How To Overcome Adversity with Tony Riddle #238
This episode features a live conversation with Tony Riddle, "The Natural Lifestylist," who was eight days into a barefoot run across Great Britain when injury forced a break. They discuss coping with adversity, the power of vulnerability, progress over perfection, and simple, free tools like breathwork, meditation, mobility, and cold water therapy.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Introduction to Tony Riddle's Barefoot UK Run
Tony's Philosophy: The Natural Lifestylist
Motivation Behind the Barefoot UK Run
Challenges and Injury During the Run
Coping with Adversity: Simple, Free Tools
The Power of Vulnerability and Male Emotions
Progress Over Perfection Mindset
The Physiology of Stress and Breathwork
Simple Breathing Exercise Demonstration
Integrating Breathwork into Daily Life
Impact of Technology and Information Overload
Sustainability: Individual vs. Systemic Change
Final Thoughts: Trusting the Process
5 Key Concepts
Rewilding Human Coach
Tony Riddle's role, which involves helping urban dwellers align their lifestyles with human biology by finding biologically normal ways of living within often extreme urban environments. This addresses physical, social, and spiritual needs to combat modern diseases.
Upregulated State
Refers to a cellular protection mechanism, akin to a fight-or-flight response, where the body is in an alert or anxious state. This state can be triggered by toxins or perception, diverting energy from growth processes.
Downregulated State
Refers to a cellular growth mechanism, also known as a rest-and-digest or parasympathetic state. In this state, the body is relaxed and able to perform functions like digestion optimally, as opposed to being in a protection mode.
Present Best
A concept introduced by Tony Riddle, suggesting that instead of striving for a 'personal best' based on past achievements, individuals should focus on their current, day-to-day capabilities and what they can achieve in the present moment.
Dopamine as a Pleasure-Seeking Hormone
Dopamine is described as a hormone that drives pleasure-seeking behavior, often exploited by technology (like social media 'likes' or gaming) to create addictive feedback loops. This constant seeking can replace engagement with free, natural sources of happiness.
7 Questions Answered
A natural lifestylist helps urban dwellers find ways of living that are more in sync with human biology, focusing on physical, social, and spiritual needs to combat modern diseases caused by habitat and habits.
The idea originated from a spiritual ceremony, connecting to a childhood foot deformity, and evolved into a platform to raise awareness for sustainability and environmental issues.
He utilized simple, free tools: human contact (hugs), breathwork to downregulate, meditation, mobility exercises, and cold water therapy, while also allowing himself to experience all emotions, including vulnerability.
Breathwork, particularly focusing on longer exhales, helps shift the body into a parasympathetic 'rest and digest' state, which optimizes the digestive system and enzyme function, preventing energy diversion to fight-or-flight responses.
Instead of isolating specific times, integrate short breathing cycles throughout the day, such as before meals to aid digestion, before entering the home to downregulate from work stress, or before sleep to promote relaxation.
Constant engagement with devices, driven by dopamine-seeking, can lead to a lack of reflection and rest, contributing to stress, relationship issues, and potentially altering brain function, as observed in the 'altered state economy'.
Both individual and systemic changes are crucial. Individual actions like conscious purchasing and recycling contribute, while supporting organizations that drive legislative changes (like the plastic bag charge) creates broader systemic impact.
25 Actionable Insights
1. Trust Life’s Process
Cultivate trust, respect, and patience for all of life’s experiences, understanding that everything is a process, whether good or bad. This mindset helps navigate challenges with greater acceptance and peace, and allows you to appreciate the good more fully.
2. Prioritize Progress, Not Perfection
Focus on making continuous progress in your goals and lifestyle changes, rather than striving for an unattainable perfection. The pursuit of perfection often hinders actual progress and can lead to giving up when challenges arise.
3. Reframe Adversity for Growth
Adopt the mindset that adverse experiences are ‘happening for you’ rather than ’to you.’ This perspective helps you learn valuable lessons from challenges and emerge as a stronger, better human.
4. Embrace Vulnerability & Emotions
Allow yourself to fully experience and express all emotions, including vulnerability, especially in front of loved ones like children. This models healthy emotional expression, fosters strength, and counteracts the suppression of feelings.
5. Practice Present Moment Awareness
Focus on living in the present moment, rather than dwelling on past achievements or future goals. This helps avoid getting overwhelmed by the scale of a challenge and allows you to appreciate the current experience.
6. Utilize Free Well-being Tools
When facing adversity or seeking well-being, leverage simple, free tools such as human contact (hugs from your tribe), breathwork, meditation, mobility exercises, and cold water therapy. These practices help downregulate the nervous system, process emotions, and shift your state.
7. Integrate Breathwork Daily
Consciously use breathwork throughout your day to regulate your physiological state, whether to ‘upregulate’ for alertness or ‘downregulate’ for relaxation and rest. This practice can profoundly control your biology and influence overall well-being.
8. Practice Diaphragmatic Nasal Breathing
Breathe primarily through your nose, engaging your diaphragm (belly breathing) to utilize the full potential of your lungs, rather than shallow chest breathing. Remember that noses are for breathing and mouths are for eating.
9. Use 3-4-5 Breath Before Meals
Practice the 3-4-5 breath (inhale for 3, hold for 4, exhale for 5) for about a minute before meals, ideally with family or friends. This shifts your body out of a stress state into ‘rest and digest,’ which can improve digestion and reduce adverse reactions to food.
10. Downregulate Before Entering Home
Before entering your home after work, take a moment to do breathwork to down-regulate and release accumulated stress or negative energy from your day. This prevents carrying work stress into your personal life and allows you to re-engage with family calmly and present.
