17: What Is Prana? Bernie Clark on Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Search for Meaning

What Is Prana? Bernie Clark on Breath, Yoga, Science, and the Evolving Story of “Life Energy”

Resources mentioned:
Buy Bernie Clark’s new book Prana
The Galaxy Song with Eric Idle & Monty Python

Matthew Huy welcomes back yoga author Bernie Clark to discuss Clark’s book Prana: One Breath, Many Worlds and what prana and kundalini might mean in historical, yogic, and scientific contexts. Clark explains that “life energy” is a modern framing and traces prana’s roots in breath and ancient attempts to explain life before modern anatomy and experimentation, comparing Eastern and Western ideas and highlighting outdated beliefs like spontaneous generation and Greek theories of reproduction. They explore how science tests hypotheses, the risks of rejecting modern medicine for ancient claims, and how unexplained experiences can still be valid data. Clark proposes prana as “communication energy” or cellular signaling, discusses fascia research and meridian correlations as speculation, and shares personal stories about overdoing pranayama and pushing through pain in practice.

00:00 Welcome Back Bernie Clark
02:37 Why Write Prana
03:23 What Prana Meant Then
05:35 Teaching The Energy Body
06:30 Memoir And Pranayama
10:05 Ancient Body Myths
13:21 Modern Skepticism And Risk
19:51 Science Explains Experience
30:50 Prana As Cell Communication
34:57 Meridians As Watersheds
37:30 Fascia Comes Alive
38:02 Meridians and Fascial Boundaries
39:21 Energy Flow Speculation
40:53 Keep Practice Simple
42:14 Yoga Healing Anecdotes
44:12 Pranayama Gone Too Far
46:02 Everyday Enlightenment
49:10 Cold Stretching Experiment
52:12 What Studies Miss
59:03 Best Guesses and Beliefs
01:01:02 Wrapping Up and What's Next
01:02:41 Final Thanks and Outro

Transcript

Matt Huy 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Enlightened Anatomy, and I'm very pleased to be bringing back Bernie Clark, whom I first introduced as Bernie Sanders in an earlier... And I'll tell you, your previous episode is my most listened to episode, so there's something about you that people like, Bernie. So welcome!

Bernie Clark 0:22

Thank you, Matthew. It's great to be back.

Speaker 0:27

Welcome to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast, where we take a deep dive into the worlds of anatomy, physiology, and science to help you deepen your yoga practice. Now he's your host, Matthew Huy.

Matt Huy 0:48

Just in case anyone does not know Bernie Clark because they've not been in the yoga world long enough or something, he's written The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga and a trilogy of books, Your Body, Your Yoga. is the trilogy called Your Body, Your Yoga? Or that's just one, that's just one of them, isn't it?

Bernie Clark 1:06

I call the whole trilogy Your Body, Your Yoga, and the is also the same name.

Matt Huy 1:10

Yeah. Your Body, Your Yoga Your Spine, Your Yoga, and your Upper Body, Your Yoga?

Bernie Clark 1:16

You

Matt Huy 1:16

it.

Bernie Clark 1:17

it.

Matt Huy 1:17

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 1:17

Yeah.

Matt Huy 1:17

all three. And of course, you've also authored other books. And the most recent being this book that I'm holding, Prana, with the subtitle One Breath, Many Worlds.

Bernie Clark 1:31

And

Matt Huy 1:33

I'll just share, um, you know, why we're talking about it, why I have the blessing of being able to interview you on this topic. So one of my previous episodes asked the question, What is kundalini? What is prana? Are they real? And I think you listened to that episode, and then you emailed me and said hey, listen, I'm writing a book called Prana, and would you want to be an alpha reviewer?" As in someone who reads the book and offers editorial suggestions and that sort of thing. And yeah and I did gladly do that. I think I got through maybe a quarter of the book because I was really busy at the time, but I gave what suggestions I could and then gave a revie-

Bernie Clark 2:15

appreciated. They did help.

Matt Huy 2:17

Oh, good. That's good to hear yeah. And you had quite a few alpha reviewers, which is great, yeah, to go through that process. Yeah, and then, you sent me the copy, and of course, I then finished it. I'll tell you, I actually ended up listening to the book for a lot of it which was a great way of taking it in. I personally, I obviously I like podcasts so I like listening to things, so that was a really nice way of taking in the book. And I've got the physical copy too, which I'm very grateful for. So let's talk about this book, Prana, and of course, it's really pertinent to yoga because- Yoga teachers talk about it. Sometimes it's, it described in teacher trainings in the anatomy component, but what actually is it? So let's ask you pr- Bernie what is prana and also what is your book about in general?

Bernie Clark 3:03

Okay. Well, Thanks, as I say, it's great to be back talking with you again, I do appreciate your feedback. My first draft of this book was twice as thick, and it really-- Once I start writing, I can't stop, so trimming it down to something digestible took a lot of effort. I think the first draft was, like, over a hundred and fifty thousand words, but through your suggestions and other help, I was able to kinda make it more manageable. Prana has many definitions, and part of my reason for writing this is I've always been fascinated about history

Matt Huy 3:38

Hmm.

Bernie Clark 3:38

looking back over time and trying to figure out, what did people back then of this concept? Like, Today, we might say prana is life energy. energy is a relatively new concept. Since the time of Newton onwards, like the sixteen hundreds upwards. to that, they didn't have the concept of energy as we know it today. The Greek word energia meant sort of activity, bustle and hustle and moving around and stuff. Well, That's not what we think of with Einstein. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. So when we say life energy, that concept would've been completely foreign to people two to three thousand years ago. What did they think prana meant? Well, If you look at the original Sanskrit word, it's kinda got two syllables, pra and na. And pra means breath, but it also means to move. When you breathe, you're moving. Your ribs are moving, your lungs are moving, body moves. So not just breath, it's something more than just that. And na means to bring forth. So in one view, prana is the breath that moves us or to bring forth the breath. But if you even look to that, almost every civilization that when someone was dead, they were no longer breathing. And if someone's alive, they're breathing. So there would've been an obvious connection between something that's alive and something that's breathing. Breath somehow was intimately associated with life. So did breath, did prana mean life itself? So that's what my book was really meant to investigate. What did people think of what was the essential part of life thousands of years ago, and how did that change through the centuries and especially through the advent of science and the scientific process? So tapestry of looking at all these different views, Eastern and Western as well, and then how did that change in modern science, and what does it mean for us in yoga today?

Matt Huy 5:33

And I assume you, you wrote this because you wanted to learn about it also, right? It was s- a topic of interest for you?

Bernie Clark 5:40

Yeah. In my yin yoga teacher training programs, I always have three main sections. There is the anatomy physiology section, which is the Your Body, Your Yoga book

Matt Huy 5:51

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 5:51

And there was also the, mindfulness practice. There's a lot of Buddhist meditation and Taoist philosophy in there, and that was another book I'd written called Shiva Dancing at King Arthur's Court,

Matt Huy 6:03

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 6:03

which is more about the, the history of meditation. But I'd always wanted to write a book on the third axis of this course, which is the energy body, which looks at energy both from an Eastern and Western point of view. So writing this book was just my way of documenting the third part of the course, and I always intended to do that back the, like, 2010 when I first started writing all these books. So is kind of the culmination of that. Now i'm done. I'm done the, the three

Matt Huy 6:29

Oh,

Bernie Clark 6:30

I wanted to talk about, and now I can relax.

Matt Huy 6:32

that's great. What I really like about this book also is that you weave in your own personal memoir, so we get to know about you, Bernie. Because y- you know, it all-- in your previous bios, it's usually about how worked in aeronautical science. And, you discovered meditation, that sort of thing, but we don't get to know you. But in this, you share a lot more of your personal story, and I actually really enjoyed hearing about that.

