The Connection Between Music & Movement with Joaquin Gomez - EP. 1

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Joaquin Gomez is a yoga teacher, movement enthusiast and musician. Originally from Argentina, he grew up in Ibiza and now lives in London, where he has been teaching yoga since 2017. You can check out Joaquin's practice on Instagram @joayoga

Transcript

Jake Wood (00:01):

Hey folks, this is Jake from So We Flow, and you're listening to the Why We Move Podcast. We speak to incredible movers from all sorts of disciplines to share their stories and give you practical and inspirational advice on movement and living a happy, healthy life. We welcome beginners and experts, introverts and extroverts, fanatics and casuals to better themselves and inspire others.

Jake Wood (00:28):

Today we're going to be talking about yoga, movement, life goals, and changes in direction with Joaquin Gomez. He's someone that I followed on Instagram for quite some time now and he not only has a physically impressive practice, but I think a story that embodies the life changing power of yoga. So thanks for joining us, Joaquin. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the first yoga focused podcast. So if you just want to give yourself a little intro to the listeners, I think they'd appreciate hearing it from you first.

Joaquin Gomez (01:06):

Sure, yeah. So my name is Joaquin, and I'm actually from Argentina, but I grew up in Ibiza in Spain, and I've been living in London for about six years now, on and off. I'm a yoga teacher and a movement enthusiast and I teach full-time for the past three years in London. Very happy about it. I also enjoy content creation, so I try to share my practice and hopefully inspire others through my movement practice.

Jake Wood (01:39):

Yeah, for sure. So you've only been teaching for three years, or is that just in London you've been teaching for three years?

Joaquin Gomez (01:45):

In London three years, before I taught for another year back in Ibiza, so a total of four. Not that much.

Jake Wood (01:56):

To be honest, given how impressive your practice is, I thought you have actually been teaching a lot longer than that. I imagine, how long have you actually been practicing for before you started teaching?

Joaquin Gomez (02:07):

So I would say five months before. So four and a half years, yeah, something like that.

Jake Wood (02:17):

So it sounds like you truly dedicated a lot of time to it to get to where you are now I imagine then.

Joaquin Gomez (02:24):

My mom used to say when I was a kid I was obsessive compulsive person, so I guess that helps.

Jake Wood (02:32):

That can go either way, right? Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's good. I think that personality is very, very common in the yoga industry, especially with teachers. I've seen a lot of teachers who they're like, "Oh I used to do loads of drugs, drink loads, party loads, and then I kind of quit it all and started yoga and that took that mentality and I just gave it to yoga." So it kind of switched that for something else.

Joaquin Gomez (03:02):

I relate in some of these things that you just mentioned.

Jake Wood (03:08):

Yeah. For sure, for sure. So let's just go back into the past a little and talk about, so when and how did you get into yoga and movement? How did it all start for you?

Joaquin Gomez (03:21):

Sure. It's kind of a funny story I would say. So my first contact with movement and self it was as a kid. I was hyperactive, I guess like many kids are. My parents used to call me, in Spanish there's a saying that we use, you say your [inaudible 00:03:43], which literally, I don't know how it would sound in English but it means restless ass, particularly you're all over the place, you can not stop, you cannot see for 30 seconds, you're already messing around, being naughty. So I was like that. They decided to bring me to a sports center so they could calm me down basically. They showed me a few different options they gave me and I chose athletics, because I love to run, I was running all over the place. So we guess that's what he'll be doing. Yeah, eventually I enjoyed, but I actually did athletics for 10 years.

Joaquin Gomez (04:29):

I started first with doing a little bit of everything, when I was seven they put me there basically with a bunch of other kids. So I was doing a bit of long distance, short distance, I was doing long jump. From there I transitioned to hurdles from 100 meters hurdles to 400 meters. And eventually with hurdles I ended up doing quite well and I moved on my late years in athletics into national championships in Spain, which was quite fun. I got to know a bit more of the country where I was living. Yeah, I would say that was my first contact with movement. I think that's one of the reasons why my personality switched to that obsessive compulsive [inaudible 00:05:33] that I told you before, because athletics is a sport that is very competitive and you always want to win and be the best. It's not healthy, I would say, that was one of the reasons why I left, but it also gave me some positive aspects.

