August 21, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode of Unlearn the Crap & Level UP: Your Soul is Calling, Kathy Baldwin welcomes Butch Phelps, founder of The Mind-Body Therapy Institute, to break down the myths around pain, aging, and the way our bodies truly heal.
Together, they dive into:
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The “crap” Butch had to unlearn as a practitioner about pain and the nervous system
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Why fascia and the brain hold the key to physical freedom
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How cultural myths about aging and stiffness keep people stuck in pain
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Simple steps anyone can take to improve movement, heal injuries, and prevent chronic pain
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The emotional and spiritual connection behind physical healing
💡 Learn more about Butch’s work, fascia therapy, and resources at https://butchphelps.com (or his latest program if he mentioned one in the episode).
📚 Kathy’s Books:
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Unlearn the Crap & Level UP: Your Soul is Calling
-
How I Unlearned MY Crap
Available on Amazon + bookstores worldwide
🌐 Learn more at https://kathybaldwin.me
👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to help others heal and rise.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Unlearn the Crap TV with your host,
Kathy Baldwin. Unlearn the Crap TV is more than
just a show. It's a movement towards breaking free from the
disempowering structures designed to benefit the few at the
expense of the many. It's about education, healing, and unlearning
(00:21):
the detrimental beliefs that have been ingrained in society for generations.
So now please welcome the host of Unlearn the Crap tv,
Kathy Baldwin. Foreign.
Welcome to another episode of Unlearn the Crap and level
up. Your soul is calling. My name is Kathy Baldwin,
(00:43):
and I am your host. For those of you who are new to this podcast,
let me explain what Unlearning the Crap means.
Crap is an acronym. It. It means the condition,
responses, and automatic programming that go into our limiting thoughts
and beliefs. It comes from our ancestral trauma.
(01:04):
It comes from beliefs from our society and our upbringing
and our family. It comes from marketing and
every disempowering thought that we've ever
had. But it is more than that, because crap
is what it sounds like. It is excrement. It is
(01:24):
that which the body is trying to process and release that
does us no good. And while it can all
go through our digestive system when we're dealing
with our food, we also have crap that comes from those condition
responses and automatic programming that sets off our central nervous
(01:45):
system, which in turn affects our gut microbiome,
which is the cause of inflammation.
Inflammation is a direct correlation to
disease within our body. So we
cannot ever think that our thoughts have
no value or they don't matter just because they're
(02:08):
in the energetic realm. Everything affects
everything. And today, my guest,
we are going to be talking to Butch, and we are going
to be talking about the interconnected,
interrelated systems that is our mind,
body, heart, soul, and how it affects us.
(02:30):
Welcome. But it's so good to have you here today.
Thank you for having me. It's going to be a lot of fun today.
I'm looking forward to this. But before
we get started, you've heard what that definition, according to
me is about what crap is. Could you please tell
me and our audience what. What crap you needed to unlearn
(02:53):
so that you could level up? So if you got like 10 or 12 hours
to go through all of that, I mean, it's like we're all to go through
every bit of that, you know? Sure. I. I can. I can list four
or five right off the top of my head. The number. The number one thing,
you know, growing up was I was always thought that my Worth as a
man was going to be decided by how much money I made. Not whether I
(03:17):
enjoyed something or not, but how much money are you making? You know,
and so, you know, I spent 20 years on a job that I literally
hated. I had great benefits, I had a great schedule. By most
people's standard, I should be the happiest man on the planet. And yet I
would get off on, on a Wednesday or Thursday morning, I had the weekend
(03:37):
off. Every, every weekend. The first thought I had out getting
into my car was, oh God, I have to come back on Sunday night.
And it was like I started to see that it wasn't the money,
the money didn't do anything for me. And then when I got into
doing what I do, I started to see that
what made my life was how do I benefit other people?
(04:00):
Secondly, secondly, I always had to win.
I always had to win. And I was an athlete and
growing up a three sport athlete. I was large. I was 6,
4, 220 pounds in high school. I was very
athletic. I was good enough that I could get on teams easily.
But I didn't have the mindset and the work ethic
(04:23):
that I needed to be able to, to be good at what I
did. I could have been good, but just didn't have the mindset because I was
going back to, I need a job to make money. You can't make a living
doing this. And then lastly, in finding relationships,
I, my, my first wife that I had was a very nice
(04:44):
woman. I thought having a submissive wife would be great for
me. And what I learned was that was not great for me either. I needed
an intelligent woman who could speak her mind, who could stand side by side with
me and we fight the battles together. And once I found that, my life changed.
And so those are the top three that come off the top of my head.
(05:04):
Okay, I am writing copious notes
of things I want to come back to. But before we come back
to that, Butch, could you please introduce yourself
to everyone? Now that you've unlearned this crap, how are you leveling
up and serving the world? Well, to begin with, I, I am a
(05:27):
self described muscle nerd. I study the muscles of
the human body from a movement aspect and from an emotional
aspect. I get great joy out of just watching people walk
and figuring out what's wrong with them just by the way they walk. So that's
kind of how sick I am about that. But I actually am a massage therapist
who studied neuromuscular massage and sports massage. I later was introduced
(05:50):
to A man named Aaron Mattis who taught me about active isolated stretching, learning how
to stretch the body the correct way. And then I was very fortunate to
have five mentors, two of which were neurosurgeons that studied the
brain, that started tying together to me the emotions in the brain
of our body with the fascia and the muscle system of the human body.
