0:01 Hi, everyone.
0:01 Welcome back to the Change Your Mind Podcast.
0:04 I'm your host, Kris Ashley.
0:05 We explore the intersection between personal development, spirituality and science.
0:09 And today we are going to talk about the importance of movement.
0:13 First, a couple of quick announcements.
0:15 If you head over to the links in my show notes, you'll find a link to my book.
0:18 Change Your Mind to change your reality.
0:20 It was endorsed by Bob Doyle Michael Beckwith, Marcy Simo, all who were on the secret, also endorsed by John Gray who wrote men are from Mars Women are from Venus.
0:28 So go check it out.
0:29 It's in paperback, ebook audio book.
0:32 You'll also find links to my free downloads, my free master class, as well as ways to connect on social media courses, coaching all of the things.
0:40 Please come be a part of the community.
0:42 Stay connected.
0:44 All right.
0:44 Oh, and this podcast is also a part of the Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network.
0:48 So we do a lot with personal development.
0:50 So check us out, check out all the other other amazing podcasts that are part of the network.
0:55 Hi, I'm Kris.
0:57 When I was younger, I went through trauma that caused me to feel broken and lost.
1:02 But my life changed after I had a spiritual awakening.
1:05 Since then, I've dedicated my life to studying and learning from masters all around the world that have helped me to create a life of fulfillment and abundance beyond my wildest dreams.
1:15 Now I'm dedicated to sharing everything I've learned so that you don't have to suffer for decades.
1:19 Like I did, I've seen people's lives completely transform and I share it all right here.
1:27 OK.
1:27 So with me today, I have Janice Eman.
1:31 Janice is a movement specialist based in Calgary Canada.
1:34 She is the founder of my body Couture, a movement therapy studio that provides personalized training and rehabilitation services to clients with chronic pain, injuries and other movement limitations.
1:47 Janice has been working in the health and fitness industry for over two decades and she has extensive training and experience in various movement modalities including Pilates, yoga and functional movement.
1:57 So welcome Janice.
1:58 Hi, I'm happy to be here.
2:01 Yeah, I'm happy to have you.
2:03 and you know, as someone who owns a yoga studio, I love talking about movement and the importance of it.
2:08 So, you know, I like to start all of my episodes the same way and that is by asking my guests what their origin story is, what put you on this path in the first place and made you want to do that.
2:19 So please share your story with us.
2:21 I love that question.
2:23 A lot of my clients have the same question because a lot of people who do movement just really loved it.
2:29 I am actually from the opposite world.
2:32 So I was not an athletic kid.
2:34 I would do not come to any of this naturally.
2:37 And so where I really began was when I went to post secondary education, I decided to start running and quickly developed a pain in my knee.
2:49 And I had been a kid who is more artistic than athletic.
2:54 So I always just had this sense, like something is different with my body.
2:58 Something's wrong with my body.
2:59 Why, why does this not work for me?
3:01 It works for everyone else.
3:03 And so I ended up doing what a lot of people do, which is going to various practitioners to try to get home for my, for my knee.
3:11 And I was, you know, I was still a teenager and I, I couldn't walk up and down stairs.
3:16 I couldn't sit and study, everything was kind of painful.
3:19 And I ended up going to a roller and a sports medicine doctor and my general practitioner and just all of these different places and nobody could figure out how to make my knee different or better.
3:33 And I would get some temporary relief and then it would come back the next time I went for a run and, you know, I became the practitioner that I wished that I'd had at that time.
3:43 , at that time, we are actually missing a bit of information which was later discovered by the University of Calgary.
3:48 That runner's knee is often caused by problems in your hip.
3:51 So, you know, if this happened today, I probably wouldn't have this career, but it set me off on, on a bit of a lifetime path to discover,, more information about my body.
4:04 And it turns out I'm just a really, really, really average human being.
4:07 But every time I would go into a class or tried something like a running program, it just seemed like my body didn't do what other people's bodies did.
4:17 And so I really threw myself into trying to figure out how to make my body a comfortable experience to live in.
4:28 Thank you so much for sharing.
4:29 I relate to your story.
4:30 I, I was not an athletic kid at all, like at all.
4:34 I was definitely I don't even know if I was artistic.
4:38 I was a, I was a writer, I was a creative writer.
4:40 That was my thing.
4:41 I think I was, I was a horseback rider, but like the fact that I got into yoga at all is just like crazy, you know, when I think about it.
4:50 So I totally relate to that.
4:52 So, so, ok, so how did you find yoga and Pilates?
4:58 Like how did you come become like a physical therapist?
5:01 Like all of these things?
5:02 What made you wanna like get those certifications finally?
5:05 So that actually was,, that's how I found relief from my runner pain in the first place.
5:10 So it actually was, it was a Pilates studio and back in those days, they were few and far between.
