August 20, 2025 • 53 mins
This week, we talk to Neurosequential Sport Specialist Martin Ali Simms about relocating to Mexico at the start of the pandemic, unpacking dissociation and trauma in therapy, developing the D.O.P.E Framework (Develop, Organize, Process, Engage), and the importance of self-regulation for well-being.
For more content, subscribe to our Youtube and Patreon!
For more content, subscribe to our Youtube and Patreon!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small dud help from this small.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Small human areas smalls.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to another episode of Small Doses podcast. So I
know that you probably looked at this title and we're like,
what the hell is this episode about?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
What's she? What's she talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And let me give you some backstory. So on my
show of Views for Amandoland, which you can check out
every Wednesday ten am Eastern on youtubemand of Seales TV,
we do a segment ever so often called Black Around
the World. This is a segment where I interview Black
Americans who have immigrated to other countries. This is to
expose people to geography, to expanding their understanding of like
(00:52):
what it is like to be black American in other
places of the world, and also to just clue people
into the processes of what it takes to do that
and expand their reductive, myopic mindset that the United States
is the only place to live and that it's the
best place to live, because that's just simply not the truth.
So we had Martin Simms on the show, and Martin
is a brother that I met when I was helping
(01:14):
with the flood relief for Hurricane Harvey.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
In Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I met him on the internets and he was working
and I was helping, and that was that. But he
then met this woman, Phoenix, and they ended up forming
a beautiful relationship that blossomed into a romantic relationship, and
then they became a couple, and then they got married.
I think they got married, and then they went to
Mexico to wait out the pandemic, and they had their
(01:38):
son there. And that was the impetus of the conversation.
I had no idea that he was going to come
on here and blow our minds, y'all. Martin came up
on Views from Mandolin and blew all of our minds.
And he blew all of our minds because he started
talking about discovering neuroscience while he was out there, and
(01:58):
the myriad ways that it changed his life and also
changed his relationship for the better. Now, when we talk
about neuroscience, I mean we've talked about psychology, we talk
about psychiatry, we talk about therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
We also talk about neurodivergence. So it's of course dealing
with the mind.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
However, I think for so many of us, we just
don't consider the real applicable ways of shifting your daily
life and how you respond to things without making it
like a really deep connection to trauma, which oftentimes it is,
but there's also a certain level of just doing the math,
connecting the dots and shifting the pathways. And so Martin
(02:41):
got involved and started showing us how that applied not
only into himself but in his relationship and how it
applies to his career as a coach.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And I wanted to share.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
This conversation with you all because I can tell you
that for those of us who came to this episode
of Views form amandaland expecting to just talk about being
black and Mexicans, so we did not expect to be
so enriched.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
By this combo, and enriched we were.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And one thing I'm gonna do, y'all is I'm gonna
share enrichment. Okay, if I'm not sharing enrichment, then what's
the point?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And the beauty of having.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Views for Mandolin and Small Doses is that there are
different spaces that call for different things, but ever so
often there is an intersection that ven diagram b ven diagramming,
And when that happens, I'm gonna bring those interviews right
here to you at Small Doses podcast, So please check
out this episode Side Effects of Neroda Stage Relationships as
(03:42):
it surpass you through.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Speaking of Sherpas, if you have.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Not seen the film Mountain Queen The Summits of Lachma Sherpa,
It's a twenty twenty three documentary on Netflix about this
woman from Nepal, Lachma Sherpa, who summited Everest ten times.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'm telling you watch the film.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It will move you to tears, to joy, to anger,
It's all the things, and it really most importantly moves
you to being inspired. And what we need in this
time more than most is inspiration because it can be
very trying and very demoralizing existing in this present state
here in the United States. But nonetheless, I really want
(04:23):
you to check it out because I felt like it
was incredibly.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Helpful to my own neuroscience moology. So let's do this.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
My ad.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Is not to get us together.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Side Effects of Neuroscience Saces Relationships here on Small this
podcast a featured interview from views from Amandoland Back around
the World, Knocking back around the World, Back around the World,
(04:58):
back around.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The World, back around them worlds are we into national
as for he.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Back what y'all, let's bring to.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
The stage Martin Alie Sims to join us.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Us to join us from Black around the World, our
segment where we talk about black folks, Black American folks
specifically living in other places around the world or who
have lived for extended times and other places around the
broad Mark.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
How you doing great? I'm great, I'm great. How you
doing I'm.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Chilling, I'm chilling, I'm chilling. How's every how's the same?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Think great? You know, I took the kids to school
though we weren't gonna be able to do this with
him here.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
He he'd be on the mike.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
He don't have he don't have no etiquette whatsoever. Somebody
just got to have him in order for me to
do these types of things for real.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They just have to possess him.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Really, he's a daddy's boy, so he want to be
wherever I'm at. So when I have to do these
types of things, he just don't care about the audience.
He's he wants me.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So he's at the NBA press conference.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yep, he's Yeah, Steph Curry's daughter at the press conference. Absolutely,
that's him.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love that we both knew exactly who I was
referring to righty. Yes, I'm afraid to Rightley, Okay, Martin.
So this segment Black around the World is all about
expanding our understanding of what it is to live in
other places, also geography, because I feel like, y'all, why
am I sweating so much today? Am I going through
(06:40):
Manibas today? Like just today? Because I am sweating, like
I am really.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Sorry, my glasses a slipping off my face mark and
I'm just I'm like struggling. Okay. People will say Mexico
but they not realize that Mexico is.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
A whole country with thirty three states.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
With states I don't I didn't even know they.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, so I lived in the state of kanu.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Quintana Rue and that is in the Yukatan Peninsula. Correct.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Okay, So y'all, I'm gonna show you this on a
map so that you can understand what we're talking about,
because this is the thing. When people think Mexico, they
may just be thinking of Mexico City. They may be
thinking of like Tijuana, Sinaloa.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know all, I'm naming places in Narcos. But the
if we're being is so you lived over here, correct?
Where this is in Tulum.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Now I lived in Plio del Karmen.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You lived in Plio del Carmen.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Okay, And if we are even closer, let me actually
remove this media asset so that we can really see
the whole jazz it all. So then you cut down
peninsula as we see at the top right is by
the Carmen, which is next to a place that a
lot of people.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Have heard of, Cancun.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, didn't make a difference living close to a tourism place,
like would you do you feel like that affected like
the living conditions of where you were.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely because of language barriers. The further you get outside
of tourist areas, the less English they speak, so it
would be a lot harder or you would have to
learn their language. Not my son, he's four, he's fully bilingual.
He knows both languages. Like, yeah, I can't even talk
to in Spanish with him, he's like the translate however,
(08:43):
and I'll show you a video, I'll send it to you.
But he's like awesome with Spanish. And then we move
back to the States. He don't want to speak it
with people who don't speak it, so and I can't
make him speak Spanish like someone you can speak Spanish
and he.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Like, no, no, So talk us through it. What made
you decide I'm going to exit the States and we're
going to go to Mexico And what was the process
in determining where you ended up going.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well, we had been there the year before for my
wife's birthday, so we went down there. We were just
tourists on the resort, so to speak. And then so
that was twenty nineteen. The following year we had Genesis,
my son, but we had Genesis two weeks into.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Lockdowns, so lockdown for the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
For the pandemic lockdowns, and so what I was doing
prior to the pandemic I could no longer do, which
is basically personal training and coaching basketball. I did coach
a little bit of basketball after the pandemic started, and.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Because you were in Houston, Houston and Texas acted like
there was no pandemic exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
However, we lived in an apartment that was very like inward,
and I could tell immediately with my son. When I
say inward, I mean like we're on the third floor
and all of the all of the doors are inside,
so like we had to go through a lot of
indoors to get outdoors, and so it just wasn't and
my son loved to be outside, so we was always
(10:21):
on the balcony. And then we went to visit Mexico
for a couple of weeks after I did an AAU season,
so I coached AAU. I had a huge AAU season.
I don't know why I did it, but I did.
And I had a new born, I had just recently
had acl surgery, and I decided no, no Friday, and
(10:43):
we started our practices on that Monday. However, during the pandemic,
the lockdowns were very devastating to the kids that I
was already coaching. So I was like, I can get
them a couple of practices, a couple of games. And
that's when I first started doing the neuroscience stuff too
with them. So at the end of that season, Phoenix
was like, oh, man, no, we're about to She needed
(11:04):
a break. She been with the baby. I've been in practice,
I've been in games, we've been traveling. She's like, we're
going to Mexico. We're going to chip So we get
to Mexico and.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And you went back to where you went before because
you already knew it was good.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, and we found it. I mean, the pandemic also
had a lot of deals. So where we went was
astronomically cheap, right like, it was like we were on
a resort that was so beautiful that I was like, man,
I think I could live here. And I think she
was already thinking it. Period. She had already lived outside
(11:39):
the country. She lived in Asia, Indonesia, She's already lived
outside the country. So when I was like, okay, well
we'll try, and I think, by the grace of God,
the apartment Complax, who I was also training for, they
no longer had any They had a big budget and
they couldn't do it for like events because everything was
(12:00):
locked down. So they was like, can you do us
some virtual fitness things? And they paid. They gave us
a check that covered the whole vacation. So we went
on vacation and we left with a lease and at
the same resort that we were already saying it and
I wouldn't have it was only like a four month least,
like we're trying to see how it go. We ended
(12:21):
up out there for three years, like weve and literally
the only reason, pretty much the only reason that came
back is just because the things that I was doing
with the neuroscience stuff, like.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Started what is the neuroscience stuff?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Because the people in the contents are like, skirt, skirt,
what is.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
The neuroscience stuff?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Because you definitely just said that and keep it, kept
it moving.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So in twenty nineteen, I started going to therapy when
she was pregnant with the baby because I told my
acl the same weekend I found out she was pregnant
with the baby. So I'm like, it's a lot going
on here mentally physically, and we're preparing for a baby.
