James Mauk is one of the top movement specialists in the nation. During his career, he has worked with hundreds of people to help them regain movement and vitality that has been diminished from long hours at work or in a chair. Today we are going to talk with him to discuss different ways that you can improve your life through natural movement. If you are interested in contacting him or trying out one of his courses there is a contact form on the bottom of the page where you can contact James directly.
Transcription:
Jake : So today, we have a very very interesting guest on our podcast, James Mauk from Embodied Strength. He does natural movement fitness, which is relatively something new. To tell you the truth, I’ve never heard about it until speaking with Jamie. Some of the concept that we go over in the podcast really make a lot of sense and I think that this information is extremely valuable for anyone that spends a lot of time in a chair or people that are constantly on the grind, working really hard. Which, I know is kind of a category that most of our listeners are in. So, let’s jump into it. Let’s talk with Jamie and see what he has to say. So, today on the podcast we have James Mauk who owns, he’s one of the co-founders of Embodied Strength, which is a really really interesting company. They have a very unique concept that I think has a very very broad appeal especially to people that work really hard, entrepreneurs, a lot of people like you who are listening to the podcast right now. Our goal is to help people increase their productivity and happiness and one of the main things that gets forgotten about… We talk a lot about helping people increase their productivity and their businesses and increase their happiness by creating more money. But really when it comes down to it, your body is very very important both for productivity and happiness and Jamie has a company that is pretty much focused on helping people have less pain in their lives. So, tell a little bit about what you do Jamie. What is Embodied Strength all about?
Jamie :For sure. Seriously dude, thanks for having me on man. It’s really nice to chat with you. I appreciate the work that you’re doing too.
Jake : Thank you.
Jamie : Yeah, yeah. So, I think it’s pretty interesting. One of the work that we do. My partner Jonathan and me, He’s in Portland nad has been an awesome movement coach that I met a few years ago and just really appreciated his work. So, we kind of teamed up to create what we’ve been delivering as our flagship program, which is a 3-month program which basically teaches people how to reconnect to their bodies. That in itself is a really complex to start to break down. “What does reconnecting to your body even mean?”. And so we have a pretty holistic approach. On the kind of the left brain mechanical side of things, we’re teaching people how to move again. We see a lot of people trying to get into good shape via kind of really outdated models or some models work ok, they just don’t really have the principles that it takes to succeed. And something like weightlifting or crossfit, in on itself I enjoy things like crossfit, weightlifting or yoga but there’s a phase that a lot of people are missing which is actually how to move properly, how to feel their own body and there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with whatever programs and modality these people are deciding. So, we’re kind of taking people a step back to take a look at some of those components.
Jake :Ok. So, basically if you were to describe fitness as a pyramid, you’re helping people with kind of the foundational levels that are really necessary before you get to the other things. The yoga, the weightlifting all that sort of stuff, is that right?
Jamie : Exactly, exactly. Right, totally. We take a look at some really intuitive pieces and I think calling it foundational work is a great way of describing it. One of the reasons tend not to use that word is because it gets overused a lot and it gets chunked in with a lot of… I’ve seen a lot of “foundational programs” and it’s like… What they would consider to be foundational, I would consider to be way too advanced in some sense and not actually taking people through the necessary steps and looking at each individual and where they are and helping them meet those needs to become advanced movers or to get into shape or meet the physical goals that they have. It’s a bit of a different journey than most people are painting it out to be in the fitness and the health world so for example I guess, most people today as you know especially if you’re grinding, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or trying to make a dollar. You’re spending a lot of time at your computer, you’re spending a