Bernie Clark 7:00

when when I was thinking about how do I teach prana, 'cause if I'm gonna write a book about prana, I'm gonna have to teach some pranayama. Like, What is Kapalbhati, Bhastrika uh, all these different alternate nostril breath. And I well, for me to just write down the instructions would be a little bit tedious and boring. instead, I wanted to flow through how I learned about it. And another reason the book's called Prana is the very first yoga center I went to was called

Matt Huy 7:22

yep.

Bernie Clark 7:23

Yoga and Zen Center, and I joined strictly to do the meditation. was in my early and, uh, I just wanted to have a group to meditate with, and the owner of the center kept telling me I should try the yoga part. So eventually, to get her off my back, I I tried the yoga, and then I fell in love with it. So Prana is also the studio that got me into all this.

Matt Huy 7:43

Yes.

Bernie Clark 7:43

the book, I I talk about my own journey as learning yoga and learning about prana and pranayama and sharing that with the, the readers, all the teachers I had, starting with Shakti Mai, my first teacher, then people like Eric Schiffman and David Swenson and of course Sarah Powers and Paul Grilley and Shiva Rea, all the people that helped me about yoga. I thought, well, instead of me just telling people how to do alternate nostril breathing, I'll explain how I learned it from these various teachers and how their teachings kind of varied from one tradition to another.

Matt Huy 8:16

Yeah, you did that really well. And throughout you, you talked about how this is what yoga teachers say, about, why prana? What is prana? That sort of thing. And you always talk about it with respect for the tradition, and you also bring in the science behind it and, the reality and your own skepticism, which I really appreciate.

Bernie Clark 8:36

Mm-hmm.

Matt Huy 8:36

you close by, by talking about the scientific part, which was my favorite part, of course. Because

Bernie Clark 8:42

Right.

Matt Huy 8:42

you mention... I remember the scenes of the salons of these great thinkers getting together, and I it was fictionalized, right? Th- is-

Bernie Clark 8:51

Yes.

Matt Huy 8:51

Yeah. So these fictionalized tales of great thinkers of, from the East, from the West, getting together and sharing the ideas of what is prana and even how the body works. I think science today is just an extension of that. We just have different names for things and we've improved our learning. We've learned what is real and what's not real. And, like the bloodletting, we've realized, okay, that's not a good idea. And another part of your book that I really love is all of the the past ideas of w- how people thought the body worked, which we would now consider outrageous. And one of my favorite ones was about the Greek philosophers, including Aristotle, if I remember correctly, saying that the female body is an imperfect version of the male body. Not at all biased, not at all sexist, but basically a

Bernie Clark 9:43

No patriarchy there.

Matt Huy 9:44

a malformed male body, which of course we would, we rightly so say is ridiculous today, right? So can you share a couple of other, of those other ideas which seem might seem ridiculous today but were commonplace at the time?

Bernie Clark 9:59

Yeah. And this is always fascinating if you look back in the history of ideas

Matt Huy 10:03

Mm.

Bernie Clark 10:04

how they evolved and changed. But again, if you'd have put yourself back three thousand years ago, and you had none of the modern science, none of the people that went before you to figure you know, what did the heart do and do what does blood blood do. and you have no idea about these things, you're gonna make up stories. the stories Kinda seem logical, they may be taken as some sort of truth, but there's no evidence for it. So people are always making up these stories and testing with other stories and one of the stories that you're talking about from Greek. And I should say to comment on what you're saying, again, rather than just putting out this was a history, I tried to make it more interesting, put them in little uh, vignettes, little stories. So we learn about the Greek history and the Greek philosophies with two philosophers taking a walk

Matt Huy 10:50

Yeah

Bernie Clark 10:50

the, uh, the Lyceum, the uh, school of Aristotle. So all the are are ways of teaching some sort of historical principle or fact And yeah, the Greeks never had one idea of how did people reproduce. There was lots of ideas. Like Aristotle thought women had two uteruses because pigs had up to six uterus. And they couldn't dissect uh, throughout-- except s- short periods throughout history. couldn't actually carve up dead bodies and do anatomical research like we do today.

Matt Huy 11:22

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 11:23

Aristotle thought there were two wombs, and uh, the child came from the right-hand womb, it was gonna be a boy. If it came from the left-hand womb, gonna be a a female. And the females had nothing to do with the new child. The female was just the soil.

Matt Huy 11:38

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 11:39

came from the man,

Matt Huy 11:40

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 11:42

of the

Matt Huy 11:42

Yes, I remember that.

Bernie Clark 11:43

fluids.

Matt Huy 11:44

Yep.

Bernie Clark 11:45

the, The woman had no real relationship to the man, which couldn't explain how sometimes children look like their mother. Well, If there's actually no relationship, how does it work? Greek philosophers said, "No, no, that's crazy. It's the heat of the womb. If it's a cold womb, it's gonna be a a, a girl baby. If it's a warm uh, it's gonna be a boy." Other people said, "No, no, it depends on the sperm. If the sperm came from the right testicle, it's gonna be a boy. If it came from the left testicle, it'll be a woman." So again, they had no way of knowing any of this stuff. They certainly never heard of genes and DNA, so they're trying to come up with different ways of doing that. source of life was a mystery. Aristotle and many other Greeks thought mice came from straw. If you get enough straw together and it's a bit damp and you let it sit there, mice will spontaneously grow out of it. They didn't have the science we have today, and to them, that kind of made some sense. Although today we look back and think, "Wow, that's pretty weird." But if you were living then, you'd probably think, "Oh, that's interesting."

Matt Huy 12:44

Yeah. Another similar one to the mice and straw is maggots and meat. So they thought the meat, stale meat, old meat would produce maggots, but of course we know that's not the cause and effect. It's the larvae of a fly, right? But yeah you do the best that you can with the knowledge that you have available, and I always think it's really interesting. We had an Instagram comment about one of our-- Andrew and I, about one of our posts once about how scientists are only starting to understand or don't fully understand with their, quote-unquote, "gizmos and gadgets" about what Eastern people have known for a very long time. But that's really, I think, taking a very selective view of

Bernie Clark 13:32

Yeah.

Matt Huy 13:32

has turned out to be You know, slightly plausible or vague enough like prana to not be quantified or qualified or dis- discredited. Do you see what I mean?

Bernie Clark 13:45

I, I run across this all the because people have had an observation of something seem to work. Doesn't mean that 2,000, 3,000 years ago they understood why this was. You couldn't dissect people, but butchers are dissecting animals all the time, so they would've known about and, and tubes

Matt Huy 14:03

Right.

Bernie Clark 14:05

vessels. They would've seen nerves. They would have no idea what they are and what they did, so they come Up some theories. Now, the one thing we do know is that if a body is alive, it's breathing. Air is entering the body. So there must be something about the air that

Matt Huy 14:19

gives

Bernie Clark 14:20

us life. Back to Genesis, the very first um, in the garden, the, actually, the second creation story, when God formed from the the dust of the earth, the body was formed, but he wasn't alive until God breathed into his nostrils, and at that moment, Adam got his life and his soul.

Matt Huy 14:38

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 14:39

Now, we can come back to the difference. Air and soul are not necessarily the same thing, but it's not dualistic as it became later with René Descartes. something about the air. we know there's tubes in the body because we've in, in animals uh, wounded people in the, on the battlefield, we know that there's something about air that brings us to life, so maybe this air flows through these tubes. Now, today we'd call those tubes arteries uh, veins, nerves. then, they didn't have these concepts. They seemed to know there was something called blood. It flowed through the tubes. But they didn't know about these What, What's going through there? So maybe the air is going through the nerves. And they didn't realize nerves kind of begin or end in the brain. That's much later. So they didn't really know what these tubes are doing. But they noticed there was 101 tubes coming from the heart. So in the Chandogya Upanishad and other ancient things, there's channels, nadis, coming from the heart. that's just physiological observation. mean that they had some psycho-spiritual association to it. That got layered on later. So again, when you're looking into the past, it's like looking through the back end of a telescope. Things get-- can-- You forget that they didn't know all this other stuff. You know, There's no GPS then,

Matt Huy 15:56

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 15:56

we're talking about, South Asia, they didn't know America existed.

