[00:00:00] Mark Walsh: Coming up on the Mark Divine show. The thing with trauma is it’s most activated when there’s nothing you can do. Hence torture, My experience with soldiers, they most often get traumatized in two situations, not when they’re running around fighting, it’s when they’re being shelled and they can’t do anything or when they’re watching a friend bleed out again, there’s nothing they can do.

[00:00:24] Mark Walsh: This is the

[00:00:28] Mark Divine: Mark Divine Show and I’m your host, Mark Divine. Thanks for joining me today on the Mark Divine Show. I love to explore what it means to be fearless by speaking to some of the world’s most interesting, fearless, compassionate, and resilient leaders, folks from all walks of life. Stoic philosophers, motivational scientists, nutritional experts, and trauma peace crusaders, like my guest today, Mark Walsh.

[00:00:50] Mark Divine: Embodiment, Mark Walsh. Mark is the author of Embodiment, Working with the Body in Training and Coaching, and also Embodied Meditation. He’s an He’s the host of the embodiment [00:01:00] podcast and runs a conference called the embodiment conference. Obviously really into embodiment. He’s also founder of the embodiment facilitator course, has trained over 2000 coaches in 40 countries.

[00:01:10] Mark Divine: He’s recently in Ukraine working to help relieve trauma over there through a charity called saneukraine. org. Amazing. So, he’s worked in Warzone, he’s an entertainer, he’s entertained over 50, 000 kids, he’s taught at Moscow State University, he’s lived with the circus in Ethiopia, taught celebrities and even kissed a princess, he’s also in a cute black belt, and has 25 years of experience with other martial arts, yoga, body work, conscious dance, and meditation.

[00:01:39] Mark Divine: Incredible. Mark, thank you so much for joining me on the Mark Divine Show. Before I get into the show I wanted you to know that I’m opening up slots for our unbeatable coach certification and our unbeatable team for 2024. The unbeatable team is an amazing year of transformational training. It’s where I direct my full attention and time in coaching and training.

[00:01:59] Mark Divine: I don’t do it anywhere [00:02:00] else. It’s here in the unbeatable team that I can give my full attention to help those deeply committed to transforming to become uncommon in a world that you know, is rapidly collapsing into fear, moral relativism, and mediocrity. We meet virtually every month as a team, come together four times during the year for three days of powerful in person training and practice.

[00:02:18] Mark Divine: And I’m here to help you break through any barriers and to crush all of your goals for 2024. So if you’re ready to go deep with me and willing to do the work, I can guarantee amazing strides will be made. Go to unbeatableteam. com and unbeatablecoaching. com to learn more about these unbeatable events.

[00:02:37] Mark Divine: Now back to the show.

[00:02:43] Mark Divine: Mark Walsh, thanks so much for joining me on the Mark Divine show. How are you today, sir?

[00:02:46] Mark Walsh: Pretty good. Enjoying relaxing in Portugal after some intense work. So nice to see you again, Mark.

[00:02:51] Mark Divine: Yeah, you mentioned you were over in Ukraine. Tell us about that. You’re doing some training over there. How are the folks over in that area?

[00:02:57] Mark Walsh: Yeah. I mean, the last I saw the team was a week ago in Krakow. [00:03:00] The team, well to say in Ukraine, it’s a charity I started last year in Ukraine. They do psychological trauma training and this time we decided to do the training in Poland. Constantly rushing to the bomb shelters, a little bit distracting for any training, so much nicer to do it in scenic tourist Krakow, which is more relaxing than the time before in Ukraine.

[00:03:20] Mark Walsh: So, um, yeah, nice to see the team.

[00:03:22] Mark Divine: What’s the general attitude over there right now? How are people getting by? Are they trying to normalize things or just give us a description of what it’s like?

[00:03:28] Mark Walsh: Yeah, it’s been a while. It’s been 18 months since the invasion. Obviously there’s all kinds of people in all kinds of places, but, um, yeah, in a way it’s the new normal and, uh, people sometimes are just exhausted from the constant fight or flight, just being in that environment, uh, obviously a lot of people have lost loved ones, pretty much everyone I know that knows someone who’s died or, you know, who’s in immediate danger, though it’s different in different cities, different places, same working with refugees from there.

[00:03:56] Mark Walsh: You know, some refugees kind of drove in their BMWs to [00:04:00] Germany on the first day of the war. Some kind of got the houses bombed and had to walk to the border, you know, so it’s very people in a very different situations

[00:04:07] Mark Divine: And are they hungry for this type of work that you’re offering them embodied healing?

[00:04:12] Mark Walsh: Yeah, so my work is an embodiment teacher and trauma is one of the aspects of that The Ukrainians very much see trauma healing, trauma education as something Western, as something intelligent, and as something kind, and most of all non Russian. Um, so for them, it’s very positive framing for them. They’re like, well, this is something, you know, the West does, it’s something Russia doesn’t do.

[00:04:34] Mark Walsh: Therefore, we want to be aligned with the West, so therefore this is a good thing. And I think this is in a way the world’s first trauma informed war in that normally what happens is there’s a war, everyone gets traumatized, everyone denies there’s any trauma and 20 or 30 years later, you know, with the NAM vets or whatever it is, the Gulf War vets, then people go out, hang on, we need to deal with this, but only after the alcoholism, domestic violence, you know, suicides.

[00:04:58] Mark Walsh: And in this case, it’s [00:05:00] really there from the beginning and it has a very positive framing. So obviously an ideal world would be no war, but um, a pretty good world would be one where people are at least informed of the consequences and they’re able to reach out for help when they need it.

[00:05:13] Mark Divine: And who is the target for your work over there?

