[00:00:00] Alex:  When you follow the reflexology of  each tooth, is connected to a gland, organ, muscle, tissue, joint, and anytime you chew, you create charges. So if you're not hitting your teeth properly and they're interdigitating properly, you're not refreshing your organs, your muscles. You're basically cutting out current. Like you turn your car over and it won't turn over.

But when you can get them stimulated properly, then the current turns the mechanism over and allows more life to pump through, which means you have a better detoxification pathway, which means you have better nutrient delivery, which means you have better function of the system that it's correlating with. I'm Alex Rybchinskiy and you're listening to The Life Stylist Podcast.

[00:00:45] Luke:  Our guest today is Alex Rybchinskiy. He's the co-founder of Primal Fusion Health, specializing in wellness, education and primal integration to living well. Now, as a master CHEK practitioner, neurosomatic, and holistic therapist with over 15 years of clinical experience working with celebrities, pro-athletes in all walks of life, yours truly included, Alex guides clients and students globally to live in harmony with themselves and others, mentally, physically, emotionally, and of course, spiritually.

Alex also happens to be the only person I've worked with that has managed to correct certain bodily limitations and pain points. He's just a badass at his craft, and I am so grateful to have met him, and most certainly to share his wisdom with you. This, my friends, is Episode 469 of The Life Stylist Podcast. So don't think we did a bait and switch with the show title. 

We spontaneously spent the first part of the show talking about relationship skills, like healthy communication and conflict resolution. So if you're into that stuff, listen from the get-go. But if you want to skip right to the chase, you'll find it at the 20-minute mark or so.

Here's the crux of the convo. Alex describes his heroin near-death experience and how it shrunk his fear of dying; how he met Paul Chek and became a master practitioner of his method; the ethos of primal fusion and integrative neurosomatic therapy; why tooth health and jaw alignment is at the core of his work; common causes of neck and back pain that many people are not aware of, and how they relate to TMJ; how he helps women with pregnancy and the importance of breastfeeding; digestion issues from bodily misalignment; his disdain for milk and eggs; and why the place that hurts is often not the root of the issue in your body; how emotions and inner healing impact health; his model for body mechanics and holistic client programs; the application of cranium, mouth, and eye massage and endo nasals balloon therapy; childhood wounds and spiritual bypassing; how he trains coaches to do what he does; and finally, his herbal offerings and the joy of volcano vaporizers.

Now, if you want to work with Alex after hearing this one and get 10% off his herbs, visit lukestorey.com/primalfusion. And if you use the code LUKESTOREY, you'll get that 10%. That's lukestorey.com/primalfusion. All right, now it's time to get into the mind and heart of Alex Rybchinskiy on The Life Stylist Podcast. You're about to learn everything you didn't know you need to know about the mechanics of the human body. Enjoy the show and we'll be back next week with Dr. John Lieurance.

Alex Rybchinskiy. Trying to remember how to spell your name is a challenge. I got the pronunciation down pretty well. I think you can tell me if not, but, uh, I was preparing my notes and I had to go back to your website four times to spell it, 

[00:03:41] Alex: I like to keep it complicated for people sometimes.

[00:03:43] Luke: That's good. Well, you're working with people on all levels, so you want to keep their intellect sharp too.

Yeah. Um, you have the Ukrainian name, but you don't have the flag in your bio, which is a relief.

[00:03:54] Alex: Yeah.

[00:03:55] Luke: Um, I want to start off asking you this question. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have most influenced your life or your work?

[00:04:04] Alex: Um, I would say Paul Chek for sure. Um, my wife. And I'll say my wife and my kids. And then the neurosomatic educators. Because that institute-- that combination of experiences gave me the tools and shaped me to where I am now. With those tools, I let my imagination go and whatever people needed, all those, they came at the right time.

And, uh, Paul is still very active in my life, and Sarah, uh, my wife and my kids are always teaching me some things, uh, easy, hard. There's always lessons going on. So I would say those, uh, those are the-- it's hard to say three people. I would say, yeah, the--

[00:04:58] Luke: Well, also sometimes someone will name a philosophy for someone that's like, oh, the dow. So there's no right or wrong answer. That's a beautiful answer. I usually say that at the end of the show, but I don't know. I was making my notes and I just thought, I've been doing that for seven years.

[00:05:15] Alex: Let's switch it up.

[00:05:16] Luke: Let's just start with that. And I've had a feeling you'd say Paul Chek, but I always am curious because sometimes it's like the Buddha, Jesus, Ram Dass, whatever. But I find with men often, provided they're in a fulfilling relationship, that it's their partner, their wife or girlfriend and their kids. That one doesn't surprise me anymore. The first couple, I was like, damn, that's deep. And it's so true. I mean, I think I would answer the question in the same way being in the relationship, uh, in which I am.

[00:05:48] Alex: It's tough looking at it. It's like, if you can identify that that is an actual teacher, when your kids are mimicking your behavior and that you're telling them not to do, but then you realize you're the one doing it, and then they're seeing you do it and they think it's okay to do it, and they're mirroring it back, and then you're sitting there driving yourself crazy. And then you go, okay, well, I can tell them not to do it, but keep doing it, or I stop doing it, and then hopefully fill that time with something else.

And then I notice them stopping doing those things. And then I was like, oh, isn't that a beautiful teacher right there who's showing you how to change and grow and evolve? And so, yeah, I mean, I can talk to them and I can use my imagination to talk to Jesus and Buddha and all, uh, um, these other amazing, um, uh, people from the past, uh, but there are people here right now that can teach you a lot about yourself in real time. Yeah.

[00:06:46] Luke: I love when, uh, I run into random unassuming people out in the world and I see that sparkle of spirituality in their eye, just a sense of peace. And, um, I've talked about our old housekeeper in LA a million times on the show because she was just, I think, the happiest person I've ever known. And she was doing a job that I don't think I could learn to like, which is why I pay someone else to do it.

Um, so I've talked about her, but when we were recently in Florida, they have all this easy pass stuff on the freeways. There's all these checkpoints where you got to be in the right lane and if you got to pay and get change or not, etc. And we could never really figure it out. So I ended up in the wrong lane and then you had to pay. But I had the rental car with the easy pass, so I pull up to the thing and I'm already feeling defensive because I think it's going to be 50 bucks or something. 

I say to the lady, we have the thing, and she just looks at me with this big bright smile, these sparkly eyes. She goes, "It's still a dollar. Next time go over to that lane." And she gave us some advice on how to deal with it and I thought, well that was very kind and patient of her considering it's only a dollar. She doesn't need to take that time. But it wasn't even about what she said, it was just her energy was so awesome. And again, I put myself in her shoes.

If I was the guy sitting in the toll booth for God knows how many hours a day, would I be responding to people that were bitching about a dollar with that much kindness and, um, and just lateness of being. So that was a great teacher. When I start to whine and complain about my incredible life, uh, that I can think about times like that and go, if she figured it out working at the toll booth, I can definitely figure out managing a podcast and doing the things that I do.

[00:08:33] Alex: Yeah. There's definitely a, uh, funny observation and the misconception about how to become enlightened. And then, it's like you sit, you meditate, you empty. There's all these philosophies, and then you meet people like that. And then it gives you a-- turns your head and makes you pause for a second. Is that enlightenment, huh?

[00:08:56] Luke: Exactly. That's the exact thought I have. And I would guess that some of those people that we encounter in the world as great teachers, albeit brief, our interactions at times, I would put money on that many of them don't even meditate or read spiritual books or do anything. They just have a code. They just crack the code to appreciating their life and being in gratitude and treating people with kindness and just the basic fundamentals. Somehow, they just seem to have gotten it. 

Have you ever thought about how many enlightened masters are walking the planet at any given time but never write a book, never end up on stage, don't run an ashram? No one knows who they are. They're at the toll booth. It's like they have the keys, and you don't even know unless you see that spark and go, hey, how did you get that spark? What do you do? You ever trip on that? 

[00:09:51] Alex: I used to. And then once you accept that those people know something about something, then it almost makes it more tangible. Uh, it's easy to, uh, get these spiritual teachers that mess up from time to time, and then you disregard everything that they've ever taught you, even though maybe the first 90% of it was amazing. And then something happens, uh, you hear the stories about Osho and, um, people start talking about Buddha, about how he left his wife and his kids. He abandoned them.

And you start hearing all these, Jesus flipped tables, and then that's the reason I'm not going to listen to anything he said. And, um, same thing with even Paul Chek. Uh, I remember, uh, hearing students as I was going through the institute of, uh, well, here's Paul Chek talking about God and all this stuff. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And they go, okay, even if he doesn't, let's say, let's pretend he doesn't. All the other stuff is gold up until then, right? So why don't you keep learning that? 

Don't throw away the baby with the bathwater. And, uh, that's actually something that also Paul teaches. Take whatever you need and then if it works, it works. And then you'll come back to the things that you didn't know about later, and it'll make sense at some point. And then that's what usually happens.

[00:11:06] Luke: Yeah. That reminds me, I got a message from someone the other day, and if you're listening, um, no offense, but it was with an interview with a guy that I did on the show, and I don't want to call him out, but it was a great interview and we covered meditation and breath work and all this stuff. And I got the message from the person that said, "I was listening to this and it was good, but then he talked about that he was relieved when the vaccines came out, and I was out." And I caught that because I thought, oh, that's interesting. Most people I interview, I think, share a similar perspective in that, um, that medication, uh, arriving on the scene was not a net benefit.

Um, but from his perspective it was like, oh, we were all relieved when that finally hit the scene. And I thought, oh man. And I think I actually sent them exactly what you said, that old, um, statement. Um, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there's a two-hour interview that is mostly comprised of high value information and good energy, and there's three sentences that don't align with your beliefs or your values, what a shame that is to not be able to derive some value from that because you disagree on, I mean, it's a substantial point. 

I'll give him that. It's not like, oh, I like the color blue, and they don't. But, um, still he's a great guy, who cares? When he said that, I just thought, oh, that's interesting. He viewed the whole thing differently. But I'm immediately interested in everything else he has to say.

[00:12:36] Alex: Yeah. A lot of dead and living people have said, if something triggers you, look into it. That's the first sign. If you want to become more aware and enlightened or enlighten yourself, then look at the things that are causing the darkness. And if that's causing pain and darkness, well, look at it. And why is it causing me pain and darkness? And then through that exploration of pulling the, uh, the cloth out of the magician's sleeve, eventually you'll get to the end and you might have a conclusion. It may not still be on their side, but you may be more comfortable with that.

[00:13:13] Luke: Yeah.

[00:13:14] Alex: And you go, oh, I don't need anyone to agree with me.

[00:13:16] Luke: I mean, that's something that's just so sorely missing from our culture in general is agreeing to disagree. Where did that go? I mean, maybe it was never there. I don't know. But it seems we're so polarized now. And I'm guilty of that too. I mean, anyone that goes on my telegram channel would probably look at me as a hate monger because I post some pretty controversial stuff on there.

But to me, my intention where it's just like, hey, look at this is. This is an interesting perspective that you won't see on your tv. Um, I don't know if it's wrong or right, but let's just open up the discussion. But uh, yeah. It's crazy how human beings, the human mind has that tendency to become so identified with what they believe to be true that it actually becomes them and they lose who they really are. It's really interesting.

[00:14:06] Alex: Yeah. I have those same things. And I'll give you one of the easy ones that still gets me agitated, but I'm comfortable with it up until it affects my family is leave the kids out.

[00:14:18] Luke: Fair point.

[00:14:19] Alex: No matter what it is, leave the kids out of it,

[00:14:22] Luke: Fair point. Yeah.

[00:14:23] Alex: And, um, I feel like as a collective, most of us agree. Agree to disagree. It's like, you could still disagree and you could still have your preferences, but don't trespass because it won't be good. And either way we can agree to disagree, but it's then up to the person's responsibility of whoever is raising children to take care of their children. And then it's that I-- however people want to label it, you know some people say it's a sickness. Some people say it's a karma. Some people say it's, uh, um, passed down ancestrally. Um, whatever it is, keep it away from me because, like I said, we can agree to disagree, but it'll still get me real agitated if it happens. 

So even that's okay. It doesn't mean you're, uh, acting on a whim. This is something I've fully investigated, dove in, looked on both sides, and, um, that's something I'm willing to die for. And as long as people know what they're willing to die for, then living's pretty easy because then you can clearly see what's worth, especially living for.

[00:15:39] Luke: I can only imagine when you have kids uh how strong that sense is because that's how I feel about my wife. I mean, it's like I would step in front of a train if she was in the way.

[00:15:51] Alex: Not everyone feels that way. I've met a lot of people and some people don't get the spark. Some people don't even feel that way in their relationships, about their wives. Some people hope their wives step in front of a train. I joke but it's serious.

[00:16:08] Luke: I've probably been there, and I've had quite a few partners that would've liked to see that become my fate too. But, um, when you find true integrative healthy love, for me and my experience, something very different has happened to me. 

And it's not like I read in a book or listened to fucking Jordan Peterson or something and it was like, oh, I'm going to be the man It's nothing outside of myself It's something from deep within that's just this honoring and cherishing bowing to the feminine beautiful energy in my life that is embodied in the life. 

[00:16:47] Alex: Yeah, from the minimal contact I've seen you two interact with, I mean, you guys share this back and forth that looks like a nice wave. And some people don't know how to get themselves to wave. Some people are like, wave, and then there's a brick or a mountainside, and it's smashed in the mountainside until it wears that mountain down.

I tell this to Sarah all the time. I go, I'm so grateful for the fact that I found her, or we found each other and the fact that we're not absolved of conflict. We still have to conflict. On paper or in conflict, people would observe us and then absolutely be like, oh, this is clinically messed up. Um, not to the degree where that people are going to be imagining as I said that, but, um, our conflicts, don't make the kids nervous. They're like, oh, they're working it out. Because every time they see us separate and we're taking breaks, they're like, oh, this is weird. And then we come together even stronger.

And then we have this ebb and flow of moving apart, moving together, okay, we're together much. Let's go do something else. And then we will go and focus on ourselves more. And then we come back together and even stronger. And then we conflict, and then we come back and then we ebb together. I love the way it is and as it keeps getting better, it's a beautiful, um, mystery. I don't want to know what's going to happen. I don't want to kill that story. I don't want to kill that mystery. 

[00:18:24] Luke: How important do you think-- and all of the stuff we're talking about is not relevant to the point of this conversation that we're going to get into. But I just like talking to you. I like the way you think. I like to learn from you, so we'll do what we got to do to get there. But, um, how important in your relationship has been each individual's ability to self-regulate their emotions in terms of conflict? Because I find that the conflicts are so quickly diffused because each one of us is fairly decent at knowing what's ours and what's not ours, and whatever's ours, owning that and going within and sorting it out.

