Dyspraxia's Gifts

Welcome to The Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast, where we explore the extraordinary minds of those who see the world differently. Host Lillian Skinner talks with independent researcher Allan White, a fascinating individual who has carved his own path in life. Allan, who has dyspraxia, joins us to shed light on this often-misunderstood neurotype and its surprising connections to conditions like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Together, they challenge traditional notions of intelligence, discussing how creative, holistic thinking and a strong connection between the body and mind are not just valuable—they're essential for thriving in a rapidly changing world. Allan’s journey from a childhood of feeling misunderstood to embracing his unique neurodivergence as a source of genius offers profound insight and hope for anyone who has ever felt like an outlier.

Tune in as they discuss:

• The connection between dyspraxia and hypermobility.
• How physical and creative pursuits can unlock deeper levels of intelligence.
• The societal pressures to conform to "average" and the high cost of doing so.
• The importance of embracing a multi-dimensional way of thinking to navigate the future.

This episode is a celebration of what it means to be truly intelligent—not by society's narrow definition, but by the power of our integrated minds and bodies. Join us to learn how embracing our authentic selves can be our greatest strength.

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• 15:01 (Cont.) Dyspraxia's Gifts

Transcript

Dyspraxia's Gifts

[00:00:00] I can tell you how mine works, and that might give you a little bit of, um, a somatic boost Insight.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast. I'm Lillian Skinner. Today we're going to talk a little bit about dyspraxia. I have an expert with me, Allan, who has Dyspraxia himself. He's an independent researcher of it, and a really interesting person. He has chosen his own path in life.

This is how we all have to be. Those of us who are the most sensitive are going to have to be this first because the system is getting harder and harder for us to stay in, and we have to figure out how we do that.

How do we transition out of what used to be into something that's better for us, or something that at least can sustain us and help us be successful in the future we're facing.

Allan is one of those people that has done this. He is very adaptive. He was able to carve out his own way of being in the world. And this is exactly who we need to talk to and listen to and understand, to survive what's coming. Our connective tissue and our connective intelligence are related.

We both have a similar physical flexibility and similar [00:01:00] cognitive flexibility, which is something that our society has not valued because we have been in a society that divides, dissects and segments. Basically all of our growth has been us breaking up things that Genius have made in the past.

I think it's important for us to understand how our creativity works, how our bodies are made differently, and need to be a part of our intelligence because we have that integrated intelligence. We have cognitive and somatic intelligence that come together to make us very creative.

When I went into what I was, I didn't fall down and never get up. I thrived. Because being what you actually are is easy. If we were all just allowed to do that, life would be a lot easier. It turns out that we naturally figure out what we are supposed to be because we have sensitivity guiding us there.

Now that average has been replaced essentially by ai, we should all be going towards figuring out how we can be outliers. How we can find our higher dimensional intelligence, because this is now the future. We have 2D in a box. 2D was obviously not that exceptional If we can put it into a [00:02:00] computer and replace it that quickly.

But our somatic intelligence, our creative intelligence, It's incredible. Most have no idea how amazing it is.

So let's talk to Allan and understand a little bit about Dyspraxia today.

Hi Allan. Thanks for joining us.

Hello.

Would it be Okay if we started talking about how Dyspraxia works and how perhaps Eller Danlos is related to Dyspraxia? Or are there similarities?

Yeah. I've, heard a bit about Ehlers Danlos and I understand it to be a connective tissue disorder where essentially, , there's how would I put it?

 I understand it to be, a lot of, hypermobility of the joints, due to, some of the connective tissues around those joints, not being quite as, I guess you could say, strong or whatever.

And a lot of times, individuals I know another person that has Ehlers Danlos, and, she describes, basically being able to bend joints, certain joints in directions that most people can't. And, and I also understand that there is [00:03:00] a pretty high degree of comorbidity between Ehlers, Danlos and dyspraxia. It's very common for people with dyspraxia to also have Ehlers Danlos.

As far as the why of it, I also understand the Ehlers Danlos to be, somewhat, neuropsychological as well.

And, with dyspraxia there can be a bit of a tendency to also have quite a bit of hypermobility of the joints. I don't know whether Ellers Danlos is something distinct from a general hypermobility. But there is quite a bit of overlap in that regard. 

