Should Fitness NOT Be Your Goal?
ā The MOVEMENT Movement with Steven Sashen Episode 130 with Kyle Fincham
Kyle Fincham is the creator of Infinite Play, a movement workshop that explores playfulness by reconnecting us with our creative, adaptive, and cooperative potential. Infinite Play workshops are accessible to all misfits, wildlings, and nonconformists.Ā Kyle also hosts Behind the Movement, a weekly podcast where he speaks with movement makers of all types about their stories, thoughts, and philosophies. He also regularly writes articles expressing his ideas and wonderings for his blog. Kyle aims to share and explore this passion for playfulness through all areas of his life, teaching, and art.
Kyle grew up in Lake Tahoe and found his passion for teaching while working as a ski instructor.Ā He studied theater at UCLA, where he could be found regularly in Vaudeville class.Ā In 2005 he moved to New York to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.Ā After almost 10 years of chasing laughs, he realized his fascination with movement, and decided to leave the yucks behind to follow this new path.
Kyle is a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, is deeply influenced by both Tom Weksler and the Fighting Monkey Practice and was a student of Ido Portal from 2015-2020.Ā Kyle reads often and travels near and far to attend workshops and seminars, expanding his experience of different movement tools, approaches, and philosophies.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Kyle Fincham about how fitness shouldnāt be your goal during movement.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this weekās show:
ā Why treating things like they are a game to win limits the surprise in your life.
ā How people shouldnāt resist being surprised, they should embrace it.
ā How your practice in movement can reflect what you want to see in the world.
ā How there is more than one way for you to enjoy movement.
ā Why we think we are in more control in this world than we actually are.
Connect with Kyle:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@theinfiniteplayguy
Links Mentioned:
kylefincham.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
If you want to have a long happy life, you know what you need to do, you need to be in shape. You need to be fit. You need to do the things that make you fit and have fitness. Right? Well, what if that is not true? Crazy as that sounds, weāre going to look into that in todayās episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting typically feet first, because those things are your foundation. And here we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies youāve been told about what it takes to run or walk or play or hike, or in this case just live to the remainder of your life and to do that enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. And did I say enjoyably? Donāt answer. Itās a trick question.
Because I know I did. Because look, if youāre not having fun, do something different till you are. Because if itās not fun, youāre not going to keep it up anyway, so why add more stress? We call this the MOVEMENT Movement because weāre creating a movement and that we part is something that you and I are involved in. Doesnāt take any effort, really. Iāll tell you more in a second. The other part, the MOVEMENT Movement, is that weāre creating this movement around natural movement, letting your body do what itās made to do instead of getting in the way and making life more difficult. Iām Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of this thing. And all you need to do is really simple. If you want to go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com, you donāt need to do anything to join.
Thereās no membership fee. Thereās no membership really just like and share, find the previous episodes, subscribe, hit the thumbs up or the bell icon or whatever. Basically look, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. Or if you think thereās other people who should be part of the tribe, please subscribe there too. So like I said in the intro, maybe fitness is not the goal that you should be looking for. And Kyle, please do me a favor, tell human beings who you are and what you do and what you said that made me say that.
Kyle Fincham:
My nameās Kyle Fincham. I am currently traveling across the globe, teaching a workshop that I call Infinite Play, which is basically just exploring the mindset of playfulness through the vehicle of movement. Iām currently in Brooklyn, New York. And Iām flying out to Europe next week.
Steven Sashen:
Where in Brooklyn are you?
Kyle Fincham:
I am in Bushwick right now.
Steven Sashen:
I was in Brooklyn a little while ago. And I at every moment was afraid I was going to get a ticket for not having a man bun or some other hip thing that I do not do.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Maybe about 10 years ago, I was totally hip enough for any of the neighborhoods that I fell into. But now I walk out the door and Iām like, āIāve passed that time.ā
Steven Sashen:
One of the last times I was in Brooklyn, I was stunned to go by a guy who was selling artisanal pickles, $5 each.
Kyle Fincham:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
For a pickle, five bucks, pickle.
Kyle Fincham:
Wow. You know what? I got back into eating bread when I was back in Europe last year.
Steven Sashen:
Good for you.
Kyle Fincham:
The baguettes are a buck 50 or two bucks or something and here a baguette is four or five bucks and itās just from a grocery store or something.
Steven Sashen:
Oh no. Well, everything in and around New York has gotten expensive. Lena and I were there two weeks ago I think for a board meeting and I met a couple friends for breakfast and three eggs and toast. Guess how much?
Kyle Fincham:
12 bucks.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, youāre so cute. 18 to 20.
Kyle Fincham:
Oh.
Steven Sashen:
Two eggs and toast.
Kyle Fincham:
When you said that, it hit me in the chest.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I got a down payment on a piece of pizza.
Kyle Fincham:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
Pizza used to be a buck, buck, and a half, and now $3.75. Anyway, enough about the price of food in and around the great city of New York. So Infinite Play, say more about that and how that relates to what I tease this with about fitness and maybe itās not the best goal to have or the thing that you need.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. I think that weāre led to believe that if weāre strong, if weāre flexible, if weāre mobile, if we have a whole bunch of moves and techniques that itās synonymous with being able to move through life playfully. And Iāve just come to believe thatās not the case, that in some ways getting caught up in the systems or the boxes or the definitions can actually be this great limitation for us, because life is full of surprises. Life is random. Life is accidents. And to move through it playfully means to be welcoming of surprise and welcoming of the randomness and welcoming of the accidents. And maybe sometimes that means weāre strong in certain areas, weāre flexible in certain areas or we have some moves, but having the full collection of all is not the same as being able to move through life the way the rest of the animals and the rest of nature navigates life. And thatās what I like to explore in my workshop.