(06:11):
Like I said earlier when I was talking about learning the Crap, I spent 20
years on a corporate job that I hated. And the
moment I found this or this found me, I should say,
I fell in love with it. It became the love of my life. So to
be able to see someone who's been in pain for months to years and watch
the smile on their face as they are free of that pain and can move,
(06:33):
that is something that just, just makes me happy every
day. And you know, we talked about before we had the, the conversation
that, you know, I'm going to give away a free ebook that will share
and we'll talk about this at the end, but we'll share the five most important
stretches that the human body should do every day.
And that affects pretty much 95 of the planet.
(06:57):
And if you do those five stretches on a daily basis, and we'll talk more
about that as we get into it, you'll find that a lot of the common
aches and pains that people deal with, they'll go away. And what would be
more surprising, it's very different from what anyone else has ever told you about stretching
your body. Okay, well, I can't wait to get
my copy of that, which I'll do as soon as we finish our conversation
(07:20):
here. But I want to start with
telling you how excited I am for this conversation.
Me too. Those of you who don't know
guests are not just booked onto this show.
I pre interview every single person to make
sure that they are in alignment with what the mission vision
(07:43):
is of unlearning the crap. And our conversation.
I was so excited. First of all, before we even got
to it, I saw the picture behind you. So I knew that we were connecting
mind and body. Let's start right
there. You said that one of the things that
(08:03):
gives you absolute joy is releasing pain.
Yes. We, we live in a society where
there's a pill for every ill. I believe that
pain is the body's communication tool.
What do you think about that? And, and what is it telling us?
(08:25):
Okay, so there's, there's a few things. We have what's called the vagus nerve,
which runs along the spine and it's in constant communication, the body to
the brain. And actually the body talks to the brain and just sort of gives
a check into the brain of what's going on below the neck.
And so that communication needs to be clear.
The problem is, is that the way we train everybody and the way I was
(08:47):
trained in school initially, too, is we focus on the physical
side of the body. So if I pull a muscle or if I have a
stiff, low back or anything happens, we understand
how to physically fix something if it's torn or broken
or needs to be replaced, so to speak. What we
don't learn in medical school, and I'm talking from doctors all the way down to
(09:09):
therapists, what we don't learn in school is how much
the brain then. And our emotions come into play.
How much of our experiences in our lives that are literally
trapped in the fascia and the muscles of the human body are actually
hampering or changing the way we walk, the way we stand, the way we
(09:29):
feel. That can, down the road, lead to bigger and bigger issues.
Now, when we talk about muscles and we talk about fascia,
everybody knows the physical side of the muscles especially.
You go to the gym, you work out, you lift weights, you go to stretch
class, and you pull as hard as you can and hold for as long as
you can. And you think you're fighting with your muscles because you think your muscles
(09:50):
have the ability to make a decision whether they like you or not. Today,
the truth of the matter is, is that what you're fighting with is
your own experiences, is your own mind.
And so you're. You start to do something, and the brain is almost like,
oh, wait a minute, that could hurt. We got hurt before. That could hurt.
(10:11):
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah, that could hurt. Well,
we don't do that. And if you try, if someone says, no, no, be tough,
override that. And you start to pull and your body's going, no, no, no,
no, no. The experience said we're not supposed to do that. Don't do that.
Mayday, mayday, mayday. And then you pull something, and we think that
our body is betraying us. It's not our body, it's our mind,
(10:32):
and it didn't betray us. It's trying to tell us something, and sometimes we're
too ignorant to listen to it. I've done that. So that's how I can speak
from experience. I love this because
one of the things I'm always talking about is that our brain is
physically designed to always be right.
Yes. And the there's three parts of our brain. The first
(10:55):
part is the reptilian part which is only designed to keep us safe
and alive. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care about happy,
healthy, wealthy, any of these other things.
As long as you're continuing to breathe,
it's doing its job. Whether you're in a Rolls Royce or
a Volkswagen, doesn't matter. Or, or a wheelchair,
(11:17):
you know, it really doesn't. Yeah, it really does not matter.
So how does your example
about making a decision that I
want to get physically fit so I'm going to go to the gym.
How do we override that part
(11:38):
of our brain that says lifting that big heavy thing
is going to hurt? I don't want to do it. Put putting us into
our turning on our central nervous system, putting us into a stress
mode and not injuring ourselves. How do we do this?
So number one, most people go to a gym. They decided, let's say
(11:59):
January 1st, what I call the New Year's resolution or this is my year to
get in shape. Man. I'm probably would be in my mid-50s or early-50s
and I haven't lift weight since high school, maybe a little bit in college.
So I think I'm going to go to the gym. Especially as a guy.
