Think Forward EP 143 - A Stone Age Body In An AI World with Tom Meyers

We explore how an evolutionary mismatch between ancient biology and modern culture keeps our stress response switched on and quietly shapes health, behavior, and society. Tom shares how future thinking helped him rebuild his own life and why “eustasis” is a practical north star for resilience and meaning in a fast-changing world. 
• Tom’s journey from hospitality work to futurist thinking through a personal crisis 
• The “ideal day in 10 years” prompt as a tool for direction and agency 
• Letting the future pull you forward rather than the past pushing you 
• Why many modern pain patterns are “software” problems, not hardware injuries 
• Autonomic nervous system dysfunction, chronic stress, and dysautonomia as root drivers 
• Evolutionary mismatch explained through everyday triggers and nonstop activation 
• Eustasis as good balance through change across biological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs 
• The risk of “no Project Human” as technology accelerates without shared purpose 
• How transhuman paths could fracture humanity into diverging “species” 
• The Reset Approach for resilience, including low-tech self-regulation skills for space travel 
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. 

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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Transcript

Evolutionary Mismatch And Eustasis

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Okay, we have this problem called an evolutionary mismatch. There is a conflict between biology and culture. And what do you want? Okay, you want that it is matched, right? So that's that it is in harmony, it's biology and culture. And that's when I came up with the word eustasis. U means good stasis, it's like homeostasis or allostasis is uh a balance through change. And so you have the good balance through change between biology and culture. So this is what we all want in the future and now, right? Because who doesn't want to have the feeling of this balance between biology and culture, which is also another word of saying who one doesn't want to be in health and flourish and thrive in a fast-changing world. Tom, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Thank you very much, Sear, for having me. I'm doing super fine. Like the weather in Belgium, it's finally springtime as here. Yes, it's lots of sun. So uh I hope we can transcend that into our podcast today.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

I hope so too. You have quite a journey in uh working in as a futurist, but also as the osteopath and many other things in your your world, especially wanna talk about your your journey from uh we'll call for charcuterie to futurist. Um so for those that don't know you, like what's what's your what's been your journey to explore the future?

The Ten Year Ideal Day Exercise

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Where should I start? My journey to futurist thinking started about 25 years ago during a life crisis. I'm trained as a chef. I was used to work in hotels as a waiter because I didn't really like the kitchen as such, because it was a very close environment without seeing too many people, and I'm quite a social person. And then uh with some traveling around the world, some living in England for a while, I'm already I'm from Belgium originally. Then um, yeah, and then coming back when I was about 28, not really knowing what to do next. And uh, friend of mine had in the time that I'd been away, uh set up a very successful gourmet deli business, chocolate tree shops, and was looking for somebody. And you know, for making a very long short story short, which I've written two books about, the whole story, right? Like we I did that, what what he you know, what he suggested, because he had the success, he had uh esteem in the in you know, in the community, he had a beautiful wife, beautiful house, beautiful car, you know, everything. And I had nothing. And myself from what he can, I can started a deli uh like a sort of a franchise uh from his business. And two months later, I was suicidal depressive, like locked in a box, in prison into the shop because you couldn't leave. You had you had to be there, you know. Even if you didn't have any customers, you just had to stay, right? Because there might be a customer coming. So, my my let's say I was tumbling into this depressive state, and luckily I was talking to this neighbor, which was a pharmacist, about my problems. You know, she was this very open-minded person that you know that I could talk to. I was 29. I had never talked about my problems in my life before. But she was the first time, and she came in with an a number, a phone number at uh with and a name. She said, This person will help you. And you know, help for me was for desperate people. I had seen what help had done for my mother, who had been gone to a psychologist, psychiatrist. She was sometimes away for a month when I was younger, and you know, I saw this was, you know, did not result to anything. So, and a month later, I was sitting behind the desks of this therapist, desperate. Yeah. And the whole process there was what we call now life coaching, finding out, you know, what is where are you today? You know, what, you know, it's the first question. What are you doing here? And it was not like a nice, nice kind of question. It was like rude, you know, it's like what like you're a piece of, you know, how do S-E-H-H-I, and then what the end is. And I felt like aggressive. But it was a very good question because yes, what was I doing there? And suddenly from deep within me came this like answer, it says from look, you know, one part of me is doing, is going in this kind of anti-clockwise direction, and the other going clockwise direction. And these two are like in this harmony. What I'm looking for is harmony, is this in one direction, like these two sides of me that you know going to their flow. And then she said for me, tell me your story. So that was like, okay, telling my story about my past and the difficulties and so forth and the shop. And then she was pointing out to me different elements. Hey, what about this? What about that? And why did you think this and what you do? Anyway, she very interesting process seeing later in life that how beautiful that was. Then she gave me some questions for homework. When those were discussed, I found out that there was potential in me of being a therapist, a communicator, teacher, researcher, and traveler. What was I doing selling charcuterie and cheese without that was the potential I was born with. But okay, and then the last question this is the answer to your question, is she said to me, Okay, for the next time, uh, I want you to describe an ideal day in 10 years' time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