Matt Huy 15:59

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 16:00

glass, so they couldn't make lenses. They couldn't see the small, and they couldn't see the far away. They didn't have compasses. They didn't sail more than, you know, out of of the land when they went sailing. So it was very different than today. it's very hard to put yourself in the mind and experience the culture of 2,000, 3,000 years ago because we got all this other stuff that we can't forget.

Matt Huy 16:25

And a problem I think is when we think ancient cultures knew more than we do today, then we're disregarding all of the current knowledge, all of the body of knowledge that we've gained over the years through these dissections, through these telescopes, Microscopes. And you talk about also towards the end of the book about the potential dangers of yoga teachers or, wellness professionals, whoever, just normal people talking about these things and, foregoing treatments which are potentially more effective for something that they believe is effective just because it was mentioned in a book a few thousand years ago or something like that, and you-- And so I like how you tie it to the modern day and how, it should be effective against a placebo. Yeah. So do you think there are any dangers then, of thinking about these things and not taking in the current body of knowledge that we have?

Bernie Clark 17:17

Yeah, I think each step we have is our our abilities. Um, So we shouldn't today's understanding just because it doesn't agree with something from two

Matt Huy 17:26

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 17:28

The, the ideas that came up two thousand years ago were based on the stories they had then,

Matt Huy 17:32

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 17:32

now we've got better stories.

Matt Huy 17:34

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 17:35

process, I is, uh, an amazing invention that we've had, is that you come up with a hypothesis and you decide, "How can I test whether this is true or not?" then you run the test and you compare, does this actually work? That is radical. Even the earliest Greek didn't do experiments. I talk about Anaximander and a few of these other from Miletus and the-- What they did, I think the most important thing they did, was they tried to have an explanation that didn't involve the gods. So why

Matt Huy 18:08

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 18:09

thunder happen? Well, It used to be the gods were making the thunder, and they said, "No, it's the clouds clashing." And why does the earth dry out and Well, It's 'cause the sun is heating up and driving the water off. And why do things fall to the earth? Is the earth at the center of the universe? They're looking at all these things, and they didn't involve the gods in their explanations. So that was quite unique at that time. what they didn't do is run any experiments to see if their ideas actually could be proven. That kind of anathema because the mind and the concepts were more powerful than the observations. And even to the point where Pythagoras said, "If the observation doesn't really fit your ideals, then you didn't observe right, or the observation should be ignored." It's the ideals that are most important. The concepts, they have the power. So let's come up with all these great concepts. And by the way, we don't always necessarily need a god to explain it is a proto-science. It wasn't until the fourteen, fifteen hundreds where we started to do these experiments, like Galileo dropping balls to well, a wood ball and a metal ball both fall at the same rate. Aristotle said the heavier one would fall faster. Aristotle never tried it. He came up with these ideas, but he never actually tried it. this is something new. So should we still believe Aristotle because he's two thousand years old? No. We should the stuff that we have got today. But what started me on this whole journey was is a fact. I, I'm wearing a shirt. I don't know if people can It's a

Matt Huy 19:42

What does it say?

Bernie Clark 19:44

Feynman, which says, "I'd rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."

Matt Huy 19:50

I love that

Bernie Clark 19:51

Questions

Matt Huy 19:51

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 19:52

be answered, that's the basis of the scientific inquiry. So if we have an observation, our science cannot explain that anecdote, that's the exciting part about science. So for two thousand years, we've had people in the East these experiences, they're kind of mystical. And if we can't explain them scientifically, it doesn't mean the observation is not valid. That's data, and from data, we have to create a theory. Now, you probably know enough about science when you're in a lab and you you know, a hundred results. You plot them on a graph, and you get dots all over the place, and you try to fit a line through that, and there's the correlation. But there's always this one dot way out there that's an outlier. Well, Let's forget that. We'll ignore the outliers, and we'll just take the average. we're ignoring all the variations in here. That's cool. That will give you E equals MC squared and those type of things when you go in the lab. the outliers is where the interesting science will happen. Why did that happen? So I fully believe that these people have had some sort of energetic experience. They felt the kundalini rising. Now, the way they explain that may not be they're, they're using the tools, the concept they had three thousand years ago. is-- have to have new science to explain that, or can we use the science that we already have? the end of the book, that's where I try to go into.

Matt Huy 21:12

Mm.

Bernie Clark 21:12

I don't negate the experiences of the East. "Well, let's suppose these are real. They actually did happen. How could we explain that?" Like, If there is prana through the body, what would it be? We know it's not blood through the blood vessels. We know what that does. We know it's not electrical impulses through the nerves. there something else? And today, through the work of people like Helene Langevin and Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, we're starting to realize within the fascia, there are these wet interfaces, boundaries that tend to line up pretty accurately with traditional Chinese medicine lines. So there's some clues in here, which I think we're starting to unpack what these people in the East might have been referring to they sensed these communication channels Sorry, that's my term, these qi channels think science is great, it still has to explain the unexplained. We can't just throw it out and say, "Oh, we don't know how that works." That, That's where the science gets exciting. How can we explain that?

Matt Huy 22:14

Did you see that recent article in The New York Times about the interstitium? This new

Bernie Clark 22:19

Yes.

Matt Huy 22:20

potential organ, and there's a bit, quite a bit of hype about it.

Bernie Clark 22:23

I think it. is. Theise is now at all the yoga-- I'm sorry, the International Fascia Congresses. But when he first came up with this about 10 years ago, a bit of a surprise to him, but not to the fascia community. He was saying, "I discovered this new organ called the interstitium." And all the fascial researchers said, "We've known about that for decades."

Matt Huy 22:43

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 22:43

And so he just didn't know about the research in the fascia, so kind of coming together. a different flow. There's there's flow through the blood vessels, through the veins,

Matt Huy 22:51

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 22:51

through the Nerves, and now there's a-- and through the lymph system. But now he's saying there's also a flow through the interstitium. we've known about that in the fascia world for a couple of decades now, but least it's becoming more everyday accepted in the medical community that there's more ways for things to travel through the body than just the traditional thought ways of blood and through the blood vessels and the lymph uh, stuff through the nerves.

Matt Huy 23:17

Yeah, it is really interesting to learn about, and I think that article jumped to a few conclusions, and you just mentioned about how acupuncture follows these certain channels, that sort of thing and this New York Times article mentioned it also. But that doesn't explain how acupuncture doesn't do better than random placing of needles, and there have been randomized control trials of this. Basically, if you take out the eastern side of it and it's just called dry needling, and that seems to work as well. I think we can't quite say for certain that there are these ener- energy channels based on this research. We definitely need more. But I do agree that, the ancient seers, they, they experienced things. They would try holding their breath for a period of time and see how it made them feel. They would meditate on certain parts of their body, which we could call like chakra points, right? And they would experience different things. So they would see things, but they couldn't explain the mechanism. But we can sometimes jump to conclusions a bit too quickly to say, "Yeah, there's this new interstitium," although it's not new, we've known about it for a long time. And so it's the answer to everything and explains why fascia is the most important thing,

Bernie Clark 24:27

yeah. It's-- They would have an experience, and then using the cultural terms they had available to them, they'd come up with an expor- a story to explain their experience. Now today, we know those stories are very fanciful.

