Before words: How to remember our first language (transcript)

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Episode Transcript:

Lian (00:00)

Hello, my beautiful mythical old souls and a huge warm welcome back. Could words be the very thing that gets in the way of our deepest communication and connection? In this episode, I'm joined by the wonderful Michael Perez. Michael is a teacher and developer in the fields of neuro linguistics and hypnosis.

His work explores the intersections of language, emotion, survival, and the intelligence of the body, all things we speak to in this rich and layered conversation. Together we journey into the evolution of human communication, not just through the spoken language, but through the more ancient embodied ways we used to relate. We explore how our ancestors survived, not through just physical strength, but through cooperation, attunement, and a kind of felt intelligence.  that most of us have forgotten, but still lives within us. This was one of those episodes that left me thinking differently about things I thought I already understood. 

And before we jump into all of that good stuff, there is still time to join me for my upcoming and brand new Crucible for Women called Beauty Potion. It is the alchemical antidote to your beauty wound. So if you are feeling the call, to awaken your mythic beauty, which is to say, a feeling deeply confident, comfortable, and even celebratory in your own skin. Come join me. You can find out more by going to bemythical.com slash beauty.

And if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world, and would benefit from guidance, kinship, and support, Come join us at our Academy of the Soul, UNIO. It's perfect both as a very first step to your soul path and indeed to working with us at Be Mythical or indeed as a way of going deeper.

Find out more by going to bemythical.com slash unio or click the link in the description. And now back to this week's episode, let's dive in.

Lian (02:12)

Hello Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Perez (02:15)

Well, it's lovely to be here, and thank you for having me.

Lian (02:18)

Well, it is my pleasure. as I was saying to you, in some ways it's a little bit of a kind of not blasting past exactly, because it's not like we've completely left the days behind where we were focusing a lot more on kind of more sort of primal wild aspects of the human animal. But certainly it's been a while since it's something we've kind of done a real deep dive in. So it feels like a really like sort of welcome return to that. those days in a way that I'm really looking forward to. So thank you so much. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation.

Michael Perez (02:52)

I'm grateful to be the opportunity for nostalgia. And hopefully it'll be constructive and valuable as we take a tour, not only through your past, but through the past of homo sapiens like you and me.

Lian (03:07)

Yes, well I was just thinking it's a nostalgia dating back 50,000 plus years ago. So should we start there? what is it, would you be able to kind of give a little bit of that laying out the landscape that we perhaps found ourselves in 50,000 years ago and why it was different and why that matters?

Michael Perez (03:28)

makes perfect sense. you know, so if we go back to who human beings were, we as a species were all that time ago, there's an interesting thing that happens when you look at the fossil record. And we get a quick look at a glimpse at our ancestors and who they were and how they were who they were. And you find this fascinating difference between you and I and some of our ancestors, if you go back further than 50,000 years ago, and that is, if you take your tongue and you run it across the roof of your mouth, you will notice that your palate is a funny old thing. It has ridges and lumps and all kinds of things. And our tongue plays across this uneven surface on the roof of our mouth.

Lian (04:25)

I was just laughing to myself thinking, as soon as you say that, I couldn't resist doing exactly so. not thinking, I everyone listening at home write in if it's different, I bet every one of us are like feeling out the roof of our mouth in a whole new way than ever before.

Michael Perez (04:39)

Well, you know, I am a hypnotist. So you know, people tend to do what I tell them to do, even whether I mean to or not. My mouth is a lethal weapon. So I have to be careful with it. but you know, what's fascinating is, is that as we do feel that and as we do notice it, our tongue and you know, even as you speak, you can feel the way that your tongue is interacting with the roof of your mouth in order make you more articulate, to give you a wider range of sounds, to make all of our sounds quite different from one another so that they can be more easily understood. Now you might think, well why is it, why did that happen? Did just suddenly, you know, people with weird mouths suddenly start breathing and all the flat-mouthed people just couldn't get a date? It's actually probably because As language became more sophisticated, those who had a different palette and were able to make more sounds more clearly, they started to have an evolutionary advantage. And then pretty soon, there's just more of those kinds of people than other kinds of people. And now we pretty much, know, all of our ancestors were, you know, all the

Lian (06:00)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (06:03)

the guys and girls who had funny mouths. And here we all are. So.

Lian (06:10)

Mm. Yeah. And so this sounds like an overly simplistic question, but again, it's not really something I've thought about a huge amount. But the human pa- So the human palate and tongue is quite exceptional for our species in comparison to other mammals. Because it's not something, again, I've particularly, I've got dogs, I've got cats.

Michael Perez (06:18)

Well, I'm an overly simplistic fellow, so go right ahead.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Lian (06:38)

I can tell there's quite a difference between mine and theirs but is that generally the case?

