Hi, and welcome to the In The Cortex podcast.
We are your hosts.
I'm Paloma Garcia.
And I am Danny Parakoni.
And we're the founders of In The Cortex, an online community with programs that show
people the tools that they need to change their lives, their brain reorganization, no
medication, just movement.
When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start
to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life.
And now, on to today's episode.
Let's start out with a quick cortex moment from one of our members.
My name is Lisa.
I'm 65 years old.
Before brain work, one could describe me as a little too task-oriented, which led to anxiety
over getting things done.
This didn't allow for much spontaneity in my day.
This also led to a tendency toward being passive-aggressive versus communicating in a direct way.
I'd be secretly angry at my family members for not contributing to the tasks that were
important to me.
My cortex moments are as follows.
Recently I was invited to go to Colorado five days before the event.
In the past, there was no way I could organize myself that quickly.
This time, I just had no angst about it and I just got into the car and drove.
We saw old friends along the way and it just all fell into place and it was a fantastic
trip.
I also noticed that I'm a calmer listener.
I'm more interested in what they are saying versus waiting to interrupt and share my experience.
I feel that I am more compassionate and in the moment during the conversation.
I'm getting better at letting things go.
I used to worry that things wouldn't get done.
Now I feel like they will when they are supposed to and I have released anxiety over it, which
has led to a lighter vibe around the house and it's a lot more fun.
I'm growing into being rather than doing, especially with my grandkids.
I can play without a time limit in my mind and really enjoy their natural curiosity and
creativity.
I also noticed that when playing pick-a-ball, my mind has slowed down and I have time to
think about my shots, where to place them, where to move my body in anticipation of receiving
their shot from my opponents.
It's pretty cool.
Today we're going to talk about crawling and the importance of crawling at any age.
But before we get started, we're going to go over some of our in the cortex terms.
When we talk about the pons, we're talking about that part of the brain that is wired
to go into fight or flight.
It's like that anxiety reactionary brain.
When we talk about the midbrain, which is actually what we're talking about today on
the PON Today's episode, we're talking about more of that organizational prioritization
brain that maybe keeps us stuck in certain patterns of not being able to organize or
prioritize things.
When we talk about the primitive brain or the survival brain, we're talking about the
whole structure of the brainstem that is designed to react and keep us alive.
That goes hand in hand when we talk about survival mode, which is the mode that our
brain goes into when it's in fight or flight and it's starting to react rather than respond
to the world.
It's trying to save us.
It's basically trying to keep us alive.
Our goal here is to create more compassion in the world and that we're all doing the
best we can.
When we explain all these terms, it's really just to help you understand the different
parts and components of what we talk about in the cortex.
We're going to break it down to help you make sense more of what these different parts mean.
There's one more pillar that we talk about in the cortex and it's the subconscious beliefs.
It's the programming.
It's the way you see the world and why.
We really like to break that down and help you understand why is it that you always do
things that are showing that you don't love yourself.
We'll go deeper into that in other episodes.
For today's episode, we are talking all about crawling in the midbrain.
This is a fun thing to say to people.
We do this all the time.
We always say, hey, I bet if you crawled on the floor on your hands and knees, we can
give you a really good glimpse into what your life looks like.
Most people are like, what?
Exactly.
They're very curious about it.
I think we talked about this in another episode too, where some people are like, cool, I'm
going to go do it right now.
Some people are like, what?
I don't want to talk to you anymore.
This is weird.
That also tells us a lot about your brain, by the way.
Oh, always.
Always.
Basically, getting on your hands and knees is the main position a baby would assume from
six to 12 months of life.
That is a very rough general estimate there on when you would be doing this sort of movement
that is constantly changing and evolving for each person.
But generally speaking, it's when a baby is crawling.
That's the first time they're defying gravity.
It's really a significant time in putting a filter, basically, is the best way to say
it in the brain.
It's basically allowing for the brain to stay focused.
It's allowing for the brain to process information for what it is.
It gives you that automatic function of being able to transition from one thing to the next,
blocking out unimportant sensory stimuli, helps to set the eyes up with the brain.
Literally, when we get you on your hands and knees and we watch you crawl, and we'll ask
you to do this in a minute, we'll ask you to look at what are your hands doing?
What are your feet doing?
How's your overall body movement going?
All of those pieces come together.