11. Schedule Breath Breaks at Work
Set timers (e.g., every 25 minutes) during your workday to take short breath breaks, returning to your breath for a moment. This helps reinstate moments of reflection and rest that are often lost in modern, constantly-on work environments.
12. Practice Breathwork Before Sleep
Engage in down-regulating breathwork before going to sleep. This promotes a ‘rest and digest’ state, which is conducive to better sleep and overall recovery.
13. Focus on ‘Present Best’
When practicing breathwork or any personal challenge, aim for your ‘present best’ rather than striving for a fixed tempo or ‘personal best’ that might cause stress. Everyone’s respiratory system is unique and can change daily, so forcing a tempo can be counterproductive.
14. Use The Breathing App
Download and use ‘The Breathing App’ by Eddie Stern to guide your breathwork, experimenting with tempos like a 4-second inhale and 6-second exhale. A longer exhale helps to lower heart rate and blood pressure, promoting relaxation.
15. Limit Technology & Dopamine Pacifiers
Consciously reduce reliance on modern ‘pacifiers’ like mobile devices, gaming, excessive shopping, alcohol, or drugs, which provide high dopamine hits. Instead, cultivate natural ways (like human connection and movement) to foster true happiness and engagement.
16. Limit Children’s Technology Exposure
Be mindful and significantly limit your children’s exposure to technology and devices. This protects their developing brains from known negative impacts, following the example of tech industry leaders who prioritize device-free environments for their own kids.
17. Embrace Natural Movement
Incorporate biologically normal movements into your daily life, such as squatting while watching TV or for 30 minutes a day, and going barefoot indoors. This helps connect with your feet and the ground, aligning with a more natural lifestyle.
18. Prioritize Simple Joys & Connections
Value and prioritize simple, free activities like walks with family, meals with friends, and ensuring good sleep. These fundamental practices are crucial for overall well-being, helping to navigate adversity and mental challenges.
19. Cultivate Inner Sustainability
Recognize that true sustainability extends beyond environmental actions to include personal practices like breathwork and meditation. These help you sustain your own well-being and life amidst chaos, making you a more ‘sustainable human being.’
20. Adopt a Minimalist Lifestyle
Embrace minimalist living by removing attachment to excessive possessions and focusing on fundamental needs. This practice encompasses many sustainable and well-being principles, reducing materialism and promoting a more natural way of living.
21. Make Small Lifestyle Changes
Seek ways to align your physical, social, and spiritual needs with nature, especially in urban settings, by making small, biologically aligned changes to your habits. These small changes can make a big impact on your happiness and overall way of living.
22. Support Sustainable Choices & Businesses
Actively recycle, reuse, and upcycle, and consciously choose to support businesses and products (e.g., electric vehicles, sustainable fashion) that are committed to environmental change. Do this without striving for perfection or causing personal anxiety.
23. Join Environmental Advocacy Groups
Support and join environmental advocacy groups (like Surfers Against Sewage) that work to change legislation and make a systemic impact. This amplifies individual efforts and contributes to larger societal changes in sustainability.
24. Avoid Shaming Others
Refrain from publicly shaming or berating others on social media for not being as sustainable as you are. Such behavior is counterproductive and not ‘sustainable’ for fostering positive change within the community.
25. Make Informed Carbon-Impact Purchases
When possible, choose products with lower carbon impact, using tools like carbon analytics at the point of sale to guide your decisions. This allows you to individually contribute to sustainability by making environmentally conscious choices.
7 Key Quotes
The experience can be good or bad. It's still an experience. It's all one thing, but we always want the good and the happiness and everything that comes with that thing. But without the bad stuff, how do you appreciate the good stuff?
Tony Riddle
We need to be looking for progress, not perfection. Far too many of us, you know, we, we let this, um, the strive for perfection gets in the way of actually making progress.
Rangan Chatterjee
Vulnerability, I think was a big message for me through this trip. Whereas before I almost felt like, um, I don't know, I don't know whether the, whether if I felt like the kids maybe thought me as like this superhero of a papa go and do these things, you know, which is great, but it's, it's not the truth, right?
Tony Riddle
It's about exploring all the emotions. And yeah, I think it's a very important vulnerability, but I also think we need to show other, we need to show our strengths too, the strengths of our emotions, you know?
Tony Riddle
Noses are for breathing, mouths are for eating.
Lola (via Tony Riddle)
Money comes, money goes, doesn't matter.
Rangan Chatterjee (quoting his father-in-law)
Trust the process, respect the process, be patient whilst in the process. And when you finally figure out that it's all process, just be.
Tony Riddle
3 Protocols
Simple Breathing Exercise
Tony Riddle- Place your hands on your chest to understand the difference between chest and belly breathing.
- Take a deep inhale through your mouth and observe your chest rising.
- Place your hands on your tummy, exhale, then take a long inhale 'up' through your nose, feeling your belly and chest expand to reach the full potential of your lungs.
- Close your eyes and continue to inhale 'up' through the nose, then let go on the out-breath, aiming for the exhale to last a little bit longer than the inhale.
- Repeat for about 10 cycles.
3-4-5 Breath for Digestion
Rangan Chatterjee- Breathe in for a count of three.
- Hold your breath for a count of four.
- Breathe out for a count of five.
- Repeat this cycle for at least one minute before eating to prepare the digestive system.
Box Breathing (Patico Method)
Tony Riddle- Inhale for a count of three.
- Hold your breath for a count of three.
- Exhale for a count of three.
- Hold your breath for a count of three.
- Repeat this sequence, visualizing the sides of a box.