Erwan Le Corre is the founder of “MovNat”, a synthesis of his long-term passion for real-world physical competency, his love of movement in nature, his extensive knowledge of Physical Education history, and his personal philosophy of life. He believes it is everyone’s universal and biological birthright to be strong, healthy, happy and free. He calls this state of being our “True Nature”.
Erwan was born on September 10th, 1971 in France. At home, the TV set had a black and white screen with no remote control and no video games, and personal computers and internet didn’t exist. Most leisure time was spent outdoors exploring the surrounding woods. He was not only free to go move outside as much as he wanted, he was actively encouraged to do so.
At a very young age, Erwan’s father would often take him outdoors to run, crawl, climb, and jump, helping him to push his physical and mental limits. That’s when his passion for movement in nature started. Until his teenage years, Erwan’s only physical education came from Judo and exploring the world around him.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Erwan Le Corre about enhancing cognition through natural movement.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How adding primal movements into physical training allows people to reconnect individuals with nature and enhance physical capabilities.
– Why engaging in natural movement enhancing your memory and brain function.
– How incorporating natural movements like squatting into daily activities enhances your physical capability.
– Why people should engage in walking and sensory stimulation in natural environments to contribute to cognitive health.
– How you can reconnect with your innate physical abilities through practicing natural movements.
Connect with Erwan:
Guest Contact Info
X
@MovNat
Instagram
@movnat
Facebook
facebook.com/MovNat
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/company/movnat
Links Mentioned:
monat.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You want to get in shape, you want to be strong, you want to be healthy, you probably joined a gym. Could that be the worst decision you have ever made? Well, we’re going to find out more about that and many other things on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting with the feet first, because that is your foundation. We’re going to debunk the myths and the propaganda and sometimes the outright lies that people tell you about what it takes to dance, to walk, to hike, to move, to lift, to whatever it is that you like to do enjoyably, effectively, and happily for now until the rest of your life, however long that happens to be anyway. I’m Steven Sashen, the host of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast and the CEO of xeroshoes.com.
You pretty much know the drill, like, share, subscribe, click the bell if you’re on YouTube, if you’re watching us, that’s cool. Come to jointhemovementmovement.com if you want to find out more about where you can interact with us and leave your comments and your questions. In fact, if you have any questions, drop me an email, [email protected]. And when I say movement movement, it’s because we are creating a movement about natural movement, and that means that you are involved. This is a grassroots groundswell thing. We’re trying to make natural movement the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food currently is, and that’s going to involve all of you people who are participating in this. So thanks for being here. As I like to say, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and you know how to do all of that.
Anyway, I’m here with, I’m going to say a dear friend, even though we haven’t seen each other in nine years until right now about when we met, we really hit it off. And it’s one of those crazy things where we’re just bumping into each other. And I’m not even going to do an intro for you, Erwan, because you’ll say more interesting things than I do, and everything you’ll say is going to come with that super awesome accent. So why don’t you tell people who the hell you are and why the hell you’re here? Because I can’t think of anyone more appropriate for talking about natural movement than someone who literally owns natural movement.
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s going to be challenging to be as good at expressing yourself as you are, my friend.
Steven Sashen:
It’s not a competition.
Erwan Le Corre:
All right, so for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Erwan Le Corre. That’s the way you say it in French.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, how do Americans say it with their horrible accent?
Erwan Le Corre:
Erwan Le Corre.
Steven Sashen:
Erwan Le Corre. Okay.
Erwan Le Corre:
Which is totally fine with me. I’m not an American citizen and I’ve been living in the US for 10 years happily, very happily, by the way. But I was born in France and grew up there, and then I’ve traveled. I’ve worked in China, I’ve been in Brazil, I’ve been to many countries. But about 15 years ago, I made the decision that what I had learned through a number of experiences in my life, I was going to turn it into a system that would benefit people.
And I designed a method for natural movement called MovNat, M-O-V-N-A-T. MovNat, it’s a school of real world physical capability. So basically you’re trained to be capable to use your body, to operate your body in many diverse, directly, tangibly useful ways. So that’s what I do. I live in a little village up in the mountains of New Mexico at 8,500 elevation with my beautiful wife and my beautiful three children, Feather, Eagle, and Sky, since my wife is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and so are my kids. So they proudly have those names that are reminiscent of their Native Indian origins. What else can I say?
Steven Sashen:
I just love that your children have those names legitimately, that they didn’t change their name after they moved to Boulder and started doing yoga. I think that’s awesome.
Erwan Le Corre:
Hey, well, they’re free to change whatever they want about who they are when they-
Steven Sashen:
They’ll get old enough, they’re going to change their names to Scott, Michelle.
Erwan Le Corre:
No-
Steven Sashen:
They’ll all be Britneys.
Erwan Le Corre:
Look, what matters if you love your name or if you’re proud of your name. But for now, they didn’t really have a choice.
Steven Sashen:
You get them a good start.
Erwan Le Corre:
But they love their name. That’s the thing is that-
Steven Sashen:
Those are good names.
Erwan Le Corre:
-all three of them love their names, they’re proud of their names and that’s part of my name.
Steven Sashen:
My wife’s nieces and nephews are Birch, Winter, and Meadow.
Erwan Le Corre:
That’s beautiful.
Steven Sashen:
And they really fit those names. So anyway, but enough about names. So before we jump into everything, everything, I’ll always love to start with giving people some opportunity to learn something, to do something, to move in some way. Can you think of something that you would want to share with the human beings who are watching and or listening from anything you can think of, some movement, something or other? I mean, I have no boundaries on this.
Erwan Le Corre:
Well, sure, very easy. Right now, so I’m against an adobe wall because I live in a very old house, old for the United States at least, and I am leaning against the wall. So I have support for my spine. But here’s the thing, I’m in some kind of a hybrid position between a squat and sit position. Now I’m using a laptop. So right now I’m going to hold my laptop and I can change the position, which is great because most people today work from laptops. If you are watching this from home, if you have a tablet in your hands or phone or a laptop, you can then easily change that position and then you can decide to go into a squat or to go into a different sit position.
So let’s see what will happen if I show this a little. As you can see, I’m sitting here, so change your sit position. If you sit on the chair, go down to floor level. Once you’re on floor level, you have plenty of opportunities, diverse sit positions. You could also then transition to a squat and then you could also kneel if you want. So right there, challenging the static idea that you are supposed to be physically idle and physically static the moment you are looking the screen, just get some movement right there.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. What’s cracking me up is Lena and I, we work long and hard hours, and so our schedule is like roll out of bed, do some work, well, a lot of work, come home, make some dinner, sit in front of the television to relax and watch TV for a bit and then repeat. But the thing that I do most of the time I sit in front of the couch on the floor the way you’re sitting right now. Or then I’ll be cross-legged or then I’m basically just shifting all the time, even while I’m just taking some time off and resting.
And one of the things that cracks me up is every night when I do this, and I squat a lot as well when I do it, but I think when I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone who ever did this. My parents never did. I never heard of people doing this. It was no one had a relationship to the floor. And so I love this whole idea of just have a relationship to the floor and how your body can interact with the floor with all those myriad things you can do.
Erwan Le Corre:
And just for you to know, I started this lifestyle when I was 19. I was back then following a very maverick guy. So I was 19, he was 48, but he taught me a number of things and basically I followed him in his lifestyle practice, which involved no furniture in the house. When I say we, it wasn’t a commune or anything like that, everybody had their own place in their own life, but it was like a little group and we would be sharing that lifestyle, great support system. So I was sleeping on blankets, folded blankets. I didn’t have a single piece of furniture in my house or TV because none of that was necessary. I was doing a day-to-day breathing exercises. We were eating back then vegetarian, organic. We were doing all kind of trainings barefoot. We were doing cold immersions. So that’s before the internet, that’s before phone and you can post every aspect of your life on some social media account. So I was doing that already. And when I started to teach natural movement, by the way back then nobody talked, sorry, about natural movement.
