Video Transcript

James Williamson: So, good morning, everybody. This is James Williamson. We're here in Dorado, Puerto Rico. I'm with kind of a legendary healer in the biomechanics and flexibility world, Bob Cooley, who through a very fortunate set of circumstances over the past six, seven weeks has been at my disposal. It's been kind of a dream come true for me and absolute blessing, actually. And I think we've all kind of learned from each other over the past six weeks, and have been able to ignore a bunch of other insanity that's going on in the world. And it's been fun to be able to work on each other's bodies. I'm not working on you, but you guys work on each other quite a bit to stay in a good frame as far as your-

Bob Cooley: Keep advancing ourselves all the time.

James Williamson: I didn't want to talk too much, but I just want to let you take over and tell the world what you're about. I want to chime in too on what I think as far as what I see your methods and your invention being able to do for the world.

Bob Cooley: So we've been here living with James for over three weeks now here in Puerto Rico.

James Williamson: About five weeks now.

Bob Cooley: About five weeks now?

James Williamson: Yeah.

Bob Cooley: And a very talented golfer, very nice person. We've had a great time. We stretch James every day for about an hour and a half, sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's a couple of hours. We have very different things we're doing usually. We started by developing James' lower body and muscle groups. And then we went up to the upper body and trunk and neck and head. Some of the changes that we saw were we really started to free the axial skeleton from the appendages. As we kept stretching muscle groups around the pelvis girdle and then down into the thighs and lower legs, we started to get the legs to be free from the movement of the hips, and you got independence.

James Williamson: I wanted to kind of question the use of the word stretching because it is stretching, but we've talked about this before. It's not just stretching. It's almost like shredding. You're shredding fascia.

Bob Cooley: We should explain the difference, actually. We call it resistance flexibility. And the reason why we do is because when animals stretch you see them always they reach forward, and then you see them make that tense motion. And then everybody gets up in the morning and they go like this, and then they go, that thing. So I identified years ago, as you know James, that muscles naturally contract when they stretch. So most people, when they think of stretching, think of relaxing their muscles when they stretch instead of actually letting the muscles have the tension that want when they're actually stretching, which is a natural phenomena.

Bob Cooley: So if you stretched your bicep, if you went to elongate your bicep to stretch it, the bicep would naturally start contracting, and if you did, that's why we call it resistance flexibility because your body is resisting the stretch. It's a natural way to stretch. And when you do that, you get a change in flexibility, and the reason why you do is because when the muscle contracts when you lengthen it, the fascial material that surrounds and impregnates muscle tissue and all the other tissues, that groups inside of the muscle tissue. So as your muscle contracts and as it contracts, but it gets lengthened at the same, the fascial material changes it's angle and completely transfigures. So it's a permanent change of these fascial structures, and it also removes any trauma in terms of scar tissue in the material.

James Williamson: So Bob was telling me about a doctor in France that they did an endoscopic video segment on while you're actually flexibility training one of your athletes, right?

Bob Cooley: Yeah. What we did was we went to France, and the world's most famous endoscopic healing of fascial structures is done by Jean-Claude Guimberteau. And we're in an operating room with an ultra marathoner, and on the back of his leg a six inch slit was made on just the skin, and no anesthesia, except to the skin itself. And then we had that young man, as if this was the bicep of his leg, of his thigh, we had him strength train his bicep. We had him traditionally stretch his bicep, and then we had him naturally tense and resist when we stretched his bicep. And when we strengthened it, or traditionally stretched it, there was no change in the fascial structures.

Bob Cooley: You have to understand, we have an endoscope, a camera right outside of the cut. And then on the TV screen above us at 25 times the magnification, we get to see what's actually happening there. So on both the strength training of the bicep of his leg and the traditional stretching on the leg, most people think of stretching as just elongating muscles, we didn't see any significant change in the fascial structure.

James Williamson: So most of the people [crosstalk 00:05:44].

Bob Cooley: But the moment he contracted naturally and did that, the fascia turned at a really significant angle. And then as we came back it was a complete change in the transfiguration, a reconstruction, a renovation of the fascial material. And the other thing to know about it that my good friend, Sharif, at [inaudible 00:06:09] Institute does research on genetic degenerative muscular diseases. And what he did in his lab was discover that when animals stretch and the muscle naturally goes back when that stretch, the muscle releases enzymes that causes transfiguration changes in the fascial material and regeneration of other tissues.

Bob Cooley: So that's why you see animals stay flexible, and you watch people that are my age, I'm 71 years old, they get less and less flexible. And animals certainly do also, but not at the rate of people. So people are, essentially, just prematurely aging because they don't know to naturally stretch in order to keep their biomechanical body healthy.

James Williamson: So, I was wanting to do this video. I was not so much talking about sports or golf or anything like that, which is incredible in my mind, but also just the amount of stress that I had and most people have living through life day-to-day. A good chunk of my adult life I spent a lot of time drinking and being dehydrated and going through the rollercoaster of that. But the past six weeks, having a pretty amazing diet with the food we've been offered-

Bob Cooley: Yes, [crosstalk 00:07:26].

James Williamson: ... available to us, getting good sleep and getting good exercise and it-

Bob Cooley: With good supplements.

James Williamson: And even the past 10 days, me kind of stumbling upon the fact that our stretching sessions have been a lot better after an hour or so in the oxygen chamber.

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: These kind of things, just figuring out, because it takes a lot of energy. In the past six weeks I was losing quite a bit of weight, and I've kept my routine, which I should be down about 10 pounds more than I am now, but it's all been an increase in muscle, which is kind of counterintuitive to me just by stretching. But these sessions are actually pretty intense.