Michael Perez (06:40)

They're quite flat. Yeah, and even compared to, know, bonobos and chimpanzees and all that, we just have, there's an advantage to us being able to make more and different sounds. In fact, there have been some bonobos who have been taught English and can speak some English. And they speak it very badly, because they don't have the right

Lian (06:54)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (07:11)

know, flapping mouth, action for it. They're not machined for it. And natural selection hasn't done that for them. So it did it for us. So therefore we have to ask the question, why, why are we more survivable if we have these funny mouths? And this suggests that somewhere around 50,000 years ago, language, spoken language became sophisticated enough

Lian (07:18)

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (07:40)

that it conveyed a real advantage to those of us who could use it and use it well. The better you could use it, the more survivable you were. Now let's take another look even a little further back to ask ourselves why that is. In the Paleolithic, before we decided to build houses for ourselves, while we were still a migratory species, one of the things that was true is that we mostly were hunter gatherers. And eventually we got things like spears and bows and arrows and all that sort of thing. But before that, it was mostly about a thing that was called a persistence hunt. And during a persistence hunt, let's say, I don't know, let's say you were out in the plains of the Serengeti and you were chasing an impala or a kudu or one of those large animals. And now what's interesting is, is that if you look at the way lions predate or, you know, or jackals or any other predatory animals, they tend to look for the weak ones, the sickly ones. We would focus on the largest and the healthiest ones.

Lian (08:25)

Hmm

Michael Perez (08:56)

Now, this is interesting because our digestive systems are not really good at eating sick animals. If we eat sick spoiled animals, we don't do well, but if we eat healthy animals, thrive. And our hunting was on the kinds of animals that the other predators did not hunt. And this is because the largest, biggest, healthiest animals were

Lian (08:56)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (09:23)

the optimal prey for human endurance hunters. Because what we would do is we would chase them and we would chase them and we would chase them and they would run and they would run and they would run. But we had a couple of advantages. First of all, we could coordinate group activity. Some of us would spook them, some of us would chase them, some of us would hurt them. And then finally, there would be one runner who would separate from the hunting group and just chase this animal, chase and chase and chase.

Lian (09:29)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (09:52)

But the animal is, it's, you know, a thousand kilos, a couple thousand pounds. It's heavy, it can't sweat very well like humans can. We're great at sweating. That's one of our evolutionary advantages, believe it or not. But the other thing is, is that we only have two legs and not four. It's more energy efficient to run. We can run for longer than...

Lian (10:07)

I'm

Michael Perez (10:17)

large animals can. We lay way less than they do. We're not as strong. We don't have armour. We don't have claws. We don't have all these other natural advantages that most predators have. But what we do have is a swollen prefrontal cortex. We're really good. We have opposable thumbs. And we're good at coming up with strategies that coordinating with one another, and eventually making tools. So like for example, we can hollow out a gorge, dry it, fill it with water, and we can carry water with us. We're not going to get dehydrated. We can douse ourselves with it so that we don't get overheated. We can run for six hours. A kudu, especially a large healthy kudu, is going to be crippled by its own weight, its own inability to sweat. The fact that we're not giving it a chance to rest, all of these factors come in. And eventually we don't kill it with, I mean, we may bring a spear or something to finish it off.

Lian (10:48)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (11:16)

to be humane, but we don't kill the kudu with a weapon. The kudu dies of exhaustion, because we can run longer than the kudu can.

Lian (11:26)

Mm.

Michael Perez (11:29)

And what's interesting is, is that these these hunts require great coordination. And they require great sophistication. And yet, we didn't, according to the evolutionary record, we might not have been really great at talking to each other. We might not have had very sophisticated speech. I don't know if you've ever seen some of the old Hollywood movies about cave people, but you know, it's

Lian (11:54)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (11:58)

Me, no, no, you, go, you know, it's always terrible, simplistic speech. That might have been somewhat true. Not because we didn't have sophisticated thinking, but it's just the language hadn't developed in that way yet. But as language became more and more of an advantage, especially when it came to toolmaking and, and communicating sophisticated ideas, this became more and more of an advantage on a species that relied on

Lian (12:02)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mmm.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (12:28)

connection and cooperation, and the sophisticated transmission of ideas. There's a lovely neurologist, a man by the name of Vyasramachandran. And he said, you know, if a bear, if it suddenly gets cold, you know, the climate changes. A bear takes 100,000 years to develop more, a thicker coat and more blubber to protect it. A human learns how to skin a bear.

Lian (12:35)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (12:57)

teaches his child how to skin a bear, wear the bear fur, and the human has adapted in one generation. But it's because of our ability to communicate, to convey sophisticated ideas. And that's allowed us, know, most, even right now, chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest genetic cousins are under threat because they can only live in very small areas. I mean, bonobos...

Lian (13:05)

Mmm. Wow, yes. Mmm.

Michael Perez (13:26)

even right now they may be extinct in the wild and only living, know, because they, know, humans are encroaching on their territory. But whereas we can live anywhere, but the reason we can live anywhere is because we can talk, we can cooperate and we can adapt to new environments. And part of that adaptation, adaptational mechanism is our ability to talk.

