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August 13, 2024 64 mins

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

Unlock the secrets to a pain-free life with renowned physiotherapist Brent Stevenson on the Imperfectly Empowered podcast. Have you ever wondered how stress and anxiety could be sabotaging your physical health? Brent connects the dots between mental well-being and physical pain, sharing his incredible journey from an injury-prone athlete to an expert in physiotherapy. With insights drawn from his diverse experiences, Brent offers practical tips on preventing and relieving pain, especially for those who lead active or demanding lifestyles, like athletes and corporate executives.


JUMP RIGHT TO IT:

11:07 Understanding Breath and Body Connection

24:38 The Root Cause of Pain

31:45 Muscle Tension and IMS Techniques

47:46 Finding Neutral Spine and Posture


CONNECT WITH BRENT:

IG: @WhyThingsHurt

FB: WhyThingsHurt

YouTube: envisionphysio

LinkedIn: brentstevenson


Buy the book, Why We Hurt: Understanding How To Be Comfortable In Your Own Body OR find other resources: 

https://www.whythingshurt.com/books/why-we-hurt


Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art: https://a.co/d/3unfcVE 

Revitalize your faith and fitness with a morning routine that does not sacrifice your sleep and does start each day with God's Word and a workout. Join the community today at www.earlymorninghabit.com 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi and welcome back to another episode of the
Imperfectly Empowered podcast.
I'm your host, anna Fulmer.
Brent Stevenson is aphysiotherapist in Vancouver,
canada, passionate about helpingpeople understand how stress
and anxiety can manifest inacute and chronic physical pain
and ultimately provide solutionsto relieve it and prevent it.

(00:23):
Here to share his expert adviceon perfect posture to prevent
and relieve persistent pain.
Welcome, brent Stevenson.
I really enjoyed reading thisbook.
I feel like it's one of thosebooks that if I read through it
a second time I wouldpotentially get even more out of
it than I did the first time.
It's such an incredible readabout understanding the

(00:44):
correlation between really ourmental health and our physical
health and then dab this likesprinkle our emotional health
and social factors and spiritualfactors onto that as well.
It just goes to show howintricately connected what we
feel in our body is to the lesstangible experiences that we're

(01:08):
having, and you do such a greatjob at illuminating that.
But I'd love to press rewind alittle bit and talk about how
you got to the point that youare in learning yourself and
then being able to communicateso clearly how anxiety and
stress ultimately can createthese experiences of pain

(01:30):
physically, how you're seeingthat happen and how you got to
the point in your own life whereyou became an expert on this.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Sure Well, I've been a physiotherapist now for about
20 years and actually this is mysecond book I wrote.
My first book was called whyThings Hurt Life Lessons from an
Injury-Prone Physical Therapist, which is what a great title.
I kind of tell the tale of.
I grew up as an athletic kid.

(01:59):
Being this, I'm sort of talland loose, jointed, and managed
to play all sorts of contactsports and hurt myself all the
time and I seem to be justperpetually some level of
uncomfortable.
So I kind of came by, honestly,to end up becoming a physical
therapist, because I spent myown fair share of time in it
growing up and so I have alaundry list of things that I've

(02:21):
hurt.
So I did an undergrad inkinesiology and learned a lot
about sort of anatomy,physiology and some injury and
healing, and physical therapywas a natural transition for me.
From that point I took a bit ofa different path than your
typical physio.
I did work at a, initially sortof worked at a clinic helping

(02:43):
people that had been injured atwork and sort of were on work
conditioning programs and theytried, they'd gone through
physio and didn't quite getthere and they needed to come to
this program four or five daysa week and I just I saw a lot of
people both on the acute sideand the chronic side and sort of
dealing with, uh, variouslevels of discomfort.
I I then sort of did a 180 andswitched and moved to a clinic

(03:07):
that was working all with sortof sport performance, working
almost exclusively with golfers.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Huh interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I went from working at a very blue-collar place for
people who were getting injured,doing manual labor kind of jobs
, to working with CEOs ofcompanies that were kind of I'd
meet them on the side of a golfcourse and end up treating sort
of more older men and women thatwere in the sort of executive
positions of jobs that hadfull-on lives or owners or

(03:39):
companies and were golfing aspart of a social part and a big
priority for them was I was bothhitting the golf ball further
but also dealing with their soreback and dealing with their
stresses of their life um.
So I got a lot of experience,uh, with them and teaching.
It was a lot of movementtraining, helping people
understand how their body wasactually the limiting factor to

(04:03):
their, to their um, to theirgolf swing and within some of
the training.
Actually I think I'm not sureif you're in philadelphia near
philly, we're in lancaster,pennsylvania yeah, that's right,
it's a long story, but the uhno worries
uh, there's a physio here andI'm in vancouver, canada, canada

(04:23):
, and I had a franchise to agolf-based company that was
based out of Philadelphia at thetime and they sent me down
there for a number of weekslearning all sorts of things
about golf, but a lot of it wasactually sales training of how
to talk to and explain things topeople in a way that was
meaningful to them, which wassort of wrapping things around

(04:43):
sort of golf kind of things forthem.
Yeah, um, being in the sort ofthe health professional, I don't
necessarily get a lot of thingsabout sales, but it's really
yes, it really resonated with meabout, um, learning how to
teach people in a way that aremeaningful to them and sort of
explaining things in a waythat's meaningful to them.

(05:04):
Um, so, um, I yeah, I workedwith golfers for a number of
years and then, um, uh,eventually, about three years
into my career, decided to startmy own business, um, which, uh,
sort of shifted, and thenshortly thereafter we had three

(05:25):
kids in three years.
Uh, which sort of no big deal interms of in terms of creating
just general stresses in lifeand me trying to figure out sort
of uh, I, I.
When I was younger, I dealtwith a lot of physical injuries
like dislocating the shoulder orbreaking or banging things.
But then I started getting.
Uh, I became a physio prettyyoung, like I was in my mid-20s,

(05:48):
and yeah um started I I waslike, yeah, just taking on the
world.
I had kids, I had a business,just doing things.
And then when my kids wereabout three, four and six, I had
a really bad eye injury whichhad all sorts of physical and
emotional trauma sort ofassociated with it.

(06:09):
And so I I endured a lot, bothphysically and emotionally, and
started from there.
I got back to work, probablysooner than I should have,
trying to help a lot of peoplethat were um, that were probably
not in as bad a shape as I was.
Um and then um.