[00:05:15] Mark Divine: I mean, you, you’re actually working with military guys who are coming back from the front or, or just general civilians who are traumatized from the next air raid siren.

[00:05:23] Mark Walsh: Yeah, I mean, the team that I started it, but it’s now run by local women and they do the training themselves. Now, you know, I’m supervisor, I’m an advisor, a friend of the project.

[00:05:32] Mark Walsh: Now they’ve trained hundreds of thousands of people. For example, they’ve trained all the doctors and all the teachers and all the nurses in Lviv, which is one of the major cities and one of the big refugee cities. They go to military bases regularly. They train children, they train anyone who’s interested in trauma, which is pretty much everyone in Ukraine and, you know, just incredible young women will stand in front of 200 soldiers and, um, be able to, uh, get across to them, which is amazing.

[00:05:56] Mark Walsh: So, you know, I’m very proud of

[00:05:58] Mark Divine: that’s incredible work. Wow. Thanks [00:06:00] for doing that. That’s cool. It’s amazing how much hunger there is for this and you wouldn’t think that if it weren’t for an area that folks would be, even have the space to think, Oh, I’m going to go get trained as a trauma therapist or body worker or whatever.

[00:06:12] Mark Divine: I’m working out with these guys out of a group called the Conscious Coalition and we’re working in Sudan helping out, you know, with, um, first responders and others, you know, teaching them resiliency skills and coping mechanisms and, you know, that type of stuff. So it’s, it’s great. Not too dissimilar.

[00:06:27] Mark Walsh: I think they see the necessity of it.

[00:06:29] Mark Divine: That’s right. Yeah. No, it’s acute. It’s right there. I mean, they’re, they’re dealing with it right now, but you know, it’s not like in the United States or I guess any country COVID had a similar traumatic traumatizing effect. And so, you know, if you think, wow, that’s just for a war torn area now, I mean, like people are being traumatized daily with, you know, economic warfare and you know, the effects of the lockdowns from COVID, which are still, you know, people are still digging out of that mess.

[00:06:53] Mark Divine: Yeah. Yeah. So everyone can benefit what exactly are you doing over there and what what’s what are you teaching the teachers and what [00:07:00] specifically tools or skills that you bring to them.

[00:07:02] Mark Walsh: Yeah so mostly what the team are teaching is trauma education can’t train therapists quickly but you can train trauma educators very quickly and just knowing what trauma is is very helpful.

[00:07:14] Mark Walsh: Being able to signpost people to resources, being able to say, Hey, these are the symptoms of trauma. This is what you might look out for. I remember I, I actually married a Ukrainian and this was some years ago and just before my wedding, I was asked, my wife said, Hey, my then fiance said, Hey, can you just before the wedding, can you come and talk to my hairdresser?

[00:07:31] Mark Walsh: Cause he’s been drafted into what was the first part of the Ukraine war. And I said, yeah, sure. So turned up there and he’s brought, you know, 30 of his friends. They’re all traumatized, they’ve all had difficult experiences, uh, some of them were captured, prisoners of war, and I, I thought, God, I’ve got an hour, because then I have to go pick up the rings, you know, like, like I want to schedule it, uh, and I thought, you know what, in an hour, what can I do, so I just said, look, this is my experience of working in various areas of conflict, this is my experience of what trauma can look like, you know, if [00:08:00] you find yourself doing the following things, you’re not crazy, but you might need help there.

[00:08:04] Mark Walsh: And, you know, I talked through some of the symptoms of sort of sleeplessness or anger. You know, one of the guys is like, Hey, why do I hit my kids now? I didn’t used to hit my kids. Why do I get angry so easily? Someone else is like, Hey, I can’t make love to my wife. What’s going on? Like, you know, talk about how trauma can lead to dysfunction in various ways.

[00:08:19] Mark Walsh: Dietary issues, alcohol issues, which can be common, particularly amongst, you know, ex service personnel. And you can see the soldiers kind of nodding, nodding, going, okay, this guy gets it. And just from my demeanor, my embodiment, they could see like, okay, this guy is not, uh, You know northern california therapist who doesn’t understand that world

[00:08:38] Mark Divine: and you’re married to a ukraine

[00:08:41] Mark Walsh: yeah that also helps it gives me a way in and i just said okay and here the services locally you can go to and you know here’s a woman from the army that you might want to talk to because it would come from a guy and they were comfortable with that then you know at the end of it they were like hugging me and some were crying and saying thank you i thought i was going mad.

[00:08:58] Mark Walsh: Even just giving people the basics [00:09:00] of what trauma is, is helpful. And then there’s something called trauma first aid, which is what one might do in the immediate aftermath of an overwhelming experience, that would mean one would be more likely to just have acute trauma rather than chronic trauma.

[00:09:15] Mark Walsh: Because most people have something traumatic happen in their life, particularly somewhere like Ukraine, but everywhere really, there’s, I think, 80 percent prevalence of traumatic incidents if you live in the UK, let alone if you live in Ukraine. So what do we do after the immediate aftermath of that so that it’s less likely to get, you know, that fight or flight is less likely to get stuck in our system and become a more permanent problem.

[00:09:34] Mark Walsh: And there’s a whole series of techniques called trauma first aid. So, for example, some of the team were at the railway stations talking to refugees or advising soldiers on things they can do with each other and various techniques that can be used.

[00:09:46] Mark Divine: That sounds very important, right? If you self assess that you’ve been in a traumatic situation.

[00:09:51] Mark Divine: You know, you observe something like what’s the number one thing that can be done either for self care or for, you know, rendering aid

[00:09:58] Mark Walsh: with a few, I mean, move your body, [00:10:00] you know, it’s just devising some Israeli friends, for example, like, Hey, in their case, I was saying, don’t watch the news 24 seven. That’s one, uh, I think Israeli friends, the Ukrainian friends, like, Hey, I

[00:10:10] Mark Divine: find that traumatizing here in the United States,

[00:10:12] Mark Walsh: right?

