Squish Salon II held March 28th, 2025
Ben Interviews Purple
Choice Quotes Edited by Razma
Safest place in San Francisco : somatic savant culture catalyzes kinnection
Ben opens his interview with Purple by sharing that he organized this wisdom share because ‘genius is hiding in plain sight… there are body workers that I have worked with that have absolutely revolutionized how I experience being human”. Aš an entrepreneur Ben describes the cultural heriarchy that places body workers low on the dominant culture’s perception of value.
Purple explains some of his cultural constructions, explaining that “squish has become a ubiquitous term for me because it encompasses both texture and action… the ability to adapt and conform, to provide support without compromising structural integrity.
Babies are squishy. Healthy tissue is, by its nature, squishy – adaptable, mobile, and flexible. Engaging in squishy activities is reminding our body what it’s like to be fluid and mobile.
One thing your body does in response to any kind of stress is inflammation which is fluid retention. Your body holds on and those fluids can’t circulate, and getting squishy facilitates the movement of all the fluid in your body. You’re mostly fluid, so you should be very fluid.
Tension and inflammation are predominantly created from how we hold ourselves in relationship to gravity. So by surrendering to gravity and using body weight as tools we can mobilize fluid in each other.
This can be a mutually beneficial, relaxing, mobilizing experience, because the primary language that we all speak before we even have words is through neurological entrainment, meaning we feel how other humans feel, and that’s how we learn on a fundamental level. Unfortunately, we get conditioned away from that, but it’s still hardwired into our neurology. When you touch somebody, you feel how they feel.
One of the key pieces of being squishy is being really relaxed and not trying to effort the person you’re interacting with into relaxation. Ideally you are able to arrange and stack with passive gravimetrics to get the same structural impact on them, but without exerting effort. If you’re efforting, their nervous system is going to not be able to relax.”
Ben adds context stating ” the me from 20 years ago, would say this seems unimportant on my quest to build something that matters in the world. But what I’ve come to learn is that that physical touch is actually as essential as water. Has anyone heard of, you know, failure to thrive? Infants that aren’t held, that don’t receive physical touch die”
Purple explains that his work has deeper meaning because “If I can help someone be more comfortable in their body, more of their conscious awareness is going to be in their body. So it’s my way of cultivating more consciousness on the planet, by helping people be more comfortable so their consciousness can actually embody in this plane, and they don’t disassociate somewhere else.
It is so fundamental to the experience of being human, to be touched, and yet we have a culture that that doesn’t allow for the conditions for this to happen, which is part of the reason why we’re creating, hopefully, the safest space in San Francisco tonight.
Ben adds “We must nourish that part of us, because if we’re not parched for touch thirst, we’re at least pretty dehydrated most of the time from the level of touch that we we really need to receive. That’s one of the powerful things with what you’re saying in the lack of effort, that usefulness, you’re getting very calm and relaxed in your nervous system, so that, if you’re working on me, I can receive that along with the physical manipulation, but learn how to how to relax and be in flow and have that larger access to my consciousness.”
Purple draws on his electrical engineering background, explaining that the principals of “basic mechanics ask, how do you create pressure differential in the body to mobilize fluid without effort?
People’s nervous system is 10 times more receptive to pressure generated by their own body weight than by you applying yours to them. There’s a natural relaxation process in being held, you’re supported, and it is neurological, physical, energetic, and structural.
Due to this, I don’t have to do much effort, as you are receptive, so I can just lean in and stack functions.
Most of what I’m doing in my practice is asking, how do I create the most impact with the least amount of effort, by just stacking functions?
This is why therapeutic lap dancing is popular, because you get everything : compression, traction, torsion, and immersion.
In therapeutic lap dancing, the amount of structural leverage you have is insane, I can even lap dance three people, because a lap is this beautiful, dynamic platform that’s ergonomic, bio resonant, and it is simply a matter of using conscious awareness to create the alignment of energy. “
Purple’s expounds in his origin story, explaining “I got hardwired for somatic awareness by being a sick kid. I had a lot of asthma and allergies as a kid, so I basically did the first 10 years of my life in a chronic meditation, telling myself, be in the body, feel the body. I missed most of school, so I didn’t get the social indoctrination, so I just stayed in this experience.