Lian (13:31)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (13:54)

And of course we got really good at it. Sometimes my friends tell me I got the best at it because I can't shut up.

Lian (14:08)

Well, let me jump in here if that's okay, because I think you've done a fabulous job of taking us back in time to life many hundreds of years ago. And it's

Michael Perez (14:10)

Please do.

Mm.

Lian (14:24)

There's something quite… Ironically enough, the word is eluding me because I think it's a mixture of all sorts of words. was, it was a kind of almost like a traveling back in time. There was a magic and a kind of embodied sense of, of these different stages of what it might be like to be in those different times. And I was considering, gosh, yes, we have become so adept at language. It's hard to imagine not having it. And then I had a memory.

Michael Perez (14:49)

Mm.

Mm.

Lian (15:02)

come up of when I was about seven, my father and I were traveling around Europe and Morocco and, you know, living very, you know, very wild, very close to the land and in all these different places. And for a period we were living in the Pyrenees in the south of France and we stayed with a family who had children similar age to me. They spoke French, I spoke English and

Michael Perez (15:16)

Right.

Lian (15:32)

as far as I know, their English wasn't very good at all, my French wasn't very good at all, and yet we would play and communicate perfectly well. I've got no memory of there being any language barrier whatsoever. at various points in my life, I've marvelled at that and thought, so interesting, there's something that says a lot about this way of communicating beyond the words, because again, this was for...

Michael Perez (15:47)

Mm.

Lian (15:58)

a period of time where we were intensely, you know, with each other playing together, communicating by other means. And I kind of that memory came back to me. I had a sense of like, I'm feeling kind of like what was happening in a way that I hadn't seen before. So coming to those of us that are in this modern world with this adaptation that's allowed us to communicate very sophisticatedly. What are we perhaps missing? What are we leaving off the table that would be helpful for us to recognise is still there, still present beyond the words.

Michael Perez (16:39)

You know, if you think of us, from the time that we became hominids and started walking upright, we are the products of three and a half million years of evolution and development and focus on becoming what we are. And it's useful to remember that if we think of three and a half million years, imagine, you know, to use a metaphor to make it a little bit more comprehensible, because most of us can't think in millions that easily, unless you're a physicist or a mathematician or similar. If three and a half million years was a day, we started to talk in a sophisticated way only in the last five minutes before midnight.

Lian (17:28)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (17:28)

So it's a, in fact, five minutes might be making, you know, erring on the side of caution there. It's probably more like three or four minutes, maybe even just a couple. And that means that for most of the existence of our species, a species that relies on cooperation, on understanding our place in a hierarchy, who's the leader, who's the shaman, who's the hunter?

Lian (17:37)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (17:57)

Who's going out and, you know, gathering and digging up the roots and tubers? Who's saying what we should coordinate on? You know, we have to have some sort of hierarchy. We're hierarchical creatures, we primates. And if we had this incredible level of sophistication that put us above all the other primates, like for example, chimps and bonobos only understand about three degrees. separation, they understand who's above them themselves and who's below them. But it sort of blurs out after that. We understand seven degrees of separation. Our brain is wired to understand complex hierarchies. It also allows us the same mechanism allows us to understand complex chains of cause and events.

Lian (18:30)

Mm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (18:50)

You know, we can understand this happened, which caused this to happen, which caused this to happen and that and that and that. Whereas, you know, your dog doesn't understand where things came from. He just knows you showed up and now there's food. Therefore you equal food. You know, dog doesn't understand grocery store. So, so the beauty of this is that once we understand that

Lian (19:00)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (19:17)

we have everything that we have because of these very sophisticated tools. We were communicating with one another for a long minute before sophisticated language came along.

Lian (19:35)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (19:36)

Now, if we say that this is true, and clearly it is, then the question becomes, how specifically did we do that? Now, let me bring in one other little idea here. Most of your language is up in the neocortex, right? But the middle of your brain where you do emotions and the bottom of your brain where you move around and react to stimuli and danger and reward and all that kind of stuff. There's no language here where you move yourself around. There's no language here where you have all the feels about things. There's only language up front.

Lian (20:18)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (20:20)

And, but most of the way that mammals communicate and primates communicate is here and here. And therefore, that's probably where we were communicating. And so what does that mean specifically? That means that first off, it was more about emotional intelligence. And it was about intuition, insight, and these kind of and when I say intuition and insight, what I'm really talking about is the fact that these are pre conscious processes. They filter into consciousness as a kind of felt sense of the world.

Lian (20:42)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (21:01)

the sinking feeling you get in your stomach, the rising feeling you get in your chest when you see somebody you like, know, the sinking feelings probably run somebody you don't like, you know, and all of this complex interplay of kind of somatic computation, where the brain is sending stuff into the body, the body is getting all the feels so that you now have a set of signals that say, hey, here, this is what you feel, this has a meaning.

Lian (21:12)

Mm.