[00:10:12] Mark Walsh: Yeah. I mean, any news, most of which is lies, right? I think we probably agree on the state of the news is, um, perhaps not helpful. But, you know, if you’re seeing. Violations and awful things happening and of course, you know, it’s good to be informed. But most of the Ukrainians, for example, have got alerts set up on their phones, which if there’s a bomb coming immediately start beeping and there’s apps for it.

[00:10:31] Mark Walsh: So they don’t need to be watching the news all day long. So things like limiting news exposure, moving the body after traumatic incidents. Like even something as simple as you’re in a car accident and you know, the police might come and put a blanket around you and tell you to sit still and maybe your friend gives you a whiskey and in fact it might be better to just, you know, walk up and down a bit, you know, or go shake it off, do some exercise, the gym, that can be very helpful.

[00:10:53] Mark Walsh: Social support, so reaching out for social support, particularly if you have access to people who aren’t in that fight [00:11:00] or flight or freeze mode. So, you know, I’m on the phone to some of my friends in the Middle East right now, and I’m able to, you know, just be a little bit of a voice of sanity and a nervous system that isn’t right in the middle of it all.

[00:11:11] Mark Walsh: So the social support aspect is really critical too. And then there’s other techniques, there’s things like something called TRE, there’s tapping techniques, there’s various sort of discharge techniques for that kind of energy in the body that gets, um, stored.

[00:11:24] Mark Divine: What exactly is happening, you know, in a traumatic incident happens, obviously I get triggered in a fight or flight.

[00:11:30] Mark Divine: Is it that I’m not allowing that to release and to activate the, the opposite, you know, the rest and digestion. So then it just, well, it gets trapped in the body or what’s happening? What’s the mechanism?

[00:11:40] Mark Walsh: Yeah, there’s different theories of this. And some people can go into the neuroscience, for example, much more intelligently than I can.

[00:11:46] Mark Walsh: I think there’s a few ways to look at it, a pretty good way, sort of basic way of explaining to people is, you know, we all have that fight or flight, but there’s, there’s two things that can happen there. One is it can get kind of more stuck in the body is sometimes how people describe [00:12:00] it. So instead of being agitated and then coming down, you know, if I look at my pulse now, I’ve got a pulse of like 80, which is, you know, pretty appropriate.

[00:12:08] Mark Walsh: And I’m doing an interview, I’m active, but I’m not stressed. That’s like I’ve come down from some stress I had this morning, you know, stress comes and goes, traumatic stress stays, and there’s, you know, various reasons for that, some of which is what we do, some of which seems very random, some of which is people’s health and well being, the different risk factors that you can analyze out there as to why someone might get more trauma and someone else just gets the stress and then comes down.

[00:12:31] Mark Walsh: Another way of thinking about it is people go from fight or flight into overwhelming stress, and they go more into a freeze response, which is a different neurology. You know, for example, people have studied this, uh, the polyvagal guys have theories on the different strands of the vagus nerve, for example, involved in that, and that freeze response getting stuck in the system can look like many things, but for example, it could look like digestive issues, different health issues, You’ll see in Eastern Europe, you’ll see a lot of reduced [00:13:00] affect.

[00:13:00] Mark Walsh: So you’ll see the sort of, you’ve probably seen, you know, hot Russian or Ukrainian girls walking around with the sort of lack of smile and not really kind of engaged, you know, that’s the soldier with the thousand yards there, his eyes are chronically tight. They might have chronic tightness in the body and again, all the health issues associated with that.

[00:13:17] Mark Walsh: Unfortunately, part of that can be a reduction in kind of social engagement and empathy. Which is why you do get these cycles of hurt people, hurting people. You do get these cycles of trauma producing numbness, which can reduce empathy because while it’s in many ways an understandable response to overwhelming threat to shut down, unfortunately that shuts down the systems we need for parenting and marriage and just general social function.

[00:13:44] Mark Walsh: So some of those systems are dysfunctional. There are other ways of looking at another would be like, it’s almost like a memory disorder. Uh, so there’s a way in which the traumatic memory doesn’t get stored as a normal long term memory. So there’s a sort of a nowness. So it’s a [00:14:00] dangerous past living in the present.

[00:14:03] Mark Walsh: And I’ve had this myself from various countries to various levels and people might know about dissociative flashbacks, which is the more extreme level, but you know, you’ve probably got buddies who just constantly talk about their experiences in Afghan or in Iraq or whatever because they’re still living there.

[00:14:19] Mark Walsh: And like, I remember my granddad to the day he died was talking about world war two as if it was yesterday. It clearly hadn’t totally got into his kind of long term memory. And sometimes it’s subtle. I remember one time I was, um, in the gym working out and I had some kind of psoas release from a deep squat, which is a muscle associated with a traumatic memory.

[00:14:37] Mark Walsh: And I just kind of like felt I was in Afghanistan for about a week. It was just like a subtle, almost like a smell or a subtle feeling. It was just that, yeah, it was a weird background feeling. It just made me a lot more on edge than I normally would be in my hometown.

[00:14:53] Mark Divine: I’m also curious how micro traumatic brain injuries could play a role, you know, especially with the military guys [00:15:00] who are on the, on the front line.

[00:15:01] Mark Divine: As a SEAL, you know, we have a lot of our SEAL team guys who are like, seem perfectly normal and all of a sudden they just go boom, right? They just lose it and it’s happened in, you know, increasing numbers over the last few years and you talked about the psychological trauma, but also there’s physical trauma like you see with the football players and the soccer players and the hockey players And for, you know, military people, it’s the, you know, even going to the range and shooting.