They give that expression of what's really happening in this part of the brain.
This is what's so cool is you could be any age from when you're starting to crawl as
a baby to 100 years old.
It doesn't matter because it just shows where did those automatic functions leave off and
maybe where do you not have enough of them totally hooked up and connected as they're
intended to.
That's the whole point is that they're supposed to be automatic, right?
When we're crawling, we're developing the midbrain.
If we don't crawl enough, then the midbrain doesn't fully develop.
These functions that we're going to talk about, we're going to give some more examples in
a little bit, are not automatic.
It's like all of the brain has to do this job that should be automatic.
You're just left with less bandwidth to really operate in your day-to-day life.
Today we're going to talk about what to look at when you're crawling.
That's the next piece of this.
Let's see what your crawl looks like.
Usually you're going to get down on your hands and knees, just have somebody watch you or
just become aware of how you're moving if you're alone and if somebody can make a video
of you even better.
You're going to look at your hands, you're going to look at your knees and your feet
or feel them as you're moving.
What are your hands doing?
If your hands, for example, are out to the side rather than your fingertips facing forward,
this means that your eyes do not team with each other.
Eye-teaming means that the eyes are looking at the same point at the same time.
If they're not teaming, then your eyes are looking at different points.
It might be very small.
You might not even be able to see this in the mirror when you look at your eyes, but
if they're not fully teaming, reading is going to be really hard.
Coordination is going to be really hard.
A lot of people that have challenges like dyslexia or other reading visual challenges
have eyes that are not teaming.
If your hands are out to the side, that means your eyes are not teaming.
Another thing to notice too is when they're not teaming and doing what they're supposed
to do, then that's when the brain comes online.
The cortex has to pick up the slack and then comes up with compensations.
Oftentimes we see people close one eye.
The eye that's not teaming will get closed.
Oftentimes we see kids that lay their head down on a desk and it looks like they're tired
or sleeping, but they're not really tired or sleeping.
They're just trying to compensate by not having to have both of their eyes looking at the
paper because that is exhausting or you're someone who doesn't like to make eye contact
or it's really painful to make eye contact.
You look down at the ground and this is our big piece of helping parents and other people
understand when someone's looking away from you, they're actually paying better attention
than when they're trying to make eye contact.
Notice that never force the eye contact because then that's like, now I see two of you or
now it's really blurry and it's actually painful.
I totally used to feel that feeling of like, I have to stare at somebody really hard and
then all I'm thinking about is trying to see them and then I'm not listening to what they're
saying.
Yeah, you can't use your focusing so hard on making your eyes do something that's really
hard for them to do naturally.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And then another one is when the hands are cupped when you're crawling.
I guess we say cupped or like tented.
So basically it's kind of like you're using your fingertip but your palm isn't really
touching the floor.
Basically what that means when you're crawling is that you might have sensory challenges.
So once again, if you notice that you're crawling that way, do you have challenges with like
tags in your shirt, maybe food textures, socks that are too tight, that kind of stuff.
That's usually something that goes hand in hand with this part of the brain because once
again, it's a filter, right?
So it should be able to help your brain not pay attention to that itchy tag or that tight
sock or that shoe that's maybe the opposite, right?
It's not tight enough.
And if this is what's going on with your crawl, then that means that the brain, the
midbrain is having to really, really work hard to do that, to filter that out and you're
not able to and it really creates a challenge for you.
Exactly.
And remember, if you are listening right now and any of those things just hit home for
you, please know that there's no shame or judgment here.
We're just trying to educate that those are things that we get that people are experiencing
and they are normal in today's world.
It does not mean something is wrong with you.
And that's the biggest part is so many of us think that there's something wrong with
us because I can't wear those socks because the line drives me crazy all day.
And that's all I can focus on.
So we're just here to help you understand that we get you and there's no judgment.
There's no shame here.
We can help support you through this because we were people who both were disturbed by
these things and now we can go on living our lives without them being showstoppers and now
we can move on and we're like, Hey, that doesn't bother me.
So the other part to look at when crawling are your feet.
The feet are really big indication as to what is going on with your focus.
Anytime we have any person get into the crawling position and their feet are up in the air,
we already know they have a really challenging time sitting still.
It usually tracks usually with the younger ones, but we always see even adults and it's
really uncomfortable to crawl on your kneecaps.
So it's not something that you're actually trying to do.