(06:31):
That was sort of around thetime after I did that.
That experience actually reallywrapped my first book up well
and gave me more things to writeabout.
Um, and so I I wrote about my myexperiences in explaining
things to my clients and what Iwas going through.
I started doing a lot ofreading on the more cognitive,

(06:52):
psychology and sort of brain andbehavior sides of things, and
the experience of writing thatfirst book sort of tilted a lot
of my caseload towards thepeople that were more having
chronic and resistant painproblems, um and uh.
So I got more and more used totrying to help people through it

(07:13):
wasn't necessarily people thatgot in car accidents or fallen
off the a treadmill or something.
It was people that just gotinsidiously uncomfortable and
sore and and tried seeing achiro or physio and multiple
doctors and weren't getting,weren't getting better um and uh
and then kind of the covid sortof issue hit and people were

(07:34):
stuck at home, weren't be ableto exercise the way they
normally, were spending moretime with their family and had
financial stress and healthstress and it really tilted my
case or it really just startednoticing.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
The thing that was bringing people in for physio
was more, uh, the physicalmanifestations of stress,
anxiety and fear yeah, yeah, you, um, you talk about this
physical relationship to thepsychosocial elements that we

(08:11):
experience in our lives and itespecially resonated with me
because I worked in emergencymedicine for 10 years and saw
this all of the time.
I mean all of the time.
You started to recognize prettyquickly that you know, all
tests come back normal and thenwhen you peel back some layers,
you find out all the things thatare actually going out or going
on in this patient's life andit's like you know, we just saw

(08:33):
it constantly.
So you said it so well.
I'm going to read thisparagraph here from the book.
His book is why we hurtunderstanding how to be
comfortable in your own body.
You're going to hear merecommend this book multiple
times, but really quick, guyslistening and watching, let me
just read this.
We experience empathy, love,sadness, anxiety and fear in our

(08:58):
organs.
It is not something we canmeasure, but it is something we
can subjectively feel in ourbodies.
Sharon had numerous triggersthat caused her to feel like
something was stepping on herchest.
That set off a cascade ofreactive muscular bracing
anxiety, shortness of breath andsometimes dizziness.
She passed all the cardiologisttests but still experienced the
physical sensations of a heavyheart and constricted lungs on a

(09:20):
regular basis.
I drastically changed how shefelt by treating her muscles,
but my ability to help her feelthe tension she held around her
heart seemed to have the longerlasting impact on her wellbeing.
I read that because I think itis such a beautiful case example
and you give so many in here ofwhat a lot of us feel but can't

(09:43):
put words to that.
We recognize almostsubconsciously at times that
under increased stress wephysically don't feel as well,
even if our level of fitnesshasn't changed, our diet hasn't
changed, even our routine hasn'tchanged.
But it's simply our perceptionof stress, load, emotional load

(10:09):
and how we feel that in our body, holding patterns in our body
at one point.
How do we learn to startrecognizing them and then

(10:30):
ultimately push back on them, ifyou will, in those moments as
well?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, yeah.
People generally tend to holdtheir day-to-day emotions and
stresses more in their muscularsystems in the form of tension.
I'd say that the muscles inyour upper traps and your jaw,
actually the deep muscles inyour butt, are probably the most
common places that peoplesubconsciously sort of tense and

(10:59):
clench, sort of subconsciously.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Is that what affects lower back pain, then?

Speaker 2 (11:07):
very much so.
The muscles in your hips arevery much like loosening the
muscles in the person's hipstakes more pressure off their
back than does actually doinganything to their back, um, but
so, yeah, more day-to-daytensions tend to be more in your
myofascial system, and sort ofdeeper seated emotions and sort
of past traumas and sort ofdeeper feelings tend to be more
in your myofascial system andsort of deeper seated emotions
and sort of past traumas andsort of deeper feelings tend to

(11:29):
be more in and around yourorgans and your heart and lungs
are your big emotional centerswhich, um, just the same sort of
pulling at your heartstrings.
Well, like those are actualthings like your.
Your heart sits in yourpericardium, which is a bag in
the center of your chest that'sactually attached to the center,
the underside of your sternum,the front of your spine, around

(11:50):
your neck and then above yourdiaphragm, in the front of your
spine, in your mid back, andwhen you're really stressed or
worried or sad, like that isactually, it has a lot of energy
to it.
Your heart's a big muscle.
It will tense and pull.
It can be something physicallytugging and pulling on the
inside of you and it'ssurrounded by your lungs, like

(12:12):
there's an interface betweenyour hearts and your in your
lungs, so there and yourbronchial tubes, which is sort
of where your breathing pipesplits into around your second
or third rib, into your upperchest.
It's a big place where peopletend to hold grief, and so
they're not these passive inertstructures.
They do hold on to tension andcan physically and mechanically

(12:34):
pull on you from the inside.
I did a number, a bunch ofosteopathic training through
what's called the BurrellInstitute, a technique called
visceral manipulation.
It's an osteopath namedJean-Pierre Burrell.
He started as a physicaltherapist, but osteopathy is
more common in Europe andactually down around some of the

(12:57):
eastern states, more in theFlorida area, but it's more and
more growing over here as well.
But the Burll institute teachescourses all over the world.
Um, of it's really anatomy,based of understanding sort of
where organs attach on to andhow to actually start to start
to feel them.
It's not that an organ sort ofin position b and you got to put

(13:21):
it back in position a.
It's.
It's that your body holdstension around there and you
really see your heart and lungsarea are the big ones.
Um, but like anxiety tends toreally rear its head in your
loops of your small intestinewhere people like you feel the
feeling of your your stomachchurning into knots, like you're
.
If you look at a picture ofyour small intestine, it's

(13:41):
literally a tube of knots andyour digestive tract has a
series of seven sphincters thatrun through it.
That is a gating mechanism togo through your digestive
process and they can reallyoverly, contract and tense and
affect and either make you feeluncomfortable in your abdomen
and or make you eitherconstipated or have diarrhea,

(14:05):
and those are they're very tiedto your emotional state, like
they call it feelings, becauseyou are genuinely feeling things
and there is anatomy behindthat and if you understand that
well enough, you can help peopleconnect and, um, uh, I guess
your question was about how dowe help people understand those

(14:26):
things.
The first part of it isactually showing you a little
bit of the anatomy in anapproachable way.
I have posters all over my wallsin my, in my office, to help
them just see how big your lungsactually are, and then, um,
laying hands on people in acertain way and getting them to
uh, the biggest, mostapproachable way to help them

(14:47):
feel it is, uh, is breathing,and there's all sorts of
breathing practices anddifferent types of breathing
exercises, but, uh, holding onto a person's lung and getting
them to breathe in a certain wayin a different place, um it's,
it's very.
It can be very relaxing andvery soothing to help, try to
help people.
Somebody let go.