When you do body work without any actual training, and you just experiment, there’s a natural filter for effectiveness. I just figured out what worked and ran with it, and determined how I could get the most range of motion out of a given individual in the least number of seconds.
Part of our social condition, is abstraction. We have an amazing amount of hand eye coordination, but it’s cognitive. So what happens is, we tend to try to do things with our hands all the time, but your hands are actually the weakest part of your entire body. So hands are good for mapping if you want to feel what’s actually going on with somebody.
{demonstrating} I can feel where you’re denser and there’s tension here, but don’t use your hands to have structural impact. Lean in, with your entire body. The more contact you can make with your body to someone else’s body, the more impact and the more of your nervous system can attune to them.”
Full Transcript no edits
Unknown 0:00 One of the the reasons that I want, want to have this talk is sometimes I feel that genius is hiding in plain sight, right? Like there are body workers that I have worked with that have absolutely revolutionized how I experience being human, right? But we, there's, there's some. We go, oh, well, you know, entrepreneur, Oh, way up here, billion dollars. And then body worker, oh, they're great. And we prepare no the amount of impact that they can have in the world is the same, if not greater. And I say that as a entrepreneur, and so, well, yeah, but obviously Unknown 0:47 we're not the billionaires, Unknown 0:50 but so, so yeah, I mean, so let's talk about squish. What is squish? Unknown 0:59 I squish has become a ubiquitous term for me because it encompasses both texture and action. I think I adopted it because the one thing that's we're all interacting with at this moment is squish in the form of like couches or beds, and the quality that makes it squishy is the ability to adapt and conform, to provide support without compromising structural integrity. In a gravimetric field, that's like differential from our, like, normal structural, like alignment. Unknown 1:45 So if I can translate that into English, so I mean, squish for you is sort of become a way of life, right? It's, it's soft things that you can lay on. But it's also a way of doing body work. It's a way of engaging. This is really unusual to see you in a chair. Yeah, no. Unknown 2:11 More challenging things that I do. Unknown 2:19 But so, so, so talk to me about what, what is it like? What is squish? How do I know if I'm squishy? Unknown 2:29 Um, well, babies are squishy. Yeah, right. Like, like, healthy tissue is, by its nature, squishy, and so And at the core quality there is adaptable, mobile, flexible, right? And so what we're trying to cultivate is with by being squishy and engaging in squishy activities is reminding our body what it's like to be fluid and mobile. Unknown 3:03 Yeah, so in other words, what you're saying is that, like a baby's body and a healthy body is squishy, it's flexible, it's supple, right? It's free to move in different ways, and because of it, maybe you can, you know, illuminate us on some of the ways that we lose this natural squish that we all have, but we from sitting in chairs and all sorts, yeah, Unknown 3:28 repetitive stress, any kind of stress, yeah, basically, the one thing your body does in response to any kind of stress is inflammation. And what inflammation is fluid retention, right? So your body holds on, yeah, and those fluids can't circulate and so, like, what you're fundamentally, what you're really trying to do when you're getting squishy is to facilitate the movement of all the fluid in your body. You're mostly fluid, like you should be very fluid. And the things that stop that from happening are tension and information in the body, and most of that's how we hold ourselves in relationship to gravity. So by just surrendering to gravity and then using gravity as a tool and our own body weight, we can, like, help mobilize fluid in each other. And it can be like a mutually beneficial, relaxing, mobilizing experience, because the primary language that we all speak before we even have words which thank you guys for doing this, like this is a growth edge for me to talk about it, because, like, we all primarily learn how to relate to each other through neurological entrainment, like we feel how other humans feel, and that's how we learn to like on a fundamental level. And then we get conditioned away from that, but it's still hardwired into. Or neurology, like when you touch somebody, you feel how they feel somewhere in the making that system, yeah, so one of the key pieces of being squishy is being really relaxed and how you interact with another human, yeah, and not like trying to effort them into