lot of time commuting and driving, you’re spending a lot of time in a really shitty position. Rolled forward shoulders, tucked tailbone, you’re shortening your hip flexors, your core is getting pretty turned off. I’m on a ball right now so it’s more active. For the most part, we’re creating the sensory motor amnesia. We’re like at some point in the journey, we’re at a computer, we’re students or we’re working or whatever. There’s signals that are being sent to our body that’s saying, “This sucks. Get up, go play, go on a walk, move around, go sweat”. And you’re almost done with your project or you’re sitting in class and you’re like “No it’s good. Just a little bit longer.” So we start to shut down that signal. At some point we kind of lost the relationship to actually listen to what our body is needing, what it’s telling us. We kind of have a lot of methodologies for reintroducing the communication that people have with the body if that makes sense. But what people end up doing is they’ve lost touch to their own body and they’ve got these dysfunctions. Rolled forward shoulders and tucked tailbones or Donald Duck Syndrome where it’s anteriorly rotated or whatever, tight hamstrings, bad lower back and they’re like I need to get in good shape and they’ve over simplified the solution. So then they go to the gym or they go to a yoga class or they go do some cross training or they go join Tony Horton and do some P90X but they haven’t corrected the issues that they’ve created over ten years ago. They can’t even sit on the floor comfortably and now you want to go lift 140 pounds over head to feel good or go swing some… Even the cool stuff like functional fitness, slam balls, battle ropes, the more hipster kind of really cool things you’re seeing a lot of. Like great, have you even addressed some of the basic dysfunctions through the neglect that you created. If you haven’t, repetition will not be your friend. You keep showing up at the gym thinking you’re doing something good cause you’re sweating but you’re creating some serious overuse issues in joints and tissues and that’s the cycle that we’ve been continually getting our clients out of. I feel bad, I need to get in good shape, I’m gonna go do this thing, gym, rock climb, yoga, whatever it is. And then they feel good for 6 weeks maybe 2 months if they’re lucky and then something snaps, something tears, something doesn’t feel good. And then they’re back on the coach, getting a little bit fatter or feeling a little bit worse about themselves and the cycle continues. And they find that modality and then everyone we talk to 10 years later, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Like they know moving is good for them but everytime they try, they get hurt and that’s the cycle that I’m seeing. It’s become a worldwide epidemic. I’m working with people from around the world and that’s the cycle that everyone calls us with a consultation and they all have the same problem with a different story. That makes sense?
Jake : It really does. People are very… Based around habits, I remember I went to a meditation retreat at one point about ten years ago and it was about ten days, sitting in a position that was probably actually a little bit more of a healthy position that I normally sit in when I’m in a computer or a desk or something like that. And for the first couple of days, it was extremely painful and then after my body got kind of used to sitting in more of kind of an erect straight position. It got used to being like that and I could actually notice the pain of… You know, when I got back. When I was done with that whole process. Sitting back at a desk, I actually started to feel that. Now I think I’m kind of at another part where I do lots and lots of deskwork and when I initially kind of transitioned into getting back behind the desk and a computer for long stretches of time, I definitely would feel the “I need to get up, I need to straighten out a little bit more” you know all those sort of things and then after a while it kind of just becomes the norm. And now it’s you know, I understand what you’re talking about. I probably share some of the same things as some of your clients feel where it’s like you know, if I went and did like some heavy deadlifts or squats or something, it probably wouldn’t be a good thing to do cause I think my back is a little bit at the mercy of what the desk chair has done for me in the last couple of months. Focus on the fundamentals and just getting straightened back out to the point where I can actually do those functional movements. It makes a lot of sense. How does this play out like on a typical day in the life of somebody that’s doing your course. How do we go from the idea to the reality of this actually happening?