It's just where is your brain wired in that space?
And so what will happen over time as you crawl more, this is what's so cool about this work
is that as you crawl more, all of a sudden your brain finds a more efficient pattern
to move in.
And that's what that whole six to 12 months of life is designed to do is to create that
efficient power pattern to get from point A to point B in the room.
It's really when a baby is crawling towards something and when they first start out, it's
a really, you know, inefficient pattern.
And then as they get better at it, they get really fast and then they can just move through
and then that also lines up with all the functions that they're gathering at the same time.
So feet up in the air, feet can also be turned inward or the feet come outward.
And we're talking only about crawling right now, but there's something really important
to address that primitive reflexes are overlapping this movement at the same time.
So those are those automatic, constinctual movements Paloma mentioned earlier.
So oftentimes if you don't have a certain primitive reflex doing what it's supposed
to do or it went through the timeframe, it was supposed to go through, meaning you did
specific movements that activated the reflex, you did enough of it until your brain was
like, all right, cool, I'm done with that.
Now it can light dormant for when a real survival situation comes in play.
And if it doesn't do enough of that, then it's going to stay in a frozen pattern almost.
And it's almost like your body can't move through to the next developmental stage.
We'll come back to this in a second when I share an example with my son.
But that's another big one to look at.
What are the feet doing?
Then you also want to look at how the hands and knees are being coordinated or not coordinated.
Right?
Are you moving the same side at the same time?
Or do you have a cross lateral pattern going?
That's going to tell us a lot about the left and right hemisphere connection that's going
on in your brain.
And like we said before, the midbrain really does have a lot to do with helping create that
left and right connection in our brain because we need that, right?
We need to be able to use both hemispheres at the same time very often.
And we really also just look at the overall body.
How is it moving?
Is it stiff?
Is the head looking forward?
Are you bringing your head kind of lower, right?
Are the shoulders like moving a lot and wiggling and the hips wiggling a lot?
Does it look like a uniform movement or is a little bit more scattered?
Overall, that's also going to tell us a lot about the percentage and how developed the
midbrain is.
So as we look at different parts of the crawl, we can really help you understand what is
getting in your way in your day to day life.
So to go back to the story I briefly mentioned about my son, when he was born, we had a lot
of other things that were going on.
So it wasn't just like it was one thing that happened.
There was a lot of me, the first time mom and the stressors of I really got caught up in
the comparison of comparing my child to everybody else's.
And I had this really big program in me that I had to have a super human child.
Because everyone's like, oh, Danny, you've been doing the brain work.
Your son's going to be incredible at everything that he does.
And I was like, OK, mission accepted.
But that was not natural nor normal.
And I googled everything.
And it always isn't normal when.
And so I had a ton of anxiety that came back on.
Because remember, your survival brain will come back on and come online when you are
in the perceived space of thinking something is a true survival situation.
So in order to get to that, well, lack of sleep is a huge one.
That will help turn that survival brain on in two seconds because your brain is now like,
oh, I don't have all my functions where they need to be.
I haven't rested.
I haven't gotten restorative sleep.
So now I perceive everything as an attack.
So I had that going on.
And then I had challenges with breastfeeding.
I mean, it was way harder than I ever imagined it being.
And I always saw every mom just like, whatever, put the baby to the boo, boom, done, no big
deal.
It's so much more than that.
And there's so much more education out there that I did not seek because I didn't think it
was going to be so hard.
So anyways, I had some challenges in that.
I was really hyper focused on doing everything super natural.
So I got really caught up in things and I had a lot of anxiety and I passed that down
to my son.
And we all have our moments where we think we're doing what we need to do to help support
the situation.
But my brain again was in survival mode.
So now we go to the time when my son was supposed to be crawling and he didn't get enough of
a specific movement because he had a lip and a tongue tie.
And that fascia in the mouth threw off all of his entire body because it connects from
the mouth all the way to the big toe.
So if it's tight in the mouth, it's going to create tension in the whole body.
So he wasn't fully able to extend and do certain reflex integration movements to help prepare
him for crawling.
So by the time he was ready to crawl, he had a leg out to the side.
He also had his anxious mom who was like, what's going on?
How can we not crawling with both your knees down?
This is so bad for business.
Oh my gosh, I was going to believe that I talk about crawling all day and every day because
my own son wasn't crawling the correct way.