[00:15:23] Mark Divine: If you’re not using the protective ear protection and, you know, that you’re getting that kind of ricochet and your brain is just bouncing around in your head. And so I imagine that, you know, as we, you know, research these things a little more, we’re going to find out that is a big factor as well.

[00:15:36] Mark Walsh: Yeah, it’s interesting.

[00:15:36] Mark Walsh: So in, in world war one, when they first identified trauma, they identified it as shell shock because they thought it was from the physical shock of the shells. Right. And then later on, they realized like, Hey, no, this is, um, psychological and, you know, World War II, they call it combat fatigue, you know, PTSD was a Vietnam era terminology when they realized that, uh, soldiers had a lot in common with, um, people who had been abused by a spouse, they realized there was [00:16:00] something similar.

[00:16:00] Mark Walsh: But what’s interesting is in recent years, they’ve gone, Oh, actually the physical shock is potentially involved as well. So the world war one theory was not totally wrong. That’s what they found, right? It’s

[00:16:11] Mark Divine: both

[00:16:12] Mark Walsh: hands. I’m not an expert on that, but it looks like this research to say that this, you know, vulnerabilities at least.

[00:16:17] Mark Walsh: And unfortunately, the Ukraine front lines are very reminiscent of world war one. And back in places like that they’re really horrific and actually we always had to go back to the drawing board because I talked to a lot of this sort of American and British trauma experts and they didn’t really know how to deal with that kind of stuff.

[00:16:37] Mark Walsh: You know that kind of war hasn’t been involved in for a while. With massive loss of life, you know, guys losing their entire platoon kind of thing. And also just a constant feeling of powerlessness. I was talking to one British volunteer and he said, you know, being in a trench and try to pull his helmet down over him as if he was like a turtle.

[00:16:56] Mark Walsh: The thing with trauma is it’s most. [00:17:00] Activated when there’s nothing you can do, hence torture, rape, my experience of soldiers, they most often get traumatized in two situations, not when they’re running around fighting, it’s when they’re being shelled and they can’t do anything, or when they’re watching a friend bleed out, because again, there’s nothing they can do.

[00:17:16] Mark Walsh: And it’s these situations where people, soldiers who normally feel quite empowered, actually feel disempowered. And there’s a lot of that, unfortunately, in Ukraine, the sort of just, you know, cause if you’re in your trench and if a shell hits you, there’s nothing you can do. You know, if that’s a direct hit, that’s it.

[00:17:30] Mark Walsh: So, and you know that. You can take precautions, but, um, and Ukraine will be suffering and Russia to the impacts of trauma from this war for generations. And we’re already talking with the team about how to reintegrate soldiers, for example. Because the reintegration issues are a huge, huge aspect for soldiers.

[00:17:48] Mark Walsh: Wow. Limb loss is another one that’s huge there. We had to kind of look at a lot of work on grief and look at kind of, you know, the grief of limb loss and how that is. He’s been another big one.

[00:17:57] Mark Divine: Yeah. It’s mind boggling. You know, here we are [00:18:00] in 2023 and I’m still fighting like barbarians at the gate. It’s crazy.

[00:18:05] Mark Walsh: Sometimes I have these moments where I’m with the team and they’re just, you know, young women doing their best kind of thing. You know, they’re, I basically went to the local university and said, right, I need, I need all your psychology students to train. Because I knew all the, the few therapists that existed and there’s some great ones like EMDR therapists.

[00:18:20] Mark Walsh: I know. Who are working with that were like, you know, they’re all super busy and, you know, these young women sometimes I want to say to them like, look, we shouldn’t have to do this. This is ridiculous, you know, 2023 that we have to do this and we do. So let’s get on with it. But there’s sometimes it’s just the moment of crying or pulling my hair out.

[00:18:37] Mark Walsh: It’s really seriously

[00:18:39] Mark Divine: exactly the worst of humanity. In our current structure, the sense to the highest power structures and have control over the most devastating weapons. Like how do we get here? Well, it can only be answered probably spiritually. I think the trauma work is so important. But I also know that, you know, it’s not what you really do also, like [00:19:00] embodiment work and the work you do in training coaches, you know, it can be used to heal from some extreme trauma, but it can also be used to, you know, evolve your consciousness, so to speak, right?

[00:19:10] Mark Divine: To become more whole, more of a complete human being, let’s just say. So let’s talk about that side of your work. Like what does that look like and what does embodiment even mean to you? Yeah, what does it mean? Because like we are a body and the body is the mind. And so how can we embody, how can we be more of what we already are?

[00:19:29] Mark Walsh: I mean, to make the link, most trauma therapies involve the body because trauma is that cutting of the link between body and mind, disembodiment, numbing.

[00:19:37] Mark Divine: Disembodiment, right.

[00:19:39] Mark Walsh: Yeah. However, the average person isn’t particularly embodied anyway because we live in a sort of hypercognitive cerebral culture where the body is reduced to, as someone said, a brain taxi.

[00:19:49] Mark Walsh: Right. You know, most people aren’t physical, they’re not moving. You know, I grew up working on farms. You’re in your body a little bit more just from the elements and the labor, you know, uh, if you’re running around as a seal, you’re probably a bit more in your body, but it’s, [00:20:00] um, most people are, you know, on their phones, on a computer, add a little bit of trauma to that.

[00:20:04] Mark Walsh: Maybe we’re numbed out and there’s a cost to that numbing. You know, our body isn’t just a piece of meat. Body is a key part of who we are. It’s a gateway to the soul. If you want to be poetic. You know, I ask people, like, if I’m in a corporation, I’ll say, where do you have your best ideas? And I say, let me guess, let me guess, listeners can play this game, you know.