I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to lift at 55,
the same way I did at 18. Because it worked at 18, it should
(12:22):
work at 55. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Or somebody may go to the gym and especially,
and I've seen this in women, sometimes they'll go to the gym and they see
this cute guy, he's a trainer. Standing there, he looks really buff.
He's been lifting weights like crazy. I just want to talk to that
guy. I'm gonna have him to train me because he's got big muscles,
(12:44):
he must know what he's doing. And then they, they crawl out to their
cars and can't figure out why tomorrow morning they can't lift the tongue up off
their, their gums because they're so sore. Okay,
so my advice to most people, if you haven't lifted weights in a long time
or you haven't done workouts in a long time, find a trainer that looks the
way you would like to look. In other words, if you're 50 years
(13:06):
old, look for a trainer that's in that 45 to 60 year
range, looks fit, does well. They don't
have the perfect body that you'd have at 21, but they look really good and
they're healthy. That's probably the right person for you, getting the
bodybuilder. And nothing wrong with bodybuilders, but understand that as a
bodybuilder, that person knows how to be a bodybuilder. That person,
(13:30):
if they're 23, does not know what you feel like at 55.
Okay. And it's like, so you got to take those
things into consideration and be patient. You are not going to go
to the gym on Monday with a belly and you're
out of shape and think by next Monday you're going to look like a bodybuilder.
That's just not going to. I mean, these guys have been doing it for 15,
(13:51):
20 years, even though they're 25 years old. And it's like,
it's not going to happen overnight. So those are the three things I would advise
people right off the bat. When they go, okay, so how do they deal with
the mindset and let the mind not get triggered into
the sympathetic nervous system and be on high
(14:11):
alert where we can get injured easily. Yes.
So the, the first thing you want to do is you want to test
your body. You want to test to see what weight
level that you do that. Now, when I say that if there's like
four weights there and the bottom one is a five pound and the top one
is a hundred pound, I'm not saying go to the 100 pound weight first and
(14:34):
try to pick it up your first time you're in the gym. Start with the
5 or the 10 pound weight and then see how
well your body reacts. Can you do 10 repetitions with
10 pounds? Okay. Why I always think is, I say to people, you know,
if you're trying to get to three sets of 10, say you're doing 10
pounds. That first set of 10 should be relatively easy.
(14:57):
That second set of 10, when you get to number eight, nine and 10 should
start to get a little tougher. And that third set of 10, by the time
you get to eight, you're not sure you're going to make it to 10.
That's about the right weight you want to be. Okay,
if you get to that third set of 10 at number eight and you've given
it all you got and you know you can't do number nine, be smart enough
(15:18):
not to try to push yourself to do that. Now you're probably
after your first few days, you're probably going to be slightly sore
the day after and especially the second day after. Do not panic
because what you're Doing is, is you are breaking down muscle
tissue that's going to cause the muscle to get stronger. It's going to cause the
(15:39):
muscle get a little bigger over time and it's a normal
process. And we'll talk about later, how can you use self massage to
actually help reduce that soreness in the San? Same thing with the type of stretching
that I do as well to reduce that soreness and allow you to get back
in the gym and do it again. Some people will think that they need to
go every day. No, no, no, no. When you're working out with weights or rubber
(16:02):
bands or you're doing self body weight, do it every other day to give your
body time to recuperate so that you don't hurt yourself.
Be smart. Be smart. Take your time with it. Be smart.
Okay, so one of the things I love to do on this podcast
is take the lessons from every
(16:22):
area of the expertise of my guests.
So what I heard you say was
create small wins and create a
safe environment for your brain by setting up realistic
expectations. Right? That's ex. That's exactly right.
Yeah. I also heard you
(16:44):
say with the realistic expectations is
create a sustainable schedule that
works with you and your life instead of
trying to do the all at once campaign style
(17:06):
that so many people do when they're trying to make a life change. That those
small little pivots is what creates massive change.
Absolutely. I mean, you see it every year from January to
like Valentine's Day. The amount of people who go in,
they'll pay for an annual membership to a gym. And that
January through the middle of February, they commit themselves to it.
(17:30):
They're pushing themselves through it. About, about halfway through January,
you'll see about 25 of them drop out. But almost all
of them drop out by the middle of February. And the reason being is,
is they're trying again at 50 to be 18 and in less
than 60 days. And that's just not going to work. And it's like you got
to have a plan. And it's like when you have a plan that you can
(17:51):
feel safe and secure and you can feel yourself slowly starting to get better and
it'll kind of sneak up on you because what will happen is you'll start to
do something in your yard or you're doing something playing golf or some sport that
you play and you think to yourself on the way home,
my gosh, I haven't done that much in a long time. And it'd be like
a surprise. And that little surprise is what will keep you Committed
(18:14):
to keep coming back. But yeah, don't, don't think you're going to,
you know, somebody training for a marathon. I have plenty of athletes training for marathons
and it's like they trained for six months before the,
at the minimum, before they run the race. Why do we think we're going
to spend 30 days and we're going to look like a terrific warrior running around,
you know, running around the backyard? It's just not going to happen like that.