It was a concept that people were asking me if it was yoga or tai chi. They had no concept whatsoever. So in the way that people understand it today, it’s because I’ve been teaching it and talking about it in numerous interviews, magazines, articles, and already when I was teaching workshops back say in Brazil or in West Virginia in 2009, and people were asking me, “So how do I implement that in my life?” I’m like, “Well, to begin with, it’s not just the training that you do say three times a week, it’s also all the movements that you do on a day-to-day basis.”
And you have so many avenues for that. You can brush your teeth in a squat position or eat in a squat position. And so I was really inspiring people to add tons of simple natural movements. Not that because you have to train because they’re technical, like jumping and landing, hanging and climbing, but those that you should be doing every day like squatting, kneeling, getting up, getting down with your hands, with no hands, all of those, they are easily ignored. And I wrote a whole book about it and they’re all in the book.
Steven Sashen:
Well, around that same time is when, and I know what your opinion is going to be about this, so I’m looking forward to asking you this question. This is about the time that “functional fitness” started to become a thing. I didn’t even ask the question, but I knew that was going to be your reaction.
Erwan Le Corre:
Oh, man.
Steven Sashen:
Say more about functional fitness, Erwan.
Erwan Le Corre:
There are so many terms. There are so many terms in that idea of living healthy or moving well and this and that. And I don’t blame people for coming up with terms that are going to become hashtags or like by hiking, rewilding, functional this and functional that. I like the idea of functional-
Steven Sashen:
Let’s back up.
Erwan Le Corre:
– mentioned it that it doesn’t mean nothing.
Steven Sashen:
My joke is it’s rarely functional. I mean, so for people who don’t know, the gist of it is that the people who came up with it were saying when you go to a gym, you’re lifting weights, you’re doing a bench press. It’s just some linear thing where you’re just pushing up and down. You’re doing curls, you’re just bending your arms. That’s not what you do on a daily basis where if you’re lifting something, it’s a different motion. If you’re climbing, it’s a different motion. And what they did is just came up with different machines mostly or different activities that are barely more functional than just what you get in the gym.
And they made arguments like that if you’re doing functional fitness, you’re working on stabilizer muscles and smaller muscles, and somehow that makes you stronger when the evidence is that completely not true. But like you said, it is an amazing marketing term that people do respond to because it does seem to make sense. And like you said, and we agree, the idea of natural movement is even better in that regard. The one thing that natural movement doesn’t have that functional fitness does is it doesn’t imply a program where you go and get some desired benefit, like losing weight.
Erwan Le Corre:
Oh, it does.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I know that it does, but the phrase doesn’t communicate that in the same way that functional fitness-
Erwan Le Corre:
That’s not the emphasis. That’s not the emphasis.
Steven Sashen:
Right, of course.
Erwan Le Corre:
You shouldn’t be moving because you want to lose weight.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, that’s my point. My point is simply that functional fitness is a great marketing term because it does imply those things that people want from just going to the gym, but it’s not actually delivering what you are talking about, which is actually being a functioning human being who can actually do those functional things that in functional fitness training, you don’t really get.
Erwan Le Corre:
So look, functional training, it starts from the theory. My work does not stem from the theory. It stems from nature, it stems from experience and observation. It stems from the real world practical applications. Functional fitness stems from theory. So you look at a theory, you’d be like, “Okay, what are the basic universal movement patterns?” And you have pushing, pulling, twisting, lunging, and all these things. Pushing what with what? Pulling what with what? Okay, so if I do this with my finger, I’m pushing and if I do this with my finger, I’m pulling. Is that what you mean is functional fitness? That doesn’t mean anything.
Steven Sashen:
Well, no. You have to be able to do it your other fingers too.
Erwan Le Corre:
Because divorced from the original context where natural movement or movement is normally done and where it was shaped by such a long history of people moving in nature. So you can do lunging, you can do pushing. And again, pushing with your arms, pushing of your head, pushing or pulling with your feet. What do you mean exactly? It is divorced from context. What is it that you are trying to do that is actually practical? Explain to me because I have to scratch my head. Why are you pulling? Are you pulling because you’re climbing? Are you pulling because you are fighting? Grappling? What are you doing? And there’s something that is extremely confusing about doing movements that are completely divorced from the original meaning. When I have my people jump over an obstacle or balance on top of it or crawl under it, the practical reason why they’re doing this movement is instant.
Nobody has got to scratch their head why this movement is good for. While this movement is good for passing that obstacle, performing that practical task, no question asked. When you do a functional fitness drill, you still have to scratch your head as of-
Steven Sashen:
Why is this? What am I doing this work?
Erwan Le Corre:
Why, what situation, what context could that be used to? If you have to ask yourself what’s the application of any given drill movement, it’s very likely that it’s not practical in the first place. So functional, look, what does that mean? If you do bodybuilding, you are using your body functionally. You got to have function in your body to do bodybuilding, yoga, dance, whatever the movement is. So functional movement doesn’t mean anything.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s just like movement culture. It doesn’t mean anything because if I play ping pong, that’s movement culture. If I play badminton or if I play darts, that’s movement culture. Then if I do bodybuilding, that should be part of movement culture. Who are you to say that a bodybuilder is not doing some form of movement then using the body to do that movement? So if all I’m doing is skateboarding and I call that I’m part of a movement culture, okay, great. All you mean is that you’re having some kind of movement activity so you’re not fully physically idle on a day-to-day basis like most people today. Okay, wow, that’s enlightening. But that doesn’t take you anywhere, to me, that’s really relevant.
Steven Sashen:
I love the example you gave of dealing with an obstacle and climbing over it or jumping over it or going under or doing all the various things you could do with it. I want to come back to the thing I’m going to say now and I’m going to say it now just so I don’t forget. And that is I’d love you to give more examples of some of the things that people do and learn to do when they’re doing MovNat workshops. But here’s the question I want to ask first, and I’ll have to frame it this way. So I’m a former All-American gymnast, and as a gymnast I spend a lot of time doing things upside down or in the air or in unusual positions.
And gymnasts are the only people that I know who will say something like, “Hold on, I’ve got to get upside down for a few minutes.” There’s just something you earn from being upside down that you do or gymnast deal with obstacles in certain ways because we’ve dealt with in different ways. What I’m curious about is when people do MovNat or they work with you in some way, what have you heard about how they then literally just deal with simple physical things or how it changes their relationship with the objects they encounter in the world on a daily basis? And what does that look like?
Erwan Le Corre:
Well, that is the entire goal of at least the primary goal because there’s a difference between goals and benefits. We’re talking about weight loss. You may experience weight loss if you train physically though it’s no guarantee because there are so many other aspects of your lifestyle that are involved in losing weight or not losing weight or gaining weight, and what kind of weight, by the way? So this being said, the primary goal, we’re not talking about the other benefits of MovNat practice is to give you the real world physical capability that you’ve never developed in the first place. And how do I know that you’ve never developed it in the first place? Just because I’ve never met anybody who had that overall capability that isn’t trying a MovNat except to some extent, and I’m not saying they don’t exist, they’re just very rare.
That could be some people in the military, that can be some people that are firefighters, that can be some people who are real mavericks and who’ve trained a certain specific way, but usually people are either physically idle or they have some kind of activity that’s just one activity. So it means that they’re specialized. You go to the gym to get bigger muscles for instance or just to stay in shape to get some general strength. That’s awesome, by the way. When I was talking about functional fitness or movement culture, I was not in a way saying anything… I was talking about the terms themselves and how I don’t agree because the terms are very misleading or confusing and vague. I’m not talking about whatever a person does in their life to improve their quality of life, to be physically active, that’s beautiful regardless of what you do.
I think that’s beautiful. So I hope that nobody took it personally because some people may identify as a functional fitness expert or student-
Steven Sashen:
Agreed.
Erwan Le Corre:
And another person as part of a movement culture, and that’s beautiful. I’m just saying those terms, I don’t like them. That’s it. That’s my thing. And it’s whoever thinks different, it’s whatever. But I think that when people move in their life, it’s a beautiful thing. When we train in MovNat, what we teach people is to have practical abilities to do whatever is necessary that’s really directly useful and tangible in their lives. And that’s not just in the day-to-day situations. That could be to be prepared for situation that may never occur in your life.