Bob Cooley: James, you have to kind of imagine, for the people that don't know how this works, you have to kind of imagine you have a board, a stretching board and you lie on the ground. And then James lies down on the board and then straps, stabilize his pelvis and, say, one of his thighs, lower leg. And then it takes three people to move his leg in eight different directions while he naturally tenses and resists. And when we do that, as we move in each different of the eight angles we move in to do the eight different muscle groups in your lower body, we look for where there's the most resistance and in which direction they in. And that's where the most dense fascia or scar tissue is.

Bob Cooley: And so as we make that movement, that literally rips that out of the body. It goes into the bloodstream, and then your lymphatic system removes that out of your body. And so three people in order to change these fascial material, there's a fact people need to know about it. If you measured, say, the strength of your bicep, and let's make it simple, and just say that your bicep could lift 20 pounds, most people can do that. When you stretch the fascia material, the resistive force of the fascia is like stretching a yoga mat. It has incredible tensile strength.

Bob Cooley: And so even though when you strengthen a muscle, that fascia just crinkles up so there's no resistance. But the moment you go to stretch the muscle, the muscle doesn't generate more. The muscle is the same tension force that's generated whether you've strengthened the muscle and shortened it, or whether you contract the muscle and lengthen it. But the fascia has two to six times the strength of the muscle. So if you lifted a weight of 20 pounds, and you lowered 20 pounds, you wouldn't get a stretch of the fascia material. You'd just become musclebound, like most people who lift weights.

Bob Cooley: So instead, when we're stretching James' leg, say we're stretching the outside of his leg and we're pushing his leg in towards him while it lengthens the outside of James' leg, when we stretch the outside of his leg, that's enormous physical forces by three people, but there's no pain. And the reason why there's no pain is significant, is because your fascial material isn't like your muscle tissue and your ligaments and your tendons that have nerve receptors that go to your brain so you can feel what's going on in your body. That way you have sensation. The fascial material doesn't carry pain receptors that way. It's not connected to the brain the way the nervous system is.

Bob Cooley: So when you stretch a muscle, it has huge resistive forces, but you don't feel it. The people stretching you feel it, but unless you look at them you wouldn't believe that there was that much force going on. So that's a very big discovery for people to make and they can make that simply by resisting themselves and strengthening their bicep and feel what their bicep feels like to them when they're kind of maxing-out the resistance to strengthen their bicep. But when they go to stretch it, if they kept using that same force and went to stretch it, all the sudden they can barely move their arm. And they're wondering like, "Did the muscle change?" Not the muscle, actually, it's the resistive force in the fascial material.

James Williamson: So, one of the things I've learned with Bob is that I'm pretty fascinated with fascia, in general. I told you about meeting Dr. Jerry Tenant at Tony Robins' Unleash the Power Within in Miami last November.

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: And I've been really fascinated with fascia in general ever since as an electrical conductor of our body, being able to connect organs throughout the Chinese meridian, which I didn't really know much about until a year or two ago. But this fascia is really incredible to me because I can feel things happening, and I don't really, like I said, don't reel any pain. But I definitely know when I'm sleeping, I'm sleeping a lot, and things are happening. I wake up, and I feel different. Like yesterday, I was squatting down to pick something up, and I felt an incredible amount of tension from my mid back all the way around my rump to my quads in an area that I've never felt so much tensile-

Bob Cooley: Ability to use strength.

James Williamson: Yeah. And it wasn't like my quads were really engaged at all, it was just like a, "Holy cow, this is incredibly strong."

Bob Cooley: So we have to understand, in terms of James, what we did was when we met James, his pelvis was more tilted forward. If this was the front of his body, James pelvis was more tipped forward. That's called flexion of the pelvis. And that comes with a hyper extension, an increased curve in the lower back, and then an increased curve backwards of the upper back, and an increased curve in your neck. And then the thighs tend to be externally rotated.

Bob Cooley: So as we kept stretching the muscles of the hip girdle and the hip joint, James' pelvis started to rotate backwards. And when that happened, the thighs also started to rotate inward, the lower back started to decrease in its curve forward, started to straighten out and lengthen. And then the upper back started to push forward and rising up, and then the whole shoulder girdle starts to rotate back up on top. The upper arms start to externally rotate. And it's all a natural [crosstalk 00:13:41].

James Williamson: A big guy like me, I'm always trying to keep good posture, so I'm pulling back on my chest and on my arms trying to squeeze that dime. They say squeeze a time between your shoulders,-

Bob Cooley: Shoulder blades, yes.

James Williamson: ... like you do in the military?

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: And that's just a really stressful way to walk around. But what's happened to me in the past few weeks is we've been working so much on driving that mid thoracic spine up,-

Bob Cooley: Into extension.

James Williamson: ... which actually causes my ribcage to drop into where it should be and lock things in a lot better. I get better freedom in my arms. And then the shoulders kind of just drape back naturally.

Bob Cooley: They do.

James Williamson: So, the thing I wanted to kind of impress upon everybody is how good it feels, how incredible it feels to be tension-free.

Bob Cooley: What we're essentially doing-

James Williamson: And I'm sorry.

Bob Cooley: Go ahead.

James Williamson: But just the idea that when your body starts feeling this freedom of motion that you haven't felt, in my case, 20-something years. I don't know if my hips have ever been this flexible. I don't know if my shoulders have ever been this flexible. I mean the range of motion and the strength throughout all the different angles. It feels like I have incredible freedom there. Your mind associates that freedom with, like in my case, how I was back I my 20s, living in Hawaii, I was carefree. You resort back to that younger you.

Bob Cooley: You reclaim yourself.

James Williamson: And you're actually emotionally more flexible. I don't know, I feel my personality has changed as much as my body has changed.