So we started in therapy and my therapist was trying
to tell me about disassociation and I had no idea
(13:05):
what disassociation was. I considered it nonchalant, right, like this
is just me not caring about what's going on. And
so she like trying to break down disassociation to me,
and I'm not really liking what she's saying. So what
she's saying because it's about me, Like I'm just I'm
the one with the disassociation.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Oh, you didn't like what she was saying because it
was accurate, But.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You know, nah, because if you're in a therapy session
sometimes it's like you're getting jumped, you feel me like
in a couple of therapies, like both of them against me, like,
so it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Was was it accurate? Was accurate?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Absolutely? But so yes, it was absolutely accurate. I did
not know what disassociation was, and so when I found
out this is an actual response trauma, song stress response,
and it causes you to basically leave the moment mentally
(14:04):
or go within yourself, within the safety of yourself. It's
pretty primal reaction because when you can't run or like
when they say fight or flight, if you cannot run
or flee or fight, the next thing is to just
you know you have impending danger and your body goes
into a shutdown phase where like your heart rate starts dropping,
(14:26):
you start checking out, and it's because if something is
immediate and it's gonna happen, you don't want to bleed out,
so your heart rate drops and it just prepares for danger.
And of course, like disassociation evolved to more social things,
so we can disassociate when we feel like we're in
a relationship or some type of power differential. We could
(14:49):
disassociate with a boss, we could disassociate with a spouse,
we could disassociate.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
When I was on to realize to do that it's.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And it's automatic, and that's this is the issue.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Literally, it was just like Jude h m hm.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I checked out. I was in this automatic that
was the issue that I was having. I was like,
why am I in trouble for doing something that automatically happens?
That's what I feel like, was Phoenix, like.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You keep checking out and You're like, but I'm here.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
There were there were moments where she needed me to
be present and I would check out, like there was
and that was the issue. She's like, I really need
you here and I'm like that's too much. And I'm
not saying that consciously. Right, this is a Without this
therapy session, I don't know you know what I mean.
And so my therapist couldn't explain it to me as
well as and so she got She started telling me
(15:44):
about this book doctor Bruce Perry. He wrote a book
with Oprah What Happened to You? But she wasn't telling
me about that book. She was telling me about his
previous book, uh, The Boy that Was Raised as a Dog.
And when I started to understand this is yeah, I know, right,
So the hell of a title, y'all? I got a
whole story for how I found out about that Tyler.
It was terrible. But anyway, no seriously, because okay, I
(16:07):
go into it. I know we're talking about black around
the world. But at this point, so I come from
training a client and my therapist and Phoenix on the
phone together without me, right, like, they was not supposed
to have that conversation. And so I get in the
house and they're like, oh, we were just talking about you. Okay.
That don't make me feel better either, Like what are
(16:28):
y'all saying? And she was like, no, tars reading this
book and the book is about disassociation and this doctor
really understands it and he can explain it to you
this I said, okay, well, what's the name of the book?
And they like the boy that was raised as a dog?
Like what's she trying to say? What she talks? She
talking my mama up? Like what is so?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Wait, give me the ethnicity of the doctor.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
He's white. He's absolutely white.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, so no, the one that the I mean, sorry,
the therapists that.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Y'all are going to.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, she's white too, and added to it, absolutely it's
the only thing that makes this all the way better.
These are two of the best white people I have
ever met in my life. Like, I mean, they have
an understanding of whiteness, and they really understand how that
(17:22):
affects blackness, and they talk about it from a scientific perspective.
They understand what causes trauma, because this whole thing is
about trauma. And so doctor Perry he worked with like
the kids who got shot up in Columbine or the
kids who survived that the Waco of bombings, he worked
with the most traumatized kids. Right now, he's doing work
(17:45):
in Turkey and the Palestinians and all of those things.
So he works at deep levels of trauma. And so
I started watching a YouTube video literally before they got
off the phone on him, and I was like, nah,
he really get it, Like he at least understands this part.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I want to give you props real quick, because what
you could have done in that moment is disassociated And
what you could have done in that moment is been
like man if y'all and walked right back out the house.
And instead you went against your instinct and you actually
(18:22):
leaned in and you said let me, which is what
I keep trying to tell folks to do in general. Like,
if your instinct is to run, do the opposite, to
actually at least prove to yourself if you're bugging or not,
and look at what you ended up doing, You ended
up awakening.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
I do it. This is what I do now, Like
I literally go everywhere talking to people about their brain
how disassociation can affect. It's deeper into disassociation because that's
not the only response. People have arousal responses. They do
have dissociative responses, and oftentimes they don't know where their
responses are coming from. And when you get down to
the depths of trying, it's not just your trauma is
(19:02):
transgenerational trauma, So you may have some responses that resemble
your parents or your grandparents or things that they have
gone through that might not show up in your life.
Like where would this come from? My son act as
a bit of a temper that he's never seen me exhibit,
Like I don't have that temper no more, right, but
(19:23):
he's still I'm like I see him right, Like, I'm like, so,
but this is the cool thing because I got tools
now that I didn't have at the time that I
can help him move through those disregulated moments and you know,
this regulation is a is part of our vocabulary regulation,
and this regulation being at a homeostasis where you can
(19:43):
actually have a conversation where you have your prefrontal cortex
engaged in the conversation because a lot of people shut
down or they're responding out of more traumatic responses or
stress responses than there are in an actual intellectual away.
So doctor Perry talks about it from this perspective. He said,
(20:03):
you want to have a conversation cortex to cortex, you
know what I mean, and.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Gif you core text to core text. I see how
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We're still talking about Mexico for the record job because
we need because all of this is context to context.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Absolutely absolutely so. I mean because Mexico helped us regulate ourselves.
It gave us a minute to not be in the
battle ground of America and to be honest with you,
when we actually moved out there the day before the
elect the first election of Biden and Trump, so we
(20:39):
got out like we weren't even we was in Mexico
to day that election happened, when Biden won, and I
just didn't want to be a part of the back
and forth. It's always you know, it's always just back
and forth, and I'm really I'm tired of that conversation
because it becomes a every four year finger pointing versus
(21:04):
a collaborative attention to what I've been.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Saying because you you just echoing what well Martin, We
always on the same page.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So you know how I go, so long story short,
to make a long story short, I got into that.
I'll say. My shirt is develop Organized Process Engage. So
that's DOPE. That's an acronym for DOPE. That's my company.
We have to bring the language of neuroscience down to
a language that we can digest because right now it's
(21:34):
in the clouds. Shout out to your background. So so
right now that conversation is in the clouds and it
doesn't reach us from a to an intellectual perspective. And
I'm not talking about dumbing things down. I'm talking about
meeting people where they are. And so that's what it is.
And so we like I share these information and these
tools and things in a context of being able to
(21:56):
teach through acronyms and things that people can understand all
and it has to be because outside of that we
will be missing out on information that they're finding out. Now,
there's a lot of research at this point where we
find that regulation and continuous regulation helps what's called neuroplasticity.
(22:18):
We can change our lives and we can change the
lives of our offspring if we are able to do
enough work on our own nervous systems.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Well, someone asked earlier, what does regulation mean?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
As somebody who was not regulated and is now regulated,
I feel like I know the answer, But you are
the guests.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So take away.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Regulation is just being at a at a homeostasis, and
homeostasis is just even killed so to speak, like you're
not you're not extremes, Yeah, there are at So they
call it the window of tolerance. The window of tolerance
is like this, like this is any everything in between
my hands is what you can tolerate. If it's above this,
then it's arousal response. If it's below this, it is
(22:59):
a being a fight flight or a fight or a
flight or freeze response. So if you go below the
window of tolerance, you end up disassociating. You go above it,
it could be a verbal lashing out, it could be
literally physically doing something, and so a lot of time
we call it crashing out. Though at the end of
the day, you've gotten outside of your window of tolerance,
(23:19):
and your response to that is something that doesn't fit
the actual space right, and then that's crashing out. That's
ultimately what happens. And so if people were able to
open up their windowor tolerance through regulation, through constant regulation,
then they'll have a better resilience nervous system to be
able to deal with some of the stressors that are
a part of life. And what happens is when we
(23:41):
have too many stressors over and over again without being
able to get back to a baseline, which is where
regulation is. It's a baseline, and so if you can't
get back to the baseline, that becomes chronic stress and
then we start having these ailments like cancer, like diabetes,
like heart disease, and all the things that the top
five things that kill us literally are are byproducts of
(24:01):
us not being in a window of tolerance, you know
what I mean, so, or not being able to maintain
this window of tolerance because we got constant stresses, whether
it's poverty or whether like right now, the political landscape,
got people not really knowing exactly what's going on or
what's going to happen and that level of dysregulation. Just
being uncertain is you know, somebody says clear as kind.
(24:23):
Certain is kind. So if I give you clear instructions,
or I give you a clear expectation of what's going on,
your nervous system can be calm because it's predictable. We
know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That's all I be asking for, Martin, That's all I
be wanting. And then folks think I'm being pushy or
I'm being demanded, and it's like, no, I'm just I
know that these are the things that calm me down right,
that keep me regulated. And would you say that there's
also something to be said for like, there's a certain
(24:54):
amount of regulation that you can control yourself, but you're
also a part of an environment, and so the vironment
can affect your regulation abilities.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Absolutely. It's called emotional contagion. So and basically, someone else's
nervous system, disregulating nervous system can disregulate yours, right, And
so for three.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Years we're someone from disregulating nervous system was trying to
disregulate mine, and.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
It goes back and forth. And so if you can't
reach a level of baseline, then that's called alostatic low,
meaning it's happening over and over again and you never
get a chance to reach a baseline. So what happens
is in your nervous system, you create a new baseline
that's much higher and much more sensitized than the one
that you had before you start going through those stressful times,
(25:42):
the chronic stress, like three years is chronic stress.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, and now I'm on lexapro because I couldn't I
couldn't regulate. It was three years and then Palestine.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You take on things like wholeheartedly. So when you was
having your conversation about other people when they're saying like
I'm just gonna sit this one out, that's a regulatory
act and it's like one that your nervous system is like, look,
I can engage, right, and so you know how to
do this. You retreat at times. You know when to
go into a retreat and you've learned that over time,
Like you didn't always know that. You just going into
(26:23):
the next fight, into the next fight, into the next argument,
all that type of stuff. So you do have to
take time to retreat because that's when you get a
chance to rest and repair, because if you don't have
that rest and repair period. You just constantly putting too
much stress on your body and on your nervous system,
(26:44):
and that's where people develop all these chronic diseases. It's
coming from chronic stress and the inability to regulate.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
That question I was asking because I wanted to find
out where people were really coming from, Like are they
saying that they're sitting this one out as like an
act of defiance or is.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
It like what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And I got really good answers and really interesting answers
that I'm going to talk about later in the show.