(18:35):
Yeah, absolutely. Before we switch
into mindset, I want to stay on this topic because
I, in my early 50s,
which was a while ago, I decided that I was going
to be one of those people. I was going to finally get my body under
(18:58):
control because I'd been yo yoing
my entire life. I didn't know about the connection between mindset.
I didn't know about root cause. I did not know about trauma or
any of these other things that developed into my fibromyalgia.
I didn't know any of these things. So I thought, I'm going to do it
the right way. And I hired a trainer and the
(19:22):
trainer helped keep me on track. Beautiful.
But my body at some point said, no,
no more. And while I lost weight and gained strength,
eventually my body started to put the weight back on no matter
what I was doing. And when that happened,
(19:42):
I, like a lot of people, went, eff it, what am I
doing? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
So I might as well go back to my junk food and my
wine and everything else when it doesn't seem to
be working. How do normal people like
us. Yes. Conquer. Conquer that,
(20:05):
that defeatist attitude. Yeah, that's a great,
that's a great question. You know, 1997, I weighed 315 pounds.
And I know a lot of my friends today when they see me, it's like,
oh, no, you never weighed that kind. But I weighed 315 pounds.
Like I said earlier, I was a three sport athlete. When I was younger,
I found myself having a difficult time walking around my one bedroom
(20:27):
apartment because I'd be out of breath. I would find myself walking a flight
of steps and be out of breath. So it took me 18 months
to lose that weight and to start getting back into shape. Now I had
help from a doctor who had just gone back to school to study nutrition.
And she said to me, the important thing about
getting in shape and losing weight is not just the losing the weight.
(20:51):
Once you lose the weight, the question you ask yourself now is now what?
How do I maintain this weight, she said, because people have
all kinds of ways of losing the weight. Losing the weight is the easy part.
Keeping it off is the hard part. So she said, we're going to screw
with your brain a little bit. We're going to get you thinking about things in
a different way. And she started think, changing my perception.
(21:15):
Not perception, but my relationship with food in such
a way that I began to look at food purely as fuel, no different than
my car, you see. So when you start to look at
food more like fuel you would put in your car. Her example was,
you know, people will talk about, well, fast food is convenient, it's cheap.
You can go to a restaurant, it's a little more convenient, I don't have to
(21:37):
cook it, blah, blah, blah. Trying to go home is like the hard way.
She said, so your car runs off of unleaded gas? And I said, yes.
And she said, all right. So you go to a gas station. There's three pumps.
The first one is kerosene. It's the cheapest of the three. And it's the first
one there. It's the most convenient. And I said, yeah, but my car runs on
unleaded gas. And she goes, exactly. So you go to the second pump. It's not
(21:58):
quite as convenient, a little more expensive, but it's way cheaper than the
unleaded. How about that one? And I said, no, my car runs on unleaded.
And she said, that's exactly right. So does your body. Your body will not.
Does not like, doesn't even know what you're putting into your system, number one.
So that's where we started. And then it took me 18 months
to lose that weight. But I was also exercising along the way.
(22:20):
And so I got to the point, like I said earlier, walking around my apartment
was difficult. And I just looked at it and I
said, I am doing this. I've got help here. I'm doing
this. I'm going to. And there were days where I just wanted to sit on
the sofa, eat a bon bon, and say, forget it. And I just said to
myself, I've got to do this for me.
(22:42):
I was. I was 37, 38 years old.
My family is high, history of heart disease and strokes.
And this doctor, actually, she gave me a physical at 37.
What got me started with this was that she said to me,
my, my. I would put my money on the fact that by the time you're
40, you'll probably have a heart attack or stroke. And I was like, holy cow.
(23:04):
And that kept playing in My head, how I was going to stay safe.
And she helped me get through that. And I lost the weight. Now,
once I lost the weight and I kept pursuing going to the gym and working
out. Then I developed low back pain. And like you, I was like, oh,
for heaven's sake. And I lose the weight, I look great now I can't even
stand up out of my car. And then that's what led me to doing what
(23:26):
I'm doing today. And we can talk about that a little bit later. Yeah.
So that is getting that mindset. It's getting that goal.
Keep that picture of that goal. Make that goal realistic, but keep that picture
of that goal in your head. And even on days when you.
When you feel like it's not quite what you want to do.
Hello? Oh,
(23:49):
you still there? Okay, okay, okay. Sorry about that.
But anyway, so even on days when it looks kind of like it'd be tough,
I set myself up with a routine. So on Monday, Wednesday,
Friday, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and I've done this now for
almost three years. And I go to the gym to work out. My clothes are
laid out and everything is set so that when I get up at 4:30,
(24:11):
by 4:38, I'm in my car and on the way to the gym. So I'm
not going to turn around and go back. If I get up and I thought,
well, I'm gonna have my coffee, maybe I have a little bit of breakfast and
I sit there in my chair for a little bit, there's a good chance I
probably won't go to that gym. So you, you have to make a plan that,
that there's no turning back. You just, boom, you just go do it.