(15:09):
It's sort of uh, unwinding thisactual physical aspects of
anxiety yeah, what is one?

Speaker 1 (15:17):
I mean, there's so many, so many breathing
techniques, but to your point,um, at least from my
understanding, there are somegeneral principles that ring
true in terms of where tooriginate that breath from,
meaning the high breath versusthe low diaphragmatic breath.
Just speak to that for a second.

(15:38):
I even have breathingtechniques on the podcast, and
I'm sure he has some too, but uh, you guys just listen, because
what I want you to hear is how,ultimately, where the breathing
should be coming from from aphysiological standpoint.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Sure, Um biggest point I try to help people
understand is there isn't onemagical way to breathe.
It's not like you're doing itwrong and there's a right way to
do it Breathing is good.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
you guys, Having worked in the emergency
department for 10 years, we likebreathing.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Your body will do a pretty good job of keeping you
alive.
It'll keep doing its job, butit's one of the main, the only
real physiological process youcan consciously tap into and
affect how you're doing it.
Um, I'd find most breathingpractices people tend to preach
a diaphragmatic breath or like abelly breath, which is sort of,

(16:33):
yeah, trying to draw it downand feel your diaphragm, to
stand and feel it sort of downinto your belly.
Um, I generally I acknowledgethat with, but I tend to help
teach people more of what you'dcall a lateral costal breath,
which is sort of breathing intothe sides of your rib cage, into

(17:05):
a bit of your pecs and some ofyour intercostal muscles in your
chest which actually drive yourrib heads into your sternum,
which can be part of the.
It creates the discomfort inyour into your chest and those
muscles can stay really sort of.
If you're a really generallytense person, your rib cage can
get really guarded and not movethat well.
Part of breathing is your wholerib cage should be able to

(17:26):
laterally expand and open.
At the same time your diaphragmdrops down.
So people don't naturally dothat motion as well as they
could.
So I have a poster in my roomthat shows sort of all the
organs underneath the person andpeople are so surprised of how
big your lungs actually are.

(17:48):
The apex of your lungs startsort of above your collarbone,
and the lungs aren't just inyour front, they're
three-dimensional things thatwrap around your heart and they
go down into your back, sort ofbelow your bra strap, the bottom
of your ribcage, and so numberone is actually visualizing them
as a big emotional bag insideyou and trying to uh slowly

(18:10):
engage them and take a breath ina way, that sort of uh sort of
in through your nose and itfeels like you're breathing
again sort of into the sides ofyour bra strap or the end of
your armpits a little bit.
Um, I like teaching people thefour, seven, eight breathing
which, uh, and sort of dr wheel,but the people do like box

(18:30):
breathing but generally takingnumber one, looking at how big
your lungs are.
Two, appreciating their bags,and it's not all, just lift your
chest up and breathe up here orall breathing down into your
belly that you are filling upthese big balloons inside you to
the point where it's makingyour rib cage stretch a little
bit, starting to get a bit ofproprioceptive.

(18:53):
It makes me, yawn it like,relaxes me instantly yeah, I'm
practicing breathing over hereand I'm already yawning yeah,
it's the tell peopleparticularly have like shoulder
problems or neck problems, likeand if you can see you tilt
towards the more anxious side ofthings like, practice some 478
breathing.
It's a, it's a form ofstretching for your rib cage and

(19:15):
it's inherently relaxing.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
I dare you to not be more calm after uh yeah, which
is also a great way to fallasleep at night.
You guys, I've I've talkedabout 478, but in case no one
has listened to that podcastepisode, which is probably a lot
of people, tell people how todo the 4-7-8 breathing.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Effectively take four seconds to slowly breathe in
through your nose, trying to getthat bit of a stretch in the
sides of your rib cage, holdingit for seven seconds and taking
eight seconds to slowly breatheout through pursed lips of just
slowly blowing out through asmaller hole in your mouth.
A bit of the back pressurehelps open up your bronchial

(19:54):
tubes a little bit and will helpyou last eight seconds in
blowing it out.
If you ask someone to take adeep breath, a lot of people
will try to do a big quickbreath and try to get a lot in
in the first second, butactually it's just the level of
mindfulness of slowing it down,trying to visualize how the size
of your lungs in there and baskwith holding it for a little

(20:15):
bit.
You're not going to die if youhold your breath for a few
seconds where, um again, peoplethat are more on the anxious
side of things can, uh, eithernot breathe in well or not
breathe out well yeah and it can.
The feeling of tension andrestriction in your chest can be
inherently claustrophobic andcreate a vicious cycle.

(20:37):
So, um, for, particularly forneck and shoulder issues and
general overall people that arekind of global tension bracers.
Starting with breathingpractices is usually one of the
first places.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
I love that.
So when you take a deep breath,you're feeling your rib cage
expand, and I'm assuming youwould say we don't want the
shoulders to rise, we want therib cage to expand.
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Exactly Yeah's, it's not a yes, the muscles that lift
your shoulders up are sort ofmore accessory muscles of
breathing, that if you'rerunning and you're panting, sure
they should keep going, but inthe effort of taking a deep
breath, shouldn't?
They'll passively lift a littlebit, but also don't necessarily
try to pull your shoulders down.
Just, I have a video I referpeople to all the time on my

(21:28):
website, which iswhythingshurtcom.
That's called.
Everything your mother taughtyou about posture is wrong.
That stems from picking on mom.
Sorry, but everybody alwaysgets.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
We're used to it.
We're used to it.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, shoulder a lot of the blame, but the whole sort
of chest up, shoulders back anddown thing can get people in
trouble.
So we can come back to thatlater, but the there's not the.
Pulling your shoulders furtherand further back or down is not
necessarily better.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Hmm, interesting you guys keep listening.
We're going to talk aboutposture, don't worry.
Everything your mother taughtyou is wrong, but in terms of
breathing, I love that.
Keep them relaxed is what I'mhearing.
Rib cage out four, seven, eight.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
There's also a video on there just called breathing
as an exercise, which is notdoesn't explicitly say the four,
seven, eight, but it gets intothe lateral costal breath, um,
that's uh on my YouTube channelbut it's integrated into the
website there.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Awesome, that's perfect.
We'll make sure that link isincluded too in the show notes.
Uh, you also had a great quote.
You said people's functionalmobility and their perceived
levels of pain do not correlatethat closely to the pictures we
can take of their insides withx-ray and MRI machines.
And I think this speaks tofurthering the point that we

(22:59):
need to start becoming betterdiagnosticians, if you will, of
our bodies, specifically as theyare correlating to our stress.
And to take it back one morelayer, you also have to be aware
of what is stressing you.
So I'll plug that in You've gotto be conscious of even what
your stressors are.
I think stress is some people'scomfort zone.