But I want to also point out to y'all that
Martin is the one who put me onto the book,
and I.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Do mention you in my next book, by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Who put me onto the book Warrier of Light The
Worry of Light by Paolo Cuello, who also wrote of
course The Alchemist, And that has actually been a source
of regulation for me, that book, which is why you
you you gave me that book before you even were
doing this work, Like you put me onto that before
you even knew that this was your calling.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Right, and it's so much a calling, but that book.
But if we talk about the book with the warrior
the Light is kind of one of there's things in
there where you're like, oh, okay, this is the path, right,
and so you'll find more and more things along the way.
You just like the Alchemists, just that show you the
personal legend. Yeah, I listened to I at least have
(27:57):
to listen to both of them, or both of them
at least once a year, especially when I'm going through
difficult times, to just let me know like this is
par for the course, and this is what the warrior
of the Light is supposed to go through. Just you know,
hold your head and keep it moving and find ways
to make it.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Never accepts the unacceptable.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Okay, there you warrior off.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
That's why when people be like, why wouldn't why would
you so against Kamala Harris. I was never against Kamala Harris.
I was against her supporting the genocide because a warrior
of Light cannot accept unacceptable.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
So you're in Mexico. You were able to get a
lease at the resort. Was that just because of the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, because at the time that we were there at
the resort, it might have been ten people there, ten
maybe ten families like it was like twelve buildings and
not a lot of people. So for us, that was
big for Genesis because I didn't want him to grow
up socialized during this part of his brain development with
(29:10):
people with masks on their face all the time, and
so during that level, during that part of development, if
they're not reading facial expressions and not being able to
interpret what that is while their brains are developing, I
think they're going to be behind on that. And you
know that by the time he was born, I was
like all the way into this neuroscience and brain development things,
so that was as much a part of it too.
(29:32):
So he can be outside like he liked, and then
he wasn't fully socialized with masks only because we was
inside their resort. Don't get me wrong, Mexico had masks,
they had math Mandate two. However, when we were at
the resort, we were pretty good and we had lots
of space without being around too many people.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Now, did you stay there for the duration of the
three years?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Nah? I wish, because I wish My actual goal in
life is to go back and purchase at that resort.
It just you know, we stayed out, We overstayed our
financial welcome, and we had to go somewhere where it
was a little more feasible for us to be, which
also we just you know, we got an older son too,
(30:16):
who is there was not a lot of socialization for him,
and so a lot of that, And it was a
vacation resource, so a lot of people would come in vacation.
He would meet friends and then they would leave in
a week or two. So he had this up and down,
up and down situation. So we eventually moved into a
neighborhood where he met friends, start going to school down
there and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
And so, oh wow, did he pick up Spanish?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Na, I think it's really far. And then is also
a brain development thing, like if you don't learn another
language during the formative part of your brain, your capacity
to do so drops. It's not that you can't do it,
you just can't do it like a kid, you know
what I mean. And so it's way too far from
him being in there. So he went to a bilingual school.
They taught him in English sometimes, but you know a
(31:01):
lot of times it's still was. It was difficult for
him in the school setting as well from the language
barrier perspective, but he was able to socialize and that's
what he needed at the time. And a lot of
the kids during the pandemic suffered from that for a lot,
a lot of the teenagers. And you know, once we
got back outside, we never went to go make those
(31:22):
adjustments for these kids. We just felt like, oh, well,
we're back outside and now we're good. A lot of
people have not addressed what happened during the pandemic if
it was traumatic for them, and so you carry that
with you and you and when they say, the body
keeps the score and so eventually you'll start having some
type of ailments that that can point back to a
(31:46):
time where you need to go heal at that time
or what needed to be healed at that time.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
What was the.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
As a black person in Mexico, as a Black American person,
Like but if any were unique experiences that you feel
like you were having by nature of that.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Man, let me tell you something like Mexico had like
this revolutionary type situation at the time that I went.
When I got there, there were quite a bit of
Black Americans in Mexico, Like we had a community, a
black community, so I mean, and we created an actual one,
we incorporated it. Whatever you had to do to make
(32:28):
it official. But it's called Beta, it's black expats thriving abroad,
and we had we was on the board and all
kinds of stuff sop plying the Karma has a strong
black community down there, and uh, without I would I
would be there. I loved I got friends, like I
got friends and people have dispersed at this point, but yeah,
(32:51):
like it wasn't a bad experience being black down there.
We had black people that we could talk to, converse with,
become friends with. Commune. You know, I'm throwing barbecues down
there because it's on that resort. I was throwing barbecues
like weekly.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
How do you feel that?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Okay, now that I think that's dope, but I also
think there's something to be said for do you feel
like that kept you siloed from the actual culture and
the indigenous and like the people who are of Mexico.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Not me, not not not who I was dealing with,
either with the black Americans, because you're in Mexico, You're
not in America, you know what I mean? So, like
you don't want to become a colonizer, and it's you
know what I mean, Like you don't want to become
a colonizer in that, but it's such a tourist place
(33:46):
and it's such a space in that's transient that you
can really still work with a lot of the Mexican
culture out there, Like I wouldn't be able to have
done as much of the neuroscience and sports things and
(34:06):
know as much as I know if I didn't partner
with It's a guy down there by the name of
Coach Sada. He's in his seventies and doesn't speak a
liquor English, and at the time I didn't speak a
liqu of Spanish. But you know, we had some translators.
We had a good idea good thing, and I got
the go ahead to pretty much run my program in
a court that no black American had ran anything like
(34:30):
that there, and so being able to do that allowed
me to get a lot of diversity because a lot
of people were there. Mexico didn't close their borders like
a lot of other countries, so a lot of people
retreated to Mexico. So I coached kids from Ukraine, I
coached kids from the UK, Africa, Canada. People were from everywhere,
(34:52):
and I was able to coach them from all cultures
and I mean, my partners was all Mexican. Like my
first camp, I didn't have a black coach there. And
then when we started doing other uh other, like more
we expounded on the camps and we started including a
lot of the black ex pats and whatnot. But it
(35:12):
was very diverse, and it gave me all the confidence
that I needed to know that this works without us
really even knowing the same language, Like we got brains
and so knowing that kids that don't even really speak
your language can regulate and you could teach them how
to regulate without really knowing their language was a game
changer for me. So yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Sounds though like I mean you said this earlier.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
But by being there, you got to discover other things
that you wouldn't have been able to necessarily discover had
you stayed in the States.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Am I making.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Without a doubt, Like just the experience and the exposure
of a different culture, different language, different way I have
to go in too, having to go about things because
I mean, you're not in America again, the you you
have to live by the laws of the land, so
to speak, and all the laws of the land aren't written.
(36:13):
There's some things that are just literally you better know
how to read. Yes, Yeah, and you know I'm from
those spaces in America where.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I was about to say, you're from Houston, you you know,
like you're not from a little town.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
You from where you better know how to read the
room where you could die.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
And I never all the work that I've always done
has always been in the inner city, Like even if
I don't stay there no more, Like I'm always going
back all my programs. I could go do what I
do with a suburban group of kids, but I don't,
and I always end up right back in those spaces
where even if I'm dropping a kid off from practice,
I need to pay attention to where we're at, right,
(36:52):
you know what I'm saying. So that's in you need.
You definitely need to do that out the country. And yeah,
and then you need That's why we put together like
the networking thing that we had down there, because you
really do still need community if you go somewhere else,
Like you can't just be out there by yourself looking
like cake, you know what I'm saying, Like these people
(37:15):
really don't. Everybody isn't well to do. And so when
you in these places and just going about your business
like a regular American. Sometimes that makes people feel how
I make it. It's like riding on rims and with
your chain in the wrong hood, you know what I mean,
Like you just don't do that. Like it's certain things
that you just don't do because it's one that could
be disrespectful too. It could just really be a way where, yeah,
(37:40):
it doesn't make sense to me, but you could do it,
and you could draw things to you, to yourself that
you know. I always say, you can step in some
shit you can't get off your shoe.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You can step in some that you can't get off
your shoe. We're gonna take some questions from the people.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Okay now, because this is a class I make everybody
address our guests with mister or ms or whatever.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Their preferred pronouns.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I need said missus simms. I mean it is one
of our greats. Shout out to Saint Louis. What has
been your experience with encouraging this for black and brown
men and what has been the response? And I'm sure
this is referring to the neuroscience.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, so when we first got down there, we started
doing this with a flag football team, All Black Flag
football team put one together, and I just feel like
sports is one of those things where it can transcend
belief systems and things of that net. Like people. You know,
people who might be on two sides of the of
a topic both love the Eagles. They will hug each
(38:52):
other when the Eagles win the Super Bowl. You know,
they'll put their differences aside and they have this common ground.
And so so I do that through sports. We did
that with the Black Xpact Group football team, and that's
where we started to develop a relationships. So like there's
this engagement sequence. So the engagement sequence is regulate, relate,
(39:17):
reason right, And you must regulate first, and then you
have to find some type of relatable either topic relatable,
something relatable before you could really get to the reasoning
part of the brain. Because we just, okay, humans have
always been humans' greatest predator, So we look at people
(39:37):
sideways and we don't really you know, we gotta trust
you first, and so if we disregulated, we automatically don't
trust you because we in survival mode basically. And so
if you could regulate and then relate to a person,
then you could get to the reason and faculties of
their brain because you open it up. And so yeah,
like we did that with sports and then just having
(39:58):
a community of black men just wanted to do things.
They still doing taco too, They taco Thursday. We meet
up every every week a group of black men and
they are doing it. And my god, I got some
I got some guys down there that really own it.