Steven Sashen:
So let’s talk about a day-to-day one first. So what are some things that either you’ve seen or you’ve heard or that you’ve trained for that changes for people or their relationship to movement changes or their relationship to objects change as a result of doing the training or being introduced to the training?
Erwan Le Corre:
So much just… I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you one example. Most people can’t even deep squat, they cannot assume the position at all. They fall off balance. We’ve had support. They fall off balance. So to give a person that simple ability, simple yet so critical to health, because if you’re not… And that’s functional, right? That’s function except that function, we’re not going to recover it through functional drills. We’re going to recover it through natural movement drill. And when you hear natural, that’s simply the way that you’re supposed to behave physically on a day-to-day basis. So I’ll give you an example. I’m going to just move my laptop here and I’m going to change this. And you should be, for instance, seeing here that I’m in a sit position.
Steven Sashen:
So here I’ll describe for people. So you’re sitting with your back against the wall and now you have one leg extended, one leg up by your hips. Now you’ve got both legs up by your hips. So yeah, these are all variations of squat patterns.
Erwan Le Corre:
Okay. So if you train in MovNat, if you try natural movement, if you practice it, you may be able to cover, for instance, the ability to go like this and get back to a deep squat and then stand, come back and like that.
Steven Sashen:
So again, to go from sitting on the floor to standing, but going through a squat without having to use your hands, for example, which is what you’re pointing out, very natural thing. You go to many parts of the world, this is what people do on a daily basis.
Erwan Le Corre:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
In America, definitely not.
Erwan Le Corre:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Like I said, I never saw adults doing anything remotely like this. My dad actually used to show off. It was one of his things that he had loved to show off that even into his 70s he could sit on the ground and then put his legs in a lotus position. He was just flexible in that way and he just loved that he could do that. He couldn’t do anything else, but he could do that one.
Erwan Le Corre:
So that’s great, but you want to have the full scope.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly.
Erwan Le Corre:
So there was a scientific study from Brazil, and not that I feel the need to constantly come up with, “Hey, there’s a study that substantiates what I do.” Fortunately, our ancestors never needed any kind of science to be actually healthy and strong and resilient and just to be able to be fit in the full sense of the word. But that study showed that people who had an ability to from standing get to the ground and back up without using their hands or elbows or knees, so clearly greater mobility and greater real function, had that natural movement ability to do that kind of get up how the significantly greater life expectancy than others.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve seen that one-
Erwan Le Corre:
We know about people in hospital has been studied made where you assess how much grip strength people have, patients have in a hospital. Those who have greater grip strength will leave the hospital much faster than those who don’t. And by the way, Millennials today have not only they can deep squat, but this is a generality because there are still some healthy people. But generally speaking, the physical state and physical abilities of young people today compared to other generations just like that, they have no grip strength. I just want to finish on that point, Steven. Why on earth would it have a great life expectancy if you’re not strong and if you have significantly lower function? You may not see yourself as or a problem deep squatting or doing that kind of no hand get up as a health issue, but actually it is a health issue. There’s something about your health that is already lowered and you want to claim that. That’s what we teach.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a woman at Duke University, I think she’s a nurse who’s been doing research that shows, and I’m paraphrasing, I met her a few years ago, that showed if your walking speed gets under a certain level, it’s a high predictor that you will die within 10 years. And it’s not obviously for people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, but something like people in their seventies where walking speed was a very strong correlative factor with longevity, with life expectancy. And of course the idea that was not specifically that you want to increase someone’s walking speed, although that does help. It’s that whatever’s going on that’s making it so they can’t walk is the problem. And if you can address that through by starting with walking speed, you’re going to address some of those other factors. But boy, you remind me of something else. This morning when I was driving to work, I drove by a local high school and I saw the kids who were doing their physical fitness part of their class.
There’s no way you’d be able to guess what they were doing. So I will tell you, they were strolling very, very slowly for about a half a mile on a sidewalk. That’s their entire physical fitness program at this high school. It was amazing. I’ve seen it before, but I mean I was literally reminded of it this morning when I saw it. That’s all they do. In fact, sometimes when I’m out on the track training, when I used to train during the week in particular, they would come out and their entire physical fitness program was walking for a half a mile around the track, two laps of the track while they’re just chatting, hanging out, strolling. That was it. It’s like, wow.
Erwan Le Corre:
I know. It’s extremely alarming.
Steven Sashen:
It is. I’m also curious about, for some reason, well again, because of my own history, but I’m also curious just about the way we interact with our environment. So when I thought about the practical, not practical applications, but practical examples of what happens when people start moving differently, I thought about how I get in and out of things like beds and couches, which is often jumping or rolling either onto them or off of them. If people haven’t had that experience, they don’t know that that’s an option, let alone how fun it is to do that. Or wait, I’m trying to remember where I was. Oh my god, I know. I was in a store like a Sears or something and they had mattresses. And so what I was doing is I was running-
Erwan Le Corre:
Sorry, finish the story.
Steven Sashen:
That’s okay. Well, I was running towards them and basically what I would do to test the mattresses is I would do a dive roll and land on the mattress and then bounce off and go to the next one. And some of the salespeople said, “Hey, you can’t do that here.” I said, “Hey, I have to test the mattress to see if it’ll work for what I do on a daily basis.”
Erwan Le Corre:
That’s hilarious. You have a youth to you that is both the mindset. And if you have the mindset, then you will have the physical behavior, the movement behavior that’s aligned-
Steven Sashen:
I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it goes both ways because if you don’t know that that movement is possible for you to do, it would never occur to you. And the movement happens to be “young or playful” or whatever it is. But I’m curious just about that. But of course the extreme version of what I’m describing is now free running in parkour.
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s a beautiful thing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s a beautiful thing. But again, usually emerging trends, that’s it. Things are changing.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Erwan Le Corre:
No, they’re not. Emerging trends like that are exactly the sign that, generally speaking, things are going the other way. And because young people today realize that maybe they’re 15 and they’re like, “Oh my God, all I’ve been doing until this time is gaming on the couch, being on my smartphone, on my iPad, whatever it is, watching TV, being indoors. I’m going to be an adult soon.” And some of them have a wake-up call where they’re like, “I need to be capable. I need to be strong. What am I going to do if running is going to be boring? I’m not into any specific sports.” They may have all kind of… But then parkour, it’s a freedom and it looks cool and I can be popular maybe.
Steven Sashen:
Anti-corporate. Yeah.
Erwan Le Corre:
I’m going to behave like all the superheroes that I have watched in all the movies and video games that I’ve been playing with. They all do those crazy movements, but I could do it too. Look, it doesn’t matter what your motivation is, it’s great that that trend exists. A lot of people who do parkour come and train with us. And the reason is not only because we have actually a method that’s really detailed and effective, it’s a method for teaching all these movements, but we also have a more complete range of movements that we teach, that we have people practice.
Steven Sashen:
It’s interesting that… I’m trying to think of how to frame this. It’s becoming more and more popular to watch people do more and more extreme things. So I’m thinking like American Ninja Warrior where hugely popular show, watching a very small number of people doing very insane stuff. And it just makes me think about what can we do to bridge that gap to help people become more active? Not because it’s a prescription, not because we want to tell them they should because it’s good for them, but to give people the experience of the fun and pleasure of that and if you want to say the rightness of it. Again, so that there’s not this big gap between sitting on the couch and being an American Ninja Warrior.
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s an extremely important, very good and very important point that you’re making when you look at performances in any special light sports. Because for anyone to have the ability to perform at a really high level in any discipline, you’ve got to be hyperspecialized, had to do that. So you look at, say, you go on YouTube or you go on one on TV or on social media and you see amazing parkour, you see amazing acrobatics, you see amazing rock climbing, you see amazing whatever you’re into, spearfishing, amazing…
Steven Sashen:
Hula hoop.
