Jan 18, 2023
Read the conversation below
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Aaron Alexander, welcome to the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast. Thrilled that we got through all of our technical difficulties, all of our scheduling issues, and very happy to have you here. Thanks for making time, man.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, bro, thanks for doing this. Excited to get to talk.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: You have made an unbelievable name for yourself. I mean, you're everywhere, from your Align Podcast to your Align Method book, which was an outstanding listen on Audible. Thank you for reading it. I appreciate it. How did you do this? What piece of advice can you share to strength coaches, to sports PTs across the world that are trying to get recognized the way you have been recognized?
Aaron Alexander: Wow, I don't think of it that way. I appreciate that reflection. If there was something that you were like holding a samurai sword to my neck and saying I needed to divulge something or else you're going to decapitate me, probably something that would probably set me apart would be I've gone out of my way for the last, at least 15 years. I've been doing training for the last 20 years, but I would say probably more like the last actually nine years or ten years since I started the podcast, I've gone out of my way to offer free sessions to people of influence, not necessarily like influencers on social media, but people of influence in my community. I started off doing Rolfing and manual therapy and body work and training in Hawaii originally, and then Boulder, Colorado.
Aaron Alexander: That's like the Mecca of the Rolf Institute and all that stuff. And then went to Bend, Oregon, started a clinic out there and then down to LA and in all of those different places, I was a new person with no name. I didn't really develop any semblance of like name until late into living in LA. And so I would just reach out to key figures in the community, different trainers, chiros, just people that have access to other folks that have already built up their network, and I would see how I could be helpful in their lives. So whatever that was. Typically for me, it would be like they have back pain or a neck thing or some type of, they want to work on body composition or just whatever the thing is, they're training for some event that I have experience with and just find a way that I can be helpful.
Aaron Alexander: And then just through the natural law of reciprocity, not expecting anything, oftentimes that would lead into something, they connect me with somebody else and then somebody else connects me with somebody else and that would probably be the thing that would, if there was something that I've maybe done a little bit differently than some people, it'd just be going out of my way to find who are the people with greatest influence, I'm not saying influencers, just influence in the community or whatever community is, and finding a way to be supportive in their lives.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: How do you get them to respond to that first cold email? I've sent thousands of emails that go totally unheard. I hear about Aaron Alexander, I shoot him a DM and he responds. What's the secret to getting a response?
Aaron Alexander: Knowing what their issue is, particular. So I think if it's just like, "Hey, I'm awesome, would love to do a session with you," whatever your thing is. "I do acupuncture, I do chiropracty, I'm a PT," whatever. That's probably not as valuable as actually doing some research and understanding, you know, if you're reaching out to whoever the celebrity somebody is, well, if it's like a celebrity, it'd be harder to get to and the way to connect with that person would be to help the people around them and then eventually, perhaps, that trickles into their matrix. And again, if you have attachment to that and you're doing things with some type of bias towards I'm trying to get something, people are very sensitive and you'll get that.
Aaron Alexander: So there's really like a practice of unattachment and finding a place where it's like, I really want to do this because I can find value in this myself, I enjoy connecting with this new person genuinely. Like, I wanna meet this new person, I want to connect with this, so I see that alone period as value to me. And so I think that would probably be a main thing. Like, if someone has a very specific thing going, you're listening to a podcast with them, you heard, oh my God, Tim Ferriss or whoever the person is, they mentioned they have a shoulder thing, they just got done with shoulder surgery, okay, cool, that would make sense.
Aaron Alexander: Now, reach out to whoever, their assistant, whatever it is, say, "Hey, by the way, I'm freaking awesome." Which people listen to this, probably a lot of people are awesome in their own way, they probably already have a reputation in their community, presenting evidence of some sort. "By the way, I worked with this person who I know you know," they're either a friend of yours or they're just probably familiar with them 'cause they're in a similar field. So that kind of creates like a little bit of a pre-vetting. I think pre-vetting is incredibly valuable. So anyway that you... 'Cause there's so many people doing the same type of stuff.
Aaron Alexander: So it's all about like, it's not what you do, it's what you do differently. So sorting out like, why are you different? And then also creating trust and rapport through that pre-vet. So establishing whatever you can do to pre-vet yourself, and typically, relationships are the best way to pre-vet. And if you're in a place where you don't know anybody, or you've just been in your hole and you're a tremendous practitioner, but you're just, you're socially, you are on the spectrum, you're kind of like, okay, I'm like Rain Man when it comes to adjustments, but if you put me in a room of people, I just shrink up and close down.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: You got to find your angle, find the thing that works out for you and just get started. That's like Warren Buffett, one of his biggest rules with investing is start. The first rule beyond anything, just get in the market. And so that would be my suggestion. This is not at all what I was anticipating talking about, but I don't ever talk about this to anyone at any point, at any time, really. So it's kind of fun to explore like, oh yeah, what is all that stuff? So that would be the thing I'd say first, like, get in the market, get involved, find your place, really establish what is your value, what do you do differently and just start making connections with anybody to start, anybody that's within the realm and just keep on doing that. And eventually, inevitably, I've been doing my podcast for probably nine years.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Wow.
Aaron Alexander: I've been doing, training clients for 20 years. I've been doing the Rolfing and the manual therapy and all the soft tissue work for 16 years or 15 years and I think that a lot of that like traction is really only coming to fruition as something that's like tangible maybe in the last few years. So I ended up, through relationships, ended up starting working with Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback. So I've been working with him for the last seven months through his whole Achilles rehab and like all the different things and that was a product of relationships. So I had relationships established by me providing value for folks within that realm or container of people. And then, so that kind of, there's like cool, Aaron has value, he does AcroYoga with us, he stretches us out, he's like super nerdy, geeky, weird about anything in relation to like freaking health or nutrition or biohacking or movement. If anybody has a shoulder thing, Aaron's like first to raise his hand, like, "I'll sort it out."