Jamie : Totally, yeah. I’d love to share that and I’d also love to give your listeners a few takeaways and take something that’s at this point recognizing that it’s a little bit of tracked and talk about some of the work that we can do and that even philosophically, you can apply it to your own day to day life that would make some improvements. And cover some of the blind spots that some people have kind of missed. That’s the definition of a blind spot right? So, I really like your story and I think awareness is kind of the big piece you got. Sitting in itself isn’t bad. It’s like the tuning out that sucks. What’s the best position to sit in is something that we hear a lot in the so called movement community and the answer is the next position. You just don’t want to be doing one thing for too long. You want to listen and hear what your body needs to do to do something a little bit differently and I think you’ve just really narrowed in a big piece of what we do. It’s the same thing. We have mutual people that are in our lives and one of them is Lee Joseph, who was my massage teacher and just an incredible man but you know… Going to school with him, the big thing that he taught wasn’t a technique for touching. It was having awareness to tune in into myself and use that awareness to then really feel into someone else. That has really translated continually. I mean, that was over a decade ago and to the work I’m doing now. It’s really about tuning in to yourself. Like from the standpoint of being effective in the workplace. What happens when you’re in control of your body, when you have a relationship with this thing, when you can feel into it deeply and you can powerfully use it in a way that makes things happen. Like when you need to be the hero that needs to run after something and catch something or reach for something and pick something up heavy and be that guy or that woman. Like how does that show up in the workplace and your family life. Like it’s a really awesome place to focus to just make you more effective everywhere else. It’s like the foundational piece, right? The people that come to us don’t necessarily come to us to fix one problem. They come to kind of solve a few problems and focus on one place, if that makes sense. So to answer your question, a day in a life is basically… We have different ways of kind of attracting our audience. Typically, we have like an open facebook group, like a free facebook group where we’re delivering quite a bit of content and really trying to create a nice community there, give a lot of people who may be can’t afford to work with us at least enough stuff to do, takeaways. A lot of the work that we do is implementation. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t share with you that we do. I don’t wanna hide my secret sauce. Like, I’m happy to share everything we do it’s just I know that the implementation and the structure that we’ve created for our clients, which I’ll share in a moment, is really the value in what we have to offer as coaches. So anyway we got this free facebook community. A lot of people hear about us through word of mouth, clients we worked with, and we also have facebook ads and stuff like that. And so on our facebook ads, we have like a master class, fancy name for a webinar where we deliver some of the philosophy. It’s pretty uniquely different when we talked about a lot of things that we’re talking about now and if that’s something that vibes with someone who watches it, we invite them to have a phone call with us which we end up kind of diving into where they want to be in their life and where they are right now and help them get really clear on steps that they would need to take to fill the gap and basically for a lot of people who really feel like they want help with that process, we show them what it looks like and we work with our clients for a minimum of 3 months. And so when they say yes to that and they wanna do that journey with us and have some help in the implementation of these concepts and ideas and things that we’re working with with people. They basically jump on for this wild ride with us for 3 months, where their getting one on one coaching sessions. So these are people around the world so it’s all virtual. It’s all online. They have access to 12 weeks of material basically. So it’s pre-recorded videos that are all scalable depending on where someone’s movement capacity is at. Does that make sense? And then we also have each and every video. So one of the things that a pre-recorded video that just has not worked in the past with the things that we’ve created, with programs programs that we’ve been participants in has been that there’s no follow through. Often times, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like a beach body workout thing. At some point, I don’t know if I’m doing that right. Like you’re learning something new, you’re learning a new complex movement pattern and it doesn’t feel right to your body and you can’t call up the dude on the phone and be like “Hey, I bought your $90 DVD. I’m trying to do this thing but it doesn’t feel right. Am I doing it right? What do I need to do?” We’ve noticed there’s a complete lack of explanation and theology or concept mapping around the movement structure. And so our audience, our target audience, our entrepreneurs, they’re really intelligent people who are critical thinkers, who enjoy deductive reasoning, who just need to figure out how to apply that to their own bodies. How to start to solve the mystery of their bodies. So for every movement that’s in our program, we have something called mastering the sequences where we explain exactly how it should feel in the body, how to activate, which muscles are being targeted, what the point of it is. When you get really good at it, how it can scale up. If it’s not accessible, how you can scale it down and also where the movement goes so when it’s something that’s integrated into your movement pattern, when you can own that movement or whatever it is that we’re teaching, here’s what’s next. Here’s how that transfers into something cooler. Does that make sense?
Jake : It does. It does.