Matt Huy 24:42

Mm.

Bernie Clark 24:42

that mice don't come from straw, but they're trying to explain the experience. So let's not denigrate the experience just because their story was wrong.

Matt Huy 24:51

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 24:52

okay, we got better science today. Today, can we explain those experiences?

Matt Huy 24:56

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 24:56

I think is the challenge, not to throw the the experience, 'cause again, that's data. So somehow you're gonna have to come up with a hypothesis, or first, kind of in science you go as a speculation hypothesis, and then you test the hypothesis, and you get a theory. So we can call Speculations.

Matt Huy 25:13

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 25:13

had no way of being tested. They were just stories, and everyone had different stories, and you would argue over which story kind of is more believable. Not makes more sense, but is just more believable given the story to the background. So in the beginning of the book, I talk about the pre-shamanic traditions, where people have seen dead people not breathing, living people breathing, and they would have known there's something about the breath. And then religions developed, and now we've got not just the local spirits in the got the Sky and the big clock or calendar in the sky by which we decide when to to, to reap. that's when the gods became huge because society became huge. So our stories had to change. It wasn't just breath. Water is the lifeblood of an agricultural society, so water is also prana. all the four or five elements became associated with life and prana. So the idea of prana started to grow as societies started to to grow. again, they still didn't quite have science. They just had these early versions of philosophy

Matt Huy 26:18

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 26:18

and keep it through. But then when science came on, we started to expand our horizons, but we still had to explain life, and we still don't know what makes something alive. We do Know that

Matt Huy 26:30

Yep.

Bernie Clark 26:30

to come from life right now, life can't come from straw 'cause straw's But life comes from one cell dividing into two cells, so there's always this cellular lineage that requires life. But we don't know how that first cell became alive. still have a mystery there,

Matt Huy 26:46

Yep.

Bernie Clark 26:46

just like we have a mystery with consciousness.

Matt Huy 26:49

Y-yes, exactly. And some listen-listeners might be surprised to hear that we don't know what life is, but there is not necessarily a good, solid definition. And a virus is a perfect example, because normally life is described as being able to change with your environment, right? Being able to adapt to the environment. viruses can adapt, but they don't follow our standard definition of life. So is a virus alive? It's really hard to define it. And you also mentioned consciousness, and we still don't know how to define that exactly. These are, like, at the forefront of current science. And that's why I love science. It's about having these conversations about what is the very meaning of life? How-- What forms life? When we don't understand something we use mystical descriptions, and this is what your book is all about, looking at those different mystical descriptions. And then we start to understand it. Okay, so that's gravity, and then we develop a theory, the theory of gravity, which is basically not just a guess, but the body of knowledge that we know a-a-around this topic. And then we get more and more specific, and we can give names to it and equations, like you said, E equals MC squared, et cetera. But that, for me, that doesn't take away from the beauty of it. It's just learning about it in a different way. me, s-science today and learning about how the body works is what the people of yesteryear were in those salons using to describe all the ideas of prana and stuff. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 28:14

Yeah. It's, It's interesting when you think about I know there's some people who say things just a theory. Gravity is real. When you drop something, it falls to the earth. So we've now developed an explanation of why that happens, and that's called the theory of gravity. then you test the theory, and the theory of gravity is so strong We Never have a failure to do it, except in some very small particular cases out there in the solar system, which Einstein solved by modifying the theory of gravity. Uh, sorry, general theory of relativity. So we have something that's a fact, and then we way to explain the fact. people talk about uh, the theory of evolution, and they say, "Oh, that's just a theory." Well, So is the theory of gravity. It's just a theory. But in saying that there's a theory of evolution doesn't negate evolution. Evolution is a fact. Gravity is a fact. And then we try to explain why that fact is

Matt Huy 29:12

Exactly.

Bernie Clark 29:14

can test it. by saying it's a theory of evolution doesn't mean-- Even if you disagree with the theory, doesn't mean the fact of evolution is not true. So we look at the-- We've had these experiences throughout the centuries of something inside the body, they would call it kundalini rising.

Matt Huy 29:30

Mm.

Bernie Clark 29:32

So now what theory can we propose that would explain that fact? So that's what I'm trying to do in the last part of the book, is trying to say, is there some body of science we

Matt Huy 29:41

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 29:43

Could be used to explain prana. And not quite. I don't think we're quite there,

Matt Huy 29:49

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 29:50

whatever we come up with is not gonna be the prana that people thought three thousand years ago.

Matt Huy 29:54

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 29:55

uh, Indra says, "I am Prana. I am life." So that's not amenable to scientific investigation. But if we say there are winds, Vayus, five Vayus flowing through these nadis through the body maybe there's a can kind of explain if people are intuitively feeling that there's something happening,

Matt Huy 30:14

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 30:14

like an energetic flow is happening through my body, can we explain why they're experiencing that? And that for that, I think we can get a little bit more close. completely there, at the end of the book, I redefine Prana to be communication energy, every cell in the body needs to know what's happening in the community. Now, we're, we're a collection, a community of fifty trillion cells. actually counted them, so it's just an estimate, and ninety percent of them aren't human cells. They're guest symbiotic bacteria. But let's suppose we're five or ten trillion human cells. They have to communicate with each other. In my view, Prana forms of cellular signaling that happens. you can have a cell that communicates with itself, autocrine, that's sending out signals that it responds to. You can have cells that communicate to the nearby cells. That's taxocrine. You can have cells that communicate through the whole body. That's the endocrine system. So we have communication, and it's not just chemical messengers. Cells also respond to heat, to light, to sound waves, to energy fields, to magnetic fields. There's all sorts of ways these cells are listening seeing what's going on, and based on the signals they get, they do a certain action. that to me is Prana. That's the communication system within the body.

Matt Huy 31:35

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. And you also close the book by saying, our definition is evolving, right? So you don't... Yeah.

Bernie Clark 31:44

In a hundred years, people back and say, "Well, these, what are these people thinking back then?"

Matt Huy 31:48

Mm.

Bernie Clark 31:49

we look back to Aristotle saying, "What an idiot.

Matt Huy 31:51

Yeah, exactly.

Bernie Clark 31:54

from straw?" So we're always-- We're doing the best we can,

Matt Huy 31:57

That's quite...

Bernie Clark 31:59

our ideas

Matt Huy 32:00

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 32:00

if they

Matt Huy 32:01

Yeah. That's quite an interesting and humbling idea to think that 100 years from now, people thinking-- be thinking back to some of the things that we take for fact and

Bernie Clark 32:11

Yes.

Matt Huy 32:12

to consider them ri- ridiculous, right?

Bernie Clark 32:16

Chances are it won't get completely thrown out, like

Matt Huy 32:18

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 32:19

modified Newton. He didn't throw Newton away. He just said, "Newton's great for ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, there-- it's imprecise. It doesn't explain the orbit of Mercury, the procession of Mercury's orbit." But if you put this into a gravitational well with general relativity, you can now modify Newtonian mechanics to explain that. And general relativity is one of the the most tested theories ever, and it keeps coming up

Matt Huy 32:44

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 32:45

So it's hard of a, a theory that'll go beyond that But physicists are trying to figure it out, but it doesn't match with quantum mechanics. These

Matt Huy 32:52

Yeah. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 32:54

so something's gonna supersede them at some point.

Matt Huy 32:57

And that reminds me of the sliding filament theory, which we use to describe how muscles contract, with actin and myosin binding together. Yeah. A theory because it's our-- it's the body of knowledge to, to describe how it happens, and it has been tested, and you can remove a muscle cell or even muscle filaments from a human body. You can put them in a lab, add necessary components like calcium, and you can trigger that reaction. So we do know that the sliding filament theory is a real thing, and that, that is a good way of describing it. But like you said, we're learning more about it, and a recent development is the role of titin, another protein, which was not previously described in the sliding filament theory. And this is probably playing an important role in, in eccentric contractions. So yeah. So it, it's a-- an ever-evolving...