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: So it's like, cool, do you have value in the tribe? And then from there just continuing to provide value. And that was because of that 19 year process, it puts me into a place where suddenly Rodgers is in my sphere and he has some stuff going on with his, whatever he had going on at the time, I was able to fix it in like a pretty permanent way, which is great. And then it's like cool, let's keep going deeper. I was like, okay, cool, let's do it.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: A few things jump out at me from that story and you just kind of getting started. One is, I'm gonna try to use your advice right now and so I'm gonna pre-vet myself by telling you that one of my heroes and now dear friends is Kelly Starrett. And so just reading through your book and listening to your book, Kelly wrote the intro to the Align Method or one of them, right?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And Kelly's had a major impact on my life, specifically within my profession. Give me a good Kelly Starrett story and how it impacted your life and career, because I know you have one.
Aaron Alexander: So like Kelly Starrett story in the sense of how I got associated and connected with him in the first place?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And what's that connection with Kelly?
Aaron Alexander: Well, Kelly was just because of the podcast, so the podcast for me, now podcasts are so diluted so I think I in some ways was, I don't know, like a year or something to have started it before podcasts were really a thing. So I was able to create somewhat of a name and kind of like establish somewhat of a position in the podcast sphere and when people were more open to doing podcasts as well.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: But really Kelly there wasn't really anything complicated with that. It was just reaching out on wherever I reached out on, Twitter, Instagram. It was so long ago, I probably... The first podcast I did with Kelly was probably six years ago, or seven years ago or something.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Awesome.
Aaron Alexander: And so I don't really have like an amazing story. Well, I guess maybe in somewhat... Okay, so this would be a thing. So we're doing a remote podcast right now. Your potential, one, if you do a remote podcast you can have like the beginnings of rapport with somebody but more likely than not if you and I see each other in a year and a half or something like that, it would be, well, since you reached out to me, you would probably remember me and in a year and a half it would be harder for me to remember this with you unless something happened just because... Just by way of like I didn't know about you before this podcast and...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Well, Aaron, wait, I'm gonna be all over your DMs following...[chuckle]
Aaron Alexander: Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Stay persistent. But not, and there wouldn't be really much reason for you to like try to whatever, be persistent with me or whatever. I'm just saying this as an example, this is a thing that can happen and I hope that doesn't sound totally wanky and pretentious.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: You're good.
Aaron Alexander: It's just something that can happen with a remote thing. You're creating rapport but it's not to the same degree as in person.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: For sure.
Aaron Alexander: It's easier to get your foot in the door, not that you have any reason to get your foot in the door. There's not a ton that I would be able to provide you of value in the world or whatever, who knows. There's no reason for you getting any foots in any doors with me or anything like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: My foot in the door now. But go ahead.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, whatever. You and I we're at the same level where like there's different value that you and I could both offer each other is the reality. I'm sure there's a ton of stuff you know way more about than I do and things that maybe I know a little bit more and some different directions. So there's a lot of things that we could share just as far as like, you know, personally has so much space for so many people in their lives and the tendency if someone's not within that like circle of 20 people or 50 people or whatever, it's just gonna disappear. So the rapport you can create with an online experience is rapport but it's not fractionally close to the experience of actually being with a human being. So that would be something that I did with Kelly that went from, there's no way Kelly would remember me, like, "Oh yeah, remember when we did a podcast two years ago and we talked about elbows?"
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: He'd be like, he might fake that he remembers me or whatever but like is, there's not much of a connection. So if there's the availability to actually meet with the person and then I will provide value for the person outside of just the podcast. Sometimes podcasts can feel a little bit like, almost feels like prostitution in a way. If the podcast guest is just like asking you rote questions that you've been asked a hundred times and you just provide the same answer.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: You can feel kinda just like, ugh, like that wasn't the best usage of time. So go out of your way to provide value for the person, whatever the heck that is. And so for me, I meet up with Kelly and I meet up with Juliet and I do Rolfing, body work, all the things, sessions with them. They're like, "Oh my God, you're actually quite talented at this. This is interesting. This like, like the way that you work stands out from anything that I've done before." It's like, "Oh, cool, sweet." So first you actually have the thing, you've cultivated the craft, then you get with the person if it's possible. It's a lot harder to get with somebody than it is to do something remote.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: And then that creates actual rapport. Like you guys, you've circulated each other's pheromones and felt each other's touch and felt like, you actually experienced the quality of that human being. You had this energetic, electromagnetic, pheromonal, mental, emotional experience with each other which creates memory. The way that you remember something is by creating emotional content around it, being with a person is emotional content. Remote stuff there's not a ton of emotional content that transpires.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: So that would be something that I would say that might perhaps stand out. If the question was, tell me about something that stands out with Kelly Starrett, like as far as like creating connection, it would be going out of my way to say, cool, I'm in Bend, Oregon. I'm gonna drive down to San Francisco, I'm gonna meet you at your gym. I'm gonna bring all my podcast equipment. I'm going to commit that weekend to doing a free session for you, a free session for your wife. I'm gonna do a class at your gym, I'm gonna meet other people. I'm going to do the work within myself to show up and be in shape and have like a tan and have eaten healthy food for the last while and gotten good sleep and read books that allowed me to have range to be able to have conversation outside of just this one thing. And like, and just have like that life experience to be able to bring the gift of not just body work, but also like presence with the person and listening to the person and actually creating impact in that person's life. Like that's the operative thing. How do I create actual, significant, meaningful value in this person's life that could potentially be supportive for my own life and path and future.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. A few points that jump out at me there. One, you made yourself available. You said, "Hey, I'm gonna be there for the weekend." So you did exactly what you preach, which is you just gotta start, you gotta put yourself out there. So that's one. Two, you were super intentional about that interaction. You prepped for it, you thought, "Hey, what books maybe is Kelly reading? I want to read those books or what topics?"
Aaron Alexander: Right. Yeah, that's the thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: It's a thing, I'm gonna do that. It reminds me of my lone interaction with a guy named Eric Cressey, who's a star in the strength and conditioning world. I sent that guy an email and said, "Listen, I'm gonna be down in Florida a number of times over the next six months. What weekend would work for you?" He gave me a date and then I booked my flight 'cause obviously I wasn't going down to Florida a number of times. So...