5:17 And I walked in and, you know, saw all of these, these interesting movements that I've never seen before and my body actually loved it right away and I actually had a fully separate career before I did this.
5:30 But I remember, you know, this is kind of before vision boards were a thing.
5:37 I actually had a little book and I, and I cut magazine pictures out of things that I wanted.
5:41 And that was one of my 10 things that I wanted.
5:44 I wanted to own a Pilates studio, no idea really where that came from or why that was such a connecting point.
5:51 But I basically proceeded with my life.
5:53 I finished my degree.
5:55 I I have a business degree.
5:57 I went and I worked in the marketing and, and media fields for quite a period of time and this was kind of just running in the background.
6:05 It was, it was really my personal passion and with all of these certifications you actually have to do as you would know, you have to do client hours, you can't just kind of attend the classes and, and get your certification.
6:18 So I actually had to teach and I had to do exams.
6:21 And I found that I really loved working with people and that I really loved solving problems in this way that I found so challenging.
6:32 You know, I, as I mentioned, I turn out to have a very average body, but I think a lot of the sports and athletic and training world is not actually set up for average people.
6:43 It's really set up for athletic people who kind of get it from day one and they can coordinate it all.
6:48 It all makes sense to them.
6:49 And a lot of those instructions and the way that that world is set up, I mean, gym's really come from the bodybuilding world and who was bodybuilding in the 19 fifties.
6:58 But people that just really connected with that, they loved it.
7:00 It made sense to them, they wanted to do it, it was their passion.
7:04 And so I became really somebody who loved working with everyone else.
7:09 So it's the other 85% of people that, that messaging doesn't actually make sense to.
7:14 And the deeper I got into my training and working with clients, the more I just loved and loved and loved it.
7:19 And then I added health coaching certifications and you know, all of these different pieces.
7:25 But at the end of it, it was all really directed from my passions and my interests and, and what really caught my attention and just making it accessible and available to people.
7:38 And at the end of the day, most people, you know, let's, let's say the cut off age is like 35.
7:45 That's a bit arbitrary.
7:46 But most people over 35 have been told to go to the gym.
7:49 We all know we're supposed to be doing this and if we're not doing it, there's usually a reason we don't like it.
7:55 It doesn't make sense.
7:56 Us, we go, we try, we don't get any results, but a big driver is actually that our body is in pain.
8:02 So we get people that try to go out for walks or try to do, you know, various classes including yoga and it hurts like their back will hurts or their hamstring feels like it's ripping.
8:15 And so that's really what I started helping people discover.
8:20 And I did have as many people who kind of can tell this story.
8:24 I had a, a client that actually really changed how I saw all of this.
8:27 She came to me and had had a childhood cancer and she had had to have surgery on her hips.
8:34 The, the doctor said that she needed her shoulders replaced as well.
8:38 And I worked with her twice a week for two years and she never to this day has needed those surgeries.
8:45 So that really became inspiration to me to start working more and more deeply into this level of people who have pain, people have injuries, people who have kind of chronic conditions and how I could help solve those in ways that were maybe not standard.
9:01 So my goal for people is to get them moving.
9:04 And that doesn't necessarily mean attending a body pump class or doing spinning classes.
9:10 It means the kind of movement that we want in our life.
9:14 A lot of people say that that's very relationally driven.
9:17 They want to be able to go on vacation with their family, they want to be able to, to be with their family or their friends and do fun things.
9:25 And so that's really my driver is to get, it's because I wanted that in my own life as well.
9:32 Yeah, thanks for sharing all that.
9:34 And it makes me think like historically, like when you think about the human body and how it's built and like way back when we were, I don't even know like nomads or cavemen or something.
9:43 Like how much is the human body meant to move in a day?
9:48 Well, I don't have a specific answer of how much we were meant to move, but I do have a specific answer of how much we did move.
9:55 So there is evidence that shows that modern hunter gatherers walk around 15 miles a day just to get food.
10:05 So that's 15 miles or, you know, just over 30 kilometers.
10:10 And I'm gonna repeat that just to get food.
10:13 So that's not entertainment.
10:15 That's not for fun.
10:17 That is to stay alive.
10:18 And I've seen other research that says that ancient humans spent about 75% of their caloric intake just to get more calories.
10:28 So, not that long ago in our history, we really spent most of our time on our feet trying to survive.
10:37 We spent most of our time literally looking in bushes for berries and planting vegetables and trying to catch small game and then processing that and working with that.
10:51 So the human body was not meant to sit.
10:54 And that is an area where I find that the vast majority of my clients kind of bump into problems and it's not our fault.
11:03 Everything is made very conveniently for us these days, we don't have to go out anywhere to get food.
11:11 We can actually get it right to our door.
