how spiritual I see this practice. And of course, it's also completely rational scientifically from a neurological perspective.
Right? So when you learn to not just regulate yourself like that, you regulate yourself in the moment, but then ultimately you recalibrate yourself and imagine how this prepares you better for life.
Daniel Vitalis (01:52:41.848)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (01:52:47.65)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:52:48.975)
You know, you're going to have anxiety, going to have impatience, you're going to have frustration, maybe remuneration, all of that.
or the temptations to entertain those moods. And then you're like, wake up. Is that what you want? Is that the experience you want for yourself in this moment? Absolutely not.
Daniel Vitalis (01:53:02.935)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Wow.
Daniel Vitalis (01:53:12.962)
Wow. I feel like you're talking about the most important thing. It's like the most important, you know, all the stuff we've talked about before, behaviors, eating good, exercise, all those are like, you know, it's like talking about symptoms instead of the cause. It's like that stuff's all like peripheral, but we've been talking about, well, we talked about willpower and that's got me thinking about, you know, when we talked about God and like, I think the most precious thing we have is our free will. And then you,
You know, we're given this gift of free will and then you look at all these forces that want to take your will and impose their will and get you to give your will to them. And then what you're talking about is instead of lifting the dumbbell or pushing the sled or climbing the tree or any of those things are pushing everything away and learning how to consciously direct your will, which is your gift from God. The thing that you have that an AI can never have and a robot can never have is like true will. And then
learning how to consciously maintain and control and direct your will. mean, it seems like maybe it's like the most important thing in a way, you know, that you could do in a sense.
Erwan (01:54:23.993)
Well, it is, it is because every moment is a choice. Every moment you have the potential awareness.
Daniel Vitalis (01:54:26.805)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:54:38.671)
to shape the experience that you are in every moment the way you want to experience it.
Erwan (01:54:50.777)
So if you feel depressed, can realize, I'm depressed. I'm just giving an example and be like, why would that be? What makes me believe that this experience has to be my experience in this moment?
And you wake up and be like...
Daniel Vitalis (01:55:11.639)
you
Erwan (01:55:14.159)
push that like a fog on the side and you elevate your conscious game and you step into the
Daniel Vitalis (01:55:16.824)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:55:26.371)
the presence, the quality of the presence that you want, that you've desired for yourself, that is your baseline, that is your standard. You seek the excellence of your spirit. You do not want whatever thoughts, whatever thoughts that are just not.
righteous or beautiful or meaningful and emotions that are low vibration. You don't want them. It's a form of
Erwan (01:56:12.834)
aristocracy.
Daniel Vitalis (01:56:15.299)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:56:16.471)
of consciousness. Not because you think that you're superior to anyone, but because you believe in superior levels of being, starting with the spirit that you are within it and how it expresses itself in every moment. That does not make you perfect. That does not shield you from moments of maybe sometimes being upset, impatient, sad.
It does not shield you from
the very nature of human life it does not you're still vulnerable you still can be messy still can be whatever but this is what's gonna change
is the frequency, intensity and duration. Let me explain.
Daniel Vitalis (01:57:11.821)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:57:15.715)
Let's say someone has a tendency because in the end, it's all about helping others.
And all I'm doing here, even I may sound philosophical, not, know, trying to sell my programs. And by the way, I do have an online masterclass, but I'm really trying to provide insights and share insights that have maybe well received.
Daniel Vitalis (01:57:31.327)
Yeah.
Erwan (01:57:42.879)
potential to help. Let's say someone has a tendency for rumination.
Erwan (01:57:55.887)
They're going to find ways to justify why they love to ruminate.
Yeah, but because of that happened in my past or this happened at work. So now I'm going to ruminate. I should have said this. That person said that. Rumination, rumination, rumination, rumination. Is it a pleasant feeling? No. And if you do that hours a day, every day, it's not the most pleasant way to experience life, right? Okay. Everybody will agree with that.
Daniel Vitalis (01:58:11.833)
You
Daniel Vitalis (01:58:26.777)
And you're building your rumination muscle.