When you're suicidal, depressed, your shop is not going very well. That's like the what question?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

10 years' time, I've got problems now, and can't you see that you know I'm struggling? Why can't you give me a straight answer? Why do I have to think about something that's so far away when I have so many problems today? But there you go. That was my first introduction to futures thinking.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

So you said that that sentence, it was obviously it's one of the hardest periods of your life, but it turned into a perfect description of your life today. Is there anything you could maybe do you have that sentence? Do you want to paraphrase? Like, how did it, how did it, you know, how did you realist, like, what's that first? And let's kind of talk about how you write.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Yeah, so I went home with that and I had four weeks to answer it. And the third week, I said, from I better do my homework, because she was quite intimidating, and I was very intimidated by her. If I didn't do my homework, she I'm sure she would slap me around the head or something like that. Or at least it would be a verbal onslaught of not so niceties about my person. I thought, from do the homework, Tom, it's easier. And I was thinking, like, now, if I'm born, and if my potential is being a therapist, a communicator, teacher, researcher, and traveler, if I'm born to that, then I'm made for that. Would my life not become more into a flow? Would my life become not more meaningful or more purposeful if I put that into action? And so I imagined what would a life look like in 10 years' time when I have developed this potential. And so I wrote a short story. It's like storytelling about yourself. And then the essence of that story was well, very simply, I'm a therapist who has developed his own approach, which is research, who has written a book about it, and is asked around the world to give presentations and workshops. So that's the teaching, the communication, and the traveling part. And here you are. Here I am. That's my life today.

When Foresight Finally Had A Name

SPEAKER_04 8:12

Well, you know, it's funny that every conversation I've had with and like the pre-interview call, we were during the conversations with people, those who are in innovation or in futures, a lot, so many people kind of discover it, kind of fall into it. Like you had said to me that you realized it was a discipline in like 2017. Like it was, but you've been doing it your whole life. So that kind of like, I love to talk about that kind of aha, that epiphany, the discovery moment. What did it was it a relief? Like, how did it feel for you?

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Well, yeah, it's like, you know, so I first didn't really realize I uh, you know, when I had I was on a stage in Italy giving a workshop about the reset approach that I had developed. And suddenly it dawned on me, my God, I'm I'm here. I'm I'm doing what I was set out to do. Like, you know, I think it was 13 or 15 years before that, so it was not 10 years, but I said, I thought I must write that down. That's the book I want to write, right? It was a book in me, I'm gonna write this down. And then I started to write the book over a period of time, so from 2015, so ending it in about 2017 towards 18. And in those last months, due to a Facebook post of somebody, I was introduced to a person called Gert Leonard, who has written a book about you know humanity or technology versus humanity. And that inspired me. And then as if I've started reading that book and say, But hang on, what he's saying is what I've been doing on myself all along, this kind of future stinking, having where are we going, and then deciding where you're going, and then you know, executing that and letting your future pull you forward. And that was like an epiphany for me from say from wow, well my God, there is something, there is a discipline that describes what I've been experiencing for that and what I'm trying to write down here in my book. So it was the final. So I had already finished the book, and then I added another small chapter to it with my that written recent discovery that I also then explained as such. Look what happened to me now. I first started reading this book, and look, you know, this is something that is actually exists. And from that moment onwards, that future thinking foresight became for me something very interesting because I had been living it all along. And it was like the physical proof of that it's not only about the future of technology, of businesses who have a business plan which is future-oriented, but that we are, we can use this to manage better this fast-changing world. That we have to think about our future instead of always thinking or always dabbling in that past that's pushing us forward into direction unknown, which creates a lot of anxiety about the future because we're not, don't know where we are going. But now, if you just if you decide from okay, but this is where I want to go, what do I need? What do I want? And you start from there and you come back to today, and you let that pull you forward, that's a very well, it was a completely different story. For me, anyway, the experience of that is very different.

SPEAKER_04 11:57

Yeah, and it's well, they're talking about different experiences. I think the one thing that's fascinating about the field is that everyone has such a varied life experiences and what they bring to that. You know, you talked about being a chef and you you train that, like, and then you train as the therapist. Like that lived experience definitely shaped how you think about the future. So, versus like someone who's like maybe purely through academics, like how is that shaped the way you think? Like, how is it maybe you think about the future differently?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Oh, I I you know, the future is the word thing. There are many scenarios of the future, but there are things of the future that do not change in all those scenarios. And what I found about the future is like the past is the past, but the future you create with every choice, decision, and action you make, because that's what I've been experiencing. And so it becomes far more important than my past. Whatever the past that I have experienced, I can change the direction of my future, obviously, because I did it and I gave it a direction. Also, that direction was based on my potential, not on some random or random elements, which I think is also very important. Because many people say you can dream it so you can be it. Wait a minute, I don't think that's true.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

I can dream of flying. I don't know if I can actually do it. So I exactly, that does have its limitations. Exactly, you know. But it is a positive, well, it's a positive thing to to to not to connect to, to attach yourself, you know, is it is not to be so cynical or dismissive, but I understand it's got its it's got its uses, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:57

But it's but it's got its limitations, and if we take it, you know, if we take it to the you know, to this kind of metaphors and we're going to live by it, we might be at the end of our lives, we might say, you know, I what did I do with my life? I lived to this metaphor, and you know, I didn't I didn't get anywhere. It's like life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. I'm sorry, but that's the wrong metaphor. You know, I can look up these days what in that box of chocolates, what kind of chocolates are in there, and I can know which one I like and not like, and so I will not be surprised. So, you know, we have to be careful with metaphors that they don't become the wrong metaphors, become the wrong basis of on which we build.