Bob Cooley: So one of the things, and James mentioned it earlier, is that it's probably obvious to people that you have to move in eight different directions, and so you must have-

James Williamson: And we're typically, only moving, I was telling you-

Bob Cooley: More like a [inaudible 00:15:22].

James Williamson: ... up and down, left and right. We become, as we get older, we're not doing any more circular motion. It's just very rigid and squatting down to pick things up, but we're not turning like we did when we were kids.

Bob Cooley: And so what happens is that when you stretch these different eight muscle groups, you get a biomechanical upgrade. So when you stretch muscle groups that are around your hip girdle, then your pelvis gets to move more naturally. We're not talking about mentally controlling your movements now. We're talking about you decide to do something, your body just naturally gets to be able to do it. So, James already understand that before I met him, where he knew that in terms of golf that trying to mentally control his body movements to make a golf swing was not going to work. That's just impossible, quite frankly.

James Williamson: I was telling him that I have had success, at times, hitting the golf ball the way I want to. And I realized very quickly that the freedom that I'm getting is allowing my body to do what it already knows how to do. I've already put the repetitions in. I've already done my work, it's in there somewhere, the [inaudible 00:16:29] of the neurons, whatever.

James Williamson: But eliminating the pathways for resistance in the golf swing, for me, is all about stripping out all the things that aren't working, all the things that are impeding my progress to be able to take away the golf club and make a completely tension-free swing, completely tension-free. I've never even understand that that was even possible, aside from watching the golf of Fred Couples, who is just smooth as silk, but I quickly realized you get rid of all the physical impediments one by one, we're doing it daily. You're working on my hands, giving me new hands, you know?

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: You get rid of all that stuff, the club want to swing on its own, it wants to do its own thing, golf as much as any other sport. I was telling Bob that I was taking the club away, the golf club shut, even though I felt like I was rotating. And he worked on my forearms he did some [crosstalk 00:17:22] resistive. I'm resisting and-

Bob Cooley: A half hour of stretching his forearms. He's resisting while we're rotating his forearm in both directions. And then we went after, he would be resisting while we'd be extending and flexing his wrist and turning in different and the hand. We did a half hour on each of these.

James Williamson: Like you said, you feel like my hand is actually coming back out of the forearm because it was being sucked in, and you're right because I was so tight right here, another source of tension, and getting this freed up. Anyways, I went out to hit golf balls again, and my forearms naturally were doing it without even thinking at all. It was crazy that the fascia can be used as a memory device. If you think about it like shrink wrap, which is really what it is, almost, you can do almost anything.

Bob Cooley: What happens with fascia, you need to understand the basic principle behind it, it's the most energy-efficient material of all of the materials in the body. So when you contract your bicep, your fascia, your tricep lengthens. And then without a contraction of the tricep, when you stop contracting your bicep, the fascia springs your arm back it's enormous. But if you have dense fascia or scar tissue in your tricep, and you try to strengthen your bicep, first of all, it would stop you from really making the range of motion you would need to make to make a complete strength. and it then doesn't spring back.

James Williamson: You've got some big guns there.

Bob Cooley: Yes, big guns. So as you remove the dense fascia and scar tissue, it's either from self stretching or being assisted by people that are trained to do that, then you get a natural freedom and range of motion that you, in some cases, in men most cases, have probably never had in your entire life.

Bob Cooley: Now the other part of the picture that we just want to bring up is that these eight muscle groups in your lower and upper body that moving in different directions are also identical, each one of those group of muscles that move you in one of those directions, is identical to the pathway in traditional Chinese medicine of the different organs. And so if somebody comes to us and, say, their gallbladder is not functioning well, and they've been medically tested so we know that it's functional, it's still structurally sound. The muscle groups on the outside of your leg are associated with the functioning gallbladder in Chinese medicine.

Bob Cooley: And when you have a problem in the gallbladder it shows up as dense fascia, scar tissue and limitation in movement of the hip girdle. And so as you strip that out, then the gallbladder, for reasons that not understood well at all scientifically, starts to function better, and the person starts digesting fats. But there's eight organs in the lower body and eight in the upper body.

Bob Cooley: So when we're changing James' body in these different muscle groups, it's not just giving him suspension at the hip girdle, the hip joint the knee and the ankle and foot, healthy fascia gives you suspension at the joints instead of compression, which you're experiencing all the time, and freedom of range of motion and more strength. Because when you remove that fascia material, the fascia is kind of like a plastic wrap around the body, and then the muscle has no room, no real estate to develop. And it impedes circulation both arterial and venous, and also lymphatic flow, besides other things.

James Williamson: Tell them what we were doing yesterday or, actually, the last few days. I had a slight rotator cuff tear in my right arm, I would say 2006 or so, and all of a sudden me golf game completely left me because instead of my right elbow dropping like it normally does and being an extremely powerful player, I lost all my distance almost overnight. And I had a chicken wing in my right shoulder. Anyways, I had a lot of scar tissue. I was functional, but, man, what you've been doing in the last week or so, we've been getting after it, and the arm wants to be able to do this stuff.

Bob Cooley: What started off is the shoulder girdle, of course, would be the first muscle group you'd work on, the back of the shoulder and the front of the chest. And then you go and work on muscles associated with the shoulder joint and then the elbow and your wrist and hand. And as we do that and make those movements, then the girdle, your clavicle and your scapula, become a stable unit as part of your pelvis, spine, neck and head. And then you start to work on muscle groups that allow the arm to be independent of the shoulder girdle, and the same thing with the lower arm and hand. And so for James' body, what had happened was that, and most people are too internally rotated in their upper arms, so then his-

James Williamson: My body looked like this.

Bob Cooley: ... injury caused even more of that internal rotation.

James Williamson: And, plus, we're on the computers all the time and we're hunched over.