Jake Wood (05:55):

Yeah, for sure.

Joaquin Gomez (05:56):

The personality that may help you bring somewhere else and eventually grow I think.

Jake Wood (06:04):

So you think the athletics kind of caused that characteristic in your personality to come out, or do you think it was kind of going to happen anyway, it just happened to sort of be athletics that showed it to you first, would you say?

Joaquin Gomez (06:20):

Yeah. I think it may be something that was inherent within me, but definitely athletics enhanced it.

Jake Wood (06:29):

Yeah, sure. It's interesting because I didn't do athletics when I was younger but I did competitive swimming, and it was very much the same. Super intense training, hours and hours every day, but my personality was the opposite so I've never been obsessive or compulsive in that way and I think that's what made me walk away from it, the fact that you almost needed to be like that to succeed in it.

Joaquin Gomez (06:57):

Yeah.

Jake Wood (06:58):

So I kind of walked away for a different reason, but I kind of had the similar experiences to that. So in terms of, you did athletics and then you decided to move away from that, how did you go from that to kind of where you are now in being sort of a yoga teacher in London, what was the journey from that time?

Joaquin Gomez (07:19):

So my mom was always very connected to spirituality in those terms, and she always encouraged me to do meditation with her. She used to give me books to read, also The Secret and Saint Germain, I don't remember exactly the name but I think it's called The Golden Book. It's basically all about spirituality and how to enhance human experience, the power of your mind, the power of your thoughts, and to be honest, by that time I was reading it because she told me to, but I wasn't very interested in that. I guess like every teenager, whatever your parents tell you, you don't really care. But when I ended up athletics, because I was fed up, it was too much, I was training five days a week for three hours every evening and then we were doing a test every Saturday, so basically I didn't have weekend, I was not seeing friends, I was basically just doing athletics, that's it.

Jake Wood (08:34):

Sure.

Joaquin Gomez (08:36):

As a teenager, so then as soon as I quit athletics, because I said I could not do this any longer, I switched completely. So I stopped doing sports for like four, five years, something like that. I did a bit of parkour just because I thought it was cool, but nothing too extreme, just to kind of explore, I sometimes climbed in trees because I lived in an island, just for fun. Nothing really that I was focusing on. It was mostly a bit of rock climbing when you go to the beach here and there. So I completely quit doing an actual practice, and I switched to music, which is completely, well some people may say is different, there's a lot of similarities that we can go into, but yeah I completely stopped doing any physical activity. And through music is when my life changed completely for drugs, party, playing night, staying up all night and then sometimes two days no sleep. It was a bit crazy timing. But at the time it was fun and I thought life was meant to be enjoyed, which is it, but maybe not on those terms.

Jake Wood (10:15):

Yeah, sure.

Joaquin Gomez (10:16):

[crosstalk 00:10:16]. So yeah, I had a gap of four, five years where I didn't do any movement practice. The only movement I was doing was my fingers because I was a guitar player. Actually I came to study here in London. That was the first contact I had with the city. And the girlfriend I had at the time, she was going to yoga classes and she was always trying to encourage me to do yoga with her, I'm like oh not really, yoga is just for girls and also it's too spiritual, wishy washy, there is nothing really to be learned there. That was me for two or three years. And then when I finished university I went back to Ibiza. I decided I didn't want to do music anymore, because I had a few bad experiences playing plus drugs, where I felt my mind was not going to be the same anymore afterwards, especially with psychedelics. And my girlfriend decided by the same time to break up with me. I was a bit attached to that relationship, so it hit me quite hard.

Joaquin Gomez (11:40):

I was on YouTube starting to check how can I help myself, basically, and I encountered a yoga video, 10 minutes like beginners, just practice stretching the shoulders, and I thought okay let's give it a try, she always told me to try, I never really wanted to, now I don't have anything to lose, she's not here anymore, I don't know what to do with my life so let's give it a try. After that video I felt great, because it was the only time after, I don't know, one week, since we broke up that I stopped thinking about her, at least for those 10 minutes.