11:13 We do not have to walk to socialize.
11:17 We have, you know, cell phones that we can just press a single button and talk to people either on the phone or via facetime or video call like this.
11:28 We can get in our vehicle or get on public transit and go wherever we want to go.
11:34 We can get on an airplane and go across the world.
11:37 And so the average person gets most of their steps when they're on vacation.
11:42 So most of us actually find that the amount that I just shared with you.
11:48 in terms of what it used to take to get food, that would be a Monster Day at Disney or a big day of touring Europe for most of us.
11:56 Now we're posting it all over social media.
11:58 Like, look at this, like God, you know, all these steps, but it's kind of a peak moment experience for us now as opposed to just everyday living that we kind of have to do those things to stay alive.
12:09 Yeah.
12:09 It's super fascinating to think about.
12:11 And like, how many steps do you think the average person gets in a day?
12:15 There is research on this because most people now have something that counts the steps.
12:20 And I don't remember what it is off the top of my head, but it's, I think it sits in the 4 to 5000 steps per day range.
12:29 So what other impacts besides things like pain and stiffness?
12:34 does our modern lifestyle do to our bodies?
12:36 Like what are the, what are the other impacts?
12:39 It has a huge impact on our digestive system.
12:43 So the way that our digestive system actually works is is the movement of the pelvis by way of walking.
12:50 That's actually what gives us motility of our intestinal systems.
12:54 So that is actually meant to move.
12:57 It's meant to sort of kind of think about a washing machine.
13:01 It's got that sort of cyclical impact on it.
13:05 And so a lot of modern humans actually have a lot of digestive issues because we're sitting a lot.
13:11 So not only do we have our upper body pressure down on our on that area, but then we're not actually moving it.
13:18 And so it's, it's fairly common to actually have people that come in to see me that have significant digestive issues.
13:26 And that, and that ranges from, they don't go to the bathroom to indigestion to they're literally just not processing their food properly.
13:38 Yeah, I and you know, you mentioned knee pain from running earlier is often caused by hips.
13:45 So they free to speak a little bit about how different body parts are connected in that kind of way.
13:50 So we often when we learn in, in junior high or high school about our own bodies, which is very minimal.
13:57 we often really learn about it from the free of you look in a textbook and there's a discrete muscle, we memorize the muscle name and then there's the bone and we memorize that name and, you know, we think of them as really, really separate.
14:11 But in actual fact, the whole thing is, is way less separated than what you might think.
14:17 So if you ever watch a dissection video, which is they are available online that where one muscle ends and the next begins is definitely less concrete than what we actually learned.
14:29 And so that's the first thing is that it's more of a flow.
14:33 It's the same way that, you know, if you think about driving across the United States, you might see a sign that says you're in a new state, but it's not like everything changes.
14:42 It's not like, it's not like there's actually a color shift or like a massive shift in the geography kind of just flows from one to the other and, you know, if you're driving as you go, that geography is gonna shift.
14:55 So when you go from California to the Midwest, somewhere along there, there's actually quite a significant geographical shift.
15:03 But where that actually happens is way less delineated than kind of like, oh we're entering Nevada now, it's all different.
15:10 So the body is like that the body is basically the same as that.
15:14 So, you know, we all know that there's a difference between your foot and your hand.
15:18 But where does that shift occur?
15:22 It's just less, it's less solid than the textbooks.
15:25 What have you believed?
15:27 And then we also have connective tissue that's running through the whole body.
15:32 So much of our knowledge is really based on muscle, but what is actually tying everything together is connective tissue.
15:41 So there's something called fascia, which used to be described as kind of, you know, the the skin over top of a chicken breast.
15:48 And that is true.
15:49 That kind of creates what we think of as muscle.
15:52 But it also goes through all of your fibers and there's channels that run all the way up and down through your body.
15:59 And they actually have, they run in different patterns than the muscles.
16:05 So they're not just kind of like big chunks of things that are kind of stuck together.
16:09 So you've got, you've got almost ribbons running through the body and we have a lot of communication between the muscle groups and between the different elements.
16:20 So there's a lot in our body that's about coordinations.
16:24 And most of us again are kind of thinking of coordinations.
16:27 Like if somebody throws a ball, you're gonna catch it and work good co ordination in this sense really means your brain says I'm gonna stand up right now and 15 or 20 different things have to happen for you to be able to stand up.
16:42 And most of the time, we don't have to think about that at all unless you're in pain and then maybe you do.
16:47 But coordinating all of that is actually a lot related to your fascia.
16:53 So that's the tissue that's gonna make it elasticize and it's gonna have everything flowing from one muscle group to the next.
17:01 And that's an area where a lot of us get really tight and really stuck.
17:05 Hm.
17:07 First of all, I love your state line metaphor.