Like I didn't even want to leave. But yeah, they
know about this I've done. As a matter of fact,
before I started going public with it, I did a
(40:21):
the first time I started doing dope as the acronym,
I did it for them. I wanted to know if
I know all this neuroscience, and I taught it to
somebody who knew nothing wouldn't land, and it did. And
so after that I've been out here with.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
It, out here with it. Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Next question, Kashan, another one of our Amanda Lander great ones.
As a personal question, what was and or is your
family of origins response to your relocation in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
You know, they thought I was crazy. I am in
a way, but you know, I think my wife is
crazy than me, so you know, I was. I just
obliged what she was going going on. In place. You know,
you gotta you gotta cater to her. She just had
my baby during the pandemic. She had it at the house,
you know what I mean. Like there was a lot
of a lot going on with that, so you know,
(41:13):
she needs some peace. And I just ran a whole
basketball team and she ain't even really put up a fight,
you know what I'm saying. She was bringing the baby
to the games and stuff like that. So I'm like, yeah,
we could go. But my family, yeah, they thought I
was crazy, but in the beginning, but they visited me
down there. They loved their experience, you understand what I'm saying. Like,
so my nephews was down there. I had quite a
few friends that visited me down there. So like just
(41:34):
being able to be a.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Guy trying to visit you down there.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
The same weekend that I was moving back, I was like,
she was like, I'm gonna be down and I'm like
packing everything up right now, you know what. I'm like,
I'm gonna try to get you, but right yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So I'm glad though that they got on board. They
eventually got on board, all right. Next question, missus Sims,
thank you for sharing today. Was it difficult to obtain
a visa to say for three years.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
So the visa process is so you got a six
month tourist visa. Regardless a lot of people that go
down there for that time they do what depending on
if Mexico, depending on where they are with it. Sometimes
they during some parts of the pandemic, they got real
strict on this and they stopped giving like six month
visas because people were just abusing them and just living there.
(42:30):
So the whole immigration situation was becoming a problem, especially
in the tourist areas. So you could do the six
month visa. Then the temporary visa requires a certain amount
of money in your account for twelve months. Eleven months
won't work, I promise you, Like, it's not gonna work.
So you have to show documentation of having a certain
(42:51):
amount of either income or a certain an account that
never went below a certain amount. So that has I
think they've up that, but it's somewhere around, Like I
can't tell you the number because I don't really know
no more. And so they'll give you a temporary visa
for one year if you reach a certain reach a
(43:11):
certain criteria. If you reach another criteria, you could just
get permanent residency, like if you just have a certain
amount of money. I ain't saying we wasn't there. I
wasn't doing neuroscience at that one. We was trying to
make it happen. But yeah, so like the visa process,
you can get a temporary one for one year, you
can renew that for three years, and after that renewal,
you get a permanent residency. So that would be like
(43:33):
the temporary trying to see if you want to do
that or not, or you can have the other criteria
that allow for you to go in and straight get
a permanent residency for life as long as you don't
lose it. And you don't want to lose any of
those things because you need a translator or somebody that
knows that process, because yeah, it's better to pay somebody
(43:55):
to just help you through that process. I knew one
or two people that could do it themselves, but I
wouldn't recommend it. I would recommend just finding somebody that
knows what they're doing, understands the process. Yeah, because you
don't want to end up in Mexican jail and they
will deport you too. It'll happen. You could be the.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I've seen all right, last questions, missus Sims, how have
both your children adjusted with living in with living in
Mexico for three years?
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Well, yeah, because it was three years.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, my son, that's all he knows. Like so when
he knows the difference between Atlanta and Mexico distinctively, so
the three year old, but he's four now, so he
knows he's like in Mexico, he did this and here,
you know, like you know, he knows those things distinctly,
so he didn't he had to adjust moving back to Atlanta.
(44:48):
My oldest son, he was his was probably more difficult
than when we had to navigate a little bit better
because his lockdown happened right at the end of his
eighth grade year and he never really experienced high school
in America, so a lot of his friends were doing
things that he didn't get a chance to do he
(45:08):
was in Mexico. He met some friends in Mexico. I
think he got some lifelong friends from Mexico, but he
needed more. It's just kind of difficult, and I think
a lot of times, like the people with kids probably
moved back quicker than people who were just couples or
(45:28):
something like that, because it's just not as many black
kids there, and you're going to have to assimilate yourself
into their culture. And it's not always accommodating, nor can
it be, because they just don't know enough. And so
you can, you know what I mean, Like, it's just.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Not it's foreign.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
And the thing about humans is anything that we don't understand,
most often we other and make it into something either
dangerous or less than.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
And that's a neuroscience thing.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
The last well, this was fabulous.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
We thought we were going to Mexico and we went
to the frontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Y'all all right? We was all up in the Sarahbella.
We was in the business of the brain.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Where can people learn more about the work that you do.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
And get into the neuroscience of it all?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
So you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok all
it at the dopest coach is t H E d
O P E S T coach co O A C H.
You can follow me at all of those. I promise
you I'm gonna start making content on this. I just
been showing up with my face and doing what I'm
doing here with Amanda or doing you know, speaking engagements
(47:02):
which have been going great, by the way, and so, uh,
that's what I've been doing, but I'll create.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
More because you have the coach skills yea.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, but then you're applying it in this space that's necessary.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah. So And a lot of this is from the
fact that I've coached in AAU and I saw so
much toxicity, like from coaches who meant well right like
so like you can have they get a lot of
like AU is such a toxic environment. And then I'm like,
but they don't have any training, like nobody and they're
(47:38):
here right like so we always talk about deabie dads
and all kinds of stuff like that, but these coaches
literally are at these practices, at these games. They're taking
kids to it. Yeah, but they could be committed and
still dangerous to kids because they don't have any uh training,
They don't have any knowledge of that. They just got intention.
And we know the difference between intention and right. And
(48:00):
so I was also the same, right, I also was
the same Like I wasn't. I wasn't. I don't feel
like I was toxic, but I did have some toxic
things before I talked to my therapist and I talked
to and you know what I'm saying that I got
into talking to doctor Perry and once I started realizing,
you know, this can be easier, you know what I mean,
(48:20):
Like this can it don't have to be so difficult? Yeah, Well,
just being able to regulate or recognize that someone needs
to regulate and no I don't need to engage them
right now, or just having a uh yeah, I'm saying
so knowing saying so knowing that you can help people
regulate and then you could become a regulating force as well.
(48:44):
And so I think that's just one of those things
where because the power differential, and that means the person that,
like right now, Manda on your show, you have the
power differential, So your nervous system is going to be
more influential to everybody and this thing that everybody else is.
So you must stay regulated as much as you can
(49:05):
so other people don't get disregulated right like this, And
it's it's the responsibility of the leader.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It's a give and take.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
I understand. I'm the same and I'm passionate too.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Sometimes they being here trying to disregulate me, they and
then they achieve it.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Sometimes a disregulated adult cannot regulate a disregulated child. A
disregulated person cannot regulate disregulated person.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
A disregulated person cannot regulate. Well, that to me is
when it's like, Okay, I need to take a breath.
Like sometimes I'll be like I need to take a
breath and step away and I'm coming back, you know.
And that's the thing I used to tell my ex,
like it's fine if you need to step away, but
you need to come back, you know, if you just
exit and then when you come back you act like,
ain't nothing happened, We have not achieved anything.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
So that was me too. I did that too, and
I recognized that, you know, I couldn't make that loop,
you know what I mean, because this regulation actually is
one of the most uncomfortable things. And so what people
do is they either they find ways to regulate themselves.
They check out, disassociate, or they self gym or they
(50:17):
self medicate, right, and so like the gym could be
a self medication. But the gym is good, it's a
very regulating thing, but you still also need skills and tools,
emotional skills and tools after you leave the gym. So
the gym is not the end all be all, you know.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
It gets you to baseline it gets you.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Back to baseline, but then you need those skills to
be able to engage again, right even if and it
takes time, I mean it really does, but it takes
understanding and knowledge, and so we didn't get that in school,
you feel me. So that's what I'm saying. Like that,
That's what I'm saying. So Amanda, can you regulate as man? Know,
we gotta understand, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Like that?
Speaker 3 (50:56):
That is the comment I promise you, Like I am
so on that. That's what That's what I really want
to be. Like the intro to my podcast, speaking to podcasts,
I'm doing the podcast. Can you be a guest on
my podcast? Of course? Right? Okay, cool? So the podcast
is called Your Brain on Dope. Yeah, and then we
(51:19):
can have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
You know, my my podcast called Small Doses, so we
in the same round.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
So when I was when I was talking to you
about that, I never went so we could talk about
that on a podcast, I promise you, because that is
that is a neuroscience concept that you don't even know.
And it is absolutely it's absolutely a concept absolutely called
dosing and spacing.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
All Right, we got a lot to talk about y'all.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
You gotta get back to you. You gotta get back
to your show.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Give it, I know, because we'll sit here and do
a whole small Doses episode and I'm like, no, you
gotta come on small Doses and do a small doses episode.
But shout out to Martin Simms, y'all for joining us
for another audition of Black around the world. And we
went to all sorts of spaces and places and we
still made it back to Mexico and uh, this is
(52:09):
really but this is really valid information. The goal of
this the goal of this segment though, is at the
end of the day, just encourage folks to understand that
there's other places. The world is yours, and there's this
very effort.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
There's an effort by the United I'm mad. It's a
Hennessy bottle. It's that's when Nads was doing his Hennessy run.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
That's exactly what it was, anivers I never got rid
of about it. I haven't drained Henessy since then, and
that was my last birthday. But I kept the bottle.