So there might be a little head butting, but then each person reflects quickly and goes into observer awareness fairly quickly and goes, oh, okay, I see this is just two minds colliding, or two egos colliding and it doesn't diminish the love. And you're in control of your nervous system enough to where those things don't escalate and become something stupid like slamming the door and driving down the road because someone left the dishes out or something. How does that work in your relationship?

[00:19:39] Alex: You asked something in the beginning. I'm having a tough--

[00:19:41] Luke: Um, the ability to self-regulate, how does that play into your conflict resolution?

[00:19:47] Alex: So if we do really good work taking care of ourselves, then we tend to flow. But then as conflicts arise, something happens and then one of us stops managing ourselves. And, um, we'll, have conflict. And we've had so many tools, and Sarah's read to me. We have libraries of books, and uh, things I've learned from Paul and non-violent communication. And then not everything works in those moments. And sometimes, one of the best things that Sarah and I found that works for us is we're like, I'm going to get away from you.

And then I go outside, she goes and regulates herself. But then when we say we need a break, we go actually take care of ourselves, not go play video games and forget what we were doing. It's like, no, we're going to go take care of ourselves so we can meet again and then resolve what we need to resolve. But right now this is too much. We're two strong egos and we keep pushing the limits and we keep finding something nitpicking and adding to the pot of nonsense. And then we're like, wait a second. We're like, we need to separate. I need to break.

And then something that I'm really grateful for is the fact that I don't have to worry when we don't talk to each other for a couple of days, that people get this jealous mind of like, well, what if I'm not good enough and she's doing something or he's off looking at-- we're both under this like, no, it's me and you. We're going to figure this out. So if we don't talk for three days, no big deal, because I'm not going anywhere and you're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere.

[00:21:30] Luke: That's a really good point when you have that security that you're not going to be abandoned and you know within yourself you're not going to abandon the other, that you're there for the full meal deal.

[00:21:42] Alex: And Rumi says, uh, break your heart until it opens. And, uh, this is one of those things where you leave your heart open and then hope they don't break it. And sometimes they do break it. And sometimes I break Sarah's heart and then we keep growing as we repair each other's hearts or apologize and regain trust and all these things.

Um, but yeah, we're definitely not absolved of conflict. And, uh, we'll go months, six months, we'll look at each other and we're like, when's the last time we have a fight? Then we'll go, hmm, that's interesting. And then two weeks later we'll have an argument about something trivial. And then when you realize what it is, it's an underlying stress of something else that hasn't happened or something broke. And we're like, okay, where are we going to find 10 grand for a new, uh, air conditioning system? That wasn't in the books. And then that turns into something else.

But if you don't know what that looks like, you're going to think whatever they're coming at you for is the thing that they're nitpicking you for. And it has nothing to do with that. But once you learn, okay, well, what is our conflict on a big level right now? And then you go, okay, well, is that part of that? And how do I best approach that? And then so you get it wrong all the time. I get it wrong. I'm right a lot, and at my house, I'm wrong a lot because I'm always learning things. And what work today may not work tomorrow. 

But ultimately, when I'm honest and open and then feel like sometimes I get trampled on and vulnerable, that's what I'm working into right now. And then sometimes it doesn't work out, and sometimes it does. And sometimes I try to be vulnerable and I get trampled on. And sometimes I'm not vulnerable and I get trampled on. And sometimes Sarah's vulnerable and I trample on her on accident. And then we're like, we're so stupid. Why do we do this to ourselves? Uh, but there is this underlying level of, conflict is okay, and it's like, what can we tease out of each other? 

And I think a couple conflicts ago where we had this conflict and Sarah's like, oh, I think you brought up something for me that I haven't thought about in years. And then so she started journaling. I'm like, you're welcome. Welcome for triggering you enough to find something in your psyche that you want it to tease apart Yeah. and tease together. And then that's the same thing that happens to me. 

Sometimes we'll be bickering and then one day she'll stop, very dysfunctional, once again, out of context. And she'll be like, you're not a man. And I'm like, what do you mean by that? And it stops the whole argument. And then I'm listening for, okay, tell me. What is happening? What am I missing? And then as the things that she starts saying, I go, oh, actually, you know what, I could button that up, and I could do this, and I could do that.

And so the more-- we've been together over maybe like, what, moving on eight years, I think. Maybe a little bit. Maybe past that where we've known each other for eight years. Um, and, uh, it's constantly learning and learning and getting better. And if you look back year before that, it's miles better. And the stuff that we, um, are working on now are basic. Seems like human decencies, but these are deep conditioned things of how we were treated and spoken to and then recognizing it.

And then still knowing that that person is acting upon conditioning, but then holding them to the higher standard, and then holding the even the apology and accountability to the highest standard. And that, I mean, brings us higher and higher and makes life easier because it weeds out all the other stuff. I don't have to think about, is she going anywhere? I don't have to think about that. So much peace.

[00:25:28] Luke: Yeah.

[00:25:29] Alex: And everything that we learn from brings us closer to peace. And, um, I wish everyone got a chance to taste what real peace feels like because then they would be more than willing to do the work to get there.

[00:25:44] Luke: You mentioned something, uh, and I'll just say this and then we'll move on. Um, earlier in the conflict resolution bit, you talked about how sometimes you just have to be away from each other. And I think the self-regulation is part of that. Is knowing, okay, I'm at a nine right here. I'm so triggered. And knowing this, I mean, this is what I do.

It's, thankfully, not very often. But you're not ready for it. And something just hits you all of a sudden, I think especially, um, in the male-female, masculine-feminine dynamic. Uh, if I'm prepared for something that could be triggering just for a second, then I can not armor myself, but actually really open my heart and become more aware of the egoic threat that I'm about to experience.

But if it's just a surprise like, hey, blah, blah, blah, out of the blue, that is much more challenging. But, um, something I've gotten better at is just knowing when I hit a threshold of my capacity to hold space and to truly listen and just be in love. And if I can't do that, then I've gotten better just communicating like, I really want to be there for you right now and hear what you have to say, but my brain is, um, is misfiring terribly. I just need a few minutes or a few hours or whatever it is, and I'll come back and I will totally work through this, but it's not going to be productive right now in this moment for sure.

It's like you can tell when your blood pressure gets to a certain point where your brain is just going to shut down. The prefrontal cortex is like, bye, we're offline, or whatever it is. I think it's that. And, um, no rational solution is going to be born out of that charged emotional state, right?

[00:27:33] Alex: There's, uh, there are moments where it almost seems fake because, uh, Sarah and I, one of us, will be heated, heated, and then one of us, uh, will hear ourselves and then you'll see this, uh, or I'll observe it myself, where one of us goes, okay, what I'm hearing you say is, um, you're upset about this. And then the other one's still seething. And then it's like--

[00:28:00] Luke: Try to do the Imago communication. I've tried that too sometimes with Alyson. She's like, not ready. Just shut up and listen for a little bit longer and then you can reflect what you think I'm saying.

[00:28:14] Alex: Yeah. Exactly like we're talking about that. Sometimes you got to step away. Sometimes you can't step away. Sometimes you're in the fire. Sometimes your kid is-- uh, and this is why kids are powerful because you can't be like, you know what, I'm going to be gone for a little bit. You, uh, you go cry it out. I don't have the space for you right now, so I need to go take care of me. And the more you stand in that fire, it's like standing under a barbell, the stronger you're going to get. Um, obviously you need rest after that. 

Those last couple sets of walking lunges when your legs are burning and your butt's not firing and everything is cramping up on you and you get a couple more extra out and then you go back and you go, oh, okay, time for me. And then until the next time it happens, then you go, oh, this is a slight easier. And then you get your fill, but then as you absorb or you stand in the fire, they get more out. So they get more empty. As you get more full, then you go empty yourself and then learn how to sometimes reciprocate it back or sometimes they can't receive that level that they give you. 

And then so now you have to wait until they get strong enough or maybe they don't need to get stronger. Maybe it was too much already in their life and you need to go and talk to them differently. And I have three kids and I talk to all three of them differently. And including my wife, I have four women in the house. I talk to them all differently and sometimes they get different versions of me that they need at the moment.

And, um, they'll get mad at me for it. And it's like, once again, it's okay. And then if it's the right call, if you're reacting out of a pure reaction or annoyance, then probably not the right call. But even then they're probably going to learn from it and be a little bit more resilient. So there are no really wrong answers until it becomes, uh, unless it's almost like you see them diminishing and the flame going out. Because sometimes or most of the time, conflict, healthy conflict will make the flame brighter. But when it's not healthy, it pretty much douses the flame out and they become like, uh, I don't even want to do it anymore.

[00:30:24] Luke: I got one more question before we get into, uh, all of the physiology stuff that you're, I mean, you're multifaceted obviously, and the work you do is multifaceted as I know, as someone who's been experiencing it for a few weeks now. Uh, but I do have one burning question that I think would be interesting and that is, uh, what happened in your near-death experience?

[00:30:45] Alex: Um, I was in Ukraine, and I had laryngitis. This is when my parents explained it. Uh, I had laryngitis, my lymph nodes swollen up in my neck, uh, in my throat, and they took me to the hospital. My mom was with me at the hospital. Then all of a sudden, uh, I was asleep, and, uh, my mom goes, well, what happened? Why is he asleep? He can't breathe. 

And so the nurses go, hey, we gave you some sleeping pills. They give me sleeping pills, so my mom can get some rest. And my mom's like, I'm not here to rest. And so, well, damage is done. Didn't know it was damage. So then I think my mom checked on me, or someone checked on me. I don't know who checked on me. Um, but I was blue. And so they rushed me to the ER, I wasn't breathing. 

And um, and then in Ukraine, it's not like here where you can go observe an operation if you really push hard enough or stay at the hospital. There they're like, you go in the ER, the parents go home. We'll call you when your son's out or your family member's out. You can then come see them. Um, and so when I came out of the ER, I had a breathing tube, a tracheotomy. My parents were like, what the hell happened? And they go, oh, well, they gave them some soft explanation. He stopped breathing. We had to resuscitate him. They didn't tell them I died. 

My grandma worked at that hospital. And if it wasn't for my grandma working at the hospital, pulling papers and asking for favors to get my files, they wouldn't have known that I died. And that's the difference over there. So you have no say over there. Here you have more say. At least it was back then. Um, but yeah, even when you give birth, you give birth and the dads are out of the hospital. And then immediately the moms, uh, once they give birth, the baby's taken away. So there's a separation that occurs. Yeah. And then you only get the baby back for feeding.

And then again, separation, feeding, separation. And it's days before the dad comes to see the baby. And then so back to the-- if it wasn't for my grandma who picked up her files and asked for favors, yeah, they wouldn't have known what happened. But yeah, I was flatlined for--

[00:33:04] Luke: How old were you?

[00:33:05] Alex: I was three and a half. Three or three and a half, I think.

[00:33:07] Luke: Do you think that had any-- I mean, obviously you were in the pre memory recollection phase, but do you feel that that had an impact on your life or your worldview?

[00:33:18] Alex: 100%.

[00:33:19] Luke: Yeah. How so?

[00:33:20] Alex: Because when people complain about stuff, I'm like, yeah, but you're breathing. It's pretty cool. Everyone breathes. I go, yeah, but a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't breathe. They're not breathing anymore. So when people go, what's your favorite part of getting up? Yeah, I'm like, getting up. My eyes opening and breathing. That's the best part. Everything else will fill itself in with my effort, my consciousness, my direction, what I want to get out of life. 

But when those eyes open and you take your breath, miracle. Because you don't know if you're going to die in your sleep. You don't know when you're born and you don't know when you're going to die. You only can imagine when you're about to die. But when you actually die consciously, you don't really know it's happening. You slowly slip away almost like a 5-MeO experience. And so I've had, uh--

[00:34:11] Luke: That's probably the closest that I've had to a near-death experience.

[00:34:14] Alex: It's very similar where you're in this space of void and love at the same time. It's really odd, but then it's really intense. And because you don't have a sense of control of your consciousness yet, so it's all over the place, and then it either gets scattered and that's how people get fractured and they come back, and then they're like, what the fuck happened?

And, uh, my psyche all over the place. They're seeing in different areas of dimensions, realities and, uh, people think they're crazy, but at the same time it's, uh, there's certain things people can't unsee once they see them. And then once you start seeing them, it becomes less of a belief and more of a knowing. And, um, because if you believe something, that means you don't really know if it's true, if you believe to be true. But that doesn't make sense. So it's either you know it or you believe it and you can't unknow something. You can try to forget, but you can't unknow. 

And so a lot of people will drown themselves after they have some of those experiences with drugs or, uh, other substances or porn or video games to numb out the magnitude of the potential of what they could experience in this life. Because it is a lot. And I tell people this a lot. When you're about to have a baby, if you let it destroy you, and what I mean by that is destroy any idea you had around what you thought love was, what you thought, uh, passion was, what you thought your ability to protect someone, that drive that like, oh, wow, I'll definitely bury someone for this person right here.

Um, if you let that consume that part of you to the point where you will break if those people leave, then it'll shatter any idea you have of what love is. But once people get that love outside of having it in a grounded experience, they usually repel it because it's too good to be true, but it's not. You've felt it. You've been there. 

Now, instead of repelling it, go, okay, how can I get there closer every day? So that way I don't need that experience and I live that experience. And those same people live a lot of those experiences that we were talking about earlier.

The mechanic that goes to work and turns a wrench, and the person that takes your dollar at the kiosk, those are people that have had probably some crazy experiences that change their life around and they can't ever go back. Because they realize that getting up and your eyes opening and taking a breath is way more of a blessing than winning a $100,000. They're okay. 

I saw a video recently where someone goes, if I give you a million dollars tomorrow, would you take it? And they go, yeah. But what if it was under the condition that you die the next day? And they go, no. Okay, great. So money doesn't matter, does it?

[00:37:12] Luke: That's a good one. I like that. 

[00:37:14] Alex: I was like, oh yeah, that's a really good way to put it.

[00:37:17] Luke: Yeah. Another really fun experience is when you're doing well financially and you go through a dark night of the soul despite the fact that you have some money. That's always a good one too. I remember, um, I mean, I didn't have any money, but I was living in a really fancy house that I rented in Hollywood Hills many years ago. And, uh, and I was going through a breakup and my, uh, girlfriend moved out. And I remember sitting in that house just looking at this 360 view from downtown LA to the ocean in just this really cool mid-century modern house, just super dope.

And, um, the thing you think, oh, someday I'll get that and I'll be happy, kind of thing. And I remember sitting there for days on end and just trying to meditate in the morning and just crying and just going, fuck, I failed another one. And looking at the house, the house had zero value at all because of where I was emotionally. It was a great lesson actually, and I noted it. I remember in those moments going, hmm, the house is nice, but not if your house inside is in disorder.

[00:38:22] Alex: Yeah. I've worked with a lot of people that don't ever need money anymore. And, uh, some of their problems almost seemed so trivial to the most of us. And they go, oh, well I can't experience this. And I go, why not? And they go, oh, well, because of this. Well, does that impact anything, that other thing you want to do if you don't do it? Well, no. Well, then what's stopping you? I guess nothing. Well, great. Go do the thing you want it to do. Okay. 