Jamie : So that’s a huge chunk of the program. We do one on one coaching. Once a week, we’re doing like a diagnostics thing. So there’s something that we have like weekly milestone check-in . So every week we hand select a number of exercises that they’ve been working with and we have them film them. Which is huge for them, to see themselves recorded. It’s different than looking in a mirror. It’s different for a lot of reasons which I can get into later. They then send us the footage. They send us their own critique cause we want them to start using critical thinking.”Hey what are you doing really well here? What feels really great? What do you think you need to work on?” And they give us their answers and we give them ours. So they get 3. They’re basically the observers from 3 perspectives. They observe themselves which most people don’t do. And then they get two people who have been doing it for decades each, giving them our feedback. What we’ve seen is just skyrocketing exponential shifts and things that took me years to get over. I can get people over in a week. It almost makes me jealous. I was like “I wish I had me 10 years ago.” That’s a huge part of the program. We do a lot of journaling. We do mindset work. We do emotional work. We do you know… You’re from Hawaii. I borrowed some really cool principles like Hoʻoponopono. Like really making good with yourself. The process of really feeling your body. I think that’s a huge missing piece that’s kind of put every personal trainer who doesn’t implement the more holistic version of the self at a huge disadvantage. Like if you’re not willing to address the emotional self. This is really logical right it sounds kind of “wuwu” or “?” for a minute but just follow me. Like at some point if you’re not acknowledging like you’re emotionally intelligent self, like what it means to feel emotion. How do you feel emotion? When you’re happy and excited, you feel it, right? You feel it in your body and your tissue and at some point we’ve all kind of gotten really numb. Like our ability to express ourselves, that window’s gotten a lot smaller. Our ability to emote, feel, to express is very very directly related to our ability to be good movers, right? You see like what’s a sexy body that you can think of? Like a dancer, a modern dancer. They got jacked bodies, their strong, their capable, their flexible, their mobile. What do they do? They’re out there on stage fully expressing different emotions to an audience, right? Those things are highly related. So we dive in to different pieces of that throughout the program. So there’s a lot of self work people are doing. And we’re taking them on a rites of passage. This isn’t just a “do this get strong.” This like a transformational rites of passage that we just use movement as part of the modality for that. So we do 2 group coaching calls a week where I was just hopping on to calls. Doing Q&A on any questions they might have about specific movements or support with the journey and we’ll just go off on different things that we see that our group needs. Some might be mindset work. It might be inspirational stuff.It might be really technical aspects, the principles like around efficiency, adaptability, confidence all that kind of stuff. We might just dive deep and get really geeky around that kind of stuff. That’s basically the structure and it’s a long one. It’s complex. We put a lot of time and energy into it.
Jake : It makes a lot of sense what you guys are doing and how you’re doing it. There definitely is a connection between emotional state and the body. You could definitely tell like… For instance, I do a lot of sales so if I have a sales call and at the end of the sales call I’m not able to close the deal, normally there’s kind of like you feel that kind of hunching feeling of rejection. “Man I wish I had been able to make that work” vs you knock it out of the park. You close the deal, you’re walking out of that meeting just standing tall and standing really happy. You know, there’s a connection between the two. And you can definitely see where people have residual effects of different things that happen for a long time. They’ve been missing the deal for years and years and years and they just keep getting more and more hunched then they’re not gonna stand up straight until you know, you get that inner thing straightened out that has gotten them there in the first place cause it’s you know… The body is only a part of it. That makes a lot of sense.
Jamie : I just got back from doing some weightlifting at the gym and I’m seeing a lot of stock emotion especially in men. Their perception of they think strong is but they’re just putting strength on their strengthening dysfunction for so many of them are so closed off. So closed off emotionally. So closed off in their hearts and like there’s so much dysfunction that’s creating like… They lack power. I’m a martial artist. I can see dudes that are way bigger than me but I’m like they wouldn’t handle in a fight. I can see that they’re closed off. Their arms no matter how big they get, they’re not connected to their lats. They’re not able to move like the way that they should. I know that and it’s like… I know it’s scary. It’s scary to think that maybe if you address some of the stagnant emotional stuff and did some meditation that you’re talking about that you’d actually get bigger gains than the gym. It’s funny that not many people talk about that but I used to you know… I don’t just teach movement. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of coaching and I was doing some coaching for some people, men and women around dating, actually. And it’s funny when you acknowledge postural changes, the energy that you. It’s impossible when you… I use dating metaphors a lot when I’m coaching people still. My brain is just wired that way I guess for better or worse. I don’t think my fiance likes that my brain is like… Nonetheless like you know just like what you’re saying. You can’t show up to a date like groveling, like needy, all like broken and be like “ Hey do you want some of this?” You have to own it. Speaking with owning it, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the company Onnit. Aubrey Marcus is really cool, awesome, fortune piling like CEO guy in Austin, Texas. We were just talking about this metaphor that I think really resonates with what we’re talking about of like we’re at this time where I think a lot of people in business and in movement and in dating, a lot of people will teach you to how to pretend to be like… If you’re fishing, we use a fake lure. We don’t need to use live bait, right? So, a lot of people teach you to be like a fake lure. Like to pretend to be the thing and it’s like, we’re living in a time where people are just getting smarter. We’re getting more intelligent. We don’t accept that bullshit anymore. You don’t wanna pretend to be strong. You don’t wanna pretend to confident. Like you know.. It’s time to just fucking be the thing. Be the live bait. Be the thing that attracts the things that you want in your life. You want a beautiful partner in your life? Don’t pretend to be confident. Take the necessary fucking steps to be a confident person. Have things in your life that you’re confident about. Make decisions that you’re stoked on, where you’re proud of yourself and just show off that way. Don’t pretend anymore. And I think we do that same kind of thing when we’re coaching our students. Like what is… Let’s look at strength. Let’s figure out how to really cultivate real strength. Not this pretend armor that a lot of people are trying to cultivate.