And I have air quotes going on because, hey, we are all on a journey figuring this stuff
out and there's no perfect in any of this.
We are so perfectly flawed.
And it's about embracing this and then doing something about it.
So my son crawled with a kickstand crawl for his whole entire period of six or 12 months
when he was supposed to be crawling with both knees down.
The symmetrical tonic neck reflex was the big reflex that was stopping that from happening
naturally, both knees being on the ground.
So anyways, I then took me on the journey of learning about the emotional stuff.
That's why we talk about the subconscious beliefs because that was what was driving my need to
have a perfect baby.
And that doesn't exist because why would I put that on a baby that's insane?
Anyways, in hindsight, it's all making sense.
But right now I'm like, okay, so I needed to work on the emotional piece of releasing
my son to be his own human.
And as soon as I did that, I kid you not, both of his knees came down and he started crawling.
But by that time, he was about 11 months old, 11 and a half months old.
So he was ready to start walking soon.
So now my son, who's seven years old, we have been going back and we bring the crawling
into our everyday life.
And it's amazing because now I use it as a baseline to see where his brain's at.
I also homeschool him.
So I get to see, oh, his feet are up in the air right now.
Okay, that's interesting.
He must be feeling some stressors with certain things.
That's an indication his brain needs some more crawling.
And the cool thing about neuroplasticity is once you give the brain what it needs, all
of a sudden everything comes online.
Whole point of neuroplasticity is giving your brain what it needs to process the world
for what it is.
And we're in a world where we are living faster, bigger lives than we ever have before.
So there's not as much of the rest and digest going on.
And there's so much go, go, go.
I mean, my son's got to get to soccer, got to go to school, got to go here, here, here.
So he's like, whoa, my system needs more downtime.
And so now that I recognize we know all these things, we give the brain what it needs.
We do our crawling, we do our brain work.
I watch us as feet come down as soon as his feet are dragging on the floor.
Okay, great.
He's ready to go sit now.
And that's always a really important piece.
This is what we teach our educators who do our in-school program because now they can
understand, oh, that child is not ready to sit down or, for example, my son, we spent
the first two years, Kinder and first grade, just being able to sit at a desk and not melt
down when it was time to start reading and writing.
Because that was hard for him.
And now that he's seven years old, okay, now let's focus on the academic part.
So this is where we really want to help educate and break the model of like what is supposed
to be done at a certain timeframe because every system is so different, but the brain
in itself and where it's programmed and where it's connected is really going to help people
understand what each system is needing and that these movements, tangibly, you can see
them in front of your face.
If your hands are out to the side, reading is going to be hard.
If your feet are up in the air, don't expect that person to sit still because their brain's
like, how?
I don't know how.
It's not wired to do so.
Also, something that I wanted to mention is the fact that we think that everybody's brain
should be able to do everything in the same way.
Like no, some people are just more wired for movement, for example, right?
They're always going to be so much better.
Like Axl, that's him.
Yeah.
So he's so coordinated.
So he's like the most coordinated child I've ever seen, the movements he does, the way
he jumps on things and he's like climbing a tree, but then he's running over there,
he's like doing like a backflip in the pool and like, what?
But of course, his brain is more wired toward that and not as wired toward reading and writing.
So it's normal that it's going to be a little bit harder for him if that's not his predisposition,
so to speak, right?
Because we all have certain things that are just naturally, our brain is going to gravitate
more toward, right?
And so that's also a big thing when it comes to schools and organizations, et cetera, is
we have to understand that not everybody's going to process every single thing in the
same way and that's where learning styles really come in, right?
And that's something we talk about so much with our teachers and our homeschool parents
as well that our members is you have to find what that brain is going to need when learning
certain types of information, right?
In general, we want kids to be motivated by stuff that they're already interested in.
That's just, you know, that just makes sense, right?
So let's talk now about some challenges that are associated with an underdeveloped midbrain
and what you can do about it.
That's the number one thing.
I will start with saying the number one thing you can do about it is crawl.
That's always going to be our thing because brain reorganization is our passion.
We've seen it work time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time
and time again.
But let's talk about that now.
So for example, procrastination, that's a really common challenge for people with an
underdeveloped midbrain like me, for example, because your brain just has so much stimuli
coming in and doesn't know, doesn't have that filter, right?
Calibrated.
