Kyle Mitri left Johannesburg at 25 and has been in Costa Rica ever since. He's kept roughly the same morning routine for 10 to 15 years: make the bed, glass of water, meditation, journal, a page or two of a book, stretch, coffee. He's a men's coach — one-on-one mentorship over three months, ending with a three-day in-person initiation in Costa Rica.

The part of his work that's lasted longest is the weekly men's circle he co-leads with a friend. Seven years running in a town where almost everyone is transient. The format is deliberately simple — three words, three minutes, everyone checks in — because most of the men walking in are new to this and need to feel safe before they need to be challenged. His answer for what actually makes it work isn't the format at all. It's consistency: showing up on the week you don't feel like it, because you're not only showing up for yourself.

The back half gets into stillness, and what it costs to get there. Kyle walks through his vision quest — four days alone with no food, no water, no phone, no one to talk to — including the part where he panicked on night one because he had no idea what to do with himself. Day three is where it broke open. He describes it as dropping into the pace of nature until he could notice things again. From there the conversation turns to fasting, plant medicine and how Costa Rica integrates it, why fire sits at the center of ceremony, and a masculine/feminine framework he sums up as the riverbank and the water.

Fair warning that a stretch of this one covers fasting and ceremonial plant medicine, including claims about wounds healing mid-fast. That's Kyle's own experience, not medical guidance — dry fasting in particular carries real risk, so treat it as a story rather than a protocol.

Full conversation below.

Find Kyle:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyle.mitri/Website: https://kylemitri.comThe Initiation (3-month program): https://kylemitri.com/the-initiation/Free course: https://kylemitri.com/free-course/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kyle.mitri

Quality Values Podcast:Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

#QualityValues #MensWork #Stillness #CostaRica

Chapters:0:00 Cold open0:55 Kyle Mitri joins the show1:47 The 100-day challenge and learning to speak to a camera4:29 A day in the life in the Costa Rican jungle8:12 Community, and acting as a steward for new arrivals10:25 What "commune" actually means14:10 Coffee, flat whites, and learning latte art16:50 Inside the weekly men's circle17:11 The format: three words, three minutes, "I'm in"21:32 Accountability, and keeping a circle alive for seven years25:05 Containers, structure, and weekly housekeeping25:43 The coaching business and the three-month initiation27:47 What draws him to men's work30:02 Consistency as the active ingredient33:17 Movement: compound lifting, yoga, and animal flow36:04 Tiger Brenda, boxing, and Nosara37:03 Why resistance training matters on a men's retreat38:46 Sitting with plant medicine responsibly42:41 Integration, and why Costa Rica holds it well44:18 Peyote: form, fire, and what it reflects back46:51 Why fire sits at the center of ceremony49:02 Fire and water, masculine and feminine50:48 Eastern philosophy as a bridge52:42 The riverbank and the water: leading in relationship56:30 Stillness, and the discomfort of doing nothing57:26 Four days alone: the vision quest1:00:16 Dropping into the pace of nature1:02:11 Fasting, and what surprised them both1:03:44 A fall, a wound, and what happened on day two1:05:22 Reliving an old knee surgery mid-fast1:06:54 Doctors, and what the body already knows1:07:41 Slowing down enough to be present1:08:42 Presence vs. alignment, and awareness across time1:12:54 Where to find Kyle

Zach Jungles is Neural Reboot — five or six different nervous-system reset systems he's learned and adapted, layered on a strength-and-conditioning background. The throughline across all of it is balance: getting the brain to accept sensory input properly again so one injury stops quietly causing the next three.

This episode ties together a few threads from this show's past nervous-system-training conversations — Zach trained directly under Shawn Sherman in Square One, studied under Jarod Burton, and worked alongside Jared Slater in Charleston. We get into Square One's gait-based logic, Burton's "Neuro Target" system and the buried history of the ARP wave, and a wearable direct-current device called the Volta X (currently mid-rebrand) that Zach says has cut ACL and meniscus recovery timelines in half. From there we get into structured water, grounding, quantum biology, and a handful of very old, very strange experiments people are still arguing about.

The idea he keeps coming back to, credited to Einstein: knowledge comes from experience, everything else is just information.

Full conversation below.