Hardware Medicine Versus Body Software

SPEAKER_04 14:43

Well, I think one of the things I find fascinating about your work is that the things you've done, right? You things you've done with being a therapist, being a chef, those, and then, you know, when you talk, I want to get into this evolutionary mismatch um theory, as well as, you know, the hardware and software, where you, the work that you do is very much in grounded in the present, right? Present pain that needs to be solved, present issues that need, you know, you can do kind of futures work, even a chef, you know, it's about the immediate experience, the mindfulness of especially, you know, high-end dining, right? It's like you want people to have this like sensory experience that's they have to be in the present, which I find so many futurists are obviously more out there for, but I I love that you are looking at this in the present moment. But the one thing that just really kind of, you know, I think people listening to that the work that you're doing is that you told me that most of the colleagues, most of the doctor, they're doing using 19th century, that's the 1800s folks. Um, you know, designed for those 19th century problems. Let's let's talk about that. I'm gonna stop there and let you kind of take the okay, okay. Yeah, because we had the discussion, because you're like, you'll listen to it, you're like, oh my, you're totally right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah, wait, because in the discussion we had before, you know, I'm an osteopath. I specializing stress-related ailments, being it physical, mental, especially now with the you know, chronic diseases that have been established to what's called dysautonomia, including like long COVID and so forth. And that these are dysfunctions of our autonomic systems. So, but if you look at what autonomic systems are, so you have, for example, the autonomic nervous system, the neuroendocrine, and so forth. This is part of what I call our software. So, this is what is directing muscles, the heart, the digestion, the immune, the inflammatory, the way you think, the way you look ahead, or your capacity to future thinking, for example, all of that is basically regulated by autonomic systems in our body. So I call this the software of our body. But if you really look at manual therapy, manual therapy today and the training we get is based on developments from the 19th and early 20s, developed for problems of their time, where the problems were not so much on the software part, but more on the hardware. You know, whether we were from physics, there was physical labor, we had physical active lives. So the the impact of that of that physical life was also physical trauma or wear and tear, which is directly on the musculoskeletal elements, for example, on the arm, on the back, on the neck. Yes, so the biomechanical parts. So the 19th and 20th century was basically strewn with biomechanical problems, musculoskeletal disorders due to physical trauma. Today we find ourselves with musculoskeletal conditions. And if I ask my patients, you know, uh what happened? Nothing. I don't know. I just woke up with it. Right? And so, and this woke up with it, I know from experience, now I've been doing this for 19 years, so it's not from yesterday, that that means that probably that body was in it was so stressed, chronically stressed, from something that has happened months ago, uh, or an accumulation of things that have happened over time, where the body's regulatory system, so this software has become dysfunctional. And so the tension stays and the incremental, so tension starts, and then we say, Oh, it will get to it will get better tomorrow. But it doesn't get better tomorrow. Actually, you get used to the pain or used to the tension. But the next thing arrives and then more tension builds up and more tensions until the body is so overcompensated that you turn in your bed and then you're blocked. It's not the mattress, it's not the pillow. It's that chronic stress has put you into an overcompensated state that one movement, a small movement, can make the difference into uh into relaxation to oh unblocked. And it can be also when you wake up, you pick up your towel in the bathroom and you're stuck, or you're doing your your your shoelaces on. It can be as simple as that. But here we cannot treat this with a hardware solution because the the cause is not the hardware, it's not a biomechanical physical trauma, it's stress. So it's like a switchboard, you know, no, like how do you call it? Like um in your in your house, you have electrical circuit boards, right? And the circuit has sprung.

SPEAKER_04 19:37

It's it's yeah, the the circuit board. It's the it's the circuit board. Yeah, I mean it's this fuse, it's a fuse box. Yeah. Fuse box. Which fuse has sprung. Yeah, it trips. The fuse the fuse trips, shuts itself off, switches over, and you have to go and manually cut it over if you have to. But it's it prevents a cascading failure. It also pro it also isolates the problem and shuts it down. That's you know the function.

unknown 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

And so you're, you know, you can, if you say biomechanically, I'm going to switch that switch back on again, and you do that, you do that, but it doesn't work because somewhere there is an overcurrent happened. So you need to treat the overcurrent, which is a, you know, in the body, it's like the overcurrent comes from this software problem.