(23:21):
Actually, stress has almostbecome the new normal, so that's
a whole different podcastepisode.
But to your point then, once weare aware of that stress and
anxiety, starting to recognizehow it might be physically
affecting us.
So it's so fascinating to methat the deeper butt muscles
this makes so much sense are theprimary or most commonplace to

(23:48):
physically tense, or I think yousaid muscular bracing, which
then of course makes so muchsense as to why lower back pain
is like one of the number onemost commonly diagnosed problems
for chronic pain.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, very much so, and like the more of what you
experience, usually from a painor discomfort perspective, is
more related to your tensionlevel in your muscular fascial
system and or in around yourvisceral system, around your
organs and, less so, your bones.
You can have and you'll.

(24:25):
You can have people with justhorrific looking x-rays and very
little to no pain, and viceversa, people that have all
sorts of pain but test like passwith flying colors all of the
different medical tests.
So which?

Speaker 1 (24:38):
I can.
I have seen that for many, manyyears.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it's.
It tends to be a default.
If you go into your doctor withlike back pain, they'll usually
say, well, let's start with anx-ray, and unfortunately that
can.
That act can take people down alike, it can make people worse.
It can, um, because you get aradiology report back that has a
lot of uh, uncomfortablyforeign, uh medical jargon words

(25:05):
on it.
Um, and like degenerative discdisease, which most people, as
they get older, have some levelof degenerative disc disease or
um, the stage one, this or thator syndrome, that and it's, uh,
it's.
You can tell a lot from justactually talking to a person
moving their hips around,getting them to bend, move and

(25:28):
squat and see how their day,week and month are going, more
so than taking a picture of whattheir discs look like inside of
them.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Uh, so uh it's a lot cheaper too people.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
It's a lot cheaper too and from sort of whether
you're paying out of pocket orit's your like, our medical
systems are different.
Both have their own challenges,but, um, the the.
We tend to focus more on thesymptoms of things than the
actual story behind them or theroot cause.
Um, the.

(26:00):
Going back to those deepmuscles in your butt, so that
underneath your gluteus maximus,which is the bigger part of
your butt, you have a series oflittle deep hip rotator muscles
like your.
Your piriformis gets blamed fora lot of things because your
sciatic nerve goes through it.
Um, but there's your gluteusmedius and a handful of other
ones that are all they're likethe rotator cuff of your hip.

(26:20):
They affect how your hipactually sits in the socket.
They have a big posturalimplication in terms of how
you're holding yourself, andthey're probably the number one
or number two area where peoplehold on to their stress, like in
subconsciously tense and holdthings From a female perspective
too.
The whole process of pregnancyfeeds tons and tons of tension

(26:44):
into those, because your, yourabdominal muscles, your belly,
slowly gets all sort ofstretched out, uh, your center
of gravity changes and then in afairly quick that happens over
nine months, then a fairly shortprocess.
You damage some of your pelvicfloor muscles.
The tension in your abdomenchanges entirely and those deep

(27:06):
butt muscles just do all thework trying to hold your pelvis
together so they can get verygrippy as a stabilization
strategy and because yoursciatic nerve comes right
through that area, it's theelectrical wiring down to your
hamstring, calf and feet, so ifit's getting a bit annoyed you
can start getting calf cramps,you can start getting plantar

(27:28):
fasciitis and heel pain, whichis all more related to the
tension you're holding in yourbutt, partly from just
posturally trying to carry ababy around while your body's
still recovering, and there'sall the stresses that come with
with sort of motherhood and yourposture through that area
probably wasn't great to startwith.
Um, yeah, so a matter of tryingto find, uh, uh it's where

(27:53):
understanding your story uh,makes a big, makes more
difference of both yourstressors, what your posture and
movements like andunderstanding like.
That's why my website's calledwhy Things Hurt.
Is that like, yes,understanding the context.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, I love it.
It makes so much sense to me.
Well, and I have to tell you, I, my husband, is a prime example
of this.
He had ran a half marathon,didn't stretch while he's a
football player and then decidedto run a half marathon, you
know, after we got married.
So, uh, he would be the firstto admit, did not probably train
properly or stretch properlyfor it either.
Pulled something, um, he said inhis butt afterward, but what

(28:37):
happened was it was just thislike progressive degeneration of
his ability to walk.
Um would just wake up with themost debilitating pain and could
not seem to figure out any likecause.
It would get better, it wouldum, get worse.
And uh, you know, of courseorthopedists were getting x-rays
, all this other stuff.
Anyway, bottom line, early,early on, a physical therapist

(29:00):
said I don't think this isactually um or was he having,
but I can't remember.
Anyway, the physical therapistwas was ultimately the one that
was like I think it's actuallyoriginating here, even though
your symptoms are here.
I can't remember which one.
It was Um, but he ended upgetting diagnosed with
ankylosing spondylitis and ittook years to figure out.

(29:22):
That's what he had, which, forthose of you guys listening is
an autoimmune disorder where hisspine starts to fuse together.
But it's to your point.
It's this idea of even though asymptom is manifesting one
place, because everything's sointerconnected, the root issue
is often somewhere else orsomething else.

(29:45):
And that's where I just thinkyou guys are so good at In
emergency medicine.
We should honestly be miniphysical therapists.
The amount of ortho stuff wedeal with like that should be a
whole section of our curriculumthere should just be physical
therapists in the ER In the ER.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Can we preach that let's yep amen um, but I agree
with that for, like, example,like your husband, whether even
like I'm treating a guy withankylosing spondylitis right now
, but and and like I spent Iliterally spend most of my day
poking needles in people's buttsbecause, like, because I do a

(30:22):
technique of what's calledintramuscular stimulation, which
is really funny.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Not too many people can say that's what they spend
most of their day doing.
It's what I spend most of myday doing that's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
I get home and my 16-year-old always says you see
some butts today, dad, I treat abunch of his friends and all a
bunch of our parents.
But that's hilarious, the the alot of what we experience as
discomfort again, like even ifyou have something like
ankylosing spondylitis which,yes, has a lot to do with sort

(30:55):
of fusing of joints, and thingthat more of the discomfort you
end up feeling is still based inyour myofascial system and
you're understanding how yournervous system works and the
nerve innervations of muscles,like muscles, are supposed to
have a certain amount of restingtone to them.
They shouldn't be these limp,flaccid things and they
shouldn't be sitting there allsort of tense and braced.