Erwan Le Corre:
Whatever. Okay. You have movement of some sort. You have people who have both incredible innate talent because that’s a fact. People are just naturally talented. And then you also have told dedication to just being great at what they do. And so they become that. The value of this is to show you what specialization and dedication can enable some people to achieve. And it can be very inspiring to others to watch and be like, “I may never be able to do that, but I’m going to try.” But the problem with that also is that it leaves a lot of people disheartened because I can’t even do that. I won’t even try. There’s no way on earth that I’ll ever be able to do it.
This is where I position what I do. I’m an educator at heart. If some people are able of elite physical performance, beautiful, good for them. But that’s not the case of most people. And what most people need is not to be seeking an elite level performance. It’s just to have an overall physical competency and capability that is going to last a long time, that is not difficult or too difficult to acquire, that is not too difficult to maintain and that can be maintained a long time while also having fun enjoyment in doing it. That is MovNat because the movement you do from crawling to balancing to some running, jumping and landing, hanging, climbing, lifting and carrying, throwing, catching, all of that are just movement, number one, that you are designed to do.
So it comes natural to your body. What we teach is to be efficient at those movements, to be efficient technically at each of those techniques, to teach you techniques that you may not know or that you didn’t know you could do that movement that way or more efficient, number one. And then to also have an efficient practice to just not be a jackass, try to go in the woods, try out some stuff and maybe twist an ankle and come back and be like, “I’m too old. I’m already 25.”
Steven Sashen:
I’m having this fantasy thought right now that what would it be like if-
Erwan Le Corre:
What is that?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, it’s really cool. You think of something that doesn’t exist and you imagine that it does, you should try sometime. So here’s my fantasy thought. My fantasy thought, or this is just one of them, is that in the same way that we have as children go through the educational process, we expect them to develop a certain amount of competency in a number of different things, many of which they will never use again, either because they’re not practically used or because it’s not their own interest.
So for example, I had to learn some things about history. History is just not my thing, for whatever reason, that’s not where my brain goes. I don’t organize things in that way, but I understand how history works. I get how things relate to each other. Anyway, what would it be like if part of the curriculum had a… What’s the word? Some core competency with certain kinds of movements. You can’t graduate high school unless you can do a cartwheel, unless you know how to roll, unless you can… I mean if we identify what are the dozen simple movements that everyone should be able to demonstrate that they know how to do. I mean, boy, that would be incredible.
Erwan Le Corre:
Yeah, that would be incredible. But at the same time, public schools are not-
Steven Sashen:
I said it was a fantasy.
Erwan Le Corre:
They’re not designed. Okay, so I’m coming back to reality. So let’s keep the fantasy alive. In that fantasy that I’m now entering in my own mind, people would actually be exuberant with their movements. They would have some form of movement every day, and that it is-
Steven Sashen:
And you find the ones that work for you.
Erwan Le Corre:
Look, my kids don’t go to… They’re homeschooled.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Wait, hold on, hold on. Let me say this. What a shock.
Erwan Le Corre:
You should see how my kids move. No instruction, but they have example every day and they mimic that example. So one is amazing at climbing, the other one is amazing at running, the other one is amazing at jumping. Wow. Little body like five years old like massive jumps, perfect landings. I never taught him anything, but if you’ve seen me do it, kids have seen me or my wife do it better than that. They wear onto our bodies as we were doing those movements.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Erwan Le Corre:
We never used a stroller ever. Never owned one ever. So you can imagine you go anywhere and we’ve traveled and we go there and there. When babies are babies, you don’t have a stroller. They’re on you. They’re even on your wife or on me, on the husband. What that means is that they have imprinted the movement patterns and experienced movement patterns of other parents that it is crawling, running, climbing, jumping, have jumped with holding my kids. Not anything dangerous, of course, but just the sensation. You know when you jump, all of a sudden you feel airborne, you’re like… Like when you’re in an elevator and then you land. When a baby is held, he feels exactly the same. What is that? But you can also see, so kids could see and they could feel those movement patterns. No wonder if they want to replicate them also because it’s the example they have in front of them every day. Do you have any expectation from the public system to make my kids healthy or physically capable? Absolutely not, because they know that it’s just not happening.
It’s not happening. Programs in schools are extremely poorly designed, and this is not saying anything about the actually knowledgeable and dedicated PE teachers that there is all over the country or the world. It is to say something absolutely negative about the intentions behind the people who design the programs and they have just complete… It’s not enough that they to say that they don’t know what physical education is. They just don’t give a crap about it. They don’t care that-
Steven Sashen:
I think it’s worse.
Erwan Le Corre:
Steven, I’m just going to finish on that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, sorry.
Erwan Le Corre:
Those people who are in charge, it’s not only that they don’t give a crap that people are going to be healthy or not. They want them to not be healthy, otherwise there would be solutions. Yeah, that’s conspiracy theory if you want. Every year, when you hear that Google right now is diminishing the traffic by half of any alternative health website.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not sure about that.
Erwan Le Corre:
Yes, it’s happening because they’re dealing with corporations that have something to sell.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s a whole different thing.
Erwan Le Corre:
Just verify. Just check it out. It’s happening. So what I want to say, back to physical education, every year millions of kids leave school having acquired zero physical capability. They’re not educated with their body, all right?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Erwan Le Corre:
So what would happen if the same millions of kids every day, every year would be to be leaving school without knowing how to read and write.
Steven Sashen:
Agreed. I totally agree. And it’s funny, I’m thinking when I was a kid, we had a thing that was called the presidential physical fitness test or something like that. And there was some number of activities, maybe 10 activities. And depending on how you did in each of these activities, you got different levels of some sort of award. And there are things about it that I totally loved. One was, I’m a sprinter by trade. I mean that’s what I do. And one of the events was a 600 yard run, and I think you had to do it in, I don’t know, two minutes something or maybe 2:30, whatever it was. It was some time that frankly was not a really fast time. I could barely make it because 400 meters is a long run for me. I don’t do it. So 600 yards, that was crazy.
There was also a woman named Joy Abramson. I hope I’m not embarrassing Joy to say this, I shouldn’t have used her name, but there it is. She was one of the women who she matured faster than anybody else. So she in sixth grade was already like an adult-sized person and couldn’t run that 600 yards either. I think with Joy, she went really, really slow and she just didn’t like it at all, it seemed, and she always had her head down. But at the end of the race, everybody would finish. And after we figured out our times, we’d all turn to Joy and go, “How much money did you find?” Because she always found money running around this particular course, which is great.
But I think about this curriculum of these fundamental movements that everyone should have to know, demonstrate that they could do. And there’s invariably going to be things that no matter what size you are, what shape you are, what weight you are, what strength you are, these are things that you can do. And some you’ll do better than others, some you’ll like more than others. And boy, I’m just enjoying this idea of to your point, what would it be like if everyone did walk out and had this core competency, and how would that change the educational system all along if we weren’t expecting people to just sit all day every day?
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s a beautiful fantasy and it’s also actually also true because for instance, a scientific study was made using two natural movements. So the people researched it said, “Hey, we’re using the MovNat method.” Some people will be climbing around a tree, like hanging, and then they will also do some balancing.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Erwan Le Corre:
Just balancing surface. That was first group and the other group would be doing yoga, third group would be doing nothing. And then their working memory would be tested before and after, before doing natural movement, after doing natural movement, before doing yoga, after yoga, before doing nothing, after doing nothing. What’s working memory? So working memory is actually much more important than IQ in determining, forgive my funky French accent, how you process, how fast, how well you process information. So basically people have a high IQ, maybe very smart in that way of solving very abstract problems, but not necessarily situationally.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Erwan Le Corre:
So with working memory, you’re much better being situational about how you process information. And I’m not a scientist in that regard. So I hope that I give a decent explanation of what working memory is. But in any case, it’s very important aspect of cognition. So the point was to determine if there was any benefit to doing nothing or doing yoga or doing natural movement. The people who did nothing as you would expect scored the same.
Steven Sashen:
Right. No difference.