Bob Cooley: Doing that internal. And so all we did is just kept removing that, and as we did that his whole shoulder girdle started to go sideways, abduct sideways. The whole shoulder girdle starts to go down the back, the scapulars start to rotate inward, and the upper arm start to rotate externally, and the whole girdle starts to rotate backwards. That's called extension. And so as we did that, and the more we worked, when we first worked on his shoulder assisting him, we would make very slow movements, very careful movements, looking for where the scar tissue was while he was naturally resisting, remove that. But in the last week we're moving his arm-

James Williamson: We're getting after it.

Bob Cooley: ... at a very fast pace-

James Williamson: It's fun too.

Bob Cooley: ... while he's resisting.

James Williamson: It's more strength than I ever knew I had because I would poop out. I couldn't deplete the, what is it, the build of the lactic acid. I would just tire out really quickly. I can't believe how much force I can generate.

Bob Cooley: 20 minutes of just continuous moving of his arm where he's resisting as hard as he possibly can at different times. And we're just taking it in all these different directions, and then you first of all start to move the girdle, and then you start to have the rotation of the arm. And then you have the rotation of the lower arm, and then you add the wrist and hand. And when he comes out it's like, "Oh, my god, I have ..."

James Williamson: It's kind of like an assisted Tai Chi where he's providing resistance and we're moving all different places. He gets on this knife's edge, we'll say, gets in a certain area, and if feels so uncomfortable, but it's right on the edge of pain and discomfort.

Bob Cooley: It's so deep, that tension.

James Williamson: And we're just riding that edge, and it just feels like you're carving a Thanksgiving turkey, and you're just kind of going right down that edge and just kind of-

Bob Cooley: I like your image yesterday that you talked about when you talked about when you're stretching somebody like this, when you have somebody skilled stretching you this way, assisting you, you're stretching you and they're assisting you, you're honing their body into, it's like a sword.

James Williamson: Absolutely. There's so much repetitive work that has to be done here. It's not like a magic fix, but everything you put into it, all the work you put into it you get out of it. You get results. And, like you said, if you've got severe scar tissue or whatever, the sub-fascia, it just takes a lot of time to get that out. It's not going to come out instantly. But, man, the relief you feel and the feeling. Describe to people how you feel, or I could probably tell everybody. When you get up after you go to town on me, I get up, I stand up, and the face looks physically different.

Bob Cooley: Yes, very much more relaxation, better structure.

James Williamson: There's something going on there. You're lit up in areas. When we talk about organ health and stuff like that, I would love to see some measurements on this somehow on me to be able to quantify what's going on. I just know that I feel like I'm lit up like a Christmas tree right now. Organ health, whatever it is, the food, the stretching, it's just all incredible.

Bob Cooley: So understand when you remove this dense fascia and scare tissue, that's making you numb. The feeling of your body is not available to you. And as you remove it, you don't have to think about your arm, the feeling of your arm comes up to you. So when James is practicing his golf after that, he has all this feeling of his body coming up to him so that he's deferring to his body, and his body is showing him how it wants to make these movements in order to be natural in terms of the way he golfs. There's 10,000 ideas about any activity, so you can't possibly mentally control it. And every day he's learning new ideas about how to make a body.

Bob Cooley: Back into the concept of the organs, so each of these muscle groups in the lower and upper body are associated with different organs in Chinese medicine. I have 16 of those, and when you work on those it actually changes, for reasons that are not known how that actually operates, the physiological function of those organs.

Bob Cooley: And then the other part, which is even more fabulous in some ways, is that it directly affects developing aspects of a person's personality that, for whatever reason, wasn't developed. Some people are very developed analytically through positive conditioning. And other people are very much developed emotionally, their social skills and their intelligence is very high. Other people are very developed because of conditioning in their physical body, and other people are very spiritually developed in terms of their values.

Bob Cooley: So everybody, of course, has developed different parts, and they need parts in order to kind of complete what they're doing. And so, it's our job to find out which muscle groups have not really finished development enough sufficiently so they can do what they want to do. And then when you do that, that person, so you might find somebody that's not particularly helpful. And they might irritate you like crazy because they're not helpful. And then instead of taking it personally, you could realize, "Oh, that muscle group is associated with the muscles on the inside of their legs. And those muscle groups are associated with being helpful." And then you go to stretch them and, lo and behold, there it is, the dense fascial scar tissue. And then you stretch it out, and they stand up and they're like, "Can I get you a glass of water?" They start being helpful.

Bob Cooley: So instead of criticizing people, if you have a problem in your car, and the tire doesn't work, you don't throw the car away, you get a new tire. Well, when people find somebody that's not helpful or too critical or judgemental or too controlling or whatever the part they don't like about the person, instead of taking that so personally, you just have to realize, just like a car, that part doesn't work. If you fix that part they would be just the way you'd want them to be.

Bob Cooley: And so the question is when we're developing James, we've mapped out what his genetic personality type is because these 16 muscle groups are associated with genetic personality types, we know, we have the theory about how that person develops. So, James' personality type, I'll do myself first, I'm an analytical, thinking type. I'm very speculative in my thinking. I like quality items. I only like things that work and don't work.

Bob Cooley: And then as that analytical part gets developed enough, if you want to speak in energetic terms, that energy gets refined into me becoming more physically healthy. And not just athletically fit, but also physically healthy, the two parts of wellness. But then when that develops enough, that energy, if you want to call it that, gets refined in me, developing more social skills, something my type's not known for having. And once I develop enough, that gets refined, and then I become more practical minded and gain more perspective on things. It affects my value systems.