17:09 That's like you one of the coolest metaphors and it, it totally makes sense.
17:14 And like, also just, you know, there's so much of modern medicine, it's like people specialize in things and that's never made sense to me because it's like you want to look at the body as a whole, right?
17:25 So, so when we're talking about fascia does it actually convey like messages?
17:32 Like is there like electric messages happening?
17:35 Yeah, tell me, talk to me more about that because it's, it's super fascinating.
17:38 Like I've always been told like it's the, it's like the white stuff in the orange.
17:42 But you know what I'm talking about, like the stuff that you like pick out.
17:46 But no, it's interesting because your fasha can get more flexible too, right?
17:51 Like yes, talk to me about fasha because it's super, super fascinating.
17:55 Yeah.
17:55 So fascia is actually it's, it's a quote, quote, newer discovery of the body from a Western scientific standpoint.
18:03 although it is not new in traditional Chinese medicine, so if you are familiar with acupuncture, they're really working on those channels and those, they're, they're called meridian lines.
18:16 So they're working on the communication of your toe to your finger basically.
18:22 And so throughout your body where you're getting acupuncture, the needles are put into, they're called meridian lines.
18:29 And that's gonna help unlock and unleash all of the communication in the channels from a Western scientific standpoint much more recently, like we're talking in the last 20 years.
18:42 there was a scientist who was dissecting and realized that some of the tissue that he'd only ever seen in a, in a preserved body looked different when he worked with a body that had not had that fermentation that what's the word aldehyde formaldehyde applied to it?
19:05 And so that kind of set off a whole discovery of what is actually happening in the body.
19:11 He discovered that there are communications and there is a whole channel that is, it's, it's moving most of the fluid through the whole body.
19:22 So the fluid that many of us think of are gonna be your blood and your limb, but your fascia is actually moving more fluid through the body than either of those items are.
19:34 So, yeah, so one of the most important elements of the body is actually our hydration.
19:41 So we are basically just big squish balls in meat sacks that ha that are filled with fluid.
19:49 So most of our body is fluid.
19:50 And what happens for a lot of us is that we actually kind of get dried out and to be really specific.
19:58 one of the things that is making your fascia hydrated is something called hyaluronic acid.
20:04 So most of us are kind of familiar with that if you are buying beauty products that is in your beauty products, so you can apply it topically to the skin.
20:13 And the reason that it's in beauty products is because it attracts and retains approximately 1000 times its body weight in water.
20:22 So you put that on your skin and you put on some lotion and away go your fine lines and wrinkles that's happening inside your body as well.
20:29 However, we have a lot less Hyaluronic acid at age 40 than we did at age 15.
20:35 It's, it's a huge thing that shifts as we age.
20:39 So as we age, many of us will kind of wake up with like quote unquote aches and pains and creaks and things that just don't feel that great in our body.
20:47 And our Hyaluronic acid and collagen are largely responsible for that.
20:52 So that's gonna give your tissue that stretch that elasticity and it's gonna help it communicate with the their tissues.
21:00 So when we go to stand up, that the muscle coordinations and then that communication can just happen really smoothly, we all know what it feels like when you, you know, if you drink too much or you're dehydrated, it just kind of feels bad.
21:13 So that happens naturally as you age and that's where we really a lot of us could use work on keeping that tissue elastic and stretchy and communicating and all of that fluid moving through the body.
21:29 Thank you so much for teaching me all of that.
21:32 It's I love learning about the body.
21:33 It's so fascinating.
21:35 So when someone is in pain, is it often caused by this, like drying out and stiffness of the fascia?
21:42 And then like, how do you get that stretchiness back?
21:45 Like do you do it by supplementing with collagen or hy whatever you Hyle Acid, Hyon Acid?
21:52 I'm like, I can see it spelled out, but I've never said it out loud before.
21:57 or is it, is it through movement modalities.
22:00 Like what do you, what do you recommend?
22:03 So when someone is in pain, there's often kind of from my lensing.
22:07 There's two things that are really causing quote unquote the pain.
22:11 One is a lack of hydration and that's gonna be that Hyaluronic acid and collagen and that stretchiness.
22:18 And the second is lack of space.
22:20 So if you think about literally taking your finger and pressing it down into your hand, that kind of hurts, right?
22:29 Versus pulling it out.
22:31 That's gonna feel like I have some space in there.
22:34 So as people sit, we lose space in the in the joint, you literally lose space at your hips, you li you lose space in your, in your spine.
22:45 So it's quite common to get back pain because there's no space left in there.
22:49 I think those two things are often related.
22:52 So losing space and losing hydration are kind of interrelated.
22:57 So then it's a matter of OK, how do we actually create that space and how do we get that springiness back in the tissue?
23:05 And I have a couple of techniques that I like to do, but I lens things through movement.