Michael Perez (21:29)

And then consciously you start to understand how you feel and that informs what you think. I've got a bad feeling about this. I feel good about this idea. I don't know that person I like, I like the cut of their jib. They just feel right. Or something feels off about this relationship. We've always had such great communication, but suddenly it just doesn't feel right.

Lian (21:37)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (21:55)

Now, once you understand what these feelings are, then you can understand that we have kind of a sophisticated internal language. And that's the language between the middle and the back of our brain with the front of our brain. And if we learn to understand this kind of internal conversation that we're having with ourselves, then we can understand that actually we are intuiting, are being proto telepathic.

Lian (22:09)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (22:25)

because we are looking at somebody else's somatics which tells us on a pre-conscious level what they're feeling because they have to do their feelings in their body the same way that you have to do your feelings in your body. So for example, if I'm like this, how are you today? I'm fine. Yeah, everything's good.

Lian (22:42)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (22:52)

You can already feel what this feels like, right? If you put yourself in that position, if you start to, if your voice starts sounding like that, you know exactly what I feel like. You can get a view into my hidden world, even if I'm not saying it out loud. On the other hand, if my shoulders are back, my eyes are wide open, I'm looking slightly above the horizon. How are you today? I'm fine. Well, suddenly it's all different, isn't it?

Lian (23:01)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (23:22)

And there's a part of you that is designed to reproduce me inside of you, so that you can feel what I feel so that that gives you an insight into my sense of well being. If you watch people in a room, and you just put a little hidden camera on them, psychologists have known this for years, or psychologists have realised that people start attuning to one another, they start repeating one another's postures.

Lian (23:37)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (23:50)

one, you one of those facial expressions and that's not just, know, because they said, well, this is about matching and this is about, you know, people trying to synchronize, but actually it's about understanding. I, I'm trying to embody my understanding of you by replicating a little of what you're doing so that I can get an insight into how you feel that informs my, yes, the matching and the

Lian (23:51)

Mmm.

Mmm.

So the matching and the kind of synchrony is downstream from that.

Michael Perez (24:16)

Exactly. The matching, the mirroring, the rhythms, you know, even the yawning, right? How many times have you seen a yawn go around a room? Because we all need to understand another person. And it's not just about language. It's about, no, I have to do it with my body so that I understand what their body feels like, because their body is where they're doing their feelings. And I do my feelings in my body. But when we get so caught up in the talk talk, in the jaw jaw,

Lian (24:20)

Thank

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Michael Perez (24:44)

We lose track of what's going on somatically. We lose track of our feelings. We get so caught up in intellectual abstractions, which language is great for, and it's an amazing tool. But it should be a tool and not a distraction.

Lian (24:49)

Hmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (25:04)

So therefore, it's about creating a kind of first off, you create an internal dialogue with yourself. How do I feel about this? Secondly, you create an internal dialogue with the rest of the world, you realise that, hey, you know, based on how their physiology is, based on how you know, what does that tell me about how they feel? And how are those feelings reflecting the way that they see the world?

Lian (25:27)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (25:32)

And then I can make some hypotheses in my little smart front brain and then ask some questions, right?

Lian (25:33)

It's mmm.

it's, it's really striking me how this, as you say, is happening anyway, it's not like the other parts of our brain have gone offline, it's happening, we're just not bringing our attention there. And, and it was also dawning me how there is, I guess it's challenging for us to multitask to have our kind of one, one part of our attention on that kind of

Michael Perez (25:45)

Yes.

Yeah, we ignore it.

Yes.

Lian (26:05)

what's happening with the words at the same time as kind of what's happening at somatic level. And this funny example came to mind, this series that my family and I watching over the weekend. I think it's called Last One Laughing. I that's right. Where they put a bunch of comedians in a room and it's like, who can not laugh the longest in short. And...

Michael Perez (26:21)

Mm.

Right, right.

Lian (26:29)

There was this one of the one of the women was really, really good at it until and the same thing happened twice in two different ways. So she was brilliant all the way through and all the other times where people would kind of scenarios we would laugh apart from if she was trying to do something physically at the same time as not laughing. So there was one point where she was doing this kind of rock, paper, stone game. And she was obviously trying to do the game.

couldn't play the game because she was focusing on not laughing. And then while she was doing that, she ended up laughing. And it was such a simple thing she was doing, like something, you know, most of us have grown up with playing rocks, paper, scissors, stones. And it was so interesting. It was that that made her not be able to focus on not laughing. And then the second time it was something similar, was something she was doing that obviously had taken her focus away from not laughing. And that was like...

Michael Perez (27:07)

Yeah, sure.

Lian (27:23)

at the time it struck me as really interesting because it was such a simple thing. And yet was obviously like just too much to multitask on. And it's come to mind in this conversation, because I guess that's the almost like something to master that that ability to bring awareness, which I guess, you know, to an extent, any any of us that are on this sort of journey of

Michael Perez (27:26)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Lian (27:46)

know rewilding becoming more conscious isn't it's you know We are bringing our attention more and more to these different aspects of ourselves But it's dawning me as we're talking, you know in a conversation that that's asking a lot of us to be able to again be in the sort of talky talk part of the conversation as well as the what's happening down here part of the conversation Yeah, that's a lot

Michael Perez (27:47)

Sure. Sure.