(31:16):
Ideally they're somewhere inbetween, so they can contract as
you need them to or stretch asyou need them to.
And if a nerve, if a portion ofa nerve's getting irritated,
the some of those areas where itinnervates will start creating
a holding on to tension and willjust stay in a slightly overly
contracted state which willlimit the mobility of that joint

(31:39):
.
It usually makes it a littlebit more tender or sore and can
start to create nerve referralsfurther downstream.
So those deep muscles in yourbum, they really affect down to
your feet, to your knees and upinto your low back, and then on
either side of your spinethere's a couple inches deep of
muscle that run all the way upyour spine.

(32:00):
That get that will hold on to alot of tension for, again, a
variety of reasons, part of thempostural and part of them
stress, and and if you do havean underlying degenerated kind
of thing or an autoimmune thing,that's, that's creating maybe a
little bit more layer ofinflammation that irritates it
too and it creates thiscompressive nature in and around

(32:22):
your spine and your joints.
If you poke a needle into anormal, healthy, happy muscle,
you don't feel a lot.
If you poke a needle into amuscle that's already sitting
there in a contracted, banded,tense state, the stimulus of
moving a needle in and out of itwill cause that muscle to
contract and you'll feel it likea like a deep, crampy, achy,
pressure kind of feeling.
It'll cramp and then reallyreflexively relax and people get

(32:46):
a real love hate relationshipwith it because it is a series
of crampy, achy kind of feelings.
But yeah, can literally feellike magic if your your normal
use to baseline is this holdingkind of braced state and all of
a sudden I've tricked yournervous system into letting it
go and all of a sudden your hipmoves normally and um it it's.

(33:07):
It can profoundly change sort ofchronic tension holding
patterns.
Yeah, we're all regeneratingsources of tension based on poor
posture, movement patterns andbased on our stress and having a
million kids and jobs and doingthings.
So, yeah, it can last for agood while but it can start to
kind of come back.
But the act of helping somebodyfeel more what normal is

(33:29):
supposed to feel like and thenteaching them what they're doing
that's contributing to it andwhat they could do differently
to help it not regenerate soquickly, and pair that with the
visceral stuff I was talkingabout earlier People can.
The process of doing it istherapeutic in that you can

(33:50):
really understand where you holdyour tension and your stress a
lot more, so you can providerelief and teach people about
their holding patterns at thesame time.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
That's awesome.
I love that and I um thetechnique that you're talking
about with the with the needles.
What is that technique called?
Like?
If somebody is looking for ayou know, a physiotherapist who
is going to provide a beneficialservice for them, is that one
that you recommend?
And what is that is going toprovide a beneficial service for
them?
Is that?

Speaker 2 (34:21):
one that you recommend, and what is that?
Very much so, and it depends inthe states.
It depends what state you're in.
There are different forms ofwhat you'll call dry needling,
which is effectively putting aneedle into without actually
injecting any kind of substance.
It does use an acupunctureneedle of different sort, of,
slightly thicker than you'd use.
Use an acupuncture needle ofdifferent sort, of, slightly
thicker than you'd use intraditional acupuncture.

(34:43):
Um, the technique I'm talkingabout is called ims or
intramuscular stimulation, uh,which is created by a guy named
dr chan gun, who's here invancouver, um, but so there's
more people here that do thatspecifically than probably
anywhere.
Um, there's in different statesthat I believe it became a bit

(35:05):
of a turf war between physicaltherapists and acupuncturists
and some so interesting, somesome states, uh, like I know in
washington and california peoplethey're not physios aren't
allowed to do it.
I have people that come up hereto see me whenever they're in
town.
There's a bit of a, yeah, Ibelieve, in the states.

(35:25):
Different states have groupedtogether for licensing exams and
have similar policies.
So it depends where you are.
It's generally, if you look updry needling, there's a few
different forms of it.
They won't necessarily all beexplicitly what I'm talking
about, but it's probably theclosest uh.
I actually created my own sortof uh course on ims for

(35:47):
practitioners that are alreadytrained to do some level of of
of dry needling, like they're,wherever they are, they're
legally allowed to poke needlesin people, and I created an
online course to help peoplethat is based on Dr Gunn's model
of IMS, but it's sort of withmy my own sort of experience

(36:10):
I've take on.
I've been doing it since 2008.
So I would I look up IMS, butif you are, yeah, your
availability of it will dependwhere you are in the world.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I'd start with dry needling, yeah, IMS dry needling
, depending on where you are andif you are a practitioner and
want more guidance on it, what,what would they look up on your
website?
We'll make sure our editor putsit in the show notes, but what
is what would they find it?

Speaker 2 (36:42):
yeah, if you go to whythingshurtcom and just one of
the big bars at the top whichsays courses, and there's a,
there's a course there.
It's, it's hosted through udemyum website and it's goes
through and has all theexplanations behind it and has
videos of all the differenttechniques and how well, um, all
the different sort of musculartug of wars of which muscles are

(37:05):
best to sort of releasetogether, um, and how to really
importantly is how to have xvideos of me, how I explain it
to a client of what I'm doing,because that again, the act of
poking needles in people can beinherently stressful.
People have very complexrelationships with needles and

(37:25):
so I've helped train and teach alot of people that have taken
courses in needling and thathave had various success with it
.
So this course goes through.
It's what I wish I had when Iwas sort of learning to do it.
So it's sort of an onlinementorship course to both

(37:47):
understand the safety techniqueof doing it well, how to explain
it well, to not traumatize theperson as you're trying to poke
needles in them.
So, yeah, I've had people allover the world sort of uh, take
it.
They had uh like a physiatristtype doctor in italy kind of
contacting about it and peopleand um a number of different

(38:09):
parts, um, because they're yeahsame.
In england there's people havedifferent levels of dry needling
training but haven'tnecessarily.
I'd say dr gunn was one of thepioneers of IMS and it's uh, it
is very effective.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
That's awesome.
We'll make sure that's includedso that you know, for as long
as people are listening to this,if you are a practitioner you
can actually learn from that.
Uh, in a minute we're.
I know what you're thinking.
We're getting there in a minute.
We're going to dive intoBrent's expert advice on to do a
quick round of, would yourather with brent?

(38:44):
He didn't know this was coming,but he's game for it.