Bob Cooley: So as James was describing as we're stretching him, besides the obvious biomechanical upgrades and the fitness upgrades and the health upgrades, there is changes that are occurring to the person emotionally and psychologically, very specifically, and spiritually. The person is literally evolving in front of you, and they just get so much happier with themselves. They've always wanted to be a particular way, and they saw other people being that way, and for whatever reason they don't know why they can't be that way. And they might be even envious of that person or appreciative, but they had no idea they could have that too. And that's what you're doing because when James is going to golf, or anything else he does, it's really based on James, not just the circumstances. And so his ability to know how to function, based on whatever the circumstances are, will give him the success that he actually wants. And that's what the stretching does.

James Williamson: So, the general benefits that I've felt, I feel like my hands are dragging on the floor. I started this path, by the way, actually, yes, it was after Thanksgiving. I ran into Michael Gebhardt.

Bob Cooley: Michael Gebhardt.

James Williamson: Who I hope is watching, buddy. He's in the Dominican Republic. Michael was a Olympic-

Bob Cooley: A genius windsurfer, Olympic and world champion, a genius at that.

James Williamson: Great guy who I love to death, and he was the one that opened me up to all this because he trained under you, what, in 2005, '06, maybe?

Bob Cooley: For the Olympics, the 2004 Olympics.

James Williamson: He went to five different Olympics, won a silver and a bronze. Anyways, he was here, and I got connected to him somehow. He came over for a few hours and told me all the stuff about my emotions and Chinese meridians, and I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

Bob Cooley: Gebi is a great guy, and so Gebi goes, "You have to meet Bob Cooley."

James Williamson: But I was going through a lot of stuff. He's opening up my left side. This is associated with male trauma on the left side and female trauma on the right side. And it was all kind of a whirlwind. And then after about three hours I was like, "What are you doing tomorrow? Can you come by again tomorrow?" So we ended up knocking like 17 hours in four days, and it was just an incredible week. I could not believe how much of a change in a matter of hours. And that's what I wanted everybody to understand is that this isn't something where you've got to dedicate yourself to daily stretching and blah, blah, blah.

Bob Cooley: And then five years later [crosstalk 00:32:18].

James Williamson: No, this happens right the fuck now.

Bob Cooley: It's immediate, it's cumulative, and it's sustainable, the changes you're getting.

James Williamson: Yes.

Bob Cooley: And they're beyond what you're imagining, that's the best part. So James wants to take his talent and have this incredible body that can manifest it beside the other parts of his personality. And we keep giving him more parts of that ability way beyond what I didn't know my hands could do that.

James Williamson: I was telling everybody it's kind of like you watch the Weird Science where these two kids are sitting there trying to make the most ideal woman, bigger tits and stuff like that. I feel like, "Bob, today could you give me a softer pair of hands?" Because I want to be able to caress that club and really feel and set the transition and just caress that club.

Bob Cooley: See, I really, obviously, don't know about golf. And so what happened when I met him, I'm like, "Look, I don't know about golf." And so I know some things about it, but not really. So you just tell me every day whatever you want. And so every day it'd be like, "Hey, my thigh on the right hand side, it needs to move this way." And I'm like, "Okay," and then I-

James Williamson: Because I'm feeling things in my swing I've never felt before. And the only reason I felt them is because we went out and hit balls at night, glow balls, and it was completely pitch black. All I see is this glowing ball, and all I can do is feel the weight transfer and how my body is moving, and the distribution of weight to my left and right and fee, which I'm barefoot. And it was completely a sensory deprivation chamber, except the fact that I could actually feel my weight distribution. Which is then the next morning-

Bob Cooley: All the body.

James Williamson: ... I was like, "Hey, right thigh needs to interior rotate on the back swing, the way that thing smoothly switches to an exterior counter torque with the right foot to the left side of my golf swing." And then the next day we were working on thing, and he's giving me a better swing in that aspect, which is really cool.

Bob Cooley: And then the next day he's like, "When I do this, I'm tight back here." I'm like, "Okay, what we'll do is we'll give you more extension in your spine and more lateral bend to the left." And we will do that today. And then every day when James meets his buddies, his friends, he goes, "You're not going to believe this. Every day I get up and Bob's there stretching in the morning. And I just open up the door, he's out on the porch, and I go, 'Hey, that was great yesterday with my knee. My knee feels great. Could we just do a little something on the backside of my back over here?'" And I'm like, "Oh, sure, no problem, then." And then he tells his friends, "Bob never says no. He's like a genie, and you just tell him what you wish for. And then he just goes, 'Oh, okay, I'll take care of that."

James Williamson: So what's-

Bob Cooley: And then we deliver, which is the better part.

James Williamson: That's a good segue to we've got a lot of people. I don't know how many people we have on here. This is the first time I've ever done this before, a few, or, I don't know, 20-something, whatever.

Bob Cooley: That's okay. We're on the East Coast.

James Williamson: Anyways, let's go through the typical list of ailments, restrictions that most people my age, I'm 47, going on 27, typical ailments, limitations in the everyday, day-to-day kind of things that people feel, from when they wake up to whatever.

Bob Cooley: I understand what you're saying. So most people feel like, think when they get up, they feel pretty stiff, and, of course, you've been lying down. And based on how much, too much dense fascial scar tissue you have, that's really limited your circulation. And so that stiffness is really an arterial blood flow issue. And so if you stretch out muscle groups that are on the front of the body associated with the what's called the pericardium or heart protector in Chinese medicine, then you get more blood flow throughout your whole body, and then your hands and feet aren't cold, so that's one thing.

Bob Cooley: The biggest issue is, really, for everybody is that on the back of your legs you have three hamstrings. And on the outside back of your legs, not in the middle back but on the inside back, on the outside, that's where everybody, regardless of any age group or any preferences, has the most dense fascia scar tissue. And so that lateral hamstring, in Chinese medicine it's associated with the bladder, that needs to be addressed on everybody. And if you do that, that takes compression and low back pain out. So the low back pain is not the symptom that's showing up in your back, but it's not coming from your back. It could, but in most cases it's coming from the lateral hamstring.