Find Zach:Instagram: https://instagram.com/neural_reboot

Mentioned in this episode:Jarod Burton (Train Efficiently): https://linktr.ee/TrainefficientNathan Siles (BioSpectral Systems): https://biospectralsystems.com

Quality Values Podcast:Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

#QualityValues #NervousSystemTraining #SquareOneSystem #NeuralReboot

Chapters:0:00 Cold open1:34 Zach Jungles joins the show2:39 What "neural reboot" means2:59 Finding Square One and Shawn Sherman in South Dakota5:18 A scar, a scratch, and a woman who broke down crying6:21 The gait pattern behind Square One8:30 Finding Jared Slater and Jarod Burton12:09 Building "the pie": his neural reboot framework12:48 Layer one: quantum health, light, water, and magnetism15:16 Square One, Neuro Target, and the history of extreme isometrics17:56 Why "the right intention" isn't the issue19:32 What muscle testing "on" and "off" actually means20:24 Doctor Jay's results with Larry Fitzgerald and Adrian Peterson22:03 The four layers of the pie23:29 The seed crystal: how memory training led him here26:49 Balance as the North Star, according to 20 years of Cal Dietz28:44 How non-contact ACL injuries actually happen30:44 Where the passion comes from: no weekends, no relationships32:18 Football, injuries, and a light pole to the head34:06 Two years of doctors and PRP injections with no results35:04 Finding a $50 knee program that worked when nothing else did36:18 Realizing every injury traces back to imbalance38:32 Knowledge comes from experience, not information39:53 Reflexes vs. conscious control: reconciling the gap43:36 Balancing a pitcher and adding three miles an hour overnight47:36 Introducing the Volta X: direct current and The Body Electric50:36 Finding "hot spots" of electrical resistance52:41 Case studies: faster ACL and meniscus recoveries, in his telling54:37 Evan Lewis, Doctor Burton, and an upcoming device rebrand57:32 The night Doctor Burton tore his Achilles on a tennis court1:00:42 Recovering from a torn Achilles with no imaging, no surgery1:03:38 Structured water and the Edith Heuss / Marinovich lineage1:08:15 Nathan Siles, Gerald Pollack, and quantum biology in pro sports1:11:10 Nature as "the ultimate balancer"1:13:48 Structured water, gemstones, and a funnel1:14:54 Book recommendation: Living Water1:17:20 Book recommendation: The Wisdom of the Body1:19:12 What actually moves fluid through the body1:21:02 A chick-egg heart experiment: light and fluid flow1:22:36 Known unknowns, unknown unknowns, and staying in his lane1:29:56 Where the industry is headed1:30:18 Where to find Zach

Jared Slater tore his UCL pitching in college, right as COVID shut down every field, gym, and clinic he could have used to rehab it. He was stuck in California with a laptop, some bands, and a couple of weights in his garage, so he started treating himself — filming his own mechanics, adjusting his own program, digging through research at night. He doesn't call himself a strength coach anymore. He calls himself an athlete engineer, a term he picked up from Matt Rhea, because the box "strength coach" puts you in is too small for what the job actually is.

He owns IHT Human Performance in North Charleston, South Carolina, where he trains athletes on both performance and rehab through a heavily neuro-based approach — muscle testing, treating the brain as the actual site of an injury rather than just the tissue, and getting people back on the field in a fraction of the usual timeline. He opened the gym about a year and a half ago, not long after losing his mother, partly to carry forward the work ethic she modeled for him.

This one covers his theory of injury and recovery, built around voltage and charge in the body, several case studies he cites (a torn PCL he says was healthy in eight weeks, bulging discs resolved in four days), a theory connecting a run of 49ers tendon injuries to a nearby electrical substation, and his take on vibration, frequency, and why the people around you matter more than you'd think. Underneath the specifics there's a plainer idea running through all of it: be the best at whatever level you're actually at right now, before worrying about the next one.

Full conversation below.

Find Jared:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slater_hp/IHT Human Performance: https://ihthumanperformance.comIHT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iht_performance/