Aaron Alexander: Their schedule is so much more important than yours. It's like, if there's an opening, it's such a big deal for someone... If in the hierarchy of whatever, there's a lot of different hierarchies in the world, there's just a money hierarchy, there's like a influential kind of hierarchy, there's a, maybe if it's a strength thing, there's people like, "Wow, that person's the strongest person in the world. I can only bench 115 pounds," like, whatever the heck the hierarchy is, hierarchies are nebulous, always the same. If someone that's in like the stratosphere of the hierarchy is giving you the opportunity to be supportive in their life, and your intention is to grow towards closer where they are, cancel everything.
Aaron Alexander: And anything they say in that instance of like creating a little micro moment of opening that might go away and never come back, I think is, it's worthwhile making yourself very available for those situations. And like, whatever they need in that, you don't wanna just become like a, like bend over for them for anything. But as far as like the scheduling goes, I think if they create a window, it's like, press pause and whenever you can drive to San Francisco, offer them every day and bring them a gift. Like be a kind... Don't be a creepy, don't be a weirdo.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: Don't be a stalker but just like be present and be there and make yourself available for anything that's valuable.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And so that's an awesome example of you kind of practicing what you preach there, making yourself available. You also said something else that's, really hits home with me. Which is, you have to be really good at Rolfing before you have that session with Kelly Starrett, right? And so be awesome at your craft. I recently shared on one of my own pods, how I was just hammering a guy who was super successful in his own business and I'm like, "Hey, how'd you do this? And how do you grow it? And how are you marketing it and all?" And he's like, "Yoni, shut up and become a really good physical therapist first. Like, you're in grad school." So I really took that to heart, like, you better be the best, fill in the blank, before you start saying, "I am the best," or before you start taking these opportunities and making yourself available. And that sounds like what you did. You're the best Rolfer, so you better be damn sure that when you're Rolfing Kelly Starrett, you know what the hell you're doing and that obviously came through, so.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. You can shoot yourself in the foot by being too convincing and getting yourself into places that you don't belong and then getting found out and then you're shut down permanently. So there's that as well. Like, so you can be, you can reg how to win friends and influence people and books on body language and you could have researched oh, Kelly Starrett's a fan of Miyamoto Musashi, so I'm gonna read The Book of Five Rings or whatever and show up and have all this information, you kind of like stalk them, it's like weird. And then they finally, they're like, "Cool, let's do a session," and you suck.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: You suck.
Aaron Alexander: And now they have this memory of this person. It's like, "I remember that, they sucked. I would never recommend their service to anyone."
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Now you're dead.
Aaron Alexander: But if you manage to get your foot in the door or whatever, in three years, after you put in 9000 hours of repetitions of this, and you got better, and then you're there, then suddenly it's a very different thing. So I think that that's like, delusional self belief can only take you so far.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, get really good at your craft first. So that's outstanding advice. Okay, tell me about Rolfing. Tell me about that. Tell me what it is, who it works for, and why it works.
Aaron Alexander: What do you think about Rolfing? Do you know anything about it?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I know enough to know that I don't know enough to speak intelligently about it.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, well, Rolfing is the last name... I just asked because I'm kind of curious other... For me, I've been steeped in it for a while. So my perception of it is like very different. Most people would think it's like live action role playing or rolling on the floor laughing or something or they might know it as being something that's like some form of massage therapy or manual therapy that's super painful, but oftenly it's like these cathartic kind of weird releases and emotional stuff.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I would go with my thought would be the latter. Very painful, a lot of trigger point work.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: But I'm asking you to define it and maybe fill in what I don't know about it.
Aaron Alexander: So the painful part comes from, and I'll try to be brief because I don't know how much people really care about Rolfing, 'cause it is such an esoteric thing. But it's the last name of Ida P. Rolf.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I'm not gonna ask you a question that people don't wanna know the answer to, so.
Aaron Alexander: That's a good point. I think I have insecurity around certain things like that where I'm like, eh, like Rolfing, like, does anybody really care about what Rolfing is?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yes. Yes, I do.
Aaron Alexander: All right. So yeah, we can go as deep as you want. It comes from a girl called Ida P. Rolf. She was... She had some health conditions of herself and she got quite deep into like the world of osteopathy. And so the original meaning or approach with osteopathy was much more manual. So it's a lot of the symptoms of disease that we're experiencing is coming from some root, something that's rooted structurally and so if there's misalignment in the connective tissue, that could be impacting the way that you circulate lymphatic fluid, or it could be impacting the way that your nervous system functions or visceral function, motility of the organs, respiratory function and your diaphragm, all of that, including like the heart and the pericardium and all the connective tissue wrapping the heart or your throat or the brain's circulation of cerebral spinal fluid to the brain.
Aaron Alexander: So, so much of disease or dis-ease is rooted in some structural footing. And osteopathy would be working with how do we get the system, or Rolfing as well, but how do we get the system into working alignment so the system can heal itself? That's would be the easiest way to describe like what is structural integration, which is the term that Ida/the people of the time would call Rolfing. It's a structural integration, integrating your body. And then with time, people started calling it Rolfing because it was like Ida had like this specific approach and be like, oh, you got Rolfed, and so it's a weird name. I think that's probably part of why I'm not... I think they're like marketing campaigns probably aren't that good 'cause they just don't exist. That's why I'm a little bit like, I'm like, I don't know if anybody cares about Rolfing, but it's very effective. If you work with somebody that's very good, yeah, the focus is on fascia or connective tissue and saying you're focusing on fascia is like way too broad and nebulous because fascia is freaking everywhere.