So the world is yours.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
There you go, the world is yours.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
I think though, Uh, there's a really concerted effort to
scare Americans into staying in America, and particularly Americans who
are of black and brown descent, and then they end
up keeping us here and then utilizing us as a
part of the prison industrial crisis as a part of
a label labor for us that they're not going to support, etcetera, etcetera. So,
(53:02):
you know, I just always want to encourage people. Even
though when I've told people about getting passports, they said
I was an elitist, petty bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
I was not.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
I was saying that because there's a whole world here
that they don't want you to be a part of,
even though they want to take parts of you and
sell it to the world.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Tell them get out the inner city limits.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
There you got it. There you go.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Thank you so much for the We will be in
touch and tell Phoenix I said, Hi, I.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Will do that. Appreciate you for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
No dat
Small dud help from this small.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Small human areas smalls.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to another episode of Small Doses podcast. So I
know that you probably looked at this title and we're like,
what the hell is this episode about?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
What's she? What's she talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And let me give you some backstory. So on my
show of Views for Amandoland, which you can check out
every Wednesday ten am Eastern on youtubemand of Seales TV,
we do a segment ever so often called Black Around
the World. This is a segment where I interview Black
Americans who have immigrated to other countries. This is to
expose people to geography, to expanding their understanding of like
(00:52):
what it is like to be black American in other
places of the world, and also to just clue people
into the processes of what it takes to do that
and expand their reductive, myopic mindset that the United States
is the only place to live and that it's the
best place to live, because that's just simply not the truth.
So we had Martin Simms on the show, and Martin
is a brother that I met when I was helping
(01:14):
with the flood relief for Hurricane Harvey.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
In Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I met him on the internets and he was working
and I was helping, and that was that. But he
then met this woman, Phoenix, and they ended up forming
a beautiful relationship that blossomed into a romantic relationship, and
then they became a couple, and then they got married.
I think they got married, and then they went to
Mexico to wait out the pandemic, and they had their
(01:38):
son there. And that was the impetus of the conversation.
I had no idea that he was going to come
on here and blow our minds, y'all. Martin came up
on Views from Mandolin and blew all of our minds.
And he blew all of our minds because he started
talking about discovering neuroscience while he was out there, and
(01:58):
the myriad ways that it changed his life and also
changed his relationship for the better. Now, when we talk
about neuroscience, I mean we've talked about psychology, we talk
about psychiatry, we talk about therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
We also talk about neurodivergence. So it's of course dealing
with the mind.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
However, I think for so many of us, we just
don't consider the real applicable ways of shifting your daily
life and how you respond to things without making it
like a really deep connection to trauma, which oftentimes it is,
but there's also a certain level of just doing the math,
connecting the dots and shifting the pathways. And so Martin
(02:41):
got involved and started showing us how that applied not
only into himself but in his relationship and how it
applies to his career as a coach.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And I wanted to share.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
This conversation with you all because I can tell you
that for those of us who came to this episode
of Views form amandaland expecting to just talk about being
black and Mexicans, so we did not expect to be
so enriched.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
By this combo, and enriched we were.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And one thing I'm gonna do, y'all is I'm gonna
share enrichment. Okay, if I'm not sharing enrichment, then what's
the point?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And the beauty of having.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Views for Mandolin and Small Doses is that there are
different spaces that call for different things, but ever so
often there is an intersection that ven diagram b ven diagramming,
And when that happens, I'm gonna bring those interviews right
here to you at Small Doses podcast, So please check
out this episode Side Effects of Neroda Stage Relationships as
(03:42):
it surpass you through.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Speaking of Sherpas, if you have.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Not seen the film Mountain Queen The Summits of Lachma Sherpa,
It's a twenty twenty three documentary on Netflix about this
woman from Nepal, Lachma Sherpa, who summited Everest ten times.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'm telling you watch the film.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It will move you to tears, to joy, to anger,
It's all the things, and it really most importantly moves
you to being inspired. And what we need in this
time more than most is inspiration because it can be
very trying and very demoralizing existing in this present state
here in the United States. But nonetheless, I really want
(04:23):
you to check it out because I felt like it
was incredibly.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Helpful to my own neuroscience moology. So let's do this.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
My ad.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Is not to get us together.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Side Effects of Neuroscience Saces Relationships here on Small this
podcast a featured interview from views from Amandoland Back around
the World, Knocking back around the World, Back around the World,
(04:58):
back around.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The World, back around them worlds are we into national
as for he.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Back what y'all, let's bring to.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
The stage Martin Alie Sims to join us.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Us to join us from Black around the World, our
segment where we talk about black folks, Black American folks
specifically living in other places around the world or who
have lived for extended times and other places around the
broad Mark.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
How you doing great? I'm great, I'm great. How you
doing I'm.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Chilling, I'm chilling, I'm chilling. How's every how's the same?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Think great? You know, I took the kids to school
though we weren't gonna be able to do this with
him here.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
He he'd be on the mike.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
He don't have he don't have no etiquette whatsoever. Somebody
just got to have him in order for me to
do these types of things for real.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
They just have to possess him.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Really, he's a daddy's boy, so he want to be
wherever I'm at. So when I have to do these
types of things, he just don't care about the audience.
He's he wants me.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So he's at the NBA press conference.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yep, he's Yeah, Steph Curry's daughter at the press conference. Absolutely,
that's him.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love that we both knew exactly who I was
referring to righty. Yes, I'm afraid to Rightley, Okay, Martin.
So this segment Black around the World is all about
expanding our understanding of what it is to live in
other places, also geography, because I feel like, y'all, why
am I sweating so much today? Am I going through
(06:40):
Manibas today? Like just today? Because I am sweating, like
I am really.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Sorry, my glasses a slipping off my face mark and
I'm just I'm like struggling. Okay. People will say Mexico
but they not realize that Mexico is.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
A whole country with thirty three states.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
With states I don't I didn't even know they.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, so I lived in the state of kanu.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Quintana Rue and that is in the Yukatan Peninsula. Correct.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Okay, So y'all, I'm gonna show you this on a
map so that you can understand what we're talking about,
because this is the thing. When people think Mexico, they
may just be thinking of Mexico City. They may be
thinking of like Tijuana, Sinaloa.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know all, I'm naming places in Narcos. But the
if we're being is so you lived over here, correct?
Where this is in Tulum.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Now I lived in Plio del Karmen.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You lived in Plio del Carmen.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Okay, And if we are even closer, let me actually
remove this media asset so that we can really see
the whole jazz it all. So then you cut down
peninsula as we see at the top right is by
the Carmen, which is next to a place that a
lot of people.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Have heard of, Cancun.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, didn't make a difference living close to a tourism place,
like would you do you feel like that affected like
the living conditions of where you were.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely because of language barriers. The further you get outside
of tourist areas, the less English they speak, so it
would be a lot harder or you would have to
learn their language. Not my son, he's four, he's fully bilingual.
He knows both languages. Like, yeah, I can't even talk
to in Spanish with him, he's like the translate however,
(08:43):
and I'll show you a video, I'll send it to you.
But he's like awesome with Spanish. And then we move
back to the States. He don't want to speak it
with people who don't speak it, so and I can't
make him speak Spanish like someone you can speak Spanish
and he.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Like, no, no, So talk us through it. What made
you decide I'm going to exit the States and we're
going to go to Mexico And what was the process
in determining where you ended up going.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well, we had been there the year before for my
wife's birthday, so we went down there. We were just
tourists on the resort, so to speak. And then so
that was twenty nineteen. The following year we had Genesis,
my son, but we had Genesis two weeks into.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Lockdowns, so lockdown for the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
For the pandemic lockdowns, and so what I was doing
prior to the pandemic I could no longer do, which
is basically personal training and coaching basketball. I did coach
a little bit of basketball after the pandemic started, and.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Because you were in Houston, Houston and Texas acted like
there was no pandemic exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
However, we lived in an apartment that was very like inward,
and I could tell immediately with my son. When I
say inward, I mean like we're on the third floor
and all of the all of the doors are inside,
so like we had to go through a lot of
indoors to get outdoors, and so it just wasn't and
my son loved to be outside, so we was always
(10:21):
on the balcony. And then we went to visit Mexico
for a couple of weeks after I did an AAU season,
so I coached AAU. I had a huge AAU season.
I don't know why I did it, but I did.
And I had a new born, I had just recently
had acl surgery, and I decided no, no Friday, and
(10:43):
we started our practices on that Monday. However, during the pandemic,
the lockdowns were very devastating to the kids that I
was already coaching. So I was like, I can get
them a couple of practices, a couple of games. And
that's when I first started doing the neuroscience stuff too
with them. So at the end of that season, Phoenix
was like, oh, man, no, we're about to She needed
(11:04):
a break. She been with the baby. I've been in practice,
I've been in games, we've been traveling. She's like, we're
going to Mexico. We're going to chip So we get
to Mexico and.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And you went back to where you went before because
you already knew it was good.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, and we found it. I mean, the pandemic also
had a lot of deals. So where we went was
astronomically cheap, right like, it was like we were on
a resort that was so beautiful that I was like, man,
I think I could live here. And I think she
was already thinking it. Period. She had already lived outside
(11:39):
the country. She lived in Asia, Indonesia, She's already lived
outside the country. So when I was like, okay, well
we'll try, and I think, by the grace of God,
the apartment Complax, who I was also training for, they
no longer had any They had a big budget and
they couldn't do it for like events because everything was
(12:00):
locked down. So they was like, can you do us
some virtual fitness things? And they paid. They gave us
a check that covered the whole vacation. So we went
on vacation and we left with a lease and at
the same resort that we were already saying it and
I wouldn't have it was only like a four month least,
like we're trying to see how it go. We ended
(12:21):
up out there for three years, like weve and literally
the only reason, pretty much the only reason that came
back is just because the things that I was doing
with the neuroscience stuff, like.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Started what is the neuroscience stuff?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Because the people in the contents are like, skirt, skirt,
what is.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
The neuroscience stuff?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Because you definitely just said that and keep it, kept
it moving.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So in twenty nineteen, I started going to therapy when
she was pregnant with the baby because I told my
acl the same weekend I found out she was pregnant
with the baby. So I'm like, it's a lot going
on here mentally physically, and we're preparing for a baby.
So we started in therapy and my therapist was trying
to tell me about disassociation and I had no idea
(13:05):
what disassociation was. I considered it nonchalant, right, like this
is just me not caring about what's going on. And
so she like trying to break down disassociation to me,
and I'm not really liking what she's saying. So what
she's saying because it's about me, Like I'm just I'm
the one with the disassociation.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Oh, you didn't like what she was saying because it
was accurate, But.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You know, nah, because if you're in a therapy session
sometimes it's like you're getting jumped, you feel me like
in a couple of therapies, like both of them against me, like,
so it.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Was was it accurate? Was accurate?