Steven Sashen:
Fascinating. Then weāre using the word move in maybe two different ways. One about the movements involved in fitness activities, for example. Being able to run, being able to lift, being able to climb, being able to whatever. But another, when youāre talking about moving through life, thereās more of a metaphorical component to that. So can you pick that apart a little for me? Maybe you can do that by explaining something more about what somebody would do if they were joining you for a workshop.
Kyle Fincham:
Totally. Well, ultimately at the end of the day movement is not just an activity that we do. Movement is our way of communicating with the world. We just have this privilege of have to not use our full library of communication skills because everything is convenient and sanitized at this point. But movement worked in relation with our senses and we would use that to move through life in terms of how we communicate with other people, how we communicate with the spaces that we move through. Thatās why we have this amazing potential for movement. So in my workshop, Iām not so much caught up in distilling down all the different movements and break them into what we can do. Iām interested in presenting scenarios where weāre willing to get lost, and be okay with that rather than having to Google map everything.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Iām going to ask you this question, but I have to tell you a story before you answer it. The question is given that, and given that this is The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, Iām going to ask you to share something so people can have an experience of what youāre saying, rather than just hearing it. Maybe ā¦ Iām doing this thing lately where I go, āHm.ā And I my head a little, like 45 degrees, because my wife and I for the first time in our lives are now dog owners. So we have a dog that just does that like, āWhat?ā But hereās the story Iām going to tell you that maybe it sounds like there may be an analog and I want you to tell me if itās true. When I was in my twenties at the advice of a crazy girlfriend, I found myself in a group therapy group. Not suggesting the group therapy means youāre ā¦
Itās a fine thing, but I went because she told me to, and ultimately did not get a whole lot out of it. But there was this one great moment where I realized that everybody was sitting in the same seat or more accurately thereās one person in particular who always sat in the same seat. And I happened to show up at the group one time earlier than anybody else. So I sat in quote her seat and she came in and told me to move. And I said, āWhy?ā She goes, āThatās my seat.ā I said, āItās a seat.ā And she went crazy. And when all the group was there, thereās a big kerfuffle about who was sitting where, and I remember at one point she said, āI thought this was a safe space.ā I said, āItās safe enough to discover that you can sit anywhere and be okay.ā Am I way off base with that story?
Kyle Fincham:
No. A story that I like to tell is one that a friend of mine shared with me about his time in college. And he and I are about the same age, late thirties, so it was before there were Google Maps, which I referred to before. He talked about how he and his friends would take road trips often during the spring breaks and summer vacations and things like that. And he says, when he looks back on that time and those adventures they went on, the things that he remembers most and the things that are most special to him are the times that they got lost. We have done this really great job of making everything fast and efficient, right? But at the same time, weāve limited getting lost. And the magic I think might be in the getting lost.
Steven Sashen:
Thereās a variation of that. I remember having to drive when I was living in New York city, this is 30 years ago. I had to drive to somewhere outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was a camp that I went to as a kid, they were having a 50th anniversary party and I had to go. And I remember looking at a map, if people remember what those are, an actual map in a big Atlas-y kind of book thing. What was really fun is the maps had roadside attractions that were clearly marked and in the middle of Pennsylvania, there was a wild animal preserve or a reptile and some other strange animal sanctuary or something. There was all these wacky things. And I built a trip around everything that was off the main roads to just go from one of these things to another, to another, to another. And it was totally ridiculous and delightful. And you just canāt do that anymore. Not looking at Google maps.
Kyle Fincham:
Right. And I think that the larger repercussions of this way is that it makes us think that we can control and be certain of everything and we can limit our lost and we can prevent surprise. So that ultimately when those things do happen, we panic. Weāre not really prepared to be with surprise. Weāre not really prepared to be with lost, when itās totally inevitable. Itās going to happen, weāre going a trip.
Steven Sashen:
Iām going to get back to the give something to people to share or share something with people. Youāre suggesting, it sounds, that the things that we are currently doing for fitness are antithetical to that idea of just being open to whatās happening and able to respond accordingly, whether itās letās call a mental or physical movement.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. I think that the things that weāre doing now are fine if we also do the other thing.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Kyle Fincham:
Thereās a lot of precision and not a lot of romance. And I think that we need more.
Steven Sashen:
Thereās a great book, I think itās just called Muscle, about a guy who moved to New York when he graduated college or maybe grad school and got a job in publishing and felt insecure in New York and felt at the whim and mercy of New York and so he got into body building. Itās a really interesting book about that goes back and forth chapter by chapter between what it was like to train to become a bodybuilder and what was going on in his mind about this and how he was able to, or not able to roll with the punches as it were. It was a fascinating, fascinating book, because itās really describing exactly what youāre talking about.
Kyle Fincham:
Well, I was part of the CrossFit world in a certain degree for a short period of time. And the irony is we sit around telling people we want them to be able to think outside the box, but the gym is actually called a box.