Yes. It seems like they do have a lot of commonalities. I know for me, I didn't know as a kid I had Ehlers Danlos. We have to stay on top of our flexibility and strength balance. When I was a kid, my hips were so seized up from being forced to sit still in school that I didn't think I was flexible. But when I got to college, I was running into so much pain that I had to start stretching, and I found out I was extraordinarily [00:04:00] flexible that I just had been pretty much in a lock up until that point.

Oh yeah, 

Unfortunately, it wasn't until I was an adult that I even learned how far away from average I was and how far away from healthy I was. I had to live in my healthy space where I'm falling apart. But when I'm in my healthy space, I am doing excellent.

 yeah. Yeah. And I very much experienced the same thing. In fact, I see, from a fairly early point in life, I learned that, with my dyspraxia, it basically seems, and I've heard of other dyspraxic individuals opine the same thing, is that, essentially.

It seems to be so much more imperative that we do take care of ourselves physically. Through very, assiduous physical exercise and making sure that we're not, putting on too much additional body weight, because if you have, impairments that affect, motor functioning and bodily stability, any additional weight that you're carrying, is going to mean that you're going to experience pain, fatigue and weakness a lot more readily.

That bodily instability might be even [00:05:00] magnified somewhat. And that was just something I intuitively figured out at a fairly early, point in life. I've exercised religiously, pretty much. Most of my adult life. Because I've always understood that, doing anything less than that as well as, very strict about my diet. Making sure that I'm not eating things that are going to cause me to pack on a lot of pounds, that, anything less than those measures, will seemingly cause you a much more rapid deterioration of, my physicality, relative to most anyone else, and, through a lot of the physical exercises that I do. I get like some of the best ideas in terms of ideas for riding and like, whenever I'm, going, running or something or, whenever I'm, doing my weight training. 

Oh yes. I think this is part of higher dimensionality thinking. I can exercise and all of a sudden everything sorts itself out and I have clarity on whatever I was trying to figure out. I can write whole papers while I'm doing [00:06:00] exercise. And I wonder how much of our issues in school are related to our inability to exercise.

Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Same thing happens whenever I shoot archery too, Yeah. I shoot traditional archery and getting back to the whole thing about hyper hypermobility and Ehlers Danlos, after all my exercises, I always stretch out afterwards and, I'm now in my early fifties and I can still, if I sit on the floor, I can still, touch my toes almost effortlessly. I almost bring the midline of my hand, right at, to the tip of my toes, without any effort, whenever I'm, stretching out after my exercises, I do a lot of stretches like that, where, in some ways there's a little bit more flexibility that I experience in, most. Men my age generally will, 

Yeah, for men, that is extraordinary. I also want to ask you to just do a little bio on yourself because I should have started out with that. So Tell me a little bit more about yourself so [00:07:00] the listeners know more about you.

Sure. My name is Allan White and I am a neurodivergent individual with a primary neurotype of dyspraxia. 

And dyspraxia is commonly known to be a neuropsychological disorder, and that's the term that's often used that includes, primarily, psychomotor functioning, differences what's properly termed as dyspraxia by most clinicians in the UK essentially to my understanding, entails both the psychomotor aspects of it.

Difficulties with balance, coordination, et cetera, along with some, cognitive impairments that oftentimes don't quite fit within the diagnostic criteria of any of the other neuro divergences, like a DHD, autism, et cetera. It's common for people who are dyspraxic to have executive dysfunction challenges.

It's also common for such individuals to have what's known as slow cognitive processing speed. I [00:08:00] have that, slow cognitive processing along with, some of the psychomotor differences. So that's basically, a bit about my neurotype and, I am an independent researcher and author and lecturer on, matters pertaining to, neurodiversity, neurodiversity politics.

And, I have a particular fascination with restructuring political and economic systems in ways that are informed, by the experience of neurodiversity, if that makes sense. 

It absolutely makes sense, and I think that I'm doing something similar.

Oh yeah. 

I hope you don't mind if I bring up my Ehlers Danlos to compare this to. Because I am a somatic embodied learner, and when I do that, it helps me understand the nuance between it. We are really good at modeling things in our body. We can model organic things and understand what it is to be like them. Model and figure out how they would move through the space or [00:09:00] react in certain conditions.