Yes. Yes. You know, let me, let me, I'm going to jump back a little bit to give us a little bit of an explanation as for why that's as hard as it is before I jump forward and address what we can do about that and how we can make it easier. In fact, how we can make it very instinctive. Cause luckily we have a set of human instincts that are three and a half million years in the programming that we can kick into pretty easily once we know how to do it.

Lian (28:23)

Mm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (28:37)

And once we even realise that it's worth doing.

Lian (28:38)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (28:41)

Think about the way that we were raised. Sit still, sit up straight, look forward, don't look around, don't talk, don't stop that, stop fidgeting. All of that is designed to take us out of our bodies. All of that is designed, and especially while they are usually, that's usually in the context of school, and that's usually in the context of them filling your head with a lot of stuff that you're supposed to memorize. All this.

Lian (28:59)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (29:10)

neocortex stuff, right? And as you beautifully pointed out a moment ago, even doing simple tasks, it's so hard to multitask. Multitasking is the great human illusion. We think we can do it. None of us are good at it. And the reason for that is this front part of the brain, you know, where we do all this primate stuff, it's called the neocortex, new cortex. And this stuff down here, the motor cortex and all that's really old.

Lian (29:10)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Michael Perez (29:40)

This stuff over here, the emotions, it's newer, but it's you know, hundreds of millions of years in development. This, three and a half million years of development. So my question is, what's the difference? The difference is this can process down here, all kinds of stuff really quickly. If you ever watch a martial artist or an acrobat or a gymnast, they learn it at a deep level. It's all in their motor cortex. It's all in their nerves, you know, and

Lian (30:01)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (30:09)

And they just do things automatically, automagically. On the other hand, the feels, the feels arise. They take a little bit more time, but the feels arise. They just, they have more information, not as much as down here, but more than we have up here. And they're faster. You'll feel something before you understand why you feel, something feels off. I don't know why. You may eventually figure it out. But your first warning is,

Lian (30:13)

Hmm. Yes.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (30:38)

this part of your brain got it before this part of your brain got it. This part of your brain, the neocortex, because it is so new and because it is so primitive, it is slow. And it plods along one step at a time. And it kind of needs one set of things to do at a time. And therefore, if you try to do stuff up here, you're going to be terrible at it. But I want you to think about

Lian (30:44)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (31:06)

Any of you who have learned a sophisticated skill, maybe it was, I don't know, ice skating, could have been learning how to drive a car or ride a bicycle, but there was a brief and shining moment when you were terrible. You were sliding all over the place. You were falling on your butt. If you were, you know, like in the car, okay, put your hands steering wheel. Now look at the rear view mirror. Now look at the side view mirror. Now look up front. Now look at the look in the side window. But don't stop looking and you got to keep scanning and you've got to both hands on the wheel and no, no, but then now you got to steer and also move your foot and know what are you doing? And it's terrible, terrible, terrible. But here's here's the amazing thing. At one point, I'm to use driving here for a moment that you can use bicycles or

Lian (31:24)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (31:52)

ice skating or anything, anything you know. There's this one moment, there's this one day. And I remember for me, it was very clear because it had to do with Freddie Mercury. Because suddenly Bohemian Rhapsody came on the radio. I'm just a poor boy from a poor family, spare him his life from this monstrosity and I start singing because I cannot have that song come on without my ketterwalling in a terrible off tune performance of one of the greatest masterpieces of modern rock opera. Let me tell you. And suddenly it's five minutes later and I'm ishmerlach, no, I will not let you go, let him go. And I'm, I'm going at it. And I realise that I have been driving safely.

For the last five minutes, I didn't hit any vehicles. I didn't run any stoplights. I've been navigating the road. I've been checking my blind spots. I've been doing everything that I've been trying to do, but I paid no conscious attention to it. Instead of trying to drive here, suddenly I was driving here. And guess what? Once you can drive here, it's easy because you do it automatically.

Lian (33:05)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (33:16)

And the only time that your attention is brought to it is when something needs to come to your attention, because now it's a sophisticated moment and you need to make a decision. And it's not something you've prepared for and therefore, yes, no, Michael, there's a car that suddenly came to a blinding stop. Now I'm going to instinctively press the pedal, but my attention is going to go away from Freddie Mercury and Queen. just for a moment to understand where I am and what's going on. And what's really interesting is, is that this, there's a psychologist by the name of Michaly Csikszentmihalyi. What a name, a mouthful. And he came up with an idea called flow. And in flow, it is when you have learned a sophisticated skill,

Lian (33:46)

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (34:10)

to a high enough level that you become unconsciously competent at performing that skill.

Lian (34:18)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (34:19)

Once that happens, it happens automatically and it only impinges on consciousness when consciousness is needed to help us to make a decision or to apply a more sophisticated understanding of what's going on.