(39:04):
Would you rather let's do it?
Would you rather take your kidsto the beach or go camping?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
beach.
Yeah, camping is too much workwith three kids.
I like I like camping, but uh,uh, we kind of gave up camping
after a while.
We tried it when they're alllittle, and I think my my garage
is full of camping gear.
We haven't done that in years.
Uh, but we kind of gave upcamping after a while.
We tried it when they're alllittle, and I think my garage is
full of camping gear.
We haven't done it in years.
I love the water, they all lovethe water, so beach hands down.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Raise your hand.
If you've got lots of campinggear and haven't used it in
years, that would be me.
So many of us.
Great experience, too much work.
Would you rather a personalyacht or a private jet?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
all of the above, it's a good one.
Um, I'm gonna go personal yachtbecause I live in vancouver and
I'm right on the edge of one ofthe most beautiful sort of
coastline in the world, so Ithink I'd take that and go
explore more of our ourcoastline vancouver really is.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
canada is so pretty.
My husband and I at one pointwere looking at moving away from
where we've been and man,canada is so beautiful.
It's just too cold.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Vancouver is way warmer than where you are.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
What Really oh yeah, Wait this is my geographical
ignorance shining through?

Speaker 2 (40:28):
no shame we're we're two hours north of seattle.
It's the warmest part of of ofcanada and, like we, in the
winter it's warmer than where weare uh, yeah not all year round
, but in philadelphia.
Like we barely get belowfreezing here uh in in the
winter, uh, I mean I I'm lookingout my window right here.

(40:51):
I've got snow cap mountainssitting right there.
I can see from right over there, but so it's cold.
It gets cold out there, but itrains a lot here, but it's.
This is a very temperate, mildrainforest climate here.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Wait.
So what's your temperatureright now?

Speaker 2 (41:09):
In Fahrenheit, I don't know.
In Celsius it's probably about18 degrees, which is.
I don't know if that is inFahrenheit, it's probably like
70.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
70.
Okay 66 here.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, oh, it's been, it's been.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Well see, this is why you can't trust google people.
Maybe we should have moved tovancouver.
It's so pretty, it's beautifulthere yeah, I know we're we've
got.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I'm gonna say we from , from sitting right here, I can
be on the top of a mountainskiing in a half an hour that or
be out and sitting in the beachor going out on my private
yacht.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Now, surely the water is cold.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
The water's cold.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
I was going to say that has to be pretty cold.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
I was surprised.
Actually it's colder in Oregonas you go down south a little
bit, I went surfing down thereand it's as you go.
I don't know how currents work,but it's.
You get to California, it'swarmer but the water's colder.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oregon is colder, water is colder.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Oregon somehow is colder, I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Okay, Well, we apparently should have called
Brent when we were researchingVancouver Cause I remember
specifically looking at it andbeing like Hmm, so pretty.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Look at it in the temperature differential all
through the winter and Iguarantee you we're warmer than
you are.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
That's wild.
I'm going to do that, I'm goingto look.
Maybe I shouldn't.
Then I'll feel depressed andthen I'll get stressed and then
my butt muscles will clench andthen I'll have back pain.
So we should probably not dothat.
Yeah, okay, would you rathercake or pie?
Pie, I love fruit.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Oh, okay, peaches.
Or like a strawberry rhubarbpie, like sweet with a bit of
tart.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Uh-huh, that's yeah, I just interviewed a guy
Actually, he'd be a greatconnection for you.
His name is Yuri Elkaim.
He's founder of, or ahealthpreneur Specifically it
specifically with healthprofessionals wanting to venture
into online entrepreneurship.
But he's incredible.
But he's from Canada and hetold me his favorite pie is

(43:16):
bumbleberry.
Are you familiar with it?

Speaker 2 (43:20):
I've heard of it.
I can't say I know exactlywhat's.
I think that's their collectionof different fruit.
Or is bumbleberry an actualberry?

Speaker 1 (43:28):
I wasn't sure.
I've never even heard of it.
I definitely think it's acanadian thing.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
It's kind of like a, like a blackberry kind of uh,
blackberry raspberry kind of uh,with sweet, with a little bit
of tart, kind of thing, I thinkmix.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, it almost sounded like a yeah blueberry
married a raspberry and then didsomething weird with a
blackberry or something.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Anyway, we have a, we have a family cabin up in
okanagan which is sort of goback to geography, the same
natural extension of land thatnapa valley kind of goes up into
here we have a whole own winecountry.
So it's all orchards and so thepeach and cherry orchard up
there.
So a good fresh peach you pickoff a tree and put that in the

(44:11):
pie.
I'll take that over.
Chocolate cake is a closesecond, but I'd go pie.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, I'm with you there.
Actually, a fresh peach piewould be my go-to, with homemade
crust.
Give me the good stuff.
Nothing, store-bought, none ofthat nonsense.
You have another really greatquote in this book.
There's a lot of great quotes.
I highlighted quite a few ofthem, but you said, helping
people starts with teaching them, not with treating them.
So with the remaining time,let's talk posture, because this

(44:42):
is something that many of usdeal with.
This is a case in point.
I've had six interviews today.
I've been sitting in a chairfor hours.
I try to get up when I can.
This is not my everyday.
This is an unusual, and I don'tusually do six interviews in a
day either, but I feel it Rightnow.
I feel it in my neck and myshoulders.
This is really what's tightless in my back.

(45:04):
I'm just curious.
Step number one especially forpeople who are feeling it in
their lower back, which is many,many people, I would love to
hear your go-to teaching aboutposture because, ladies,
everything our mothers taught uswas wrong, so listen up was

(45:33):
wrong.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
So listen up.
Um, yeah, it depends where Iwould start with.
It depends on what position,what, what, what posture you're
sort of mean you're mainly, uh,talking about whether it's
sitting or standing, uh, what?
The areas to pay attention toin sitting are slightly
different than standing.
Um, generally, when I startpointing it out to people, I
will start having them stand ina mirror and focus on their side
profile, because we posture ingeneral in people's perception

(45:57):
is sort of what's kind ofhappening from their chest up
and sort of more, more.
And you say the word posture,people immediately lift their
chest up and usually pull theirshoulders back yeah, chin down
head back yeah, which generally,again, we are moving human
beings.
We're not meant to sit in chairsand do six podcasts in a day or

(46:18):
be standing at a counter allday like.
So, yes, sort of step one ismove more, like find, like I
know you can't stand up and movearound right now, but step one
is trying to little micro breaksthroughout the day is a big
piece of it.
But when you actually aretrying to help people understand
the posture piece of it numberone focusing on I'll stand you

(46:43):
have you look at your sideprofile, because what you might
think aesthetically looks likevery nice posture from the front
, you might realize if you lookat yourself from the side
profile, you're very muchleaning backwards.
So your efforts to think chestup, shoulders back and down
makes you look nice and openthrough your chest.
But if you look at you from theside, a lot of the times from

(47:04):
about an inch or two below yourbra strap, from that point of
view your whole torso isactually leaning backwards.
And so step one is actuallypointing it out to people and
not trying to teach them thingsto change, but just try to help
them see where their currentnormal is like, what their
baseline is because if yourperception of normal is leaning

(47:28):
backwards and I make you gostraight, you're going to feel
like you're leaning forwards.
Yeah, our, our brains have ahead writing reflex that want to
keep our eyes and our facelooking straight forward.
So if, uh, if I, if you're alltight through here and I lean
and you're leaning backwards andI pull you forwards, your
body's gonna you're gonnaaccommodate your body to you
forwards.
Your body's going to you'regoing to accommodate your body

(47:49):
to.
You're going to move your bodyaround to accommodate your
vision.
So, just seeing what they'rehelping you realize that you can
see, or what you feel might bedifferent than what you see in a
mirror.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
So step number one, ladies side profile do an
evaluation and what should yousee?