In our society they say this is narcissism for us to talk from an I statement, but it actually is a somatic thing. We're talking from our body. And I wonder if you are not similar in this way.

Yeah, yeah. I totally understand that. 

Great, thank you. So can you tell me, when you were a kid, how did you find out about your dyspraxia? What was it like to be you, as a kid? 

Well, so, what I remember about my childhood is that I've always had manifestations of psychomotor differences.

I could never quite do some of the things, like a lot of the climbing in my generation it was still quite common, for kids to actually be outside playing, climbing and jumping and hopping and skipping and everything,

 I've never had kids of my own, but I do know that it's a common complaint nowadays from a lot of parents that, oh, kids, they don't want to get out and play. All they want to do is be at their. Computer or phone or tablet or whatever. And so let me [00:10:00] give you a little bit of a context of the time that I grew up in and what childhood was generally like then.

So, that much I do remember about my childhood, this kind of inability to keep up with my peers in a lot of situations. Like if I was out with a group of my friends, they all wanted to climb a tree, that wasn't something I could do.

Of course, there were a lot of times that I could keep up and lead just fine. If we were all out on our bikes, pedaling to go somewhere or whatever, then, I could keep up and do just fine. But I also had like really real difficulty like with playing the same kind of sports that a lot of children usually boys tend to play, baseball, soccer, whatever. 

But I do remember like a few things that I did quite well in the realm of like certain play activities that children do. I remember we all, like in the neighborhood that we lived in. I developed the reputation of being quite an adept. Catcher of little Critters, snakes. A lot of my peers will be like, how do you do it? We'll go in the woods and they [00:11:00] come back home with a bag full of garter snakes. 

You're the crocodile hunter.

Yeah. So, there were things like that that I could do, seemingly a little bit more adeptly than my peers, you know, now in the scholastic realm.

How I found out I was different was basically, and this is probably a familiar story to many other neurodivergent children, or neurodivergent adults reflecting on their childhood, I remember being oftentimes randomly called out a class, by school psychologists to take all these different tests.

They'd have me walk across a balance beam the symbol, a puzzle or something. And it was always so perplexing to me as to why. And, I had to take occupational therapy and like, when, throughout my grade school years. And of course, it never worked, I'm still as uncoordinated and inefficient as I ever was.

Of course, Having to take this therapy, not really being told why, it's a very, [00:12:00] um alienating experience for a child, of course, the other kids, they see they're something,

They see you being called out to class by this professional, they kind of have a sense of what's happening. And so it's very, it's very ostracizing and very alienating, so I do remember that aspect of it too, just, uh, feeling very, uh, ridiculed and ostracized from my peers all the time.

 And of course, you know, the struggles with PE classes and everything, and, academically, the only class that I was in, what they call the IEP program for was mathematics. It was the only class I was, I had to take, any sort of remedial, teaching for was the math classes.

Others I did just fine with language arts classes, the other sorts of subjects, history, whatever. And it wasn't until really like late adolescence that I. Began to really actually learn about the various neuro divergences, like [00:13:00] -A-D-H-D and dyslexia. This was in the early nineties when those were about the only two kinds of things like that, that were widely known about.

And I would read literature like that, and I'd be like, oh, okay. I could see how some of this kind of relates. And then right around that time I recall reading a kind, called the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, and the book was written like back in the late eighties.

Um. And something really interesting that it mentioned for dyslexia is that, and of course, the criteria, they've long since changed the criteria. Plus, it was a British book, and they don't use the, DSM like we do, but at least in that reference, I mean, it mentioned that coordination difficulties, can be an aspect of dyslexia.

So, I'd read things like that, and, again, like I said, I know that the criteria is different now, but I'd read things like that, and I was like, okay, that fits. And so for a while I thought, at that point in late adolescence when I started to learn about these different [00:14:00] neuro divergences, I thought either dyslexia or ADD, or some combination thereof, had to be, uh, the case for me.

So basically, in terms of my childhood adolescence and whatnot, I didn't really find out about any specific possible causes until, I was like in late adolescence, I grew up always knowing that I was very different but never understanding why. 

Oh, that's really interesting because we had a similar thing in our family, but my father got in front of it because it was a family thing. You know the ropes they used to have in the gym. I think they got rid of them maybe in the nineties, but it was like two stories high.

