Home Holistic, 39 Brooks Avenue, Venice, CA (2025)

01/23/2022

I was going through some photos this morning and thought this might be an interesting share.

This is the second visit with a new client who’s been dealing with some chronic low back and SI joint pain.

I’m not sure if it’s as visible to you as it is to me, but in the first picture here, her front ribs look very flared. This chronic state of extension can create stress or compression through your spine and if it is a state that is always lived in, it can jack up your nervous system too. This is a person who said to me that she has a hard time “letting go”.

In the second image, we not only have better lighting but you can also see the effects of a complete exhale, drawing the front ribs down and better lining up the thoracic diaphragm and pelvic floor.

In image 3, my client is completely relaxed. I wanted to show her her rib hump with better lighting but after just 6 long exhales, we can see that it is pretty much gone and it also looks like she is creating some nice intra abdominal pressure, without even trying.

Is her pain completely gone? No, but there was a significant reduction in lower back tightness and she has a new understanding of what it feels like to let those low back muscles go.

11/19/2020

A few weeks ago I sat down with from to shoot some photos and tell my story about how I ended up in LA, how I got connected with the banks crew and what got me into the health space.

These guys have supported me along this whole journey and I’m super grateful to be a part of such an epic team.

I also put together a Journal Jams playlist with a bunch of songs that I think encapsulate the changing headspace I move through on a weekly basis. You can find the link in my bio and if you make your way there, be sure to have a look around the site because the new holiday range is on point.

09/01/2020

2 Rights & 2 Lefts from the weekend in a chlorinated pool.

06/17/2020

Active Recovery.

Often times when I discuss recovery methods with clients, the assumption is that recovery means to simply sit back, do nothing and wait for our body to repair itself and for energy levels to be restored. Many days this is what is needed but there are also activities that we can categorize as active recovery methods, which can speed up the pace of recovery, allowing you train, surf or party harder and more often. Here a couple of examples of what you can try:

Aerobic Work.
Building your aerobic base, your ability to use oxygen efficiently, is probably one of the best things that you can do to improve your recovery time. This means long duration, low intensity exercise at a pace where you can comfortably hold a conversation or maintain nasal breathing. You could run, walk, bike, swim, yoga, stretch, dance or row and as long as your heart rate stays below 70% of your max, then you can consider it aerobic training and can also consider it to be active recovery. This helps you move the byproducts of more strenuous exercise out of your body, pumps nutrition into your body and obviously does great things for your cardiovascular health.

Stress a different system of your body.
My favorite way to do this is thermal stress. Cold plunges or saunas are a great way to stress your body, creating a favorable adaptation without overburdening it through more exercise. In fact, regular sauna use has even been shown to improve cardiovascular fitness and endurance in the absence of specific endurance training. If you don’t have a sauna, you can still get similar benefits by running a hot bath and soaking for a good 20-30 minutes, which can also build a nice sweat.

Tai Chi.
This is a practice that has stood the test of time, with its origins dating back over 700 years. Tai Chi develops endurance, increases bone density, improves coordination and balance and is intended to fill your body with energy by circulating chi throughout your system. Combining gentle movements with focused breath work, this form of exercise is a great way to recover actively from more strenuous types of exercise, providing more energy than is expended. YouTube has plenty of classes @ Venice

06/10/2020

Here is a simple set up to help you get more range of motion out of your shoulders in less time.

Most of the PAILs/RAILs setups I know work one side at a time. I love this setup for shoulder external rotation because you get twice the work done in half the time.

If you have cranky shoulders, limited range of motion and want to create some more wiggle room in your capsule whilst improving the tissue quality and neuromuscular control, give this one a go.