Lian (34:36)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (34:36)

So here's what will happen when you first start paying attention to somatics and to your feels and to all this other stuff in the context of conversation, you will instantly and it's wonderful you instantly get worse at communications because you're suddenly overwhelmed for a little bit. It's like wobbling around in that bicycle or falling on your butt several times on those skates.

Lian (34:51)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (35:02)

And then when you keep at it, you'll you'll be a little less wobbly and a little less wobbly and a little less wobbly and then suddenly at some point without even necessarily knowing when that moment is, it just becomes natural and automatic and the thing that you do. There was a time before you knew how to walk. And now you

Lian (35:25)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (35:30)

Don't even really think about it unless you got something wrong. Or you're walking across a slippery bathroom floor and you you haven't tried your feet yet or something. Then you pay attention but otherwise, walking is just a thing you do. You don't even know how you walk at this point. You learned it at some point and I guess you must have figured out how to move your ankles and how to move your toes and how to move all those little pieces. But if I asked you to do to describe that on purpose to me, you really couldn't.

Lian (35:35)

Mmm. Hmm, I love this. think there's some, can I just come in and say a couple of things that this has brought to life for me that everything you're saying makes complete sense. And it's a kind of, I guess, a way of seeing kind of conscious change and mastery that applies to so many things. And

Michael Perez (36:01)

I'm going to point out. Yeah, please, please.

Yes.

Lian (36:26)

I love the way you've sort of broken down why that is the case. And there's a couple of things that came to my awareness. So firstly, I had a similar experience. It wasn't a Freddie Mercury one, but it was one that left a similar impact where there was this really dangerous place where used to, it was many, many years ago, so had to go through on the way back home from work where it was a single track road.

Michael Perez (36:33)

You

Lian (36:51)

And then one side of the road had to go under this tunnel, this tiny tunnel that you had to like, you had to line yourself up so perfectly if you didn't want your wing mirrors to scratch. it was so, so it was like every time you'd be like paying absolute attention so you wouldn't scratch your car. Then you had to make sure as you came out of the tunnel, you were making sure there was no traffic coming your way so you could get back up onto the road. And this one day, I don't know where my mind was,

Michael Perez (36:55)

Mm-hmm.

Ugh.

Lian (37:21)

But all I knew is I was approaching the tunnel. The next thing I knew, I'd come out and I was up at the other side of the tunnel. And I suddenly realised like, I have got no recollection of lining myself up to go under the tunnel, going under the tunnel. I've got out the other side, I haven't scratched my car. I've managed to make it back out onto the road. But all of that happened automatically. And it was such a… It was so binary as in like, had no conscious awareness that happened and yet it happened perfectly. And so it's exactly the same thing. It's always stood out as one of those kind of like, I learned something about consciousness in that moment. And then the other thing as I was pondering is, you mentioned martial arts as an example, I've done many, years of martial arts and

Michael Perez (37:50)

Yes.

Lian (38:10)

something that was so like the examples you were giving. I did many years of certain martial arts, then had a break. And then more recently, I started back with martial arts, but with kung fu, which is quite different to the kind of martial arts I'd done before. And my goodness, talk about going from being really good at something to being really bad at something.

Michael Perez (38:24)

Mm. Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Lian (38:37)

learned certain ways to say for example kick and punch all of which had to be kind of like thrown away to learn how to do kung fu and then there was a point where all my previous years of martial arts kind of suddenly came back but I really was like so I was probably much worse than the other beginners at kung fu because of my years of martial arts it was like I really had kind of had to let go of that stuff be really bad

Michael Perez (38:43)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yes.

Yes.

Lian (39:06)

in order to start to be good again.

Michael Perez (39:07)

Yes.

Lian (39:07)

And I think there's something hopeful in recognising like, like this is part of the process, it will happen and there is something beyond that.

Michael Perez (39:14)

Yes. Well, you know, in Zen, we refer to that as the beginner's mind. You know, to find the place where you're fine at being terrible. I had a similar thing happen to me when I learned how to drive and I became a reasonably good driver for a young man my age and then I wanted to learn how to drive a race car. And I wanted to learn how to drive rally racing. And suddenly everything that I knew about driving was wrong.

Lian (39:22)

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (39:47)

And I became much worse before I got any better. Now what was interesting though, and this is I'm sure this is something if you haven't already discovered it, I'm sure you're going to discover it. If you learn one style of martial arts, then you try another style, you're terribly bad. In fact, you're worse than the other people at your same beginner's level, because your old patterns are trying to assert themselves and they shouldn't. But then you learn to find the beginner's mind.

Lian (40:14)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (40:15)

Then you take on the new patterns, and then they become automatic. But what's really interesting is, as people discover when doing mixed up martial arts, there's a moment when the old patterns and the new patterns find an equilibrium with one another and you suddenly have a much wider range of possibilities and of things you can do than people who only know one pattern or the other.

Lian (40:40)

Mmm.

Hmm.