That's how simple it is sometimes and stuff. People even re-listen to this and go, what is the thing I want to do that? What's stopping me? This. Okay, well if I don't do this, will it impact that? If the answer is no, go do the thing you want to do. Make the complex simple. Don't overthink the things. And I like to play also a game with people is, uh, this or that. What would you-- if I'm going to either give you-- here's two options but I'm going to take one away forever, which one would you miss the most?

And I keep doing that until they get to this point of, this is the one thing that I don't want ever to lose. And I go, great. That's staying in your house. Now you focus on that because that's more important than anything else going around you. And then you slowly see that when you focus on the thing that you really, really love, your life gets better and you're less agitated.

[00:39:40] Luke: That's similar to the impetus for me asking you about the near-death experience. There's another really fun game like that. When you're afraid of something or you're trying to avoid something, you play the game of then what.

[00:39:55] Alex: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:57] Luke: Well, what if I get fired? Okay, so what? Then what? Then what? And you just keep playing it out. And it always leads you back to your physical death.

[00:40:05] Alex: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:06] Luke: And that's a fun game to diffuse the relevance and the weight of things that are troubling you. When you identify that at the end of all of those fears is the fear of death, what if you just died now? I mean, not literally but the ego death, these different, um, deaths and rebirths that we have. What if you just did that every day? 

[00:40:31] Alex: Yeah. 

[00:40:32] Luke: There's that, um, I forget where it's from, and I'll probably butchered it, but there's a scene I heard somewhere, um, I think it was in the book about the religious origins of psychedelics, which I also don't remember the name of, but it goes something like this. Um, if you die before you die, when you die, you don't die. And it might even be cooler than that. I'm probably not getting it exactly right, but when I heard that on the audio book, it's like Greek philosophy or something, um, I was like, yes, that's it. 

And it's like the what if or then what game, I mean, um, in that that physical departure is coming anyway. And all the time we spend worrying about the ways in which we think it's going to happen. Because it's going to happen when it's supposed to happen, no matter how hard we try to prevent it. But anyway, I want to get on to the task at hand.

So for those listening, I'll probably say in the intro at 39 minutes, we get into the topic, which is the name of the episode. But I like to meander and be spontaneous, so there you go. So I've been working with you and your system of Primal Fusion now for quite a few weeks. I mean, I think we've put in probably 25 hours or something at this point.

And I don't know if I ever told you this, but I think the first time we met was at the old, uh, Sunday ARX workouts here in Austin. And I remember the first couple times I went there, you'd be doing some manual therapy on someone. And I don't remember who it was, but at least one, if not a couple people were like, oh, that's the guy Alex. That's Alex. He's the master. He's the body working master.

He's better than anyone. And they really talked you up. And I took note of that because I always have something I want to work on with my physical body, um, in terms of pain and function and all that. So I took note and then didn't see you for a while. And then, I forget how it came into my awareness the second time, to be honest.

But, um, we're going to talk about teeth obviously today, um, because that's a huge part of your foundation, not just a person's foundation, but the foundation of your work. And we'll learn why. But, um, I came to the understanding that I was going to have to rebuild my whole mouth and get all new teeth and rebuild my bite and things like that.

And I just thought, if I don't have proper alignment when I go through this process, I'm going to build a bite on a crooked ass body and end up with a bite that is maybe in a different position in terms of how forward or back the jaw is. But I really want to make sure that my cranium and whole skeleton is as ordered and correct as possible when they build the bite because I'm going to live with this for the rest of my life.

And so that's why I sought you out. And I just thought, man, I'm going to do both of these at the same time. And holy shit, I'm glad I did because, this is my little testimony here, and you're free to put this on your website if you want, but it's true. Dude, I have not had this lack of neck pain, I mean, in years doing the work that I've done with you in conjunction with moving the jaw with the new teeth, which are still temporary, as you know, but the jaw is where it's going to be with non-plastic teeth basically.

Um, so I'm a huge fan of what you're doing, which is why I wanted to have you on the show because of my subjective experience. And as people listening might guess, doing what I do, being into the stuff I'm into, I mean, I was trying to think of how many practitioners have I worked with? Body workers, acupuncturists, chiropractors, um, physical therapists. I mean, I'm 52. It's probably been a few hundred at this point. Started getting massages when I was a teenager probably. 

Um, so having had all of those experiences and had temporary and minor improvements and many of them were very talented and wonderful people and were great at what they did, but I think this is the first time where I'm like, holy shit. I don't have to do that thing to make my neck pop, to make it feel relaxed anymore. 

There's just certain physical habits that I've adopted to just feel comfortable in my body. And I've already noticed, and we haven't even gone through the whole thing because we did so much of my initial, um, uh, package that I bought with you in terms of the programming was just spent making sure the bite is right. I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of where we're going to go. 

And so if I already feel this good, and we spent the majority of the hours just getting from the neck up right, I'm like, holy shit. So that's my thank you to you, and as I said, my testimonial for people listening. If you have pain in your body and, um, no one can figure it out, I very much relate to that. 

Um, and another interesting thing, and then we'll go into all your stuff, uh, is that I hear practitioners that understand physiology talk about this idea that where you're feeling the pain is not the origin of the pain, like this referential pain. And I'd like get that as a concept because everything's connected. If you look at an anatomy drawing, you can see that even if you don't understand anatomy, which I really don't on that level. 

But what's really trippy is when I've worked with you and I'm like, ah, this thing hurts, like I had this-- uh, we did work on my shoulder, my left shoulder, which has been hurting for a long, long time, it's much weaker than the right. And I'm like, yeah, it's like backed by my scapula and right here on the deltoid, can you work on that? And you're like, oh yeah, I can fix that. And so rather than touching those areas that hurt, you dig in my freaking armpit and in my pec, which was excruciating. Uh, I mean, I didn't really doubt it, but I'm like, that's interesting because that's not where it hurts.

I don't have pain under my armpit. And so you're just digging in there, grinding around, and low and behold, my shoulder became free. So I find that part of your work also really interesting because it's something that I've heard in theory, but never actually personally experienced. So that's another curiosity as we move forward. Because I have a lot more hours now, uh, to do with you also after this. So I'm like, oh, I wonder like where we'll find my lower back pain that I've had forever that has never been able to really be resolved. We're going to find that in my big toe or something, which is really interesting.

So that's my summary of my experience with you so far. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of all the different things that you work on, maybe you could give us just a brief overview of the ethos of Primal Fusion. What's your elevator pitch on how you help people?

[00:47:25] Alex: Uh, you hit the nail in the head when you said, if people can't figure it out, we'll figure it out. Because what we end up doing is we look at the whole person. We look at their mental, their emotional, their physical, uh, their spiritual state. We ask them about what they went on through childhood. How was the relationship like with their kids, their parents, and their relationship as a kid to their parents. And we have lots and lots of paperwork that we have them fill out. And the paperwork itself could be triggering and therapeutic at the same time.

[00:47:57] Luke: It was very personal. I still owe you two documents by the way, but I went for the hardest ones first, the longest and the most internally based. But yeah, I was thinking actually when I filled the one out that was more emotional, spiritual about trauma childhood and stuff. I remember filling that out, going, this could be very difficult if I hadn't already been spending a lot of years doing that work to the point where I was almost like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I already dealt with all this. But I still did it and gave it my all, but yeah, I see what you mean from that perspective.

[00:48:30] Alex: Yeah. And then ultimately we do another, uh, three to six-hour assessment of all the biomechanical, uh, evaluation of the body. We look at your breath. We look at what your teeth is doing. We look at what each one of your ribs is doing. Um, what your atlas is doing, which is your C1 vertebrae, the top of your spine, where your skull sits on and meets your skull. 

Um, what is the condition of your teeth? Do you need to find a dentist? Do you need a referral? Uh, does your bite line up? Is this causing, uh, structural issues? Uh, what are the different range of motions that you're experiencing? So that assessment initially takes three to six hours. And then we whittle it down as-- once I teach someone how to breathe, I don't imagine I'm going to be continuously teaching them how to breathe. Because the idea is, learn it so we can move on. 

I don't want to teach someone the same thing for years. That's exactly why I give you the answers so that way we can move on to the next stuff and the next stuff and the next stuff. So when you compile all this data and you're not afraid to look and stack them all together, you start looking for data points and knowings at the same time with pattern correlations through the paperwork. And it's being able to hold all those at the same time. 

And then, I've been doing this almost 16 years that it's so ingrained that I look at paperwork, I go, oh, that's that, that's that, that's that. Okay. And then all of a sudden in these categories, you start seeing the liver pile up and you go, oh, let's look at his liver. And then you go, oh, the right shoulder hurts. They have anger issues. They're so angry that they don't even know they have anger issues. They eat terribly. They, uh, they don't go to bed on time. Oh, look, says right here that they're angry at their dad too.

Okay. Great. And then you start piling up all these things about someone and then you know exactly where to look. So you're not shooting in the dark. I'm really good at shooting in the dark, but when it comes to long-term solutions, we like to gather all the information and then once we figure out what the biggest objectives are, we tackle those first. 

Because if you have a power outlet that's not working, but you have a hole in your roof, don't fiddle around with the power outlet, fix the hole in the roof. So that way it doesn't ruin your carpet and your furniture and your flooring and you're sitting there fiddling with the, oh, this thing won't turn on. It's like, yeah, probably because the hole in the roof is causing an electrical shortage somewhere. And if you fix that, it'll stop flipping the breaker. And then that's that looking somewhere else situation.

And, uh, so that's what I really like doing. I like puzzles. I like to play chess in person. And, uh, um, I like games. And this is a big game of putting someone back together, but ultimately, I'm not the one putting them together. I do manual therapy and things like that. So I physically do put people back together, but the exercises, their, uh, ability to maintain their states has nothing to do with me.

So people thank me and go, thanks for all you did. I go, oh, I mean, I realigned your hips and your atlas. I mean, yes, I did do that, but I mean, you went home and ate. You went home and slept. You didn't go to the bar when you really wanted to. You didn't spend all this extra money on this vacation you didn't need. And yet you invested it in something you did need. They did that. You did that. I didn't do that. You chose to do that. 

So you healed yourself. I was there to be the mirror of what it looks like of someone that, uh, spends their money wisely on food. And even if they don't see my bills, people know. Because I can look someone in the face and say that and then there's an internal, I think he's right about that, versus me making stuff up.

[00:52:11] Luke: So based on my experience with you, it seems like you're multifaceted in that you're integrating into your, uh, modality, all kinds of other things. And I think that's really interesting because most of us that have something wrong go around to all of these individual specialists, the chiropractor, the acupuncture, the, um, what's that sacral cranial thing? I always forget how you say that.

[00:52:39] Alex: Uh, cranial sacral.

[00:52:40] Luke: Cranial sacral. And I love all those things and I'll probably continue to do them, but when I came to you it was like, oh, this dude's just already cherry-picked the best from all of those different, um, traditions and practices, and just built his own system. So neurosomatic therapy, is that what that is or is that a different definition of its own specific modality.

[00:53:07] Alex: The neurotic therapy is a body work modality where they, hey, why learn a specific style when you can learn the tissues and then the tissues respond differently And if you find this, you could do this or this, or this. And so in getting those tools, and I call it, give me a jungle gym and I'll play on it. And so I'll go outside the jungle gym. I'll run up and jump over the jungle gym. So there are protocols that they teach, but as you get familiar with the protocols, you realize that there's patterns that emerge. And so you play with that. 

And that's with the cranial manipulation, the atlas manipulation, um, working on the organs because those organs hold emotions. And uh, they also hold physical matter. They also hold thoughts, and they also hold your spirit. And, uh, you learn that in the CHEK system. And then I married it with the neurosomatic system. And then on top of the plethora of other things that I dabble with iridology and seeing where that folds in, and, uh, bio geometry, where which folds in. And so I like folding things in, and I'm ready to burn it all over the ground. I know something works because it produces a long-lasting result.

And I think why I like to cherry pick is because I found things that work and they're consistent. And then the moment something doesn't work, I'm like, ah, try the next thing. And I'm not afraid to ditch a modality that I highly regard in that instance that maybe someone needs something else, like neurosomatic therapy. Sometimes I'll be working on someone over and over and then I go, you know what, get up. Let's go do some exercises. Ditch all the manual therapy, do a simple postural exercise. Everything turns on. And I go, oh, they needed that. 

But if I started there, their body wasn't aligned enough to be able to activate those tissues. So crossing modalities is what's what makes sense to me. And when people have one modality that they do, I feel like that's great. But they also need to know what other modalities are out there that compliments them because that only makes them a better practitioner and builds them better rapport.

I've had so many people like yourself, where you came to me with the teeth already in mind, but I've sent people out for the teeth many, many times and they go, yeah, it was expensive, but I feel so much better. I go, yeah, told you. But it instantly builds rapport with whoever you're working with because you tell them the truth.

[00:55:37] Luke: Well, there's another interesting, uh, thing that I learned about how you work. Because when I first heard the murmurs over at ARX, he's the body worker guy, he's a magician, I bookmarked that for like, oh cool, maybe when my body hurts I'll go get a great massage. And then when I finally contacted you, you were like, eh, that's not how I work.

You're going to get a, I think it was a 10-hour or a 20-hour package. And in my case, because we had so much, from the neck up, work to do, we went with the 20 and then I just did another one. Uh, and it's not cheap either. Um, but at what point did you decide like, oh, I'm not just going to get paid $250 an hour to work on someone.

Did you find it annoying or futile to try to just give someone temporary relief from their aches and pains and then eventually decide, you know what? We're going to go all in on my whole program for at least this minimum of hours so that we can see results. What was your thought process there?

[00:56:37] Alex: So there's several steps to that process. And, uh, one of those steps was, uh, exactly, he's the best body worker, which I am really good with my hands. And I could fix things really quickly. But then I noticed over and over again that it wouldn't stay because no one listened to the other advice. Everyone still ate gluten, which inflamed their gut, made their back hurt, and then they'd come back and go, hey, can you fix my back? Then--

[00:57:00] Luke: Dude, that's so true.

[00:57:01] Alex: Over and over. And I felt like a mechanic. And it was like eating at my soul because I was like, hey, you need to stop eating gluten. Here's some books about it. Here's resources. Here's the inflammation. You could take care of this problem and never see me again. And, uh, they're like, oh, no, no, no, it's okay. So that was step one where I'm like, I'm done. I'm done being a mechanic. It's eating at my soul. 

I used to go, uh, work at golf clubs and those guys would tip me more than I would get paid because they're about to go swing clubs with the boys and, uh, their back would be hurting, and then tip me hundreds of dollars for 10 minutes of work. And, uh, they're like, whoa, I can go-- that was the best round of golf I've ever had. You'd see them, you put their atlas back, and then all of a sudden they're swinging perfect. Better than they would ever have any warmups no matter how much time they spend on the green. Is that the driving range?