Chronic Stress And Dysautonomia Explained

SPEAKER_04 20:23

Well, and this relates to what you also talked about evolutionary, evolutionary mismatch, right? You and I think and I before we did, I think about when you just said that, I think about the paleo diet, like the paleolithic, how we used to eat for 12,000 years, right? Grazing, you know, eating grains or like the way we used to operate. And we did that until like the last, I don't know, 70 years, 80 years when processed foods, like it's just changed our diets, right? But we're still that human that existed for thousands of years in a certain way, right? And you talk about this from a stress response that ha, you know, our stress response system hasn't updated in 12,000 years. Say, but but but like the environment's changing at this exponential rate. We all feel it, right? The AI is even basically even more present. It's one thing to, you know, change your skills and change your career, but it's like it's just coming at us. I mean, what is that, what is that gap cost? What is that gonna cost us, or what is it costing us now as a species?

SPEAKER_02 21:25

So it the soft, the software problem comes from that um, you know, from that evolutionary mismatch in our stress response. So that you could say that the list, the last 12,000 years is a couple of seconds in a 24 hour clock of our evolution. For millions of years, you know, we have evolved and we have, you know, in our body it's been created, and certain certain systems have been made, like our stress response, which was necessary to fight and flight. To run after food to have food, or to run away from a predator, not to be food, right? And that needed a lot of muscular tension, you know, muscular activity, changes in vascularizations, changes in metabolics, changes in heart rate, breast rate, immune system, the way you uh react with your brain. So all of that was very good for that time. But today, that same response is being useful. I don't have any internet. Yeah. Oh, Netflix has got, you know, the YouTube. Yeah, so you can you can see already, you know, so my neck goes in, my shoulders goes up, so my my hands go like, oh, so I'm going to that fight and flight response, my psoas tenses up, my heart grows up, my breath's changed, my vascularization changes, all of that. For I don't have any internet, which is not going to kill me, right? And it's not something that I mean, you know, it's not a survival response is needed for that. And so this evolutionary mismatch describes that this evolutionary trait, like our stress response, is not matched to the demands of today, nor the type of demand, nor the amount of stresses and demands that we have today. Because it was meant for a short time. Now we are constantly, with all the demands that we have, in the lifestyle that we have, it's constantly being triggered. And that creates ailments, that creates this kind of uh, you know, dysautonomia and dysfunctions. And then we have the tensions, we have the heart problems, we have the digestive problems, we have the irretrobolobious drone, we get depression, cognitive decline. You know, we have a lot of some people get skin allergies and so forth from this. Not all of them, but there is it's a generalization that we, you know, that we need to discuss that many of our problems today are related to this evolutionary mismatch in our stress response, because that stress response is itself become a stressor because it's mismatched to the current demands. And well, although it's been written about in science, it's there is a book about it, mismatch, it's called as um, it's a Dutch uh scientist that's written about it, but nobody seems to see what the the importance of this is uh for our health and well-being. And I want some I want to be an advocate of that. I want to say from look, this is a huge problem that we all have, that I'm discussing with my patients, and they all see the sense of that. And I say I'm working on a solution to this because we'll need to put this, you know, we need to put this into discussion. I'm not necessarily a scientific researcher, but but if I can make this up, if I can see this, why does not many more people see this?

SPEAKER_04 24:52

I think it could be that there is comfort in what they practice and and the abil the desire to push change is not there for a lot of people. I think as a futurist, our kind of natural state is change. Like we look at that. And, you know, this is this is a curve of exponential change culturally, right? It's you know, the biology isn't changing though. So let's put our futurist hats on. Like if we go out 50 years, what happens if we don't address this? What happens if we don't deal with this in a very, very active way? It might be very strange to say. More, okay. Yeah, this is is this go to the kind of weak men make bad times, bad times. You know, it makes strong men, strong men make, you know, good times. You know, it's the kind of cycle, right? It's like you need a almost a collapse or situation to kind of shake the system to make us realize what we, you know, have.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

We we and to kind of we feel more uncomfortable with ourselves. We feel the more that we go into this stress response because of the stress response, we also get more short-sighted. We want to think now, we don't think about later. Our neighbor becomes the enemy because the stress response is all about you and nobody else. And so, you know, we will be less in we will be less tolerant, we will become also far more greedy, and we will become sicker at the same time, right? And then technology that is exponentially changing. We probably are going to rebel against that because it's taking our jobs and we become far more um, you know, how do you say aggressive? Because stress creates aggression, it doesn't make somebody very love and peacey-like.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

Uh love and love and PC. That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

And there will be more diseases, and there will be more different diseases, more multimodal diseases, so more complex diseases. Of course, that all of that is in front of Earth if we don't start to think about solutions, about how to deal with this conflict between biology and culture.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

Well, that that kind of gives us a kind of bridge into kind of this vision you have of dynamic balance, right? So you coined this term, eustasis.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

I understand it as good balance through change. So I'm gonna let you side it. And then we kind of explore that and we'll kind of do some different I want to get some different framing around it and things you've written about it. But yeah, let's start because that leads into like, okay, what happens, let's find the balance.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