Bernie Clark 33:47

I'll throw another one out at you. I don't know if you've heard of Gerald Pollack. wrote an interesting book called Cells, Gels, and the Engines

Matt Huy 33:53

Oh,

Bernie Clark 33:55

deals with water, and he believes the sliding filament theory is incorrect. What's happening is the state of water is changing

Matt Huy 34:01

Uh

Bernie Clark 34:03

contracted, to a solution state, relaxed. So he doesn't necessarily think it's the sliding filament theory that's doing it. It's the way water changes its conformation. state, like Jell-O, where it holds together, and then a fluid state like water out of a tap. So even there, we may not quite have it right. It may be a bit of

Matt Huy 34:21

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 34:22

things

Matt Huy 34:23

Yeah. Could be both. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 34:25

science keeps changing.

Matt Huy 34:26

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which is why we...

Bernie Clark 34:29

to your, your point, Matthew, about acupuncture it is true that dry needling can have a very similar effect,

Matt Huy 34:36

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 34:36

but there are some studies that show that acupuncture is a little bit more efficient at the effect

Matt Huy 34:40

Oh, okay.

Bernie Clark 34:41

by itself. So even though dry needling does have an effect... And this a a different view of what meridians are. Normally, we think of meridians as just kind of lines. So this guy is called Mr. Meridian Man. He's got all these traditional meridian lines, like the urinary bladder and the spleen line. And if you think of the meridians as like, roads on a street map that's gonna give you one sort of view. But instead, think of these meridians as watersheds, every cell in the Daoist philosophy needs qi to survive. So somehow that energy has to get not just to the main roads, but out to them. So you think of a watershed, you got a valley, two mountains, and then the water starts to flow down the mountains, forming little streams bigger brooks, and then they form the river, and the river goes into the ocean. That's what's happening within the body. We have these little meridians, which become bigger meridians, which become the main meridian.

Matt Huy 35:41

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 35:42

you look in an atlas in, say, Brazil, you'll see the Amazon River. But then you'll also see the watershed and all these millions of other rivers that flow in to form the Amazon. So we might have a main line, which is called the urinary bladder, but what we're not seeing is the watershed flowing into that. So when you're doing dry needling, not be on the main and the main line of the river, but you probably are touching some of these watershed ones. So we have to stop thinking about the meridians just being these lines, and there's the classical lines of them, and thinking more of watersheds that are three-dimensional. They-- Like fascia, there's a superficial layer to it, but there's also a deep layer, and there's the layer that invests and covers the organs and goes inside the organs and so forth. So the whole Eastern of of qi and meridians are... It's a bit more broader than we simplify it often today.

Matt Huy 36:37

Yeah. I don't know. I just struggle with, we've got these identifiable dissectible structures like the arteries, and that's exactly what you're describing also in terms of, smaller vessels into smaller vessels and smaller vessels. And I don't know, there's so much to learn in terms of the dissectable stuff. I kind of struggle with this idea of there's this thing that doesn't-- you can't really see it, so I don't know.

Bernie Clark 37:02

if you're looking at the fascia. Like, In the past, as you probably know, fascia was boring, inert material.

Matt Huy 37:07

Hmm.

Bernie Clark 37:08

you threw it in the bucket.

Matt Huy 37:10

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 37:10

We were looking for the systems, the

Matt Huy 37:12

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 37:12

system, the

Matt Huy 37:13

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 37:14

the nerve system, and we threw out all the wrappers. Well, Now in the last thirty years, we're realizing these wrappers are alive. They've got living cells in

Matt Huy 37:22

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 37:22

respond. There's ten times more nerve endings in the fascia than in the muscles. So most of the pain we think is muscle pain is actually pain coming from the perimysium. And it's, it's reactive. And then these shieldings. So Helene Langevin showed that... Well, she did it in the upper arm, but I, I find it easier to describe in the legs 'cause people are more familiar with the leg muscles. But we have this group of muscles called the quadriceps, and there's a fascial bag around that,

Matt Huy 37:47

Yep.

Bernie Clark 37:47

the epimysium, which bundles them all together. Then inside that, we've got the individual muscles. You got the rectus femoris, and you got the vastus lateralis and so forth, and they have their own wrapper around it. Well, Separating the quadriceps from the adductor muscles, we've got two fascial boundaries, septums that come in and go right into the femur. Well, That pathway, that interface there, is the line of the spleen meridian. And then between

Matt Huy 38:15

Okay.

Bernie Clark 38:16

lateral side, between the, say, the IT band and the quadricep, you've got the hamstring muscle group. And in that interface, you have the gallbladder meridian going down So wherever you see these classical meridian lines, they tend to line up with the fascial boundaries of muscle groups. Right down the middle of the body, we've got lines that lined up very closely with the rectus um, abdominis. On the medial side, that's kidney meridian, and on the lateral side, there's the stomach meridian. But they seem-- wherever we look at these lines, they tend by and large to line up with these fascial interfaces between muscle groups.

Matt Huy 38:53

Hmm.

Bernie Clark 38:54

Now, that's just a correlation, but it's interesting that this seems so consistent because we also know that these fascial boundaries are lubricated to allow gliding, water is a conductor of electricity. Not pure water, but water with a little

Matt Huy 39:08

With ions, yeah.

Bernie Clark 39:09

if-- There's some speculation that through piezoelectricity and other stress-strain electrical potentials, when you move the tissues of the body, you're creating these little internal currents,

Matt Huy 39:20

Mm-hmm.

Bernie Clark 39:20

they're flowing down through these water-rich pathways, through these fascial boundaries. Now, this again is in the speculation. It's not yet a hypothesis or a theory, but it's just a speculation that if people are sensing some sort of energetic flow through their body, could it be that they're experiencing this flow through the fascial boundaries? That would line up with these meridian lines. So again, we don't have proof yet.

Matt Huy 39:45

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 39:46

have a really working theory that can be tested,

Matt Huy 39:48

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 39:48

but we're getting the pieces together 'cause we don't have to create any new science to explain that.

Matt Huy 39:53

Yeah,

Bernie Clark 39:53

have

Matt Huy 39:53

that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I, yeah I can get behind that. That makes sense to me.

Bernie Clark 40:01

true. It's just the best guess right?

Matt Huy 40:03

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 40:03

So these people have that experience. How can we explain it?

Matt Huy 40:06

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 40:07

might be one way to

Matt Huy 40:08

Yeah. My problem is if you have to throw out the, again, quote, "gizmos and gadgets," the current measuring devices and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 40:17

No,

Matt Huy 40:17

if we can... Yeah.

Bernie Clark 40:19

to find these things.

Matt Huy 40:20

Yeah. Yeah. I c- I can understand that then, yeah. I-- at the same time, I do worry though that people think, "Oh, I need to totally change my regimen for exercise, for yoga, for whatever, and I need to focus on the fascial lines." I, what I always think is you basically just do the yoga that you're already doing. Do the massage that feels good or whatever works for your body, keep doing that. And your fascia, your everything else will sort itself out. We don't worry ourselves about the Krebs cycle, for energy production in the cells. But we do know that going out for walks and having cardiovascular exercise is really good for your, for the health of the cells. I don't know. I, I do think we...

Bernie Clark 41:04

I, I've seen a lot of people, they work at the margins, like

Matt Huy 41:09

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:09

their mitochondria, so I'm gonna take a lot of CQ10 And other things to help the Krebs cycle. Ignoring that the biggest three things you can do to longevity and health span is lifestyle, exercise, sleep. You know, Get these things

Matt Huy 41:25

Yep.