Aaron Alexander: So like anybody that does anything, if you're a talk therapist, you work with fascia because if a person's communicating or they're gesticulating or you know, they have a cry or anything like that, it's gonna affect the fascial layers of the body. So really everything works with fascia. But it's really specifying how do we start to work with these different layers of connective tissue or fascia to start to create space within the body so that your muscle bellies and organs and all of the different structures in the body are able to move freely because all of the space between those structures, like the muscular septa, for example, the space between muscles is well hydrated and it has all of those fluid components for those muscle bellies or organs or whatever structures to be able to slide and move and communicate effectively. And structural integration specifically focuses on that with also a strong focus, like a perennial ongoing focus on how does this tie back into the whole system?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: So that would be something that separates a structural integration session compared to some other sessions where it could be a little bit more myopic. You come with the shoulder thing, we're going to dry needle you, we're going to hit up your SCM or we're gonna get into the traps, we'll do some mobilizations around the shoulder joint itself, the joint capsule and you're like, cool, you're good. Rolfing would be, how is your breath? How is your respiratory function affecting the carriage of your shoulder girdle? How is that tied into your pelvic floor? How is that tied into your feet? Okay. If you're laying on my table and we do this magical, amazing XYZ session with your shoulder girdle, you suddenly have ease and spaciousness and full internal, external rotation of the shoulder. It's like, wow, this is great. And then you get up off the table and you stand, now your body's standing in gravity. All those other associations and relationships of the rest of the body are gonna start to probably pull that joint kind of back into place. And so it's really emphasizing a full body integration and specifies or works specifically with techniques that work with fascia.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. So that's an awesome explanation. I think you did a good job of getting just deep enough in that. The question I have on what you just said is I think with every intervention or let's call it train of thought or type of thought and intervention is there's an assessment in intervention and then a re-test of some sort. You mentioned things like pericardium, diaphragm, cerebrospinal fluid, how do you test those? How do you assess those?
Aaron Alexander: That's a good question. I don't really know. I don't have like a set test. I mean, I do know. I think you know as well, I think anybody that pays attention to the body at all knows like they're all tied together. Like none of those parts, structures exist in a vacuum. And so something that a person, I mean, I don't know a test for the connective tissue wrapping the heart, but one of those could just be like the quality of your breathing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay.
Aaron Alexander: And so that would be something that... I'm making this up right now, by the way, this is not like write this down. This is the pericardium functional movement screen, everybody start using this for their patients or clients. But I would look at that as a... A correlate with that would be the quality of the respiration.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And so let's dive into that. How do you assess and test respiration? What is a good breather? What is a poor breather?
Aaron Alexander: A good breather would be a breather that has access to all of the structures of breath. So a poor breather would just be a limited breather. I don't think there's a bad or a good breather, there's just limited breathers and less limited breathers. So someone that's breathing, typically the common trend that you already know would be a person that's breathing with their shoulders and breathing with their neck. And they might be maybe an emphasis towards mouth breathing. They might be breathing a lot, they might be hyperventilating or super ventilating and not even realize it. I think the average breathing rate for people in the United States if you at least... I heard this recently, I was doing a podcast with Brian Mackenzie.
Aaron Alexander: I don't know where he got this information from, but so says Brian Mackenzie on a podcast from a couple of weeks ago. Said the average respiration rate is like 20 breaths per minute. And the healthiest version of breathing per minute would be around like five to six, like 5.5, which that's also very interesting because a lot of the Eastern esoteric practices of different mantras and different singing practices, they happen to match that exact cadence, which is very fascinating. So that would be something I would look at, like, what's the pacing of your breath? How many breaths do you breathe per minute? Is that, what's the quality of the breath? Is it quiet? Is it slow? Is it very loud?
Aaron Alexander: Can you hear the person breathing from across the room? Look at the location of what muscles are actually breathing you. So something that can be really helpful is thinking of the breath as like, bringing it down horizontally, so down into the lower lobes of the lungs and bringing it down into the lower ribs. Can you breathe into your back? Can you start to inflate and open that space in the back? Can you breathe into the front? Are you able to access that more superior breathing pattern? Superior in the sense of up portion of the body as well? And if you can do that, then you can have access to all of the gears of not just respiration, but also your autonomic nervous system because respiration and our nervous system, they're tied together.
Aaron Alexander: Hence why things like, if you do holotropic breath work, you'll take yourself through potentially some type of, you'll potentially relive some traumatic experience in your life or experience a lot of emotions will come up and all these different things because you're going in a safe container, and safe container being a place like you're not going to get hurt or die or whatever. You're mimicking this stressed out sympathetic breathing pattern and then you're also stacking that on top of breath holds and long exhalations and maybe toning and humming and things of the like to massage the nervous system. You're literally playing your autonomic nervous system while you're doing that.
Aaron Alexander: You can also play your autonomic nervous system with your vision. That's something, if you're more in a myopically focused vision, that's going to put you in a more upregulated, sympathetic state. If you're spacing out, you're taking in that panorama, that's going to calm you down, so you can start to stack these things. And if you run anxious and you have some meeting, you're like, "God, my heart's beaten out of my chest. I'm like panicked." Something you could do is actively put your phone down. Stop looking at your social media notifications because it's stressing you out because your eyes are extensions of your brain. They're feeding information to your autonomic nervous system to tell you what you should be doing.
Aaron Alexander: Should I be stressed out right now because I'm about to hunt? Or should I actually pull back a little bit and chill and just take in the whole picture? So relax your eyes, look up at some clouds. Looking up also is supportive for boosting energy, creativity, things of the like. Because, again, tied into your nervous system and your eyes are, they're continuous with your brain, it's neurological tissue. And then stack that with long exhalations. And you could stack that on top if you want to do long exhalations and you want to go another layer, do a sigh while you do those long exhalations. If it's okay to even get more weird, you could hum or you could, ohm or you, "Mmmm." That's what you'd see a child do if they're freaking out. If you want to just learn about your nervous system, just hang out with a baby.