Michael Perez (40:46)

And suddenly you become much stronger. but what's also interesting and where this can become problematic, sometimes I deal with golfers, and golfers have a thing, maybe some of you have played golf, it's a thing called the yips. And the yips happen because golfers are always big on their swing, right? No, put your hips here and put your shoulders like this and careful with your elbows. blah, blah, blah, all these different, no, your legs are too far apart. They're not close enough in together, blah, blah, blah. And if they get if if they start trying to swing consciously, or if they consciously interrupt their swing, trying to check for all of these things that are supposed to be the way that they are, they will suddenly mess up their swing. And that little moment of conscious interruption is called a Yip. It's like a hiccup almost that just messes up your swing. And the key is

Lian (41:30)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (41:42)

You have to let it become unconscious again. You have to decide to let it go. Once you've learned enough, then you have to decide to let it go. And that's another part of the process as well. Michael Jordan, the basketball player, I'm not a sports ball guy too much, but I love the way he described playing basketball when he was playing at his best. He said, you know what would happen? I would start playing.

Lian (41:47)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (42:13)

And then it was almost like I was watching myself play. And in my mind, I was asking myself, I wonder what I'm going to do now. there's those two guards. What am I going to do? I went through the middle. that's great. what am going to do? I took a shot. Look at that. He was literally surprised by what he was doing. Because he just detached. He was letting his animal perform and doing what the animal knew how to do. And on a human level, he's just

Lian (42:18)

Mmm.

I love that.

Mmm.

Michael Perez (42:41)

sitting back and being a spectator. Let me tell you where you do this right now and you don't even know that you're doing it and I'm doing it right now and I do know that I'm doing it but I keep forgetting. Let me ask you a question. Where do you conjugate your verbs when you talk?

Lian (43:03)

I don't know.

Michael Perez (43:05)

Right? Where do you insert your conjunctions in your particles? How did you even know? But I mean, but where in your brain? I mean, is it in consciousness? Is that happening anywhere where you get to, let's see, I got to start with a conjunction, the, let's see a particle and then I've got to the here's the verb, the noun, the subject, the predicate. Here's the secret.

Lian (43:14)

It's like, where in my brain?

Hmm.

Michael Perez (43:34)

You never talk consciously. Speaking happens outside of awareness and it enters awareness and when that happens we take conscious credit for whatever it is that's coming out of our mouth. But consciousness didn't assemble language. Consciousness just takes credit for it.

Lian (43:39)

Hmm.

Mmm.

Yes, I love that so much. It's funny because this, yes it is, it's timely because my daughter's very good at English and she finds it hilarious that she'll be talking to adults and their understanding of English is much worse than hers and so she was, I won't out the family member, she was talking to, it only last week this happened, she was saying about said family member who was there.

Michael Perez (43:57)

Isn't that funny?

Hahaha!

Hmm. Yep.

Lian (44:24)

She doesn't even know what a verb or a noun is and laughing at this other family member. And then the other family member said, well, I haven't need like I can use them without needing to know what they are. And I was like, what you're saying is kind of a whole other level. It's like, yes, they're happening irregardless. It's yeah, there's something so there is something magical with the recognition that that is just happening.

Michael Perez (44:29)

Yep. That's it. Yes. The animal in us knows a thing. The human in us knows about a thing. Metacognition as opposed to cognition, right? And so there's a, you know, in Buddhism, there's an entire practice of understanding that it is not about attaining something, it is about realizing that you already are that thing.

Lian (44:59)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Michael Perez (45:21)

And so much of these of these kind of primal principles is about the recognition of what is already true about you that you already do. And to simply allow yourself to step into that in fullness, rather than having consciousness constantly throw you into the yips by trying to pull you out of it, but trying to meta analyze everything.

Lian (45:35)

Mmm.

Mmmmm

Michael Perez (45:45)

And so one of the things that myself and my friend Ryan, who's also been on your podcast, one of the things that we teach people to do is we teach people to go into states of consciousness that are more fundamentally animalistic human as opposed to sort of rational kind of you know, just this idea of the human who is thinking about things rather than thinking of things. You know, getting out of this kind of disconnect that we have. Again, mindfulness practice is very much about the description of a thing and the attention to the description of a thing as a way of disassociating from a thing so that we can be more mindful and more peaceful and more measured in our responses.

Lian (46:21)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (46:44)

But when it comes to the love that I feel for one of my family and friends, I don't want to disassociate from that. I want to fully step into that wonderful embodied loving kindness and care and compassion and just genuine empathy and kindness and love. the description is valuable.

Lian (46:56)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (47:13)

but I don't want to live in the description 24 seven. You know, this is where again, I think the ability to detach not to be a captive of attachment is a valuable skill, but it is not meant to be a lifestyle.

Lian (47:18)

Mm-mm.

Mmm. 

Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Michael Perez (47:35)

You know, is the optionality, I can do this. And when it's appropriate, I do. And yet in other moments, in other moments, it's just about being. It's just about, you know, letting go of everything else and simply being in the moment.