Bernie Clark 41:26

and all the rest are like one or two percenters.

Matt Huy 41:28

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:28

Here's the 98%.

Matt Huy 41:30

Yep. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:30

98% and don't really worry about the Krebs cycle.

Matt Huy 41:33

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:33

that doesn't mean the Krebs cycle is not interesting and maybe you you know, get that extra half percentage

Matt Huy 41:37

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:40

working for you and you're feeling better,

Matt Huy 41:42

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 41:42

then who cares? Just keep doing that. It's just that I like to understand why is my yoga working. So I start with the observation, yoga works for me. give you an anecdote. I had a woman came up to me after a year of taking a Sunday night yin yoga class with me. And I didn't really know her. She's always in the back of the room. But after a year, she came up to me at the end of class and asked if she could give me a hug. So I said, sure. So we hugged and she was almost crying a bit. She said, you know what? A year ago when I started coming to your class, I had really bad back pain. I could barely get out of the house. And now after a year of doing your yoga, pain-free. And she was so grateful. And as she walked away, my ego started to grow and I had to shut it down saying, look, I have no idea what helped that woman. Maybe it was the yin yoga. it was just doing shavasana once a week. Maybe it was getting out of her house and away from her husband and kids. Maybe it was the social group. Maybe it was a bit of breathwork. I have no idea why she's feeling better. But the fact is she was feeling better.

Matt Huy 42:43

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 42:43

that's great, accept the win. And then it's up to me to speculate as to what might have happened. And it probably had nothing to do with me. I suspect maybe it had nothing to do with the yoga either. It could have just been a change of life, just getting out, getting away from a stressful environment. Because we know back pain is very related to stress in the life.

Matt Huy 43:02

Yeah. And 90% of back cases resolve in six weeks, which is an important thing to remember too. And you also talk about your own health issues in this book with low blood pressure and feeling faint, periods of lethargy, and really being not able to function. And at the end of the book, you say, "Yeah I did get better." And for you, you said you tried all these different things, all these different treatments, Eastern, Western treatments, and I remember you saying in the book, probably the most effective thing was time, right?

Bernie Clark 43:36

Yeah. Time and slowing down.

Matt Huy 43:39

And slowing down. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 43:41

So when I got into pranayama, I'd heard that if you do 1,008 kapalabhatis, you'll

Matt Huy 43:46

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 43:47

up to 1,008, counting on my fingers.

Matt Huy 43:50

Wow.

Bernie Clark 43:50

And I believe that is part of what set me off.

Matt Huy 43:53

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 43:54

can be wonderful. But like anything, dynamite can be you know, clear away for a dam or it can be used to destroy things. All these techniques have a double edge to the sword. overdid it

Matt Huy 44:05

Yep.

Bernie Clark 44:06

a real guru or a trainee-- a trainer to help me. And it was only later I discovered what I was probably doing to the blood chemistry in my brain, when you do a lot of hard pranayama,

Matt Huy 44:16

you

Bernie Clark 44:17

are hyperventilating. You are changing the CO2 levels of the blood, which makes the blood much more alkaline, which has all sorts of psychological and mental problems that come up with it. So it's-- you gotta be careful working with pranayama. Now, I don't wanna scare people. I'm not talking about alternate nostril breathing for a minute or two.

Matt Huy 44:35

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 44:36

about doing a half hour of vigorous pranayama

Matt Huy 44:39

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 44:40

this, this stuff in the book, I talk about the cautions that you need to do because I kinda learned the hard way. I, I broke both of my knees

Matt Huy 44:48

Yeah, I was just-- Yeah.

Bernie Clark 44:49

I wasn't ready

Matt Huy 44:50

I

Bernie Clark 44:50

it.

Matt Huy 44:50

was just gonna bring that story.

Bernie Clark 44:51

body to places it was telling me, "It hurts. Don't do it."

Matt Huy 44:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 44:57

kept doing it.

Matt Huy 44:58

I've...

Bernie Clark 44:59

I'm a uh, role model for to to do your yoga practice.

Matt Huy 45:03

Yeah, I remember you saying that story before, Padmasana, destroyer of knees, but you didn't listen to your body, and so as, as- powerful as these practices might be our own inner teacher is still the most important. We gotta listen to that, right? And you didn't. You ignored that, and you pushed through that pain in the knees.

Bernie Clark 45:18

All right.

Matt Huy 45:19

for a good cause. You were really trying to reach enlightenment.

Bernie Clark 45:23

Yeah. I didn't-- I've not reached enlightenment yet, but I did break the knees. Fortunately, the knees are fine now. I learned to respect them and treat them better,

Matt Huy 45:30

good. I don't know if enlightenment is a place exactly where we reach. I think it's a spectrum, and we get there at we have moments of it. We feel it. We sense it. And for me, learning is a step towards enlightenment or even gives me snippets of it, of enlightenment.

Bernie Clark 45:49

Yeah, that's true. It's it's always a ne-never-ending journey, and in the Zen world they say after Satori, the dishes.

Matt Huy 45:56

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 45:58

you reach enlightenment, you still have to get back to life and lead your life.

Matt Huy 46:01

And

Bernie Clark 46:01

In, in Zen you get these little awakenings called kensho, and then you might have A big awakening, and that's what I found in life. There's all these

Matt Huy 46:08

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 46:08

moments. "Ah, now I understand. That's why my knees know? that in the back and it changes your life a bit, but it's not a big radical change. So you get the little kenshos and maybe you'll have a big understanding of how things work, but you still just gotta get on with life and

Matt Huy 46:22

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 46:22

what you, what you've learned.

Matt Huy 46:24

Yeah. And you also mention Thich Nhat Hanh in your book, and his philosophies really changed my view of life and s- and spirituality. Because he talks about finding the beauty in every day, kissing the earth as you walk, but just practicing gratitude, practicing i- mindfulness while you're washing the dishes. So I think those are

Bernie Clark 46:45

he

Matt Huy 46:46

really powerful.

Bernie Clark 46:47

who was an ancient Chinese philosopher who said, "The true miracle isn't walking on water.

Matt Huy 46:51

Mm, yeah.

Bernie Clark 46:52

is to walk on the earth."

Matt Huy 46:54

Yeah. Which...

Bernie Clark 46:55

to walk with awareness than in walking.

Matt Huy 46:58

And just the fact that we exist, You know,

Bernie Clark 47:01

yeah.

Matt Huy 47:01

some, mathematician did the mathematics on how likely it is that you individually, exist in this world, and it's something like the city of San Diego. That many people have to roll a million dice a million times, something like that. They all have to land on the exact same number, and that number is your, is how likely you should exist on this earth. So in that way, yeah, it is an absolute miracle that we do get to live on this earth, and for me, this is that spirituality, just that, that daily practice of gratitude r- and finding mindfulness in little moments. Yeah

Bernie Clark 47:39

Reminds me of Eric Idle's song the, uh, the galaxy. I don't know if you've ever listened to Monty Python's old recordings. got the miracle of the birth.

Matt Huy 47:48

I love Monty Python, Yeah. I

Bernie Clark 47:50

Yeah.

Matt Huy 47:51

that specific one, but yeah, I do, I do.

Bernie Clark 47:53

You should look it up, Eric Idle and the miracle of birth and how unlikely is your birth.

Matt Huy 47:57

Oh, okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. I'll try to find that and put it in the show notes so people can watch it too. En- enlightenment through comedy. I think we can learn a lot through comedy, actually.

Bernie Clark 48:09

Yes.

Matt Huy 48:10

it's been great to chat with you again and thanks for taking the time here.