So yeah, can you but let's go back to my original story. I said that the first question that that I was asked was, what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Right. And I said with this, what yeah, and there is this is you here is this conflict that I described with my hands.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

So this one sees this goes like that. So the first thing we have to do is what's the problem? Okay, we have this problem called an evolutionary mismatch. There is a conflict between biology and culture. And what do you want? Okay, you want that it is matched, right? So that's that it is in harmony, this biology and culture. And that's when I came up with the word eustasis. EU means good stasis, it's like homeostasis or allostasis is uh a balance through change. And so you have the good balance through change between biology and culture. So this is what we all want in the future and now, right? Because who doesn't want to have the feeling of this balance between biology and culture, which is also another word of saying who one doesn't want to be in health and flourish and thrive in a fast-changing world? So that so that is again how my past and my future and the theories I have suddenly become so meaningful and to saying from wow, this is the same process. So now I have my instead of a sentence, what do I want a future to be? I have this like vision of the word eustasis on which I now can build what do I need to have eustasis, or what it's not about me actually, it's about what do we need, because it's my future, is our future. We are not alone, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

Yeah, like in my book, in my second book, I say change your change your story, change your why apostrophe. Right. And everyone's gonna experience the future differently. There's different states of that, and I think that's where s a lot of scenario work kind of falls. It just talks about reductive generality. But I think in this case, you know, how we have a way to adapt. If you said it's about the capacity, uh, you know, yeah to to adapt.

unknown 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

So eustasis is your capacity to adapt and manage change no matter which future scenario presents itself.

SPEAKER_04 30:09

Yes. And I think for me, the the thing that I love about this concept the most is that you don't just talk about the biological, the psychosocial, you bring in the spiritual, which is about meaning and purpose, which I think is so important. I mean, I think a lot of the neuroscience and a lot of it's just cure quant numbers and you know, it's just the science, right? It but it doesn't understand that there's a there's a there's an element of meaning and purpose. And if it's you know, connection with the higher power belief systems, right? That that creates balance and health in your life.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

If, you know, I I love that you bring you you make sure that that's there because it's a yeah, so we have the bio, psychosocial, and spiritual. And that spiritual for me is indeed, you know, meaning and purpose, the innate meaning and purpose, your personal, but also your collective meaning and purpose. But also we have to start thinking about transcendence towards the next generation, for example. And here is another thing about next generational thinking, and because meaning and purpose for oneself, but also the next generation, but for oneself becomes interesting because, for example, I teach in India, and many of my students believe in reincarnation. There are many societies, many cultures that believe in reincarnation. But reincarnation that means for some, you know, it can be anything. But I've spoken to some of my Indian friends and they say from that no reincarnation as a human, that means that the next generation might be me.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

Right. Yeah, think about it now.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

If it's that easy, we don't know. But so if we don't know what the future is going to bring, the next generation uh if I die, we don't know what is going to happen. If we cannot be sure, then there is a possibility of no, there is no reincarnation, or there is reincarnation. And what if it is? Okay, so then meaning and purpose is also what I think the information that we take with us to that life, because what we know for sure is that all the material worlds you leave behind. So, what do you take with you is information, experience. And I want to work, and I find that info and experience, that's part of meaning and purpose.

Project Human And Tech Without Direction

SPEAKER_04 32:41

No, you wrote that's great, because you wrote this article, and I loved reading it. It was called, and I'll pop the link in the show notes for people to check it out. It's called Feeling Lost in Paradise. So you talk about the fast-changing technology and this this technology-driven world, right? But there seems to be a lack of vision for humanity. I'm a pro-topian person. I believe in the individual, you know, we have our tribalism, our greed, but I think humanity as a, you know, a species, the last few hundred thousand years, we're pretty resilient. But we've also had a guiding sense of where to go. So where do you think we're going? What's what do you, you know, what do you, what scenario are you kind of worried about these days? And like, and then that connects with eustasis. Like, how does that help navigate something like this?

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Yeah, so again, looking back at that kind of futurize yourself process that I went through, looking at that, I say from hey, but this is what we need to do for humanity to work towards that eustasis and to counterbalance the conflict between biology and culture. And suddenly I realized, but we don't have a project human. Where are we going? What do we want? Where do we want to be for as humanity? There is no answer. So at this moment, we are being pushed forward by our biology, and I said this before, into direction unknown case of Rasura. When tomorrow looked the same as yesterday, that was not so much of a problem. But today, tomorrow doesn't look anything like yesterday, and this becomes a problem because it creates anxiety of the future. So now the thing is that if we start thinking about ourselves in a hundred years' times, what would an ideal day be like in a hundred years' time? 100 years is a sweet spot because there are people today living that will be living in 2126. Right? My son's my son. My son is if you're looking, yeah, he'll be. Yeah, so he probably will live until that age or can have the potential to. But hey, maybe we too. You know, if you're looking at some of the developments into uh longevity and you know, health span and lifespan, the development resbillions being invested in that. Maybe they found something in the next 10, 20 years that will reverse aging, and then we might even have that chance to live that long. If we want it or not, that's another and that's that's something aside. I'm not gonna discuss that part, but it means that we need to think about what do we want and what do we need, because we know for sure that the technology is going to evolve exponentially, exponentially. But here is another thing. Where is that evolution of that technology going? Technology is meant to augment us, it's needed to help us, but if we don't know where we are going, how can technology help us if we don't have a direction for ourselves? This was the question I was asking myself into this article. Right? So at the moment, I find that technology is developing in so many different directions, and some of them, because we don't have a direction for ourselves, are being created and are creating problems that did not exist before, because there is no direction for it. But now, if we can imagine a future, use Stasis future with all different elements and make it into a birthright, and then every company and every single government has to have has that as a sort of directive to align to. And there will there will not be less commerce, no, there will be not less things being sold, but it will have a direction who have more meaning and purpose. And so I believe that the economy is then supporting human evolution instead of now, today, I find it is more diversifying us into different elements, into even different species, I think.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