And they would put that little thin mat underneath it and if a kid actually fell, they broke their arm or something. My siblings and I could all climb that rope because my dad would make us climb a rope that was even taller in our backyard at least twice a week. It didn't matter if it was snowing or whatever, we had to go out there and climb this rope.

And I realized what he was doing now, which I thought was kind of neurotic at the time, he was trying to keep our strength and our flexibility Equal. I don't know that [00:15:00] my kids could do that. They're not outside climbing rope like I was. 

Yeah, exactly. With the mathematics related subjects, the interesting thing that I found whenever I was in college is that, I had to start out my first year of college, taking grade, school level math to kind of get caught up.

So, I eventually, I advanced from that to algebra and whatnot. But then once I got past algebra, taking, uh, college level math classes and once I got past the algebra, I started to take statistics. I struggled a lot less with statistics than I did. The algebra. 

That makes so much sense because algebra is visual. We can see it in real life.  I think Temple Grandin talked about that. Even the math savants of my family struggle with algebra. It's probably because we needed to be embodied. I remember thinking, I really wanted it to be applicable to life, and we just have math somatically intelligent. That's why we need it to be embodied, but they won't do that in the school system. They make it linear, and it's really [00:16:00] especially hard. Because they do that. I really think all of dyscalculia and dyslexia is probably just somatic intelligence, and since it's oppressed, you're not learning it that way.

The creatives have to learn it top and bottom, so they have to learn it from the body and the mind. 

Exactly. Yeah. As far as like quantitative and math related, classes. I think that in general with my, with basically, like the intellectual curiosities and whatnot that I have, one key moment in my life, , that I think triggered it all, was, uh, again, , this happened, when I was like , a late adolescent, 17, 18 years old, right around the same time that I started finding out about all these different neuro divergences is that, I developed an interest in what are known as, uh, primitive technologies. , I write about it from time to time on my substack. Basically by primitive technology is what I'm referring to, uh, are things like the manufacturer of stone tools.

Basically, napping arrowheads out of flint and obsidian, making, halted [00:17:00] ground stone ax, heads out things like basalt or, Or Jade or whatever, As well as other skills like, making cordage out of natural fibers like say stinging nettle fiber or animal sinus and gut

 making fire by friction. Things like that. And think that it just, it, there's always been this sort of wide-ranging curiosity I've had about a lot of things, this sort of a very divergent kind of orientation to the world around me.

I've always had this tendency to, you know, get like a question or thought that pops up in my mind, and then I've got to go to the library or something to 

Try to find something about it and or maybe something that I.

Read or see somewhere might inspire it. How I developed the interest in primitive technologies was one morning I was preparing for school. I was a junior in high school at the time, and I saw this, uh, news broadcast about, then it was breaking news about, this was in the early nineties [00:18:00] about, frozen mummified corpse that they found in the Ilian Glacier of Austria later dubbed the Iceman or Uzi.

Because it was basically a frozen mummified corpse that they found up there. There were a number of soft tissues and organic materials that were also well preserved. He had a bow made out of U wood and some, uh, garments that were well preserved that were made out of different, animal, hides and, vegetable fibers.

And of course he had, um. A copper ax that was halfed in you would, and so one of the first news reports that I saw about that Find, was showing all these artifacts, you know, my first thought was, what would it be like to live in a culture, where that was what the technology was like.

So, some days later, I'm perusing a local bookstore. And I stumbled across this book called Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Deanol. And the book had descriptions on how to make stone [00:19:00] tools, how to tan animal hides, and things like that.

So from there it was just like a lot of reading and trial and error learning and whatnot, that was the start of, I guess you could say a general curiosity really about the human condition that I never had. The interesting thing is that, it was an interest that developed kind of organically, in my own time and space, outside the formal scholastic system because, functioning within that system, it was so marginalizing for me as a neurodivergent pupil, I mean that, that it just could not spark that same sort of, uh, creativity and sense of wonderment.

You know that is this sort of like a freeform. Wondering and questioning could, 

it's called super focused and special interest and it's literally the apex of genius learning. Yeah. It's so awesome. Yeah. 

So, can I ask you, how did your [00:20:00] parents handle that?