Erwan (01:58:29.963)
If you are depressed, same thing. If you are always upset, same thing. We all can agree that those emotions, their feelings, their emotions, their states of the mind, it's also very emotional. It has to do the nervous system. So basically it makes us feel like shit. Period. And that's a fact. Nobody really wants that. But some people have a tendency of entertaining that very frequently. Why? Because...
They are trained. They don't know they trained for it, but they've been doing that for so many years that now their nervous system is trained to be very good at it. So now it's also an addiction. They need it. They need it. They need it. Their nervous system needs it to feel itself. If the rumination, because I gave that example, was to go away, all of a sudden it would feel like they're a different person. And then they would...
Enter the threatening territory of unfamiliarity. I'm a new version of myself that does not ruminate. This is weird. I don't like it. Let's go back to rumination. Program.
So first off, one, the person needs to become aware of that about themselves. Oh, that's a pattern. It comes back all the time. Why? The question is probably not why. The question is, maybe you can understand why, but is it desirable or not? Do you want to change or not? Yes? Okay. Well, then some work is going to be needed. First, you need to become metacognitively aware.
Metacognition, all the ability to look at yourself as if you were a different person on the other side of the room watching you and be like, that person is doing that. Like being able to read your own mind and watching it, witnessing it and be like, mm-hmm.
Daniel Vitalis (02:00:33.113)
You
Erwan (02:00:37.505)
And then the one observer would be like, me? Like me? And then the other one would be like, it's the, you know, your, your, your double, right? Your copy, your, be like, you're doing it. You know, no, I'm not doing it. yes, you were doing it. You know, you're doing that. What am I doing? Well, you're doing that thing that you love to do. You're entertaining that behavior that is part of who you believe you are.
you believe that your person is supposed to ruminate all the time. And then not only that, but to believe that there's nothing you can do about it. That's also part of your little tricks you play on yourself so that you don't have to attempt any change. There's nothing I can do about it. Okay, well then self-fulfilling prophecy brother or sister, you know what? You declare there's nothing you can do about it, therefore you don't do anything about it, therefore it never changes. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pay attention to your beliefs about yourself because they dictate your experience.
So now you decide you're to change that first stuff you need to become aware. Be like, wait, yeah, I know what I'm doing now. I'm doing this to myself. Nobody's doing that to my brain. My brain is doing that to myself. I'm in a state of rumination. That's my activity of the moment. Somehow I think I'm supposed to do that. And then I justify by explaining, yeah, but not me. It's because of that person and that.
whatever the world, the politics and stuff. There's always a reason that's not you. How convenient and how disempowering.
Erwan (02:02:22.479)
It's never been because of you, huh? Never. No, no. It's always been because of others in the world. Always. Convenient. All right. I know, exactly. And then you're gonna have to become...
Daniel Vitalis (02:02:30.785)
It's a common denominator.
Erwan (02:02:39.023)
do more than just being aware of what you're doing because it's an internal behavior therefore it's something you're doing it's an activity it's an act it's a deed
Daniel Vitalis (02:02:48.089)
you
Erwan (02:02:51.745)
It's nothing else. It's not just, it's happening to me. No, you are doing it. Blame your brain if you want.
But you are doing it, it's an activity, you're occupied doing this for maybe two hours at a time. And then the next step is not just the awareness. Again, the awareness is what? The self-examination I was talking
Erwan (02:03:21.891)
The next is self-ministering. Who is going to change that? Only you can change that. are not paying a coach to be with you 24x7 to ask you about what you doing in your mind and telling you, no you can't do this, you need to do that. I know. Alright. So, that's the next level.
It's not just the ability to be self-aware, which is already very very hard for most people, but it's trainable good news people, it's completely trainable.
The next step is the self-alteration, metacognitive alteration, metacognitive regulation basically, or control, or recalibration. Change it, modify it. but it's too hard. Okay, well again, if you say it's too hard, then you can't do anything. Do it, even if it's hard. All right, so I was saying, you know, I'm just like anybody else. I have my moments in my own mind, but...
what happened is that I'm instantly recognizing them and acknowledging them. I instantly acknowledge that I'm stepping out of grace. I'm stepping out of the most desirable state of the mind and the spirit, which is at peace and clear and grateful and in faith, in trust.
in all the good things, all the goodness that is available to a spirit who believes in it. So I'm entertaining something else. Some things, my God, there's a friend, my God, there's a reason to be frustrated and upset and stuff, all of a sudden, right? So.