James Williamson: So when Bob and I started working, Bob says that, "Your hamstrings are too tight." I'm like, "Dude, I can lock out my knees and put my palms on the ground." I felt like I was exceptionally flexible.

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: I've always been a stretcher. I've always stretched all my whole life. I never really did weights a lot. I was always naturally big, but you showed me pretty quickly how incredibly tight my upper and mid hamstrings were.

Bob Cooley: We started to work on those and change that tissue. So that's for lower back, which is a big issue for a lot of people. The other thing is that people carry tension in the back of the neck and shoulder.

James Williamson: Yes.

Bob Cooley: And the reason why that's so significant is not just because it's a pain in the neck, but because it's a-

James Williamson: It robs you of your life force.

Bob Cooley: It's associated with your internal immune system, which is what fights viruses as well. And so stretch number 16, what we call a thymus roll down, when you take the dense fascia and scar tissue out of the muscle out of the back nape of the neck and shoulders that come down into the ring finger, for reasons that are not well understood, it turns on your lymph nodes of your body, which is the part that fights viruses, so that's a big one also.

Bob Cooley: And then the two more that I commonly think of is addiction is a big thing with people. Now, whether it's coffee or chocolate or whatever the thing is that the person is somehow snagged with, that's associate with the stomach. So your lateral quads in your body, that's stretch number five, if you stretch those out, that gets a person to go after in life what they want, as opposed to because they don't have what they want in their life, they feel dis-spirited, and then that attaches them to addictive substances. That's stretch five.

Bob Cooley: And then the last one is the whole concept of a person's passion and going after their passion is muscle groups associated on the back of the shoulder blade. That's associated with the small intestine. And if you stretch those muscles, that person becomes much more creative, and as they become creative, they realize they're transmuting their depression into creativity.

Bob Cooley: And then the last thing, and I think the most important thing, is that on your hamstrings on the back of your legs we've described stretching the outside back. The one on the inside back of your legs is associated with your pancreas. That's the muscle group that controls your fascia, so that's a big deal, but it also controls your peacefulness and how balanced you are in your life. And so if you stretch those muscles, then, you balance out your play with your work, with your educational mental development, with your emotion. It gets you to balance yourself, so that's really the most important thing to get people to do, is to balance that way, and they don't even know.

James Williamson: Now that I feel what I feel now, and I've got a taste of things, and now I have a hunger to get even more.

Bob Cooley: Of course.

James Williamson: We go through sessions, and I get up. It's almost like I'm getting a, what do they call it? A complex where I feel like anything is possible, and my body feels incredible, and I want more, you know?

Bob Cooley: Yes.

James Williamson: But having that feeling is such an opposite feeling to the one I felt before where that stress kind of just over the course of days and months and years, and all of a sudden I feel like it slowly shuts our bodies down.

Bob Cooley: It does.

James Williamson: And I feel like that is probably at play quite a bit in the proper functioning of organs over the long decades.

Bob Cooley: Definitely.

James Williamson: I just feel like there's something to do with the electric energy going through the body and how your fascia transmits all that, how your organs function.

Bob Cooley: I think people need to really view their body as a reflection of their life. So if you're hanging out with people that are a pain in the neck, you have pain in your neck. Why you're with them is really the issue. So with everybody, if you thought of your body and you go after these different stretches, 16 kinds of stretches, you can address different aspects of your life through your physical body. It's the foundation of your psychology, the foundation of your emotional maturity and the foundation of your spiritual growth. And so by upgrading your body, not just in fitness, such as aerobic and athletic exercise, but in terms of wellness, to add wellness to your fitness, I think that's what people are looking for.

James Williamson: I was just turned on to meditation, and have been pretty consistent about it over the past, I don't know, say, two years or year and a half, two years. A lot of big changes there, a lot of good changes. And I prime myself for my day, and I feel incredible. And when I do it, I always have good results. This, though, I think is a great addition to that because the way I feel when I stretch and-

Bob Cooley: It [crosstalk 00:41:53] your entire life.

James Williamson: It's like what my body knows how to be. When I'm stress-free, there's no question about who I am or how I need to be in any situation. I feel natural.

Bob Cooley: And the decisions you want to make, decisions you need to make. The other thing I just wanted, because we didn't really talk much about it, I think now we're coming close to a close on this, is that when I-

James Williamson: And, by the way, if anybody wants to ask a few questions, so we've got a lot of time.

Bob Cooley: I think the people that know me, if you read any of my books, the Genius of Flexibility or Resistance Flexibility 1.0, my new book comes out. I'm hoping to finish it this summer, so that would be next fall, it's called The Sixteen Geniuses, Sixteen Genetic Personality Types. The concept that a person has a genetic personality type is not in psychology. Trait development is, but not a genetic type, the concept that the sperm and the egg have union, and then a genetic type is formed. And if that's true, we have 16 of those.

Bob Cooley: And when the book is released, and as soon as possible at that timeframe, on your phone you'd be able to take somebody's photo, and given they give permission, we could send you 60 pages of information on that genetic type so you could understand your own feelings and thoughts about the person you're with, and also know more about and get much interested in them, instead of just being defensive.

James Williamson: So explain to everybody what I am, just as an example.

Bob Cooley: So, for example, James' type is, say, an emotional type. The emotional types, they express themselves a lot through their face. His high trait is associated with being humble and freedom and non-repress and strategic and zeitgeist, he resonates with those. And the downside associated with being codependent where he's helpful to other people before he's actually gotten enough help for himself. My personality type, as I mentioned earlier, is an analytical, thinking type. I'm highly speculative. I like to puzzle things out and figure out how to make things work. I like quality items, and the downside is eccentric behavior, or what's called schizotypal.