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Absolutely? But so yes, it was absolutely accurate. I did
not know what disassociation was, and so when I found
out this is an actual response trauma, song stress response,
and it causes you to basically leave the moment mentally
(14:04):
or go within yourself, within the safety of yourself. It's
pretty primal reaction because when you can't run or like
when they say fight or flight, if you cannot run
or flee or fight, the next thing is to just
you know you have impending danger and your body goes
into a shutdown phase where like your heart rate starts dropping,
(14:26):
you start checking out, and it's because if something is
immediate and it's gonna happen, you don't want to bleed out,
so your heart rate drops and it just prepares for danger.
And of course, like disassociation evolved to more social things,
so we can disassociate when we feel like we're in
a relationship or some type of power differential. We could
(14:49):
disassociate with a boss, we could disassociate with a spouse,
we could disassociate.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
When I was on to realize to do that it's.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And it's automatic, and that's this is the issue.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Literally, it was just like Jude h m hm.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I checked out. I was in this automatic that
was the issue that I was having. I was like,
why am I in trouble for doing something that automatically happens?
That's what I feel like, was Phoenix, like.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You keep checking out and You're like, but I'm here.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
There were there were moments where she needed me to
be present and I would check out, like there was
and that was the issue. She's like, I really need
you here and I'm like that's too much. And I'm
not saying that consciously. Right, this is a Without this
therapy session, I don't know you know what I mean.
And so my therapist couldn't explain it to me as
well as and so she got She started telling me
(15:44):
about this book doctor Bruce Perry. He wrote a book
with Oprah What Happened to You? But she wasn't telling
me about that book. She was telling me about his
previous book, uh, The Boy that Was Raised as a Dog.
And when I started to understand this is yeah, I know, right,
So the hell of a title, y'all? I got a
whole story for how I found out about that Tyler.
It was terrible. But anyway, no seriously, because okay, I
(16:07):
go into it. I know we're talking about black around
the world. But at this point, so I come from
training a client and my therapist and Phoenix on the
phone together without me, right, like, they was not supposed
to have that conversation. And so I get in the
house and they're like, oh, we were just talking about you. Okay.
That don't make me feel better either, Like what are
(16:28):
y'all saying? And she was like, no, tars reading this
book and the book is about disassociation and this doctor
really understands it and he can explain it to you
this I said, okay, well, what's the name of the book?
And they like the boy that was raised as a dog?
Like what's she trying to say? What she talks? She
talking my mama up? Like what is so?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Wait, give me the ethnicity of the doctor.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
He's white. He's absolutely white.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, so no, the one that the I mean, sorry,
the therapists that.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Y'all are going to.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, she's white too, and added to it, absolutely it's
the only thing that makes this all the way better.
These are two of the best white people I have
ever met in my life. Like, I mean, they have
an understanding of whiteness, and they really understand how that
(17:22):
affects blackness, and they talk about it from a scientific perspective.
They understand what causes trauma, because this whole thing is
about trauma. And so doctor Perry he worked with like
the kids who got shot up in Columbine or the
kids who survived that the Waco of bombings, he worked
with the most traumatized kids. Right now, he's doing work
(17:45):
in Turkey and the Palestinians and all of those things.
So he works at deep levels of trauma. And so
I started watching a YouTube video literally before they got
off the phone on him, and I was like, nah,
he really get it, Like he at least understands this part.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I want to give you props real quick, because what
you could have done in that moment is disassociated And
what you could have done in that moment is been
like man if y'all and walked right back out the house.
And instead you went against your instinct and you actually
(18:22):
leaned in and you said let me, which is what
I keep trying to tell folks to do in general. Like,
if your instinct is to run, do the opposite, to
actually at least prove to yourself if you're bugging or not,
and look at what you ended up doing, You ended
up awakening.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
I do it. This is what I do now, Like
I literally go everywhere talking to people about their brain
how disassociation can affect. It's deeper into disassociation because that's
not the only response. People have arousal responses. They do
have dissociative responses, and oftentimes they don't know where their
responses are coming from. And when you get down to
the depths of trying, it's not just your trauma is
(19:02):
transgenerational trauma, So you may have some responses that resemble
your parents or your grandparents or things that they have
gone through that might not show up in your life.
Like where would this come from? My son act as
a bit of a temper that he's never seen me exhibit,
Like I don't have that temper no more, right, but
(19:23):
he's still I'm like I see him right, Like, I'm like, so,
but this is the cool thing because I got tools
now that I didn't have at the time that I
can help him move through those disregulated moments and you know,
this regulation is a is part of our vocabulary regulation,
and this regulation being at a homeostasis where you can
(19:43):
actually have a conversation where you have your prefrontal cortex
engaged in the conversation because a lot of people shut
down or they're responding out of more traumatic responses or
stress responses than there are in an actual intellectual away.
So doctor Perry talks about it from this perspective. He said,
(20:03):
you want to have a conversation cortex to cortex, you
know what I mean, and.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Gif you core text to core text. I see how
we are.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We're still talking about Mexico for the record job because
we need because all of this is context to context.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Absolutely absolutely so. I mean because Mexico helped us regulate ourselves.
It gave us a minute to not be in the
battle ground of America and to be honest with you,
when we actually moved out there the day before the
elect the first election of Biden and Trump, so we
(20:39):
got out like we weren't even we was in Mexico
to day that election happened, when Biden won, and I
just didn't want to be a part of the back
and forth. It's always you know, it's always just back
and forth, and I'm really I'm tired of that conversation
because it becomes a every four year finger pointing versus
(21:04):
a collaborative attention to what I've been.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Saying because you you just echoing what well Martin, We
always on the same page.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
So you know how I go, so long story short,
to make a long story short, I got into that.
I'll say. My shirt is develop Organized Process Engage. So
that's DOPE. That's an acronym for DOPE. That's my company.
We have to bring the language of neuroscience down to
a language that we can digest because right now it's
(21:34):
in the clouds. Shout out to your background. So so
right now that conversation is in the clouds and it
doesn't reach us from a to an intellectual perspective. And
I'm not talking about dumbing things down. I'm talking about
meeting people where they are. And so that's what it is.
And so we like I share these information and these
tools and things in a context of being able to
(21:56):
teach through acronyms and things that people can understand all
and it has to be because outside of that we
will be missing out on information that they're finding out. Now,
there's a lot of research at this point where we
find that regulation and continuous regulation helps what's called neuroplasticity.
(22:18):
We can change our lives and we can change the
lives of our offspring if we are able to do
enough work on our own nervous systems.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Well, someone asked earlier, what does regulation mean?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
As somebody who was not regulated and is now regulated,
I feel like I know the answer, But you are
the guests.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So take away.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Regulation is just being at a at a homeostasis, and
homeostasis is just even killed so to speak, like you're
not you're not extremes, Yeah, there are at So they
call it the window of tolerance. The window of tolerance
is like this, like this is any everything in between
my hands is what you can tolerate. If it's above this,
then it's arousal response. If it's below this, it is
(22:59):
a being a fight flight or a fight or a
flight or freeze response. So if you go below the
window of tolerance, you end up disassociating. You go above it,
it could be a verbal lashing out, it could be
literally physically doing something, and so a lot of time
we call it crashing out. Though at the end of
the day, you've gotten outside of your window of tolerance,
(23:19):
and your response to that is something that doesn't fit
the actual space right, and then that's crashing out. That's
ultimately what happens. And so if people were able to
open up their windowor tolerance through regulation, through constant regulation,
then they'll have a better resilience nervous system to be
able to deal with some of the stressors that are
a part of life. And what happens is when we
(23:41):
have too many stressors over and over again without being
able to get back to a baseline, which is where
regulation is. It's a baseline, and so if you can't
get back to the baseline, that becomes chronic stress and
then we start having these ailments like cancer, like diabetes,
like heart disease, and all the things that the top
five things that kill us literally are are byproducts of
(24:01):
us not being in a window of tolerance, you know
what I mean, so, or not being able to maintain
this window of tolerance because we got constant stresses, whether
it's poverty or whether like right now, the political landscape,
got people not really knowing exactly what's going on or
what's going to happen and that level of dysregulation. Just
being uncertain is you know, somebody says clear as kind.
(24:23):
Certain is kind. So if I give you clear instructions,
or I give you a clear expectation of what's going on,
your nervous system can be calm because it's predictable. We
know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
That's all I be asking for, Martin, That's all I
be wanting. And then folks think I'm being pushy or
I'm being demanded, and it's like, no, I'm just I
know that these are the things that calm me down right,
that keep me regulated. And would you say that there's
also something to be said for like, there's a certain
(24:54):
amount of regulation that you can control yourself, but you're
also a part of an environment, and so the vironment
can affect your regulation abilities.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Absolutely. It's called emotional contagion. So and basically, someone else's
nervous system, disregulating nervous system can disregulate yours, right, And
so for three.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Years we're someone from disregulating nervous system was trying to
disregulate mine, and.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
It goes back and forth. And so if you can't
reach a level of baseline, then that's called alostatic low,
meaning it's happening over and over again and you never
get a chance to reach a baseline. So what happens
is in your nervous system, you create a new baseline
that's much higher and much more sensitized than the one
that you had before you start going through those stressful times,
(25:42):
the chronic stress, like three years is chronic stress.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, and now I'm on lexapro because I couldn't I
couldn't regulate. It was three years and then Palestine.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You take on things like wholeheartedly. So when you was
having your conversation about other people when they're saying like
I'm just gonna sit this one out, that's a regulatory
act and it's like one that your nervous system is like, look,
I can engage, right, and so you know how to
do this. You retreat at times. You know when to
go into a retreat and you've learned that over time,
Like you didn't always know that. You just going into
(26:23):
the next fight, into the next fight, into the next argument,
all that type of stuff. So you do have to
take time to retreat because that's when you get a
chance to rest and repair, because if you don't have
that rest and repair period. You just constantly putting too
much stress on your body and on your nervous system,
(26:44):
and that's where people develop all these chronic diseases. It's
coming from chronic stress and the inability to regulate.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
That question I was asking because I wanted to find
out where people were really coming from, Like are they
saying that they're sitting this one out as like an
act of defiance or is.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
It like what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And I got really good answers and really interesting answers
that I'm going to talk about later in the show.