Erwan (02:05:10.467)
then you regulate that in the moment and the more often you do that the better you become at it. what I wanted to conclude this with eventually you will observe this and I was talking about frequency, intensity and duration.
Frequency is how often those bouts of, let's say, rumination or upsetness or anger or depression will happen less frequently. That's a good thing. When they will happen, they will reach a lower intensity.
Daniel Vitalis (02:05:48.217)
Yeah.
Erwan (02:05:54.573)
and then their duration will also shrink. So you'll step out of these moods faster. Out of your metacognitive awareness and metacognitive choice, control, selectivity. Basically you become spiritually discriminate of yourself to begin with, none of others in the way they live are. How you conduct your own internal spiritual affairs, starting with how you think and how you feel and your intentions.
Daniel Vitalis (02:06:11.737)
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah.
Erwan (02:06:24.087)
all your behaviors. So that is to me the ultimate name of the game. That's the ultimate level of the game and it's consciousness. And that's where I'm at. And I'm teaching that, not, let's say I'm teaching, mindful breath holding where I help people recalibrate their nervous system by temporarily exposing themselves to a mild level of stress.
so that they can better train their response to it. So instead of trying to eliminate stress and to find relaxation, you embrace stress as an opportunity to become more clear, more intentional, more resilient.
more composed and that's the way it happens and then more than just regulating the moment ultimately you shift the baseline and you become a better version of your nervous system a better version of your spiritual self
Daniel Vitalis (02:07:30.873)
It makes so much sense because it's sort of like what we started talking about. The world's always gonna be throwing stress at you. And if you try to shield yourself from that, now you're back in the gym or you're back in the four walls. You're like, well, I've created a safe space and now everything atrophies and breaks down because you've cut yourself off from life or the world or from nature. So much better to be calm in the storm than to never experience a storm because then you're not living.
Erwan (02:07:38.681)
always.
Daniel Vitalis (02:07:57.476)
and storms are part of living. so it seems like James says that he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of various kinds, because it builds endurance and steadfastness. And it's like, it's exactly what you're talking about. And the world just keeps wanting to pull away all those discomforts for us. And it's like, we have to consciously make sure now to subject ourselves to these challenges or else we just wither away.
Erwan (02:08:24.131)
Yeah, but it's hard. can be hard to regulate oneself or control oneself in the moment of the heat in a relationship. For instance, something is really annoying you and you try to be like, no, gotta stay calm. I gotta stay composed. And then all of a sudden you feel really triggered. It crosses the threshold and then you go, that's enough now. And how do you train that? It's hard to train that.
Daniel Vitalis (02:08:35.705)
Right. Count to 10.
Daniel Vitalis (02:08:53.881)
you
Erwan (02:08:54.891)
In the moment, it's too late. Once you trigger, it's too late. So what you do, and we were talking about doing that with movement. So not training straight up in the wild nature, but bring your movement in a more, more forgiving environments to learn techniques and then gradually expose yourself to more demanding environments. Well, you can do that. That's what you do with breath holding is that you do that.
Daniel Vitalis (02:08:59.181)
Mm-hmm.
Erwan (02:09:24.363)
on your own, you trigger a stress that's not external, it's internal, and you can control its frequency and its intensity. So you can adjust the level of difficulty to where you're at mentally or at the level of nervous system.
But eventually, it has to apply to life.
Erwan (02:09:52.185)
That's the point. But at least when you show up to the regular situations of life, especially interaction with others, professional, friendships, love, whatever, your baseline, it's stronger.
your ability to stay composed, maintain trust and clarity despite the physiological noise and the typical triggers that can destabilize your mind, you've trained that. So you are stronger. So you practice upstream.
But then you've got to apply to the variables, to the real wild life of consciousness, which is your interaction with the world.