Well, uh, basically the same way um, whenever I would try to, tell them what I was finding out about the different Neurodivergences and, how I could identify so much of it, within myself. They basically reacted the same way. They did whenever the school system tried to convey to them that, that there was something about me that needed to be investigated, that is they just tried to blow it off, dismiss it, because, they'd never wanted to bother, wanted to be bothered by it, that sounds like kind of a harsh and judgmental. Pronouncement on my part. But, you know, that was just how I'd always felt. 

I understand that my dad's family was very much about us being average. We could never fall out of average. They didn't want us to be exceptional. They didn't want us to be below it. We had to pretend to be average, and it was about us basically disappearing, and it cost us dearly to be average. I would be in the hospital with chronic infections because [00:21:00] I was trying so hard to pretend to be average, and the cost for me cognitively, the cognitive load was so high because I needed more.

And so I was taking on. All this translation load, and I think that happens to a lot of us. We don't understand how pretending is not just something that doesn't cultivate us, but it actually can kill us. 

Exactly. Yeah. Totally. Totally. That was very much, uh, my experience growing up too. It's just my parents, they couldn’t really handle the idea of having a child who is different in any way, you know?

 It is almost why we probably went into this and trying to understand it because it was illogical the way our parents were acting. There was almost an indifference to the struggles we were having because the fifties were probably so cruel. I think my father, something broken him and he'll never admit his struggle or his pain, and because he won't admit it, he won't heal.

There was legitimacy there. His family was forcibly lobotomized and institutionalized for schizophrenia. They didn't have, because we couldn't break [00:22:00] our intelligence and we couldn't externalize it in the way they insisted. So we were never seen as intelligent, despite having incredible intelligence.

And it makes perfect sense too, that. We don't understand how creatives learn. It has been erased how We learn through our head and our body and it has to come together and see the whole, that's what we're made to do. We're made to see the whole, for the whole group. But it also makes perfect sense why you had such super focus and special interest on things, and you are investigating them because you're embodying that natural style of learning that we're all born with. The natural style that's been around for 300,000 years and only in the last 12,000 of civilizations has it changed and it's become more and more narrow until we're probably at the apex of its narrowness, and that's why we're collapsing again.

Mm-hmm. Oh definitely, that's exactly what it is too. It's a narrowing, 

Speaking about the narrowing of the focus and education and everything, and really, like the narrowing of its entire, basically scope and whatnot.

I recently self-published a book, which is [00:23:00] basically a memoir about, uh, my experiences, growing up with late diagnosed dyspraxia. And, when I was in the process of having that book, beta read and edited, there were some of the beta readers, I intentionally wrote the book in some way.

To, shed some light on, you know, how, broader societal factors affect, different neurodivergent people. Like for example, I would write about, basically, not just my experience as somebody, who could never learn how to drive a car to dis to dyspraxia, but, uh, what's that living in the context of most of, north American society where roadway infrastructures are basically built to privilege, privately owned motor vehicles.

And, it would illustrate very concrete experiences of some of the consequences like that. For example, all the time that I had to waste just commuting to and from college, with a very inefficient bus system because, I couldn't drive, [00:24:00] the roads were not safe for cycling, I mean if there were protected bicycle lane, or the infrastructure with a lot of those, you know, networked into the system, I probably could have rode my recumbent bicycle to and from campus and much less time , than what it took to take two buses to and from campus, you know?

So, I'd mentioned examples like that and, one of my beta readers read that and wrote a comment to the effect of, what does this have to do with dyspraxia? And I'm like 

everything a lot. I mean, it's that 2D focus, of, thinking of any kind of, situation like that where there's a neurodivergence of thinking of it in a strict medical sense of, you know, what are the person's symptoms, so to say, not, what the person experiences in the [00:25:00] broader societal realm.

With society structures and institutions being what they are. Like I said, I had beta readers that just could not make the connections between things like that, that I would illustrate and, how my natural organic functioning, as a dyspraxic individual.

Again, it's this, just this very limited way of thinking that, sort of taught through our, uh, through our, scholastic institutions. 

Yes, and I know actually how they lose it. It's our empathy. It's the focus on competition and the separating our intelligence. Our empathy is how we connect things. And I know for me it's how I recognize patterns. I still have my compassionate empathy, which means I have my cognitive and somatic empathy, and it comes together, and it is able to connect and see the whole picture.