23:11 And so I don't think personally that you're ever going to kind of create that springiness in the space in the body through injections or through supplements or through just, you know, you can't kind of apply it topically and hope that it, that it's going to do what movement's gonna do.
23:27 Human bodies are meant to move.
23:29 Period.
23:29 That's a full sentence.
23:31 We have to move to get this.
23:32 So once we are in pain, you're gonna need to do some specific therapeutic modalities.
23:39 And yoga is great for, for developing that hyaluronic and collagen creation, creating space in the body.
23:48 There's a technique that I love called yam and a body rolling that's gonna kind of give you space back at the joints.
23:53 Those aren't the only things that exist.
23:56 I do personally supplement with these things as well.
24:00 I do take Hyaluronic acid and collagen.
24:03 but I do those in combination with the movement therapies.
24:08 So I don't think that you can, oh to just have it kind of applied to you, you have to actually get up and do what the human body was meant to do.
24:17 Yeah.
24:18 And yeah, that's so interesting and like also like all kinds of movement, right?
24:23 Like, oh yeah, just like sitting and lifting weights and like doing the same thing over and over.
24:27 Like we're meant to like run and walk and lift and bend and reach.
24:32 Right.
24:33 Absolutely good.
24:36 Oh, I think that that's, that is actually such a super important thing to say because I think that there are a percentage of people that go to the gym and they focus on, you know, these things are great strength training or cardiovascular health.
24:52 That's awesome.
24:53 But at the end of the day what most people do the most is sit and stand and walk.
24:59 And if you're not doing those things more than going to the gym, you need to start.
25:03 So, you know, they, we can't overcome sitting for eight hours in a, in a block, you can't go to the gym and outrun that.
25:13 So you need to be standing up from your desk, you need to be sitting down, you need to be walking around, you know, that I'm not a huge, huge, huge fan of like the you have to walk 10,000 steps.
25:27 There's actually new research that shows that the magic number for like longevity is 8000 steps twice a week.
25:34 But that's still, you know, that's gonna exceed what the average person is actually doing in a week.
25:41 So you need to just find a way to get more steps in and that could be, that could be anything like I get steps in by just sort of quote unquote wasting time.
25:49 It's not efficient for me to walk to the post office, but it helps me get those steps in because our modern world is, is created in such a way that I, I literally don't have to.
25:58 Right.
25:59 So I think that you have to walk and you have to sit and stand and if you have a desk job, that means that you have to stand up and you can sit right back down again, but you just have to get that, those fluid and the tissues and everything kind of moving and you have to do that throughout the day.
26:16 Yeah.
26:17 And 8000 steps, twice a day doesn't sound like a lot to me or twice a week.
26:21 I mean, doesn't sound, it's not like it's only twice a week.
26:24 Yeah.
26:25 No, I know.
26:26 I know.
26:26 It's not, it's not even the 10,000 steps a day that we were kind of arbitrarily told.
26:31 , and it just shows you like, how, how the human body actually doesn't need that much to, to actually thrive.
26:39 , it wasn't, you know, we're, we're lucky as a species we can kind of, we can kind of get away with a lot in the body and still make it all work out.
26:51 People can eat pizza for, for a year and not have any kind of negative side effects from that.
26:57 , et cetera.
26:59 So that's, that's your minimum and just going out for a couple of walks a few times a week is going to give you that longevity piece is gonna give your tissues what they actually need.
27:11 Which is, that's great news.
27:13 That, that's the best news.
27:14 Right.
27:16 Yeah.
27:17 Yeah.
27:17 No, totally.
27:18 I mean, and, and walking is so therapeutic, like, emotionally too, which actually kind of brings me to the next thing I want to talk about is,, like, how, how do you see emotions being tied into,, pain and stiffness and ailments in the body.
27:37 Well, so that's a great question.
27:40 So every time we have an emotion, we have a muscular response.
27:45 So as you and I are sitting talking, our faces are creating responses and it kind of does that without your permission.
27:53 So if I'm disgusted by something, it's gonna show on my face.
27:58 there's, there's going to be a a muscular reaction so we can, we can change our thoughts, we can do all kinds of emotional work.
28:07 But at the end of the day, your muscles are still going to have a response.
28:12 And in our society, we actually, then we, we talk about this in a couple of ways that I love.
28:17 So the one is you have butterflies in your stomach.
28:21 So most of us can kind of call that idea to mind.
28:24 But what's actually happening there is you get, you get tightening of the intestines, you get shortening of the psoas or the hip flexor muscle.
28:33 The other one that I love is that something is a pain in the ass or a pain in the butt.
28:37 So that's where again the the glute muscles will kind of tighten up, the sit bones will kind of draw a little bit closer together.