Daniel Vitalis (02:10:55.033)
Yeah.
Erwan (02:10:56.097)
So it's the same principle, it's exactly the same.
Daniel Vitalis (02:10:59.705)
I love it. Well, quick question. Like, so let's come from 50,000 feet back down towards the runway here. If I'm, if I want to like start this and I want to, you know, like, I like I have time in my day carved out in the morning where I have my practices before my day starts. I want to hear, you know, like just the basics like get started and then tell us about your programs and like how we can go deeper because obviously, it's not we're not going to unload it all right here right now. So
So like what's a basic starter pack look like and then how do we get involved in like higher levels of it like you're teaching.
Erwan (02:11:32.719)
All right, I can share a wonderful, very simple and potent breathing, breath holding exercise.
if you want to calm down quickly. No hyperventilation, no hard breath holding whatsoever. Anybody can do this. So it's very simple. You will breathe normally. You inhale and you hold. You don't count anything. Do not count. Do not measure time. Feel it.
It's a brief moment. So that would be three seconds, five seconds. Then you exhale, normal. Then you inhale, normal and hold.
Exhale, inhale, hold a few seconds. Very gentle, very easy, very pleasant.
little by little without you trying without you ever pushing you will simply observe or realize that your holes are actually longer and maybe your breaths are a little deeper but you're not trying to push the holes you're not trying to measure time all you do with your mind is to repeat
Erwan (02:13:04.791)
mindfully replicate that exact same pattern slow inhale pause exhale slow inhale pause slow exhale and again and again and again why is this so calming there are many reasons but first is that you have one point of focus that's all you have to do
You must control the breath. So you have to pay attention. And typically what causes us anxiety and being all over the place in our minds, because we're constantly absorbed by different tasks and things to do and things to think about. You take a moment for yourself to just do that. And all you pay attention to is that one simple breathing, breath-holding pattern.
So now you're fully focused. When was the last time you were this focused? For five minutes, 10 minutes. So that's the first reason. Second is that you pause. The breath hold is a pause. You basically take a break and at the same time it's active. So what happens is that you conserve your CO2.
which through the Bohr effect is going to increase your cellular oxygenation. So for people who breathe too fast, all of a sudden their respiratory rate goes down and easily so without them struggling to make it happen, that shifts your nervous system towards the relaxation basically,
Daniel Vitalis (02:14:56.92)
comparison.
Erwan (02:15:00.797)
very sympathetic. So you are
Daniel Vitalis (02:15:03.202)
I feel it happening to me right now, by the way. I've been doing it and I keep wanting to yawn already, because it's like, I've just come in right now.
Erwan (02:15:07.533)
Nice, exact. Right. And this is a nice break because one of the pain points, very universal pain points that most people have with when comes to the mind, thinking too much, thinking too fast, thinking negatively, being distracted, being whatever, all over the place. Now you are tasking yourself in a very specific way. It forces you to be really centered.
but also slower. So there's a physiological aspect to it through the CO2 increases. So basically decreases oxygen intake, but the paradox and it's beneficial is that it increases oxygen uptake. So you lower oxygen intake, there's less oxygen circulate in your lungs. And like, wait a minute, is that a bad thing?
No, it's actually a very good thing because most of the time we breathe way too much oxygen that we can possibly use. But what's the most important is the uptake of oxygen is basically cellular oxygenation. So now you are restoring proper pH in your body, in your tissues, you oxygenate better. What do you think happens to you when your cells are happy with all the oxygen they need is that you start to relax.
So you increase CO2 and you've heard of like those CO2 suits and how CO2 is good. Well, you can increase CO2 by just breathing less, right? And you breathe less when you pause the breath and hold your breath briefly. So all around just experience that, try it. Your mind will calm down also because you slow down the breath.
Daniel Vitalis (02:16:44.682)
Yeah, right.
Erwan (02:17:02.083)
By ordering the breath to be slower, the mind orders itself to be slower.
which is what most people need and want. I want my mind to be calmer. So try that and within two minutes you start to really feel it deeply. After five minutes, 10 minutes, you feel high, but in a good way. And if you want to learn way more than this, because here's the thing, a true method is not made of one...