I dare say, our emotions and particularly our empathy may be the most important thing for our intelligence, and is the exact thing they're targeting in our system, trying to [00:26:00] break and destroy. We've moved from no emotions to now on the other side of it where they manage our emotions, but that's still prevents our empathy because we're constantly having to perform our emotions.

Our ability to learn in the body and the mind is incredible, and we can see the loss of it there because this person cannot see how a person having dyspraxia and can't drive would also result in needing buses. And how buses being inefficient would harm or cause more stress or inconvenience in your life when you can't drive.

I mean, come on, that's so very clear.

But this also tells you that we've really marginalized intelligence to this narrow focus and They can't actually think outside their box. And their box is that linear line of cognitive intelligence in whatever their specialty is.

And Allan, I love that you do all of these things because I want you to teach, I think children with love to learn the things you're describing.

It's so wonderful. I want to sit through your class. The things that you describe would tie everything together, [00:27:00] science. Math, history, English, everything. And even the youngest ones could grasp it. Because the way you're using it and using it through making it would be beautiful. It's such a holistic way to teach.

Oh yeah. Definitely. That was, as I started to. Look at my interest in, uh, primitive technologies and human prehistory, through different dimensions, through different lenses. I also begin to see, how like some of these different cultures that, in a post-colonial context, that were deemed as, by many of the colonists as being, to use some of the terminology, just not quite up to par with, their view of how humanity should be.

You know, in a lot of the technologies that. Many of these earlier societies use, there was a, quite a bit of very complex understanding of scientific principles involved, I mean that, that they were cognizant of that many of these [00:28:00] hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists, I mean, had to be cognizant of to, to survive,

and there's just so much, in a lot of these technologies that is embodied, I mean that goes beyond just the mere technical practice of, the skills themselves. 

That doesn't surprise me at all. I actually think that our native cognitive intelligence is a higher level of intelligence. We don't understand it because it's living in peace and harmony. And we're so used to having to compete and drive ourselves to this limit or these extremes in order for us to survive.

But that's not a natural state, and the way I've seen our intelligence, the way I document our whole intelligence is as a web, which is also how the wisdom keepers saw it. I have laid out how it, how the cognitive, the somatic, and the creative come together. How it uses your full sensing. which mean we're much more intelligent. Most gifted people are tested for this exact thing. Our ability to see beyond what is cognitive, the cognitive really is only a small [00:29:00] portion. Anyone who's going past that is actually pulling up somatic intelligence.

We don't really fully understand how profound our holistic intelligence is, and what it really is encompassing.

Exactly. 

Can I ask a different question when you're talking about how you can't drive, I can feel this in my own body. One of the things that it triggered for me is my peripheral vision. It triggers nausea, especially when I'm driving in a place that I don't know well.

so I don't know what's coming. And it's an overwhelm for me that's pretty high. I wonder if for you if it's our sensing is so much higher that plays a part. 

yeah, that was one of the problems I had. I naturally use a lot more of my peripheral visual field, in navigating through space, whenever I'm on foot or using one of my recumbent bicycles, I use a lot more of that peripheral field than most people seem to, and.

When you try to do that while driving, where everything goes so fast and you have to, focus, on much more I guess you could say, a narrow range [00:30:00] of different variables in many ways, then, yeah, I can a lot of times, feel very overstimulated, you know, to the point where, , I felt like it even kind of like, I was even much more fully diminished, Yeah. In terms of my capacity because I was just so overstimulated, 

Can you give me some of the ways that dyspraxia benefits you? I know that there are ways, and I want to know how they result in your giftedness, how they help you learn and grow. Okay.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that, there, some of the kind of noted strengths that come with dyspraxia are kind of like this sort of bigger picture thinking. And this ability to recognize patterns, um, and that's something that I've been told that I'm particularly adept at.

That has come up, you know, for example, whenever I've, done what are known in archeology, field archeology as pedestrian surveys, where you have, a group of, uh, field workers that, walk [00:31:00] in a line over an area and visually scan the field, you know, for things that are like, uh, like scatters of stone fragments, from stone tool manufacture and so.