Bernie Clark 48:15

Thank you, Matthew. It's fun to be back

Matt Huy 48:17

Thank you.

Bernie Clark 48:19

hypotheses.

Matt Huy 48:20

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 48:21

day, maybe a theory.

Matt Huy 48:22

Fascia, is it important? Is it not important? Really quickly on...

Bernie Clark 48:26

We just don't understand it all.

Matt Huy 48:28

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 48:29

It's

Matt Huy 48:29

Really...

Bernie Clark 48:30

so um, do something.

Matt Huy 48:32

Yeah. Really quickly, I promised someone I would ask you a question, which you mentioned in the last podcast episode about basically the most flexible thing takes the stretch, okay? And so that's why it can be useful to stretch in a cold environment when you are cold to do yin when you're cold. The model that's often used is if you imagine a really stiff spring and then a very flexible TheraBand, the only thing that's more compliant, looser will take the stretch, right? But that disregards all human biology and all the other factors that go into stretching, including our nervous system, right? So I don't know. Do you still agree with that? Am I... Or am I not saying the model correctly?

Bernie Clark 49:11

Uh No, I, I did create my own little experiment on this. My theory was... Well, let's start with the observation first. If I'm doing my yin practice when I'm cold, I do find, because my muscles aren't as compliant, I get a deeper sort of effect. But that, that's an observation, so how can I explain that? So that's when I took two elastic bands, and I had a very stiff one, and I said, "That's gonna represent my tendon and ligament." And then a very compliant elastic band, very thin one, and that's gonna represent the muscles when they're warmed up. And I tie them together, and I, I put the same amount of strain to them. So like maybe I pull them apart twenty-five centimeters. And then I measured how much moved, and almost all the movement was coming from the compliant elastic band. And then I got a thinner, band, and that might represent... Sorry. kept the ligament the same thickness, but I got another elastic band that represent the muscles when it's cooler. So a stiffer, less compliant elastic band.

Matt Huy 50:10

Mm. Mm.

Bernie Clark 50:11

put the same amount of strain, twenty-five centimeters, and now the ligament band moved much more, which proved to me that you have something that's very compliant and you put a strain onto it, it's gonna take up most of that movement. Very little strain goes into the thicker one. So for tissues that are in series,

Matt Huy 50:30

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 50:35

If you think of a joint capsule, so like if you take your finger and you relax it and you pull, you can feel a separation

Matt Huy 50:43

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 50:43

base of the joint there.

Matt Huy 50:44

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 50:46

that's resisting this now. Now, if you the muscle will take that strain, not the joint capsule. So if my intention is I want to put a strain into the joint capsule so I can distract the joint, I'm gonna have to relax the muscle. But

Matt Huy 51:00

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 51:01

if I want to prevent that, I want the muscle to be stiff or colder. So there's a time to do this when the muscles are cool and stiff, and there's a time to do it when the muscles are warm and relaxed. So you can enhance range of motion when the muscle is and you can enhance stability when the muscle is contracted. So there's different times to use the different things.

Matt Huy 51:23

Yeah. But then that still even begs the question of it, wh-which one is more beneficial? Which...

Bernie Clark 51:29

Oh, that, yeah, that benefit's a different

Matt Huy 51:30

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 51:31

is this, a story that I see developing in the yoga world that stretching is all to do with the neurological connection to the muscles. Now, I agree the neurological connection to the muscle has a big effect,

Matt Huy 51:43

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 51:44

'cause your Golgi tendon organ and your muscle spindles, of breaking

Matt Huy 51:47

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 51:48

pedal

Matt Huy 51:48

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 51:49

nerve interaction is contracting the muscle If the Golgi tendon organs win, the muscle relaxes. If the muscle spindles win, the muscle contracts. And we're constantly, through our interoception and proprioception, adjusting that neurologically. And there are ways to turn down that neurological impulse so the muscle starts t- to relax. But that's only one mechanism, and a lot of the studies I, I like to quote The Princess Bride on this,

Matt Huy 52:18

Mm.

Bernie Clark 52:18

I don't think the studies say what you think it says." So when they look at these studies that prove that it's stretching for 30 seconds to 60 seconds is the best way to in- create increase in range of motion. When you look at the studies, have to look at both the demographics and the protocols being used. These demographics exclude people over 50. exclude people who have issues, problems,

Matt Huy 52:45

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 52:46

uh, diabetes, and so forth. They're looking really at the athletic type of person,

Matt Huy 52:50

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 52:50

then they-- the protocol is we're gonna stretch you for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, and we'll-- and up to two minutes, and they find that once you've gone to 60 seconds, there's no increase in range of motion. Now, notice they didn't say that two minutes didn't increase range of motion. said it doesn't give you any more range of motion. So it doesn't mean a two-minute hold is less effective. But that's not what we do often in yin yoga. Usually, this is statement against yin yoga because we're holding the poses for three to five minutes, and they say, "See? There's no benefit to yin yoga." of all, they didn't test five minutes. They tested up to two minutes. yin yoga, what we feel is after about two minutes, you get this relaxation occurring. So now we're not talking about a neurological effect. We're talking about how the collagen fibers start kind of change their orientation, and there's also an internal relaxation within the fibers themselves. also the state of water that we've talked Gerald Pollack.

Matt Huy 53:49

Hmm.

Bernie Clark 53:49

The water may be in a bound state with a lot of hyaluronic acid aggregating the water. But after stressing for four minutes or so, the hyaluronic acid starts to change, and then the water loosens up. So we know just from experience, again, in fact, if you hold a pose for four or five minutes, you'll feel these stages. first stage, that might be neurological. You just feel a letting go. the Golgi tendon organs are turning on. But after two minutes or so, there's another release, and after four minutes, there may be another release. So there's other factors occurring that aren't in these studies that look at just one or two minutes. Plus, most of the students that I have, they're not elite athletes.

Matt Huy 54:31

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 54:35

people who are 50, 60, 70s, people who have arthritis, who've got all sorts of conditions. They're not the ones being studied, you can't really say that the neurological thing is the same for them 'cause they

Matt Huy 54:46

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 54:46

studied

Matt Huy 54:47

Well, there might be some studies here.

Bernie Clark 54:48

is a big part of the question, but I don't think it's the only answer.

Matt Huy 54:52

Yeah. That's a good point. And I know that, you mentioned the muscle spindles and so the old idea, like in the Ray Long books, is like you stretch a muscle, the muscle spindle becomes excited, it sends a message to the spine and back telling the muscle to contract. But we've looked at whether there are neurological messages going to the muscle through EMG, electromyography. So you're measuring, is there an electrical stimulus going into the muscle? And when you're stretching, it's minimal to none. So the stretch reflex really doesn't explain our tightness also, because in the stretch reflex, what's called the Hoffman reflex, is a very momentary thing when you're overstretched, when you trip, when you

Bernie Clark 55:37

Yes.

Matt Huy 55:37

into something, and your muscle contracts to basically prevent you damaging a tissue, right? So just to put that out there, because I'm not sure muscle spindles have that important a role. And I also struggle then, and I still don't totally get my head around it, like- I know the nervous system is an important part of flexibility, stretch tolerance and that sort of thing, but I don't fully understand and I don't think science can fully explain actually changes in flexibility because we know it's driven by the nervous system, but it doesn't seem like the nervous system is being that actively involved, and perhaps something like titin is being involved. And I think there are also bio- mechanical things like you're discussing too. So it's more to be learned, I think.

Bernie Clark 56:17

hy-hy-- I've heard some people say you know, the muscle's only so Like, The hamstring goes from below the knee to the ischial tuberosities, so it's that long.

Matt Huy 56:26

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 56:26

when you flex the hip, it goes that long.