Well, we both come up at this in a similar way, the fraction of our species, right? It's like, you know. Yeah, that was funny.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

That was funny when we were had that free interviewer saying someone, wow, yeah, I didn't know that anybody else had thought about this.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

Mine is uh my my my kind of overall is like homo machina, but it's like it, you know, there's species that connect. If we take people that might connect through technology to create a collective consciousness, or people that are modifying their bodies to do long, you know, space travel, or just even the basics of just, you know, using CRISPR, right? And you talk about this with, you know, if you're integrating that, you know, you're changing the DNA. Like, and will that mean just like movies like Gattaca, will we have to change children to to deal that, like to deal with that diverse? I worry about the fracturing of of humanity. Yeah, so do I envelopus for yourself? Does what you kind of come out with how do you look at this?

unknown 38:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Different from transhumanism. Well, so I was thinking, okay, so what are we seeing already happening is that some people are trying to vade themselves into the digital world, right? Into the virtual reality world. Let's say that happens, that continues. These are people that are not going outside anymore. They have the virtual world, they have their virtual families, they have their virtual houses and everything like that. So, but you know, that's game over, right? They because if they don't meet somebody and they have children in the real world, no, they have digital children and bring them up. Okay, so that's game over for that species. Then you have, you know, the the the more the the homo digitalis, transhumans, they integrate technology into themselves that is executive. So and so you have technologies that measure things but don't have any executive function. But here we're talking about executive. So it changes your brain function, it, you know, all this arm is too weak. I'm gonna put another arm in it and I'm gonna augment my capacities. But the problem with that is that it will change DNA. And so it changes because you're not gonna use certain faculties, you're not gonna use certain brain functions, these are switched off. So environment and behavior changes epigenetic coding, changes the way a gene is expressed. So that gene expression is changed, and then you have children, but then this exchange gene expression will go to the children who don't have that upgrade. So, what will happen to them? And then we have the gaticas that we probably need to CRISPR them to make them happy or to make them healthy.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Because I think that might actually be unhealthy children.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

And so we're slope because we use that as a very, very, very steeper slope indeed. So that changed baby, CRISPR uh CRISPR, that creates a huge new human species for me. And then you have the, as you said as well, I called it the Homo astralis, the one that goes into space and has babies. Well, due to the environmental changes, epigenetic changes, DNA changes, maybe that child cannot come back to Earth because it will not be able out of people to deal with gravity.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

That's right. I mean, I've said that on previous shows, and people in the space industry is that everyone is about going to Mars, going to planets, you know, and even but Venus is actually the best candidate. People don't realize that Venus in its atmosphere high atmosphere is breathable and it's also got one G of gravity, it's also a closer planet than than Mars. And it's and but at the same time, it's like, okay, you live there, that's great. Or you go to Mars and you live there and you have a colony, that's great. But if it's one third of the gravity, can you actually conceive? We don't we don't know yet. We've been doing a lot of space research, which kind of leads me to kind of what you're you want to take some of the re your research approach into space. And it's going to have massive implications on the things we choose for humanity if we're gonna, you know, go to the stars, because we might have to modify, we might have to do that. But you're like you said, Earth might be too hostile of a planet if we're gonna have to be out there. It's it's wow kind of.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

And that's I'm not saying it's not okay. That's okay. You know, if we create a spacing aware and just kind of smart being aware what the what it is that we are facing, and because you have the transgenis, this is like you know, this is a pretty utopian idea, but the ones that but they're doing it already because you have these people that are that have died and now they're putting in cryo reservation. So this means that trans homotransgenis is where your software uh uh it is transported into a digital tool, and so no more this abandonment of the biological body. So that's another species. There you go. And I have homoevelopsis, and ovoevelopsis is the homo that is it's called is the process of evolving on purpose. That's what evalusis stands for. And the evelopsis is the person which I choose to be and am, is the one that evolves on purpose. They say, from this is where I want to go to, and this is where I dedicate my life to. And so the eustasis. So the one that is going to work towards eustasis um and to to be able to cope better with change, with the technology, that technology is what technology does, but I will stay human, but I will become the better version of the human that I can become.