Erwan Le Corre:
The people who did yoga as you may not expect scored the same.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Erwan Le Corre:
The people who did natural movements scored much higher.
Steven Sashen:
I have a theory about why. Do you?
Erwan Le Corre:
Oh yeah, I know, and actually I’ve already said it before science determined it. It’s not that I’m particularly smart and it’s not that I’m a scientist, I just like to observe things. When you know that the brain, the reason for having a brain is to be able to move it’s, but not just doing any movement, because yoga is movement clearly, or tai chi, it’s for locomotion that is adaptable, adaptable to complex environments, which is natural movement in nature. So you’re going to go through, the forest surface is going to be slippery and stable and predictable. And through that, you are in one location, point A, and you look at point B, that’s where you want to be. And your brain is already a fortune-teller determine determining how are you going to navigate so you get there?
It’s extremely brilliant. Today, even robotics can’t achieve the same exactly. So that’s the number one reason why we have a brain. So if you are that little animal that has one or two neurons, I don’t remember, and you’re basically, you start as an animal, you’re moving through the ocean, and then all of a sudden you decide to settle for the mussel life, you stick on the rock and you become not a shell, you become a plant, you become seaweed. And the first thing that they do, so they’re born animal and they die vegetal. First thing they do as they switch to the vegetal life is to dissolve their mini-brain. Why? Because it has become useless. Why? Because they don’t need to navigate their body with locomotion through complex environments.
So adaptability of locomotion is the number one reason why we have a brain, not a body, but a brain. Not for abstract thinking, not for discussing the history of art and fine wines and things like that. It’s beautiful, but that’s not the primary reason. So it would make perfect sense that if you’re going to do the movements that are adaptable, that your very brain is originally designed to take care of, that is going to boost cognition, it’s going boost brain function.
And you don’t have a brain for movement and the brain for the rest of your activities. It’s the same person, it’s the same brains, the same cognition. So if you boost your cognition, regardless of why and how, and it’s going to carry over areas of recognition that have nothing to do with movement, such as abstract thinking. Yoga won’t do it. Why? Because in yoga, you do not adapt to the environment. As a matter of fact, you react it. You don’t want branches and sticks and rocky funky stuff in the way because that could destabilize you.
Because look, when you do yoga, you can close your eyes because you think, okay, I’m more mindful. Okay, that’s the point. Which of the two is more mindful? Is it to close your eyes and to do movement only on the spot, so you don’t have to adapt to anything, nothing is bothering you, right? And on top of that, you’re replicating exact same movements that you replicate all the time or would it be to actually keep your eyes and all your senses open and to be extremely sharp and alert and responsive to all the information you get from a changing environment as you move?
Tell me which one requires the more mindfulness. That’s right. It’s natural movement. And this is why you gain more benefits in working memory in so many other aspects of cognition actually that have not been proven yet if you do natural movement than if you do yoga. And this is not to say anything negative about yoga, it’s just an observation. Yoga’s beautiful, but it’s not what people think in term of benefits necessarily.
Steven Sashen:
Kirk Erickson is a researcher, I don’t know if he still is. He was at the University of Pittsburgh, this is maybe seven, eight years ago. He published a study, it was a longitudinal study that I think they did over about nine years where they looked at elderly people and they did an fMRI and checked out their brain, and then they tracked them over time. And I don’t remember if he assigned groups of people to be the groups that walked versus the groups that didn’t. But suffice it to say at the end of the study, the elderly people who had done more walking had retained more brain matter, more gray matter in their brain. And I called him and I said, “Why do you think this is?” And he said, “It was from the stimulation of being out and walking and seeing things and feeling things and hearing things.” I said, “Can you imagine what it would’ve been like if they actually were feeling the ground and they weren’t in the stupid shoes?” And he said, “Oh yeah, that would’ve been a whole different thing.”
Erwan Le Corre:
Exactly. And on uneven surface-
Steven Sashen:
Uneven surfaces, yeah, exactly.
Erwan Le Corre:
Because if you’re barefoot, but you’re barefoot on flat, it’s complete predictable. The stimulation to the feed is exactly the same all the time.
Steven Sashen:
It’s so funny, I went into Costco this morning and I love the Costco floors. I was barefoot. I love the Costco floors. They’re nice and smooth and cool, but I like it even more when I get out into the parking lot and it’s all those extra sensations, and it’s a different thing, but it’s like both of them are good. There’s times where you want to get the stimulation, there’s times you want to rest. There’s times where you want something nice and smooth and cool.
Erwan Le Corre:
Absolutely, absolutely. Look, there’s nothing… God, I love my comfort, man. Some people say, “Comfort is bad.” No, trust me, if I was to remove all and any comfort from your life, you would be screaming. Comfort is what we are naturally evolutionarily-
Steven Sashen:
Looking for.
Erwan Le Corre:
Exactly. You want comfort. Dogs want it. Dogs, you let them go on your couch and they make it their own. And if you try to get them off the couch, they’ll start to be gnarly. So comfort is great.
Steven Sashen:
Did you just call me a dog without knowing it?
Erwan Le Corre:
Did I?
Steven Sashen:
Well, yeah, I do the same thing on my couch.
Erwan Le Corre:
Big mistake. I’ll try to be respectful from now on.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no, no, I have no problem being called a dog when it comes to being on my couch. I like my couch. Our couch, that’s a whole other story. There’s a great couch story.
Erwan Le Corre:
We don’t have a couch. But honestly, if I lay down, we have a nice bed, comfortable, and I’m able to sleep on hard surfaces because I’ve done that a lot for many years. I’m able to enjoy comfort. Comfort is not a problem. It’s how you manage comfort. If you are constantly seeking comfort, ultimately you lower your ability to handle discomfort and that makes you uncomfortable.
Steven Sashen:
There’s another aspect to it that occurred to me that’s relevant for my end on the footwear side. So the number one way that people try to sell two things, mattresses and shoes, is based on comfort. And ironically, they’re trying to tell the same story. It’s like, “Here’s all this padding. Isn’t this great?” When people go to try on shoes, they try them on in a store and they’ll say something like, “Oh, this feels really comfortable,” because they like the cushioning or the texture of the material or the whatever. But in real life, those things aren’t actually comfortable. Our product developer, Dennis, loves to say, “If I asked you to do 20 push-ups, do you want to do them on the floor or on a memory foam mattress?”
And everyone says, “Well, on the floor.” He’s, “Well, why?” It’s like, “Well, because you get more feedback, you get more response.” He said, “Well, it’s the same thing with your feet.” If you use your body, that’s actually more comfortable because you’re more efficient. If you just put yourself on the mattress, you’re going to get stuck in there and you can’t really move correctly. And eventually your body reacts badly and it gets worse and worse over time. Same thing when you’re doing the same thing in footwear, all that cushioning doesn’t actually help. It feels good temporarily, but isn’t good for you. And in the long run, it’s going to end up being bad. And people go-
Erwan Le Corre:
Question, Steven, what if you were to tell people you got to do jumping, like clapping push-ups, would they have the same answer? Because you see, when you do a push-up, your hand stays on the floor. They don’t take off.
Steven Sashen:
Even more.
Erwan Le Corre:
You basically have to land-
Steven Sashen:
Even more. In fact, I was thinking that exact same thing. If you have to jump and land, it’s the same thing. The cushioning isn’t good because it makes you unstable and puts your joints in bad positions, and that’s where you’re going to screw things up. I mean, the only way you get the feet… When I tell people how to run barefoot, I go, “Take off your shoes.” And they go, “But you sell Xero Shoes.” I went, “No, no. Take off your shoes. If you’re worried about the ground, that’s why we make Xero Shoes, next best thing to barefoot. But the important part, take off your shoes, find a nice, smooth hard surface.” And they go, “Well, don’t you want to do it on the grass first?” Like, “No, hard surface because you need to get the feedback to then develop the right movement patterns so that you find that that’s actually really, really comfortable to do, more comfortable than running on something soft because your body knows how to react to that and reacts to it better.”