Steven Sashen:
My first time that I was in a CrossFit box, and someone had me go through one of the workouts, theyāre yelling at me like, āGo, go, go.ā And I literally turned at one point and said, āYour yelling does not give me any motivation.ā Iām self-motivated. Iām curious to see how I can do the next time, but thereās no prize money at the end of this. Itās not a real competition. I just donāt care that much. If itās fun, Iāll do it. If itās not fun, Iām not going to do it.
Kyle Fincham:
Well, and competition is just so of this part of the world at this day and age, and I think we celebrate it and make everything into the ā¦ We think that itās the way, but I think that weāve made it really far by also being quite cooperative. And I think that things like play are our places to explore potential for cooperation. And itās a powerful tool, but I think that in our world in the way we exist now, maybe itās a bit of a privilege to get to exist in a very competitive settings all the time. But Iām not so sold on it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I can tell you from my experience, thereās two things. One as a competitive sprinter, I love the competition because it ā¦ For a couple reasons. One, I have a naturally competitive streak in me. So it gives me a place to indulge in that in a way thatās entertaining. It also gives me a reason to get out on the track, because Iām imagining these things that I want to accomplish because I enjoy doing them. And so it gives me a bit of a focus. When I was doing physical things, where there was no end result, some of the things I was doing, itās like, āOh, this is more pain than gain. So Iām not going to do it.ā But I like that the flip side is I will say that the more Iāve come to understand what big shoe companies have been doing for 50 years and how itās been hurting people and how we are hearing from people daily saying, āOh my God, this natural movement thing changed my life,ā itās brought out a competitive streak in me in on the business side that I didnāt really know that I had.
Itās engaging in a certain way, but I canāt say itās enjoyable. And the cooperation thing is intriguing because Iām friends with most of my competitors because we are all trying to do the same thing. We need to play together in some way. So itās a really interesting kind of balance between ā¦ Itās like when Iām at the track, some guy will usually say really intense like, āGood luck in the race. Have a good race.ā And Iāll say, āHey, hey dude, thereās no prize money. Thereās no sponsorship. Have fun. Hopefully you wonāt get injured. Oh. And by the way, I totally want to kick your ass.ā And I say it that casually, because it really is that casual. I will, or I wonāt, who cares. It doesnāt really matter in the long run. Rumor has it my wife wonāt leave me if Iām second in a hundred meters. I donāt know. All right. Iāve mentioned this five times or so, so now Iām going to put you on the spot. Give people something that they can experience from what weāve been talking about, which again, can be a little out in the-
Kyle Fincham:
Iāll give two things. And one of them I already mentioned, but Iāll give two.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Kyle Fincham:
The first one is very much a movement task.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Kyle Fincham:
And itās one that I use often, but grab a ball, any kind like a tennis ball or a lacrosse ball, whatever you got. Lay it on the ground, get onto the floor on your hands and your feet or your hands and your knees. I donāt really care. And maybe move just in that position, around on the floor and just keep the ball moving, keep the ball moving only using your hands and your feet. And then if your hands and your feet have felt like youāve become competent, maybe use other parts of your body to keep the ball moving like your shoulder or your elbow or your wrist or your chin back of your head. Right? And just keep the ball moving.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh, thatās a good question if someoneās doing that to wonder every now and then what part of my body havenāt, I used?
Kyle Fincham:
Itās also a good opportunity to drag in your friend or your roommate or your spouse and ask them to tell you what part of your body to touch the ball with.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, thatās a good one too. This reminds me, Iāve been known to do things at workshops where they say, āFind a safe space to do something,ā Iāve been known to walk out the door. Because Iām just thinking whatās the most outrageous way I could do this thing that theyāre asking? What would be the one thing that no one thought to do and then just leave.
Kyle Fincham:
I love that. Love that. Nice risk. I like that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, Iām curious to see whatāll happen. Thatās a good one. Was the first one just go somewhere and get lost?
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Walk out your front door.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
And get on your bike or drive in your car or ideally take a walk in zero shoes or barefoot, but donāt turn on Google maps and start heading in a direction you know, and then when you get to an intersection when you normally wouldāve turned right, turn left and just see what happens. Go get lost because, both of these things are being playful. Both of these things are the willingness to be surprised and bask in the surprise and getting places efficiently and always trying to treat things as if theyāre a game to win is when we start limiting surprise. Right? Because as you know, as a competitor, when youāre in competition mode, you want as few surprises as possible, right? You donāt want to trip on a stone. You donāt want to feel something thatās ā¦ As much as you can control, you want to control for that moment in time. But when we start doing life that way, when we try to limit surprise and try to only do things that weāre competent at, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
When the things happen that weāre not competent at, or when surprise unfolds or when the randomness happens, weāre just not prepared. Right. And we get rigid and the way that we respond to surprise when weāre not welcoming of surprise is to try to defeat, destroy, control, submit whatever that thing is.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
As opposed to dance with it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you know whatās funny about the structured competition and surprise, my favorite part of the race is the moment between set and the gun going off because the whole technique is to be ready to be surprised. You canāt be ready to go. You get set and youāre ready to go. And then you just have to be surprised. Itās actually my favorite thing when someone literally does surprise me, they come up behind me and I donāt hear them. Because itās the most unadulterated, and I never thought of it this way, unadulterated experience of just jumping in the air and being shocked. I just totally, totally enjoy it.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. I use this quote often. So the reason I call my workshop Infinite Play is because I read this book, Finite And Infinite Games by James Carse. And thereās a famous quote that he has in there. And itās something like to be prepared against surprise is to be trained, to be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
Steven Sashen:
I like it. When youāre doing the workshops, what kind of people show up? What are they expecting and what surprises them when they go through it?