Jake Wood (12:30):

Yeah, for sure.

Joaquin Gomez (12:31):

And I was like wow, there is something here that I need to try again. So I came back the next day, I did the same video, I think I did that video for one week, every day, and those were my 10 or 15 minutes where I was able to disconnect from the craziness that I created in my mind. It was very gentle, so nothing really intense. So after that I thought okay, I think I'm liking this, I like also the consistency, it's giving me a purpose again, at least even if it's just for me to move a little bit. It's making me wake up every morning with something to look up for, to look up to or look up for?

Jake Wood (13:21):

Worth waking up for I guess.

Joaquin Gomez (13:23):

Okay, good. Sometimes I confuse. Yeah after that I decided to look for an online platform, I think I looked for [inaudible 00:13:39].

Jake Wood (13:39):

Yeah sure.

Joaquin Gomez (13:40):

Or something like that. I wanted to explore a little more, and I went for an intermediate practice. I thought yeah, I did great with this 15 minutes practice, I will do amazing, I was an athlete, I'm going to do great for sure. And I think we did like warrior two and warrior three and I was like shaking, I couldn't hold balance, I'm like what the fuck, this is crazy. I used to be so good, and I cannot hold my body weight for more than 10 seconds. So I guess that triggered my mind to my athletic sort of background of oh I need to do great, and I started pushing myself a lot. I was doing half an hour videos, then I moved to 45 minute classes, and then up to one hour classes for the following four months.

Joaquin Gomez (14:43):

By that time it was summer time in Ibiza and when the summer ended I had saved some money and I didn't want to be there in the winter because it's dead. So I thought what am I doing? I don't have uni anymore, I don't have a partner, I don't have anything to lose, so let's go travel. But I didn't want to just spend all my money nothing, so I started looking for yoga retreats in Europe, and the ones that I wanted to go to which were in incredible locations, they were quite expensive for the budget that I had, so I started looking Asia, and I found a retreat in Nepal, and I started looking. I never in my life thought that I would go to Nepal, but I started looking to some pictures, and I saw the Himalayas, and I said wow this looks amazing.

Joaquin Gomez (15:45):

So I booked, but then the retreat got canceled like the week after. I'm like okay, I already wanted to go to Nepal, I think I bought the tickets and everything, so I started looking and the only thing I found was a teacher training, but they were saying that you didn't require any experience. So I'm like okay, I don't have a clue what I'm doing, I don't even know the names of the postures, let's give it a try. So I went to Nepal, and the first day we arrived to the training, my teacher, he said to us, I want you to forget everything you learned, we will start from the very beginning. I'm like okay, this is-

Jake Wood (16:33):

Great.

Joaquin Gomez (16:34):

Because I don't have a clue what I'm doing. So yeah, that's how I started.

Jake Wood (16:38):

Well that's amazing, man. There's so many things I wanted to talk about, but I didn't want to interrupt, you were just flowing on that topic. So music was the main reason that you moved to London in the first place was it?

Joaquin Gomez (16:52):

Yeah. I wanted to be a star.

Jake Wood (16:57):

Yeah. And what style of music were you playing?

Joaquin Gomez (17:02):

So I like different styles. It was a mix of reggae, funk, hip hop, jazz.

Jake Wood (17:09):

A blend. On acoustic?

Joaquin Gomez (17:12):

Say again?

Jake Wood (17:12):

On acoustic, was it?

Joaquin Gomez (17:14):

Electric, electric guitar was my instrument.

Jake Wood (17:17):

Completely solo or were you in a band?

Joaquin Gomez (17:20):

No, I was in a band. We were called Overflow, overflow of everything, not only music, but everything we could encounter. We were playing in Ibiza in beach bars and stuff, it was quite good for three years we were playing a lot. But yeah, as I mentioned before, I realized that lifestyle was not for me.

Jake Wood (17:49):

I think you know as good as me, that lifestyle is very easy to have in London. I kind of had a very similar lifestyle for most of my 20s. I think only in the last few years was when I kind of stopped pulling back from that way of living. Did you ever have any overlap with that lifestyle and the more kind of holistic, healthy lifestyle? Or were they very separate?

Joaquin Gomez (18:18):

Yeah, they were quite separate because when I moved back to Spain is where I was already fed up of that lifestyle and then is when I encountered yoga. And then when I came back to London three years ago, I was already, my mindset already changed. I mean I'm not saying here and there I tried some things, but much more controlled.

Jake Wood (18:51):

Yeah, yeah.

Joaquin Gomez (18:52):

Maybe it's like 10% of what I was doing before.

Jake Wood (18:57):

Yeah, sure. I think it's interesting because it took me leaving London to kind of remove that part of my life. The same way I guess you moved back to Ibiza. I always found that a challenge, so much of my life I followed this healthy positive track, and then three times a week I'd do something that is kind of completely polarized to what I'm doing in most of my life. But I could never kind of walk away from it because I think in London culture it's so ingrained in the society. All general socialization is based on drinking, isn't it? So it's so hard to separate yourself from that.

Joaquin Gomez (19:43):

Yeah.

Jake Wood (19:45):

And I think that's a challenge most of people that do live in the city, and it's not just when you're young as well, especially in London, going into your 40s, your 50s, I think it's still this battle that people are torn between.

Joaquin Gomez (20:00):

Yeah. I agree, 100%. I think something positive for me is that I am not such a big drinker anyways. So that part of the culture which is so ingrained to the city is not effecting me that much. For me it was more about smoking, having mushrooms, MDMA, stuff like that.

Jake Wood (20:31):

Yeah, for sure.

Joaquin Gomez (20:32):

So actually Ibiza was harder [crosstalk 00:20:38].

Jake Wood (20:42):

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:20:42].

Joaquin Gomez (20:43):

Yeah, exactly.

Jake Wood (20:46):

So one thing that you mentioned before that I was like I need to come back to that was how the connection you saw between music and movement and how you felt that they're related to each other.

Joaquin Gomez (21:01):

Yeah. So there's a speculate that some people say that music have actually probably emerged from movement because of the synchronization, the connection that generates between people, I've read some articles where they mention that they are actually interconnected. But for me I've always seen it as movement is something that happens everywhere at all times, right? Maybe not human movement in itself, but we are already knowing that we are rotating around the sun and the moon is rotating around the earth. There is always movement from the smallest atom in the universe to the massiveness, the wholeness of the universe itself. So movement is there. And at the same time, music, it's known for it's represented always as a wave, a sound wave, right? And the science sound wave is from emptiness or from nothingness, sound waves create movement, or it's the movement of sound.

Jake Wood (22:45):

Sure.

Joaquin Gomez (22:46):

So in that sense, in order to create for instance a piece of music, there needs to be movement of sound with silence or with pause or with space in order for that sound to move from noise to a piece of music or to a harmony. And in movement, if there is no connection or there is no awareness of movement in itself moves from being something graceful and something that interrelates between different positions, let's call them like that, to a flow. If there is no space, if there is no awareness, as the same way when you create a piece of music there is no actual movement, it's just like random, how can I say it, random positions that cannot interrelate with each other, if that makes sense.

Jake Wood (24:00):

Yeah.

Joaquin Gomez (24:00):

So I see movement and music kind of like that.

Jake Wood (24:05):

I've always known there was a connection, but the way you describe it then really kind of visualized it for me. It was quite beautiful.

Joaquin Gomez (24:12):

Thank you. Yeah. I don't know if I expressed it exactly as it goes through my mind, but I tried my best.

Jake Wood (24:20):

It made so much sense, and I think obviously everything that we do there is a connection between it all and I think you're right in saying that visualizing it is the wave with the stillness and something has to cause that change, whether it's a physical action, whether it's some kind of stimulus, and then that wave itself is then moving through the air as well to our ears. The connection between those peaks and troughs in the wave and the way that they-

Joaquin Gomez (24:57):

And the spaces in between each other is what creates either a graceful movement practice, or a beautiful piece of music, yes.

Jake Wood (25:07):

Yeah, exactly. And I guess that's maybe part of the reason why your yoga became so important to you as well I imagine, because you don't find in some of the movement practices, they are quite disjointed and there's not as much flow to them, there's not as much introspection, and it is a bit more stagnant and disconnected even though it is using your own body. Would you say that's true for you?

Joaquin Gomez (25:35):

Yeah, that's 100% actually. It was something I was about to mention, so thanks for saying it. I found when I was doing athletics, even though I always sort of tried to connect with my body, or I had that inherent in me, I never really knew when to stop. I never really knew how to create gracefulness within, but it was all about just giving it all and die, literally. I remember after a few races where I was dead and I ended up on the final line, I arrived and I basically fainted because I didn't have any more to give, because it was not about the connection and the awareness of not only the movement but also awareness of myself. It was just about wanting to win, when I started practicing yoga and I started to learn about breath and about meditation, I realized that there actually needs to be something else than just moving because moving is moving because first you can, but also because you're kind of like flowing ... it's kind of like a representation of your own life.

Joaquin Gomez (27:30):

When you grow from being a kid to a young adult to an old person and dies, it's like a cycle, right? You need to respect those parts or those points from the lowest to the highest peak, and I think before I wasn't respecting them. I was just like going all in, whether the practice helped me to understand there needs to be a little bit of respect.

Jake Wood (28:10):

Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing about yoga specifically for me, and I guess kind of dance as well, especially the way you've talked about it and I imagine the way your practice is, it is quite connected with dance in the sense that there is movements connected together rather than these separate things that stand alone that maybe you would find from athletics, like a calisthenics practice, like a gym workout or anything like that. It's the connections and the moments in between the movements are just as important as the movements themselves, and I've really kind of, it made sense to me when you said it represents who you are in your life right now because I think when you stand there on the mat and you go into your practice, you feel very vulnerable to what's going on right now like emotionally, physically, and it's kind of all there for the taking and the practice that you then do very much represents in an external way what's going on inside.

Joaquin Gomez (29:24):

100%. And when you look back, for instance, before if there was no energy in my body, I kept pushing. I didn't really care why or I didn't really question why where now I know when there is something going on psychologically or emotionally, it kind of represents how my practice, how I'm feeling in my practice and even how it looks. So kind of like gives me that space for me to step back and listen, and at the same time, I notice when I cannot do something like a move, let's say a press to handstand one day even though I've done it thousands of times, before I used to just push and try to get it, and I wouldn't finish the practice until I didn't get it, because I knew I could do it. Where now I'm like okay, maybe today is not the day, I will try again tomorrow.

Jake Wood (30:55):

Yeah [crosstalk 00:30:56].

Joaquin Gomez (30:55):

That's what I meant by respecting myself.

Jake Wood (31:00):

Yeah, and just stepping back and taking the foot off the gas once in a while.

Joaquin Gomez (31:04):

Yeah.

Jake Wood (31:05):

And knowing when to do it as well. I think it made me think of moments when sometimes you feel very low energy, but you actually need the practice to kind of take you into high energy, do you know what I mean by that?

Joaquin Gomez (31:19):

Yeah.

Jake Wood (31:20):

They're kind of the moments that are confusing because you might be thinking oh today's maybe not the day for an active practice, but it's actually exactly what you need. And I guess that just comes through practice and experience knowing the difference between needing that or needing to actually just have a very slow paced, relaxed practice.

Joaquin Gomez (31:46):

It depends, as you were saying, day to day, and it comes with your own experience of how your body reacts to certain things. There are days where you feel tired, but that tiredness may come from something that is unrelated to physical fatigue, and actually you need to do something a little bit more active to come back to your senses to say, and other times when you know there is no more energy moving through your veins you kind of need to start doing something a little more restorative.

Jake Wood (32:35):

I think one thing that I've noticed from over my whole years of practicing yoga and movement and everything else is however passive or active the practice you do is, you never regret doing something. You always feel better afterwards. And that feeling of you know before kind of like oh shall I do it? Shall I do it? And then even if you just do a few basic stretches, you always feel better afterwards. I don't feel like might necessarily agree with that based on the look on your face.

Joaquin Gomez (33:08):

Yeah, no, no, no. I agree. I don't know if that comes necessarily to, so for instance, I believe that there is a need of some sort of movement to happen on a daily basis for your body to feel that you are alive, or to feel healthy, but I also know that there's time when no movement needs to happen because there's moments where you actually need to step back 100% and just maybe moving to something a little bit more meditative because of X, Y, Z. I remember a couple of years ago I broke my [inaudible 00:34:06] bones or my heel, I had an accident on my bike and it was quite crazy. I actually started doing handstands with a massive cast, because I couldn't balance on my legs.

Jake Wood (34:24):

That's the obsessive part of you coming out again.

Joaquin Gomez (34:28):

Exactly. But once I fall and I didn't enjoy that moment, it kind of taught me that I actually needed to stop and do nothing, or focus on other aspects of the practice. That's something that I like from yoga is that there is not only movement, like physical movement, but you also have the movement of as they call it, prana, or the movement of your breath, the breath control or the breath work, from where you started, and then the practice of meditation which is something that we take for granted and I feel like I try to meditate regularly but it comes and goes, but it's something that is so important, and when it happens, then it's going to truly feel like oh my god I'm glad I've done it, even though it takes me a while to get into it.

Jake Wood (35:28):

Yeah, for sure. I think sometimes as well we can have practice where we're not quite there, like the mind is not present in the practice, it's elsewhere. And I think that's why prana or breath work, whatever you want to call it, and meditation is so important to integrate into that daily practice because it does bring you back to where you want to be because even though you might have had some physical benefits from moving your body, a lot of the time it is our mental space that needs the movement and the stripping back of everything that's gone on in the day or even if it's in the morning to prepare for the day and open your mind up to what the possibilities of the day.

Joaquin Gomez (36:15):

Yeah. So whichever movement practice one does, it's basically a way for us to feel that we are alive, right? And I guess when you repeat something over and over again as you were mentioning, it becomes automatic. It becomes robotic. So then your mind is not engaged anymore there, and then is when we start moving or shifting our thoughts into something else. Then I see it as there are two options, if you want to continue being like fully aware, you start moving somewhere else in terms of your physical practice, that's why we are challenging ourselves to do something more intense or something that feels harder for us, but actually when we try to work in something as you could say relaxing, or something that it looks very easy like meditation or breath work is when we really struggle, or at least I struggle, because then you are not using movement as an excuse for your mind to be aware, but you actually need to use a stimulus for your mind to be aware. And then when you are able to, I'm not saying macerate, but when you're able to grasp that through all these other practices like meditation or breath work, then when you go back to your movement practice and you're able to combine them and join them together then is when everything flows, I think.

Jake Wood (38:15):

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think when both those areas of my life, like the physical and mental are balanced and they come together, that's when I feel most at peace with everything. It's not just a movement practice or a yoga practice, but everything around me kind of fits together. I think it's important as well, if you say I have a physical practice that is very disconnected and you maybe don't think about the breath, don't include meditation, and your thoughts are off, that's not necessarily a problem. Everyone's different, right? If you're satisfied with what that's doing for you then that's amazing. But I guess if you are feeling a sense of something being missing, it could well be that breath work, meditation, and the connection, the mental connection.

Joaquin Gomez (39:18):

Yeah, I think it depends your personality, it has to do as well with what are you looking for with your movement practice or with whatever physical practice that you are doing. I guess for instance for me when I started I didn't care about anything else, not how my body was looking, to be honest, I never really cared about that, but I cared about what could I do. Whether now, even though there's still an interest there, I try to make sure that whatever I do I do it feeling that there is no gap in terms of how's my body feeling, how's my mind feeling, how I am feeling. Before it was just like body, body, body work and nothing else, and then I was coming back after finishing practice which felt great, but then after that I'd come back with the very beginning when I started practicing yoga, on those moments of the practice there was complete absence of worries, discomfort, anger, sorrow, but then after that and before that I still had all of that in my mind, whether now because I tried to add all these other aspects, I'm slowly managing to ease those, let's unpleasant moments, and extend the pleasantness of the practice throughout the day.

Jake Wood (41:15):

Yeah, for sure. So for people that are struggling to connect those two elements of the practice, what would be your main piece of advice for them?