And again, my favorite thing is when people say stuff like, “Yeah, but we didn’t evolve to run on concrete.” I go, “Have you ever been to the plains of Africa where the packed mud is as hard as concrete and the things that are packed into it are sticks and twigs and pointy things that are worse than any piece of concrete you will ever step on in your entire life?” The surfaces we run on now are just a dream compared to what we evolved to run on. And I’m not saying that you want to stay on the road all the time, get off and play, jump on things, climb over things, jump over things, get on a trail. But the idea that somehow we haven’t adapted to be able to run a marathon on the road is of course absurd.
Erwan Le Corre:
When I moved to the US in 2009, first workshops were in that summer 2009, and then I don’t know if you know that, but I actually moved to Boulder.
Steven Sashen:
I did not know that.
Erwan Le Corre:
So that was from say 2009 to… We didn’t know each other yet. I think I’ve left somewhere around January 2010 or something. So I just stayed there a few months. But where I was living was close to those, not the Flatirons, but the other part. Anyways, I would go up there barefoot, and that’s even before the barefoot trend started. And man, I was going up and down and people were just stunned. I guess today more people have heard of that idea of barefoot running, but they still think that to be absolutely barefoot is really radical and near impossible.
Steven Sashen:
Oh no, I hear it all the time when people… As I’m running by someone, when someone says, “You can’t do that.” It’s like, “Didn’t you notice I just did it?” Yes. It’s amazing to me that the way I describe it is… Actually, I’m going to back up and talk about Irene Davis again because she said it great at an American College of Sports Medicine conference last year. The last question for this panel discussion about footwear that I was involved in, she said to the panel, which included people from Brooks and Adidas, she was, “Look, in the ’60s, we were running in super thin-soled running shoes and playing basketball in Chuck Taylor Converse shoes. We weren’t getting the kind of injuries or the severity of injuries or the number of injuries that we’re getting now. So what problem were you trying to solve and why didn’t it work?”
And the other guys had no answer. And now, it’s been so long, it’s been 50 years plus that people have had the idea that you can’t be barefoot, that you need shoes with motion control and arch support and all the rest, that it’s no longer marketing that shoe companies have to do to convince you of this.
We teach our children, we tell them that it’s true. It’s common knowledge, it’s conventional wisdom. It’s the way it is. And part of what you and I are talking about doing is not only breaking out of that, but it’s not creating anything new. It’s just reminding people of what they knew as children, what they experienced as children, what we all did up until 50 years ago. And so on the one hand, we have a big challenge in front of us of combating hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate interests. On the other hand, we have the simple challenge of just all we’re doing is reminding people, just asking them to wake up a little bit, which is way easier than trying to teach them some new thing that requires a whole bunch of explanation that makes no sense.
Erwan Le Corre:
You just said, which I agree with you, is that we’re providing inspiration and solutions in the term of software as I do like the method for trying natural movement in term of hardware like you do with your high-quality minimal footwear. But yet you know that we are up against corporate interest, billions and billions dollars industries, all right?
Steven Sashen:
Yes.
Erwan Le Corre:
So back to that Google thing, please check it out because you wouldn’t be surprised that the number one search engine has ties with those huge corporate interest.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no. I’m suggesting it’s simpler-
Erwan Le Corre:
To prevent some alternative.
Steven Sashen:
No, no. I’m suggesting it’s simpler. No, my contention is that Google only cares about two things. One is giving people, and not necessarily in this order, one is giving people… No, actually it is in this order. It’s giving people relevant results. And what I mean by relevant results is that when someone searches for something, they end up finding something that they’ll click somewhere and they want to click on it, or they’ll click somewhere, not find it, come back and click on something else, but they’ll find enough relevant results that eventually they get to where they want to go. But here’s the key, here’s the caveat. They want the companies who are giving the relevant results to be paying for it. So things that used to be free, you now have to pay for. So the top positions in Google are now paid ads and the side positions in Google are paid ads.
They’ve actually taken the home page and made it more about paid results than non-paid results. So it’s not that Google is consciously trying to control the dissemination of information, it’s that the information is being presented in a way based on who is able and willing to pay for those particular relevant results. So sometimes there will be corporations who are willing to pay more and they’re going to get the results. And the “alternatives” are not pushed down deliberately, but just harder to find because the paid stuff is what pays the rent for Google.
And sometimes, depending on the search, it’s the alternatives that are the ones that are providing the more money to Google and therefore getting better results. And often, I mean, the problem that we’ve seen with both Facebook and Google is what’s happened now is people realize that and they’re willing to pay more money to get in front of people with things that are patently false. I’m not talking about alternative medicine or health, although that’s one of the domains where this can happen. But basically just people know that since Google wants to make money, all you have to do is provide them a way of making money and they will promote you more. It couldn’t be simpler in certain ways. And because of that, couldn’t be more horrible.
Erwan Le Corre:
That makes sense. I still believe that there are conspiracies.
Steven Sashen:
There may be. But look, the simple thing is if Google were aggressively trying to do what you’re suggesting, there are so many conspiracies and conspiracy theories and simply things that are factually inaccurate that they would have track on a daily basis, it would require the entire population of America to do that. I mean, the simple thing is if they really cared, the flat earth movement wouldn’t exist. So they don’t care. That’s not their-
Erwan Le Corre:
Well, listen, the flat earth movement does not sell anything. The people-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yes, it does. Oh yeah, it does. There are people-
Erwan Le Corre:
No, listen, brother, there is no flat earth billion industry business, all right? However, there is the industry just for medication, whatever it has to do with healthcare. It’s so huge.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Erwan Le Corre:
Don’t you think that there’s potentially, and again, I could be wrong, but there are ties between those interest so much to sell and so much profit to make-
Steven Sashen:
Again, not the way you think, if anything, because as someone who’s been involved in trying to market products, here’s what I can tell you, a couple things. So when we started this in late 2009 through 2010, 2011, I couldn’t advertise on Google because I couldn’t afford to because the big shoe companies who were selling things they called minimalist but weren’t really minimalist were paying huge amounts of money for every click that they got. They were just sucking the clicks out of the universe, if you will. So I couldn’t pay for them. Now, Google didn’t need to do anything for that. I mean, that was just the corporations trying to control the conversation and using these platforms to do that. Now, I don’t think that the corporations per se have a relationship with say Google in that regard. But what happens is this, the more money you spend, the more you then get access to tools and ideas and information that allows you to spend more money.
Erwan Le Corre:
Okay. So how about this aspect of conspiracy, simply commercials conspiracy is that Google won’t tell you that the result of whatever could be is biased based on pay to play.
Steven Sashen:
Again, not entirely. Not entirely. And again, I say this simply because I know guys who game the system all day long.
Erwan Le Corre:
Anybody who’s going to go and Google, and that’s pretty much everybody to search say minimal and huge expect unbiased results. And they won’t get that according to what you said, they won’t get that because some companies have paid and others have not.
Steven Sashen:
I’m just saying that the bias is a little different than what you think and the fundamental problem… And look, I’m not pro or anti-Google in this conversation. I just know some things about what they do and some things I don’t know because mostly people don’t know because they are always trying to balance these things of giving people the information they’re looking for and paying the rent. And sometimes those things definitely conflict with each other. No question.
Erwan Le Corre:
But you did affirm that search results are biased.
Steven Sashen:
Well, they have to be.
Erwan Le Corre:
Based on who pays the most.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no, no, no.
Erwan Le Corre:
As a Google consumer.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, sorry, it’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying-
Erwan Le Corre:
Who thinks about it?
Steven Sashen:
No, what I’m saying is what you see on the homepage is being impacted by who pays the most, but that’s not the entirety of search results. So there’s the paid results and the unpaid results. And one thing Google has played with is how to make it clear that something is a paid result versus an unpaid result, but not making it too clear. And so it’s definitely doable. The results aren’t skewed by a bias for some particular thing but-
Erwan Le Corre:
Telling you it’s a conspiracy. What’s a conspiracy? Doesn’t have to be something crazy about aliens. All it has to do is something that people do without telling you.