Kyle Fincham:
When I first started teaching, there was a lot of people who came from movement, the big M movement that seems to exist in the world now, because thatās where I was found.
Steven Sashen:
Like?
Kyle Fincham:
Movement culture, movement. Iād been studying with Ido Portal for a really long time. So, a lot of people who have movement facilities have hosted me and had me. And theyāre amazing. And then a lot more recently, I think itās starting to transcend a little bit the gaps are getting a little wider. The demographic is changing. Itās a lot of different people. Itās not necessarily people who come from movement, but who are maybe interested in movement philosophically. But in the end, I think people are quite moved. And I donāt mean physically moved, but some people, there have been a couple people who have been moved to tears.
There are taken by the experience because ultimately, weāre really practicing communicating. Weāre practicing being with people, right? Weāre practicing that potential we have for deep listening. But that means to deep listen with a group of people is also to feel listened to. And I think sometimes people are taken by what it feels to be listened to because maybe in this world thereās not a lot of being listened to happening.
Yeah. It can be enriching and maybe so far as to healing for some people. Yeah. Itās a special experience. And I think itās far from what anybody imagines. So often when people ask, āWhat should I expect?ā Iāll be like, āWell, whatever you imagine, itās not that. And then when you imagine it again, itās not that either.ā
Steven Sashen:
Well, speaking of things youāve mentioned, youāve mentioned movement as communication a couple times. Can you dive into that a little bit? Because Iām not quite clear how that works or what you mean when you say that.
Kyle Fincham:
Right. So before we could speak with words we had sounds and we moved our body to try to communicate. So even just in a human to human interaction, we were moving our bodies to help navigate communication. But also human to human, without even trying to communicate, our nervous systems are having a dialogue. Right? So thatās what co-regulating is right? Iām noticing your posture, your breath, your eyes. And Iām not thinking about it. Itās not cognitive. This is something thatās happening just in my own nervous system. And these are all different movements and things that are happening in our body. Right? But then on a more thinking about how we move through the world, on an individual level, I need a body thatās deeply communicative. Right? I want joints that communicate with one another from the ground up.
Right? So that they move like a symphony, right? So that theyāre creative, adaptable and cooperative with one another, instead of rigid and isolated, same thing goes with people. I want to be able to be creative, adaptable, and cooperative, which means to communicate with another person so that when we walk into a scenario and you and I have never done anything before, whether itās dancing together, fighting together, playing together or talking with one another, I have the tools to move with that. And then same thing goes for the spaces that we move through. Right? I need to those same qualities to walk into new and novel spaces and scenarios and situations so that I can have my dance or my play or my dialogue with whatever that is offering me.
Steven Sashen:
The image that I got when you were saying that is of someone or most of us not thinking of ā¦ Well, itās going to sound weird. Iām hacking it out in real time. Not thinking about how our very subtle moves, just the way we stand, the way we sit down, the way we stand back up, the way we take that first step. People donāt think about that as a form of communication typically. Although the flip side in my thinking is Iām flashing back to when I was in second or third grade. And I remember, or at least I have seemingly a memory of walking down the hall of my elementary school, practicing different ways of walking because I wanted to look like something I saw in a comic book or whatever it was. But weāre not typically thinking about ā¦ We get these patterns, we get locked into them we donāt think about how they may be impacting the way people see us, because what weāre telling them without knowing what weāre saying.
Kyle Fincham:
And in relation to walking, multiple kind of dialogues are happening, right? Weāre having a conversation with the surface of the earth or the ground, right. Weāre dancing on it. Right? But if we dance with it, weāre always going to be more efficient, right? Again, our joints are having this interaction, as people are moving around us, weāre having these nonverbal communicative interactions as we navigate around the spaces with the people. And that involves everything that involves things that we can think about. And so much that we canāt think about. Thatās why itās, like I say, the way we actually move our body and our full sensory experience and everything thatās happening in our nervous system, itās an all at once this emergence thatās happening.
Steven Sashen:
Have you experienced that people in different cultures have a different relationship to this? What Iām thinking of when I say that is like, when I was just in New York or when Iām walking down the street and people are walking towards me and thereās only so much room, Iām always interested to see how people respond to that. Theyāre looking right at me and they donāt get out of the way, for example. I find that utterly fascinating. Versus I remember when Lena and I were in India for friendsā wedding 15 years ago or so, tons and tons of people, less difficult interactions during the course of a day, walking through tons of people in India than you have in five minutes in Whole Foods where people park their cart in the middle of an aisle and just randomly go off into space. And itās like a whole different way of thinking about the way our bodies interact with that space in those people, in that place. And I was wondering if youāve seen similar things.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. I havenāt spent it much time in more collectivist cultures, but I read about them quite a bit. And I think in some ways, what youāre describing is people who have emerged out of a culture thatās a little bit more individualists, right? Itās the me, myself and I attitude. So itās like, āIām not getting out of the way,ā or, āIām going to win this walk this way,ā or, āWho cares what everybody else is doing? Iām parking my cart right here.ā Whereas in some of these other parts of the world, thereās a little bit more we us and them. Not to say thatās a better way to live either Iām not proposing better or worse. What Iām thinking more is that thereās again, this dance that can exist between the individualās mindset and the collectivist mindset. So that we see a little bit more of we in me.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Kyle Fincham:
I think that thereās something there. But speaking to what youāre talking about, I think that itās really a cultural emergence or a societal emergence in these very individualist places. And itās not a single person being like, āIām going to be this way.ā Itās just whatās come out of it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You came out of the fitness world and I think came out of is an interesting phrase, both from an evolution and an escaping from perspective. What was the thing that triggered that and how did you then develop what youāre doing with infinite play?