Joaquin Gomez (41:29):

I would say taking some time off of your regular life when possible. It doesn't have to be like going to Nepal like I did, going thousands of miles away. But trying to take some time off and going for a walk in nature, or going to a different neighborhood that they are not used to, try to, because we are very robotic and we always come back to the same patterns. So the first advice would be try to break one of those patterns. Do something different. From there, I would say explore things that require not only difficult challenge but maybe mind challenge or breath challenges or something that is completely out of your comfort zone, because when we are in a stage of difficulty, the best thing we can do is placing ourselves outside from that situation into a completely new situation, so then we can first experience something else, so our mind can, basically I call it like a rinse of your mind. And then when you come back to it, hopefully there will be a different perspective.

Jake Wood (43:11):

Yeah. That makes complete sense. A question I'd love to ask you which is kind of a big part of So We Flow is less specific about the movement process, but kind of what it takes day to day to have sort of a healthy mind and body and maintaining a sustainable practice over time rather than these intense, very focused practice, and I guess from your experience with athletics you probably have a really good idea of what the difference is and how you've integrated that into your life.

Joaquin Gomez (43:47):

Yeah. So I would say the most important thing is having a structure of the day. It doesn't have to be exact to the minute, but at least have a time that you dedicate to work with yourself, especially in the morning, and having set spaces and set times for whatever you want to work with. Even if you want to just eat, to have a time where you're [crosstalk 00:44:26] or you're eating, have a time where you are reading, have a time for when you want to do your physical activity, have a time for when you want to be with your family, because otherwise we start interconnecting everything and eventually it becomes a big mess.

Jake Wood (44:44):

Yeah. I completely agree with that. I think since we have had a baby, I've really understood the importance of routine and structure, and I always had this romantic vision that I'd have this sort of feral child that would have no rules and we'd live this natural lifestyle, but actually it was almost a shackle to live like that. What was actually liberating was creating structure and routine in the day because you know where you stand throughout the day, and you also, it creates vision for the future of what's getting done and knowing, that knowledge that things will get done that you want to get done is kind of like, I don't really want to say this word because it's thrown around a lot at the moment, but it's empowering in a way. It makes you feel sort of like positive and optimism.

Joaquin Gomez (45:42):

Yeah, I agree. In fact I think, or I believe that structure creates freedom.

Jake Wood (45:51):

Absolutely.

Joaquin Gomez (45:53):

I think we all believe at first that freedom comes from completely being out of structure, but without structure, as you were mentioning, there's no vision, and there's no rooting.

Jake Wood (46:08):

Yeah. Absolutely.

Joaquin Gomez (46:09):

So yes.

Jake Wood (46:10):

Chaos.

Joaquin Gomez (46:11):

Exactly. I can imagine having a baby chaos is literal.

Jake Wood (46:17):

Yeah. Literal chaos. But the baby is almost like an extreme version of all these responsibilities we have in our day to day, and a lot of them you can kind of just not consider that much, but obviously when you have a child of your own, it requires absolute consideration and how everything fits around that. So for me it was the true thing that saw structure as freedom, as you say, that's the big takeaway from this podcast I think, structure is freedom is a great thing to [inaudible 00:46:58]. So Joaquin, thank you so much for coming on, I really appreciate it. It's been amazing to chat to you, and kind of just went into some great areas, and we could have talked for another hour I think but want to keep it good listening for the people. Maybe we can just do it again some other time.

Joaquin Gomez (47:18):

For sure, yeah. It was a pleasure. I have to apologize if I went all over the place.

Jake Wood (47:24):

Oh, it was perfect. It was perfect. And is there anything you'd like to share with the So We Flow listeners, whether it's where they can find you, website, Instagram, anything you want to share?

Joaquin Gomez (47:37):

Sure. So they can find me on Instagram at Joayoga, or J-O-A-yoga all together. They always have the chance to practice with me in the primalyogis.com, that's my platform, and then if they want to come for a training, you know Miles. So me and Miles do trainings together. They can always either hit me up or hit Miles up and feel free to join one of our trainings.

Jake Wood (48:15):

Perfect. Thank you so much, man. Well everyone, have a great day and we'll see you soon.