Essentials: The Science & Practice of Movement | Ido Portal

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now, for my discussion with Ido Portal. Ido, thank you for coming here today. Over the years, we've been in communication and I've come to realize that you're a true intellectual of the topic of movement. And I define an intellectual as somebody who can understand a topic at multiple levels of granularity. To start off, could you inform us how people should think about approaching a movement practice? What is the first layer of any good movement practice? It's an open system, it has no center, it's decentralized, and it can be approached from anywhere. And that's its magic, and that's the benefit of it. Some people, find the body a good entry point, and then playfulness can be an entry point, an attribute, or And this is so open, so I don't want to limit people and limit their minds in the way that they engage with a practice, but I also want to encourage the self inquiry. So, when people enter movement practice, it is about education, bringing some awareness to the fact that they are living in a body, that they are living in motion, that their mind is a type of movement, that their life is a type of movement, bringing attention to the movement of the emotions as well, bringing just attention to the fact that things are in motion. And this for me is the movement practice, is this examination and bringing this awareness into things. As we sit now here, I'm also aware of my body, I'm also aware of the way that things make me feel, the way that your face is communicating to me, and I'm not just in some limited overly verbal state because it misses a lot of the beautiful flux. Actually, in anticipation of you arriving here today, I noticed that as I was going up and down the stairs in this house, that I was injecting a little bit of playfulness in the way that I might have many, many decades ago, but haven't for a very long time. And I asked myself whether or not that's what Ido is referring to, as opposed to, but of course, not exclusive from just saying, I have forty five minutes, I'm going to do movement practice before I shower and have some dinner. Could you share with us just some ideas to get people thinking about or maybe even incorporating movement practice into their day, and maybe even touch on the potential role of play or playfulness? One thing is this what you call wordlessness. I have been recommending to people non verbal experiences. The awareness of motion is a very good way to start to bring awareness to that layer, and that layer will …