Kyle Fincham:
I was really practicing a lot. I was practicing six hours a day, this movement practice where things were in containers and things were really tight and rigid. I progressed and could do amazing gymnastics things and I could do amazing strength things. And I had these moves and some techniques and things, but I realized that I couldnāt just show up and play in any scenario. I needed everything to be in place. Right? And then there was this really funny moment where I realized, āOh man, I can stand really well on my hands. I can almost do a one arm handstand, but subjectively I moved poorly on my feet.ā That was the catalyst for whatās going on here? Then I started thinking more philosophically about the things that I believe in and the things that I care about and the things that I value and playfulness became this word that just really captured a lot of the things that I care about.
And I was talking to my friend, Marlo Fisken, whoās a really, well-known pole movement teacher, performer, artist. Sheās a genius. And I just asked her one day, I said, āHey, what do you feel like isnāt talked about enough in movement? And she said, āHow our practice and our teaching can reflect the changes that we want to see in the world.ā And it was just this aha moment where I thought to myself, āWow, I really care about what the world might look like if people were willing to welcome surprise rather than defeat surprise. Can I facilitate that in what I present? Can movement be my vehicle for that?ā And that was the jumping off point.
Steven Sashen:
And so, from there, it sounds like that was a aha, but not clearly fully formed something. It at some point had to take on a bit more of a, I donāt want to use the word structure incorrectly, but it had to become a bit more tangible at the very least. And I like that idea. What happened in terms of developing it?
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Well, I was fortunate enough that I lived in Boulder for a few months and there was a group that would meet me out there in North Boulder Park twice a week. And they were just I donāt want to say Guinea pigs because we were really working on things together and creating together, but I was facilitating and trying and experimenting. And every day I would just walk in with a couple little nuggets of ideas. But what I really thought to myself was the teachers that Iāve been the most moved by in my entire life are not people who showed up with amazing content, even though the content ended up being amazing, but they showed up with a message and then anything that they presented just went through the filter of that message.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Kyle Fincham:
Every day Iād be like walking to the park and I would just be thinking to myself, āOkay. My message is playfulness. Playfulness means to welcome surprise and uncertainty. The tools for welcoming surprise and uncertainty are to be creative, adaptable, and cooperative.ā And I would just say these things over and over, and Iād walk in with my little ideas and just throw them out there. But then it also meant that Iād almost set it a mantra to a point where I was like, āI also need to welcome surprise.ā So whatever everybody else throws back at me, thatās part of what we start cooking with together.
I might show up with an idea, but then part of play is letting it unfold. When itās too rigid and youāre trying to hold it in place, well, thatās not surprising anymore. So then I might propose this tennis ball game for instance, but then they would start adding to it and creating their own scenarios. My friend who was a break dancer, added his little pieces to it. And then this friend of mine, whoās a contemporary dancer, added these other pieces to it. And Iām like, āOh, well, thatās what happens when you let everybody add their spice to the soup rather than saying, āIāve got the recipe, no one else put anything else in.ā ā
Steven Sashen:
Itās interesting because if youāre trying to establish yourself as a teacher of a thing, you need a thing. And so this happened in the barefoot running movement back in 2009, 2010, where there was just maybe a dozen people who each were trying to carve out a thing. It was definitely very rigid. It was like, āYou have to do it this way.ā Itās like, āNo, no. You donāt really have to. Thereās other ways of doing that.ā
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Well, before we spoke a little bit about competition and cooperation. Thereās this book by this guy named Alfie Kohn called No Contest. And in there he starts talking about the cooperative learning movement. And I think that maybe took hold in the eighties or nineties, the idea of cooperative learning, trying to push it in schools. But immediately when it became popularized, people jumped in, were like, āWe need to create a system, a methodology,ā and people wanted to sell the system and it inevitably didnāt work. And what he points out is he was like, āItās not a system, itās actually a value.ā So what you need is teachers and facilitators who embody the value. And then they walk into each novel scenario with that value and then present it to that unique group and the way that itās meant to be done at that period in time.
Steven Sashen:
It strikes me that is so anti evolutionary in some way. And what I mean is that there seems to be an evolutionary pull towards having something systematized, having some clear understanding of what something is, even if that understanding is not accurate we still go for it. Iām actually flashing back. If you havenāt watched the special about George Carlin recently.
Kyle Fincham:
Just watched it.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, so great. They had something that was one of my favorite things that he said he was on Charlie Rose, āYou see, no, I love individuals. I just donāt like groups. And sometimes a group is as small as two people.ā And because then it becomes a solidified thing. And so I think that thereās got to be a reason that we do that and I would argue itās an evolutionary reason. And so being cooperative in that open is Iām just having fun with the phrase anti evolutionary, just because itās so not the way we typically go about anything. And ironically, itās funny, weāve built this company, thereās now 67 of us and I am really, really happy that thereās no politics going on. Thereās nobody competing for the next position. Because there isnāt a hierarchy like that.