(24:33):
And that's how I do it. That sounds a little bit
like atomic habits, where you take small habits
and you layer them on each other. Yes, exactly, exactly.
Lay the clothes out, put the shoes on,
get in the car before the brain knows what's happening.
Exactly. So by the time I pull into the gym, the brain says
(24:56):
the logic part kicks in and go. You're too far away to turn around now.
You're already here. It's too late.
This is a perfect example of how we can be empowered
and rewire our own brains.
But I'm here to challenge you, and I'm here to do the.
Yeah, but that I know I'm hearing from my own brain
(25:20):
as well as from. From people who are probably listening.
Yes. So we said in the beginning that the brain
has traumas, it has crap, it has
Conditioned responses and automatic program. So your solute
solution sounds so wonderful and idyllic and
everything down the road, but that does not sound like where some of
(25:44):
us are in this exact moment. Well, we're still carrying our craft. We haven't
unlearned it yet. Right. How do we.
How do you see the crap of
our belief system, our thoughts, our habits, our traditional
society that we've lived in, our family of origin,
(26:07):
all of these things? How do we begin to
unlearn it so that our body can reach
a natural, healthy homeostasis? Oh,
great question, great question. So one of the things that I taught my daughters when
they were younger, they're now 41 and 38. I feel old when I tell
(26:28):
people that, But I always said to them, you are where you are by choices
that you make. And unfortunately, we all make choices
based on our experiences and based on our past.
And so when you start to look at your life and you look in
the mirror and you go, you know, I'd like to lose 15, 20 pounds,
maybe 30 pounds. I'd like to get in better shape. And then
(26:52):
you start to think to yourself, but, you know, mom and dad were overweight,
and it is a genetic kind of thing, you know, and, and I am 42,
so I don't really have to look great at this point.
And, and I look okay. And then you go back and you
leave the mirror, and so now you feel good. And then you come back,
look at the mirror again, and you go, yeah, but I have a wrinkle right
(27:12):
here. Yeah, I have a little bit of fat over here. And then, then you
go through that whole thing again, and it's like, well, but I'm only 42.
I got plenty of time. I. I can, like, this is fine. And, and I
like my vodka tonics. They are just really good things to have.
And my mom, dad always had vodka tonics every. You know, and so
when you start to look at that, being aware of,
(27:35):
am I thinking this because it's really true and logical,
or am I thinking this because this is the way I've always done it?
And, you know, in many cases, you know, I. I was lucky.
My parents were not drinkers, but in a lot of families, mom and
dad come home and the first thing they do is they. They used to
(27:55):
be smoke when I was a kid, but they'd also have a drink at,
you know, I've got to relax myself. I've got to get into this. You know,
it's been a hectic day. I. I deserve a drink. Because it's been a tough
day, you know, and so you want to start being a
little more aware of. Of your thoughts. And is this an automatic thought?
Do I always think this? Or how about if I just
(28:16):
change the way I think about that for a second? And that sometimes can be
scary because it's a total different paradigm shift from where you've
lived your entire life. So for me, you know, everybody kept
saying, well, you know, you're. You're. You're 37 years old. You.
You have, like, plenty of time. And I said, but I don't. My dad had
angina at 49, which was affecting his heart.
(28:38):
And I. They said, well, you know, what are you going to do? It's genetic.
You can't really change that. And I go, that's not true. Because I started reading
about that, and it was like, genetics means you have the potential for it,
but if you do it, check it early enough, in a lot of cases,
you might be able to really reduce your risk, you know, if you.
That and you work with that. So I had to play with my own mind
(29:00):
to get out of my own way, because as a guy,
you know, we're told to eat a ton of things because you're a big
boy, you know, you have to eat all this food. My gosh. Especially if mom
and grandma are cooking for you, you got to eat all this food. So I'm
cramming down 4 and 5,000 calories a day because I was a big boy.
My sister was a girl. She's supposed to have, like two or three pieces of
(29:22):
lettuce because that's all she needed. She was just a girl, you see. So we
have all this mess, this crap that is put in our heads that we really
have to really focus and be mindful of and actually start to question
some of your own thoughts. Is, is this really true? Is it
not? And what I found in my life was a lot of it just was
not. And so when I started looking now, I just changed.
(29:45):
Yeah, I started changing a little bit. Not everything. I mean, it's too scary to
try to change all of that. I mean, you can't go back in your past
and change all of. Although it'd be nice in some cases. But you. Little things
that you do differently and. And how you
do things, even in relationships, little things. I mean,
the person I was in my first relationship, I'm a very different person in
(30:06):
my second relationship, and it's going way better because I made some good choices there.
But the. But the point of the matter is, is you have to first be
aware of the decisions that you're making.
Yeah, I. Yes, that. That is so
in alignment with where I believe empowerment comes from self
(30:27):
awareness, challenging your own thoughts,
challenging your beliefs. Even if
after the challenge you say, yeah,
I still believe that. And I, I choose to keep
it because it's empowering for me. Yep. And that's okay.