Lian (47:43)

Yes, that really makes sense. Hmm. So what might that we are well actually up on time this is flown by

Michael Perez (48:00)

okay.

Lian (48:06)

You've absolutely touched on this as we've gone, but kind of in closing, what would you invite listeners into as a kind of practice of becoming aware of, you know, what's taking place semantically at these other levels, whilst, say, for example, we're in a conversation, what might that look like?

Michael Perez (48:10)

Yes. Sure. One of the things that I like to do is I like to engage in a little dialogue with myself sometimes just to continue to bring my attention to these things. So for a moment, I bring it into consciousness. I ask myself, how am I sitting? How am I? What's my facial expression? What's my belly feel like? What's my chest feel like? Where are my shoulders? Where's my gaze fixated? You know, how much muscle tension and tonus are in my face? What's the rhythm of my breathing? How deeply or not am I breathing? Am I down on my belly and breathing for my diaphragm or my breathing for my chest or even occasionally just breathing for my nose? What is all that? What is true about how I am right now? Then the second question I ask is, if I'm in some sort of a dialogue with another person, what's true about where they are physiologically? And then I asked myself the question, what aspects of my physiology are a response to their physiology or vice versa? And therefore, and how does their physiology feel? Let me just step really into their physiology for a moment. What does that tell me that they're feeling right now?

Lian (49:26)

Mm. Hmm.

Michael Perez (49:44)

How might those feelings reflect a deeper insight? And if I know how they feel, and I take what they're saying with their jaw jaw word words, what is what is what? How are those feelings a kind of commentary on what those words really mean?

Lian (50:06)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (50:08)

And then once I've taken a moment to kind of connect with what that is, what those feels are, I then put it aside for a moment and I just connect with the person again. But I do this periodically. If I notice a big shift, I'll ask myself a question. Okay, so what's true now? And this whole little check, this somatic check, it might take 15, 20 seconds really.

Lian (50:32)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (50:38)

Especially once you practice it and once you get good at it. But just doing that, you know, every time you feel a shift can give you insights that you wouldn't have otherwise. Now, again, of course, you know, I teach much more sophisticated practices around this, but just as if that's the one thing that you did was just allowed your awareness of the fact that this is going on.

Lian (50:53)

Hmm.

Michael Perez (51:07)

give you a chance to check yourself, check someone else, check the interchange, ask yourself based on their physiology, how might they be feeling, what that, what meta commentary might that make on whatever it is that they're saying? Does that give you any additional insight?

Lian (51:29)

Mm. Yeah.

Michael Perez (51:30)

That's something that I think, you know, if anybody picked that up, I think that would already make you a better communicator than maybe a good percentage of maybe a majority of the human species who just gets caught up in their head and focused on the words.

Lian (51:43)

Hmm.

Definitely, but potentially worse before you get better. Yeah. Well, this has been absolutely fabulous. Sure listeners would love to find out more about you and your work. Where can they do so?

Michael Perez (51:49)

Potentially worse just for a little while. You're always a little wobbly before you get good.

Well, you can find me and my lovely and talented partner, Ryan Jenkins. He's not that lovely, but I love.

Lian (52:12)

Just to say Ryan has been on the show many times before and he's also a really dear friend. you know, I would recommend anything that Ryan is up to. So just wanted to add that before you carry on.

Michael Perez (52:17)

Yes. Absolutely. And I'm a friend of Ryan as well. He's not as beautiful as I am, but you he's very nice. we're, we're working together on a new project. My neurological, psychological, anthropological work is called the Neuron Code. And the new work that we're doing together, because Ryan and I both have great experience with tribal peoples is called Neuron Code Tribal Trainings, where we are talking about

Lian (52:30)

Hehehehe

Michael Perez (52:53)

the interface between the spiritual, the psychological, and the primal, you know, and really stepping into who we are as animals in a very sophisticated way that helps us in our personal evolution. And also, you know, helping people to be trainers and leaders and coaches. So if that's something that you're interested in, we're at NeuronCodeTribalTraining.com.

Lian (53:03)

Mmm.

Michael Perez (53:23)

It's all one word, neuron code, tribal training. And come see us. We'd love to get to meet you and get to know you in person. And maybe you can come to one of our trainings. And we'd love to answer your questions.

Lian (53:37)

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Michael. This has been really fascinating for me personally, which is usually a sign of a good show. And until the next time, because I feel like this is probably the first of at least one more conversation between us. Thank you so much.

Michael Perez (53:53)

I'm happy to come back and this was a joy and a real slice. So I look forward to seeing you all again.

Lian (54:01)

I very much hope you enjoyed watching that and if you did and you're not already subscribed then do hit that bell thingy and subscribe to automatically get each fresh new episode as it's released each week. If you'd like to find out more about the work we do at Be Mythical to guide and support old souls in this new world to live their own unique myth…

Do hop along to bemythical.com and you'll find out all the ways you can join us and go deeper with us on your own mythical journey.

Lots of love for now.

See you again next week.

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