Thereās just everyone trying to do the right thing. And some people do it well, some people do it less well. Some people really get thatās what weāre doing. Some people donāt know, but thatās what theyāre doing anyway. There was a guy who worked for us for a while who always called me boss and I kept slapping him. Not literally, but itās like, āNo, that doesnāt work here. Thatās not the game weāre playing.ā And when weāre developing products, everybody is involved. Thereās lots of opinions and it ends up you heading in the right direction. But even that, we think of that as anti-corporate, which is anti-evolutionary in the same way.
Kyle Fincham:
No, but youāre hitting an interesting point. Because we are really pattern machines and we have this magical way of seeing patterns around us and probably played a pretty integral role in us making it as far as we have on an evolutionary perspective. I think that more recently though, itās almost as if that ability to see patterns and create organization is almost become all that we do. And maybe itās part of this illusion of control that now is seeping into how we want to move through the world. Because the blessing of consciousness and our unique consciousness is all these things that we can do, have this conversation the way weāre doing it here today.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
But also, then at the end of the day, part of that awareness is that weāre fully clear about our mortality and whatās coming and thatās scary. And I think that some of these things help give that illusion that weāre in more control of this uncontrollable world.
Steven Sashen:
We love the idea. I have this fantasy. Iāve said if at some point Lena and I ever sell this company and we have a whole bunch of money, Iām going to go around to bookstores and buy all of the books on how to create a successful business and then take them into the parking lot and burn them. Because we love this idea that someone can tell you, āHereās how to get to this thing that you think will make you happy. And I have a plan to get there.ā And then we just buy that crap. Despite the fact that thereās just nothing behind thatās remotely true.
Itās all hindsight bias and survivorship bias. And people use Apple as an example of an amazing company. They forget in the nineties, Apple was an example of a company thatās about to tank and crash. Or Enron was a great example of a company for a long time. And Theranos was a great ā¦ But we do, we love this illusion of control because we know if somebody questions us about whether we do have that kind of control or not push comes to shove, weāre going to go, āMaybe not as much as I think,ā and some people will be ballsy enough to go, āYeah, no, I donāt.ā
Kyle Fincham:
Well also I think control is maybe closely aligned with what people think happiness is.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, absolutely.
Kyle Fincham:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Kyle Fincham:
And happiness, I think is what people think of when they think of meaning and purpose. And I donāt know what meaning or purpose is, but I know there are times when I feel meaningful and purposeful and it has more to do with what I was describing, really communicating with life and the world and that full body listening that Iām describing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
Those are the times where Iām like, āThis feels meaningful.ā Being with people, whether itās doing jujitsu or tossing a ball with them in the park or moving through the natural world in ways that asks all my senses to come alive and participate. Thereās some sort of feeling of meaningfulness in that. And I think that there are just a lot of forces at play that want to make us think that itās something bigger crazier and probably more expensive.
Steven Sashen:
Well, again, control, like you said, that connection between control and happiness I think youāre really onto it because we do think that if we can control fill in the blank, then weāll be happy even though no one has ever been able to control that. Itās my favorite thing to talk about with regard to diet. It seems that the way people approach diet, itās the one thing they know they can control to a certain extent on a daily basis, which gives them the idea that it will allow them to have the body that they want. It will allow them to fill in the blank. But most of the time itās, again, a complete farce that that diet is going to be the thing that does fill. It seems to be, how do I put this, the last ā¦ Thereās a phrase that Iām looking for.
Itās the last something of desperate men. Whenever thereās something going on in your life thatās out of control, especially happening with your body, people turn to diet. Itās like, āOh, Iāve definitely got to change this.ā Itās like, āWhere did you get that idea?ā Thereās a woman named Denise Minger who wrote a wonderful book called Death by Food Pyramid. And sheās written a bunch of great blogs that are really, really long essays about health or nutrition. And Iām not going to get into those per se. But the most interesting thing is of in the last couple years, sheās been saying that sheās not going to write about nutrition any longer. And knowing her previous writing where she would, she became the belle of the paleo ball, because she was a diehard, raw food vegan. And it really was affecting her health badly.
So, then she went the exact other way and became like, āIām just going to eat nothing but animals that I kill with my own bare hands,ā which Iām exaggerating for the fun of it. And then she decided to investigate the counterfactuals, like going outside the room when someone says find a safe space. So she looked because the paleo movement was all carbs are bad, sugar is bad. She found places where people eat lots of carbs and lots of refined sugar, totally, totally healthy. She found that there was a thing called the rice diet that they did at Duke, which was taking a morbidly obese people and having them eat nothing but, as much as they wanted, white sugar, white rice and fruit juice, almost impossible to stay on the diet, except that it literally made them go down to a normal weight and reverse their diabetes permanently. So she was looking for these contrary things anyway, knowing that kind of thinking when she said sheās no longer going to write about nutrition, all I could extrapolate from that is she determined that thereās no relationship between what you eat and longevity.
But thatās what we aim for. Itās like, oh, āIāve got to eat this, otherwise fill in the blank.ā And I joke with people that Iām on the, āI donāt know when Iām going to get hit by a bus,ā diet. If itās enjoyable, Iām going to have some. I donāt binge. Thatās not my thing. Iām making a cake right now. My birthdayās coming up and Iām testing a cake. Thereās more sugar in this cake than I eat in a year. Canāt wait to try it.