Speaker 2 (48:25):
What should you see?
What do we curve to it and thena bit of an inward curve in
your low back and inward curvein your neck, so it creates a
bit of a an s curve.
Um, people tend to overthinkthat they have to do the chest
up shoulders back, and just themore they pull things back, the
better.
Um, but again, appreciatingthat, your shoulders so I'm sort

(48:47):
of moving my shoulders back andforth that your shoulders and
your spine and rib cage, whichcan slouch and come up and down,
they're two different thingsthen.
So you want to learn to useyour rib cage to support your
shoulders more than yourshoulders to support your rib
cage.
So if you think of your yourupper few ribs as sort of a coat

(49:08):
hanger for your shouldergirdles, and you want to learn
to feel, and that's where comingback to breathing is helpful
and help you teach people, get alittle bit more.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
It's funny, I was literally just moving my body
and my inclination was tobreathe because I'm like wait
ribs, how do I okay?

Speaker 2 (49:23):
yeah, trying to realize if you take that lateral
costal breath or you try tobreathe into your armpits or
into sort of the background,your bra strap, a little bit
more, where you can fill up thatspace and feel that if you take
a big deep breath it doespassively kind of lift your
shoulders from below a littlebit more, whereas a lot of
people will tend to overusetheir lats and their rhomboids,

(49:46):
so the muscles kind of in yourarmpits and muscles between your
shoulder blades, to try to pinthem back and down.
Step one is learning to let thatgo a little bit and learn,
learn to start to try.
Priority one is uh, try to feelyour rib cage and your thoracic
spine, the middle part of you,a little bit and try to

(50:08):
appreciate if you're, if younaturally are, really kyphotic
and really rounded, or you mightactually kind of think you are,
but you're actually reallybraced and leaning backwards,
which you might be able to, youmight be able to see in a mirror
yeah um, in my first book andon my website, if, if you
actually search why hips hurt, Iwrote a blog article called why

(50:32):
Hips Hurt, an IllustratedExplanation.
I draw a whole bunch of stickmen that get into the actual
biomechanics of stacking yourbones up.
That can help you understand abit of it.
A bit of it, um.
But number one is, yeah, startwith trying to breathe and feel
your rib cage a little bit andappreciate that it's not

(50:52):
necessarily the more you liftyour chest up.
So, um, and again, this is abit tricky to show sitting here,
but uh, um, um.
So, step one, try to feel,appreciate the difference.
Imagine I had a slinky and Iwas trying to lift the slinky
straight up.
Posture wise, you're trying toelongate things upward more so

(51:17):
than lengthening the front andshortening the back.
You picture a slinky that'skind of fanning out in the front
and squishing in the back.
You want to make sure you'renot overly just compressing the
heck out of everything in theback.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, that's so good, you guys.
I've never heard that before.
Write that down, ladies.
Slinky goes up and down, itdoesn't go to the back, and then
compress everything in the back.
That's a great illustration.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yeah, so it's about helping you build a bit of a
relationship with your mid back.
People like your hands mighthurt, your shoulders might hurt,
your knees might hurt, butpeople don't really understand
like what's happening in theirmid back.
It has the most joints in it.
Your thoracic spine has themost vertebrae, all your ribs
attached and somehow tons ofjoints.

(52:02):
There's lots of things in therethat can.
If that whole area is a bit ofa brick and not moving well,
other things will compensate forit and you can end up creating
problems.
So, trying to get you toappreciate the movement there,
um, there's an art, a video onmy website called four point
neutral spine, which is puttingyou on your hands and knees and

(52:26):
trying to help you find thatnatural s curve.
Not on gravity, so you're goingagainst gravity, so you're not.
You're not really biased bywhat you're seeing or what
you're, what's happening in yourfeet.
You can try to relate, um, whatyou're doing with your pelvis
and what you're doing with yourmid back and how tricky that is

(52:47):
for a lot of people to actuallyfind, create a little bit of a
natural s curve.
People will very commonly bepretty good at doing the cat cow
kind of thing which creates allthis hinge in that middle part
of your spine, but have a hardtime, uh, actually finding that
part of your back andunderstanding the relationship

(53:10):
of your pelvis to your hips.
So, yes, coming back, comingback to I saying how you hold
all those tension in the deepmuscles in your bum, you'll see
a lot of people, particularlymothers, that have had babies.
You put you on your hands andknees and look at your side
profile.
Usually you've got your bumtucked right underneath you, um,
so, and if I ask you to tip itand stick it back out the other

(53:34):
way, you'll tend to have yourmid back drop right down.
So, um, your posture is a thingof.
It's kind of a game ofwhack-a-mole.
You try to you put one thingdown, something else moves,
trying to understand therelationship between your hip,
your pelvis and your back andhow that relates to your trunk.
So the next step of it isputting you on your hands and

(53:58):
knees and trying to help you seethat neutral spine video.
And then there's one calledfour point rock backs, which is
finding that neutral spine andthen just moving in your hips
and seeing if you can keep thatspine in the same position,
which comes down to learning howto use your abdominal wall a

(54:19):
little bit.
You might have in standing youmight have really strong abs,
but it kind of looks like youhave a little bit of a belly or
a little bit of a punch in thelower part of your abdomen.
If you're overly extending yourback, you're inhibiting you
from using your abs properly andyou can make it look like
you've got more of a belly thanyou actually do.