[00:20:22] Mark Walsh: I’ll say, you don’t have them sitting at the computer. You have them when you’re walking in nature. You might have them in the shower, maybe on the toilet.

[00:20:28] Mark Divine: Einstein, all of his best ideas came while he was walking, sometimes in his underwear.

[00:20:33] Mark Walsh: Usually if you’re moving, you’re in nature, because there’s a degree of what we call eco regulation to the body.

[00:20:39] Mark Walsh: You’re either in good company, like dancing or making love is co regulation. Uh, but nearly always you’re relaxing, like in the shower, on the toilet, in your body, because your mind just works better when you’re in those situations. It doesn’t work well when you’re stressed out at a computer and traffic or whatever.

[00:20:56] Mark Walsh: So the idea of embodiment is very practical in that it’s helping people think [00:21:00] better, it’s helping people communicate better, you know, so much of our communication is embodied. It makes me laugh. I’m in a business and there’s some guy who’s getting paid a hundred grand a year and he’s, you know, done an MBA from Oxford or Harvard or something and he’s just a head on a stick and he’s like, you know, hello, welcome to my company.

[00:21:17] Mark Walsh: I’m the inspiring CEO and I’m, and I’m like, okay, man, we need to get you at least moving. Let’s give them some embodied practice or just, I mean, just super stressed out. Like everybody I work with, God love them, they don’t have to be in a war. They’re just stressed. I mean, I remember when I was in my first boardroom doing corporate stuff and I’d already done NGO work, non profit sector work in war zones.

[00:21:38] Mark Walsh: And I just remember thinking, God, this is the same embodiment. This is the same, you know, it’s from your work, right? Like people are so stressed that they need some stress management tools and you, you can’t really think your way out of that. It’s like, you know. You know, if two guys are about to have a fight, you can’t just reason with them, excuse me, gentlemen, I think this is an unwise move, you know, this is not going to work.

[00:21:59] Mark Walsh: So [00:22:00] you have to work directly with the body. If you’re interested in working with people, the body is the quickest, most effective access point. And if you want to create lasting change, you have to work with the body because otherwise the body will just undermine all your nice theories and books or whatever.

[00:22:19] Mark Divine: Okay. We’re going to take a short break here from the Mark Divine show to hear a short message from one of our partners. And now back to the show.

[00:22:29] Mark Divine: Yeah, I recently developed a program and I ran it once and I got a, it was a little too early for me to kind of put it out as a product, but I called it the exponential mindset. And I talked about developing the five minds and the first mind is the body mind. So the point you just made is spot on, like if the body is in hyper arousal, if the body is out of shape, overweight, out of homeostasis in any way, then the brain is as well.

[00:22:54] Mark Divine: And so your, your cognitive functions are going to be impaired.

[00:22:57] Mark Walsh: There’s the foundational level of [00:23:00] just kind of health. But it’s also the foundation, say, of our emotional intelligence, like, where is empathy? It’s in the body. You know, are we tuned into our body to pick up on our intuition or the quality of rapport that we’re in with someone?

[00:23:13] Mark Walsh: I mean, even as I said, like our cognition is, is based on that. Um, the lead is someone is, is embodied, you know, by that I don’t mean are they tall or are they skinny? That’s not so much about physical fitness, though. That’s a good base. It’s something else. Do they have the qualities of a leader? I learned some of that through martial arts, for example, and it’s not taught academically.

[00:23:36] Mark Walsh: You can read a lot of good books and a lot of theories, but, you know, does someone have it in their spine? Does someone have it in their muscle, their bones, their sinew? That’s what it really comes down to.

[00:23:44] Mark Divine: That’s the difference between knowledge and knowing. You use your martial arts example, you know, that’s why you start out as a white belt, you know, and you work from ninth cue down to first cue and yeah, like going downhill, you’re just packing knowledge in and you’re starting to learn some basic movements, but you don’t [00:24:00] really start knowing until you’re well into your first, second, third degree black belt, right?

[00:24:06] Mark Divine: Because you’re, you’re embodying the movements, you’re getting out of your head and just spontaneously acting, right? Shibumi, effortless perfection starts to flow. Usually, you know, with long period of practice, but I think, you know, in the West, we’re so, Infatuated with knowledge and just packing more knowledge in and conceptual knowledge, you know, disembodied or disconnected from the knowingness of the body is not that useful in the long run.

[00:24:30] Mark Divine: It’s good for a career as an academic, but not much else.

[00:24:33] Mark Walsh: Right, right. We’ve taken that academic model of knowing about things. And that’s very different than knowing something, let alone being something. We’re talking about Portugal earlier, you know, like I could tell you about Portugal and you would know a bit more about Portugal, but that’s different from, I don’t know, the smell here, not what it is to hang out in a Portuguese bar.

[00:24:53] Mark Walsh: I need a pastel de nata. There’s a quality here. I mean, all leadership skills are [00:25:00] not academic knowledge. I mean, you can explain emotional intelligence very quickly, but how do you build it? And for me, that level of being will either support or undermine anything we know. And it’s almost like our culture is obsessed.

[00:25:13] Mark Walsh: It misunderstands the verb to know and has become obsessed with knowing about things rather than knowing to do things or knowing to be things. We even don’t respect the other kinds of knowing so much. You say, Oh, he’s just a tradesman. I’m like, okay, this is the guy who fixes your electricity or your plumbing.