Kyle Fincham:
I think itās a hard topic to get into because I know where many people can be coming from. But again, I bring it back to almost my message. I donāt know. If we were more playful and again, playful as in joyful. Right? Itās that place of just not trying to defeat everything. And if we were like that with the world around us, sometimes I think that some of these things would work themselves out.
Steven Sashen:
Like what?
Kyle Fincham:
I think that we have this ā¦ Thereās an abundance of food.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
Right? And I think that abundance is maybe a part of the emergence of the attempt to control and defeat things. I want to make sure we always have enough, but it means that a lot is being defeated for our abundance, like what we do to land.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Kyle Fincham:
What we do to animals. All these things. But if we were a little more playful with our relationship to the world in that way, maybe there wouldnāt be so much of this abundance? And I would also say that now, if I were to go a little bigger, if we were talking about food companies and things like that, not being so competitive and playing this finite game of trying to defeat one another and have the most customers and make the most money, maybe products wouldnāt be out there that were so deeply call it unhealthy for people in mass abundance and also super cheap.
Steven Sashen:
Well, dude, we know people at pretty much every footwear brand that weāve ever spoken with who say, āOh no, we totally get this natural movement thing. We just canāt do it because it would be admitting that everything weāve ever said is a lie.ā
Kyle Fincham:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
The need or the goal to make money with the idea that somehow thatāll eventually make you and, or your shareholders or whomever else is at play happy drives a lot of behavior that is detrimental. But I would also argue though, that human beings in general were really bad at predicting what the consequences of our actions are. I literally drive around the street sometimes or drive around the town sometimes looking at all the things that we did that we thought would be good ideas that prove not to be. Hereās a really simple one. Everyone thinks the solution to traffic is make highways wider. But the evidence is really clear. The more lanes you add, the more traffic there is. But who knew the first time? It seemed obvious, we need to have more road for the car. That didnāt work. And thereās things like that over and over and over, everywhere.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think weāre all just tinkering and stumbling and everything. I think we also just expect-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. But we donāt admit thatās what weāre doing.
Kyle Fincham:
Exactly. And we expect people to hit the nail on the head every time. Which means weāve stigmatized failure and thereās a mixed judgment on things. But everybodyās just making their best guesses and stumbling forward.
Steven Sashen:
Iām taking this out of context. This is something that Iāve been railing against slightly. Iāve discovered in the financial world, what I now refer to as the venture industrial complex, that thereās this whole industry about investing in companies that is based on the fact that no one is willing to admit the one obvious thing, which is what you just said, which is, Iām paraphrasing, no one knows nothing. They just donāt. They canāt predict whatās going to work, whatās not going to work. And so they build this whole ecosystem to try to control it that ironically kills most of the companies that could be the successful ones. Because to protect themselves, the bankers, the investors, cetera, they put the source of their livelihood at risk all because no oneās willing to go, āYeah. I donāt know. Iām taking a guess. Stab in the dark.ā
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Well, it makes me think of this author, Nassim Taleb, who writes about the financial industry quite a bit. Yeah. And what youāre describing is when youāre limiting the exposure, when youāre limiting the surprise, youāre not embracing a complex systemās potential to be anti-fragile, which I think is his word.
Steven Sashen:
Well, in Fooled by Randomness, which is the book that most people donāt know, they know the Black Swan, the subtitle, the Hidden Role of Chance in Markets in Life. And the biggest thing if you really read that book, you come out of it realizing to a certain extent, no one knows nothing. And more, if you think you are someone who knows something, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Kyle Fincham:
Right. Because youāve decided that you have answers rather than questions.
Steven Sashen:
And youāre pulling the past with you into the present in ways where it doesnāt apply.
Kyle Fincham:
Right. The answers are basically trying to maintain the status quo whereas the questions, the what-ifs that you can propose, is when you are willing to expose yourself to uncertainty. And as he said, thatās what makes the complex system robust is it needs that exposure. Itās like an immune system. You know what I mean? It needs to keep getting the exposure to fill in those little gaps for the things that are going to happen, what he calls the black swans.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, the uncertainty is there every day. Lena early on was upset one day. And she said, āI feel like I donāt know what Iām doing.ā I said, āNo one knows what weāre doing. No oneās ever done what weāre doing before. In many, many ways, our job is to hopefully be smart enough to figure out what we need to learn to then address pretty much the fire that started overnight, despite the fact that nothing changed since yesterday.ā And she goes, āOh, I can do that.ā I said, āYeah, I know. Youāre super smart.ā And I say this on a sadly daily basis where my disappointment or upset is not because of whatever just happened or the thing that someone told me itās because that crashed head first into the expectation I had about the future.