(30:47):
That's okay. And it's, it's like, as long as it's working for you, that's okay.
But if you're totally unhappy with some part of your life,
being aware of what decisions am I making that's keeping me there will
change a lot of things, good or bad.
So let's move on to the fascia.
Okay. Because I know
(31:11):
what fascia is, but I don't know that everybody who's listening
to this conversation does. Could you explain what
that is in our body? Yeah. So fascia is soft tissue.
It's not muscle, but it's soft tissue that literally holds everything
together. Now, fascia, when it's healthy,
is very wet, very lubricated. And the reason for that is
(31:34):
the fact that I just got back from Costa Rica last week where I took
a class in cranial sacral work. So when you,
when you touch the body in certain ways,
you can feel the fluid in the body moving from
side to side, front to back, depending on what part of the body that you're
on. We don't see it with the naked eye, but if you put
(31:55):
your hands on someone and you really zoom in to feel
their body, you can literally feel their body just sort
of like moving from side to side either way.
Okay, so what that fascia does it with the lubrication,
if it's well lubricated, really wet, the fascia just sort
(32:16):
of moves like this inside of the body for balance. It allows our
bodies, our organs to really be able to work properly. And the muscle system
working around that allows that to work properly so that we have better balance,
not just standing up balance, but better balance in our health. So that our digestive
system, cardiovascular system, the brain, everybody seems to work together.
(32:36):
And then in the spine itself, we have what's called cerebral
spinal fluid that literally is tracking up the spinal cord up and
over the brain that while you're sleeping at night, for instance, is washing over the
brain to help keep a lot of the beta amyloid plaque out of the brain.
And so this fluid becomes real important now for
some people, especially people who don't move a lot, who are
(32:59):
not really taking care of Their bodies. This fascia can become sticky.
And when it becomes sticky, it becomes harder to breathe, it becomes
harder to digest your food, it becomes harder to eliminate
the waste of your body. It becomes harder to move and inflation and
inflammation starts to rise, which creates a lot of pain for people.
(33:20):
So most people don't really talk about fascia a lot,
just like they don't talk hard about muscles beyond working out and making
our muscles stronger. But having this soft tissue work properly
because it is tied to the emotions and the energetics of the body
to have that, that fashion, that muscle system wet and
(33:41):
soft and moving just like it's lubricated really
well. Our bodies in can respond to so many things that will
keep us healthy. The problem is, is that we live such a sedentary
lifestyle that the fascia for so many people become
sticky. And now it becomes difficult for their systems to all work
(34:01):
properly. Okay, I want to come back to the
sticky fascia. So I'm writing that down.
I'm going to ask that you hold that thought as well. But before I
move on to that, I want to connect the
neuroprogramming and the
hormones of stress and cortisol as
(34:25):
well as trauma. When we do not process
that through our normal lymphatic system
or our motions, whatever.
I've heard that those chemicals,
those hormones generally get trapped in our fascia.
Is that true? I would probably,
(34:47):
from my opinion, would probably say no. I,
I, what the hormones do is that they turn, in other words,
they turn things on that can create some feelings.
What happens with the fascia is that as you
become frustrated, you become afraid, you become lethargic.
(35:07):
The muscle system and the fascia will begin to tighten on you.
And as they begin to tighten on you, it can squeeze out a lot of
the fluid that's in those tissues. Tissues which can, can make them stickier.
Going back to that term, but with the hormones, the hormones
that are driving your thought process is driving how
you feel and how your body then reacts. So it's
(35:30):
more of a reactant to anything else, whether you're dealing with dopamine or serotonin
or whatever. Yeah, yeah, no, I was referring to those suppressed.
Yes. That are trapped in our bodies.
Yeah. I remember the very first time that I went to a chiropractor
who was connecting the,
(35:52):
what we call now, woo woo to the
physical body. And he touched a part of my body
and he, he asked me a direct question about a
trauma that I had. And when he touched that area,
memories of that that he just mentioned
popped up into my brain, and I became emotional.
(36:15):
And he was the one who told me that that
memory was stored in that area of my body that I would
agree with. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So what happens is you've been
in a car accident, you fell off your bike, you fell out of a tree
or something like that. Until you address the.
(36:35):
The muscles and the fascia of the body and the areas that you've been injured.
Okay. The body then remembers that. And of course,
the brain is. Is a driver for that. But what happens is that anytime
that you get close to somebody touching that area or
hitting that area, the brain's first reaction is, we've had a problem here.
(36:56):
Don't. Don't touch that. Don't touch that. Okay. When someone touches
you like he did, and it makes you emotional, that release. In other
words, you can hit certain muscle areas and fascial
areas. When you breathe and you allow your brain to just
let go, that's where that emotional release came
(37:17):
in. Because you were holding that emotion right there. That fear
was right there. And then when you hit that and
the body breathed out, the brain just like let go,
the net spurs an emotional release. Often for people.
It's not unusual when you're working with fascia to have people
lay and cry. Male or female, doesn't matter.
(37:41):
So it is honoring that which was trapped,
acknowledging its presence,
being witness, so that it can
complete its process. Right, right. And then what?