[00:25:29] Mark Walsh: You’re like, yeah, this is somebody who really knows his art. So for me, like, if you’re going to look at leadership seriously, or I work with a lot of coaches, for example, I help coaches. And it’s like, again, it’s not just cognitive.

[00:25:40] Mark Divine: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, our work, um, we’re calling it vertical leadership development because, you know, it’s probably a little misleading.

[00:25:47] Mark Divine: It’s inclusive embodiment, but it’s the type of development that transcends who you were and gives you a new sense of self, self concept that is, like I said, inclusive, embodiment, new context, um, [00:26:00] world centric in your perspective, open hearted, compassionate, caring. And those are all aspects of beingness that you just, like you said, you can’t learn from a book.

[00:26:10] Mark Divine: It has to kind of emerge within you. And yet we know that there’s certain practices and tools and, and methods to find that emergence or to activate that emergence. And I think that’s what somatic work and embodiment practice is so valuable. Most people approach it in different ways. And I’m curious because I’m a lifetime martial artist and a yogi myself.

[00:26:31] Mark Divine: Movement has always been really, really important, and you mentioned movement, right, to release immediate acute trauma. How central is a somatic type practice like a martial art or yoga or dance or just, you know, being in nature to embodiment?

[00:26:47] Mark Walsh: Yeah, I mean, all my students have a meditation practice and a movement practice.

[00:26:51] Mark Walsh: And what that movement practice is, first of all, I say, look, something’s better than nothing, just moving your body is great, moving your body with awareness, like yoga, [00:27:00] conscious dance, martial arts, that’s just, that’s even better than just going to the gym, which is still better than nothing. And then if we’re going to be even more selective, we could say, okay, what qualities do you want to build?

[00:27:10] Mark Walsh: So, for example, first time I walked into an Aikido dojo, I was an 18 year old alcoholic from a, you know, family of alcoholics, like, something in me saw the discipline, the spine, the Japanese ness, you know, the whole piece, culturally and embodiment wise of Aikido, and really spoke to my heart, and I was like, wow, this is going to save my life, and it did.

[00:27:31] Mark Walsh: Right. And for many years, like, you know, was practice, if not daily, several times a week, I was a live in Aikido students. And then after a while, I had, you know, enough of that sort of warrior archetype, but kind of integrated that. And we were doing the Ukraine project. My driver was a Aikido friend called Pietro, a Polish Pete, who I was a live in Aikido student with.

[00:27:49] Mark Walsh: We were doing that project and we were saying, you know, Mr. Smith, who was our teacher, Shayan Smith in England, we said, look, he taught us the embodiment to do this. To deliver medical [00:28:00] supplies and do trauma work in a war zone. So it’s like that way of being, you know, being with me now 25 years. But there was a point where actually I realized that I was getting diminishing returns from doing Aikido.

[00:28:10] Mark Walsh: And that’s when I started, like I, for example, I took up tango dance. I was like, okay, let’s time for music and women’s perfume and fabulous shoes and, you know, play. And it’s like, you’re not going to finally, you’re not going to find that in a Japanese martial art. You know what I mean? Argentine women in high heels, you know,

[00:28:27] Mark Divine: variety is good.

[00:28:28] Mark Divine: I love that.

[00:28:29] Mark Walsh: Yeah. Build the range. So, you know, what you’ll tend to find in martial artists or the same yogis, conscious dancers is they’ll get very, very. Good at one thing and then maybe they can actually branch out a little bit. Yeah, so if someone’s a beginner I’m just like do any in body practice if someone’s a bit more advanced.

[00:28:47] Mark Walsh: I’d say okay. Let’s talk about what you’re doing We send this house a dancer to kickboxing or whatever the jiu jitsu guides, you know what, uh, you know, I already read a whole book about this and It’s become one of my specialisms as a coach is helping [00:29:00] people design their own,

[00:29:01] Mark Divine: you know, I’m a lifetime martial artist, but I, I, I kind of like for the past three or four or five years, the more I, I had a similar experience to you, uh, the more I trained, the more I felt like I was, um, intuitively that I was just like reinforcing.

[00:29:16] Mark Divine: Something that didn’t need to be reinforced anymore, right? And so I was like, what is that? I got into the martial arts to develop my warrior archetype, right? And to really understand what it meant to take a life and what it, uh, what it meant to not take a life. You know, the martial art is a beautiful practice if you’re doing it with the right intentions, right?

[00:29:35] Mark Divine: If you’re doing it to be the badass and to go out and play whack a mole, that’s not the right intention. But when I got into yoga and I started practicing yoga and, you know, one of the primary principles there is ahimsa, which is peace, which is not, it’s not like conceptual. It begins to, you know, emerge in you through that practice.

[00:29:53] Mark Divine: So I was beginning to experience peace, and it was in conflict with, and even my last art is Aikido, even though they call it the art of peace, it [00:30:00] still was born in war, and it’s a violent program. So I finally said, you know what, I need to stop doing martial arts now. I think I’ve, I’ve learned enough and so I continue my yoga practice, but to your point, really exploring other embodiment practices.

[00:30:15] Mark Divine: And, uh, so dance is one of them. I think that’s really cool. More time in nature, back to some of my old, like, steel fit roots, rucking with weight and You know what I mean? In the ocean swimming. So it’s been pretty cool.

[00:30:27] Mark Walsh: Yeah. It sounds like you intuitively got to that and credit to you because a lot of people get very invested in what they do.

[00:30:33] Mark Walsh: It becomes part of their persona and identity for sure. And being a beginner again, it’s never, I remember being in my first, you know, I went to a conscious dance, which is like crazy hippie dancing and. The martial artist in me was like, where am I? What the hell am I doing? This is a confrontation. And then now I love it.

