weMove Podcast

Be curious about what you read and who you train with.

This weeks podcast is a result of a t shirt a guy would wear when we trained alongside each other @whitehartcrossfit. 

Efrem Brynin trains @whitehartcrossfit and I remember seeing his T shirt with the logo and slogan Strongmen on it. I got it but I also didn’t until I began to see a few more around in the box. So I got curious about what it meant and what it was for.

Turns out Strongmen is a bereavement charity Efrem founded with Daniel Cross after being connected by one of the SAS Who Dares Wins team as they had both been on the show and suffered from unexpected loss.

Hearing this it felt right to do what we can to share what they are doing and how just because culture has shown that men deal with life events like bereavement in one way, does not mean they aren’t looking for a more connected way for them to express the rise and fall of grief and bereavement which can literally make a once stable world fall apart around the person.

We are all strong, and culture often misrepresents what it means to be strong, vulnerable, ask for help etc. Strength, true strength of the mental and physical kind is being able to ask for help and support. All of this is easy to say, but harder to do. As Efrem says when something like this happens “You know in your Self that something isn’t right, but difficult conversations and difficult conversations”

To make this progress the person needs to feel safe to do so and that is exactly why Strongmen exists, to create a safe space where in this case men can be around like minds and receive support and connection to manage the grieving process and build their life back. They do this through weekend retreats and also a peer 2 peer telephone service called Man2Man which started during the lockdown of 2020.

We will all face bereavement and loss at some point in our lives, knowing there is a network to hold you as you experience the grieving process is invaluable.

If you need to make a call or know someone that might, then check out www.strongmen.org.uk

Thanks Efrem

The sports field is literally a proving ground, and in this weeks podcast we explore an idea that maybe the proving ground is not fully understood and that we often attempt to prove something that doesn't need to be proven. That, you are enough and you have always been enough.

Now imagine what that shift in understanding would do to how we show up on the field, that you are in the field because of who you are.

That is what I take from our podcast with @rick_cooper, ex rugby player, fireman and now leadership coach and speaker. We talk, Competition. Connection. Resilience. Leadership, how to pick yourself up when you are told you will never walk again and more.

Thanks brother for your time, as always it was a pleasure.

If you like the pod and feel like buying us a coffee to keep us fueled, then follow the link in the bio.

Peace☮️, love❤️ and rigor✊.

Welcome to the weMove podcast. 

When does sticking at things and never quitting become detrimental and negative to progress? 

Quitting, is a term that has so many negative connotations. There is so much glamour in the social media feeds of never quitting, doing something whatever it takes that it can get clouded and confused. 

I am all for the idea of not quitting, but sometimes I do wonder what it’s all about when slogging away at something, where the stakes are not related to what really matters, like life/death. 

Todays podcast is with David ‘Jacko’ Jackson, one half of @schoolofcalisthenics, former professional rugby player who had to make the decision to call time on his professional playing career due to culmination of impacts, tackles which were slowly over time affecting his longevity as a human. 

Jacko suffered a seizure during practice, leading to the necessary scans etc to confirm that the life forward from then on would need to be different. 

This is where quitting is legitimate, though still a tough pill to swallow when drive, ego and the nature of the game is to “patch up and keep going”. 

What followed was certainly a questioning of identity, purpose and all the other trimmings that come with turning away from the thing that defined Jacko. But what I feel has come from that is the path that lay ahead and the number of people Jacko has been able to inspire, and positively impact along the way developing the School of Calisthenics with his co founder Tim Stevenson and then personal explorations into the more cutting edge ideas of vestibular training, breathwork, cold immersion to begin to reconnect to the bodies innate ability to improve, grow and progress, all the time investing in to as Jacko calls it your “physical pension”. 

And it does start with movement, as Chris and I have always believed. Get up and move, do it consistently with intention and it will change your life. 

Thanks Jacko, and enjoy the episode. 

As always if you like what we do, we have this Ko-fi platform where you can support the podcast by buying a virtual coffee. Click the link in the bio.

Chris and James riff on Paul Warrior's 30 day Atlas ball program and Chris' dive into  Shadow Work

Chris and James discuss thoughts from 2020

This weeks episode we are on the bike, exploring one persons infatuation with the bike, or at least that’s what he was originally thought it was.

Turns out it was a vehicle for expression, but not of the ego image that is so often the case. But something deeper, the bike was a support vehicle to connect with what was needed. To grieve the passing of his dad, a big transition in the scheme of life. 

We spoke to Dhiren half way through this year and this conversation really was a gem. Articulate, and willing to ask questions of himself that many suppress, Dhiren spoke about cycling, the infatuation that occurs when we begin the movement journey of a specific genre (in this case cycling), the addiction of feeling fitter, stronger, more capable and the all too common gentle attrition of the physical self that comes from endurance pursuits.

Sports are neutral, inert. It is us that give them a charge be that positive or negative. I fear that we are illiterate and ill prepared in our comprehension of why we move. That is changing slowly and can happen more often if we are to understand that movement is healing, that our bodies are always striving to move towards healing, to completion, to a feeling of wholeness.

There is a consequence in striving.

The question for me is “are we striving to achieve the thing we think we are?”

We think, most often because of the linear start and end point of sport that the achievement is the winning, the completing.

But what about the DNF, the inability to finish something. The DNF is the thing that no ones wants to do, but it represents to me a point of questioning, because the body and or mind could not continue because we weren’t listening to what it was trying to tell us that it needed or maybe didn’t need. Do you need to run that ultra, ride that sportive, climb that mountain? 

It is the challenges that stop us in our tracks that teach us the most about who we are, what we an become, not doing something easily with little on the line. 

The podcast is accompanied by a short film, one of Chris and Will (the editors) best I think. 

Thanks to Dhiren for your patience on the bike, for the journey you went on and the openness of the conversation.

We will be on newsletter 3 in a few weeks, so if you’d like to sign up then go to weMove.world/newsletter and we can update you with the new one. 

Or if you are feeling generous and would like to support us with a coffee but wonder how you would as we are all in this weird lock down. Fear not, you can support the podcast using Ko-Fi where you can literally buy us a ‘coffee’, follow the https://ko-fi.com/wemoveworld

That’s all from us, peace from the two of us.

Hey there, welcome to the weMove podcast. There’s a lot of internal change happening within weMove at the minute. Not the obvious change, Chris and I are both still involved, but with this year being what it is, it has evolved us. 

I’m now in Portugal living with my young family, which has been a radical, obvious, natural, needed, timely, earned move. For how long, who knows but we are up in the hills, surrounded by nature, farmland, real life and it is just what we needed, I needed. And Chris is roaming and exploring in his own way, revisiting his place of birth, and the constructs that come with that. We are both in a good place, however you define a good place. I would say it still comes with the daily sludge to move through, but interspersed with real gems and progress.

Training here is happening more in this place for me than the initial phase of lockdown 1. I just didn’t want to move, I wanted to be quiet and luckily I had the opportunity to. Become a kind of hermit, training with a close group of friends, having conversations that I realise are becoming the next stage of weMove. IT’s pretty cool, daunting and natural.

And that has informed our podcasts in a way it didn’t before. We were attempting to be more planned, slick, professional, but this world feels that the conversations we have are by their very nature, real.  Real in the sense that we are not setting out a formulaic conversation structure where guests are brought on to promote their new book or just getting the big names on. Because those big names you can listen to again and again and they say the same thing, their thing. 

We are looking to the network that is natural and connects more organically around the world, and has no less impact. In fact I think it has more impact if we actively and passively let it. Todays conversation is a continuation of last weeks pod with Georgie Holt in that it is with acupuncturist Jack Jewell, a Five Element Acupuncture practitioner and he feels like a young Jedi, of which there are a growing number of younger therapists who are following in the footsteps of the history and tradition while bringing a more contemporary take on therapy.

What is consistent in Jack and the tradition is the belief that the relationship between the natural world and our bodies, is paramount in how we live, in particular how it manifests as illness in our body, mind and spirit.

Which I find particularly interesting because weMove started with the belief that people just need to move and then the path will open up if we seek. What we are beginning to realise is that the seeking is our Self and who we really are. We just have to go through this initiation of endurance, learning, unlearning, finding, losing and then re-finding who we are, what we can do and what is possible.

Literally, we spend our entire life if we are unlucky looking for something that was under our noses all along. Us, you, me. We are what we seek, but we have to be in that place which feels like non effort, that middle way we discuss where we can observe and shape our reality.

I enjoyed this one, the sound is a little whack but that is the wonder of zoom, headsets and transcontinental Wi-Fi connections.

Thanks Jack, this was good.

You can find Jack on instagram @jjacupuncture and jjacupuncture.co.uk.

We also got our first newsletter out a couple of weeks ago, thanks to those that signed up, sent us questions and emails. We are putting together the next one, it will be different again. If you are not on the list sign up at weMove.world. Like I said things are changing here at weMove world and it will be a good end to this year and start to the wonder that will be 2021.

Peace from Portugal.

Hey there and welcome to the weMove podcast.

With one more episode in our movement and search for meaning to come, we are holding off whilst we complete the accompanying short film Chris has been working on. It’s rally good and a lovely bookend to the series.

In the meantime we are beginning a new series of conversations with a growing number of body work practitioners influenced by the concepts of Eastern Medicine specfically acupuncture, of which there happen to be two who have piqued my interest on instagram for their personal message and their aesthetics. And whilst how we choose our personal team isn’t always best based on aesthetics of their insta feed and words. These mediums do portray someone’s flavour as I call it. Their personality, their interests etc,, which has been how I have gathered and formed those around me who I call on when I am struggling physically, mentally or spiritually.

There are many practitioners out there in the world, no two are the same even if they come from what is on the surface the same background. If you don’t click with them and by that I mean feel safe, seen and heard then chances are their effectiveness with the person is not likely to be what it could be. 

So if you are seeking someone to support you, then be discerning with your choice, with you and the energy you surround yourself with, be this a coach, a training program, body worker, healer, guide. Choose wisely.