Steven Sashen:
Well, look, you live in New Mexico, we know that you’re already controlled by aliens because everyone’s coming to hang out by you. So that’s a given. So you don’t have furniture. It’s not that you don’t have furniture because you don’t want it. It’s because the aliens came and took it. We know that. So we didn’t talk about that in this podcast, but we know the aliens stole your furniture and took it to Area 51. That’s common knowledge. But more importantly, anyway-
Erwan Le Corre:
At least you and I are having a one-on-one conversation as that totally improvised and not planned in any way. So hopefully, your audience will be okay with that.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve never planned for a conversation. It takes too much effort.
Erwan Le Corre:
For sure. I like to say this, I’ve always fought before I even started what I do that I was up against, not a conspiracy necessarily, but at least such layers and layers and layers of conventions.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Erwan Le Corre:
What’s what I call normalcy that is not necessarily your friend. Normalcy is not your friend. The same way Terence McKenna said, “Culture is not your friend.” So today’s culture is what we call normal is actually in so many ways, beautiful and practical and just very practical.
Steven Sashen:
But not normal.
Erwan Le Corre:
At the same time, it’s in so many ways unhealthy and we want to question that. And there’s also lots of industry that just don’t want change, don’t want alternatives, and that’s what we do. So clearly it’s not easy and clearly it’s such a fight or quest in this industry.
Steven Sashen:
I agree, and I think there may be another way of playing it too. I want to back up to something you said before about, I can’t remember how, oh, about kids in the physical education program in schools. I know that some of the influence on physical education programs has happened because of insurance problems. So for example, I know that when I was in high school, again, I was a gymnast. So we had trampolines and I know that there was a number of very high profile lawsuits where people made so much money suing the school or suing coaches or suing the trampoline manufacturers and trampolines vanished from schools. Now they’re back in trampoline parks. So there’s this sort of ebb and flow, but I know that a lot of what has happened in the physical education programs of schools has been dumbed down, if you will, because the schools are worried about getting their asses sued if they do anything that could put people in…
It used to be just physically dangerous or harmful situations, now it’s emotionally harmful situations. Now they’re worried that if they have kickball, that someone who gets picked last is going to sue the school because they were excluded because of whatever the hell it is. But what this leads me to is I’m not trying to complain about this, I’m actually thinking as we move forward, the question is how can we align ourselves, and I don’t know if this is possible, how can we align ourselves with the same people who have been controlling the conversation, if you will, in a negative way to demonstrate that this opportunity that we’re presenting is actually positive, can make them more money, can save them more money, can be more efficient in various other ways? Because we know that it can, it can reduce healthcare costs, for example. Now again, there are people who have conflicting issues about healthcare costs, some people who want it to go up because they make money on it, some people who want to go down because it cost their company.
Erwan Le Corre:
People who actually own the healthcare or health insurance-
Steven Sashen:
Maybe. I mean, again, there’s a conflict. I’m not saying there’s no conflict there, but what I am saying, what I do think is, again, when I started the podcast by saying this is a grassroots groundswell kind of thing, I think that the message of natural movement is so screamingly obvious. Here, let’s back up to the other thing I say, we’re trying to make natural movement the obvious choice, the way natural food is. So clearly there are people who make a lot of money selling processed foods that are not inherently good for people.
Many of those same companies are now providing and promoting more natural food. Walmart is the number one provider of organic produce in the country. So while there are conflicts, when something becomes so obvious to a certain group of people that the movement, if you will, or the momentum is obvious to, let’s call them, the powers that be for the fun of it, then they’re going to go for the ride. Gluten-free was not a thing until big companies went, “Oh, there’s people who are actually having issues with this and there’s other people who aren’t having issues, but they’re going to want to take care of this. We can actually get behind gluten-free.” So maybe there’s a way.
Erwan Le Corre:
We can definitely change the culture, but it’s usually the small players who do that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and here we are. I mean this is-
Erwan Le Corre:
Exactly. I agree with you. For instance, I just came back, I was at an airport recently and I just was hungry, didn’t eat the food in the plane. And so I looked at snacks and I was happily surprised to see the amount of healthy or at least not alternatives in a store in an airport. All I can think of was, okay, that has to do with the paleo, the keto movement, all of that. A number of small players are changing the industry. Well, yes, because look, you put those products on the shelves. Either people want that kind of product-
Steven Sashen:
Or not.
Erwan Le Corre:
Or they don’t. And if they do, it flies off the shelves. And when it does, then the people who manage those stores are going to order more of the same product and more of similar products. So basically it’s in the hands of the consumer. We always know that. It’s in the hands of the consumer and the consumer’s consumer relation to what they believe is the best and what they like the best, and influences that are not mainstream, at least originally, eventually may become mainstream.
Steven Sashen:
Well, look, that’s why I’m having these conversations is we’re trying to just get more people thinking about what’s natural and demanding. It’s funny, not funny ha ha, funny, annoying as crap, that when the minimalist movement started to wane, the reason that it happened was that the bigger shoe companies that were making products that they called minimalist realized that if they actually made minimalist products, it would make people, again question the rest of their product line and could really jeopardize their business. So they started pulling out of selling minimalist products to stores, but then the people who report on sales data we’re saying, “Oh look, sales of minimalist products are down. That means people don’t want them.”
It’s like, “Well, no, no, no, no, you have it backwards.” The big companies who were providing most of the products weren’t providing as much, so people couldn’t buy as much, so sales went down. It was like a totally upside down bit of logic. There was some reason that I brought that up, but I can’t remember what the hell it was. Something having to do with just, oh, the consumer behavior. The consumer is definitely controlling it to a certain extent, but there’s got to be product available. There has to be the information available so that they can act on that so that it can change the culture, it can change the conversation. It can create a new, I’m going to say, zeitgeist.
Erwan Le Corre:
They have a tremendous financial power just to stir things in the direction that is best for them and no, it’s not best for the people. They can pay… Well anyways, I’m preaching to the choir.
Steven Sashen:
No, I know, but it’s fun to do it sometimes.
Erwan Le Corre:
It’s definitely a fact. So yeah, they can totally afford to just not even commercialize any single pseudo-minimal.
Steven Sashen:
And look, well, it’s not going to happen like that. I mean, because again, this is a big ship that we’re trying to turn, but it doesn’t matter because we got to turn the ship and at a certain point there’s critical mass. The ship has turned enough that it’s now on a new course. And eventually I hope that this whole idea of natural movement takes hold during my lifetime. I would love to see it come to fruition enough that it really does become something that is so obvious and practical and simple. I don’t even know what other adjectives I’m looking for, but I’m also not naive. I mean, on the one hand, I’m a 57-year-old guy. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left in me, things like this can take time.
On the other hand, we’ve got the internet and all these other communication tools that are accelerating the dissemination of information and maybe it can happen faster. I mean, boy, that would be awesome and I don’t even care. I’m not looking for it to happen so that it’s Steven Sashen or Erwan who it’s like, “Look what we did.” If Nike and Adi and Puma and all the rest, if they started making truly minimalist footwear that actually fit human feet that were actually good for you, I would be ecstatic. If we were just the people who catalyzed the change, I would be thrilled. I don’t care if it’s me or not, I just want to see it happen because it’s the right thing.
Erwan Le Corre:
That’s why I never called my method the Le Corre method, right? I called it something else because my idea originally was I don’t care if people know me. I don’t even care they know where it all comes from. I just want them to use the tool and to harvest the benefits in their own life to have higher, greater quality of life. So it was never an ego thing. And by the way, it’s been 10 years, actually more than I do have the 10 years publicly, and I have released hundreds of thousands of videos. I haven’t done that because it was never about blasting people with my face and my voice and my persona. It was about promoting the mindset, the method, the lifestyle, all of that to benefit people.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a tricky balance.
Erwan Le Corre:
But I believe in what you say, look, I didn’t start with a business plan, all right? I started with vision and the way… By the way, are people still listening? If you do, if you do, I want you to do this. I’m going to keep talking and Steven and I are going to keep talking instead of looking at the screen, instead of looking at us, me and Steven-
Steven Sashen:
They may be listening without looking.