[00:30:48] Mark Walsh: Now I love it. Contact improv and conscious dance and all these fun, happy things. I love it. I have

[00:30:53] Mark Divine: this weird kind of discord, but I understand it now with my martial arts practice. I never was with a [00:31:00] particular teacher or studio long enough to really move beyond, you know, a showdown. So I’ve got like four showdowns.

[00:31:07] Mark Divine: And so I always thought that was the kind of a problem or, you know, as an unfortunate circumstance because, you know, there’s a benefit for staying in, you know, and you get your four, all my, all my peers back at Sado Karate with Nakamura in New York are all six, seven dons. But what was nice about that is I had to be a white belt four different times.

[00:31:25] Mark Divine: And start over. And now, of course, I had a lot of skills and, you know, I progressed pretty quickly, but I always had to empty my cup every time I, you know, moved somewhere or, you know, had to change my, I had two studios, you know, shut down because the teachers couldn’t run them. It’s interesting, but it taught me to empty my cup and to always think like a white belt.

[00:31:42] Mark Divine: There’s an entrapment that can happen just like in any kind of hierarchical structure when you’re like, oh, I’m the sixth or I’m the seventh You know and you start to get the spiritual egoism or this, you know what I

[00:31:51] Mark Walsh: mean? I remember going, you know, as a pretty competent Aikido black belt going into a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Dojo for the first time because I was like, yeah, you know what Aikido’s got some [00:32:00] holes and there’s some things that well Uh, you know, it’s not very realistic in these ways and My friend Rockcast actually, he did a whole YouTube channel about this journey from being like, he’s a Lithuanian guy from being an Aikido black belt to, um, becoming an MMA guy is a humbling.

[00:32:13] Mark Walsh: I remember being choked out maybe 20 times on my first night on the mat. And I had to really, like two days later to go back to class. I had to really like get myself up, you know, and then it’s a humbling that, um, You know, like I know parkour guys who can jump across buildings fearlessly, but they can’t talk to a pretty woman, you know, it’s like, you’ve got to be able to transfer the skills or else.

[00:32:36] Mark Walsh: So who cares if you can do a wrist lock or jump across a building or who cares, you know, like, can you transfer it into your life is what I’m most interested in about,

[00:32:45] Mark Divine: right. If someone comes to you and, and after listening to this podcast and they say, okay, Mark, uh, I’m ready. How do you assess or help them understand kind of what what kind of embodiment practice would be right for them?

[00:32:56] Mark Walsh: Yeah I mean people might set up as a coach and they just want to learn a [00:33:00] few coaching tools and you know I can show them a few basic tools to work with the body practical things like centering which will be helpful as a coach They come to me as a yoga teacher a dance teacher. That’s very different, right?

[00:33:10] Mark Walsh: If they come to me as a soldier, that’s very different. So it’s really, who’s the person, you know, what’s their level of experience with the body, with business guys, it’s like, you have a body, you know, one on one and maybe let’s do some stress management, you know, let’s do some stuff on charisma and leadership because that’s, that’s might be helpful for you, you know, that’s very different than someone in Ukraine or someone who’s already a 10 year yoga practice, for example.

[00:33:34] Mark Walsh: I’d think increasingly now I get students who are already meditating. What do you start, Mark? But to me, loads more people are meditating than 25 years ago when I started this stuff, right? Oh,

[00:33:44] Mark Divine: for sure.

[00:33:45] Mark Walsh: So that’s great.

[00:33:46] Mark Divine: But I find they’re struggling with it.

[00:33:47] Mark Walsh: Yeah, often they’ve got an app, maybe a light practice.

[00:33:50] Mark Walsh: They might not have done retreats. You know, it’s, they’re not necessarily. Meditation was never really meant to be removed from the whole buddhist structure of ethics and wisdom and different [00:34:00] traditions, but, you know, if people have a basic meditation practice, that’s helpful. And, you know, often people have done a bit of yoga or a bit of martial arts.

[00:34:06] Mark Walsh: Now, I mean, my life’s got a lot easier. Like, I remember going in companies 20 years ago, people just going. What, you know, mindful, what, you know, and now they’re like the HR manager is like, Oh yeah, I do yoga and I’ve got a mindfulness app, but I don’t know about you, but my life’s got a lot easier.

[00:34:22] Mark Divine: That’s pretty funny.

[00:34:23] Mark Divine: You use the term embodied meditation in your book title. Is that a specific practice?

[00:34:28] Mark Walsh: There’s a few practices in that particular book, and I think the word mindfulness is a translation of a Pali word, and it’s a very, sort of, 19th century British aristocratic translation that misses a lot of stuff. So, unfortunately, if you take, sort of, Western cognitive people, translate the word in a very cognitive way, and then extract it from a kind of cultural tradition, you will get a very cognitive practice.

[00:34:55] Mark Walsh: So a lot of meditation, I think is embodied, even if they don’t use the word, you know, it’s a [00:35:00] nice word, but sometimes people need to come back to meditating as a body with a body, not just on a body. Sometimes I feel like a lot of modern meditation is like how you would stare at a parking ticket, you know, it’s, it’s just like looking at your body from afar.

[00:35:17] Mark Walsh: We’ve discussed, and that’s, that’s probably not the best, best approach.

[00:35:21] Mark Divine: No, I agree with that. One of my yoga teachers, I did like a 500 hour training with him, said that yoga was actually depth psychology. And what he meant by that is the way it was taught in the sutras and the Vedic tradition was that it was a whole mind body intuitive spiritual practice.

[00:35:40] Mark Divine: And so zen, like zen is just the dharana, the concentration part of yoga. And mindfulness was just the, you know, kind of like the witnessing, cognitive, um, metacognition component. Like learn how to separate from your thoughts and just sit there with them in non attachment. And they were just two techniques that were kind of [00:36:00] seized upon and then turned into entire systems.