But I want to also point out to y'all that
Martin is the one who put me onto the book,
and I.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Do mention you in my next book, by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Who put me onto the book Warrier of Light The
Worry of Light by Paolo Cuello, who also wrote of
course The Alchemist, And that has actually been a source
of regulation for me, that book, which is why you
you you gave me that book before you even were
doing this work, Like you put me onto that before
you even knew that this was your calling.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Right, and it's so much a calling, but that book.
But if we talk about the book with the warrior
the Light is kind of one of there's things in
there where you're like, oh, okay, this is the path, right,
and so you'll find more and more things along the way.
You just like the Alchemists, just that show you the
personal legend. Yeah, I listened to I at least have
(27:57):
to listen to both of them, or both of them
at least once a year, especially when I'm going through
difficult times, to just let me know like this is
par for the course, and this is what the warrior
of the Light is supposed to go through. Just you know,
hold your head and keep it moving and find ways
to make it.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Never accepts the unacceptable.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Okay, there you warrior off.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
That's why when people be like, why wouldn't why would
you so against Kamala Harris. I was never against Kamala Harris.
I was against her supporting the genocide because a warrior
of Light cannot accept unacceptable.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
So you're in Mexico. You were able to get a
lease at the resort. Was that just because of the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, because at the time that we were there at
the resort, it might have been ten people there, ten
maybe ten families like it was like twelve buildings and
not a lot of people. So for us, that was
big for Genesis because I didn't want him to grow
up socialized during this part of his brain development with
(29:10):
people with masks on their face all the time, and
so during that level, during that part of development, if
they're not reading facial expressions and not being able to
interpret what that is while their brains are developing, I
think they're going to be behind on that. And you
know that by the time he was born, I was
like all the way into this neuroscience and brain development things,
so that was as much a part of it too.
(29:32):
So he can be outside like he liked, and then
he wasn't fully socialized with masks only because we was
inside their resort. Don't get me wrong, Mexico had masks,
they had math Mandate two. However, when we were at
the resort, we were pretty good and we had lots
of space without being around too many people.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Now, did you stay there for the duration of the
three years?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Nah? I wish, because I wish My actual goal in
life is to go back and purchase at that resort.
It just you know, we stayed out, We overstayed our
financial welcome, and we had to go somewhere where it
was a little more feasible for us to be, which
also we just you know, we got an older son too,
(30:16):
who is there was not a lot of socialization for him,
and so a lot of that, And it was a
vacation resource, so a lot of people would come in vacation.
He would meet friends and then they would leave in
a week or two. So he had this up and down,
up and down situation. So we eventually moved into a
neighborhood where he met friends, start going to school down
there and everything.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
And so, oh wow, did he pick up Spanish?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Na, I think it's really far. And then is also
a brain development thing, like if you don't learn another
language during the formative part of your brain, your capacity
to do so drops. It's not that you can't do it,
you just can't do it like a kid, you know
what I mean. And so it's way too far from
him being in there. So he went to a bilingual school.
They taught him in English sometimes, but you know a
(31:01):
lot of times it's still was. It was difficult for
him in the school setting as well from the language
barrier perspective, but he was able to socialize and that's
what he needed at the time. And a lot of
the kids during the pandemic suffered from that for a lot,
a lot of the teenagers. And you know, once we
got back outside, we never went to go make those
(31:22):
adjustments for these kids. We just felt like, oh, well,
we're back outside and now we're good. A lot of
people have not addressed what happened during the pandemic if
it was traumatic for them, and so you carry that
with you and you and when they say, the body
keeps the score and so eventually you'll start having some
type of ailments that that can point back to a
(31:46):
time where you need to go heal at that time
or what needed to be healed at that time.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
What was the.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
As a black person in Mexico, as a Black American person,
Like but if any were unique experiences that you feel
like you were having by nature of that.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Man, let me tell you something like Mexico had like
this revolutionary type situation at the time that I went.
When I got there, there were quite a bit of
Black Americans in Mexico, Like we had a community, a
black community, so I mean, and we created an actual one,
we incorporated it. Whatever you had to do to make
(32:28):
it official. But it's called Beta, it's black expats thriving abroad,
and we had we was on the board and all
kinds of stuff sop plying the Karma has a strong
black community down there, and uh, without I would I
would be there. I loved I got friends, like I
got friends and people have dispersed at this point, but yeah,
(32:51):
like it wasn't a bad experience being black down there.
We had black people that we could talk to, converse with,
become friends with. Commune. You know, I'm throwing barbecues down
there because it's on that resort. I was throwing barbecues
like weekly.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
How do you feel that?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Okay, now that I think that's dope, but I also
think there's something to be said for do you feel
like that kept you siloed from the actual culture and
the indigenous and like the people who are of Mexico.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Not me, not not not who I was dealing with,
either with the black Americans, because you're in Mexico, You're
not in America, you know what I mean? So, like
you don't want to become a colonizer, and it's you
know what I mean, Like you don't want to become
a colonizer in that, but it's such a tourist place
(33:46):
and it's such a space in that's transient that you
can really still work with a lot of the Mexican
culture out there, Like I wouldn't be able to have
done as much of the neuroscience and sports things and
(34:06):
know as much as I know if I didn't partner
with It's a guy down there by the name of
Coach Sada. He's in his seventies and doesn't speak a
liquor English, and at the time I didn't speak a
liqu of Spanish. But you know, we had some translators.
We had a good idea good thing, and I got
the go ahead to pretty much run my program in
a court that no black American had ran anything like
(34:30):
that there, and so being able to do that allowed
me to get a lot of diversity because a lot
of people were there. Mexico didn't close their borders like
a lot of other countries, so a lot of people
retreated to Mexico. So I coached kids from Ukraine, I
coached kids from the UK, Africa, Canada. People were from everywhere,
(34:52):
and I was able to coach them from all cultures
and I mean, my partners was all Mexican. Like my
first camp, I didn't have a black coach there. And
then when we started doing other uh other, like more
we expounded on the camps and we started including a
lot of the black ex pats and whatnot. But it
(35:12):
was very diverse, and it gave me all the confidence
that I needed to know that this works without us
really even knowing the same language, Like we got brains
and so knowing that kids that don't even really speak
your language can regulate and you could teach them how
to regulate without really knowing their language was a game
changer for me. So yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Sounds though like I mean you said this earlier.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
But by being there, you got to discover other things
that you wouldn't have been able to necessarily discover had
you stayed in the States.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Am I making.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Without a doubt, Like just the experience and the exposure
of a different culture, different language, different way I have
to go in too, having to go about things because
I mean, you're not in America again, the you you
have to live by the laws of the land, so
to speak, and all the laws of the land aren't written.
(36:13):
There's some things that are just literally you better know
how to read. Yes, Yeah, and you know I'm from
those spaces in America where.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I was about to say, you're from Houston, you you know,
like you're not from a little town.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
You from where you better know how to read the
room where you could die.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
And I never all the work that I've always done
has always been in the inner city, Like even if
I don't stay there no more, Like I'm always going
back all my programs. I could go do what I
do with a suburban group of kids, but I don't,
and I always end up right back in those spaces
where even if I'm dropping a kid off from practice,
I need to pay attention to where we're at, right,
(36:52):
you know what I'm saying. So that's in you need.
You definitely need to do that out the country. And yeah,
and then you need That's why we put together like
the networking thing that we had down there, because you
really do still need community if you go somewhere else,
Like you can't just be out there by yourself looking
like cake, you know what I'm saying, Like these people
(37:15):
really don't. Everybody isn't well to do. And so when
you in these places and just going about your business
like a regular American. Sometimes that makes people feel how
I make it. It's like riding on rims and with
your chain in the wrong hood, you know what I mean,
Like you just don't do that. Like it's certain things
that you just don't do because it's one that could
be disrespectful too. It could just really be a way where, yeah,
(37:40):
it doesn't make sense to me, but you could do it,
and you could draw things to you, to yourself that
you know. I always say, you can step in some
shit you can't get off your shoe.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You can step in some that you can't get off
your shoe. We're gonna take some questions from the people.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Okay now, because this is a class I make everybody
address our guests with mister or ms or whatever.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Their preferred pronouns.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I need said missus simms. I mean it is one
of our greats. Shout out to Saint Louis. What has
been your experience with encouraging this for black and brown
men and what has been the response? And I'm sure
this is referring to the neuroscience.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, so when we first got down there, we started
doing this with a flag football team, All Black Flag
football team put one together, and I just feel like
sports is one of those things where it can transcend
belief systems and things of that net. Like people. You know,
people who might be on two sides of the of
a topic both love the Eagles. They will hug each
(38:52):
other when the Eagles win the Super Bowl. You know,
they'll put their differences aside and they have this common ground.
And so so I do that through sports. We did
that with the Black Xpact Group football team, and that's
where we started to develop a relationships. So like there's
this engagement sequence. So the engagement sequence is regulate, relate,
(39:17):
reason right, And you must regulate first, and then you
have to find some type of relatable either topic relatable,
something relatable before you could really get to the reasoning
part of the brain. Because we just, okay, humans have
always been humans' greatest predator, So we look at people
(39:37):
sideways and we don't really you know, we gotta trust
you first, and so if we disregulated, we automatically don't
trust you because we in survival mode basically. And so
if you could regulate and then relate to a person,
then you could get to the reason and faculties of
their brain because you open it up. And so yeah,
like we did that with sports and then just having
(39:58):
a community of black men just wanted to do things.
They still doing taco too, They taco Thursday. We meet
up every every week a group of black men and
they are doing it. And my god, I got some
I got some guys down there that really own it.
Like I didn't even want to leave. But yeah, they
know about this I've done. As a matter of fact,
before I started going public with it, I did a
(40:21):
the first time I started doing dope as the acronym,
I did it for them. I wanted to know if
I know all this neuroscience, and I taught it to
somebody who knew nothing wouldn't land, and it did. And
so after that I've been out here with.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
It, out here with it. Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Next question, Kashan, another one of our Amanda Lander great ones.
