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EMP Podcast 53
Parkour, Fight Club, And Self Transformation With Brandon Douglass: EMP Podcast 53
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Parkour, Fight Club, And Self Transformation With Brandon Douglass: EMP Podcast 53

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Episode Breakdown

  • 00:00 – Intro
  • 04:36 – The Age of the Pandemic
  • 17:25 – The Future is the Past
  • 26:26 – Wisdom, Meaning and the Heroic Journey
  • 44:31 – Parkour Fight Club
  • 51:43 – Embodiment and Self Transcendence
  • 01:03:45 – Epistemology and Self Knowledge
  • 01:12:26 – Comedy and the Dark Side of Training
  • 01:27:00 – Practical Action
  • 01:32:17 – Outro

Inside each of us there’s an ancient voice calling out for a life filled with meaning and adventure.

We want to taste excitement, face down challenges and grow into better people through the lessons we learn, yet the lives we live in this day and age often don’t fulfill that need. 

With all the world’s comfort and convenience at our disposal, it’s not hard to become sheltered, coddled and fragile.

It’s become all too normal for us to spend the majority of our day distracted— consuming empty entertainment and letting our time slip by while we repeat our daily routines. 

As much as we might enjoy these creature comforts and daily distractions, they do nothing to cultivate a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.

The meaning crisis is a real, tangible thing that’s being studied by scientists around the world (including our friend John Vervaeke), and what they’re finding is that people are feeling more alienated, disconnected and meaningless than ever before.

As it turns out, one of the best and easiest ways to break free from this trap is by taking on some kind of dedicated practice. 

Whether it’s fitness, meditation, painting, singing, or martial arts, starting down a path that challenges you to evolve and gain new insights about yourself or the world around you provides a chance to feel like your life is moving in a better direction. 

Parkour is one such practice that offers us a way to learn and grow. You’ve probably heard us say that it’s a direct laboratory for our character development, but just like any other practice, it can come with it’s own set of pressures and pitfalls that can derail a person from finding a balanced sense of personal well being.

Our guest today is Brandon Douglas who is one of the OG’s in the Boulder parkour scene. He’s worked with Apex Movement and Parkour EDU as well as founding his own clothing brand (MYRM) and hosting the Height Drop Podcast on Youtube.

Today he flipped the tables on this conversation and took the role of interviewer in order to dive deeper into Rafe’s philosophy and Evolve Move Play.

Since so much of our work is tied into cultivating a meaningful life through a dedicated practice of movement, mindfulness, community and nature connection practices, we talk a lot about the meaning crisis and how that has shown up in popular culture through films such as Fight Club.

Furthermore we relate that narrative back around to the narrative of how parkour was founded to illustrate how one can walk a path towards meaning in a toxic or a nourishing manner and why that story is so captivating to young people in today’s society.

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