weMove Podcast

Thoughts on the Lindsey Matthews podcast with Chris and James

Hey there, welcome to the weMove podcast.

Something a little different but related to the year that we, well I had. This one is about the power of birth, the epic adventure it is and was very timely as I became a dad a 6 weeks before hand. 

Watching my partner give birth to our boy, the lead up to it, the act of it and the post birth or post partum has taken me on a wild ride and that’s just my experience, let alone that of my partner. Truly amazing and as life unfolds we are discovering many practices and people creating support networks for the act of birth and beyond and that leads us today. 

We are in conversation with Lindsey Matthews a doctor of chiropractic, birth doula, NLP practitioner, and strength and conditioning coach and founder of Birthfit. The brainchild of Lindse,y Birthfit is an eco system of all things birth prep and beyond termed by Lindsey and the team as the motherhood transition.

Birthfit is a movement, an approach to birth, a state of readiness and a support team with a mission to cultivate awareness and enhance education throughout the motherhood transition by developing and producing experiences through in person classes, and distance learning so that a woman has the space to make her own informed, intuitively guided choices.

Having been present at the birth of my son and earlier the death of my father, the way we talk about the start and end of our lives is not talked about enough, not in a morbid or icky kind of way. But instead an informed celebration of these two phases of our lives which have profound echoes beyond for the family unit. 

Chris and I are sold on the power of Birthfit having met Lindsey and some of her team who are all powerhouses in their own right and just brilliant people doing super important work. I love this conversation, its different to the last few weeks and at the same time another dot on the journey to a complete human experience.

Follow birthfit at birthfit.com and @birthfit on insta. If you know of any mums and dads to be, this might be useful. Enjoy.

Today in our thoughts on series we pick up on the concept of reflection spoken about in our time with Ron Kauk and a strong theme amongst all those we are meeting. Taking time to look at your past, present and future honestly and without judgement. The latter part being a real challenge as we, that is movers tend to be quite alpha in personality and want to constantly make progress. 

The purpose of reflection is to turn around, look how far we have come and take that forward. So we speak to an ascendant movement specialist Wil Brown. First spotted him on insta as I was working out handstands and things and he was heading to Australia to explore movement culture. Its been great to hang out a few time with Wil, incredibly accomplished already in his early twenties and yet super humble with an enormous appetite to learn. 

NO surprise and also quite surprising for his age, he uses the process of reflection during his coaching sessions and for his personal development to integrate the thoughts and emotions with the physical practice.

You can follow Wil on instagram @wbrown7

Today in our thoughts on we speak to Lindsey Mathews the founder of Birthfit, doctor of chiropractic, doula, NLP practitioner and S&C coach on how she uses reflection to move her ideas and process forward.

We will be speaking to Lindsey next week in our main podcast, and thought it the right time to ask her about her daily reflection process that she posts as her Coffee Talk series on her instagram stories daily. Posing questions and thoughts for others to reflect on to support them in their process.

You can follow Lindsey on instagram @lindsey_k_mathews

Thoughts on the Ron Kauk Podcast with Chris and James

Today we are with the Yosemite climber Ron Kauk. Ron pushed the limits of climbing in Yosemite during the ascendance of the sport and paved the way to some extent of what we see now inspiring climbers of our generation Tommy Caldwell, Alex Honnold to create the next level of what is possible on the soaring granite walls of Yosemite and the wider world.

 Chris and I met Ron 3 years ago by chance. He was giving a talk in Yosemite on the few days we were there and as we sat there listening to his ideas of nature, how it has changed and what climbing has taught him about how to be a complete human we turned to each other and said we have got to spend a bit more time with Ron. WE hung out with him and featured him in Issue 1 alongside the lessons from Yosemite which we learned in our 3 day trip.

Well that was 3 years ago and on our again impromptu stop of in Yosemite we sent him a text to see if he was around for a coffee. He was and we spent the rest of the day talking from daylight to darkness and wished we had recorded it!