So it does not know how to organize in order to get things done within the right time,
right?
Within the timeline that you've set for yourself, whether it's a project or something you want
to do or whatever deadline is coming up.
So your brain goes into that fight or flight mode.
And guess what?
Calibration is flight to the max.
So it's like, I'm just not going to deal with it until I have no other choice.
I haven't spent so much time in college and even my grad program, just up until 5 a.m.,
writing that paper because you're like, 11.59 and you have to turn it in.
You're like, no.
I mean, genuinely, it's happened so many times.
Yeah.
And there's something that goes in your brain where you're like, oh yeah, I'm just going
to start it at 11 p.m.
And I know it's going to be at 6 a.m.
But I know I'll have enough time to get it done.
And then you're doing it.
You're like, why did I do this to myself?
Like, why am I stressing myself out?
And it could have been so much better had I done it the week before and had time to reread
it and perfect every time.
Yes.
But that's that flight mode.
And so a good thing to do, for example, if you're somebody who knows that you have a
tendency to procrastinate, is to find that motivation.
Find what's going to really, really, really get you going and attach it to that thing
that you've been avoiding.
Right?
And this is really much simpler to do with kids because you can just say, hey, when you
do this, you're going to get this.
And that's great because they're usually super motivated by something.
Right?
Kids usually have like one thing that they're really interested in, whether you have like
a point system going in your house or it's just a kid that really loves to do a certain
activity or whatever.
And as an adult, you can also say, okay, I really love going to the movies and there's
this movie I really, really, really want to see.
I'm not going to watch it until I'm done with this one project.
And so that way you're motivating yourself because you're tying it to that reward.
And that'll work as best as your brain is wired to do that because we will all find
excuses to not get something done if we don't have that intrinsically within us.
So that's why Paloma said the number one thing to do is your brain work because we're
obsessed.
We know it works.
And, but if you're not ready to do that yet, you can try that tip, but you're only going
to get so far.
And we don't want to sound like we're negative in that space, but we both lived it.
We both said, okay, this time I'm doing it differently.
How many times do people set up on yours resolution and it lasts literally a week?
Right?
Or so many times that people say, oh, I'm going to do the brain work and then they get
through the first week.
They're like, oh, not enough has changed.
It's because we are so connected to this instant gratifying world that we live in today.
And it's a little terrifying to know that all of us humans at our fingertips could have
anything.
And really, if anything is really worth it, it takes time and energy to put into.
So that's why, and not to do too much about our program, but we have that plugged in.
We know that you need that support to keep going and to motivate you.
So we have tons of support within the program of our accountability group.
We have a Facebook group.
We have all these different things that keep you going.
But ultimately it really comes down.
We're speaking to the people who really want change.
And that's why the Maloma brought this up.
She was like, we tell people what we do.
We tell them by getting on the floor and crawling.
You can just see it in their face if they're like, okay, this is for me.
Or you're right, I'm out of here.
We already know it's not for absolutely everybody.
But unfortunately, it comes to a point sometimes where people have tried to get
out of here, tried everything, and then they come to us after that.
We wish they would come before, but that's okay, because everybody's on their own
journey and we respect that.
And we are just so happy.
I mean, we love our members.
We're obsessed with them.
Another thing that is huge with the midbrain, when the midbrain is underdeveloped, is impulse
control.
So being, for me, I mean, I'm giving you the adults kind of symptoms because I can't
really remember about this when I was a kid.
But I could not, and I talked about this last episode, I think too, walk into a store and
not buy 40,000 things.
Like if it's a 7-Eleven, I'm buying snacks, I'm buying gum, I'm buying a water bottle,
I'm buying a soda for my friend.
I'm buying like the most random things that are, I'm just going to end up never eating
them or never using them.
If I walk into a Starbucks, I'm going to walk out with like a drink and a water bottle and
a recyclable cup and a muffin and you know, I just can't, it was really hard for me.
That was one of the biggest things that was hard for me or just any sort of, if I wanted
to, if somebody said something and I wanted to really respond immediately, I had to go
for it right immediately.
So I walked through things and then responding was really, really hard for me.
And I'd gotten a little bit of some awkward situations sometimes, especially with the
social part of like, you know, just kind of going for it.
And that's a huge one because again, your midbrain is that filter and it's giving you
that pause to say, that's not important right now.
You don't have to answer that right now.