Bob Cooley: And so when you know somebody's genetic type, I know that in order to facilitate James to be more successful, that's based on how balanced he is. And so, ultimately, his balance is actually an unconscious personality inside, not just a type outside. His unconscious is not the part of him he doesn't know about. The unconscious is the actual type that balances his qualities. And that personality type, because he's a male, is a female that is known for devotion and certainty and abundance, and the downside is dependency, these qualities of his freedom and their devotion.

Bob Cooley: So for James' type, what I'm trying to do by developing his body, helping him, is to get him to realize that his high quality of freedom, freedom doesn't mean license to do anything you want. Freedom only happens when somebody else is devoted to you. So once you're devoted to yourself through these stretches on the gallbladder on James' muscle groups associated with the inside of the legs, and gallbladder is associated with the outside of the legs. As the gallbladder outside the leg becomes more functional, he's more devoted and more decisive about himself and allowing other people to devote to him. And when that happens, he also attracts people that are that type. And when he does that, that's where the freedom comes from.

Bob Cooley: In other words, most people know that your bicep and tricep balance each other. So if you want to strengthen your bicep, let's go back to physical, if you want to strengthen your bicep as you're resisting, the bicep contraction [inaudible 00:45:59] through muscle fiber, the tricep has to be able to lengthen. So if your tricep isn't flexible enough, you can't really finish developing the bicep. But if you're stretching the bicep, the tricep would have to shorten. What people don't know, and the second idea I figured out was that when you stretch the muscle, you don't just get an increase in range of motion, you get an increase in the capacity of the muscle to shorten. And the rate of shortening in the rate of the rate or the acceleration.

Bob Cooley: So when you're strengthening your bicep, your tricep has to be flexible enough to lengthen while this shortens. And when you stretch your bicep, your tricep has to be flexible enough to shorten to allow that motion. So these muscles are balancing muscles. They're on opposite sides of the bone. So they have balancing biomechanical functions. They have balancing organ function. So on the outside of the leg is the gallbladder. The inside of the leg is associated with liver. Both of those muscle groups control suspension of the shoulder, of the pelvis girdle, the movement of your pelvis.

Bob Cooley: Those muscle groups are also associated with the gallbladder and the liver, and your liver produces bile. And your gallbladder stores it and disseminates it when you digest fat. But they're also associated on the outside with devotion and on the inside with freedom, and so they're dependent on each other. So just like the bicep and tricep depend on each other for working, the inside of your leg freedom, that trait, really, the source of that isn't the inside of the leg. The source of that is the muscles on the outside of the legs for the gallbladder, or devotion.

Bob Cooley: So the more devoted you are, or anybody your type is, and it allows people to devote to you, the more the liver high functions actually show up, your freedom, your zeitgeist, your strategic skills. Because most people think their personality, their conscious personality is created by that. It's not that, really. The source of it is the balancing inside. So inside of me, because I'm a male, is a female that is peaceful, communicative, likes to prioritize, likes to have fun. I like to work, they like to have fun. I would never guess that the ability to have fun is producing my ability to work. And they would never guess that their ability to work gives them the ability to have fun.

Bob Cooley: Everything turns into being about balance, muscle groups balance, organs balance, personality types balance. And so that's already in all the stretching books that are out there, the two books I have out there. You can buy them on Amazon. But the next book on the 16 genetic personality types tells people, "Hey, you're depressed? Oh, these are the muscle groups to go after. And you can transmute your depression into creativity." That's what creative people do. That's not what depressive people know. They think they don't want to be depressed, I agree. But what they don't know is that creative people are more depressed than they are, but they've developed a way to transmute that into creativity.

Bob Cooley: So your freedom actually comes from transmuting indecisiveness, not what people are thinking. And so, when I meet somebody and I say they're addicted or they're depressed or they're avoidant or they're paranoid or they're borderline, whatever their personality malfunction is occurring, to me, that's compost. Flowers grow out of compost. They don't grow out of flowers. And so I don't have a negative take. I understand they're negative, but I don't have a negative take on those parts. I'm like, "Just tell me what's wrong with you." Of course, I'm going to judge you. I'm going to criticize you. But that's not the issue. I just want to know what doesn't work so we can actually fix that part of your body so you can transmute that negative into a high trait.

Bob Cooley: So if you meet somebody, and they're in a really bad mood, that means muscle groups down the front center of their body are not working. And if you stretch those out and the balancing on the other side in particular that are the source for the muscles on the front, that person will become trusting and know how to trust themselves and trust others, which is the foundation for their good mood and for their self worth. That's how it works.

James Williamson: Nice. So, we're going to wrap up here in a few minutes.

Bob Cooley: That might be a lot for everybody [crosstalk 00:50:40], but anyhow.

James Williamson: You're heading to Boston today.

Bob Cooley: Yeah, we're going to go there for about four days.

James Williamson: Bob's got a studio in Boston, Santa Barbara, LA.

Bob Cooley: And Los Angeles.

James Williamson: Primary place is eco-friendly place in Santa Barbara.

Bob Cooley: The studio in Santa Barbara is a totally green building, solar-powered, infrared-heated, everything in there is organic and sustainable. The building-

James Williamson: 100% California.

Bob Cooley: Yes, exactly. The LA studio is a cute little place for private sessions. That's in Santa Monica. All of that, you can reach it all on the webpage thegeniusofflexibility.com. So the last thing I wanted to say was I want people to know that their body is medicine. They fix their body, that's medicine.