28:44 So quite often, what will happen is when we have really strong emotions, our body will do a lot of internal rotating.
28:51 So if you think about and that that could include being warm and cozy.
28:55 So if you think about the winter time and you, you wanna be comforted, you can curl up into a little ball.
29:01 So we, we make ourselves smaller, our shoulders roll in, we'll often pull our hips and towards us.
29:06 So that even is a, is a comfortable emotion.
29:10 But when we feel stressed, we can, we can have a lot of emotional response to that too.
29:16 So something that's really common is pulling the shoulders up into the ears.
29:21 When we feel a lot of stress, the two biggest areas, I think that people really have a strong emotional somatic response are in the shoulders and in the stomach.
29:31 And the reason for that is because the two most exposed areas of our body from a, from a skeletal standpoint are our neck and our torso.
29:40 So if you think about, you know your arm, if I was to take a knife and hit my arm, we would hit bone there pretty quickly.
29:48 That's not true in your, in your viscera in your stomach.
29:51 And it's not true in your neck.
29:53 So our body has a really strong protective mechanism of our stomach and our neck.
29:57 So when something feels a little bit icky, we kind of become like a cat, cat will arch its back, we'll lift our shoulders, we'll jut our head forward, we'll do a lot to kind of get the neck out of the way and same thing at the at the abdomen.
30:13 So who the whole, the whole torso will just kind of shrink.
30:18 That's a really protective thing that is happening.
30:22 But a lot of us are having that response and not even actually being aware that it's happening.
30:29 So, and your emotions in your body are one thing.
30:34 So, although we've medicalized it and said we go to the doctor for a body and we go to the psychiatrist for our brain.
30:41 It's one system.
30:42 So it's really what we were talking about earlier where that whole system is, is working in co ordination with each other and you can't separate it out.
30:50 There is no way to actually kind of smile and make yourself happy if you're not actually happy.
30:56 It just, it, I can do the facial movement, but it doesn't mean that anything has actually changed emotionally in the body, but vice versa.
31:04 When I'm scared, you're the hair on your arms are gonna jump up, maybe that your shoulders are gonna jump up.
31:11 You're gonna have a really strong somatic response and then doing that over and over and over and over again without sort of flushing those emotions through or having that pause moment or having any downtime.
31:26 That's where we can actually get into pain because our muscles are just like an animal if a cat was walking around all the time with its back arch, you know, so you'd have to take that cat to the vet like something is wrong, right?
31:38 But a lot of us are kind of living in that heightened state of like fear, emergency stress.
31:43 And then it eventually it's just too much for your muscles.
31:46 It, it creates lack of space.
31:48 We get that tightness, we get pain and away we go.
31:52 I really appreciate everything you just said.
31:54 And, you know, we, we've had so many conversations on this podcast about, you know, how pain is tied to repressed emotions or mindset and all these things.
32:04 But it's really interesting to hear it just from like purely a body standpoint and everything you said makes a lot of sense.
32:12 You know, I've also heard of like tucking you, tuck the tail bone a little bit, kind of like a scared dog.
32:17 Like it's Yeah, so protective.
32:18 And as you were talking, I was thinking like, wow, this is like my dialogue when I teach camel pose, right?
32:23 Like, or when people come out of it, I haven't been in meditation.
32:26 It's like, you know, because those heart openers can bring up a lot for people like it, it's like from a biological standpoint.
32:35 Like we don't want to open the front side of our body.
32:37 That's where our vital organs are, that's like a vulnerable place to be.
32:42 And I, and I like that you touched on, you know, if we're constantly sitting all day, like there's this, this compression that's gonna happen and then if we're stressed on top of that, which most people are, yeah, then there's this like rounding and tightening and shortening of muscles.
32:58 , at least in the front side of the body that's gonna happen.
33:01 And it's like, no wonder people are having back pain and neck pain and, and shoulder pain and all these things.
33:07 Like it, it's so, so clear.
33:10 Right.
33:10 Absolutely.
33:12 Yeah.
33:12 I mean, end of the day we're living in a manner that's really divorced from, from the way that we were born to adapt to.
33:20 So, you know, most of us, if you, if you strip out the city where we live in, look at the ground underneath you, you would have been walking on that terrain.
33:29 You would have been searching around on that terrain for food, hunting, gathering, eventually cultivating crops and those kind of modern stressors wouldn't have been peeking out every second.
33:45 Many of us, every time we check our email or pick up our phone, there's a million things that are kind of popping up that feel like severe emergencies.
33:54 So we don't even have to wander into the world of trauma to, to kind of see that we're living in a way that we didn't adapt to.
34:03 So there isn't really any way to remove all the flooring and remove all the sidewalks and remove all the shoes and kind of go back to all of that and most of us wouldn't want to anyways, but we probably do need some sort of practice.