SPEAKER_04 42:51

Well, and if you're taking eustasis and you're managing how humans manage stress here, you've been looking at this in terms of application for space travel, right? You're looking at like, how does the evolutionary match match, what does it look like on a mission to Mars? Like, what is your research approach first? Like, what do you want to explore? And then how would that like work like on a mission to Mars?

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Like let's say that so the process that I've developed for manual therapies, how to integrate autonomic regulations, so software treatment into the hardware protocol. So that is uh a manual therapy approach that helps the body to you know back into autonomic regulation. The best way to describe is it's like when a child is in distress, you you know, you give it a hug and you rub over the head and you do on the face, for example, you do it on the arm. But by the way, you never do in the opposite direction and you never do it against the hair, it's always with the hair. And this is very interesting because that is soothing, that is a calming effect that neuroscience has shown that. Um so when we're using these kind of manual. Techniques, especially on the head. Remember that it's another example. When you forget a name, you touch here. When you've done something you shouldn't have done, you, oh, I shouldn't have done that. You grab here when you have tension through la la la la. Why do we do that? Okay, so I discovered that the process that had I had discovered and that I was doing with my patients, that it was exactly these current parts of the head that I was touching. So imagine that we teach astronauts, you know, this kind of self-treatment, so this self-reset, because they're in a very stressful environment, you know, and when there's you know when stress takes the overhand, you also change, you know, then your behavior changes, you become less tolerant of the others, there might be some more conflict, you know, you can get a bit a bit depression. So what if we teach astronauts this kind of technique, this the kind of self-treatment, or doing it on another astronaut, because I do it on my patients, like if you teach astronauts how to do that on each other, and I've already taught lay people this and they can do it, so everybody can do it. So that is an approach that doesn't require any medication until a certain limit. So it's it doesn't solve all the problems, but maybe it can help them to be more resilient and to stay balanced longer. And also there is no payload. You teach it, it's an information, and it doesn't cost 10,000 euros per kilogram to get it into space. So there is a benefit in this for astronauts to learn this. But my first idea was actually for space tourists because also uh space tourists are not trained like astronauts, they're not selected like astronauts, and and and the experience of sitting on a you know on this big cigar that might explode any minute, the fear of that, then experiencing weightlessness and all of that is enormous for in a very, very short period of time for something that is definitely creating an evolutionary mismatch, right?

SPEAKER_04 46:13

I think about roller coasters. Like when you come to a amusement park, right? You may like roller coaster, you may like, but you look at this thing, you kind of know the layout, but you've never been on it, right? And you're looking at this thing and you get on it, and then the sensory overlay of just the drops, the thwart, and then once you've done it, it but it is like how do you prepare for that, right? And I think of a ride that it's you know, a rocket is just you know, a whole nother level. But I think about that, you know, your your whole body is trying to absorb the change. You just put yourself through it.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Um so the the the initial idea was from okay, I think that that, you know, give private astronauts or space tourists, whatever you want to call them, you know, give them a treatment before and after their trip, right? Because definitely before to make sure that they're in the best optimal kind of relaxed state to go up so that the experience is also not from a stress point in a lower stress level, and then they come back and then do the treatment again so that the stress experience from a biological level is again neutralized. Because otherwise, what I was seeing as a consequence, if you don't do that, that these are people with a lot of influence and you know, they they have lots of businesses, but and they have seen the earth from the overview perspective and they suddenly see from how precarious our world is, and they probably become more climate activists, as many of the astronauts do. They become advocates of we need to take care of our planet, and so they can put that into their businesses and so forth. But if they go into their stress response and they don't realize it, they become the egoistic, they become very radical, and it might just destroy all that, all that what could have happened, all of that, these great ideas, this kind of climate-conscious people might become completely the opposite and have a bad trip. Look at the I can't remember his name as a real part Ali, the the actor who played Kirk in Star Trek.

SPEAKER_04 48:20

William Shatner. Yeah, he had a bad trip.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Oh he, you know, he's listening to 92. Yeah, went up and had a bad trip. He really, you know, it really affected him very negatively. Oh wow. I didn't know that. I thought he straight away that he came down, he had like like like he had this kind of, you know, for me it was like a a man depressed state.

2050 Health Outlook And Legacy

SPEAKER_04 48:46

Well, it does for many people I've talked to who've done it, who've gone up or been up, the people I've interviewed. There's a sense of excitement, and then there's this sense of smallness and like, but there's also a lot of like resolve and like how beautiful this earth is and how unique it is. It definitely has a life-changing experience for many. I can't say all, but it definitely has uh the impact. It's you know, and it's interesting you share that. I I thought Captain Kirk would have, you know, it's Captain Kirk, but still. But I thought he would, you know. But uh I give him a lot of credit because at 92, most people, you know, don't even want to walk down to get the mail. So I mean, he's he's some he's got a hell of a lot of energy, you know. And I I think as we kind of you know cut to get to the end of this, you know, wrapping up this wonderful conversation, you know, things that I like to kind of rapidly go through, it's kind of cute things to kind of like off the top of your head that I love to get from people. And um, you know, the thing called the the bold future question, like one thing that okay, if there's one thing you think will be true about human health in 2050, what do you think would most people would call it crazy? Like what would what would be the thing you think will be true?