Not even the control that I was hoping, but just what I was expecting, what I was imagining was going to happen and what was necessary, what would be useful, et cetera. And I go, āItās going to take me somewhere between a minute and day to get over it.ā And then, then weāll have some creative idea of what to do next, but Iām going to be not happy for some finite period of time. And that oneās important to me because itās helpful for me to acknowledge to other people, hereās exactly whatās going on, but more, I also know that itās going to take a little while to unwind and itās nothing personal. Itās just, thatās what minds and bodies do.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Well, we have stigmatized patience, right? Weāve stigmatized boredom, weāve stigmatized rest. Thatās when a lot of these things would work themselves out. It makes it feel like weāre not allowed to admit to those things in some ways.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it occurs to me. I agree. And itās a variation of ā¦ Lena and I, one of the reasons I think we have a great relationship is weāve never said something like, āI need you to hear what Iām feeling.ā So if weāre upset, we both seem to have the same natural tendency to walk away and wait till things settle down and then have a conversation rather than trying to deal with it when youāre in the middle of what I refer to as you canāt be smart when youāre stupid. When your brain is not working well, thereās nothing you can do about it. You have to wait till it settles down. You canāt control your ability to get creative again. Itās going to happen when it happens, no matter what youāre trying to do. And thereās a whole industry and the whole meditative world is promoting this idea that you can achieve some supernatural calmness that pervades through every possible scenario in your life. Itās the ultimate kind of control is that sales pitch. And weāve never met anyone whoās actually lived that way.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. I meditate a lot and frequently, and I would never claim any amount of calmness, but what I do believe is that ā¦ From my understanding in Zen meditation, they do this thing called the koan, right. And the koan is like a riddle. And from my understanding, itās there to basically distract your thinking mind, your conscious mind to a point that there are these little cracks where your unconscious mind can seep through a little bit. And that is that integration of the conscious and the unconscious mind. And I think to myself, that to me, meditation is creating the opportunity to see more options, right? Because underneath the conscious mind, which is where our ego is built and our ego is the story of who we think we are, right. Our options are limited to that. But as you go lower towards the unconscious that pure consciousness, itās a sea of options that are below who we think we are and creating opportunities for those cracks to come through, I think is a pretty valuable little tool.
Steven Sashen:
I think Iām going to reframe koan practice for you in a way that I hope is useful. I think itās actually a form of play. I think, because what itās pointing out is which part of your body isnāt touching the tennis ball, what itās pointing out is whatās that way that youāre standing, thatās communicated something that no one had told you and the koan gives you a chance to eventually see it because thereās nowhere else to go. Itās like show me your face before you were born, you canāt do that logically. Thereās no right answer. And the only way, the way you quote solve the koan, is by doing something that breaks out of the box of only rolling the ball with your right hand to come up with an answer.
Kyle Fincham:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
I donāt know from conscious unconscious, but koans, because Iāve gone through a bunch, they really ā¦ Iāll tell you this one. A friend of mine was doing a long time Zen session, meditating for 20 hours a day. And he was just really aggressively trying to make sure he wasnāt having any thoughts. And he was just doing the practice and the teacher pulls him aside at four in the morning and says, āThis is about being kind to yourself and having fun.ā Heās like, āwhat?ā And people, but people approach that practice often trying as another thing to try-
Kyle Fincham:
To win.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I literally think of koan practices as theyāre really clever jokes and if you donāt get the joke, then youāre going to be frustrated by it. And once you get the joke, then the response is really ā¦ Thatās the natural response, whatever that means.
Kyle Fincham:
You said it there, you said itās like a form of play. But when youāre playing, youāre creating the opportunity for the same thing to happen, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
For the opportunity to see the more options.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, and thatās the other thing about whether itās Zen practice or whether itās koan practice or any other form of meditation. Youāre putting yourself in a situation where youāve limited your options to begin with. Youāre sitting in a place in a way, trying not to move. I like to think of certain meditations where itās shoving you into a corner so deeply that your only response, because you canāt get out of the corner, is to do something completely unconditioned because thereās no other option. Youāre just backed up as far as you can go and you got to break out of that and you canāt do it in any way thatās ever been done before. So the options are limitless and you get there by being crazily limited.
Kyle Fincham:
Yeah. Yeah. Itās like with any sort of play or improvisation, itās the constraints that create the opportunities.
Steven Sashen:
I used to do something. I had a word for what I did, but I canāt remember what it was. When I was doing comedy for a living, Iād go see friends who did improv. And my favorite thing to do was whenever they asked for a suggestion was think of the most outrageous thing theyāve ever heard. You would just then watch them go, āOh crap, Iām going to really have to do something totally different here. Because I have no idea where to go with that one.ā Name something people are obsessed with. Bulgar wheat. Then you watch peopleās heads explode for a few minutes. Or my favorite one, I donāt think this was mine. I think this was the one that gave me the idea. Someone said, āGive me a popular phrase.ā And this is at a university with a bunch of science people. And the phrase that someone yelled at was, āOntogeny recapitulates phylogeny,ā and a bunch of really good improv actors go, āAh.ā They redid it syllable by syllable. That was the only way.
Kyle Fincham:
Wow. Wow. Speaking of improv, since you said itās one of my favorite things to mention, because thereās always these talks that come up right around the movement space of who great movers are, who are these amazing characters? And oftentimes Bruce Lee will come up or Charlie Chaplin. These are the ideal movers and Charlie Chaplinās amazing. But people often say Bruce Lee and I, and I say like, āI donāt know a ton about Bruce Lee. I know that he created an art form and heās amazing and all this, but I really donāt know enough about him to know thatās my north star for movement.ā
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kyle Fincham:
Because I donāt know enough to know whether he was playful, but there is somebody who I do know is quite playful and thatās my north star. And I always say that itās Bill Murray. He show up and sees options in any scenario with any person and can move playfully through life. And to me, Iām like, āThatās the thing.ā
Steven Sashen:
I think about that one a lot, because I wonder if Bill Murray could be Bill Murray, if he wasnāt Bill Murray. If he didnāt know who he was, if he wasnāt ric
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