[00:57:56] Luke: You got me.

[00:57:57] Alex: Yeah. Wherever they warm up to play golf.

[00:57:59] Luke: I've only played golf once. And it was at a-- no, I did play. I played real golf one time, I think.

[00:58:06] Alex: But then it kept-- and then the cart will come up with Miller Lights and the Budweisers and--

[00:58:12] Luke: Gluten juice.

[00:58:13] Alex: The gluten juice and all the other, uh, candies. And then they load up and I'm like, ah, this is annoying. And so I gave that up and I didn't want to work with them anymore because all they wanted to do was avoid their wives, trash their bodies, and play golf, and ignore the things that were really bothering them that could make all their lives better but they're focusing on this little tiny ball, which they absolve all their problems into. But yet I'm painfully aware of this going, I'm part of the problem. Yes, I'm helping them, but I'm taking money for something that doesn't feel--

[00:58:46] Luke: It's like an enabling position.

[00:58:48] Alex: Yeah. And so that's when I started doing programs and going, it's either you're going to work with me or you don't, because as irritating as it is, I've seen this happen over and over and over again. And I can guarantee that if you follow the things, you're going to get better and you're going to stay better. Sarah's always telling me my favorite quote is, uh, the say a lot is, I did the math. And so when you calculate a 10-year or 20-year, uh, process of going to other practitioners without knowing what's actually going on in your body, the calculated cost is enormous. 

Throwing out $20 here for copay. Oh, copay ran out. Oh, it's okay. It's a hundred bucks here. And so when you calculate the accumulated cost of all the practitioners when you don't actually know why you're going to them and hoping that they're going to get it, and then every time you don't get the thing that you need, your hope level drops, and your hope level drops.

And the people that come see me go, I have no more hope. And I go, here's some hope. And they go, wow, this is great. I didn't know I could feel like this. And you go, yeah. Thank you for trusting in me and I greatly appreciate it. And so those are those moments that I'm like, this is what I need. This is what's happening.

[00:59:56] Luke: Well, from a client perspective too in that, I think my first round was 10 grand for, was it 20 hours? 

[01:00:07] Alex: Twenty hours. 

[01:00:07] Luke: Yeah. Um, which sounds like a lot of hours, but some of those we did four hours, and I was like, shit, I'm burning through these quick. But I did the math on that too. I'm no dummy. I mean, that's a lot of money for anyone, including myself. Um, but I did the math and then thought about, okay, so yeah, I'm spending 150 bucks here for a quick acupuncture, 40 bucks for a quick adjustment of the chiropractor, $250 for a 90-minute massage. How many years I've spent doing that, and how many, probably tens of thousands of dollars I've spent, and yet I still have the same effing problems that I did then. 

So it's like, it's symptom relief versus actually solving the underlying cause issue. And for some reason that just clicked in my head and I had room on my credit card, so I pulled the trigger. And also the impetus of getting my teeth done as I talked about earlier. That's worth the investment because I don't want to do it wrong. 

But that's how I was able to break it down and rationalize it. And just had to trust my intuition. My intuition was like, you need this guy. Do the thing. Don't worry about the money. And I did that, and I was so happy that I signed up for another 20 hours.

Because as I said, I'm like, all right, this is great. If my neck is just fixed, 10 grand, no problem. Totally worth it because my quality of life, my ability to do interviews, sit on my computer, just work, be me, and generate revenue is dependent on me feeling comfortable on my body. So that was my thought. I'm like, hmm, if we already got like the neck on point and the shoulder's way better, I won't say it's 100%, but probably 80% better with one or two--

[01:01:48] Alex: We haven't even exercised on it.

[01:01:49] Luke: Yeah. I mean, you just did the thing under the arm and then I was like, ah, we're fixed. Um, but anyway, that's my doing the math and my thought process too is like, okay, this is an investment. But also because a lot of the things, unfortunately, that I like to do are exceedingly expensive. The technologies, all the biohacking shit, supplements, eating organic, all that. 

But I always think about, where are other areas in my life that I'm squandering money on dopamine highs and escapism to distract myself from the discomfort I feel physically or emotionally. And what if I actually just cut some of the budget from some of that, what I consider like, oh no, that's fun. I got to have that do I really need that? Like you talked about a vacation that you don't need or that's too extravagant for what you can afford, which I'm definitely guilty of.

[01:02:42] Alex: We all are.

[01:02:43] Luke: Yeah. But to me, to reallocate those funds into more of a long-term vision, okay. So right now I'm doing okay at 52. I got a few aches and pains, but what am I going to look like at 80 spending money on all this other shit that I don't really need that's just fun or distracting. I want to be feeling better when I'm 80 than I feel at 52. And I know that that's possible because not entirely, but many parts of my experience feel much better at 52 than they did at 25.

So I already know you can age backwards to a certain degree. I mean, I'm losing some hair and got a bigger gut and whatever but, um, generally speaking, my wellbeing seems to improve over time. So I just want to share that with people too, whether they work with you or whoever they work with.

It's like, if we're not investing in ourselves, what are we investing in? Because investing in ourselves is the thing that gets us the ROI on quality of life and productivity later. So that was my thought process in doing that. Because at first I was like, ah, man, I just want to go over and get a few adjustments and get my teeth and I'm good. But I thought, well, I'm going to go for the whole thing and see how it goes. And again, it was just based on intuition and so many great referrals from Kyle Kingsbury and Josh Trent, mutual friends that we have. They were like, dude, just do it. You're going to be thankful.

Okay. So we broke down how you pulled these things together, why you chose to actually just build programs that are more of a commitment. And I think what I'm trying to say in way too many words is just having skin in the game, to me, is going to make, even just doing all the intake forms and stuff, not even just the money, but just like, I've had to participate in this. I'm not just laying there, fix me. 

So the skin in the game, for me, on a few different levels has already made me more mindful about my posture, how I'm breathing. I took a break on the raw milk that I was chugging a gallon a week and gained a bunch of weight. You're like, dude, you can't drink that much raw milk. And I was like, okay, let me try it. Instantly started trimming up within a week. 

So the buy-in, for me, is a really important part of it too. If I'm spending that time, energy, and money, I'm going to do what you say at least to the point where I see if it worked or not. Um, for people that want to work with you, and we're going to talk more about this, you guys can go to lukestorey.com/primalfusion. Uh, by the way, I don't want to forget to say how to contact you.

So let's start from the top, literally. Why are the teeth such an important part of your programming?

[01:05:24] Alex: So in the totem pole, the first physical aspect is breathing. And so if you-- uh, how many days can you go without eating? Months. There's even breatharians.

[01:05:39] Luke: So they say. 

[01:05:39] Alex: So they say. Yeah.

[01:05:40] Luke: I don't doubt it.

[01:05:40] Alex: Yeah.  The typical answer is you can go a month without eating, a couple weeks without drinking, but you can't go more than a couple minutes without breathing. So you start with the breathing. And then the breathing is fairly self-explanatory. Yes, it may need some manual releases. So the diaphragm functions. You can expand. All the angles have to be right so you can breathe properly. But when it comes to the teeth,  not the teeth, but your jaw has a disc in it like your back.

And so if there's compression on it, your grip will give out. It'll say, hey, these teeth are how we get food and water into our mouth, and if we can't eat, we will die. So we need to preserve our teeth and forget everything else is important. Until these things are fitting together properly, nothing is important.

And people think teeth are-- I've heard people say, oh, well when you brush your teeth, that's the only place you can brush your bones. And I go, teeth aren't bones. They're crystals. And if you Google, are teeth crystals, it'll tell you the composition, the quartz. And so when you hit quartz together, they create PIA electric charges.  And almost every time it's coming from their teeth.

And then I have them either go to a dentist for a custom mouth guard or I go get a mouth guard. And then I go test them again. And then sure enough, grip goes up and then their weights go up. And I go, yeah, because your teeth need to be fixed. And if someone's in the middle of a sport, they can't get their teeth fixed, wear your mouth guard all the time. Pretty much. And then when you're done and you're off season, we've got to go get your teeth looked at and start the whole process of getting your mouth where it needs to be because you're going to be a monster. If you're ready--

[01:07:16] Luke: I remember you, uh, saying something to the effect that you've observed. I don't know anything about sports, but many people do. Uh, obviously, they fill stadiums. I'm always just like, why? But anyway, you observed that all of the elite athletes, without exception, have perfect teeth, and that a lot of their performance and strength you feel is based on that in alignment with what you're saying there.

And then I thought about it, and again, I don't know much about sports, but yeah, if you think about top athletes that even non-sports people know of, and you look at them smile, none of them have crooked, yellow, tiny jacked up teeth. They have big, bright, Weston Price teeth. You know what I mean? It's a genetics thing.

[01:08:03] Alex: Yeah, either genetics or-- 

[01:08:04] Luke: Or they fixed them.

[01:08:05] Alex: Or they fixed them. Yeah. Um, uh, Christiano Ronaldo was one of those people. You look at him, he was very talented, and then he started getting his teeth fixed. And then still talented. But you'll see a lot of people with the teeth that don't fit, you'll see their performance, their body can't keep up. And then they start to trail off. But then you start seeing the trends of people can go longer at the top when they have better teeth. 

And then you have these anomalies that were, let's say-- it breaks my heart to say it's an anomaly that someone was breastfed nowadays, but, um, let's say they were breastfed, their mouth was developed, they're eating the right things, they were taken care of, or they have genetically amazing teeth, wide arch, their tongue fits in their mouth, um, then their physiology can grow because their teeth are in the right place. And they're healthy. And they're not creating disease into the rest of the body. And so, yeah, Google any elite athlete, they'll either transition to nice teeth or they've had really wide teeth. You could see all of them.

[01:09:13] Luke: So, uh, a few years ago I interviewed a Dr. Dwight Jennings out of Oakland, California, who specializes in TMJ and he does, uh, appliances and stuff on people to get your bite in the right place. So there's a show on that. We'll put in the show notes, Dr. Dwight Jenning's episode. But he's far away and I can't get to Oakland. So when I need to do this, I started asking around, and Kyle Kingsbury, I remembered one day, just had his teeth done because I remember him talking about how he stained his temporaries with methylene blue, which I've been very mindful of with the temporaries I'm wearing. So I talked to him and he is like, Dr. Winters, Dr. Kevin Winters, he's your guy, um, at the Hills Dental Spa, it's called, here in Austin.

And I was already reaching out to Beverly Hills doctors and different people that do the whole mouth makeover thing. Because I wanted it to look normal and natural too, and not have a bunch of big white tombstones in my face. Um, and so if someone is unable to come and see Dr. Winters in Austin, like I was unable to see some of the other great dentists that I was in contact with, um, what's this type of dentist call? Because it's not an orthodontist, right?

[01:10:27] Alex: Correct.

[01:10:27] Luke: It's just a dentist that specializes in TMJ and in jaw alignment. 

[01:10:33] Alex: Airway.

[01:10:33] Luke: Airway dentist. That's the word I'm looking for.

[01:10:36] Alex: Yeah. Because when you look at an airway dentist, yes, the teeth cosmetically need to fit, but what their main goal is, is to un obstruct the airway, which usually involves the jaw being wider, bringing the tongue out of your mouth. There's a great book, uh, by Dr. Felix, and I don't know what how to-- Liao. But I'm also in contact with him and there's some special stuff cooking up between the two of us. Um, but his book, uh, Six-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage, you can imagine that the cage is your mouth and the tiger is your tongue.

And, um, so these airway specialists try to open your jaw with an anterior growth or whatever dimensions you need, and, um, get your tongue to fit in your mouth because without your tongue fitting in your mouth, you can't close your microcosmic orbit, which is the tongue of your mouth behind your front teeth and it closes that whole loop. 

So people that are watching or listening, where's your tongue right now? And if it's at the bottom of your mouth, the middle of your mouth, it should be at the top of your mouth now pushing forward, but up. And if there's any part of that tongue that can't go up, then there might be something to look into. It could be a tongue tie. It could be that your mouth is too narrow or it's restricted from braces, from regular orthodontics. And, yeah, I've seen some interesting stuff.

[01:11:56] Luke: So if somebody finds an airway dentist or someone that specializes in TMJ and getting the bite right, it seems as though there are, generally speaking, two ways that they're going to go about fixing that. One would be with braces, which is what you did, I believe. When you still have natural intact teeth that are okay and in good shape, they just need to be moved.

And then in my case, because there wasn't even enough tooth matter left there from all the years of grinding and hard living, uh, they just said, we can't move your teeth. We have to put new ones in, and that's what's going to move your jaw. So are those the two main approaches, or is it more nuanced than that? And I know you're not a dentist, but just based on your--

[01:12:37] Alex: Pretty close to that. I've seen people that do, uh, different appliances. So there's several big appliances people use, uh, one of them being the DNA. Another one being the FAGGA. And then Dr. Felix has his own appliance that he uses, and I've seen his casework. It is also mind blowing what you could do with, uh, a proper bite and freeing the TM, uh, TM joint out of, uh, being compressed and bring the mandible back where it's supposed to go, and bring the disc back onto the condyle, which is, um, where the disc articulates and moves on, uh, or under.

And then there's people that could do bone screws. It can be as barbaric or a simple. For kids, they have something called ALF appliances, which is, if you can get a kid early, I mean the, uh, they put a little wire and it gently encourages the teeth to keep growing outwards. And it's not invasive. It's not like mine where they had to-- I couldn't bite in my mouth for two years basically. And my teeth were all messed up, and now I'm still waiting. I have a mouth guard I'm still using. It'll get my teeth to come down. I had to fix a deep bite. I have to grow bone in my face still. It's a whole process. Um, so--

[01:13:53] Luke: I took the fastest but also most expensive route. Just like getting a bunch of porcelain--

[01:13:59] Alex: Yours is what, three months?

[01:14:02] Luke: Three or four months. Probably four when it's all said and done. Yeah, I think I'm about three weeks away from getting the real deal teeth in.

[01:14:09] Alex: Mine so far was two years and I got the braces off almost at the two-year mark, maybe slightly before the two-year mark. And that's after the braces, appliance, and then back to controlled arch braces as they call them. And then now I wear a bite guard to, uh, encourage my teeth to meet so that way my front teeth don't overlap.

Um, and then, yeah, I'm still going through it, but uh, I tested my grip strength before I went through this, and it was about 90 pounds. And without exercising in the last two years, I started exercising again recently. But without training for two years, it went up to 160 pounds. 

Once I got my mouth guard in about a week after I got my braces off and I squeezed my hand dynamometer, it went up to 160 pounds. And I mean, I could feel every pound of power when I squeezed my hands. I had to recalibrate my handshake. It was funny, um, because the same tension, I mean, you're feeling people's knuckles cracking her under me. I'm like, oh, I apologize for that.

[01:15:14] Luke: Well, you had two years of people not wanting to shake hands to practice.