One of the ways that has manifested in that situation was that, and also, with my background in stone tool manufacturing processes, whenever we would be, doing a pedestrian survey like that, I could much more quickly pick up on a wider variety , of material remains that allude to, Flint napping activity and within an area, and I could also.

Like place the particular types of remains, within the actual process of, like of what phase of the process of, manufacturing stone tools to where I could very quickly discern things, for example, this is the spot where they were quarrying the material.

And uh, and this may have been the [00:32:00] spot where they took the quarry blanks too to, uh, further refine and shape them into the completed implement the whole picture. 

Yeah, and I could relate that to again, my own experience, as a Flint napper.

Um, empathy is another sort of gift that's oftentimes attributed to dyspraxia. And, I've had people tell me that. That I kind of almost have a little bit of a shamanic presence to me.

Yes, you definitely have that. I can totally feel that vibe. You have a very quiet centered presence, that's just very peaceful to be around, and I think it's beautiful.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep. 

The thing that I think is most gifted about you, that dyspraxia is probably contributing to is that you are interested in something and you go into it. That you build your own intelligence in a way that nobody's ever taught you to or told you to, and you know how it ties together and you just naturally following it. And it's so rare to find that.

Honestly, I don't find that in [00:33:00] hardly anyone. Most people I'm teaching to do that. So, when you just show up and had it, I was like, we have to talk. Because it's incredible. It's what we had as little kids this preverbal cognition and it's so much bigger than we realize. It really is this incredible source. It's a well of wisdom and you definitely have that.

Yeah, yeah. I think so too.  I think that getting back to that could be really a very critical part of that.  if there's any chance of saving humanity after, it is very likely, almost apocalyptic event that I can pretty much foresee coming.

I think that getting back to that more holistic intelligence is absolutely imperative to not only saving humanity, post catastrophe, but also like rebuilding human culture, if you will. 

So I am a creative intelligence researcher, and I want to know how does this impact your intelligence? How does it contribute to your sense of knowing? How does it work for you?

I [00:34:00] Um, a lot of times, I make random, almost seemingly very, um, divergent associations, I mean with between some of the most seemingly unexpected things, a lot of times something will remind me of, a particular, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it, I just get these random sparks of questions and ideas that will pop up, that seemingly get triggered by very unrelated kinds of, um, kinds of phenomena.

Let me see if I can think of an example. it's very difficult to describe, because it almost happens at a level that just seems to, I don't know. It is difficult to describe, you know.

I can tell you how mine works, that might give you a little bit of Insight

Yeah.

So earlier when you were talking about being able to walk through the field and seeing things, I have a similar experience with my children. We'll go down to creeks or we'll go to the mountains and they always are like, mom, find [00:35:00] something cool because I can see things they miss.

I don't walk through the world like most people. I let my body decipher the lay of the land. I don't even really need to look at the ground.

My peripheral vision probably is doing most of this work and it will just spot something that's different from the normal rocks. So, I find arrowheads that way. I find fossils that way. There.  It's something's a little different. Our sorting and our ability to pattern recognizes from everything else being the same.

 I just get a little blip; it comes up from my body and it's like a comic strip. How those little bubbles appear where it's thinking. It says something's different. So, then I turn and I let my body lead me to were to zero in on it and then it pulls it up . It's not always a hundred percent, it's not gold or whatever, but it usually is something that's a little bit different.

So I end up bringing home some cool find every single time we go anywhere. One time we went to a Shark Tooth Beach in Florida, and we had bags of sharks teeth because we were so good at it. There is definitely an insight from our somatic where those of us who are connected, we can use our body sensing do [00:36:00] a lot of the work.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that, yeah, that's very, very much, you know how my process manifests too, it is, it's like a comic strip in my head, And it's almost like there's this sort of chain of associations.

For example, I'll write an article on Substack, you know, and then some moments later I'll be reflecting on it and I'll be like, oh, darn, I should have included this. That could be the subject of another article. I could build on that and, make that into another article.

Maybe I could even, uh, build on it further and write a book on it.

I understand that. I do the same thing for my podcast. I write them and I'll just vomit everything out, and then I have to go back and subtract because I can literally talk for an hour straight. When I do that, I have all these other podcasts available to me.