05/27/2020

Finding Balance

Last night I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about how finding balance in ones life is completely different from person to person based upon their circumstances and life goals. He’s an actor, who for the past 5 years, has been going hard working on a TV show and in this time has struggled to find what he believed to be a balanced lifestyle. He said that when he looked around at all of our friends, everyone seemed to be so good at keeping their s**t together and keeping a healthy mix of work, rest and play. Over the course of the conversation and after delving into the different circumstances that all people on this earth have to deal with, he came to realize that his life wasn’t as out of balance as he previously thought and it required a shift in perception to be able to see this.

2 Forces
There are two creative forces that govern the natural laws of our existence and the Chinese named these yin and yang. The yin and yang are in a constant dance, finding momentary periods of stillness, only to be shifted into flux again moments later. We can look at our actions and behaviors in this way, with our outward and expressive behaviors being considered expressions of yang energy and our inward or introspective behaviors being expressions of yin energy. When someone is seeking more balance in their life, usually it means that that they are spending too much time emanating either of these types of energies.

Time
Often times people feel out of balance because the construct of time that they are using to frame their situation is too small. To demonstrate what I mean by this, I want you think about some of the Northern European continents and how in the different seasons they can have up to 20 hours of darkness per day. If you were to visit Sweden for example in the Winter, coming from somewhere much closer to the equator, you might think that this is a completely unbalanced way to live. However, for the residents in that area, this is just a normal phenomena of the natural world which, for the person with a more expansive concept of time, they understand that this will be balanced out in the Summer by the same amount of

05/18/2020

Many of us have been lead to believe that the solution for rolled forward and slumped shoulders is to simply pull them back and down. While this advice isn’t bad, there are still many more ways to keep your shoulders strong, mobile and consistently being challenged at their end range (which is where I think a large portion of your training should be done).

Give this exercise a shot and let me know how you go in the comments below!

05/15/2020

How to design your own exercise program.

Exercise is a manmade construct which was created to make up for the fact that we aren't doing what we were naturally selected to do. Humans are made to move. In fact, our entire nervous system has evolved to ensure that, through movement, we can acquire things that will keep us alive. As human civilization has advanced we have became more sedentary, we created sports and have found ourselves in specialized occupations requiring repetitive movements or extended periods of no movement at all.

With so much information out there, deciding on what do for exercise can get confusing. Here are some simple tips on what to think about when designing your own exercise program.

1. What are your goals?
Knowing what your goal is cuts out all the guess work. Do you want to get better at your sport, do you want maintain your physical independence or do you need to balance out or strengthen the skills that your job requires of you. Becoming clear on what your life goals are can better help you to understand your exercise goals.

2. What physical attributes does this goal require?
Do you need to develop enough stamina to be on your feet all day or is mobility important so that you can fit in tight places or carry things over head? Is the repetitive, one sided nature of your sport creating muscular imbalances in your body that need to be balanced out? Based upon these answers you can then begin to break down your goals into movements or desired physical attributes to then start putting a plan together.

3. Experiment with your dosage.
There are only so many days in a week and so being realistic about how much time you want to spend training is really important. Depending on what your goal is, becoming clear on how much time you are going to dedicate towards it will dictate how many physical attributes you can tackle at one time. Learning is enhanced through repetition and so you need to expose yourself to the stimulus you are wanting to adapt to multiple times per week in order to get better at it. This requires self experimentation to figure out how much is too much, how much is too little with the right amount sitting @ Los Angeles/Hollywood California

05/13/2020

As surfers, we put our necks in some pretty bad situations and positions and as a result a lot of surfers have chronic necks pain or poor range of motion.

A big reason for that is that many of us do not move from our lower cervical and upper thoracic spine, creating what is known as a hinge point or any area that has too much force going into it.

CARs are a great way to become more aware of where you do and don’t move. After becoming more aware and further practicing moving from those areas, you can then block areas of your body or put yourself in common positions required of your sport and practice CARs from there.

It’s important not to block to soon however, because you may end up putting more force into an area where the tissue isn’t ready for it.

In this video I’ve decided to block my body off in a position that resembles how I’d be paddling. I wrap myself around the ball for tactile feedback and to keep me from making any compensatory movements with my shoulders and I put all my efforts into extending and moving from those two areas mentioned above.