SPEAKER_02 50:02

If we if we continue like we're doing now, what I'm seeing today, we will be worse off. We will be more less healthy?

SPEAKER_04 50:12

Less healthy. Interesting. I don't know, people will call you crazy. You know, it sounds not, yeah, but people, you're right, but in a way, a lot of people think everything's progressing and being solved, right? They think AI is gonna solve cancer.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

It's a scenario that I want to change. That's why we have this conversation. That's why we're having this conversation today.

SPEAKER_04 50:36

So when what keeps you, you know, you've talked about so many wonderful things. I mean, the every day, like what makes you what keeps you inspired? Like, you know, this keeps it keeps you going, that keeps you like revved up.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

2050 still looks bad.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Yeah. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Oh, that keeps me going and say from no, I want to make sure that 2050 looks good, right? And so yeah, you know, my the reset approach, I've started to teach that very recently because I got felt confident in teaching it. I'm also I'm 55 today, and so with that age comes also like sort of a I want to pass on my my knowledge. And now with you know, this 19 years of experience, 25 years in a way as a futurist, now I'm ready to pass this on to the next generations. But also, the more people that I train, the more people feel the benefits of that. And you treat one person, but they go home and it has an effect on a family, it has an effect on the next phone call, it has an effect on the business they are doing, on the you know, on the business relationships they have.

SPEAKER_04 51:51

Well, and that leads me to the legacy question. So, say 50 years from now, past the 2050, 2075, when people when you're looking back at a cur at a a great career, great, you know, I'm not saying this the end of the road, but like when what do you hope people say about your contribution, like what you did for society, for humanity behind it?

SPEAKER_02 52:12

I I really hope that there is a you know that some there is a reset approach practitioner in every single community around the world and into space.

SPEAKER_04 52:21

Explain the resplay that the reset practitioner just right now.

SPEAKER_02 52:24

So the reset approach is the you know, the reset is the return to ease. That's a R E A S E T. So for health to express itself, we need to be at ease. In ease, that means that we are able to adapt and manage change and that we can have the stress when we need it and go into relaxation where we need it as well. It's like another way of saying use cases from a BL on the biological level. And then you still have the psychosocial psychological, social, and the spiritual. So, and by today's problems, as we said before, many of today's problems are a soft software have a so this is what we need to bring into balance first. This is what the reset approach does. It's a full-body approach that doesn't only focus on the autonomic nervous system, but also on the central autonomic network, central autonomic nervous system, neuroendocrine, and the immune inflammatory system that we see as a whole, we help it into ease. So we we calm the body, and so from then we do the symptom treatment of the patient. So it's not an alternative, it's not a complementary approach, it's an integrative approach. You integrate it into your manual therapy practice, or for example, you integrate it into cancer treatments, you've you integrate it before and after an operation. To do what? To make those operations, to have that cancer treatment have more success. Because the success depends on the state of the body. If the body is in stress, its immune and inflammatory system doesn't work, the digestion is inhibited, your heart rate is too high, your breath rate changes, that changes metabolics, your vascularization has changes. All of that that helps you into healing is actually, you know, has a sort of a short circuit. How do you want then that treatment works? It will have an effect. So I'm presenting a sort of a system from we do this pre-treatment and then you do your treatment. So you, doctor, whatever you do, that your results have more impact, are more effective because the effectiveness of that medication that you're giving, of the surgery that you're giving, of whatever you do, is impacted by the state, the stress state of the body.

Where To Find Tom

SPEAKER_04 54:44

That's great. So tell me this. Where can people find you to dive into deeper thoughts of the Tom's deeper thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 54:52

Deeper thoughts. Okay, you can find me on LinkedIn. I think that's the first place uh where most people find me. But then you have futurizourself.com or theresetaproach.com. That's more for therapists and people that are looking for information more about this research approach, about this way of thinking about manual software approach into manual therapy and other techniques. But futurize yourself is where you find the links to my books to and all of the futures thinking ideas that I have. So you have the Futurize Yourself. At the moment, I have rewritten that book and that will come out again like a second edition sometime this year. And then you have the futures effect where I explain how to develop a DNA for your future. So a DNA that we haven't talked about, I think, but it's about sense for that word does not alter, but can be expressed in different ways, so that you can make a vision for the future for yourself on something that does not alter. And that is my DNA is that kind of my potential. What do I want to feel and my aspirations for the rest of my life? I know these elements won't change at all.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

They express differently, but they don't change.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

Great. Tom, thanks for being on Hit on the Show.

SPEAKER_03 56:15

Great conversation. Thank you very much for your vice. We really appreciate it. Really do. Great. Thanks a lot, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.