Jake : It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So to give some people some action steps and somethings that they can work on right now after listening to this podcast. What are some of the first steps that you’d recommend for people to really kind of start making the change? What are some of the catalyst that you see that people hit in their lives that enable them to do things and how would you suggest that they get to those places and push through those things that are keeping them from starting their path towards better health and more mobility and better mind body connection?
Jamie : Yeah, that’s a really great question. Awesome question. You know, a big thing that Jonathan and I pride ourselves on is not having a “one-size fits all approach” and a lot of that phone call is like we really personalize everything we say specifically to the person that we’re working with. That said there are some universal truths and some basic approaches that I would recommend for everybody so I can share some of those. That said, depending on where you’re at and having to coach, having someone really get you to like… I can witness where you’re at and really coach you into feeling it. You can get the idea of something and it might not change your life. It’s the implementation part that’s really important. So that’s you know… What I see, a lot of people especially men and what’s trending is mobility, I think. People are like they’re finally recognizing that strength is always gonna be limited by your ability to have functional mobility. Meaning like your expressive range of motion through your joints, right? So a lot of men specifically but women too are realizing that they’re lacking that flexibility and we’ve kind of… It’s good. We need to have a language around these things. It’s good that mobility is a thing now. Like, I’m really glad that it is. At some point though, we need to start to merge mobility, flexibility and strength and some other attributes too back into just moving. It’s just your body expressing it’s capacity, if that makes sense. And so, my point is when a lot of people are trying to get more mobile or more flexible, the main approach that I see if I could shave some years of some agonizing pain off of your life if you’re trying this right now. I have for years and I’m seeing more gains and weeks if not months when I kind of switch my approach. The thing that I would leave with people is that going to end range of motion and just hanging out at your end range of motion is completely going against what your body wants to do to open up. So a lot of the work we do is just planting like a concept, creating a conceptual framework to move from. We’re always moving and creating from ideas like if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting a business, at one point was an idea and depending on that idea that’s gonna shape your business. And the principles that you use is gonna shape the way that you interact with other people in that business. So the idea aspect is really important so we want to get people really clear and one of the ways that we do that is I think is when we’re reconnecting to our bodies. When we want things like more flexibility and more mobility rather than doing what a lot of systems do including pitkin yoga. I mean certain teachers do it right like for sure and I’ve got a lot to learn from yoga and I don’t want to put it down in general but I’ve also heard hundreds of stories that whose point is about how yoga’s let these people down. So, you can imagine somebody who doesn’t have a good range of motion or mobility, they go do yoga class and they’re like “Cool now tie yourself into a pretzel, do a forward bend and do this flow with us” and what ends up happening, I heard the story today. It’s like they feel like they need to talk their body like “Hey it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok” and their body is freaking out. Their nervous system is like “ Don’t do this, don’t do this. This is freaking scary.’ You can imagine if you did that to like… You take your kid or your friend and you know… in Hawaii one of my favorite things to do is jump off of a cliff, over a waterfall, into the ocean, doing backflips 30 feet off of a cliff. That’s my thing. I love doing that stuff but I couldn’t even imagine taking my girlfriend up there and be like “Alright, do this, do this, do this” She’s like freaking out and I’m like “Go,jump, jump,jump“ and I’m yelling. There’s no way she’s gonna jump off that very well. There needs to be a level of trust right and so, so much of gaining your flexibility and mobility and opening yourself back up is gaining the trust of your body back. You have offended your body by not listening to it enough and now that you wanna finally pay attention to it, you’re treating it like you’re cracking a whip on the… When you’re cracking a whip on the horse it’s like a slave driver and you’re doing that to your body. You’re like “Stretch further. I need you to be flexible.” You start doing these things to your body. What you need to do is to back way off. We need to do things that feel really good. Like that’s the key. Show your nervous system “Hey buddy. It’s ok.” Like train it like you would when you get a dog. You know when you get a dog and you need to build trust like “Hey it’s cool. You can trust me. You can come here and do what I say.” And the second it has trust it starts listening to you again and it does what you say. Same as when you’re raising a kid. I’ve been a teacher for kids. You need to have trust and so a huge part of it isn’t like bending as far as you can on a forward pull to touch your toes to finally open up your hamstrings. That’s why your hamstrings are still tight ten years later. Because it’s holding on to fear. What you need to do is to start working from the inside out. Here’s a really tangible way of working with this. It’s super simple, I’ll even show you. You can see me ok?