There is a shared connection when we talk to Ron, climbing brought us together but it is how he sees the world as a result of climbing, what he has experienced in terms of highs and lows that we hold space for because it is an opportunity to learn and share wisdom from someone who has been up to the top, seen the view, come down and then asked himself what the next step is. For Ron it became a journey of giving back through Sacred Rok the educational program sharing his experience with the younger generations to connect with their inner wisdom. Serving others and giving back being a practice we hear regularly from the people we sit with.

The big takeaway for me is the importance of rites of passage, how we have to pay our dues, work through the levels and the instability that is often a result of hacking our way through the process, becoming our best takes time and practice and the more you practice with purpose the more progress will be made.  Culture, instagram, the media pushes the idea of always being the best and yet rarely talks about what it takes to get there and the stages that the idols pass through in order to achieve their status.

There are so many parallels with the conversations we have had with Jamie Wheal, Tony Molina and Arthur Joseph, Brian Mackenzie and beyond that strengthens the case for the essential principles of being a complete human, mainly that there are steps to take and if you skip the steps you will most likely have to return to take them so best to be fearless and take them as they come.

Enjoy the conversation with Ron, let us know your thoughts and it would be great if you follow us on our youtube channel weMove world and our instagram page @wemovemagazine.

This week in EQUIP we hear from the man behind So We Flow, the yoga brand for men with movement in mind. 

We met Jake in 2018 when he was launching the brand and in the yoga world what he was doing felt rather unique. Simple workwear styles for men who do yoga. So simple in fact that that is their genius and their pants are some of the best climbing pants we have had and not a purple in sight.

Like the brand itself, Jake is super mellow, straight forward and a pleasure to talk to, even though we did this Q&A remotely. 

See more of what they do on soweflow.com

As we start the new round of podcasts exploring the ideas of a Complete Human Experience, this podcast with Arthur Joseph, founder of Vocal Awareness and is the third in the series post after Jamie Wheal's. We talk about the ideas which jumped out at us during the conversation with Arthur and connect it back in to where we are heading with weMove.

Hey there and welcome to the weMove podcast.

This next podcast was initially out of left field. 

Our voice is unique to us and often is hidden behind a version of ourselves we think the world wants to see. When we are not ourselves, our voice changes and when we discover our true voice then we step into our self, becoming heard by others and able to communicate clearly the ideas we have and the person we truly are.

We were introduced Arthur Joseph the leading vocal coach in the US quite possibly the world and founder of the Vocal Awareness methodology. 

During the conversation we were pretty quiet and when we did speak, Arthur would coach us much like the conductor of an orchestra, and there is a point where the sound I make when I speak does not sound like me, it didn’t feel like my normal self, instead something much calmer and more assured. Very strange and yet enough for me to felt he effect of developing how I communicate with myself and others.

The connection for us with the people we are meeting is the connection with the breath. Physical performance is all well and good but we interact with others in more ways than physical and our ability to communicate clearly with others will propel us further forward in how we live than simply how fit we are. Sure there are all the breathwork practices which talk about physical performance and health and longevity which are great, but the breath is also the critical tool in how we speak and we only learn in a monkey see monkey do kind of way. 

Arthurs clients read like a complete who’s who from Angelina Jolie, Arnold Schwarzenegger to Karim Abdul Jabar, and countless NFL and NBA hall of famers aswell as regular folk just like us and that is why this is special. We all have a voice and when we know how to use it and what it is capable of then the world opens up because we can connect rather than conflict with others.

As with all these practices, choosing the ones to practice is the skilful part, but how we use our voice might just be the next step in this complete human experience we are living.

For more information on Arthur, go to our website and follow the links from his podcast.

This week in Thoughts on, we ask our cold water compadre and natural movement specialist Tony Riddle aka The Natural Lifestylist about movement and the play state. The thoughts on series is a result of wanting to go a little deeper and gain another perspective on themes which emerge from the main weekly podcast and this comes from our pod with Tony Molina founder of the Rewire project. Who said that the fundamental with people wanting to move is that they simply cannot very well. And that is the foundation and starting point for everything we do. It might sound like we are in two different places during this podcast and that’s because we are. Using the power of technology to connect the weMove world together. We record these not as a conversation but as a series of emailed questions the guest records the answers to in the comfort of their own home. Follow tony @thenaturallifestylist