[00:36:02] Mark Divine: And so they’ve led to, you know, incomplete results. And I think that was very insightful for me.

[00:36:08] Mark Walsh: Nice. And, you know, yoga can be done as a sort of narcissism practice. It can be done as exercise. It can be done as deep body therapy, which really confronts the patterns. You know, we, we have an embodied system.

[00:36:19] Mark Walsh: We teach yoga people where it’s really, you know, we have poses that explore boundaries and generosity and eroticism and all, you know, different aspects of being human that they can integrate into their yoga. You know everything has a commercial aspect these days but then there’s also so you know so many yeah i like you have a podcast i feel so lucky that i get to talk to just a lot of very cool practitioners people doing you know deep stuff around the world and we’re in a pretty unique point in human history even if it’s crazy and the world’s run by psychopaths.

[00:36:49] Mark Walsh: We’re also in a point of human history where people can download podcasts and get information they would have had to travel to Tibet for, you know, it’s, it’s uniquely horrible in some ways, even the fact that we [00:37:00] find it astounding that there’s still war. That’s progress, that’s improvement. The fact that we are disgusted by it and don’t just think it’s normal and okay.

[00:37:08] Mark Walsh: And we have access to so many of these wisdom traditions.

[00:37:11] Mark Divine: My sense is that everything’s always in balance, right? So if there’s an awful lot of awfulness, then there’s an awful lot of goodness in the world to balance that out. So you have two books and then the other’s embodied meditation.

[00:37:22] Mark Walsh: Three, three. So the first one is just called Embodiment for Complete Beginners.

[00:37:26] Mark Walsh: You can read that on the toilet. It’s very accessible. Uh, the second one is more for like professional facilitators and coaches that’s, you know, published by Open University Press. And the third one’s just a little book on meditation, uh, that’s three, three books they have out. Just, you know, you’ve got to have a book out, right Mark?

[00:37:42] Mark Walsh: That’s it.

[00:37:42] Mark Divine: Got it. I have a book out. Yeah. And you’ve got the embodiment podcast. That’s right. I mean, you’re doing so much great work. How can folks find you? How do you like to engage with people? Is it email, social media?

[00:37:54] Mark Walsh: Yeah. Books and podcasts. If they’re like that, if people want to ask me a question, the best is actually through my Instagram.

[00:37:58] Mark Walsh: I don’t really email, but [00:38:00] so if you put Mark Walsh into Instagram or Mark Walsh embodiment, you’ll find me there. That’s for questions. If they’re short, I will always get back to people personally. And the main website is embodimentunlimited. com, and there’s a load of free stuff there. So my first book, there’s a free PDF of that, for example, if people, you know, don’t want to go to Amazon, they can download that there.

[00:38:20] Mark Walsh: Embodimentunlimited. com. Loads of free resources there.

[00:38:23] Mark Divine: What’s next for you, Mark? You gonna go back to Ukraine or off to some other adventure?

[00:38:27] Mark Walsh: I’m gonna take a rest. I’m gonna Eat seafood on the beach for a week in Portugal and dance because maybe dance with the hippies in the woods if I can Yeah, I need a rest man.

[00:38:41] Mark Walsh: Like I feel like there has to be a flow between giving and receiving And nature has always been a great healer for me personally. I, you know, I have a therapist, but often I’d rather be swimming in the sea than talking to him, frankly. So, um, that’s, that’s my, that’s my therapeutic, slightly pagan plan for letting [00:39:00] go of the trauma of the world is getting off the internet and swimming in the sea in

[00:39:03] Mark Divine: Portugal.

[00:39:04] Mark Divine: That sounds amazing. I’ll enjoy. You deserve it. And thank you for your work. Thank you for your time today, sir.

[00:39:09] Mark Walsh: Oh, you too, Mark. I always, I think you’re a kindred spirit and I love the stuff you’re putting out. So it’s real, real pleasant.

[00:39:14] Mark Divine: Thank you very much. Hoo yah.

[00:39:18] Mark Divine: Well, that was a fascinating episode. I’m so inspired by Mark’s work in Ukraine. It’s amazing. So, it’s so important and, uh, we, my heart goes out to all those folks who are traumatized there and in Israel and elsewhere. So thank you, mark, for joining us today on the Mark Divine Show. Show notes will be up on our [email protected].

[00:39:35] Mark Divine: The video will be on our YouTube channel. You can reach out to me on social media at Twitter x at Mark Divine, and on Instagram or Facebook at Real Mark Divine, or on my LinkedIn profile. If you’re not receiving divine inspiration, my weekly newsletter, you might consider joining the email list. So go to mark divine.com to subscribe and send it out every Tuesday morning and it’s got show notes for the week’s podcast, my blog, a book, I’m reading other cool things in a practice of the week.

[00:39:59] Mark Divine: And I think [00:40:00] you might enjoy it. So sign up and share. And thanks for doing that. Shout out to my incredible team, Catherine Divine, Jason Sanderson, and Jeff Haskell, who helped produce the podcast and Divine Inspiration and bring guests like Mark to you every week. Ratings and reviews are very helpful. So if you haven’t done so, please consider doing that wherever you listen.

[00:40:17] Mark Divine: It helps keep us at the top of the rankings and to stay relevant and helps other people find it. So thank you very much again for your support. Thanks for being part of the Mark Divine show. Please share it with your friends. If you find it interesting and helpful, Thanks for being part of the change we want to see in the world.

[00:40:30] Mark Divine: We can do this at scale to keep things in balance. As we talked about with Mark till next time. Hooyah, bye now.