Aaron Alexander: Babies are just, they're directly tapped in to self regulating themselves at the rawest, crudest, most mammalian level because they'd all have stories of how they think they're supposed to be or who they think... How they think they're supposed to show up or what's socially acceptable, what's not, if they're stressed out, they'll cry. It's like this pool of energy inside the body, like emotional energy, emotional content. It's like, I need to get this shit out of me or explode. So what do they do? They emphasize their exhalation and they make vocalizations. And what that ends up looking a lot like is, again, a lot of those Eastern esoteric practices that calm your nervous system down and open you up into higher perspectives of yourself because you're clearing some of the stress.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, maybe not so esoteric if we were to wrap our arms around it. Is there a breath practice that you make a part of your daily routine to regulate and to optimize, to keep all of those, let's say, within that cylinder, like that you're able to constantly expand and keep that cylinder functioning appropriately?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. My favorite is breath holds. I'm kind of like on the opposite spectrum. I'm more in like the Buteyko method, kind of like Patrick McKeown type realm with breathing. I'm a big fan of breathing efficiency. So for me, I want to leverage the Bohr effect, which is as you increase co2 in the body and you increase acidity in the blood, it causes your red blood cells, hemoglobin cells, to become more liberal or open or liberated to release oxygen throughout your system. And if you are over breathing, so you're on that... So says Brian McKenzie in the podcast a couple of weeks ago, 20 breaths per minute. I had to fact check that because I don't know where that information comes from other than just Brian. But Brian is really smart with breathing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: If you're in that 20 breaths per minute, you're probably in a place where your body actually thinks it's starving for oxygen, even though you're getting a surplus of... You're overbreathing and you think you're starving. So that would be something that I enjoy doing. I enjoy doing things that feel like they have utility. And something that very clearly has utility is being able to hold your breath for several minutes. That's something that's like, as I'm sitting in my bathtub or whatever, doing CO2 tables, where I'll do like, you start off, you'll breathe for... You hold your breath for a minute, then you'll ventilate, ventilate is just breathe normally for a couple of minutes, and then come back. And now you do a minute fifteen, and you keep working yourself up. I'll work myself up to 2.30.
Aaron Alexander: And then, so I'll do two, two-minute and 30-second breath holds at the end of that, then I'll be done and it'll be like a 25-minute process. Sometimes I'll get antsy and just jump to the higher breath holds and make it be more of like a 10 or 15-minute process. That would be something that is going to make your blood, the composition of your blood, be more effective at distributing oxygen. So suddenly you don't need to feel this... You don't have this chronic air hunger going because you've fasted from air. Something that I would do as well is emphasize real slow nasal breaths. So try to breathe in a way that, an exercise that's fun would be try to breathe in a way that it's imperceptible, so you can barely even notice yourself breathing. So how slow can you bring your respiration down?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Right. Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: And you just do that. Even that moment where I'm awkwardly slowing down and as we're talking, I chilled out, from that... At first I was like, "Oh, I'm talking too slow. This is weird." And then afterwards I was like, "Oh, bro." Like...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Kind of calm.
Aaron Alexander: "I'm chilling out right now." [chuckle] It's like, "Wow, it works." [laughter]
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: It does work. Huberman has brought this to light with the Huberman sigh, and I think that's been super impactful. And then, going down this rabbit hole of Wim Hof and his breath holding and the way to build that up as you move along, and I've seen great utility in that for my own, let's call it, what's between my ears, how and when do you apply these techniques, and how important are they when you're dealing with, say, a quarterback that is very specifically trying to get back from a repaired Achilles tendon?
Aaron Alexander: Well, the fastest way to repair is to get your body into the parasympathetic state as much as humanly possible. And so every... So stacking all the different factors that we can to put the body in a parasympathetic state is gonna be huge. So I was looking at... I was doing some reading about mewing last night. This practice where you push the tongue up to the roof of the mouth, kind of like this weird thing. It's like the back of the tongue you push up to the roof of the mouth and you draw saliva up and you create this vacuum seal inside the mouth. And you're pushing that tongue to create space in the maxilla and create space in your nasal cavity. And it restructures the face. It's very interesting how that works, because your sutures, as much as we'd like to believe they are fluid, that's the whole basis of craniosacral therapy and the fact that braces work, orthodontics...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: And something like mewing, where you can actually see very visible clear effect in the before-after pictures of people just going through these exercises where, "I'm just gonna start pushing the tongue to the roof of my mouth." Which also is an Eastern esoteric thing as well.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: Putting your tongue up to the roof of the mouth completes what's called the, I think it's called the microcosmic orbit. That's not like my specialty, is the Eastern esoteric stuff, I just find it really interesting. And it's beautiful to see the crossover of West and East.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: So you can change the whole structure and function of your face and of your jaw and your teeth and your nasal passages just through the way that you live your life. That if you're chewing on things that are harder to chew, you're gonna start to develop that musculature. If you're slurping food all day long, suddenly your chin might start to recede back a little bit and suddenly you might start to experience this like crowding of the jaw because you have this slack jaw thing, your tongue is just kind of hanging at the bottom of your mouth all day long and you don't have any outward pressure. All you have is the inward pressure of the musculature around your face, and you start to kind of like cave in on yourself.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Lose it's...
Aaron Alexander: You do that the same, similar... You could see a person caving in on themselves with their knees. It's like in physical therapy world, you see a person have the valgus knee situation where the knees are dropping in and you're trying to squat, you're not gonna be able to activate the hips correctly. You're not gonna be able to stabilize the spine, the whole system starts to dysregulate and shut down because it's beginning to collapse on itself. And the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the collapsed get collapsier, the robust get robuster because they're practicing those positions. I don't remember what your question was. I just felt, popped up on mewing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: But going along your lines, like bringing along the esoteric Eastern world into the Western world, we have a quarterback who has a newly repaired Achilles, right? We know we have to load the Achilles properly. We know we have to hit gastroc and soleus and everything up the chain and down the chain and what's his foot doing and what are the arthrokinematics around the ankle, when do you bring in the Eastern world to his very Western world of he just had his Achilles bolted back down to his calcaneus?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. The whole time. And it really, it's just a languaging thing. So for some people they would really, it's, with working with a patient or a client, the biggest thing is understanding what language they speak. And so for somebody like Rodgers, as people already know, he's a fan of ayahuasca, did a darkness retreat and talks a lot about esoteric stuff on the McAfee Show.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: So for him, he likes that stuff, so there's no problem. So communicating to a client like that, it's like, I wanna dig into all that. I wanna like actually lean into that. If I was working with Trump, then suddenly it might be like, okay, he probably is a bit more of like a structure guy, numbers guy, statistics guy, evidence-based research guy, I'm gonna speak that language and maybe I'll just subtly start to integrate some of those more Eastern esoteric-type wisdom into the sessions just by either maybe just being like attuning, just being that way. I'm just gonna be calm. So the influence that I'm gonna have on this session, we're not gonna talk about any practices or anything that's gonna weird you out, we're just gonna do our training, we're gonna do some heel lifts and we're gonna work on some like joint mobilization, like hip mobilization stuff, we're gonna keep your hips open. We're gonna do some lymphatic drainage, keep like the channels open and circulating and moving, keep the tissue decongested.