34:18 And I also am a fan of yoga for the but to just have some time where we chill out and we move our body in a, in a more directed way to release some stress and to bring our nervous system down and to do some movements that maybe don't feel supernatural, like opening our chest.
34:38 We don't currently have to do anything that's ever super awkward or uncomfortable with our body.
34:43 But I can assure you if you had to drag a buffalo, you, you would have to do some things that weaker and we don't ever have to do with our body.
34:52 So we don't even have to go to super extremes.
34:55 But you mentioned this a while ago.
34:57 You know, you're squatting, you're lunging, you're throwing, you're twisting, you're rotating.
35:01 All of those things were just part of how we moved.
35:04 And, and so look, that's again, another reason why I love yoga because we incorporate a lot of those movements which are quite natural to the human body and they're not always gonna feel comfortable.
35:16 Yeah, totally.
35:19 You said something and I wanted to comment on it because I really liked it and it totally, I have like serious pregnancy brain right now and it totally just flew out.
35:26 But you know, how much movement should someone get in a day?
35:30 Like the average person?
35:31 And I know it's hard to say average person, let's say most of my listeners are in their thirties and forties.
35:37 So how much, how much movement should someone in their thirties or forties get in a day.
35:43 I, I'm gonna give a, a really specific answer more, more than you're doing.
35:48 , so most people are getting not enough steps.
35:55 So that's the first place that I actually recommend that you look at is just get some more steps and it doesn't have to be in a concrete exercise way or a specific movement modality just find ways that you can walk a little bit more.
36:09 And that could be, you know, I know this is always the example given, but it's because it's a decent one.
36:15 Park a little bit further than you need to from where you're walk an extra five minutes, go walk to your coworker's office instead of calling them or emailing them.
36:25 Make sure that at lunch time you're actually standing up, you know, lots of people now are eating at their desk and I had a desk job.
36:33 I get it.
36:34 I know why that's happening, but take that 5 to 10 minutes and just walk around your office or go down the street or go to a park or go somewhere.
36:44 So that's always the 1st, 1st, 1st place to start because it's usually the easiest we can take whatever your step count is and aim to double it and that's not gonna happen in a week.
36:55 But look at what you're doing over a year, 99% of us have phones that are tracking your data.
37:01 So it's super easy just to go into your health data, check how many steps you did in 2023 and then make it a goal to double that in 2024.
37:10 Then in terms of kind of, you know, your more formalized exercise programs, there is a benefit to doing specific strength training and cardio and and flexibility training programs.
37:23 There's a reason that those are recommended.
37:25 So ideally, we wanna aim for kind of two of those a week.
37:30 That's again, a really big stretch for a lot of people to start with.
37:35 So even if you can try to get four months, find a yoga studio, find a gym, find a personal trainer, find a clinician or somebody that you like working with, find a friend and, you know, decide that you're gonna do one class a week.
37:50 Then after six months, if that's sustainable for you, see, if you can add a second one and find something that you love to do.
37:56 Some people like riding their bike, some people like going to the gym, some people like strength training.
38:01 Some people prefer yoga.
38:02 So it's gonna be something that you're like,, I really like this and it can be really anything.
38:07 So, you know, if you, if you wanna relax, you can try again, if you wanna do something more active, you can go to your studio if you just don't want anything to do with gyms or programs, call a friend and say, do you want to go for a walk once a week and get kind of that bigger, bigger piece.
38:26 So I always start with where someone is.
38:30 And we never want to go past the point where we can sustain it.
38:33 So it does not do the human body any good to take on a program in, in, you know, New Year's resolution style is the most common way to do it.
38:42 And we see that throughout the year, it's like, ok, next week I'm gonna start, I'm gonna do seven days a week that doesn't help you if you can't stick with it.
38:50 So I'm really big on do the smallest replicable amount.
38:56 And the reality is most people don't have a ton of time.
38:58 So it is take a look at what you're doing now and add 10% at 10% a month until you're like, I can't do this anymore and then stop there and then just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
39:12 And as we age, we need more programs that sustain the body and less programs that look to buzz energy out of the body.
39:21 So to be really specific, we're gonna be looking more as we age towards things like a yoga as opposed to a spin class.
39:28 And that is of course individual, but most people who are, you know, 40 don't just sit around saying I just have so much energy, I'm so restless.
39:37 I don't know what to do.
39:38 With all this energy, we typically are looking for that energy and feeling like a little bit tired and maybe burned out.
39:44 So that's where you're gonna do a more restorative program that's gonna help give your body that balance and you're more likely to actually continue it than, than a program where you're like, I really pushed, I hate it.
39:54 I don't, I need, I need tons of motivation to go.