Once the. The brain can see that I can move
(38:02):
that shoulder, I can move that hip, I can move that knee, and there's no
pain, there's no stress.
Wow. I see. I see it a lot with people. Like, we're having joint replacements,
knees and hips and so forth. And, you know, you don't really
go to a doctor on Friday morning and say, doc, you know, my knees hurting.
(38:22):
And he says to, you know what? I got an opening of one, Come back
and I'll replace it at one. You know, they don't quite do it that way.
So it usually takes months to even sometimes a year or so before that happens.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years, exactly Right. So what
happens there is that you have that knee pain or that hip pain,
and the brain then is trying to find ways for you to
(38:43):
walk to reduce as much of that pain as possible. I mean, the brain would
love to have it zeroed out, but chances are that's not going to happen.
So you start to change the way you walk. Now, one of the things that
I've noticed with people, they go in and they have A knee replacement. They go
to pt, they're doing a rehab, and they'll come out and they'll say, well,
my knees feel worse now than they. Than when I went in. I'm disappointed.
(39:04):
Well, what hap. What's happening is that the body's having to reset itself
to go back to walking normally.
Now, a lot of times in rehab, they don't necessarily get into walking
normally. So by the time I get them, that's what we start to work on,
is how to get them back to walking normally. And then once
you can do that, then the brain starts to. To release those muscles, because now
(39:26):
it sees that I can walk on this knee and not have pain.
Okay. So as someone who waited 15 years
because it was fibromyalgia,
joint pain, it was a whole lifestyle, it was blah, blah,
blah. I ended up having both knees replaced.
And. Right. Actually, I think this.
(39:50):
It's two years for my first knee, and it'll be almost two
years for the second knee. Right. I still cannot
kneel on my knees. My knees are
still very numb, the whole. From my
knee to my ankle, and all of the muscles are
(40:11):
still bound so tight that I have plantar fasciitis.
Walking is difficult. So the.
The surgeon did his part. Right. But I know that
I am missing something along the way. Absolutely.
So. So I used. I had. I had lunch years ago with an orthopedist who's
(40:32):
well known here in town, and we were talking about joint replacements.
In fact, we were actually working on one of his relatives, and he said to
me, talking about muscles, and he'd asked me questions about the muscles, and he said
to me, you know, if they come in with tight muscles,
all I'm replacing is the bone. They're going to go out with
tight muscles. And he. And I laughed and I said, you know,
(40:54):
there's a lot that's exactly right. Because what happens is that what
I have found is that if people began the stretching routine that I teach
them prior to having their knee or hip replaced, the amount of
time that they recover becomes far less, because now the PT doesn't have to
battle with the muscles themselves. So if 15 years
(41:15):
you've been dealing with this knee pain and you change the way you walk,
the muscles get tight and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden,
you got a new knee. But they didn't change the
fascia, they didn't change the brain, they didn't change the muscles. They just
changed the knee. The bone part of the knee was it.
So now the next step Is to retrain the
(41:39):
body to. To be able to work both
legs at the same way and then change the
way you walk. So the plantar fascia is actually an issue with the
upper part of the four calf muscles in your leg. It has nothing to do
or little to do with your heel. The pain in your heel is the
symptom of plantar fascia. Now, the reason you get that is
(42:03):
that the quads are four quadricep muscles above the knee on the front of the
thighs are not extending properly. You're probably
wearing shoes with thicker soles. So the ankle's not bending properly.
And so then that stiffens the calf muscles, is also going to stiffen
the hamstrings on the back of the thighs. And so you start to press nerves
and you make things numb. And then the pain just continues to get worse
(42:27):
and worse over time. So it's learning how to. To get
those muscles to release. There's special stretches for that that you can
do and learning that when you see something
like plantar fasciitis, everybody treats the heel, doctors included.
They all. They put stuff in your shoes. Has little to do
with that. Plantar fasciitis you can knock out in two or three days.
(42:51):
Yes. It's not something to go on for years. And I've had people lay
here laughing on my table where they'd had plantar fasciitis for
months to years, and I'd work on them, they'd come back within three,
four days, and it's like it's gone. And I'm like. Exactly. Once you understand what
causes it, you can fix it. But you see, we're all trained.
We're trained to treat symptoms, not causes. Tell me your heel hurt.
(43:14):
Your heel hurts. I'm gonna put a cup in your heel. I'll give you a
shot in your heel. You see what I'm saying?
Well, I do. I do know. My calf
is hard as a rock. You got four muscles there,
not one. So this
is a great time to talk about the calf. The calf is the most important
(43:36):
part of the human body for mobility, and yet it's the least studied
part of the entire body. So when you look at the four calf muscles,
they control your foot vertically for walking, laterally for
balance and rotation. If you have any golfers out there has back
pain from playing golf, there's probably nothing wrong with their back. There's probably something wrong
(43:56):
with their calves and their hamstrings. So the average person will say, I.
I stretch my calves all the time at the Gym. What do you do?