So today Chris speaks to Georgie Holt, a London based Auricular Acupuncturist, Herbalist and Yin Yoga practitioner who specialises in guiding people in their Still Practices. So much of the movement world is about moving, moving faster, moving further or the health world about healing faster and quicker, with quick fixes and body hacks.

Increasingly this modern emphasis on speed and progress ignores the very way progress is made which is to be still. And by that I am not meaning you will run your marathon by standing still, of course you won’t but you might just run it better if you are still within your mind and body, when you are not constantly catapulted into fight or flight by adrenaline which over time is not great for your performance or your health.

This approach of still, centred and stable is evident in all of those who achieve great things. Not that the great things is the reason, but rather that from this still, centred and stable place we can tap into the potential and resources that each of us have.

Yin Yoga, Yoga nidra, breathwork, ice baths, rest, sleep, journaling. All of these I would put in the box of Still practices which are game changing and daunting at the same time. Particularly the latter for those folk who like me didn’t want to sit still and would push through injury, pain or other such signs of the body saying, “mate, time to give me a rest”

You can follow Georgie on insta @fearlessbodies and also @studio_unfold.

Share our podcast with your friends, it is how the conversations get to people who may need them. Also our newsletter, the first one of which is finally out – that was a purge on my procrastination skills! If you have received it, have a look through, it is by no means the finished article, it improves based on feedback, all of which is welcome. And if you haven’t signed up then do and support us in creating a newsletter of value and not just more inbox clogging stuff.

 From Chris and me, thanks for your support. Peace. 

Hey there and welcome to the weMove podcast. 

To say that the last few months have been unpredictable is an understatement, it has certainly taken its toll on the routine and structure of my days and for that I apologise as the frequency of our podcast releases has been intermittent as a result. 

Todays episode is a continuation of the movement and search for meaning conversations and one that we recorded as we entered the first week of the original lockdown. For some there is a second lockdown and it is curious how this episode is timely even now. We often feel the need to rush but as one of our friends wrote the other week “Rushing is what got me…” 

Just goes to show that quality be it actions or conversations rarely have a sell by date. In fact having just moved to Northern Portugal and observing the cities of UK and perhaps beyond, there is a manic rush that prevails under the guise of direction and purpose. 

Anyway back to the podcast. This conversation is with Olivia Berggren who had a similar experience to many we have spoken to. A questioning of the practices we do as to why we do them. Are they serving us or are they covering up for something that we are not asking ourselves. 

Movement is an expression of our experiences and how we see the world, but not all movement is healthy, it can without doubt be a place to hide from what we knowingly know but are unwilling to deal with. 

We can be hard on ourselves, particularly when we are searching for who we are. Often we find a practice that seduces us, more often than not through watching someone so good and proficient in the movement and repetition that they make it look effortless, full of ease and inspiring. It is amazing to watch these people, but we know very little of what they have endured to get to that place, who they are and why they do it. 

I’m going to make a generalisation here that the majority of people that are doing a practice have no idea why they are doing it, they follow blindly a practice that they rarely engage fully with and often use it to cover up the weaknesses and damage caused by a life of unfiled experiences. 

I did it with running, climbing, astanga, business. Olivia experienced something similar with astanga yoga. The control, discipline, freedom, times, splits, races, training feel great and absolutely have merit but they can and often do crossover into some form of self punishment when we do not understand why we are doing something. 

There are other ways to move that are not what you are doing that will benefit the very thing you are doing and more. Be curious enough to understand the tyoe of person you are, create a place of safety within you and explore all the ranges with which you can move, not just the end range of physical limitation.

Damian Fearns: Let emotions be your guide.

"In modern society most of us don’t want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us."

Thats a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh that resonated with me looking back through old notes and it relates to this weeks podcast. Many of us are missing something at the moment in all the"good work" people are saying they are doing to make themselves better versions of themselves.
That thing is connection with our emotions. There is as I see it a prevalent negative culture pervading social media and other areas that encourages individuals to lock into a cycle of emotional navel gazing. A continuous process of just looking and talking about emotions preventing them from what they are wanting to do, express themselves to get out of the body.

In this podcast recorded at the beginning of the Movement and Search for Meaning series I sat down with weMove collaborator, Integral coach and facilitator Damian Fearns and talked about Emotions. Because for so many, including my own self I understood but didn't really understand what emotions are, what they do and how important they are for guiding us and also how they can if not treated with respect and care create some real blockages in how we interact with life and the world around us.
Emotions when understood and accepted have the ability to raise our awareness of an issue and then move on out of the body. When we get to grips with this we can respond to them, and help them do what they need to do which is move. Because emotions move us, so in searching for meaning in our lives, perhaps connect with your emotions instead of disconnecting from them. You will thank them for it.

If you like what we do, then we ask that you share the podcast with others who are searching for new things to listen to. We will also be launching this November our newsletter The Middle Way, so if you are interested in receiving a simply designed and concise guide that connects the themes of weMove together then sign up on our website weMove.world or on our Linktree on our instagram bio. Sending you all good vibes in these curious times. Peace.