If you’re trying this at home, never move into pain and make sure your CARs are clean before you block yourself.

05/12/2020

Supplements that I find useful

I’ve never been huge on supplements but over time there have been a few that I have decided were worth my time and money and so I want to share with you today what a couple of those are and why they may be beneficial for you too.

Digestive Enzymes
Enzymes are catalysts to all the different reactions that go on throughout your body and there are many enzymes that are active in the early stages of the digestive process. Over time, our levels of enzymatic activity decreases and our digestive power goes down too. You can replenish these enzymes by eating fresh fruits and vegetables but sometimes we need a little extra support and this is where digestive enzymes can come into play.

It doesn’t matter how nutritious your meals might be; you could be eating grass fed, grass finished meat, biodynamically grown vegetables and if your digestion is off, those nutrients will be wasted. Enzymes are one way to supplement and asset your digestion so that those nutrients don’t go to waste. As a result you might feel less bloated after meals, more energized and your p**p quality might improve as well. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for and so higher quality supplements often come with a higher price tag and so my recommendation is to do your research, decide where you need the most digestive assistance and choose a product based off of your own needs.

Trace Minerals
A lot of you reading this probably drink filtered water and that’s a very smart thing to do since tap water is filled with all kinds microscopic nasties as well as chlorine and fluoride, which you don’t want be consuming on a daily basis. What you might not know however, is that filtering your water takes everything out of it, the good and the bad and sometimes we want to add the good back in. Minerals are one of the good things that get removed. Minerals can be found naturally in spring water as they are gathered on the waters journey down stream or from the underground rocks that is passes through on it’s way to collection. Without minerals, it becomes difficult for our body to absorb water and maintain hydration levels as unmineralized water will often @ Marina del Rey, California

05/11/2020

I’ve found over the years that when I ride my bike to the beach, my surfing feels a lot better.

I put that down to the warmup my quads get on the ride and so if you’d like to fee that too, give this one a go.

For the past month I’ve been training using the knee program and I would recommend it to anyone with knee pain. This thought process is what brought me to come up with the exercise you see in this video.

05/07/2020

Coffee Hacks.

I love coffee. And let me just say, I only follow these tips every now and then. Regardless of whether I take my own advice or not, many people can benefit by making one or two of these minor changes to their coffee routine.

Timing.
Right before we wake up each morning, our body produces a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is often talked about as if it’s a bad thing because it’s a hormone that is produced in times of stress. It gives you rapid energy for fight of flight situations. Only when production goes unregulated is it bad and in the mornings it provides the energy which wakes you up.

If we were to see a graph of cortisol production on a healthy person throughout the day, it would spike in the morning and then taper off throughout the day. Coffee can also spike cortisol levels. For this reason it can be helpful to delay that morning coffee until a few hours after waking, once your natural cortisol levels start to fall. This can give you a feeling of extended energy from your coffee and often helps cut the need for a second or third throughout the day.

Digestion.
I heard Paul Chek tell a story once, about a cow who ate a barbed wire fence on the farm he used to work on. His boss, an old boy farmer, told him to go to the shed and to make the darkest batch of Foldgers coffee he could. They cooled it down and fed it to the cow because dark coffee causes the stomach to produce more hydrochloric acid, a digestive substance which is strong enough to break down metal.

We also produce hydrochloric acid in our stomachs and, in the digestive process, it’s not until about 1 hour after eating food that hydrochloric acid is released into the stomach. Before that, all kinds of enzymatic reactions go on, which initiates the break down of food. If we drink coffee with our food, we essentially kick off the HCL production a little too early and cause our meal to miss this crucial part of the digestive process, one which won’t happen again.

So in order to get the most out of your food, try waiting an hour or so afterbefore you have your coffee.

Fat.
Caffeine crashes and caffeine induced panic attacks are not fun. @ Marina Del Rey Main Channel

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