[01:15:20] Alex: Yeah. In those two years I couldn't put my-- I had two biting surfaces, so my digestion was a mess because I couldn't digest food, couldn't chew it. But now that my teeth are slowly coming together, you can really break it down a lot--

[01:15:32] Luke: I've mentioned to a few people, um, just because they're like, you look weird. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going through this whole thing. They're like, what? Your old teeth were fine. I go, dude, I couldn't even eat steak. I mean, I ate it but I couldn't chew because the molars didn't even touch. There was no-- was it mastication? Is that the one? 

Yeah, it was not happening, which is probably no accident why most of the meals I eat when I'm at home are smoothies because I'm just like, I don't want to sit there and break my freaking teeth trying to chew on something, you know? And then all of the flossing afterward, the toothpicks, it all getting caught in my jagged teeth. I mean, it's just a train wreck. Okay. So that's really good information for people. Um, how does being breastfed or not affect the formation of your bite?

[01:16:18] Alex: So when you have a bottle and you tilt the bottle backwards, it's a passive system where the baby can go, very simply suck the milk out of the bottle. But when there's a breast in the baby's face, first of all, the breast is in the face, and the baby can't see. So it has to look peripherally outside of the breast. And usually the baby's laying on the side, alternating breasts, so what are they doing? They're looking for mom, and they're doing it by stretching their eyes as far as they can. So they're developing the peripheral vision. And then they hear noise and they the look the other way.

[01:16:55] Luke: That's got to be a key to higher performing athletes being breastfed too. 

[01:17:01] Alex: Because they can see things much more developed and, uh, accurately with their peripheral vision versus not needing to-- with a bottle in your face, your field of vision's open so you're actually not encouraged to stretch your eyes for extended periods of time. And there's--

[01:17:16] Luke: That's so interesting.

[01:17:17] Alex: Breastfeeding, it's sometimes hours, and then you fall asleep, and then they get up, and then you breastfeed more. And then the other thing is, uh, when the baby has to breastfeed, it's not a passive system. If you put a boob in your mouth, breast milk doesn't come out. And it's not a sucking action that causes it. It's a latch. But also when you have the nipple, it's the tongue coming out, gathering all that milk, and then sucking that out. If people want to try this, you could put your thumb in your mouth and try bringing your tongue and then pretty much gliding it on your thumb. Your mouth is going to be really tired really quickly.

[01:18:03] Luke: Oh, that's pretty real.

[01:18:04] Alex: Because your tongue is not conditioned. And so when a baby is sucking for hours sometimes, there is so much conditioning that is occurring, which is, well, your tongue is fastly connected to the base of your skull. And your suboccipitals are the muscles that connect under the base of your skull. Several of them connect to your atlas, which is responsible 50% of rotation through your spine. Now you have also the lower six cranial nerves that pass through your atlas. So if that's obstructing, now you have obstructions on cranial nerve 7 through 12 and all their functions.

And then that stabilizes your sphenoid. So your occiput and your sphenoid articulate together and your sphenoid, your cranial nerves, your optic nerves go right through your sphenoid. So if you don't have a stable occiput, you don't have a stable sphenoid, which articulates with almost every other bone in your skull and it distorts your vision, and you're going to focus harder to see, which means you have to put more effort, energy to think and observe. And it's not as easy. So the breastfeeding stabilizes your vision, stabilizes your neck, and then at the same time, while they're pulling their tongue up, it expands the arch of your mouth.

[01:19:20] Luke: Oh wow.

[01:19:21] Alex: And it pushes the teeth apart. And so that--

[01:19:24] Luke: So for women that, uh, don't produce milk and are left to bottle feed, has anyone invented a prosthetic boob rather than a baby bottle? I mean, you think about all of the ridiculous sex toys they make. I mean, you have--

[01:19:41] Alex: I mean, there has--

[01:19:43] Luke: All these silicone body parts. Not that I've ever touched them myself, but you know what I'm saying. It's like, hey, if there's any innovative entrepreneurs out there, we need that. Imagine a baby bottle that doesn't have that fake ass little nipple that doesn't provide all the benefits that you're describing, but that actually needs to be manipulated according to natural order to get the proper result for the baby.

[01:20:11] Alex: I would love to know if there was, but--

[01:20:12] Luke: There probably isn't, but--

[01:20:14] Alex: Yeah. The good news is--

[01:20:14] Luke: In future there will be. Someone will figure it out.

[01:20:16] Alex: As we're talking about it as someone's, hmm.

[01:20:19] Luke: Someone who has a sex toy company is like, huh, missing a market share here.

[01:20:24] Alex: It might be, yeah. We might have started something.

[01:20:26] Luke: You just have to make it out of something non-toxic.

[01:20:29] Alex: Mm-hmm.

[01:20:30] Luke: Yeah. Organic or--

[01:20:31] Alex: Hopefully also not human flesh. That'd be pretty--

[01:20:33] Luke: Organic latex. Yeah. Well, everyone wants to be transhuman and shit and invent these silicone robots, so let's start with the breast. There you go. It's probably the best use of that technology. Oh, I know what actually wanted to ask you about the tongue type thing.

You mentioned that, but that's, uh, that's something that I'm starting to learn a little bit more about. And from my very limited understanding, when a baby's born, that's something that a specialist can determine and they can cut it loose with the laser in a fairly non-invasive way so that that's not an issue, uh, which I think you can do as an adult too.

I never thought I had it. I was like, ah, too bad for them when I heard of tongue tied because I seem fine, but a couple of the last dentists, um, I've been to, including Dr. Winters, they're like, put your tongue on the roof of your, or open your mouth all the way and then see if you can put the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth, which I totally can't. And they're like, yeah, you have the tongue tie thing. What's up with tongue tie? Should you fix it? How do you know if you have it? Can it be prevented?

[01:21:34] Alex: Um, from what I understand and what I've observed, I've never seen anyone grow a tongue tie in the middle of their life. So you're most likely born with it. And the problem is most people also don't get their tongues looked at very often. It's overlooked. So does it grow? Mmm. Does it grow midlife? I don't know. But, uh, if people are having a hard time latching, babies, it can, um, it's a quick thing that could systemically release someone's tension. There are still practitioners-- I'm still investigating this so I can't give you a direct answer, but there's people that are like, laser cut's the best.

There's another one that, um, one of, uh, one of my, uh, biological dentist, um, friend's, colleagues, former client's, Dr. Darren Ward, uh, he's in Michigan. And he was telling me about-- I can never remember the guy's name, but he does, uh, uses Q-tips and basically teases the fascia part. So he doesn't have to do a strict cut, but he basically loosens everything up after, um, after numbing it. So that way you don't notice what's going on, but moving all that fascia and separating it layer by layer versus a distinct cut. 

But from what I've heard, people that did get tongue tied releases, some of them report that their whole body systemically relaxes because their tongue goes into the position that it can go and it stops falling into the back of their throat because if it can't go up, it's going back.

[01:23:06] Luke: Which affects the airways.

[01:23:07] Alex: Which affects the airways.

[01:23:08] Luke: And the airways are important, why?

[01:23:11] Alex: Um, well, you need to breathe. Uh, with oxygen, your body detoxes, uh, the system, your body, uh, your muscles, uh, function more effectively or else your tissues die. You have to oxygenate your blood cells. Um, and then those cells also die. So you have to keep reproducing that. And if you are, let's say, in a sense, breathing through a straw, picture that, breathe through a straw the rest of your life. 

And then what's going to happen? Your body's going to become ischemic. Your body's going to accumulate toxins. Your body's going to get locked up because it's so busy getting rid of garbage that it can't accumulate new minerals.

And then your body can't function as effectively. And now you take that straw out or even the same thing of teaching someone how to breathe from their chest to their diaphragm. How many yogis I see that are selling programs breathing from their chest. Take a deep breath, and then their chest goes up, and I'm like, oh God, another one. Why can't they breathe from their belly and let the people figure out. Let the belly come out. It's okay.

[01:24:15] Luke: Yeah. But the abs. 

[01:24:17] Alex: Yeah, it's supposed to happen. I know, but it's supposed to happen.

[01:24:20] Luke: If you're a yoga influencer, you got to be ripped, man. You can't have your belly popping out.

[01:24:24] Alex: Yeah. But I think you can't be under any delusions either.

[01:24:27] Luke: With the airways too, I mean, you teach people how to breathe properly and a lot of people are becoming aware of this with the popularity of breath work and such. But the issue I'm guessing, is probably when you're asleep because you can't consciously get more air. If I know I have a limited capacity in my airways and I'm conscious of that and I want more oxygen, well, I can habituate myself to breathe more deeply and more thoroughly and regularly, etc. But once you're asleep, all bets are off, and your airway is going to do what the airway does based on its capacity.

[01:25:02] Alex: Tongue goes back, and you're going to suck in air as much as you can. But yeah, what I was saying earlier about the belly to chest, the belly breathing is 66% of your breathing. And then, so if someone reverse breathes, they're only breathing with a shallow third of their breath. 

Now, if you reverse that, now you have literally double the amount of oxygen and 10% of the work because your chest has two mechanisms. Belly out, which means the diaphragm comes down and vacuums the air in. Inhaling is passive. You don't have to, um, what's it called? Inhale. But your body will always exhale.

Oh, I'm sorry, inhaling is active, and exhaling is passive. Your body will let the air out. But then inhaling is a choice, a physiological choice, but it's still an active process that has to occur. But when you exhale, exhalation isn't. And so when you breathe in from your belly, the diaphragm goes down pulling air, like a vacuum through your mouth, into your lungs.

Or when you breathe from your chest, your scalings, your sternoclastomastoid, your pec minor, and some other, uh, muscles have to lift your ribcage. Now, picture the muscles that are about this big. Maybe a sternoclastomastoid is about the size of your thumb. So you have muscles that are about the size of maybe four, five fingers on each side, lifting your ribcage 25,000 times a day. And then what ends up happening there, your head goes forward because it's heavy, your ribcage is heavy. 

Or the diaphragm lines the whole underbelly of your ribcage and there's this huge thick tendon. I like to think of it like an umbrella. You pull that thing down and the umbrella opens and vacuums that air in, and then you close the umbrella. In one movement with one muscle, you get 66% of the accumulated air that you can't even get if you only breathe through your chest. So now if you do both in a deep meditation, you are going to be so filled with oxygen that you're going to go somewhere else. 

And once again, your body's able to process the toxins, get more oxygen into the cells, um, and ultimately function better, think clearly, and not be so hot like the element of fire, and not be so inflamed. You can let all of that go by switching the way you breathe, and you really can't do anything. You can't control any biological function, blood pressure, um, any, um, systemic system is influenced by the way you breathe. So if you have too much pressure, you can alleviate that by not putting so much pressure on when you breathe.

[01:27:57] Luke: Huge.

[01:27:58] Alex: Huge.

[01:27:59] Luke: My thought with preparing my manuscript for today was that we would start at the top of the head and work our way down to the feet and hopefully we can get there. But I keep thinking of other stuff. We haven't even gotten below the neck yet. I mean, I guess the breathing is essential, but you're doing it from up here. 

Um, but I remembered two very interesting experiences. Well, there's three things, the work that you did on the cranium, so note that. Second was you massaged the inside of my mouth and my tongue and all that, which was really freaking wild. And then the wildest of all by far was the eye massage wherein you took, I mean, my eyes were closed, so I didn't see, but I think Q-tips basically went inside the eye socket and massage that, which was incredibly uncomfortable, but did, very obviously and instantaneously release the ability for me to actually move my eyes in all directions. And then now I've been playing with those exercises a little bit more too to see where the stuck points are. 

So what can you tell us about those three things? Cranium, eyes, inside the mouth. 

[01:29:08] Alex: Oh, and then we did balloons. 

[01:29:09] Luke: We did the nasal balloons too. So there's four things there. 

[01:29:13] Alex: So your brain and your teeth are contained in a skeletal structure. Most people think they're fused. All those sutures are fused, on dead people they are, but on living people, they're not. And you could put your fingers in your ears and then pull back on like a 45-degree angle while your fingers are in your ear holes, and then get a book and put your foot on one book. You're going to notice your temporal bones move. And then you're going to switch feet, put your foot on the other book, and you're going to notice they move again. So they're not fused because they're moving. So all these sutures, if they're misaligned because--

[01:29:48] Luke: The sutures in your skull you're speaking of.

[01:29:50] Alex: Yeah. You have the frontal bone and the suture around that. And then you have your maxilla, which is the front of your teeth.

[01:29:56] Luke: Are these sutures tiny ligaments or what's holding it together?

[01:30:00] Alex: Uh, fascia and ligaments. 

[01:30:02] Luke: Oh, okay. 

[01:30:04] Alex: And then some of them--

[01:30:04] Luke: So you have fascia that wraps around your whole skull. Oh, wild.

[01:30:09] Alex: Yeah. Remember when I was pulling your hair? That was releasing that upper cranial fascia, which is the fascia that's on the outside most, um, right under your skin. And there's something that's called thixotrophy that occurs.

[01:30:24] Luke: You're the only guy I've ever let pull my hair, by the way. And many have asked, no, I'm just kidding. 

[01:30:30] Alex: Um, there's something that's called thixotrophy. And when you put pressure on, um, on fascia and you let the heat set in, if you're there long enough, it will turn into a gel. And so when your fascia is glued in your head, pulling the hair, opens all that up, and then you can move the sutures around a lot more effectively.

And sometimes they're over a ridge or they need to be moved back or they're twisted and you have muscles interconnected with most of them, even on your temporal bone, the one I was telling you in your ears, that bone right behind your ear that sticks out, your mastoid process, you have like 22 muscles that attached to that.

So if there's a misalignment anywhere, it could move that bone around. And if you're breathing or, let's say you're answering the phone all the time but you're holding it in your right ear and you have your neck side bent to the right, you think those muscles aren't shortening and the moment you try to put your head straight they're not going to anchor down and move that bone down? Of course they are. 

So you got to release all those tissues because you have foramen in your cranium, which are little tiny holes where your cranial nerves, and to give people an idea, cranial nerves are going from wherever they go to directly to your brain. They tell your brain what's going on. Your eyes don't have a peripheral system like you put your hand on a stove but you move it before your brain registers that it's hot, and then you go, ouch that was hot.

And so it goes directly into your brain. I'm looking at you, my brain is translating it immediately. And, uh, that's why even blind people, when you ask them about certain, uh, emotions, they can repeat them, is because there's a neurology that your brain is built with these emotion centers and they know what they look like. So if someone's never seen anyone before and they can't use mirror neurons and you go, show me you being sad, they'll frown. But they've never seen anyone. So how are they frowning? Why not make another face?

[01:32:30] Luke: Oh, that's interesting.

[01:32:31] Alex: Yeah. And so whenever you have compressions on those things, once again, you're reducing function. And then there's some laws that say sometimes it accelerates the function. And what happens when you're redline too much? Eventually it shuts down or sometimes it makes it go under function and then it shuts off. And then you have to stimulate it again. So you got to figure out which one it is.