Daniel Vitalis (02:17:12.024)
most people need.
Daniel Vitalis (02:17:25.057)
Yeah.
Erwan (02:17:36.691)
one size fits all one trick pony exercise this is not a method a true method is made of a diversity of exercises not for the sake of diversity but for the sake of the learning curve and specific application and also lectures so that you understand what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it and why it works and why it matters and this is what people will find in my master class
Daniel Vitalis (02:18:06.584)
Where they find it?
Erwan (02:18:06.703)
The website is called Breath, like breath, hold like hold and work like.
Daniel Vitalis (02:18:15.383)
Cool, and then where do you send people for your book and where do you send people for moving out stuff?
Erwan (02:18:20.815)
Okay, so for the natural movement, it's movnat.com. That's the website.
We have a number of e-courses, we have workshops, and the book is, you can find it in Barnes and Nobles, you can find it on Amazon, and the title is The Practice of Natural Movement.
Daniel Vitalis (02:18:42.21)
all the places.
Daniel Vitalis (02:18:49.304)
This has been wonderful. I feel like a lot of people are gonna wanna listen back a couple times. There's a lot in here. So this is really great. And then if you're like 25 years old hearing this and you're like, I just wanna know about the peptides, just bookmark this one, cause you're wanna come back. feel like this conversation that we had today, you you start, as life goes on, you start caring about these things more, at least for me. I mean, I was always a spiritually aware person and, but.
but I had so much I wanted to do and experience in life and I was so focused on all of that and as time's gone on, I've just realized certain things are more important now than they used to be and I feel like this was a pretty high level conversation as far as high up on the Maslow hierarchy of needs, so to speak. As you climb up those needs and you secure all the things you need, you start to realize, there's things that really matter.
And that's where a lot of our energy has been in this conversation. It's beautiful. And yeah, I just, this was great, man. I really appreciate it. I feel I got a little bit of that relaxation just talking with you today.
You
Erwan (02:19:58.851)
Well, I'll teach you breathful work whenever you want. You'll be delving in a whole new ocean of...
experience and practice of inner abilities.
Daniel Vitalis (02:20:16.683)
Yeah.
Daniel Vitalis (02:20:24.375)
Hmm.
Erwan (02:20:27.545)
We all want those qualities. We all want those qualities that are so helpful in life to live again that successful pleasant life we want. We all want to be patient, composed, to have clarity, to have wisdom, patience, all of that. We typically all believe that we are either lucky with them or not to have them, to have those qualities or not.
And what I'm saying is that it's all trainable. We're also thinking, we got to learn through self-help books, but the problem is that you read the self-help books and you never practice anything. So ultimately, the treasure is from the practice because insight alone is not going to change anything.
It's not the conceptual knowing of any truth that makes a difference. It's the application of it. The real fruit is there. It's the expression of it. And that's where the celebration of that God-given gift
that is life is found. It's truly, every moment is sacred and could be and should be celebrated as such with love and with gratitude and with awareness. And that is in the end, it is my practice. It's not about the breath holding or the breathing. It's not about the nervous system regulation.
It's not about the physical training. Those are tools.
Erwan (02:22:24.505)
The ultimate prize is the experience that you
mindfully.
create and I'm going to tell you what I really believe about that as a believer is that this is the way that I give back to God because He made me, He created me. It's a mysterious
Daniel Vitalis (02:22:49.303)
you
Daniel Vitalis (02:22:55.383)
you
Erwan (02:22:55.939)
mastery and I only get glimpses of that unfathomable wisdom and love and my gratitude is in making my inner life as vibrant as possible.
That's it. It's that simple in the end. There's no like rent.
Daniel Vitalis (02:23:23.415)
I got nothing, nothing I can add to that. Nothing I can add to that, man. Wow. Errol on the core. Thank you so much for this time today. Brilliant.
Erwan (02:23:27.791)
All right.
Erwan (02:23:34.639)
Thank you, Daniel, for this conversation. Thank you so much.