relaxation, like you want to be able to, like, arrange and stack and just do passive gravimetrics to get the same structural impact on them, but without exerting effort. Because if you're efforting, they're not going to their nervous system is going to not be able to relax. Yeah, Unknown 5:35 well, and I think it's interesting to talk about the the importance of this, because I would say like the me, the me from 20 years ago, would be like this seems unimportant on my, you know, quest to build something that matters in the world, right? But what, what I've come to learn is that that physical touch, right? It's actually as essential as water, right? Like Has anyone heard of, you know, failure to thrive, right? Infants that aren't held, that don't receive physical touch, and I would theorize that also has to do with the mirror neurons firing and actually learning how to regulate our nervous systems by being in physical connection. I keep looking over at my doctor here. I'm like, am I? Am I lying about this? Yeah, Unknown 6:34 but there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a good is why I devoted my life to the practice of cultivating ways to help people become more comfortable in their body. Yeah, right. If I can help someone be more comfortable in their body, more of their conscious awareness is going to be in their body. So it's my way of literally cultivating more consciousness on the planet by just helping people be more comfortable so their consciousness can actually embody in this plane, and they don't associate somewhere else, right, right? Unknown 7:13 And that, and I to me like, this is, this is the thing is, like, it's so fundamental to the experience of being human, to being touched, and yet we have a culture that that doesn't allow for the conditions for that to happen, which is part of the reason why we're creating, hopefully, the safest space in San Francisco tonight, right? And it's to is to nourish that part of us, because if we're not, you know, totally parched for thirst, we're at least pretty dehydrated most of the time from the level of touch that we we really need to receive. And I think that that's one of the powerful things with what you're saying in the lack of effort, that usefulness, part of it is like you're getting very calm and relaxed in your nervous system, so that, if you're working on me, I can receive that along with the physical manipulation, but but learn how to how to relax and be in flow and actually Have that larger access to my consciousness. Accurate. Yeah, cool. Well, so what does it look like? What like? What does squishing look like? I mean, we're gonna see a lot of Unknown 8:29 it well. I mean, the basic mechanics is like, how do you create pressure differential in the body to mobilize fluid without effort? And the basic principle of that, let me Unknown 8:42 just interrupt that. That's, you sound like an engineer? Yeah, when you say it like that, that doesn't sound like any kind of woosh. Like, Unknown 8:51 no. Like, my whole approach is, is squish engineering. Like? A good example is like, like, like, like, when you think about sharing body weight, you think about leaning on people, right? Yeah, but it doesn't. It's not a one way street. Like, a good example is like, I can create pressure on you by supporting you. Yes, I'll hold on. And honestly, this this form of pressure I find people this form of pressure, like your people's nervous system is 10 times more receptive to pressure generated by their own body weight than by you applying yours to them. And so there's a, there's a natural relaxation process of being held. Like, if you're being held, you're supported, like, and that it's neurological, it's physical, it's energetic, it's structural, yeah, right. And then, because of that, you, I don't have to, like, do much effort, because you are. Receptive, so I can just lean in and stack functions. So most of what I'm doing is like, how do I create the most layers of impact with the least amount of effort, by just stacking functions? And then this is, by the way, and this is why lap therapeutic, lap dancing, kind of just took over, because you get everything, you get compression, you get traction, you get torsion. It's immersive, Unknown 10:38 and the amount of structural leverage you have is insane, like you can, I can even lap dance three people, because beautiful, dynamic platform that's ergonomic, bio resonant, and you don't, it's Just a matter of like, using a conscious awareness to just create the alignment of energy, and that's all you're really doing, is just following the click on one of those Unknown 11:12 things you say three People, Unknown 11:17 you have to have the right chair, though, yeah, I Unknown 11:22 usually use a bench, right? Because, because part of it is like, you know, you can