Jake : Yeah.
Jamie : So, let’s say I’m going here and this is my end range of motion. I feel this isolating in my hamstring. I can hang out here or I can push further or further and now this is getting a little scary. Now my back is starting to round and now I’m training dysfunction and this how most people won’t address it. Actually, I’m just gonna be here until I can feel the hamstring activate a little bit. And now I’m just gonna start exploring. Can I sway? Like hips are huge, pelvis. Where can I move? Can I rotate anteriorly and posteriorly? And I’m tucking my tailbone and as simple as that is, my hamstrings, my glutes, my hips’ axis in the front, my Transversus Abdominis, my deep core muscles are all tied to this one magical thing called my pelvis. Doing some little like hip sways, side to side, is affecting dozens of muscles and it’s showing like “Oh look what you can do.” I’m nearly grooving patterns in my nervous system saying “Hey look how many options you have.” You can fall this way. It’s falling or it’s parkour. It leads to so many things. By mapping out I’m creating motor maps in my nervous system that allow me to bend, go deeper and deeper and deeper into flexion and extension and all the hot stuff. That’s one example of kind of a different approach to starting to open tissue up. So we really address what we would call Pelvic Intelligence. Really starting to articulate the pelvis again. A lot of sitting, a lot of center stuff. We’re either posteriorly tucked. Meaning we’ve got like this thing going on or this thing going on. It’s too much one of the other. And so, a lot of people are always trying to fix that and correct it but just managing it in their head like “Oh is this where it’s supposed to be I think.” But the truth is you need to be articulating it from side to side, front to back, circles. So we have a lot of stuff that we’re training. Quadruped position, meaning all fours, standing, seating and when you start to open up that articulation it finds neutral on its own. And that’s a huge principle. As long as you start to open up expression, you shouldn’t have to concentrate too much on “How’s my posture? How’s my posture?” Your body is smart enough to figure that out. As long as you give it a lot of options, does that makes sense?
Jake : Yeah. So for the people who are listening to the podcast on an audio stream, let me just kind of break down what Jamie did.
Jamie : Oh yeah, yeah.
Jake : Basically, stood up, put one foot on a stool or some sort of raised elevated position and showed that a lot of people are trying to go… If they’re trying to reach their toes or something like that. They’ll try and go to the 97%, 101% range of motion to really try and push that. When actually, it’s much healthier to go for like the 20% range motion and work on the different variations so that your body isn’t just locking itself into a different motion that it’s not really liking. To really let things open up and be able to be more flexible and more free and from there you can move. I’m assuming people in your program are probably gonna end up with a better range of motion than when they started without having to torture themselves to do it. Is that correct Jamie?