39:58 So that's really, you know, there, there probably is a more scientific answer but it, science doesn't matter if you're doing nothing or if you're getting 2000 steps a day that 8000 steps may take you three years to actually kind of build into your life.
40:14 And that's ok.
40:15 I like that answer because it feels really manageable.
40:18 Right?
40:19 It doesn't feel like scary or overwhelming or like, because if you tell someone, like, you need to work out five days a week, like some, some people just shut down.
40:27 Right.
40:28 , and, and just to go back to what you're saying about, like, you know, if you're in your forties and you're feeling burnt out and tired to do something restorative, like yoga can give you energy too.
40:39 It's just right.
40:41 It's like, I feel like the more you're active, the more energy you have, like they go hand in hand together, right?
40:48 It's like when you're just sitting around, like, you, you just get so lethargic and it's like, it's just like such a chore to like, get up and get started.
40:57 But as you start doing these things, you feel better.
41:00 And I also like that you say like, do the program that feels good to you that you like doing right?
41:05 Because you're gonna wanna keep doing it.
41:07 Like that's what drew me to yoga is.
41:09 I felt so damn good after I was like, wow, for the first time, my mind is clear.
41:15 My body feels like I'm floating like I just, I this is like addicting, right?
41:20 I just, I want this feeling and I like kept chasing that high.
41:23 And then it was like, oh, I'm like, finding I would, I would just go whenever I felt drawn to my mat, which became like every day.
41:29 But then I have reached those points where I'm like, oh, this is too much of my body.
41:32 So it's like, yeah, it's super smart to listen to your body too.
41:36 Absolutely.
41:37 And I do want to mention that there is some research that shows it takes on average six weeks to start seeing results from a new program and the average person actually quits at week five.
41:48 So, so quite often we're actually quitting before we kind of start to feel the results in our body.
41:55 There.
41:55 Of course, are exceptions.
41:58 There are people who maybe had more of a history of working out and it just feels like, I can just drop back into this.
42:04 But the average person takes a while to actually start to feel or notice or, or discover those shifts in the body and they might actually be a little bit more subtle.
42:16 So we're kind of seeing a lot of magic happening on Instagram where we see the before and after pictures and big dramatic things.
42:24 It might not feel like that to you.
42:27 It might, and that's great and you can, you know, post that story and, and get involved in that.
42:33 But a lot of people, it's more exactly what you just said.
42:38 You're just feeling a bit more energy, you feel a little bit more mental clarity.
42:41 You notice that you can get a few more things done in a day.
42:44 You notice that you're maybe a little bit less stressed out.
42:48 So I really like to frame this in the, in the sense of there's, there's black and there's white.
42:56 So when we have a black shape in front of us, that might be something like body pain.
43:01 We can usually identify where it is.
43:03 It has a, it has a, a black shape.
43:06 We can notice that when that goes away.
43:08 It's really hard to notice a white object white space.
43:12 So what we're often looking for out of fitness programs and out of nutrition programs, things like that are actually the white space where we just can run our life without noticing the body.
43:24 So we might have something where we notice,, I have more energy but you might also have to go back in your mind six months to notice like the difference between the two and then we really quickly forget what the old US felt like.
43:40 So unless you're, unless you're a professional or blogging or doing Instagram posts, it can be really hard to remember what it felt like.
43:50 To not have energy and to not have mental clarity and to be kind of flustered all day and to not get through your to do list.
43:56 So I always tell people to look for that white space, that white shape in front of us, which is a lot more subtle.
44:03 It's a lot harder to pick up on.
44:05 And we're not necessarily looking for that quote unquote body transformation.
44:10 We're looking to feel good and we're looking to have our body running in the background, the engine that's just running our life behind us where we don't have to notice it or think about it all day.
44:22 But that actually takes, it takes a lot of work, takes a lot of work to actually to, to get it just running smoothly without us having to notice it.
44:32 No, I like the idea that the goal is to like, basically forget the body like stress and aches and pains.
44:39 Awesome.
44:40 So, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this.
44:43 I'm sure it was super helpful for all the listeners and I'd love for you to let people know how they can work with you where they can find you where you are on the internet, what your offers are all the things for sure.
44:55 So my business name is my body Couture, which is three words, my, my body bodykcouture.
45:02 So you can find me at the.com or any social media site where I exist.
45:07 I'm under my body kitcher.
45:08 You're welcome to reach out and to of course, follow or engage and just reach out if you have any questions or comments or if you love this episode, do you work with people online or in person?
45:21 Ok.
45:22 Yeah.
45:22 Yeah.
45:22 So I have an in person studio and then I also work with people digitally.
45:27 Awesome.
45:28 Thanks so much for sharing and thank you again for coming on and educating all of us and listeners, please like comment, share, subscribe.
45:36 If there's someone in your life who you feel could really benefit from this information, please send it to them and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.
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