Aaron Alexander: And while we're doing that, I'm just gonna be chill, and I'm gonna start to, and since I'm leading the session, hopefully they're not on their phone. That's what happens oftentimes when you're working with someone that's like a celebrity, like super high level type person, oftentimes they can't get out of their head. And so that's something that ideally we can find some negotiation where, "Hey, Mr. Trump, is it okay if you put your phone down for this hour? And then after that, all you need but just like... " And I would break down some evidence-based research of this is what happens when you're on your phone. This is what happens when you are maybe thinking about something else as opposed to kind of creating that like mind muscle connection with me. And just be very real with, coming back to like numbers, if you're on your phone, we will have effect, but it's gonna be 30% of the effect of if you got off your fucking phone.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: And so I am unattached. You're paying me, I'm here for you. If your phone is more valuable than us actually like achieving the goals that we would like to achieve today, then I respect that, I respect you, let's do that. We're gonna hit this at 30%. If you want to get maximum reward from what we're doing, put your fucking phone down. And then within that, maybe I emphasize, I say, "Okay, cool. Phone's down." Now as I'm working, I got an elbow in between their quads or something, or their anterior tibialis or whatever. I'm having them go through some plantar flexion, dorsiflexion and I'm saying, "Okay, you feel that place where it feels kind of sensitive? I want you to emphasize a long exhalation, just... Oh okay, cool. All right. Now breathe in. As you breathe in, let's do a contraction. Now we're gonna stack like a PNF, contract relax type thing into this, contract, get tight, all tight." This is breath work.
Aaron Alexander: Like you go to a new-age breathwork thing, they'll say, "Take a full inhalation, tighten your whole entire body, squeeze every sphincter in your body, squeeze your eyes, squeeze your jaw." And they'll let it all out. New-age, out there container, Trump has no interest in it. I can do that just through stacking these very Western anatomical practices in the session and we can essentially do this really tremendous somatically based breathwork session in a span of 45 minutes and they get done like, "Oh my God, I'm not stressed out anymore. I feel totally at ease. All of these ideas that I was trying to think through, like suddenly like, answers are just coming 'cause I'm out of the way of myself." He would never say I'm out of the way of myself 'cause that would be more out there like new age language, 'cause I'm chill, whatever, whatever words he wants, and I can think again.
Aaron Alexander: And now suddenly I'm breathing more efficiently. So now I have some momentum in that way where now I'm breathing more efficiently, that doesn't just stop. I keep breathing more efficiently until the stress comes back on me and I say, "Cool. Amazing. That was a really amazing push in the right direction, now let's see if we can... " And I already know it's all gonna come back. Most of the work's gonna go to shit. You're gonna go back to doing all your same stuff and you're gonna come back tomorrow, it's gonna be better but like not as good as I want it to be. So we say, "Okay, cool. Like, no problem. Let's hit it again." And we just slowly start chipping away, would be the process until eventually they're wearing crystals around their neck and they've got like Kundalini beads and they're into it.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. But that's gold because I think the real nuance there is you're meeting your patient where they are and you're meeting the athlete where they are.
Aaron Alexander: So important. Most important thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: It's the most important thing. And you might have Trump in what we call a heel flow sitting forward into an RDL, but maybe you're integrating this breath work into that very orthopedic Western model of we're gonna load the tissue, but you're gonna include some of that which we know works from the East. He's not even gonna know other than he feels better and then we'll say it again, right?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. Languaging is huge. That's how you... I would take a practitioner who is really savvy with creating rapport and attunement, like my nervous system attunes to your nervous system, we have trust. And now suddenly the patient or client wants you to win 'cause so much of the techniques that we're doing, we don't know what the hell's happening. We just know like, oh wow, I put my elbow in this place, I told the person to contract in this way or breathe this way or whatever and suddenly the pain went away or suddenly the tissue elongated or released or suddenly it was really hard, it felt like beef jerky. There was no fluid in there at all. Now there's, seems like there's a bunch of fluid in there. I don't know what happened.
Aaron Alexander: I have definitions of like, I could create some definitions that I like to lean on of like, this is exactly what's happening but so much of it is psychosomatic. So much of medicine is placebo. If you don't believe that, just look at any research on placebo, it's like 50%. So where is placebo coming from? Placebo's largely coming from rapport, trust, and belief that whatever this practitioner is doing, he's got the stuff and I want it to work and I trust that it works. That's, it's not 100%, it's 50%. The other 50% is knowing what the freak you're doing.
Aaron Alexander: So actually doing the techniques that create the effect, and you can create rapport by being really good at that other 50% of just being, like, your techniques are just rock solid. Everything you do is just like, damn, you're like a sniper. Like every intervention you do, it just, it's like change, change, change, change. Like there's no wasted time and that's something that a practitioner develops with time knowing like, what's not gonna work and what's gonna work and being more efficacious with doing the things that work more often and stopping the things that don't work quicker.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: That's when a practitioner becomes even almost like magically effective, they can kind of feel things in this weird mystical, like Neo Matrix kind of way. But rapport is a big thing. And I think it actually increases the hypnotic ability, is a term, of the patient or client because suddenly they're in attunement, they're in rapport, they're in trust, and they want what you're doing to work because they like you, because you remind them of them. Whereas if I am Eastern crystal esoteric Kundalini guy that also has knowledge in the Western world but I'm like, my main thing is that, and I'm talking to this person that's only steeped in the Western world, he's just gonna think I'm an asshole, he's just gonna... He's not gonna trust me and he is not gonna want what I do to work because he doesn't wanna rock his own belief systems.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And that reminds me of one of my heroes, Dr. Tim Stone, always says your patient doesn't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, sure.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And you got to show them that you care and that you're pulling in the same direction. Right? It's not about Aaron Alexander, it's about Aaron Rodgers, or it's about Donald Trump or whoever's in front of you. And once you guys get alignment, I think that goes a long way.