(54:39):
If you get a bit more into thatposition of your of your trunk,
you'll see it flattens yourstomach out and you learn how to
actually use them it makessense, because the slinky is
drawing upward yeah right, soyou're literally elongating,
okay well, your, your abdominalmuscles create what you call an
abdominal wall, so your six-packmuscle attaches from their the

(55:02):
center part of your rib cage, aplace called your xiphoid
process, down to your pubicbones.
They run vertically and thenyour obliques kind of attach the
front of your rib cage, a placecalled your xiphoid process,
down to your pubic bones.
They run vertically and thenyour obliques kind of attach the
front of your rib cage to thefront of your pelvis and they
kind of knit your rib cage toyour pelvis, which is a kind of
a force field connecting thosetwo.
If you're overshooting withyour back muscles and your lats,

(55:24):
trying to think chest up,shoulders back and down, the act
of doing that can actuallylimit your ability to use your
abs when you're in the verticalposition.
So, um you, you can haveheroically strong abs in a plank
position and doing sit-ups andstuff.
It doesn't mean you're going touse them that well when you're
actually in the verticalposition.

(55:45):
Um, so learning some of the stepone with posture is that point
out some of your bracingstrategies and let you see in
the, in the, in the mirror.
Then throw you on your handsand knees and get you to see how
your bum relates to the areaaround your bra strap.
Then see if you can move inyour hips and then start

(56:05):
progressively making you morevertical, of getting you up onto
your knees and see if you canhinge in your hips and hold.
I'll say one more thing interms of you sitting all day.
If you're sitting and you'recatching yourself slouching,
don't immediately try to liftyour chest up.
Biggest thing is actually getyour butt underneath you, so

(56:30):
your two sits bones.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
I just looked down at my butt.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
I'm like I don't know Well the relationship of your
pelvis to your hips.
Your pelvis should sit in aslight anterior tilt over your
hips and that's what creates thenatural S curve in your spine.
When you're sitting of actuallystacking your bones up.
It's more comfortable if yousat for a while, typically if

(56:53):
your hips are really tight, tokind of allow your pelvis to
fall back behind your hips andas soon as you do that, your
upper body will slouchInteresting.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
So like I need to push my butt back.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Yeah.
So if you're sitting there allday, you kind of, yeah, lift
yourself up, scoot your bum back.
Yeah, so if you're sittingthere all day, you kind of, yeah
, lift yourself up, scoot yourbum back, so you feel like your
sit bones are back and furtherapart.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
It did just push me forward.
I can see it actually in thescreen.
Do you see that?
See how the top of my head iscloser to the top of the screen.
Exactly so there it is Slinky'svertical.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Yeah, If you're sitting with your butt tucked
under you all day and thentrying to lift your shoulder,
your chest up all day, you'restarting an unnecessary
biomechanical tug of war.
So in sitting, pay moreattention to where your butt is.
In standing, more kind ofaround where your bra strap is,
but there's a lot in between.
But that's that's where I'vetried to create resources to

(57:44):
explain that on my website.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
I love that.
Thank you, and we'll make surethat we get those in the show
notes.
Is there one exercise that yourecommend in terms of elongating
that is something that womencan be doing whenever, or is it
just kind of like there's just alot of different things that
you stack on top of each other?
Is there an exercise likephysical movement to practice

(58:10):
during the day to keep thatelongated?

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Um, I would.
I would say it's does.
Come back to trying.
I would say the first thing istrying to do that.
Um breathe into the side ofyour bra strap kind of try to
feel that.
Imagine I came up behind you andlightly put my hands just on
the sides of you and lightly,lightly tipped forward and
lifted, and then had you try tobreathe in that area.

(58:36):
Try to shift your mentalperception of where to hold
yourself up from down to there,not be from around your
collarbones and your head.
Around your collarbones andyour head, like.
Try to start the lengthening ofthe slinky more in the middle
of you and even when you'resitting, after you've got your
butt underneath you, then goback to that same area and feel

(58:58):
like you're trying to createlength.
So it's not about it's notabout your shoulders.
Shoulders are easier lowhanging fruit, they move around
easier.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
It's a bit more of a connection to it, but Everyone's
hearing me like deep breathing.
I feel like what is she?
Doing those of you not seeingthe video.
It's confusing.
It's so fascinating, though,because I'm actually watching
myself in the video.
I've never heard this before,and it's fantastic, cause as you
take that deep lateral breath,you do see your shoulders just
passively go up and evenslightly back.

(59:29):
Yeah, your rib cage that's it,ladies, breathe better.
I'll take that any day.
I love it there's a.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
There's a good.
I recommend it in my book.
But I really like jamesnester's book.
It's called breath the newscience of a lost art.
Uh, you won't be able to notthink about how you're breathing
if you read that book.
It's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Say that book recommendation one more time.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
I believe it's called it's either breath or breathe.
I think it's breath, I don'tknow if there's an E on the end
of it.
But then it's called the newscience of a lost art.
Bright yellow on the frontlooks a picture of kind of lungs
on the front.
Yeah, it's worth it Worth theread it's entertaining and
interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes, and you guys,
of course, we're going to putBrent's book in the show notes.
I highly highly recommend thisbook.
Why we Hurt Understanding howto Be Comfortable in your Own
Body.
Where else can people find you,brent, and follow you?
We're going to put tons ofresources in this episode's show
notes, so whywehurtcom?

(01:00:27):
But where else can they findyou?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Instagram is just at whythingshurt.
I'd say that's where I'm themost active.
Lately it hasn't been thatactive, but I have plans to get
it busy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
I hear you there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Trying to fit it in LinkedIn is just sort of
LinkedIn slash.
Brent Stevenson Um, uh,linkedin is just Brent that sort
of LinkedIn slash.
Brent Stevenson.
Um, my YouTube page is actually, uh, uh, named after my
physiotherapy clinic, so it'ssort of YouTube slash.
Envision physio Um, there's,that is embedded into my why
things hurt site.
But if you're just on YouTube,either just Google my name or

(01:01:05):
envision physio and you'll findthat, um, pretty much any of
them are why things hurt.
I have Twitter and TikTokaccounts, but they may.
You're best off to look at mywebsite or go Instagram or
Facebook is just why things hurtas well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Awesome why things hurtcom and you definitely need
to check out the book why wehurt by Brent Stevenson.
But I was such an need to checkout the book why we hurt by
Brent Stevenson.
But I was such an honor to haveyou here.
I learned a lot.
I could have kept going.
We're already past our time.
Thank you so much for takingtime out of your busy schedule.
The book's amazing.
You guys need to buy it.
I pray God's blessing over yourheart, your home and all the
people that you're serving trulyand helping them to revitalize

(01:01:46):
their lives by understandingtheir bodies.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Thank you for watching the Imperfectly
Empowered podcast.
Be sure to subscribe to thechannel by clicking below, and
if you missed our last video,then be sure to check it out
right here.
We'll see you next time on thepodcast.
Your story matters and you areloved.
Thank you.
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