And I'm not going to go putting needles in people, but I observe and I go, oh, well, I touched that, turned on and turned back off. Well, maybe it's overstimulated. Because that's usually you turn it back, the circuit breaker breaks, and then, hmm, okay, well, maybe we've got to strengthen it or we got to move something off. And then I move the atlas back and, okay, it stays on now. Hmm. Cool. Moving on. 

And, um, so that's why the cranium is important because it's a very small contained unit, but you have muscles and glands. Your pituitary gland sits in your sphenoid and your hypothalamus, and, um, what else is in there? Anyway. Um, my brain's--

[01:33:31] Luke: For some of us it's just empty space.

[01:33:35] Alex: Wind going through.

[01:33:37] Luke: So cranium. What about the eye, the stuff we do with the eyes?

[01:33:44] Alex: Now the eyes are, if you put your hands behind your-- there's a little ridge behind your head, and you fall off that little ridge. And if you put your hands behind both of those ridges and you start turning your eyes left and right, you'll start filling those muscles activate.

[01:34:03] Luke: Oh yeah.

[01:34:04] Alex: So your muscle, those muscles I was telling you about, the suboccipital muscles that are connected to your atlas, which control seven out of the, uh, six out of the 12 cranial nerves that come through your, um, through your atlas, which one of them is your vagus nerve. So people that have poor digestion, people that are coughing all the time, or gagging all the time, or, um, they have books on the vagal, uh, vagus nerve.

Well, that goes through your atlas. And if your atlas is out, there's no way if it's compressed that it's going to get the stimulation. So even if you eat organic food, even if you drink all the clean water, your body doesn't have enough current to turn the stomach over and the intestines over. So you can't even digest all the good food.

So what does it do? It sits there. It's like a garbage can. And then it rots. And then someone has parasites and mold and fungus, and they're confused by why. I eat the best food. Why am I still having all these issues? Until you realign the physical structure. So the eyes, if let's say you got into a car accident, if you don't get your eyes treated and then your last thing you did when you noticed and you looked right, well, now your eyes spasmed.

And if you're always looking out to the right, your eyes are always programmed to look at the horizon. So instead of looking off to the right all the time, what you're going to do is you're going to turn your head to the left so your eyes can maintain moving to the right. So what is that going to look like? It's going to look like someone with a really stiff neck because they don't get why they can't look forward. So you have to release the eyes because that releases the way your eyes are level with the horizon. So they'll be able to find it without turning your system to be level with the horizon.

So if you got whiplashed or you're in Jiujitsu and you got your head bent this way, or you got punched in the face while you were checking some girl out, and then you got punched in the eye, and then every time you do this, your eyes are rotated and you got to go like this, well, what's going to happen? You're going to lift your right shoulder to keep your head level at the horizon. So now you've bent your spine and you're going to walk like that until someone fixes your eyes or your atlas or whatever. 

And those are those missing things that people don't do. And so once again, your eyes connects to your atlas, connects to your cranium again. And so if you work on the eyes but never the cranium or the atlas, then the eyes or the bone structures will still be misaligned, but not directly from your eyes. They might function better. And then you have this compounding effect of why the eyes are important. It will move your whole skeletal structure to keep your eyes level with the horizon.

[01:36:47] Luke: With the nasal balloons, I've done a couple episodes on that with Dr. Dean Howell, uh, from, he invented something called Neuro cranial release, I think is what he calls it, but he does the balloons. And then just for the show notes and for reference, if people want to deep dive this in interest of time, I'll just get your approach. 

Uh, the other one was, uh, Dr. John Lieurance, who I've done this with a lot. Just last week he did one. He always wants to do the balloons. Um, but I think I mentioned that to you and you're like, oh yeah, I do that. And then we did that on one day too. What's your experience of that or what's the purpose of that? When is that called for when you're working with someone?

[01:37:23] Alex: Um, I like to offer it with people who have deviated septums or, uh, I've done it a lot of UFC fighters, grappling sports, um, people that get directly broken noses, a couple motocross people here and there, um, but a lot of fighters, and a lot of also regular people that broke their nose with little league baseball. And I'm like, man, they left it, and then now they can't breathe. They're thinking about surgery, and I'm like, you can always get a surgery. How about we try this first? And I've had clients in the past that have told me how their family members got the surgery and they still can't breathe. And so I'm like, wait. So then I'm like, okay, tell me about the surgery.

[01:38:06] Luke: The deviated septum surgery? Yeah. I had that a long time ago. 

[01:38:09] Alex: Yeah. So it's things like that and people don't realize there's turbinates in like a turbo in a car. It spools and cleans the air. So even though there's a smaller volume of, uh, oxygen going through your nose, those turbinates act as turbos. And so when air makes contact, it also increases their velocity of the way they move and they can go down your airway more effectively.

So they hollow those out. Now you don't have those anymore. Now you don't have a turbo in your nose. And so there's a lot of people that have gone through very expensive surgeries and still, like I said, can't breathe. And if you're breathing through your mouth, because you can't breathe through your nose, you're activating your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight. Your body is always thinking that there's something to fight or there's something to run from or you're frozen.

Getting your body back to breathing through your nose, it activates your parasympathetic nervous system. It allows you to be calm, be sedated, not in a paralyzing type of way, but be in yourself so you can think clearly. Paint, do art, and you're not worrying and looking over your shoulder, and you're not anxious and depressed because things are happening and you don't know why they're happening, but your body feels like it's dying.

Um, so it's really important for someone to be able to breathe through their nose because you also have boogers in there. Why do you have boogers? Because you have nose hair. And why do you have nose hair? To catch all the dirty air. Your boogers are the product of your nose hair catching bacteria from going into your body. But people that breathe through their mouth, there is no filter. So you're sucking in whatever air is going in and it's laying all over your tongue, down your throat. There is no spooling, uh, of that and cleaning of that air. That's what those hairs are, the little filters.

So, um, yes, there's still a bunch of bacteria that will still get in, but then you're going to notice it lands on the moist tongue. Bacteria in moisture, in a moist environment breeds more bacteria, which affects your teeth. And now you have this whole problem of people's teeth. And then where does that go? There's digestion. They swallow all that garbage and it goes into their gut. Now they're breeding bacteria and shooting it into their stomach. Now it's in their intestines. And now we have a mess. So breathing through your nose is that important, outside of meditation too. 

[01:40:27] Luke: For people that don't go back and hear those other shows that I did specifically on this, would you describe the process of how the balloons work?

[01:40:35] Alex: So the balloons, you put the balloon on a little blood pressure cuff, and you maneuver it deep into the nasal passage, and you fill it up for, sometimes you hold it for a couple seconds, sometimes you only hold it for three pumps. And the moment it's maximal, contraction and it opens all that up, uh, and then you deflate it and pull it out. And, uh, have I gone in with my finger yet?

[01:41:02] Luke: No.

[01:41:02] Alex: No. I do that too, because then you can get really precise about what things you can move around and, uh, because you have your sinus cavity, and you also have a cavity under your maxilla. So if you guys want to try this, you could breathe up through your nose and you feel the air going up, but you can also breathe backwards and feel it tickle your maxilla.

[01:41:27] Luke: Oh yeah.

[01:41:28] Alex: So there's several ways to breathe. And so depending on which one is obstructed, that's when you know which way to go. The balloon is a more general theme. They're going to go down the maxilla. It's going to open up so you can get more volume of oxygen through, give you space to breathe through your nose. Using your finger is a lot more refined. So you can really fine tune where your fingers are going and you could slide it up all the way to the tear ducts, move ethmoid bones around if they're shifted. Um, and so it's more of a, uh, like a carpenter, moving into small places and opening things up so they're more symmetrical.

So you can harmonize your breathing through your nose instead of having to do it through your mind like, okay, calm down. Now you can sit, breathe, and your system will sedate itself because it's recognizing nothing is to run from because if you had something to run from, you'd be sucking air in through your mouth. And that tells your brain, okay, what's going on? But when you're breathing through your nose, no one's ever running from a lion breathing through their nose.

[01:42:39] Luke: Case in point, uh, those adjustments for me have been incredible. I mean, it's extremely uncomfortable for two to three seconds. I mean, it's no party. I've posted it on my Instagram much times when people are like, what the hell? But it's so brief. And for me, it's not painful. It's just like being, I don't know, like you're drowning or something. It's just overwhelming--

[01:43:02] Alex: Weird feeling.

[01:43:04] Luke: For a second, but then it's over. But there's nothing as cool. Well, there are things as cool, but one of the cool things in life is to hear and feel all of those pops up in your sinus cavity. That is so fun. It's that satisfaction some people like me get from being adjusted by a chiropractor. 

Or even just in my car, I have a little foam roller. And every time I get in my car, I just lean back on that and I just go, oh God. It just feels good to get all the air, whatever it is in there that's sticking the cartilage. But it has helped my-- I mean, I've done it, I don't know, probably 15, maybe more times at this point. Um, but it has helped my breathing tremendously for sure. 

But there's also the cerebral, uh, spinal fluid thing too. It's very, uh, nootropic also. I mean, it just brings your brain online. That's what I noticed. It's a really cool modality. All right. So I think we've mostly covered from the neck up. Um, I mean, something I've complained about throughout my life and on the show a lot is back pain. And as I was describing earlier, just in the time that I've worked with you, we're finding that what you think hurts doesn't hurt because of why you think it hurts. It's somewhere else.

So what are some of the common, I guess, causes and solutions you find for neck pain, back pain? Um, people always talk about having sciatica, slipped discs. I mean, there's really common issues that we have. What's your take on the whole spine and back pain issue?

[01:44:37] Alex: Um, a lot of people know as above, so below. And so it's true what happens in the head, in your cranium, not only in your mind but in your cranium is going to mirror itself into your pelvis. And so because your teeth are, once again, more important, your back will deal with it. They're like, ah, make their back hurt, but make their jaw function.

And what I like to ask people that have back pain, uh, I go, did your jaw used to hurt? Did you have a clicking? Oh no, that went away. And I go, five to seven years ago? And they go, yeah, how'd you know? I go, well that's about the time you start developing back pain. After your jaw clicks and it gets sick of it, your body starts to move itself around and then, okay, it finds a position and then, okay, I can move my teeth here.

And then your back five to seven years later starts-- because you're probably going to be exercising. You're going to be moving around. You're not going to notice it. Picking up your kids. But after five to seven years of keeping your jaw and your neck in a weird position and trying to stay alive, your body's trying to keep you alive, you're not going to be able to withstand load if you're exercising, on your back or your pelvis because it's not orienting properly. 

So most of the time the spine is compensating below for above, but not always because people have short legs, so you could compensate below. Because if you have a short leg, now it's going to compensate above and you're not going to be able to fix above because as so below.

So you got to figure out where the problem's coming from. And, um, measuring is really how I do it. Um, because you're going to get people who have a seemingly, uh, nice curvature, but that's only their musculature and maybe a well-developed glute. But then when you actually measure what the spine is doing and it's not in a good place, like, hmm, all right, well, let's fix that. Even though observationally, that's probably why no one's ever fixed their back is because no one ever observed and put a goniometer to their spine or even knew how to do that. 

Uh, I don't even know how many times people go, no one's ever measured my pelvis, the basic tilt of the pelvis. And then, um, how many people will, uh, observe and go, oh, it must be this? And then when I measure it, I go-- I've had my clients go out, uh, and if they're going to listen to this, they're going to probably get a giggle out of it. I've had, uh, one person go out and, uh, get some other stuff done, experiment with other practitioners and, uh, training modalities because I'm very laser focused on a certain thing. Let's get this done and then do other things later. 

So they went out and they come back, and this person had a herniated disc. So I spent so much time on this person's back, pelvis, neck, making sure everything fits together. The puzzle stacks on top of itself and you can let it go. And it's like the Jenga tower doesn't fall over and you go, great. And then they come back and they go, hey, um, they told me that my pelvis is too much tilted forward. And I'm like, before you move any further, I grab my tools, measured. I go, actually your per your pelvis is perfectly in its orthopedic position between seven and 10 degrees.

And your spine is actually in a 17-degree curvature in your lumbar spine, which is exactly where it should be 17 and a half. But she was 17 degrees. And I'm like, do not let them touch this. I'll be so upset and so will you because your back's going to hurt. And so they went back and they had a great conversation.

Luckily it was an open-minded practitioner, they had a great conversation, but these are the things that slip away. You go and you're like, someone has an idea based on what someone looks and then without even measuring, they go run with it. And then they, uh, work with this person for three months but not really realizing that it's going to cost cascading damage years down the line.

It takes about two years to develop a true injury. Uh, less if you're already coming out of an injury. But, um, yeah, people don't even know what they're setting people up for because they only observe but they never actually assess. And that's probably a lot of what causes a lot of problems nowadays.

[01:49:14] Luke: And why your assessment was three or four hours. I knew how all these calibers and all the measurements-- I've never seen any of that stuff. The grip strength by doing all this stuff and not. I was relieved. I'm like, cool. Do this as long as you need to because like I said, I mean, I've worked with so many talented people and have had symptom relief but never a permanent change. And none of them have ever measured anything. An x-ray here or there.

[01:49:38] Alex: But even how are you standing during the X-ray? Were you standing, sitting? Did they hold you up? There's so many-- what was your neck position?

[01:49:46] Luke: Uh, okay. So what about, uh, you mentioned the pelvis. What do you do with women that are planning to get pregnant, or are pregnant, or are postpartum and what do you do as far as the pelvis, any of the midsection there to help that process go well?

[01:50:08] Alex: Um, well, if someone has pain, the beautiful thing about pregnancy is there's relaxing, and their body move so easily. For the first trimester, I don't do anything. I go, finish your first trimester, if they're pregnant, because that's where most of the miscarriages happen. So when the moment they hit 12 weeks, I think it drops off over 95%, something like that. Um, if I get it wrong, sorry, Nathan Riley. 

But you generally don't want to mess with people in the first trimester, women in the first trimester. Um, and then it gets a little bit more interesting in the third trimester positioning wise because you can occlude the artery which supplies the baby.

Um, so you have to make sure they're in the right position. And sometimes seated because I have to have them on their back and then I have to orient all different ways um, if they're still pregnant. But second trimester is pretty smooth. You could do pretty much whatever. 

And when it comes to working with women that are pregnant, it's pretty much cut and dry figuring out what's out of alignment, guide it back into position. Um, and if you're doing it right, everything's going to work. They're going to get more blood flow like we're talking about. They're going to be able to breathe, which means the baby gets more blood, which means, uh, everyone's happier.

So then people, let's say, now they go back and they can't get pregnant. You got to look at what the uterus is doing. And sometimes it's their pelvis is so tipped forward that it's occluding the arteries that don't supply the uterus with enough blood. Um, and sometimes you have to take the organ and move it back to its position. And then once the veins and arteries can circulate oxygen more effectively, then you notice it can maintain a child being alive in there. Um, there's so many things to talk about.