Erwan Le Corre:
Hopefully, you have a window with some horizon, some distance. You’re going to keep listening while looking at us as far as you can. And I’m going to do that as I’m carrying it on. And it’s a vision. And the way I see a vision is I imagine a different culture, a different society where lives would be lived much more healthily and that I would be one of the people to create that change in this time we live in. And what’s a vision? A vision is not something that you hope for. It’s not something that you wish and it’s not something that you believe in. Shocking. What do you mean? You have to believe in it. You have to hope for it.
This is the way I see it is that this is something I know it is already happening. At what scale? At what pace is it going to evolve this? I don’t know. But to have change, you need to have more than hope or wish. And even it’s belief, but it’s higher than belief. Belief in the sense when you know it’s beyond belief, right? When you say I believe in something, you may have some doubt somewhere, you may have some, whatever, some restrictions, some limitations sometimes. Is this going to happen? Is this not going to happen? When will it happen? When you know you think this way, it has already happened.
And I’m doing it, proof, and then people are doing it, proof. You are selling shoes. Okay, you are making products, for profit, beautiful. Because here’s the thing, you are selling products that you have designed with a pure intention of not just make a living for yourself, but the pure intention of equipping people with truly healthy, functional footwear. That’s the mindset. That’s what you believe in and believe in, but that’s also what you know because if your shoes are there, people aware of them, people email you say, “Just changed my life just changing my footwear.” See, that’s beautiful. It’s happening. You know it’s there.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Erwan Le Corre:
My brother, my friend, you will see it happen because you can already see it happen right now, just let’s keep on pushing.
Steven Sashen:
Lena likes to say, because she knows me very well, that the challenge for me as a human being is the gap between what’s happening today and what I see, and it’s true. And what gets me out of bed in the morning is trying to close that gap. And it’s a hell of a journey. But enough about me. If people want to find out more about you, and actually I don’t want to say it this way. Before I ask you to tell people how they can get in touch with you and experience natural movement and MovNat and you, the whole thing about it not being about you, this is a really interesting topic for me. I never wanted Xero Shoes to be about me. The first handful of videos that I made, I don’t even remember if I had my face to say hi. I think I might have, but then it’s just 10 minutes of my feet, which had some interesting repercussions, but enough about that.
But what happened from the two seconds where it was my face saying hello, people would recognize me. And something that I knew but I was really trying to resist was that human beings relate to other human beings. And so I’ve made a bunch of videos, not because I want it to be about me, but because this is something that I talk about all the time and I want to share this information and I know that people relate to human beings. Am I the best person for people to be relating to? I would never suggest that. Even if it’s true, I don’t know and I don’t care.
Erwan Le Corre:
Not for you to decide.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely, correct, correct.
Erwan Le Corre:
You know what you decide is to put yourself out there-
Steven Sashen:
I do it because I do it.
Erwan Le Corre:
-to be in the arena by doing all these videos. Actually, I believe I’m going to start soon to do that the same-
Steven Sashen:
Well, here’s my joke for you.
Erwan Le Corre:
Guys, it’s not for us to decide if people are interested or if they like us or they don’t like us, or if they find our information, our insights relevant or resistant relevant.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I like to say I’m not personal, but here’s my joke about you. When you said I haven’t made a bunch of videos, my response is, “That’s a shame.” Because again, people like to relate to people and in terms of what you are doing and what you’re teaching, you are in fact the embodiment of that. And look, dude, you’re one of those guys, women want to be with you, guys want to be you. So you’re such a great example of living what you’re talking about that I’m going to encourage you to do more because there’s value there. I mean, there’s value. Look, people already relate to you when they come and do courses, but the value is having the information have a focal point. And I would argue that you are a very good focal point and you-
Erwan Le Corre:
Well, I appreciate that. And I must say that I’ve been bringing a lot something that I’m going to start soon in that direction because for 10 years I’ve been basically extremely busy growing my team, growing my company, having events worldwide, also having three kids and actually be a real father for them, be there changing thousands of diapers, just being there for them every day and then writing a book. My book is almost academic level in the sense of the amount of information.
Steven Sashen:
I’m looking forward to it.
Erwan Le Corre:
Also, I wanted to give some space like I give my team, my community a voice too, to just have that lifestyle and that example, that inspiration to be also not just in my hands, but to be in the hands of community. But at the same time, I realized that I founded this, I started it. Some people start to call me the godfather of natural movement. I won’t disagree with that. And I feel ready now to put me a little more on the frontline.
Steven Sashen:
Good.
Erwan Le Corre:
So that’s what I’m working on.
Steven Sashen:
Well, as you do that and people want to find out more, why don’t we wrap this up by you telling them how to do that.
Erwan Le Corre:
Okay, so number one. Well, since you were saying, “How do you experience natural movement?” So number one, experience natural movement. You’ve been actually experiencing it your whole life except you didn’t know it was natural movement. When you were a kid, you were crawling, jumping, hanging, you were doing all these movements, and then somehow along the way you were told that that was not the right way to exercise or an acceptable way to behave in public and this and that. So basically it was never the right place, never the right time. And so you’ve lost that natural movement drive that you once had in you. One way to reignite it is just to start practicing it again.
And if you want information, tips or even find people who can train you online or in-person, to find videos with examples, you just go on movnat.com, M-O-V-N-A-T, M-O-V-N-A-T.com. It goes through moving naturally and moving in nature. Because even though we train a lot of people not in nature, that’s because we got to be providing that training where people are when we find people, but we also train them in nature and we also encourage them to take the skills that they learn indoors or outdoors, but in urban environments back to nature. We want to send people back to nature with the skills that were once truly universal and that today are not anymore.
Steven Sashen:
Good. Well, I hope people do take you up on that and do come and see you and experience what you’re doing. I can’t wait to… Wait, there’s more. Hold on. You put your finger-
Erwan Le Corre:
A book. I wrote a book.
Steven Sashen:
Talk about the book. Geez, man, don’t make me queue you for everything.
Erwan Le Corre:
I mean, if you have vision and reading skills, I mean, pretty much you can open a book and educate yourself. And that book that I wrote, it’s called The Practice of Natural Movement by Victory Belt. It’s available on Amazon, but other Barnes & Noble and all. It has everything. 20% of it is the philosophy, it’s to manifest the why. It’s not how you do it. It’s why is it important to have a natural movement in your life. Why does it make sense? Because when it start to make sense and you agree with it like a truth or at least a fact, a reality that makes sense to you, you’re very much likely to seek the behavior that aligns with that, right? People do bodybuilding, they do bodybuilding because they want to be big. So if they’re going to do bodybuilding exercise, because in their head they want to be big, not to be questioned or whatever. Well, here on this planet to have a good life, to have the best life we can possibly have is the pursuit of happiness on our own terms.
To me, if you don’t have natural movement in your life or movement in your life, something is really missing. So I wrote a whole book about it. You’ll find hundreds and hundreds of techniques and tips in how to practice where it’s highly practical. There’s nothing nerdy in that book. And the best news is Amazon just dropped the price to $28 or something. Never personally ever had any control how much the book is sold for, nor does my publisher. It’s actually all Amazon who decides that. So right now on Amazon, it’s for $27, you have close to 500 pages of information.
Steven Sashen:
Awesome.
Erwan Le Corre:
That’s also an amazing starting point.
Steven Sashen:
Good, good, good. Well, A, thank you very much. B, as I expected, this is a total pleasure. We’re going to do more of this. Let me just wrap it up for everybody else, thank you all for listening and for being part of the podcast. As always, if you want to find out more, just go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. That’s where you can leave some comments. You can find out where to find us on all the various platforms where podcasts are served. Like I say, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and like and share and all those things that you know how to do. Is there anything else? Because yes, we went to for the third time in this conversation. You know our goal, making natural movement the obvious, better healthy choice. The way natural food is you are going to be the ones who make that happen. You are the movement movement and I want to thank you for being part of that. So enjoy and live life feet first.