Aaron Alexander: It's huge.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Looking at one of the awesome offerings that you have is your six-week program. And you mentioned in your six-week program that before you even get rolling with the program, I think the first week is all assessment and taking baselines. Can you walk me through how you have these athletes assess essentially themselves and develop their own baseline?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. So we go through and we go through the first assessment on there. We check out the function of your feet. So we look at the toe hinge, we look at ankle mobility, we measure dorsiflexion 'cause it's usually gonna be the main limitation for people. We go through hip function, internal external rotation, extension, flexion, all the different regions. We go through thoracic mobility, shoulder mobility, neck mobility and then we take them through a sit rise test on the first week as well. And so the sit rise test, that was, I'm sure you've seen like, there's like research, I think it was from like Sao Paulo. It was somewhere in Brazil. And the suggestion was that you can predict a person's life expectancy based on their, how well they get up and down off of the ground.
Aaron Alexander: So the way they did that research, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was a group of X number of people between, I think it was like the ages of like late 50s to early 80s or so. And they, it was a six and a half-ish year study. And they took all these people through this sit rise test. And each, they start off with a perfect 10 score. And then every time they have to, if they wobble as they're getting down up and off the ground, one, like a single wobble is a half a point loss. If they have to use a hand, then it's a full point loss. And the prediction with that is that if they have to use, I think it was like if they got less than an... If they got an eight to a 10 out of a 10 score compared to the people that got like a less than like a three out of 10 score, they were some significant number more likely to die during that six and a half-year period of the study.
Aaron Alexander: So all of this stuff, obviously, it's not like, it's like if you can't get up now off the ground, you're just gonna die in the next four years, but it was one strong predictor of the level of grasp that a person has in their vitality. And fall risk is the number one leading reason for elderly needing assisted living. It's like you just, you lose your autonomy as a person. And that's like, that affects your confidence, that affects your belief system of who you are and what you can do in the world. Suddenly you become a liability to your family and to yourself. Everything starts kind of, again, collapsing in in this expedited rate if you start to lose that capacity to effectively get up and down off the ground. So I make that be like a forefront of like, we're gonna make sure that when you go through this six-week program, we're gonna get you as close to a perfect 10 score by, as soon as we can, depending upon where you're at.
Aaron Alexander: It might take longer than six weeks, but it might take six hours if we just show you a few techniques and open some space up in some joints that you just didn't have space at before 'cause you weren't going through those ranges. And then also in the first week, which if people wanna check this out, it's totally free. So you can go and see all this stuff. It's at alignpodcast.com/amp. AMP stands for Align Method Program. So you can start that, it's free. You can see the assessments that we do on there. You can take the sit rise test yourself, and then I go through, I believe it's like four different joint mobilization techniques and soft tissue techniques that I found to be incredibly helpful. So it's like pin and stretch and PNF and traction, joint traction and things like that. And just breaking down like, here's how you do this effectively. And this is stuff that you can stack into any training program that you do or any program that you do with clients. So that's, yeah, alignpodcast.com/amp is the free trial that people wanna check it out.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And it's an awesome program and I love that it empowers the athlete, it puts it on them and it gives them their own baseline and what they're now able to watch themselves improve. I think that's a major differentiator between a lot of which I see out there where, okay, we're gonna do this for six weeks and you'll feel better, maybe you won't. You're showing them that you're better, remember where you were six weeks ago.
Aaron Alexander: I think it's a really valuable thing. Like take, that's something that happens in the Rolfing world. Quite often they'll do before-after pictures and they'll do pictures of your facial structure and they have you standing from all different planes. So forward, inside and backward on the other side. I'll also have, take people through like a squatting test and lunging and like I said, overhead range of motion, all those different things and then have the person film it. You don't need to show it to anybody ever again. It is just for your own files of, me, Selma, in Nebraska, 39 years old on March 15th, 2024, this was me. All right. Now, cool, mate. Like we have a baseline. So as opposed to everything being this kind of slippery swampy, like, okay, I'm gonna start doing stuff and hopefully something happens.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep.
Aaron Alexander: I think establishing that baseline and just getting real with yourself of like, "This is where I'm at. I don't need to show it to anybody, but this is... " You go get yourself, do one of the tests so you can see your body fat, and your body composition. And maybe check out, get your bone density tested. Maybe go get some... When I work with private clients, we'll go through the whole gamut of getting comprehensive blood panel and I'll have them work with a functional medicine doctor and we'll kind of work together to make sure that, establish here's where you were at, now here's the deficits and here's the places where you're doing fine, but you're not like "optimized." Now, let's actually have rock solid evidence that you could look at and compare before-after.
Aaron Alexander: And then what that's gonna do outside of just being better at results for you, you're also gonna trust me more because it's not this thing, like, I know that you've experienced this with probably a ton of different people that you've worked with, they'll come in a couple months ago with this terrible hip pain or shoulder thing or back thing or whatever and then you guys have been working for a few weeks and they have some other issue or maybe another issue or whatever. They might just be kind of a little bit whiny. They might be a person that kind of like, they might grow up in like a culture like I grew up in Lancaster where we kind of talk about what our problems are and if I don't have a problem, then who the hell am I and what am I doing with my life and my time?
Aaron Alexander: And within that, they might totally forget that, bro, you had debilitating back pain a month ago. You don't even remember that. You're complaining about this thing or whatever or you're just in a place where like, oh, cool, this is... Yeah, I think it was pretty good. It's like you don't even actually have memory of that thing. And so I think having that baseline to look back and be able to go like, "Wow, we are really, we've come a far away," or to be able to look back and be like, "This isn't working." And I think both of that is incredibly valuable.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And let's change, right? What can we learn from the fact that you're not doing better?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, how do we adjust?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: How do we adjust and how do we do it efficiently? Like you said...
Aaron Alexander: And that's the whole like being a, I don't know if being a sniper is the best analogy, but I kind of like the idea of being like very surgical with your interventions as a practitioner. And this is, again, this is something I don't talk about very much. So I enjoy unpacking. I don't even talk about me doing manual therapy or body work or any of that stuff in any kind of public way, hardly ever. So this is like a fun conversation for me. So I appreciate it. So this will now be additive. I take back what I said before of being like, if we meet in two years, I'll probably be like, "Oh yeah, I don't... "
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Thank you.
Aaron Alexander: And then, and I'll be like, pretend like I remember the thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: "I remember that."
Aaron Alexander: Because of this, because we're doing a thing, that's like actually sets this conversation apart.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Love it.