As a personal question, what was and or is your
family of origins response to your relocation in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
You know, they thought I was crazy. I am in
a way, but you know, I think my wife is
crazy than me, so you know, I was. I just
obliged what she was going going on. In place. You know,
you gotta you gotta cater to her. She just had
my baby during the pandemic. She had it at the house,
you know what I mean. Like there was a lot
of a lot going on with that, so you know,
(41:13):
she needs some peace. And I just ran a whole
basketball team and she ain't even really put up a fight,
you know what I'm saying. She was bringing the baby
to the games and stuff like that. So I'm like, yeah,
we could go. But my family, yeah, they thought I
was crazy, but in the beginning, but they visited me
down there. They loved their experience, you understand what I'm saying. Like,
so my nephews was down there. I had quite a
few friends that visited me down there. So like just
(41:34):
being able to be a.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Guy trying to visit you down there.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
The same weekend that I was moving back, I was like,
she was like, I'm gonna be down and I'm like
packing everything up right now, you know what. I'm like,
I'm gonna try to get you, but right yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So I'm glad though that they got on board. They
eventually got on board, all right. Next question, missus Sims,
thank you for sharing today. Was it difficult to obtain
a visa to say for three years.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
So the visa process is so you got a six
month tourist visa. Regardless a lot of people that go
down there for that time they do what depending on
if Mexico, depending on where they are with it. Sometimes
they during some parts of the pandemic, they got real
strict on this and they stopped giving like six month
visas because people were just abusing them and just living there.
(42:30):
So the whole immigration situation was becoming a problem, especially
in the tourist areas. So you could do the six
month visa. Then the temporary visa requires a certain amount
of money in your account for twelve months. Eleven months
won't work, I promise you, Like, it's not gonna work.
So you have to show documentation of having a certain
(42:51):
amount of either income or a certain an account that
never went below a certain amount. So that has I
think they've up that, but it's somewhere around, Like I
can't tell you the number because I don't really know
no more. And so they'll give you a temporary visa
for one year if you reach a certain reach a
(43:11):
certain criteria. If you reach another criteria, you could just
get permanent residency, like if you just have a certain
amount of money. I ain't saying we wasn't there. I
wasn't doing neuroscience at that one. We was trying to
make it happen. But yeah, so like the visa process,
you can get a temporary one for one year, you
can renew that for three years, and after that renewal,
you get a permanent residency. So that would be like
(43:33):
the temporary trying to see if you want to do
that or not, or you can have the other criteria
that allow for you to go in and straight get
a permanent residency for life as long as you don't
lose it. And you don't want to lose any of
those things because you need a translator or somebody that
knows that process, because yeah, it's better to pay somebody
(43:55):
to just help you through that process. I knew one
or two people that could do it themselves, but I
wouldn't recommend it. I would recommend just finding somebody that
knows what they're doing, understands the process. Yeah, because you
don't want to end up in Mexican jail and they
will deport you too. It'll happen. You could be the.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I've seen all right, last questions, missus Sims, how have
both your children adjusted with living in with living in
Mexico for three years?
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Well, yeah, because it was three years.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, my son, that's all he knows. Like so when
he knows the difference between Atlanta and Mexico distinctively, so
the three year old, but he's four now, so he
knows he's like in Mexico, he did this and here,
you know, like you know, he knows those things distinctly,
so he didn't he had to adjust moving back to Atlanta.
(44:48):
My oldest son, he was his was probably more difficult
than when we had to navigate a little bit better
because his lockdown happened right at the end of his
eighth grade year and he never really experienced high school
in America, so a lot of his friends were doing
things that he didn't get a chance to do he
(45:08):
was in Mexico. He met some friends in Mexico. I
think he got some lifelong friends from Mexico, but he
needed more. It's just kind of difficult, and I think
a lot of times, like the people with kids probably
moved back quicker than people who were just couples or
(45:28):
something like that, because it's just not as many black
kids there, and you're going to have to assimilate yourself
into their culture. And it's not always accommodating, nor can
it be, because they just don't know enough. And so
you can, you know what I mean, Like, it's just.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Not it's foreign.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
And the thing about humans is anything that we don't understand,
most often we other and make it into something either
dangerous or less than.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
And that's a neuroscience thing.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
The last well, this was fabulous.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
We thought we were going to Mexico and we went
to the frontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Y'all all right? We was all up in the Sarahbella.
We was in the business of the brain.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Where can people learn more about the work that you do.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
And get into the neuroscience of it all?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
So you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok all
it at the dopest coach is t H E d
O P E S T coach co O A C H.
You can follow me at all of those. I promise
you I'm gonna start making content on this. I just
been showing up with my face and doing what I'm
doing here with Amanda or doing you know, speaking engagements
(47:02):
which have been going great, by the way, and so, uh,
that's what I've been doing, but I'll create.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
More because you have the coach skills yea.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, but then you're applying it in this space that's necessary.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah. So And a lot of this is from the
fact that I've coached in AAU and I saw so
much toxicity, like from coaches who meant well right like
so like you can have they get a lot of
like AU is such a toxic environment. And then I'm like,
but they don't have any training, like nobody and they're
(47:38):
here right like so we always talk about deabie dads
and all kinds of stuff like that, but these coaches
literally are at these practices, at these games. They're taking
kids to it. Yeah, but they could be committed and
still dangerous to kids because they don't have any uh training,
They don't have any knowledge of that. They just got intention.
And we know the difference between intention and right. And
(48:00):
so I was also the same, right, I also was
the same Like I wasn't. I wasn't. I don't feel
like I was toxic, but I did have some toxic
things before I talked to my therapist and I talked
to and you know what I'm saying that I got
into talking to doctor Perry and once I started realizing,
you know, this can be easier, you know what I mean,
(48:20):
Like this can it don't have to be so difficult? Yeah, Well,
just being able to regulate or recognize that someone needs
to regulate and no I don't need to engage them
right now, or just having a uh yeah, I'm saying
so knowing saying so knowing that you can help people
regulate and then you could become a regulating force as well.
(48:44):
And so I think that's just one of those things
where because the power differential, and that means the person that,
like right now, Manda on your show, you have the
power differential, So your nervous system is going to be
more influential to everybody and this thing that everybody else is.
So you must stay regulated as much as you can
(49:05):
so other people don't get disregulated right like this, And
it's it's the responsibility of the leader.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It's a give and take.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
I understand. I'm the same and I'm passionate too.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Sometimes they being here trying to disregulate me, they and
then they achieve it.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Sometimes a disregulated adult cannot regulate a disregulated child. A
disregulated person cannot regulate disregulated person.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
A disregulated person cannot regulate. Well, that to me is
when it's like, Okay, I need to take a breath.
Like sometimes I'll be like I need to take a
breath and step away and I'm coming back, you know.
And that's the thing I used to tell my ex,
like it's fine if you need to step away, but
you need to come back, you know, if you just
exit and then when you come back you act like,
ain't nothing happened, We have not achieved anything.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
So that was me too. I did that too, and
I recognized that, you know, I couldn't make that loop,
you know what I mean, because this regulation actually is
one of the most uncomfortable things. And so what people
do is they either they find ways to regulate themselves.
They check out, disassociate, or they self gym or they
(50:17):
self medicate, right, and so like the gym could be
a self medication. But the gym is good, it's a
very regulating thing, but you still also need skills and tools,
emotional skills and tools after you leave the gym. So
the gym is not the end all be all, you know.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
It gets you to baseline it gets you.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Back to baseline, but then you need those skills to
be able to engage again, right even if and it
takes time, I mean it really does, but it takes
understanding and knowledge, and so we didn't get that in school,
you feel me. So that's what I'm saying. Like that,
That's what I'm saying. So Amanda, can you regulate as man? Know,
we gotta understand, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Like that?
Speaker 3 (50:56):
That is the comment I promise you, Like I am
so on that. That's what That's what I really want
to be. Like the intro to my podcast, speaking to podcasts,
I'm doing the podcast. Can you be a guest on
my podcast? Of course? Right? Okay, cool? So the podcast
is called Your Brain on Dope. Yeah, and then we
(51:19):
can have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
You know, my my podcast called Small Doses, so we
in the same round.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
So when I was when I was talking to you
about that, I never went so we could talk about
that on a podcast, I promise you, because that is
that is a neuroscience concept that you don't even know.
And it is absolutely it's absolutely a concept absolutely called
dosing and spacing.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
All Right, we got a lot to talk about y'all.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
You gotta get back to you. You gotta get back
to your show.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Give it, I know, because we'll sit here and do
a whole small Doses episode and I'm like, no, you
gotta come on small Doses and do a small doses episode.
But shout out to Martin Simms, y'all for joining us
for another audition of Black around the world. And we
went to all sorts of spaces and places and we
still made it back to Mexico and uh, this is
(52:09):
really but this is really valid information. The goal of
this the goal of this segment though, is at the
end of the day, just encourage folks to understand that
there's other places. The world is yours, and there's this
very effort.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
There's an effort by the United I'm mad. It's a
Hennessy bottle. It's that's when Nads was doing his Hennessy run.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
That's exactly what it was, anivers I never got rid
of about it. I haven't drained Henessy since then, and
that was my last birthday. But I kept the bottle.
So the world is yours.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
There you go, the world is yours.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
I think though, Uh, there's a really concerted effort to
scare Americans into staying in America, and particularly Americans who
are of black and brown descent, and then they end
up keeping us here and then utilizing us as a
part of the prison industrial crisis as a part of
a label labor for us that they're not going to support, etcetera, etcetera. So,
(53:02):
you know, I just always want to encourage people. Even
though when I've told people about getting passports, they said
I was an elitist, petty bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
I was not.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
I was saying that because there's a whole world here
that they don't want you to be a part of,
even though they want to take parts of you and
sell it to the world.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Tell them get out the inner city limits.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
There you got it. There you go.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Thank you so much for the We will be in
touch and tell Phoenix I said, Hi, I.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Will do that. Appreciate you for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
No dat
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com