Um, and if we're talking about post-delivery, we got to look at, is there a c-section or is there-- was there a traumatic birth? Was there tears? There needs to be recovery? Enjoy having a baby. Enjoy staring at your baby all the time. Um, and if you got to go to work, no shame. I get it. Um, people got to do what they got to do. 

But mostly remember, if you rest properly, the chances of you not damaging things further, especially when you have relaxing running through your system and ligaments, and all these things, uh, muscles moving around in unstable positions, allow your body to do what it needs to do to sustain life.

And then let's say someone had a c-section, we need to reestablish connection with our lower abdominals. So many different exercises. It takes a long time. It takes a millimeter a day. Uh, a nerve grows a millimeter a day. So picture, I mean, a minuscule amount. 

And if you have to regrow a nerve down to your leg or into your lower abdominals, it could take months, six months, a year sometimes, uh, before a nerve grows into that tissue. And hopefully your spine's in the correct position to be able to send electricity from your brain and then run current into that tissue, and then also be able to flush blood in and out of that tissue properly. 

So there's a lot of things to coordinate. They pretty much cut you in half, rip you open, pull a baby out, and then, uh, do a little loop stitch and sew you back up together, put a little glue on, and then you're like, okay, make sure you poop and you can get out of here. Um, I always find it funny that for men they give them, I think, six to eight weeks of bedrest after they get a vasectomy but a woman, all she needs to do is poop and then she's free to go.

[01:54:16] Luke: Really?

[01:54:16] Alex: Yeah.

[01:54:17] Luke: Damn.

[01:54:18] Alex: Yeah.

[01:54:19] Luke: Yeah. We had, um, Nathan Riley on the show and he was giving us the download on the c-section stuff. It's a bummer when that has to happen. But everyone that's had won is like, whatever, we got it done. We have a kid. And the kid's fine. And everyone lives happily ever after for the most part. But yeah, just, man, that seems like it's a really rough experience for women to have to go through. And the issues with the baby not getting the probiotic bath and all those things, which they're starting to become aware of, I think, these days. 

[01:54:50] Alex: Uh, so Sarah had to have a c-section, and so we colonized a cotton pad inside of Sarah's vagina for, I don't know, a couple of days maybe, or intermittently. And then when she gave birth, I pretty much rubbed it all over her body, in her eye sockets, in her eyes. So I still was able to give that vaginal secretion as if she would be going.

[01:55:14] Luke: You're a good dad, bro. It's good, man. Because some people listening are probably like, what? But we've talked about it before with a few guests actually, how that's such an important part of the immune system, is you're seeding the entire, not just gut, but whole biome of a baby when they come out of vaginally. And if the doctor or someone like you doesn't know any better when they get cut out of the abdomen and just handed off, then they miss that--

[01:55:40] Alex: And then cleaned.

[01:55:40] Luke: Yeah. It's a bunch of, God knows what they use for-- they're probably spraying Lysol on the baby in the average hospital.

[01:55:47] Alex: I can't imagine.

[01:55:48] Luke: Oh, that's good stuff. That's good information. I'm always asking people about things around pregnancy because we're in the process of allowing that to happen. So I'm selfishly learning for myself, but I know there's so many things like this that your average person just doesn't know. They're just not aware. We're not taught these things.

[01:56:04] Alex: And it's so simple. And for the most part, uh, yeah, I am pretty intense when it comes down to my family's health. So I did give the delivery people some sternness and some aggressiveness, and looks around like, hey, I don't need that. I don't need butchered giving me right now. And then I'm like rubbing my-- seating. And, uh, they're like, are you-- 

[01:56:31] Luke: I don't need the Lysol. Step back. 

[01:56:33] Alex: We need to wash your kid. You don't. And they're like, but we have to put on different gloves every time. I go, then do that. You're in a hospital, you change gloves all the time. Change your gloves and handle my baby. And then if you have to touch something else, change your gloves. It's okay. And they're like--

[01:56:52] Luke: Yeah. I hope to, in an ideal situation, have a home birth, but I'm going to be that guy in the hospital. I'm going to be their worst nightmare. Yeah. I mean, if you just let things go as they go, because it's such a flawed system, you won't get optimal results and in some cases have, um, a bad experience. Um, you also work training coaches. Tell us a little bit about that. The first time I came over to your studio, um, what's the town you live outside of Austin? Manchaca?

[01:57:23] Alex: Yeah. It's spelled Manchaca, but if you want to sound like a local, it's Manchaca.

[01:57:28] Luke: Manchaca. Okay. Uh, I came over there and there's, I don't know, 20 people in your studio, and there's Paul Chek videos up and, I mean, it's like a school. Um, and then I never really asked you about it, and I don't know anything about that. So if someone wanted to become a you, you do that as well.

[01:57:44] Alex: So they go to the CHEK Institute. Yeah, there's the CHEK Institute, but we also have a community called Primal Pride. So I started coaching a lot of coaches. And my clients realized as they coached with me that they want to do what I did. So then I'm like, okay, we'll go to the CHEK Institute, learn these processes because it's going to be so much less expensive if you go get your education and then I could fill in the gaps versus teaching you all the anatomy, all the physiology, all the terminology. It's going to be endless amounts of hours or they're already doing that. 

So go spend, uh, not even 5% of what you'd hire me for, let me work on you and optimize you and take you through the process. So then you'll have an idea of how I practice. So then you could start either emulating or taking it for yourself. And then if you have questions around, now, how do I apply this to another person, then you can come in on Mondays and for two hours we go live on different days and, um, and we answer anyone's questions.

Hey, I got a question about this. But sometimes it's also, hey, I'm feeling this way and I'm nervous about this, or I'm having a conflict with my partner, uh, how can I best resolve that? And I go, well, we talk through it and I can talk fully without having to-- like an Instagram response. Cool. Uh, yeah. Uh, try this. So I can go into it and it's all recorded. It's all stored. So primalpride.com, basically, you get in and then we have all of our resources that we have.

[01:59:22] Luke: I was looking at that today. There's a lot of content in there.

[01:59:25] Alex: There's more content that people consume. And so you have to go with what you're actually really enjoying, but then hop on the call, and then we'll help you discern all of it. Because once again, there's so many different facets and how do you figure out what's best for you? You found an airway dentist, but that airway dentist may not talk to the dentist, or they may have an ego. And then you have to go to another one, which is annoying. Or they don't talk to your therapist, they don't talk to your neurosomatic therapist, or they won't talk to me because I'm, uh, not trained medically or what not.

[01:59:58] Luke: Well, that was one thing that, um, I was really pleased about is that, uh, Dr. Winters and his staff over at the Hills Dental Spa were-- you had already worked with a couple clients over there with them, and they were totally on board. There was zero resistance from that. Oftentimes different specialties silo themselves or get siloed into their expertise. And they are oftentimes just ignorant of, or in a worst-case scenario, threatened by someone coming in and uprooting part of their, uh, belief system, um, which is a shame.

I like your idea of partnering up with all these different specialists because you're not a dentist, but you have a number of dentists you work with, or chiropractors or whoever, physical therapist and building a team, because let's face it, in the modern world, uh, with all of the offenses going to our detriment, um, we sometimes need a team man. Especially if you're really chronically ill or in chronic pain, it's a multifaceted thing. 

So I like your idea of let's get the specialist to all communicate and if a specialist doesn't like to work that way, God bless, we'll find someone who does. I think that's a pretty good protocol.

Um, one thing that I didn't want to forget was the herbs that you sell over at Primal Fusion. And when I thought of that like about an hour ago in this recording, I was like, I should have had him bring the volcano. Some people will know what a volcano is. Uh, some will not. I don't have one at home because I know for sure I'd be putting 100% tobacco in it and hitting that thing all day. 

So it's one of the things I look forward to is coming to see you. I know I'm going to have a free pass and be able to-- there's a little bit of tobacco in yours, but it's mostly these great herbs. And this is a very popular thing in Austin. Most dudes I know here have the volcano and we're hitting bags.

I was at my friend Cal Callahan's house last night and that was one of my favorite things about going over there, being able to-- I don't know if he has your herbs or some different ones in these little tins. Um, but, I don't know, it's a thing I'd never heard, I've never saw in my life until I got here. But it is a really cool practice. 

So I guess tell people for that don't know what is a volcano, how you use your herbs, what's in them, what they do, because I really enjoy them just a little too much, which is why I don't keep them around.

[02:02:25] Alex: Yeah. So I learned this from Paul Chek, and I remember even I was hesitant. My parents smoked for 30 years. Um, they finally quit smoking cigarettes. And I was always repulsed by tobacco because it was abused around me. And as you go through Paul Chek's teachings, he teaches Yuba Shamanism and how shamans use tobacco. And I'm going, I don't need it. I don't want it.

[02:02:48] Luke: Well, then also, sorry to interrupt, but there a massive distinction I think many people miss between a Marlborough full of chemicals, grown with pesticides, all this other shit in there to make it more addictive and more harmful than natural untainted tobacco. That is, as you said, historically relevant in terms of its ceremonial medicinal use. I mean it's no accident that every indigenous culture on the world that I'm aware of uses tobacco somehow.

[02:03:17] Alex: Yeah, I mean, because it's anti-parasitic as well, so if you people make tea out of it, if you're not addicted to nicotine, if you are then, people may want to be hesitant about using that. But I mean, it's a naturally anti-parasitic.

[02:03:33] Luke: That's funny because you can use it as a pesticide. You can make tobacco juice and spray it on your garden to keep pests off. That's interesting. I never put those two together.

[02:03:41] Alex: Yeah. And, um, so I was resistant and when I became a rep-- in the class that I was becoming a master practitioner, um, with him, it was six of us. And, uh, he was passing around bags and he was like, Paul's like, here. I'm like, no, I don't want any. My parents smoke. He goes, try it. So I'm like, I tried it. I'm like, wow, okay. He goes, I'll save this blessing. Try it. Okay. So I tried it. I'm like, well, this is wonderful. 

So then I spent the rest of the times smoking and I realized, I'm like, wow, I could really focus. This is wonderful. My body feels great. Uh, my lungs don't feel caked up. I'm like, okay, maybe there's more to it. So I came home, got a volcano, started getting the herbs, um, buying other people's herbs.

[02:04:25] Luke: And the volcano for those listening is, uh, it looks like a little silver volcano about the size of a teapot. And that's vaporizing whatever plant matter you put in there essentially, right?

[02:04:35] Alex: Yeah.

[02:04:36] Luke: Like a diffuser?

[02:04:37] Alex: Yeah, pretty much.

[02:04:38] Luke: Because it's not a vape. It's not like a vape. I've never used one, but I think it's like a thick liquid that gets heated to make a faux smoke. This seems like a different mechanism of action.

[02:04:52] Alex: Yeah. So people smoke out of joints and pipes and lots of bongs.

[02:04:57] Luke: I've never done that personally.

[02:04:58] Alex: Yeah. And then people, uh, that smoke out of the, uh, the little nicotine things, those are oils that they--

[02:05:07] Luke: The vapes.

[02:05:07] Alex: The vapes. Yeah. And so they're--

[02:05:10] Luke: Cherry vape, bro.

[02:05:11] Alex: Yeah. And so they interact with heat and then they combust and then release whatever the smoke.

[02:05:17] Luke: That can't be good. Vaping cannot be good because when people are using vapes, it just doesn't look healthy. They're always like, no offense to vapors out there, go nuts. But my observation at the airport ever, someone's hunched over and really hitting it hard. It just --

[02:05:33] Alex: Smuggle like my--

[02:05:34] Luke: Yeah, it has a super, addictive-looking energy to it. And I would know as someone who's struggled with addiction throughout my life.

[02:05:42] Alex: So the volcano is a dry herb vape where it comes to the basket like, here we go. We have a cup and you have a basket, and you put the tea in, and, uh, you put the herbs in the basket. You close the basket, and then instead of putting it on fire, you put it on the volcano, which basically has a heat pump and it pumps heat through the cup or the chamber into a bag. So essentially--

[02:06:04] Luke: Hot air.

[02:06:05] Alex: Hot air.

[02:06:06] Luke: So you're not burning the material, which is why it's not smoke.

[02:06:09] Alex: Correct. It does burn a little bit, but you're moving air through it enough to release the properties of whatever you're trying to smoke. 

[02:06:16] Luke: Got it. Okay. 

[02:06:16] Alex: Like the tea. You don't brew tea at 400 degrees. Black tea brews at 212, green tea at 175. They all have their temperatures and no one after drinking their tea goes, oh, you know what, I really appreciate this tea, Luke, and then I'm going to eat this tea bag. But that's what people do when they smoke out of blunts and cigarettes and joints and things like that. And you leave the tea bag in there. And so when you want to make a new bag, you open the chamber, you take the herbs that you put in there and you smoked out and you make a fresh bag. And you can't do that unconsciously.

10:00 can hit and you know there's going to be a break at work and you can run outside and go, man, this sucks. Slam the back of your pack, put a cigarette in, inhale it, throw the butt out unconsciously, go back to work and you have that nicotine high. But when you're making a bag in a volcano, you can ask people who will make it often, you can easily mess up the bag and it could taste like garbage. And you go, great, wasted herbs, wasted money because you weren't paying attention or you over sprayed, you're not connecting with the material. 

And, um, when you have the right amount of tobacco with the right amount of water, with the right amount of herbs, with the right amount of teas, and you close the bag, you wait for the right point, then you put the bag on. It's a ceremony every single time. And in the back of our herbs, there's a blessing that you want to say as to not disrespect tobacco, because when you disrespect tobacco, it teaches you respect.

And that's when people get all these, uh, illnesses due to tobacco. Because there's a straight disrespect. You're not using it for medicinal purposes or focus, or at least you're not being honest about it. You're using it to absolve yourself of some emotion or some, uh, feeling or this obligation that you've agreed to, but you really don't want to be doing it.

And so you're abusing tobacco and then when that happens, you pay the price. And like we were talking about earlier, indigenous people through all over the world don't have history of these sicknesses because they respect plants. And as weird as that sounds, if most of civilization in the United States heard that, what do you mean respect plant?

[02:08:36] Luke: We they have a relationship with plants, which does sound insane until you take a bunch of mushrooms and go on the forest

[02:08:42] Alex: 100%.

[02:08:43] Luke: If you're paying attention, that is. You realize, oh, the trees know I'm here. I mean, I just know they know. But I could have read that in a book or it'd be like-- you could have told me that. And I'd be like, yeah, right. Yeah. But there are different ways to have that experience. For me, it's usually been taking a bunch of mushrooms or something and going, oh shit, okay, now I get it.

[02:09:03] Alex: Yeah.