Aaron Alexander: And it's something that's like, I enjoy talking about that I don't really hardly ever talk about. That's a cool thing to come back... Call back to the beginning of the conversation.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Oh, yes. Okay, that awesome. Listen, that's what I try to counsel all of our therapists on our team, is to get this pre-test, post-test. If you're gonna put your hands on a patient, you got to be doing it for a reason. It's not just fluff and it's not a time filler. Let's look at, whatever you're working on, let's say range of motion of your shoulder, let's do an intervention, needle and Graston, hands on, whatever, and let's retest. Is it better? If not, how are we adapting? That's your program, dude. Aaron, that's what sets your program apart. You should be talking a ton of this. I would love to dive into nutrition, but I don't have time to dive into nutrition, but we will get there in our second podcast.
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, sure.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: So just put that on the calendar. I wanna finish with an Eric Cressey lightning round. You ready?
Aaron Alexander: Yeah. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay, here we go. Biggest mistake that manual therapists make?
Aaron Alexander: Well, I think I'd probably answer this differently and depending upon like the hour that you asked me and what we were talking about before, but the thing that comes to mind that I was just thinking about would be like, forcing a square block into a circular hole. And because you know this technique, you're just gonna like make this technique work and not listening to... The term that I learned in some, I think it was probably maybe Rolfing school, I'm not sure, but reaching a point of diminishing returns with an intervention. I think the more sensitive a person can be with knowing we've reached a point of diminishing returns, this thing, whatever the thing that I'm doing, it was pretty effective and then it became kind of effective and now it... I can... Okay, I see it's diminishing, my returns are diminishing.
Aaron Alexander: I already kind of know that it's at a point of like just kind of effective, I'm gonna do something else. Before getting to the point of, okay, it's not effective, all right, I'm gonna try it again. Maybe it'll work next time. Okay, it's still not effective. Shit, I'm kind of out of tools. We're gonna make this thing work. And so I think being really sensitive to that diminishing returns with an intervention would be something to cultivate. And the way that you can cultivate that is by having a broader toolbox. So the tools that you have, the weapons that you have in your artillery, be as proficient with them as humanly possible and expand them, and start to look at the nervous system, start to look at respiration.
Aaron Alexander: If you can tap into, sort a person's breathing out, I guarantee a lot of the stuff that you are just banging your head up against the wall trying to sort out, it's very likely tied into their nervous system and their nervous system's tied into their respiration. And then maybe get into like visual exercises. There could be something that's some type of visual thing going on that's actually messing up every time they take a step. Every time they walk, their balance is a little funny, they're being pulled a little bit to the left or pulled a little bit to the right. Their neck's a little kinked out. So start to understand how the eyes are affecting your movement. Get into lymphatic drainage. Understand, like, wow, this whole, this sewage system of the body.
Aaron Alexander: Like, damn, interesting. If I was creating a community, a town, and I had to have all these systems, maybe have a president or a king or a queen or whatever, like down the chain, like very, very soon I'd say, holy shit, we have trash building up everywhere. Where are the factories that are sorting this, processing this trash? Like, oh, right, that's your glands, that's your lymphatic system. And that's the channels, the highways that allow those trash trucks to move from your foot to your knee, to your pelvis, to your heart, to your neck and circulate through that whole entire thing. So expand your horizon in the various different systems and start to just kind of dip your toes into different waters of at least having like a cursory awareness of how to touch on some of those systems.
Aaron Alexander: Because sometimes you might be working on something that's just like you're purely musculoskeletal and if you just had any sense of how to get into the organs and kind of do a little bit of visceral massage or any of that, a lot of that stuff that you're working with and trying to unbind the hip, if you just had the confidence to get in and start to get your hands in the abdomen and maybe go beyond just the iliopsoas and start to move into just the other structures in there, suddenly what you might find, what you almost definitely will find is suddenly you end up getting that spaciousness and that ease and that lubrication that you were looking for.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Add more tools. It's something I hated hearing in graduate school, but add more tools so that you have somewhere to go.
Aaron Alexander: And also more systems.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And more systems. Yeah.
Aaron Alexander: Start looking at as, you know how you get this, the different anatomy posters?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Sure.
Aaron Alexander: There's like the muscle poster, there's the nervous system poster, there's the lymph poster, there's like all the different things, start doing that with your patients and your clients and start being like, maybe I'm not even actually on the right system right now.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Interesting. That's awesome. Where's Aaron Alexander in the next three years?
Aaron Alexander: I don't know. Hopefully somewhere tropical.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah? Doing what?[laughter]
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, I don't know. We might maybe, I don't know. I think probably doing more of what I'm doing, I would think. And just becoming... I think a lot of what I'm really interested in is just deepening my own relationship to my own body and my own mind and sorting out some of like the deeply set subtle anxieties that like govern my world and it can kind of spill into relationships and like romantic partnerships and kind of ways that I might subtly be self-sabotaging myself and not realize it. And just creating more depth within that relationship to allow that process of becoming a better version of myself to just naturally spill out into people that I come in contact with.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Whatever it is you're doing. Okay. So tell everyone listening, how do we find you? Remind us where we can get ahold of you.
Aaron Alexander: Well, yeah, so if people wanna check out the free trial of the program, I'd recommend that, that's alignpodcast.com/amp. And then social media is Aaron Alexander, the podcast is Align Podcast. Yeah, that's it. YouTube and the podcast.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I mean, I'll echo the plug of your pod. There's such great stuff in there.
Aaron Alexander: Oh, thanks, man.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. I loved some of the debates, like the Seedman debate was just fascinating to listen to...
Aaron Alexander: Yeah, that was good.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: You did an awesome job. Yeah. I mean, I really learned a ton. The book was outstanding, so thank you for all the knowledge and all the work that you put into that and to this podcast. You have been an awesome guest. Look out in your DMs for me following up and staying on your radar. Aaron, thanks for being here, man. You taught me a ton.
Aaron Alexander: That was really fun. Yeah, I appreciate you. You taught me a lot as well. I really... Hopefully that was helpful for folks, me getting to go into some places that I just rarely go into. So I appreciate you creating the space for that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it, man. Will be in touch. Thanks everybody.
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