Matt Huy 56:28

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 56:28

we actually making the hamstring longer? And th-they're saying, "No, it's crazy 'cause it only goes from A to B." I disagree with that. I think we actually do measure it, 'cause hypertrophy of the muscle, you're adding more sarcomeres. You actually are making the muscle longer. So I believe you can neurologically change the tone of a muscle if, say, at any one time,

Matt Huy 56:48

I

Bernie Clark 56:48

twelve

Matt Huy 56:48

think that's hyperplasia, isn't it? Sorry. So hyperplasia is adding sarcomeres, yeah, whereas hypertrophy is just making the sarcomeres larger cross-sectional

Bernie Clark 56:57

okay, we, we might have this wrong. I thought hyperplasia was adding more sarcomeres in parallel, whereas hypertrophy is making the sarcomeres add in series.

Matt Huy 57:04

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 57:05

That

Matt Huy 57:05

All right. Let's just Google it.

Bernie Clark 57:08

Like, This whole question is do you actually create more muscle fibers? No, you just make the fibers thicker or longer, and that's a big debate.

Matt Huy 57:17

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 57:21

And you can't cut people up. So there's one theory is that within a few months after you're born, you've got all the muscle cells you're ever gonna have. And adding more muscle cells would be hyperplasia. But at making the change in the muscle cell that you already have is hypertrophy. That's, That's my understanding

Matt Huy 57:36

yeah,

Bernie Clark 57:36

of that. But hyperplasia, I believe, is the case.

Matt Huy 57:39

y- yeah, so hypertrophy, also pronounced hypertrophy, i- is the, yeah increasing the size of the existing cells. Hyperplasia is increasing the number of cells. Yeah. But yeah.

Bernie Clark 57:49

have an effect.

Matt Huy 57:50

Yeah. Probably, yeah, Anyway,

Bernie Clark 57:53

we're still, as you say, we're still

Matt Huy 57:54

yeah,

Bernie Clark 57:55

all that

Matt Huy 57:55

exact-

Bernie Clark 57:56

point is that it doesn't stop mattering after one or two minutes.

Matt Huy 58:00

Yeah. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 58:02

one or two minutes.

Matt Huy 58:03

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 58:03

Plus, the studies only go for like four weeks or six

Matt Huy 58:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Bernie Clark 58:07

three

Matt Huy 58:07

Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,

Bernie Clark 58:08

my te-- my students have been doing yoga for years, some people for decades.

Matt Huy 58:12

Yeah,

Bernie Clark 58:12

you know, We're we're really looking at a very small subset of what yoga is

Matt Huy 58:16

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 58:16

at these studies.

Matt Huy 58:17

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 58:18

I

Matt Huy 58:18

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 58:19

says what you think it

Matt Huy 58:20

Yeah. Something I learned recently, one last thought and then I know we need to finish, is

Bernie Clark 58:24

Yes.

Matt Huy 58:25

even like ex- expiration dates on drugs, like for your- Acetaminophen, paracetamol. So they have to put a expiration date, but that is based on how long a study was looked at. But it actually could be longer. So it's not like on that date, the product the drug becomes ineffective. That's basically just how long we looked at it. And then, but it could be much longer that it'll still be effective, right? So this pharmacist o- online was saying "You don't need to throw them out the day after or even months after. They'll still be effective." But it's just our best guess based on the information that we have, which is all that we all are ever doing. It's our best guess based on the information that we have.

Bernie Clark 59:05

Well, I had a-- Just one last anecdote. I had a friend of mine I used to play tennis with all the time. He's an optometrist. And he, he got something in his eye, and he asked me if I had any eye drops, and I did. But I, I gave it to him, I said, "Yeah, but these expired like weeks-- uh, three years ago." And he said, "Ah, they never expire." So he just used it. So then here's a doctor telling me that these things don't expire,

Matt Huy 59:24

Yeah. There you

Bernie Clark 59:25

advice from a yoga

Matt Huy 59:26

go. This is not medical advice. Disclaimer. Yeah. But, it, y- like your shirt says, you'd rather have questions that, that can't be answered. And also another great quote is, "Hold your firm beliefs lightly, and hold your light beliefs firmly." So don't assume that everything that you've learned is fact and dogma. Let's be open-minded. Exactly. Exactly.

Bernie Clark 59:46

One caveat I give, you know, I was sharing the teachings that I got from these teachers years ago.

Matt Huy 59:53

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 59:53

that they would say that today,

Matt Huy 59:55

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 59:56

wouldn't say what I said 25 years ago. So I was just giving you a snapshot of what these people were telling me

Matt Huy 1:00:01

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 1:00:01

when.

Matt Huy 1:00:02

Like your credit card thing. Your spine credit card thing, which I challenged you on last time.

Bernie Clark 1:00:06

Yes. Yes.

Matt Huy 1:00:07

Exactly. And like I've said I've reread the book that I co-authored with Andrew and there, there are bits where I would change the words, and I'm like, "Oh, I don't know if I totally agree with that anymore."

Bernie Clark 1:00:15

for sure.

Matt Huy 1:00:15

It's a snapshot in time, yeah. Bernie, what's, w- what's up for you next? You said you've finished your X series of books. Are you done? Is...

Bernie Clark 1:00:24

Yeah, I think I'm done. You know, I've

Matt Huy 1:00:26

Oh, no.

Bernie Clark 1:00:26

I've always got other books in my mind,

Matt Huy 1:00:28

Good.

Bernie Clark 1:00:29

go through and do it. I'm kind of ramping down, heading towards retirement now, so I'm not teaching in-person classes anymore. I'm

Matt Huy 1:00:36

Yeah.

Bernie Clark 1:00:36

got my weekly online classes, and once a month, I write out a So that's why it's my version of a podcast. I get something off my chest, and I'll write about it. So

Matt Huy 1:00:46

yeah, yeah.

Bernie Clark 1:00:47

taking it easier these days.

Matt Huy 1:00:48

Yeah, that's good, yeah. I do that newsletter, Yin-sights.

Bernie Clark 1:00:51

Yes.

Matt Huy 1:00:52

Yeah. Good. Yeah, it's good to take it easy, yeah. Brilliant. Okay, Bernie thank you very much, and if people wanna learn from you further you still do a weekly yin class online, don't you?

Bernie Clark 1:01:03

Yep.

Matt Huy 1:01:03

Asana at home.

Bernie Clark 1:01:05

Sunday mornings in Vancouver time, but the replays and there's hundreds of replays in the library now, so people can get to All that through yinyoga.com.

Matt Huy 1:01:13

Okay, great. Yinyoga.com. And of course I'll put a link in the show notes for your new book, Prana. Of course, excellent book. I think it's, yeah, it's a really good book. It's such a good way of reading about this topic because it's through storytelling, which is the best way that we learn really. Yeah.

Bernie Clark 1:01:32

Well, You said that it was like a novel, which I thought was great because was kind of my intent.

Matt Huy 1:01:35

Yeah, it did read more like a novel, much more so than, yeah, like Your Body, Your Yoga, which I can only read in snippets 'cause it's so dense. Yeah,

Bernie Clark 1:01:45

dictionary. you

Matt Huy 1:01:45

Oh, yeah. No, you don't. Exactly. I would take so many notes on the sides. Oh. Include this in my teacher training and stuff. All right, Bernie. Thank you very much. It's great to have you here, and yeah, take care. So thank you.

Bernie Clark 1:01:59

Thank you, Matthew.

Matt Huy 1:02:00

you. Bye now.

Speaker 2 1:02:05

Thank you for listening to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast. We would be grateful if you would leave a review and a five star rating. Be sure to tune in next time for more science-based knowledge to get enlightened and help others.