You don't have to respond to that email immediately.
You don't have to buy every single thing you've ever seen in your life, right?
That's one thing.
And that also kind of goes with that all or nothing thinking because that's another,
which is another challenge that is related to an underdeveloped midbrain is you're like,
I have to do everything all the time or I'm doing nothing, right?
And so that makes a lot of things really hard because you think everything that goes hand
in hand with that perfectionism, you think everything has to be 100% perfect 100% of
the time or it's just nothing, right?
So for me, implementing new habits, changing anything about my routine, anything new was
really, really, really hard to implement because it had to be perfect or I wasn't going to
do it.
And the second I didn't do one piece of my new routine of my new habit, my new whatever,
I would just stop completely and then have to find the motive.
It all goes hand in hand, right?
Cause then you have to have motivation to start again, cause you procrastinate, procrastinate,
procrastinate.
Then that also goes into transitions being really hard because it takes being able to
transition from one activity to the next in order to start to implement new things into
your life, right?
Cause you get stuck and that's the biggest thing is you get stuck in these patterns that
you've been in for so long because the neurological connection is so, so, so strong and it's just
easier to just go with you, what you've always been doing.
So much.
And honestly, so the main thing here is that dopamine and serotonin production that comes
from this part of the brain, if you're not getting enough of it, that's why you're seeking
out those extra things to go give you that boost.
Like all, all kids want that new toy just for like a hot second, right?
Just to give them that boost of thinking they're going to feel better in having it and then
it wears off.
And now we have toys scattered throughout the house because nothing's ever enough to
really fulfill that, you know, boost of what you need from the chemical standpoint.
And then that's also two tapping into your subconscious beliefs, right?
So if you were the all or nothing thinker, maybe your parents told you one time when
you were six years old, like, Oh, is that the best you can do?
And then that stuck in your head.
And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, well, then I'm not even going to try if I
can't even succeed.
And that's what we see so many times, right?
Kids just shut down because they're like, I'm just going to get criticized anyway.
So what's the point of trying?
Or the opposite, which is what happened with me where it was like, you're so smart.
You're so great at everything.
Every single thing you're ever going to do is going to be so easy for you because you
are just amazing in every single way.
And so whenever something was hard for me, I'd be like, but bye.
I can't fail.
I'm not right in that.
And that's honestly too, there's that book called Nurture Shock and it talks about kids
who are just given too much just positive reinforcement about just general things.
They have like being good.
And then they never want to actually try and effort their way through things because they're
like, I'm just smart.
I don't need to work that hard.
If this is hard, then it's not for me.
And so there's a lot of, there's so much overlap.
We talk about primitive reflexes, pawns, midbrain, that's the creeping, the crawling, and then
the subconscious belief.
So what we do it in the cortex is help you break down where that's coming from.
So then you know exactly how to work yourself through it.
But we always say you have to be out of that survival state before you can even look at
the emotional stuff driving you.
And this is where other things that come from the midbrain, the prioritization stuff, my
favorite one, before I go into prioritization, my favorite one that I think we can all relate
to.
We've all done it at one point in our lives.
Just think about it when you say, huh, or what?
After somebody just says something, you know exactly what that person just said.
We've all done this.
We're just buying ourselves a little bit more time to process the information.
Tune into the next time you hear that.
There's always that person who does it all the time.
And that's something that you just sit there and pause, don't actually answer or repeat
yourself.
Just let them sit there and process it and then they'll come on like, oh yeah, that's
what I thought it was or whatever.
The difficulty prioritizing certain tasks.
And then this also carries over into so many times we have so many people who get so amped
and ready like, I'm ready for change.
And then they start three different things at once.
And then they go, well, I don't know what actually helped me.
So I'm just going to give up on doing all three of them.
So we start so many projects.
We never finish them, follow them through because we can't prioritize.
We always over, I did this.
This was myself, Sabatash.
I would put too much on my plate at once.
I was like, humanly possible.
And I was like, I don't know why I'm so tired or why I can't get anything done.
Oh, I don't know.
It was maybe because I just adopted a horse and I didn't even have like the means or
ability to handle a horse.
And we're sitting here going, why are you doing that?
That was very recent where I was like, why don't we have a thoroughbred?
This is actually really comical.
It's actually not.
She now has a really wonderful home.