roll it out and Unknown 11:35 again again. It doesn't really matter. It's not a dominant submission relationship right Unknown 11:45 depends on skill level, Unknown 11:59 body work, modality on the planet, and nothing has decent quad work like lap dance, Unknown 12:07 I don't know How to rotate out of this. Unknown 12:15 That was great, wonderful. Unknown 12:25 Interview first. Unknown 12:32 So I want to ask a little bit about like, how did this happen? Right? You're You're purple now, but you started out as Eric, once upon the time you were a little Eric, yeah. And so how did that happen? You were sharing a little bit of Yeah, Unknown 12:52 it happened. We formative for you. I got hardwired for somatic awareness, actually by being a sick kid, like I also have a lot of asthma and allergies as a kid, yeah, so I basically did the first 10 years of my life, was just a chronic meditation, just like be in the body, feel the body. Missed most of school, didn't get the social indoctrination, so I just stayed in this experience. Unknown 13:18 And now, now that's interesting, because you sort of get a choice, right? If you're a sick kid, like, go into the body, and other people might go, let me dissociate, yeah, and leave the body. Yeah, right. So you you went into the body. But that still doesn't explain, like, how do you go from being a sick kid into I exist in this world of everything squishy. Well, the analogy Unknown 13:44 that I think everybody here can relate to is I followed somebody to a party, yeah, and that party was the very first party I'd ever been to that was outside of the kind of alcohol driven normative like school culture, right? So I found psychedelics, which were super expanding to my sensory experience. And then, of course, the people I resonated the most with, and then environment where the people doing bodywork, yeah, so I just started doing body work on psychedelics and realized I'm like, Oh, this is super empowering and and healing and and adds a depth to experience that is so rich and so profound. And so I literally just followed them home like the lost puppy. And was like, What do you guys do when you're not doing this, and they all made Chai. So I started making chai and got into the nutrition and alkaline. And so that's a big, hard way. You have to have the basic building blocks. We have my herbal decoction I call. Vitality, Unknown 15:01 excellent, yeah. And I think two things, one, it sounds like, so this is what happens when you just do a lot of acid and body work, Unknown 15:11 well with with the with the freedom of no dogma. So when you do body work without any actual training, and you just experiment, yeah, there's a natural filter for effectiveness, yeah, you know the And so basically, what happened was I just figured out what worked and ran with it, and figured out how I could get the most range of motion out of a given individual in the least number of seconds. Wow. Unknown 15:40 And then, and I just want to say that I think that takes a lot of courage right to be able to go do that and follow your your path. I mean, one thing that you didn't mention is that when you sort of have this awakening following folks to a party you previously, you were studying engineering at Cal Poly, and then you just let that go, but kept the engineering mind and just testing for what works, yeah, Unknown 16:07 yeah, AB testing with human interaction involves your embodied consciousness. Unknown 16:16 Incredible. So does that sound fun? Does anyone want to Yeah, all right. Great, well, and so I want to close with with one question, which is, if there was, if there was one concept or one practical thing that that people would take back into their lives, and you maybe even wish everyone on the planet knew that. What would be that? One thing, putting you on the spot. Unknown 16:47 So one thing, yeah, Unknown 16:51 lean in. What does that? What does that mean? Um, Unknown 16:57 so we, part of our social condition, is abstraction. We have an amazing amount of hand eye coordination, but it's cognitive, right? So what happens is, we tend to try to do things with our hands all the time, but your hands are actually the weakest part of your entire body, right? So hands are good for mapping, like, if you want to feel what's actually going on with somebody. You know, you can make okay, I can feel where you're denser and there's tension here, right, right, but don't use your hands to actually have structural impact. Yeah. Lean in, yeah, with your entire body. Like, the more contact you can make with your body to someone else's body, the more impact and the more of your nervous system can actually attune to them. Unknown 17:52 Thank you. Let's give them Unknown 18:00 Yeah, all right, thank you for that. This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai