How to Heal Your Body and Mind Through Movement, The Surprising Benefits of Walking Backwards & How Optimising Your Breath Can Transform Your Relationships with Lawrence van Lingen #491
This episode features Lawrence van Lingen, a biomechanics expert, discussing the deep connection between breathing, movement, and overall wellbeing. He explains how normalizing breathing, walking backwards, and using a flow rope can transform physical health, reduce stress, and improve life quality.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to Lawrence van Lingen's Holistic Movement Approach
Are Humans Born to Run? Why Running Injuries are Common
The Body as a System: Upstream Causes of Pain
The Paramount Importance of Breath for Movement and Well-being
Breathing Dysfunction and its Wide-Ranging Impacts
How Emotions and Trauma are Stored in the Body
Movement as a Tool for Processing Trauma and Healing
The Victim Mindset vs. Authoring Your Life
Backward Walking: Benefits for Movement and Nervous System
Contralateral Movement and its Importance
The Flow Rope: A Tool for Movement Integration and Spinal Health
Super Shoes as a Biofeedback and Educational Tool
Mastery, Not Medals: A Philosophy for Sport and Life
Mitochondria, Environment, and High Performance
The Ease of Efficient Movement and Reframing Hard Work
Final Advice: Hope, Walking, and the Hero's Journey
6 Key Concepts
Anterior Chain Dominance
This describes a movement pattern where the front of the body, including muscles like adductors, medial hamstrings, psoas, and the front of the spine, is overactive. It is often linked to flexion, a guarded or protective state, and can feed into the sympathetic nervous system, contributing to dysregulated movement and stress.
Posterior Chain Dominance
This refers to a movement pattern driven by the back of the body, primarily involving the glute max, latissimus dorsi, and biceps femoris. It is associated with extension-based gait, healthy and efficient running, and can lead to improved nervous system markers like heart rate variability and sleep scores.
Reciprocal/Apical Breathing
An unhealthy breathing pattern where the diaphragm moves up as the ribs also move up, projecting breath into the upper chest. This reverse breathing pattern is harmful, can predispose individuals to anxiety, and makes it difficult to treat or improve human movement effectively.
Screen Apnea / Email Apnea
A phenomenon where prolonged focus on screens, causing pupils to remain fixed, negatively impacts breathing patterns and rate. This can lead to dysregulated breathing, highlighting the importance of daily breathing hygiene to counteract modern lifestyle effects.
Mastery, Not Medals
A philosophical approach to achievement that emphasizes mastering one's craft and self, rather than attaching identity or value to external results like medals. This perspective encourages focusing on the process and personal growth, leading to a more authentic and sustainable sense of accomplishment.
Motion from Emotion
This concept highlights the deep, inseparable connection between physical movement, posture, and emotional states or past traumas. Trauma can lead to a flexed, guarded posture, while opening up movement can facilitate the release and processing of stored emotions, leading to profound healing.
7 Questions Answered
While humans are generally designed to run, modern lifestyles involving excessive sitting and accumulated nervous system trauma dysregulate movement patterns. Additionally, some individuals may have genetic predispositions that make running less natural for them.
Breathing pattern disorders can predispose individuals to peripheral injuries like plantar fasciitis and Achilles issues due to decreased blood flow and oxygenation. For elite triathletes, improving breathing patterns can enhance running threshold by 10-12 seconds per kilometer in a week, boosting efficiency and performance.
Trauma, whether physical or emotional, can lead to a protective, guarded, or flexed posture (like a 'tail between the legs' stance). This physical contraction can profoundly alter gait patterns, balance, and confidence, reflecting deeper emotional states and fears held within the body.
By correcting posture and opening up the body, especially in areas where trauma is held (e.g., a 'chest fallen' posture), individuals can revisit past traumas and release them. This physical liberation can lead to emotional processing, reframing childhood memories, and a deeper sense of self-awareness and healing.
Anterior chain dominant movement (flexion-based) tends to excite the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), while posterior chain dominant movement (extension-based) improves markers of nervous system health like heart rate variability and sleep scores, promoting a more balanced and relaxed state.
Super shoes, with their carbon plates and reactive foam, teach runners to land, compress the foam, and use elastic energy for propulsion. This helps improve running timing and mechanics, encouraging an extension-based gait and the efficient use of the body's natural elastic recoil, like the Achilles tendon.
Mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells, are profoundly influenced by the environment. A safe, supportive environment that encourages vulnerability, trust, and allows for mistakes fosters mitochondrial flourishing, leading to higher performance, better energy, and improved mood, whereas a stressful environment can lead to languishing.
30 Actionable Insights
1. Normalize Breathing Patterns Daily
Work on breathing every day, like brushing your teeth, to improve physical health, reduce stress, anxiety, and improve mood and relationships.
2. Regulate Your Nervous System
Recognize that accumulated trauma and a dysregulated nervous system influence movement and feelings; addressing this is crucial for overall well-being.
3. Create Pause for Self-Awareness
Use breathing practices to create a pause between stimulus and response, allowing for conscious decision-making and fostering self-awareness rather than automatic, reactive behaviors.
4. Adopt Holistic, Upstream Thinking
When addressing health or movement issues, look for root causes and treat the human as a whole system, rather than reacting to isolated symptoms.
5. Cultivate Authenticity and Expression
Trust your movement and body, and express your true self to radically change relationships for the better.
6. Incorporate Backward Walking
Practice walking backwards (slowly, barefoot if possible, with soft toes/heel down, and contralateral movement) to improve movement patterns, nervous system health, digestion, sleep, and build trust in your body.
7. Utilize a Flow Rope
Use a flow rope (or even a towel/skipping rope) to learn posterior chain movement, balance the brain, animate the spine, and generate movement from the center out.
8. Release Trauma Through Movement
Understand that emotional and physical trauma can be stored in the body, affecting movement patterns; opening up movement can help process and release these traumas.
9. Focus on Mastery, Not Medals
Prioritize mastering your craft and developing a strong sense of self, rather than attaching your identity or value to external results or achievements.
10. Choose Agency Over Victimhood
Make the conscious choice to be in charge of your life rather than a victim, seeking opportunities for growth and learning from challenges.
11. Prioritize Nasal Breathing
Breathe through your nose to encourage deeper breaths into the bottom of your lungs, which stimulates the relaxation part of your nervous system, unlike mouth breathing which activates the stress response.
12. Practice Diaphragmatic Breathing
Ensure that when you breathe, your diaphragm comes down as your ribs go up, avoiding reciprocal breathing where the diaphragm goes up with your ribs, which is harmful.
13. Establish Morning Breathing Routine
Dedicate a few minutes to breathing exercises first thing in the morning to reset your breathing pattern, improving the quality of your daily breaths and setting up positive life changes.
14. Understand ‘Why’ Behind Habits
When trying to change behaviors like diet, focus on understanding the root causes and underlying reasons why you engage in those behaviors, rather than just the behavior itself.
15. Expect Life Transformation
Consistently normalizing your breathing and practicing backward walking will lead to profound, positive changes in your life, extending beyond just physical movement.
16. Open Posture, Process Trauma
Consciously opening up a flexed or ‘chest fallen’ posture can lead to revisiting and processing past traumas, as the brain associates the new posture with a time before the trauma.
17. Lead with Your Heart
Adopt an ‘open-hearted’ posture in running and walking, as physical posture mirrors internal demeanor and confidence, reflecting an authentic self.
18. Cultivate Supportive Environment
Foster environments characterized by safety, security, love, and trust, where mistakes are safe, as this promotes healthy, high performance and mitochondrial flourishing.
19. Regulate Breath, Reduce Cravings
Learning to regulate your breath in an optimal way can calm your nervous system, making it easier to reduce cravings for stimulants like alcohol, caffeine, and sugar.
20. Improve Breathing for Running
Correcting your breathing pattern can significantly improve running efficiency and speed, potentially by 10-12 seconds per kilometer, without additional training.
21. Avoid Over-Breathing Habits
Prevent peripheral injuries like plantar fasciitis and Achilles issues by avoiding over-breathing, which lowers carbon dioxide and constricts blood vessels, reducing blood flow.
22. Practice Diaphragm Release
Engage in diaphragm release exercises to potentially alleviate conditions like plantar fasciitis, as it can improve blood flow and overall systemic health.
23. Empower Self-Agency in Health
Seek healthcare professionals who empower you with tools and knowledge to take charge of your own health, fostering independence rather than dependence on external advice or treatments.
24. Practice New Habits Slowly
To effectively change a habit, perform the new action slowly, as doing it quickly will revert to old, reflexive patterns.
25. Roll Feet for Flexibility
Roll a lacrosse ball under each foot for two minutes to improve hamstring flexibility and overall range of motion.
26. Practice Eye Exercises
Improve hamstring flexibility and systemic health by performing eye exercises, such as focusing on your thumb close then far, and moving your gaze around the room and to the horizon.
27. Ask ‘What If This Was Easy?’
To challenge the belief that things must be hard to be valuable, ask yourself ‘What would this look like if it was easy?’ to find more effortless solutions.
28. Maintain Hope, Keep Moving
If you’re struggling with pain or feel stuck, maintain hope, keep doing what you can, even if it’s just walking, and seek out supportive people and resources.
29. Start Small, Don’t Overdo
Begin with small, sustainable actions, even just a minute or two, rather than trying too hard, to ensure consistency and long-term progress.
30. Use Super Shoes as Biofeedback
Consider using super shoes as a biofeedback tool to learn proper landing mechanics and utilize the elastic energy in your body, which can improve running efficiency.
9 Key Quotes
When you become true in yourself and you trust your movement and you trust your body and you become more authentic to yourself or more expressive of who you are and you find your voice, relationships radically change around you.
Lawrence van Lingen
The site of the symptom is not always the site of the problem.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
If you swap your breathing pattern around, I guarantee your running improves, your running efficiency improves.
Lawrence van Lingen
You need a pause between the stimulus and the response.
Lawrence van Lingen
If you normalize your breathing pattern and you backward walk, your life will change and you need to understand that change is coming.
Lawrence van Lingen
To be creative is to be courageous.
Lawrence van Lingen
How you run is a reflection of your entire life's process up until that point, and who am I to judge you?
Lawrence van Lingen
The energy behind the behavior that's more important than the behavior itself.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
People think running has to be hard, but it doesn't, does it?
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
3 Protocols
Daily Breathing Routine
Lawrence van Lingen (practiced by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee)- Perform breathing exercises first thing in the morning.
- Initiate breath from the diaphragm, ensuring the belly button goes out on inhale, not in.
- Optionally, partially block the nose with a thumb and index finger to help initiate the diaphragm and slow down the in-breath.
Backward Walking Practice
Lawrence van Lingen- Find a safe environment, such as a treadmill (set to 1.2 km/h or under 1 mph) or an open space like a lawn.
- Preferably walk barefoot to maximize proprioceptive feedback, but shoes are acceptable.
- Take steps backward with soft toes and heel down, learning to trust the weight of the body through the leg when the knee is behind the hip.
- Focus on achieving a contralateral movement pattern (e.g., right knee with left arm), which is crucial for healthy gait.
Flow Rope Practice
Lawrence van Lingen- Use a flow rope (or alternative like a skipping rope, towel, or even shoelaces) to perform figure-eight patterns.
- Practice both forward and backward figure-eight movements to balance the brain and integrate movement patterns.
- Focus on generating movement from the center of the body outwards, animating the spine and learning the sensation of posterior chain movement.