[02:09:04] Luke: Because I wasn't raised in a culture that had that appreciation and that relationship with the elements and with all of nature, just a white boy from California, we didn't get taught that stuff. Dominionistic relationship with nature, not a cooperative one. So that's a good point. But with your herbs, uh, what do you-- I never looked at the ingredients. Is it mugwort? The herbs that you're smoking, what are a few of your favorites that are in there?

[02:09:31] Alex: Uh, we named everything based on how you want to feel. So instead of, uh, feeling like oak wood table or something like that, that has a fancy name to it. We're like, what do you want? Energy? Get the energy. It has yerba mate. It'll have peppermint. It'll have spearmint. It'll have, uh, ginkgo for your memory. And so you're not only energized, yerba mate is in there. Because you can still get a caffeine buzz from smoking yerba mate.

[02:10:01] Luke: Really?

[02:10:02] Alex: Oh yeah. You smoke enough of that stuff and you're like, oh--

[02:10:05] Luke: Wow. That's interesting.

[02:10:07] Alex: So, uh, each blend is calculated by Sarah. She formulated all of them and then we tease them out so they make sure they taste good and find the recipes, and, um, yeah, make sure they taste good. Because some of them were, in the beginning, pretty tough to have a smoke.

[02:10:25] Luke: All the ones I've had over there, it's awesome. I mean, I can't wait till we take breaks, a, because you're usually beating the shit out of me. b, I know when we take a break, you're going to fill up a bag and I'm going to get to experience that. So for people that want to check that out, again, you can go to lukestorey.com/primalfusion and, uh, you can find the various offerings that you have including those herbs.

But I did want to mention that because it's not something you really promote or talk about. I didn't come over to your place and you're like, hey, check out these herbs. They're just there and I see all of your bins and your new organization's, uh, shelves and I thought, oh wow, we should talk about that because it's a pretty unique offering.

There's one thing that I did forget. We're at two hours and 11 minutes, so thank you for your generosity of time and thanks for everyone who is still listening. I hope this has been informative and beneficial for you. But we didn't talk about the feet. I know there's a lot of parts between the pelvis and the feet, uh, that we could have gone into.

But as someone who, uh, as I grow older, my feet I find are hurting a lot more and just wearing pointy shoes, trying to be a hipster when I was a teenager, totally cast Morphed my feet, almost like a Chinese foot binding situation. And they just don't look like normal, natural feet, therefore, they don't function like that type of foot and are becoming painful.

And when I talk to you about that the first time you're like, ah, we don't even worry about the feet right now. If we start at the, top like we've done in this conversation, your feet will likely work themselves out. But then we also talked about the possibility of using toe spacers and doing exercises for your arches and stuff. So why are people, uh, in our modern society's feet so jacked up?

[02:12:05] Alex: You said it really well. They get stuffed in shoes. They get stuffed in cleats. If you think about the posture of someone who's feeling shame, their knees are buckled in and of themselves. And that pronation causes the arch to collapse. So there's a collapsing that occurs. Uh, you see it in other cultures. Um, it's really easy to find it in, um, Indian cultures, not Native Americans, but true Indian cultures where you'll see them walking with their hands behind their back and their feet are turned out. 

And what that does is they're walking over the side of their feet and that over time collapses their arch. And so that way it will deform the shape of the foot. And so you're not going to get-- if you're trying to go heel over toe, you can't get the orientation back unless you bring the arch back, which brings the foot over the toe again. And that's why I was saying once we work on that, then we can start working on getting the mobility on all the joints in the feet.

And I played football for 11 years and, um, I would tape my ankles up, basically bind them, stuff them in the shoes. The tighter the better because they stay on. You could be quicker. But then I'd take the shoes off and my feet would be killing me. And I got bunions and through a neurosomatic plus CHEK's learning, my podiatrist that I went to is like, oh, we could shave them off. I was like, hold on, wait. Started through different schools.

[02:13:34] Luke: That's been offered too. That sounds gnarly. Shaving the bunions, that extra bone growth, that sounds brutal.

[02:13:40] Alex: Yeah, but your body will reabsorb it. People look at my feet and they go, oh, I can see a remnant. I know it looks you can get your toe really far in that direction, but I don't see the bunion anymore. It's because I intentionally keep the arch and walk over my big toes. And it takes a long time, which is why I say, don't really worry about it. Wear the spacers. And there's people who are really dedicated to making the foot look-- get the foot back to normal. 

And then we have to measure for, does someone have a short leg? Because if someone's leg is shorter than the other, then one leg being taller, that taller leg will want to try to collapse itself to make it symmetrical while the other one might arch itself up to be symmetrical. So they can line the pelvis up so their shoulders, your eyes could still stay level without your spine being compromised.

Um, so the feet take a lot of work. They support your whole body weight. There's this excuse in the mind that's like, hey, I work at the so-and-so, I can't take my shoes off. I can't do this. First of all, if they work from home, toe spacers 24/7. Uh, especially if you wear dress shoes, you look at your foot and if your big toe, there's a tendon which is, uh, from the top of the toe here, if you see the tendon, there's a line in it. It should be straight from here. Wherever it pulls up, it should be a straight line all the way through. But if you're starting to see a curve in the tendon, uh, some of the things that you could do, I can show you. Um, Matt Walden from the CHEK Institute showed me this one. He's an osteopath, and you basically-- hopefully my feet aren't dirty. But you start by--

[02:15:25] Luke: They might not be in the shot depending on how tight it is, but it's okay. You can describe it for those that don't see the video. Most people listen to these, I think, more so than watching them.

[02:15:35] Alex: So basically you sit back, you kick your feet back and you learn this from African runners. What they used to do is when they used to take breaks, what they do is the Achilles is sacred geometry for your space between your big toe and your second toe. And when you drive, if they can see this, but if you drive your heel between your first and second toe, it starts to create space.

So when you have tight shoes, most people, and they have that bunion forming, they're not going to be able to put that. It's going to be too much, which is why you start with tow spacers, then you work to bigger toe spacers. Then if you can start by watching TV or something, you're already laying down, stack your heel between your first and second toe, your big toe and your second toe, and allow the creep to set in.

Because there's something called creep that we haven't even talked about yet, where the ligament, like taffy, if you pull it too hard, it snaps. But if you pull a little bit, it starts to heat up and then it starts to creep open. And so since all those muscles and ligaments have formed to support the foot in a dysfunctional position, as you start to add, uh, a nudge in the right direction, those ligaments need time to creep open.

But also the physiology has to repattern itself in the mind from how do we now get the muscles? Because now they were shortened to this degree and that's how we fired them. Well, now we moved them open so people can't get hurt. So it's something that you got to pace yourself and go, okay, well if I do that exercise, I probably shouldn't go play pickleball. I probably shouldn't be playing tennis or, uh, anything that's really foot dominant. Playing pickup basketball. And they should take a rest from doing that for a couple days until they feel stable and confident. 

Same thing with the teeth. When we go back all the way to the teeth, every time they moved the tooth, my whole body felt like I was drunk. I was like, oh my god, nothing feels stable. And then a couple days goes by, I'm like, okay, I'm getting some stability back. And then 10 days go by, I'm feeling great, everything's firing it and then four days later they moved the teeth and back to, oh, nothing feels stable, my neck hurts, my chest hurts. And every time the teeth move, it shifts the whole body. 

So same thing with the feet. You want to be very gentle with your feet, but also mindful of how they move because you want to reorient their function because they're going to support your whole body and every time you run, you're going to put about what, 600 to 1200 pounds of pressure per leg when you're running through the system. Has to dissipate that much pressure per leg.

[02:18:22] Luke: Thank God I don't run.

[02:18:25] Alex: And so when you have someone that's clunking, running, sprinting is a little different, but striking, uh, are you going to be like that panther that runs through the, uh, the forest? Or are you going to be like an elephant? What's your capacity to dissipate energy? And it's always going to go to the weakest link. For a lot of people, it's their bunions. It could be their ankles, could be their knees, could be their hips, could be their neck, could be their shoulder. Wherever's, the weakest link, it's going to find it because it has to dissipate that energy or something's going to go. 

You hit your ankle slightly supinated, and if it's not stable, whoop, you rolled an ankle. Because somewhere along the neurology gave out, the nervous system gave out, and then you blow your ankle out. So it's one of those things where you don't want to rush and it takes time. When you restore the feet to their biological function, they will reabsorb the bones that they don't need and add tissues to where they do need. But then once again, you're rebuilding your feet which takes a long time.

[02:19:29] Luke: Yeah. I've noticed. I do my best with the spacers and also wearing wide clown shoes, which you really have to just let go of your aesthetic, uh, appearance with these shoes. They're getting better. But back in the day, the first few I got was just like-- I mean, people would literally comment like, dude, what's up with those shoes? Look like you should be hopping out of a clown car.

But that's how they all should be shaped. I mean, that's the thing that is so annoying about it is that, who was the first human that was like, cool, my foot's shaped like this? I have my, for those listening now, my palms together and the fingers apart like a v with the wide end of your foot being your toes. Let's reverse that and make shoes that are pointy in the front and wide in the back where your foot is the most narrow in the heel. It's one of the dumbest things that humans have ever done, and we've done some pretty dumb shit

[02:20:29] Alex: I think it was a fancy thing. It was in France or something.

[02:20:32] Luke: To be more civilized and less barbaric and what not.

[02:20:35] Alex: I read a story about it. It might not be true, so I almost don't even want to say it, but yeah, they were competing whoever had the longest shoes. And then one king was like, no, we're done with this, and then canceled, uh, all the long shoes and made him in the longest shoe. Or there was some really weird thing that happened like that. And so anytime someone has a long shoe, it shows status. And then there was another thing where they put stuff in their shoes. Um, Yeah. So there was a bunch of, uh, smart dumb ideas that caused, uh, this.

[02:21:05] Luke: I wish those Vibram five finger shoes became super hot and trendy, because then anything below that level of weirdness would just look normal. I still have never worn that. My ego won't let me do it. I have too much ego still. I just can't. And I walk around in my slippers a lot of the time. I wear some stupid shit. But those ones, I'm just, ah, man, I just can't do it. Even though I probably should.

[02:21:31] Alex: I definitely get looks.

[02:21:33] Luke: Yeah, I mean, it's 100% just being concerned how other people perceive you, which I've made leaps and bounds of progress in over the years, especially compared to when I was really young, when that's all I thought about was what people thought about me. Um, so I was so self-obsessed. But we still have our preferences, right? Even if you've maybe gained a little humility over a period of time, you can't help but feel subconscious if you're presenting yourself to the world in a certain way that looks super weird to you.

[02:22:02] Alex: Yeah. And for straight disclosures here, straight up, if you've not moved in a while and you think Vibrams are a good idea, they are a great idea, but not right now. It's like, don't get up and then run a marathon in Vibrams. You'll mess your body up.

[02:22:18] Luke: Thank you for saying that because, dude, I read that book, um, uh, it's about the barefoot runners in Mexico. Yeah, Born to Run. And I was like, oh fuck this. I'm getting, um, flat shoes, minimal footwear. And so I had my earth runners, which are great. They're grounded. I mean, I love those things for being outdoors. And so I started running on those, uh, in those and was like, ah, I'm re-evolving myself, and then totally trashed my knees. And then told someone smart about it and they were like, dude, yeah, humans have been not walking around in puffy shoes.

We had minimal footwear made of leather or whatever, but there was no concrete or tile or wood flooring anywhere. There is no flat surfaces on earth except maybe a giant rock that happens to be flat, but you wouldn't be walking over that all day long like you would in a city. And I was like, oh, so if you're not even meant to walk on flat surfaces, you're definitely not meant to run on them and thus learned my lesson. And have also, not only jacked my knees, but I also hurt my feet, I think, from wearing my earth runners on concrete for so many years. So now I really only wear them if I'm going to be on a natural surface.

[02:23:28] Alex: And thinking about the arch of your foot, it can be regrown and reestablished, and I don't mean regrown, like you grow more arch, but you reestablish the arch and you can claim that back. Takes time. Takes a lot of patience. You're going to have to work with the fascia, stretching the fascia on the bottom of the feet, the plantar fascia.

But now think about this. If your feet are already flat, the way they work is, the plantar fascia in the bottom, when you take a step, it opens, and then you build elastic energy. And then as you step over and you start to go in extension, so your foot's behind you now planting and you're running forward, the back leg, it dissipates that energy and creates free movement. And then your left foot strikes absorbs it. And then as you start to go over that foot, it dissipates that elasticity. 

So now if someone has flat feet or a high arch, when they hit the floor, they have no absorption or they have no flexibility. That thing is not going to stretch. So it's going to tear things. It's going to feel like tearing. That's why people get planter fasciitis because your plantar fascia is inflamed. 

Planter fasciitis is inflammation. You have inflammation on the bottom of your feet on that tissue specifically. Why? Because it's either already overly stretched and then you're banging your bones into the ground or they're already high and they can't stretch properly, and you're putting too much load on them, and then they're becoming inflamed, and now you have pain.

So once again it's like, ease into it. Wear them around the house. Wear them outside. Wear them on dirt. Wear them at the beach. Let your feet adjust before you go running a marathon, doing box jumps in them. Um, wear them for deadlifts. Fine. Don't wear them for speed sprinting on a basketball court and then doing suicide drills and ladders and pounding shuffles because you thought it was a good idea.

[02:25:28] Luke: That sounds dangerous. Thank you for the disclaimer. I think that's a good place to end. Uh, and thanks for your body of knowledge and your commitment to biomechanics and just understanding the human body. I too am fascinated by it. So I love talking to people like you that can tell me how the OS works. What's under the hood of this thing?

Because we just get these signals from our body that something's wrong and it takes someone like you to explain why it's happening and hopefully, like you said, educate us on how to repair it and get back into balanced homeostasis. So thank you, sir.

[02:26:02] Alex: My pleasure. Thank you.

[02:26:03] Luke: Well, thank you for spending your valuable time taking in another episode of The Life Stylist. If you're new to this neighborhood of podcast, I highly encourage you to enroll in our weekly email transmission. You can find it at lukestorey.com/newsletter.

I'll send you all of the episode content every Tuesday morning the moment new shows are published. That's lukestorey.com/newsletter. And speaking of upcoming shows next week, we've got a real barn burner for you. It's number 470, Psychedelic Journey and Jetlag Resilience, Mega Dose Methylene Blue and Melatonin with Dr. John Lieurance.

I recorded that one at John's Clinic, the Advanced Rejuvenation Center in Sarasota, Florida on a recent trip there where my wife Alyson and I underwent a series of cutting-edge therapies including stem cells, laser treatments, and of course, lots and lots of methylene blue. So if you're keen on the latest and greatest in the world of alternative medicine, you for sure want to scope that one out. 

And lastly, if you were intrigued by Alex and his body of work, no pun intended, and want to explore being treated by him or copying some of his smokable herbs, here's where to go. Cruise that browser over to lukestorey.com/primalfusion where you'll get 10% off all herbs with the code LUKESTOREY. All right, that brings number 469 to a close, but rest assured I'll be back to spend some time with you next week.

‍