James Williamson: I totally agree. It's stored so much stuff, it's a buffer for our mind, our brain, our spirituality. I was saying the other day, it's kind of along the lines of Joe Dispenza, how do you know when you wake up in the morning who to be? I feel like we get a lot of cues when we wake up, we wake up stiff and we're tired and whatever, however we feel. That kind of primes you for, "Okay, here's where I am. I'm 47 years old. I'm tight. I'm stressed, I'm whatever." I feel like you kind of put on that personality like clothes and go out for the day. And I feel like you can easily and change and then upgrade that, transform it very rapidly.

Bob Cooley: So when you see a car, and a part of a car doesn't work, in an animated sense, the car kind of knows it likes to take you places and do things. Well, your body is the same way. And just like a car needs to be helped buy other people, you yourself need to be helped by other people to develop also. So it never works for a person to just self-stretch. They need to create a group of people, a community starts forming where they're helping each other to develop because you can't just self-stretch to develop your body. You can't do anything just by yourself, really. That's not how it works. And so communities start forming. So, you go on the webpage, you learn some self-stretches. You know you need help with your hamstrings. You get your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your friends to help you stretch your hamstrings, you stretch their hams. It starts going that way, that's how that really works.

Bob Cooley: And then if you're fortunate enough to have an ability to come to one of the studios, you'd get to see people get self-stretched, really, I mean assisted stretching. A lot of different concerns and causes are happening. We have online classes that happen too, and you can do online stretch sessions. You can go on our webpage, and there's 12 different trainers, and you can hire them. And you can be self-stretching, and they can be talking you through it about how to do it. And if you had somebody with you, they could be teaching your friend or whoever that person is to help you stretch and do that. So you can be anywhere in the world and get help that way.

James Williamson: Cool.

Bob Cooley: It has been extraordinary, the situation that James has brought us into and the support that we've gotten during this. It's radically changed a lot. Like everybody, I've had negative past experiences with people, and I kind of harbor that negativity and think that's going to happen again. And from being with James, he's been erasing that. I call him the medicine man. He's been erasing that out of me by always surprising me in the same way I'm surprising him by like, "Oh, your wrist is ... Oh, we'll fix the wrist. Oh, your hand is too ... Oh, your thumb is an issue? That was 20 years." "No, problem. Let see what's going on."

James Williamson: Incredible.

Bob Cooley: He's [crosstalk 00:54:49].

James Williamson: For instance, my hands, I can't even tell you the number of years I went where my thumb pads were so tight, I could barely even squeeze them. They were like sausages. And it was a source of tension that I felt, and it propagated up my forearms to my shoulders. Walking through an airport or a stressful day flying or whatever, it just grows on you. And you changed that so fast, and the amount of tension that-

Bob Cooley: In other words, you could have it for 20 years, and we can get rid of it, somebody skilled in assisting could get rid of 50% of it in three or four sessions or something. They're doing a bunch of other stuff, they're not just doing that. The rate of destruction that's going into the body can be removed much faster than the time period the person's been carrying that around.

James Williamson: So I feel like I can actually see a path. I know there's a path for me to perform as an athlete the best I've ever performed in the next 10 years. I know that there is a guy that just went to Tampa Bay, a quarterback named Tom Brady that everybody is wondering how long he can possibly last in there. And everybody's frame of reference is number of years.

Bob Cooley: Hoping you're watching this, Tom. Ari tried to connect us so we could stretch you. We would love to still help you, Tom.

James Williamson: But I think he's doing something along the lines of what you're doing. He might have stolen something, but there's no reason why that guy couldn't play till he's age 50. I wish you could have fixed Peyton Manning before he retired.

Bob Cooley: And if you're a really talented singer, I would love to work with a talented singer. I lover singers too. So we're going to go back. We're going to go to Tucson for a week after I've been in Boston and Charles has been in Colorado, and Alexandra, his assistant, who's just the most extraordinary person, and Sean who's been assisting me stretching me and assisting me with James, with Alexandra's help, we're going to all convene again in Tucson, Arizona. We're going to have to put up large fences to keep anybody from coming in because everybody is going to want to come join us now. No. We're going to spend another week there doing that. But this is a long-term, committed, phenomena that's happened here. The relationship develops in very supportive ways, and James introduced me to some very amazing people also, like himself.

James Williamson: So, we'll cut this short here. It's 58 minutes, that's a pretty good time.

Bob Cooley: The next time.

James Williamson: We'll do another one of these, a short one-

Bob Cooley: In Tucson.

James Williamson: ... maybe a week or so from now and get after more targeted things, maybe just do a few self-stretches that people can kind of see.

Bob Cooley: Yes, and show them what the assisted stretching looks like [crosstalk 00:57:35].

James Williamson: And I'd also like to touch on your story a little bit more too, how you came.

Bob Cooley: How we figured this out.

James Williamson: The circumstances that led to Bob's discovery was not just an overnight phenomemon. It was a long tunnel.

Bob Cooley: It takes some decades.

James Williamson: It's an incredible story, and it's something that I want everybody to hear. Let's see if there's any questions. I don't even know how to end this thing, so I'll just hit end live video. Hope you guys enjoyed a little bit of this. I can have Bob contact anyone of you that have any specific questions, and, again, I hope you understand how instant this really is. I know people hear the word instant, and they think of something that's cheap or a trick, but this definitely works. I've tried a lot of different things, and chiropractics didn't ever really work for me. This stuff works.

Bob Cooley: So if you want to contact, you can go on our webpage, thegeniusofflexibility.com. If you want to get to me personally, you can just, like anybody in my position, just come and get me directly. It's This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Just email me, and you'd be quite surprised how much I'll get back to you, so that'd be fun.

James Williamson: All right. Thanks, buddy.

Bob Cooley: Thanks.

James Williamson: It was fun. All right, bye, guys.

Bob Cooley: Thanks for doing that.

The Genius of Flexibility