Jamie : Oh 100%. I was doing a similar thing yesterday with a student, who just went through our program. She’s a mom with a 2 year old from Germany and she came to us and she couldn’t do a proper lunge. Like she couldn’t lunge without like kind of shaking… It looks like she just got off a boat and she’s been on a boat for 3 months. She couldn’t like find her… You know, she still have her sea legs and in 3 months, she’s doing really advance single leg squat patterns. So like on one leg, squatting all the way down to the ground like just incredible work. And the biggest, I was like one of the biggest takeaways that she had was… She’s a movement coach. She’s a yoga instructor and she was just like “ It’s never been so easy. I didn’t know it could feel so good. Like my body enjoyed the whole process. I’m stronger, my legs are stronger than they’ve ever been, my whole body’s stronger that it’s been ever been. I’m more flexible than I’ve ever been. I’m more coordinated than I’ve ever been. I was never sore. I never woke up sore.” And that was like, it was conflicting for a lot of beliefs that she’s had had. That you could actually navigate like feeling really… Like swaying my hips from side to side is as silly as it could look and I wouldn’t do it on a dancefloor quite like that. But it feels good. It feels nourishing and and there’s a lot of layers to it. But it’s like, part of it in the head it’s like, you don’t think you’re stretching unless it hurts a little bit. Unless you’re at that anger and emotional. Like “Oh that’s what stretching has been.” That’s the concept that a lot of us have downloaded but it’s totally wrong. That’s just stretching wrong feels like. Stretching really well is just like, it should all feel like when you get up in the morning and you’re yawning. You know like “Haaaaauuugh. Yes.” You know that opening and there’s some contraction like somethings are getting contracting and some things are opening and you’re just grabbing hold of the tissue and you’re kinda… It just feels good. That’s what the whole practice is.
Jake : Ok. Well this really makes a lot of sense on a lot of different levels and I know that you have a busy day today so I don’t really want to take too much of your time. But before we wrap things up, I want to make sure that people who are interested in learning more about your process and more about your program have the information in order to find you guys. What’s the best way to get in touch with you for more information?
Jamie : Yeah, yeah. So there’s a couple of ways. One would be “embodiedstrength.co”. That’s our website. If you wanted to book a call with us. You’re like… We typically spend about an hour on a call just kind of… Like we talked about earlier, figuring out where you’re stuck and helping you get unstuck. It’s really no judgement kind of place and it’s a place where you can kind of share as much as you’re willing to share the more we can help. And if you want our help personally, we can look at what that looks like but we certainly don’t wanna… Don’t feel scared to call us and just get some free health. You’re totally welcome to do that. That’s what we’re here to do. We haven’t enough clients so I would really encourage you guys of this is exciting for you. If you get on the phone, we’re gonna help you out a little bit. Another place you can go is our free facebook page which is the Art of True Strength. So you can just look us up at the Art of True Strength”. And then yeah myself, James Mauk and then my partner Jonathan Mead are the administrators are there. So lots of good information. We do interviews and fun stuff like that and a lot of Facebook live stuff and dive into some really cool principles like we were talking about today, like every week.
Jake : Awesome. So if you’re listening on one of the audio streams, “embodiedstrength.co” is a great place to find more information. If you’re watching on youtube or you’re on our blog on the Trouble Free Employees website, you’ll see a contact form that you can contact these guys directly and get more information or if you’re watching on youtube, you’ll see a link to that. So, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today and really explain what you have going on. It’s extremely interesting and I’m really excited to be able to share this information with people cause I think that… You’re basically… There’s an epidemic of people that are getting locked into these positions that are affecting them in so many different ways and it’s very important to have people out there like you, that are helping them break these patterns. Get back more into natural movement and get more in touch with their body and I really really thank you for taking the time out of your day to do this with me.
Jamie : Yeah Jake.It’s been an absolute honor and a privilege. I really appreciate your presence and all the work that you’re doing too. It’s I think that’s what both us got excited about. Brought us together. We’re on a similar mission. Just different versions of the same story like we’re really wanting to empower people in their lives and we just have different tools for empowerment but it’s really so we can really own the day and do things to make this life worth living and also this planet, a more beautiful place to be for us and future generations and it feels like we’re an awesome team, doing the work. So I appreciate you too. Thanks for everything man and I hope we get to do it again. There’s a lot there.
Jake : Yeah. I’d like to have you back on and we’ll let some time pass and then bring you back on and see how things are evolving. I’m really interested to stay in touch with your story and be able to hear more about the success stories that you’re able to bring to your clients and some of the different things that you figure out along the way cause it’s really a cutting edge sort of thing that you’re on. Really appreciate you and what you’re doing. So, to everybody that’s listening, “embodiedstrength.co”. Find out more information about these guys. They’re definitely gonna help you out. You only have one body to live in. You’re gonna have it for the rest of your life. Take care of it. So thank you so much Jamie. I really appreciate it.
Jamie : Thank you too Jake. Have a good one.