But it was that moment of like, why do I keep putting more things onto my plate?
The good news is that Paloma and I are in the trenches.
We are doing all the daily work with our members.
We are committing our days and noticing, wow, we haven't intentionally done the brain work
as much as we are right now.
Now that we've been doing it more intentional for the past five weeks, we're like, oh my
gosh, all of these things just got easier for us.
We're like, what about the systems for in the cortex?
Like all the things, we're putting them in place.
We're doing the things and we're seeing that life is now getting easier.
The weight is being lifted off of us.
So we have more bandwidth and we have the ability to just get through our day without
completely freaking out and just falling apart.
And I was more of that.
That's just to show that everybody needs to just keep doing this.
It's not going to, your challenges don't define you, but they're also not always going to
go away 100%.
Right?
Like this is some stuff.
Like in the beginning, some people are just wired in a certain way.
And so you might be wired more toward anxiety, wired more toward procrastination, wired more
toward whatever.
And sometimes it's just part of what your life is going to keep throwing at you.
And you need to also have that moment of, and this goes into the all or nothing thinking
a little bit, is like being okay with like sometimes off the wagon, so to speak.
It's okay.
I'm not doing my brain work and it's fine.
It's not the end of the world.
And we talk about this all the time.
So just kind of to exemplify that we do this and like we live this life and we're also
still having a lot of stuff that happens in our lives.
It's just not debilitating anymore.
That's the biggest change that we've noticed is that even when we do have these challenges,
it's not going to stop everything in our tracks, right?
It's not going to put us back into that intense survival mode where we can't do anything else.
Right.
And that's honestly the best way to look at life because life doesn't stop happening.
Life just gets like, and as we get older, we notice we have more demands being put on
us, more things that we're expected to do.
And this is where a lot of people, you know, might say, oh, I'm having a midlife crisis,
right?
But it's actually just like your, your compensations are running out.
Like you just cannot keep up with what's happening anymore.
So you just kind of like fall off completely, go off the handle and everyone's like, whoa,
what happened to that?
And we see it as like we are brain just couldn't keep up anymore.
And we all have a point where we eventually break if we have a disorganized brain.
And so, and we have only met two people in our 13 years of doing this that have totally
developed while I've met two.
I, I'm one, one was a little boy before we were together and he was like 13 and he got
on the floor and crept like I've never seen a creeper go.
And I was like, well, it does exist to totally develop brain.
So that's very good news.
And then we met someone more recently in Australia.
We're like, yep, that's an organized brain.
So there are organized brains out there.
Yes.
We don't talk to them because they're not looking for help.
We are talking to the people who are like, wow, life's harder than it needs to.
And it turns out the majority of us are in that category.
We all are working harder than we need to.
And there is relief.
There is something you can do about it.
And my favorite part about it is that you can do it at home.
You don't have to go to see anybody else.
It's a completely affordable option.
We were just talking about this in office hours.
Wouldn't it be great to go to chiropractors, acupuncturists, all, you know, all the amazing
things that are out there, but it costs thousands of dollars.
And that's the part that stops a lot of people, right?
They're like, well, I can't afford to constantly keep seeing somebody.
And we're telling you, you know, you have all the tools that you need within you.
So if you're...
We're just telling you how to use them.
You have the tools.
Exactly.
And we're just sharing you the simple ways to do it.
And guess what? you have to keep doing it to keep your system regulated, but it's manageable.
And it's so easy.
And even my four-year-old's like, oh, I'm going to go do my creeping.
So it's possible.
And if you are wanting to find out what's going on with your crawl, because you're like,
okay, I took a video.
This isn't really making sense because it does take some trained professional to look
at it and kind of give you a breakdown of what's happening.
Tag us.
To tag us in a video of you crawling on social media, we'd love to get these videos because
then we can stitch your video and give you a little bit of a breakdown of what it means
for your brain and what your percentage of development is.
Instagram in the Cortex underscore us, tick tock in underscore the underscore Cortex Facebook
in the Cortex us website in the Cortex.com email.
Hello, I'm in the Cortex.com.
Boom.
Okay.
And if you want to sign up, which you probably should use promo code brainiac to get $10 off
your first payment of our program and please reach out to us and all of your questions.
We love getting people's questions from the podcast.
We have so many ideas for upcoming episodes and we just want to hear more from you.
So thanks for being here and goodbye.