I do think that. We have so many ways to understand the world around us, and there's just no vocabulary for it. Because we've chosen to only focus on the visual and the cognitive.

I've already started [00:37:00] building vocabulary around it, but I would like to get everybody holistic on board with this. Because I think it's needed for the next generation. I think it's needed for people to navigate the change coming. I think it's needed for transitioning to a different way of living.

Yeah. See. And I was just having difficulty, like describing, what my process of, getting these sort of making these kind of creative associations and connections, Yeah. That's a perfect example of how there, there isn't the vocabulary for it, and I mean that's, something that Definitely needs to be developed.

Is there anything else you want to tell us about? Anything else you want to add? 

Yeah, yeah. Well, as far as communication style? Yeah. That's something that's a bit different for me as well, and I like. I'm a holistic thinker, I'm also a holistic communicator as well, I've never been diagnosed as, being on the autistic spectrum, but, uh, like I know that, recently there's been a lot written about what they call gestalt language processing associated with autism and everything I read about that, the [00:38:00] Gestalt language processing, I feel like I very much relate to, because. Whenever I'm explaining something, a lot of people get very impatient because I can get a little bit more verbose than they would generally tend to expect, for the type of answer they're looking for. And it is just because of the way that my mind naturally, um, processes and categorizes information, much more holistically.

I don't see things in the neat, compartmentalized, fragmented ways that we're all taught to think. So for me, there's a lot more variables that are more interconnected and equally important, and, and, to whatever it is that I'm trying to explain and see, and that's another thing with me too, is that, this whole idea of, like hierarchically categorizing, uh, what's most important and what's completely irrelevant, to me that's, I don't.

Quite do that as readily as, not holistic at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

You and me both. I, [00:39:00] don't actually think of myself as a gestalt thinker, but I probably am one to other people. From my perspective, it's them being fragmented and me being whole or Them being cognitive and me being holistic.

But you're not allowed to say that. I can't say I think you're under communicating, but they are very comfortable saying, you're over communicating.

My need for precision and specificity is so much higher because our depth is higher. That's part of the sensitivity. We need more because our data is higher, and our nuance is higher. But we're told we have communication issues because the system's settled on 2D and if we can't break down to 2D, then it’s made to be our issue.

I think what we just simply need is more, and I think we need to go around and let other people know that AI is going to be a really nice intermediary for those of us who are multidimensional thinkers to communicate with people with 2D thinking, but it's really going to be to our benefit. It's not going to be to theirs.

We need to stop getting, we have to stop saying, especially for children that they're behind or that they're less than when actually what we're [00:40:00] talking about is they take in more data, they know more. It's about being more, not less.

Exactly. 

Thank you, Allan. Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. And I want to say how lovely it was to talk with you. Can you tell us about your books? because I want people to understand what you've written and seek it out. .

Oh, sure. Yeah. The book is called Disrupted Pathways, A Dyspraxic Odyssey.

And, um, again, I mean it's written about, it primarily focuses on my earlier adult years, trying to make my way in the world as a late diagnosed Dyspraxic individual. And again, I emphasize like a lot of the, structural and societal barriers that neurodivergent people encounter.

And, it's available on Amazon. The physical copies are available on Amazon as well as drafted digital direct. And, it's also available on pretty much, any major ebook retailer. 

And I met you on Substack. So can you tell us your Substack name again so other people can find you [00:41:00] there?

It's a dyspraxic lens. 

Allan's a really interesting fellow and he's somebody that we all need to invest in and. Follow. Because he is offering us a different way of seeing the world. That is the way of the future. We live in a society that has been disconnecting us from ourselves and disconnecting us from each other, and now we need to reconnect with ourselves and each other.

Allan embodies that already, and I'm looking for other people who are like Allan, who charted their own path. I want them to have a platform. I want to connect them because this is how we're going to survive. This is how we transition into the next phase of way of being.

I hope that you'll take into consideration and look at those around you that you may have not seen as valuable in the past. Because many of these people are the most valuable people. Real intelligence was reversed. We have been disabling and pathologizing those who keep genius. That is how they keep everybody down, how [00:42:00] they keep people in a system that doesn't really serve them. Now is the time to allow them to teach reconnecting and finding our way.

I hope this is valuable. Thank you for listening. Take care.

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