Quality Values Podcast:Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

#QualityValues #AthletePerformance #SportsRehab #StrengthAndConditioning

Chapters:0:00 Jared Slater joins the show2:11 What "athlete engineer" means, and why he dropped "strength coach"4:08 His own injury: a college pitching injury during COVID6:43 Why strength coaches make the best rehab professionals9:20 What's wrong with the physical therapy industry11:24 Operative vs. non-operative rehab, and training for sport instead of daily living16:36 Why no injury has one single cause19:10 The eye test, muscle testing, and "make it hurt"20:45 Why he believes the brain controls everything23:11 Charge, voltage, and hypertonic muscles: his theory of pain24:50 Case studies: fast recoveries from bulging discs, a torn PCL, and more28:23 Why elite rehab results are becoming more visible29:20 Bigger, faster athletes and bigger injuries31:02 A high school running back's hip, fixed in 20 minutes32:19 C.J. Stroud, the Texans, and mainstreaming neuro-based rehab33:00 The business case for getting million-dollar athletes back faster34:35 A theory connecting the 49ers, EMF, and tendon injuries39:17 Water, vibration, and muscle testing41:00 Frequency, energy, and surrounding yourself with the right people45:51 Building the best sports performance facility on the planet46:16 A rough home life, and losing his identity to injury48:10 Tommy John surgery and the choice that changed everything50:25 Turning discipline into a filter for every decision53:23 Being where your feet are58:23 Starting IHT Human Performance after his mother's death1:00:12 Lessons and mistakes from his first year in business1:01:47 Why he and his wife moved to Charleston1:03:33 Book recommendations1:11:55 Where to find Jared

Ezra Vancil got signed to a substantial recording deal as a teenager and has been making music ever since — he's in his fifties now, still touring, still putting out a record most years. Somewhere in his twenties and thirties he went through a genuinely dark stretch: substance abuse, felony charges, a divorce, and a rock bottom that included thoughts of suicide, until one night something in him finally said enough.

He's an Americana singer-songwriter based in a forest in East Texas, known for house concerts where the between-song stories matter as much as the songs. His new project, a double album called Morning & Midnight, turned into a full poetry collection along the way — he sat down to finish the record and ended up with a book he never meant to write, due out on Audible and Kindle by the end of the year.

Most of this conversation is about that rock-bottom period and what came after it: giving up on trying to be something and learning to just be what he already was. We also get into flow state (he describes it through a car accident that knocked him clean out of his vehicle), the three versions of himself he calls the flow-state writer, the craftsman, and the editor, why he stopped chasing what his art earns and started paying attention to what making it does to him, and the couple who wandered into one of his concerts to sign their divorce papers and left holding hands instead. His best line of the episode: he spent most of his life performing a persona, and the day he stopped, the wrong people and the wrong work just filtered themselves out on their own.

Full conversation below.

Find Ezra:Website: https://www.ezravancil.comInstagram: https://instagram.com/ezravancilSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/53DBJZYKrYOYUGz0co8XLQ

Quality Values Podcast:Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

#QualityValues #Songwriting #MentalHealth #CreativeProcess

If this episode brings anything up for you: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 (US), available 24/7.

Chapters:0:00 Cold open1:41 Ezra Vancil joins the show2:05 A poetry book that started as an album6:40 Finding a label between song and poem8:24 Spoken word, and keeping the rhythm unpredictable11:03 Flow state, the "clutch moment," and a car accident15:48 Building a life around flow state, in his 50s17:03 The editor, the craftsman, and the spark19:23 What actually counts as "writing"20:32 Untapped genius, and art that never gets finished22:07 Factory-line pop vs. music that resonates23:41 Not chasing Van Gogh: making art for his own sphere26:24 What creative work does to you, more than what it earns28:33 His writing routine, then and now32:55 Becoming the artist: songwriting at six, and a record deal as a teenager34:40 Graphic design and thirty-plus industry awards36:07 What "quality" means to him, and who he's writing for44:32 The Six-Figure Musician, and the couple who almost signed their divorce papers48:50 The song that came out of addiction, felonies, and his first divorce51:02 Vulnerability as the origin of anything valuable53:27 The catalyst: turning 40 and realizing he hadn't been living56:47 Rock bottom, and opening back up to something bigger1:00:36 Letting go of persona and ego1:03:21 Where to find Ezra

Chris Harris was ten years old when his mother, a heroin addict and dealer, got arrested and sent to prison. He and his two sisters were split into separate cars by Child Protective Services and never lived under the same roof again. What followed was years on the streets of Dayton, Ohio — sleeping under bridges, eating out of dumpsters, cycling through foster families. At twelve, digging through a dumpster, he found a bag of donuts. He ate them, got disgusted with himself for celebrating it, threw the rest away, and made himself a promise: he was done being poor.He found martial arts through a pastor who taught free karate classes in the housing projects, then talked his way into lessons at every school he could find by trading chores for training. By 18 he'd trained in six styles. After the Air Force, he spent 25 years as a private Department of Defense contractor, teaching close-quarters combat to special forces operators for the U.S. and its allies. Since then: 14 books (two of them pulled straight from his own life), eight articles in Forbes, and his own combat system, Roku Jitsu, built from the six styles he came up through. Today he goes by The Warrior Maker.This one covers what he means by mindset — the space between a stimulus and how you respond to it — free will, and why he won't keep a single excuse in his back pocket, even a true one. Also: training Navy SEALs and Green Berets, the difference between rational and irrational fear, and what happened to his two sisters, who followed their mother into addiction and both died young. Asked how his own life turned out so differently, Chris gives the exact same explanation they would have: because his mother was an addict. Same circumstances, different perspective.Find Chris:The Warrior Maker: https://www.thewarriormaker.comThe Book of Mindset: https://a.co/d/0a7A32ERIG: https://www.instagram.com/thewarriormaker/Quality Values Podcast:Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc#QualityValues #TheWarriorMaker #Mindset #ResilienceChapters:0:00 Growing up on the streets of Dayton, Ohio3:33 The bag of donuts: the moment everything changed5:26 Indomitable spirit, defined8:06 Why nobody stepped in10:05 Rivals, demons, and shadows: the Warrior Maker mindset12:19 Mindset as the space between stimulus and response14:11 Free will and accountability: the torn bicep and the book deadline20:01 What foster families taught him21:26 Finding martial arts through a pastor in the projects23:10 From the military to 25 years training special forces worldwide24:42 Aikido and harmonizing with an opponent's energy28:20 Fourteen books, Forbes bylines, and why he doesn't love writing40:05 Roku Jitsu: combining six martial arts into one system41:17 Training instinct, not muscle memory42:56 Overriding instinct: the $100,000 check in the fire44:11 No excuses, no platform to blame45:47 Training Navy SEALs and Green Berets: "there is no try"47:42 The indomitable spirit, since age 1248:22 Operating without fear: rational vs. irrational50:16 His sisters, and "same circumstances, different perspective"51:29 Find your demons and put them to work51:48 Where to find Chris: The Warrior Maker

Colin Donohoo broke his ankle in a rec-league soccer game right after finishing his kinesiology degree, and used the recovery to study his own body instead of going into physical education. Sixteen years later he's a Rev6 (formerly Revolution in Motion, formerly Proper Body Exercise) master trainer and the owner of The Language of Movement in Los Angeles.

Colin trains what he calls nervous system training — a separate bucket from strength and conditioning, built around feedback instead of load. Balance work, water bells, sand mazes, foam rollers. He walks through how he found the system through a trainer named Jeff, then traces it back to its source: Edith, a chiropractor who built the whole practice on muscle testing, and a story about a classical pianist who avoided spinal surgery because of it.

This one covers The Body Keeps the Score and trauma-informed coaching, a memory-training detour through sommeliers and medical students, and the idea Colin calls spiritual energy versus resistance energy — doing the things that are good for you because you're pulled toward them instead of forcing yourself through them. Also: a first capoeira class that went better than it had any right to, Roger Federer's Dartmouth commencement speech, Ella Langley's stage presence, and a goal to help eight million people that started out, less ambitiously, at eighty thousand.

Colin's best line of the episode: someone disconnected from their body treats the front door like a threat. Someone who isn't sees a playground.

Find Colin:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/colinmovement

Website: https://thelanguageofmovement.com

Edythe Hues / Jason Sehorn video mentioned in the conversation: https://youtu.be/LdINtjb26iQ

Quality Values Podcast:

Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tgg

More episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

#QualityValues #NervousSystemTraining #Rev6 #MovementCoaching

Chapters:

0:00 Highlight reel

1:21 Colin Donohoo joins the show

1:51 Nervous system training vs. strength and conditioning

3:00 A broken ankle and a kinesiology degree

6:16 Marv and Edith: two branches of one system

9:13 Novelty, progression, and the feedback loop

10:10 Colin's background as a memory trainer

12:26 The Body Keeps the Score and trauma-informed coaching

17:29 Client transformations: pull-ups, volleyball, a return to figure skating

20:46 Spiritual energy vs. resistance energy

23:01 Flow, information processing, and acting on instinct

25:40 Ella Langley and the mindset shift behind mastery

28:44 Catching keys, reading the turf: in-tune reflexes

30:06 Frames per second: Waitzkin, chess, and Federer's effortless game

33:07 A first capoeira class

35:29 Edith's chiropractic roots and the birth of Rev

44:22 The Language of Movement and training the whole toolbox

48:24 The six essentials and finding your bottleneck

54:08 Mission, catchphrase, and the eight million person goal

58:30 Synthesis: presence, flow, and the Flow Genome Project

1:00:37 Threat vs. playground: reframing the nervous system

1:01:59 Back into competitive running

1:03:56 The nine-month road trip and the Grand Canyon

1:08:04 Where to find Colin

Daniel Spencer (Saluz):

Origin story: Daniel started out chasing performance — hockey, bodybuilding, a firefighter injury that forced a rethink. That led him into nervous system training, and...algae. A friend left a jar of algae on his counter instead. Four days into a fast on it, his brain "turned on." That was the start of Saluz.

What he does now: Saluz sells algae harvested from Klamath Lake, Oregon — grown in a lake bed sitting on the minerals of a collapsed volcano — along with soil amendments built around the same organism. He also works alongside Hydro Bliss, a primary water brand pulled from underground in Oregon and canned before it ever sees sunlight.

This one covers a lot: hydrogen water , dead soil and mycorrhizal fungi, chlorella vs. spirulina, fascia, Rolfing, adaptogens, and much more.

Daniel's tip: Spend a year just reading the ingredients on everything you eat. No goal beyond knowing what's in it. Eventually you can pick something up and already know.

Links to everything below.
Daniel's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniel_spencer11/

Saluz (algae & soil, referral link): https://www.saluz.io/jacobconlanshields

Hydro Bliss: https://hydrobliss.com/?srsltid=AfmBOop1eeuFTocw9hQOY9BbU9-vPjUSYxxLcdNrw5e6lfENzzVOzSTl

Quality Values playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tgg

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

More episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/

Chapters:

0:00 Intro & how Jake and Daniel met

0:20 What makes Hydro Bliss different (and why "dead" water can't hydrate you)

3:09 How the can was born: Kevin's origin story

5:13 Structuring water with a device modeled on Viktor Schauberger's research

6:45 Hydrogen for recovery, Tesla & the Japan ER ritual

9:54 Structuring water on the road

11:23 The algae's 3.5-billion-year story & the volcano that made Crater Lake

13:48 200+ micronutrients & the four-day fast that changed everything

16:44 Algae + structured water synergy

19:46 Chlorella vs. spirulina, sourcing & heavy metal detox

22:15 What actually drives Daniel: freedom & simplicity

24:00 Dead soil, mycorrhizal fungi & nutrient decline

26:49 From a Mexico spirulina project to founding Saluz's soil formula

33:05 Drought, the Colorado River & Kansas wheat

34:27 What "intelligence" means in nature — and the treadmill of health

40:00 Daniel's path: hockey, bodybuilding & a firefighter injury

41:13 Discovering nervous system training

42:44 Foundation training, ATG & presence in movement

45:13 DIY equipment & why simple practices don't get marketed

47:12 Rope flow, generous mentors & the Bosu ball story

50:37 Alignment, Messi's relaxation & the stretch-shorten cycle

53:09 Nervous system training on unstable surfaces

54:35 Home water filtration & the Wood River spring

57:31 Photosynthetic beings & fasting with algae

59:57 Feeling like a vessel for energy (and the dopamine behind it)

1:02:04 Movement as farming: squats, hinges & the neurology of grip

1:05:56 Why the podcast is called Quality Values

1:07:51 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance & the quest for quality

1:09:12 Living abroad, universal truths & swapping coffee for cacao

1:10:44 A kettlebell festival, Bhakti Fest & meeting Steve Terry

1:12:10 The body lever & fascia release

1:14:02 What fascia is, and teaching lines instead of 700 muscles

1:16:06 Anatomy Trains, the MELT Method & Rolfing's ten-series

1:18:23 Using AI to organize a decade of scattered ideas

1:20:12 Fight Flight Conditioning & Walter Cannon's homeostasis

1:21:47 Posture, gravity & the peaceful warrior

1:23:13 Adaptogens & the stress buffer zone

1:24:49 Herbalism mentors & Dan Moriarty's origin story

1:26:21 Talking to plants: one herb, one year

1:27:47 Being present with food & reading every ingredient

1:29:57 Full responsibility for your health

1:31:06 Where to find Daniel & final thoughts

#QualityValues #Algae #StructuredWater #SoilHealth #Adaptogens

James Murray spent twelve years as a competitive bodybuilder in South Africa, and in all that time his hamstrings never once got sore. Scoliosis since he was young, a back "as tough as a drum," couldn't draw his knees to his chest. He gave himself two years to fix his body and get back to the gym. That was twenty-five years ago.

He tried Pilates first — got certified, got good at it, body didn't change. Two years of Gyrotonic after that, still couldn't find his own sit bones. Then a Feldenkrais practitioner working the same gym floor sat behind him, put her hands on his stomach, and told him to push his belly out. Nobody had ever told him that. He took a Feldenkrais class not long after — forty-five minutes on the floor — and came out of it with inches of length behind each knee that a decade of stretching never gave him. He spent the next four years training to become a practitioner himself.

James Murray is a Feldenkrais practitioner now, and he wrote a book on incorporating the ideas — "Cure Sleep Apnea by Moving Out of Your Own Way" — making the case that obstructive sleep apnea isn't a slack-tongue problem, it's a head-position problem, and the fix is the same as everything else in his world: change the self-image, and the body follows.

This one starts with the life of Moshe Feldenkrais himself — fleeing pogroms, a teenage walk across Asia to the Adriatic, a physics PhD in Paris, and a friendship with the man who invented judo that ends with Feldenkrais bringing the sport to the West. From there we get into what the method actually claims, straight from Feldenkrais's own book "Body and Mature Behavior": posture isn't a position, it's a decision your brain keeps making without telling you, and you don't fix it by stretching or strengthening, you fix it with awareness. We get into Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration, why his own glutes and hamstrings wouldn't grow for over a decade, what a frightened rabbit has to do with it, and why the quality of a movement matters more than its range.

The idea I keep coming back to: movement generates awareness. Not the other way around.

Thanks for watching.

📚 James's books:

Cure Sleep Apnea by Moving Out of Your Own Way

https://a.co/d/0fSHpCq1

Back Out: Cure lower back pain by doing 1 thinghttps://a.co/d/00gu6ZuY

🧠 Learn more about the Feldenkrais Method

https://feldenkrais.com/

More Quality Values:

Playlist — https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tgg

All episodes — https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

Chapters:

0:00 Cold open: highlights

1:46 James Murray joins, spelling out Feldenkrais

2:54 The plan for this episode3:14 Moshe Feldenkrais's early life: pogroms, a walk to the Adriatic, Palestine

4:20 The Sorbonne, a physics PhD, and meeting the inventor of judo

6:45 What the Feldenkrais Method actually is

7:19 Self-image and the shoulder that won't come down

9:45 The lost-hat story: movement generates awareness

11:53 Awareness Through Movement vs. Functional Integration

14:24 What good posture actually is: "independent from gravitation"

19:13 Why "stretching" isn't doing what people think

21:12 His assessment protocol and the myth of symmetry

24:20 The book he wrote on curing his own sleep apnea

31:05 Homeostasis, and the nervous system in balance

38:36 His story: twelve years of bodybuilding, scoliosis, a body stuck in place

40:54 Pilates and Gyrotonic first, then a Feldenkrais class

51:24 Why the problem is in the brain, not the muscle

54:12 Anxiety as a learned fear of falling

1:05:57 Good days, bad days: the self-image is plastic

1:11:07 Head position, gravity, and why you can't sleep

1:14:51 The frozen rabbit and the glutes that won't grow

1:20:13 Where to start if you want to try this

#QualityValues #FeldenkraisMethod #SomaticMovement #SleepApnea

Glahens Paul survived the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, immigrated to Boston at nine years old without a word of English, and now runs Dipiti, a Nashville startup betting against the entire social media playbook.

Second sit-down with Paul. First one covered the concept. This one gets into the man — the math kid who tested equal on creative and analytical scores, the kid who went from an open-door courtyard in Haiti to a concrete-jungle version of childhood in Boston, the founder who built a company out of his own isolation instead of around it.

Dipiti is the technical answer to a personal problem. Paul and his co-founder were two social new grads who kept watching plans fall through because the day got busy. So they built a tool that answers four questions — who, what, when, where — and gets people out of group chats and into rooms with each other.

We get into the 2010 earthquake and the two months he spent sleeping in a shared courtyard with his whole neighborhood. We get into why he calls social media "diet social interaction" — all the sensation, none of the nutrition. We get into a University of Chicago study on what people will pay to quit apps they can't stop using. And we close on the question Paul keeps coming back to: does AI give us the chance to become more like ourselves, not less?

Nashville rooftop, freezing wind, ground beef and sweet potatoes. Some things about building a startup never change.

Watch the full playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggMore episodes: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

0:00 Intro

1:26 Second episode, shot on a Nashville rooftop

4:04 Dipidi means engineered serendipity

6:03 A math kid who immigrated from Haiti at nine

7:48 Chunking, The Art of Learning, and transferable skill

16:57 The Anxious Generation and the 70% drop in in-person time

20:39 Why building Dipidi became personal

23:32 Busy schedules and plans that never happen

26:39 The 2010 earthquake and two months in the courtyard

31:20 Boston, isolation, and hyper-individualism

36:01 Diet social interaction and the illusion of access

41:28 The product market trap: paying to quit what you use

44:47 Who, what, when, where: bringing the human back

50:40 Why the commune fantasy never survives finances

58:22 Ancestral socialization as the pitch

1:00:07 From letters to AI: the deck

1:00:38 Does AI let us become more us

#QualityValues #Dipidi #StartupFounder #LonelinessEpidemic #SocialMediaAddiction

Anthony Simpkins runs Gems on VHS, a Nashville channel built on slow, unscripted, folk-inspired video work. Recorded at Wild Side MMA — Nashville and Clarksville — right after Simpkins and I rolled a few rounds. He's got the fat lip to prove it.

Origin story: A felony for selling mushrooms at eighteen kept him out of college — no Pell Grant for felons. So he bought a Canon T2, started filming musicians in Nashville's early-2010s scene (Belmont, house shows, a town that felt like the center of something), and decided he'd never work for anyone else again. Free videos on Craigslist turned into paid ones. One of them — his friend Benjamin Todd playing a song called "Using Again" against a white wall — sits at 12 million views on YouTube now. He didn't see it coming.

What he does now: Gems on VHS. Intimate, acoustic, cinema-verité style, shot in the spirit of old Alan Lomax field recordings. He's turned down bigger paydays — a Zach Bryan booking among them — to keep working with people he actually likes. Patreon, AdSense, and whatever else pays the bills in between (bar mitzvahs, bus commercials, gym promos — he's done it all).

We get into stepping away from capitalism as an operating philosophy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the difference between fear-presence and the real thing, dumb phones and why the carriers won't let you have one, and why jiu jitsu and live music hit the same nerve. His best idea: chase quality over quantity, work with people you like, and stop needing every upload to top the last one.

Good luck out there, Anthony. See you on the mats — or somewhere with worse Wi-Fi.

Gems on VHS:Website: http://www.gemsonvhs.comInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/gemsonvhsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/gemsonvhsDiscord: https://discord.gg/2xAtJTYBr6YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GemsOnVHS

Quality Values Podcast:YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcDYjJATsN-Nn0Fs5HLuIq5EIzDcA9tggWebsite: https://jacobconlanshields.com/pages/podcast/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5xzOcAP2agwcVVAdu7vztc

Chapters:00:00 – Intro01:41 – Post-spar sit-down at Wild Side MMA02:45 – Started BJJ at 30, taekwondo as a kid03:26 – Why he'll never go pro04:43 – Jiu jitsu vs. rock climbing vs. lifting05:43 – The touch you stop getting as an adult07:35 – What Anthony actually does for work10:16 – Discovering video through Alan Lomax11:39 – Buying a Canon T2, Nashville's early-2010s music scene13:16 – Free videos on Craigslist, getting fired from the last real job16:09 – The viral hit: Benjamin Todd's "Using Again"19:41 – Building Gems on VHS as a personal brand20:36 – Getting recognized in Ireland and Australia22:20 – Upload pressure, and letting go of it22:53 – Stepping away from capitalism25:06 – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance27:53 – The core variable: honesty, chill, peace29:21 – Turning down bigger artists to work with friends30:24 – Making content that resists the algorithm31:08 – Fear vs. presence, and chasing flow33:49 – Live music, open mics, locking in35:06 – Dumb phones and why capitalism won't let you have one36:31 – The felony story: mushrooms at 1838:48 – Going off-grid for Peace Corps41:01 – Who runs the Peace Corps, and Doge cuts43:09 – Presence, travel, and missing a place before you leave it44:34 – Sign-off, Wild Side MMA and Husky Fat Promotions shoutouts

#QualityValues #GemsOnVHS #Nashville #Podcast #BJJ