Well, they'll stand on a slam board or they'll drop their heel off of a
step or a block, or they'll lean against a wall thinking they're stretching their calves.
They have never stretched their calves in their entire lives,
especially the inside outside calf muscle. They don't even know it
(44:17):
exists. And so what they're stretching is their Achilles tendon.
If you have Achilles tendinitis leaning against the wall and stretching is
okay to stretch that for the Achilles tendinitis. But if you're trying
to stretch your calves to avoid plantar fasciitis, you're wasting your time doing that.
I don't care how many degrees that person has, is talking to you,
(44:39):
the cat. You got four muscles there that you have to stretch all four
muscles with a yoga strap or a rope. That's the only way you're going to
do that. Okay, we're gonna have to get into this more
one on one about this. And I'm gonna encourage anyone who has
lower back pain or plantar fasciitis or knee.
(44:59):
Knee joint issues that they get your free guide
and connect with you so that you can help them with their one on
one. Yes. And they can also go to my YouTube channel and see 180
free videos as well that help them learn this stuff. Yes.
Okay. Perfect, Perfect. So I, I love
how we're connecting the root cause
(45:24):
of everything. Like you, you just even went into the physical root
cause of my plantar fasciitis. That it
has nothing to do with my foot. I know it has nothing to do with
my foot, but nobody, nobody's ever said it was my
calves. Exactly. So hearing that, well,
yeah, I've had really tight calves my entire life.
(45:47):
Yeah. You know, this, this is just something since
childhood. I, I used to, I used to tear
my tendons and twist my ankles and
sprain my ankles all the time. Yes,
Yes. I have a
(46:09):
trick for you. So we talked about the rubber band in our, in our pre
interview. Remember that? So I got a really nice. Right. Rubber band. Okay. So everybody
can see that this rubber band is a certain length. However, if I keep twisting
this rubber band, it's going to keep getting shorter and shorter
and shorter. Right now. All right,
(46:29):
so this is a tight muscle. So when I want to stretch
it out, I'm not trying to lengthen and make this longer this way.
Okay. What I'm trying to do.
Yeah. I've just tried to release this back out
to its original length because it's attached on both ends.
But My gosh. How many times you go to the gym and you see this
(46:52):
thing twisted and you see someone trying to do this with their muscles. Yes.
That's how we're all taught to stretch. And what we want to do is we
just want to take that pressure out, go back to its full length.
And you take the pressure off the joints, you take the pressure off the nerves,
you take the pressure off the bones. You see these muscles cross over
(47:12):
the bone. So if this is a calf muscle, for instance, the top part up
here is attached above the knee. The bottom part down here is attached down
around the arch of the foot.
So think about when you would you wake up with plantar fasciitis.
As long as you're laying with your foot sort of pointed outward like that,
you're fine. It's when you stand up and the foot comes here. If you have
(47:35):
pain, what changed? This didn't change.
What changed was here. If I release this, my foot
goes here, I'm no pain. I contract here to bring my foot
back up. I have pain. And it's
all because the muscle has been stretched to the point
of it aggravating something else.
(47:58):
Not so much stretch, but it's just remember this. You, every time you have a
thought, a feeling, you're doing this to your muscles all over your body,
and it's just doing that. And so what we want to do with the stretch
is we want to just take it back out so that it's more like that,
and then it's flexible. Wow.
Same thing with the back. Same thing with the back. People wake up with
(48:20):
low back pain. I feel people all the time. So, you know, well, I get
up in the morning, my back feels kind of stupid stiff, but if I walk
around for a little while, it goes away. And I always laugh and I always
say to him, you don't have a back problem. What? But my back hurts.
And I go, I know you have a thigh problem. So if you stand up
after sitting for a while or laying in bed and to stand up straight becomes
difficult, Feels more painful in your back. Chances are you'll
(48:43):
find that the front of your thighs, there's four muscles there, or the inner thighs
are tight. Now, if you sit down, the pain goes away. You stand up,
the pain comes back in. What happens is that when the front of the thighs
are tight, it pulls the pelvis forward.
I just lost you again.
Let's see if we can come back. There we go. I don't know what's happening
(49:04):
here anyway. So what happens is it Pulls the pelvis forward,
which increases the curve in the small of your back, causing pain when
you stand up straight. Now, if it's an inner thigh, you'll hit the. The same
back pain, but it'd be in the middle of your back. Now,
if your hamstrings on the back are tight, then you'll have back pain when you
sit down, but it'll go away when you stand up. So is that a problem
(49:26):
with your thighs or a problem with your back?
And that is something we never talk about is the direct
causal. The relation of cause
and effect. We concentrate on the effects and we
give ourselves pills and. Well, I call it pills and platitudes.
(49:47):
Sure. Trying to make the symptoms go away.
Yeah. And. And I love how you are taking
us to root cause. Right.
And full empowerment by understanding that
all of this is within our own control. Every bit
of it. Every bit of. So within your control. Yeah,
(50:09):
that. That's. That's the amazing part. And it's like again,
even. Even with this. We talked earlier about getting people to exercise even with
this. They'll say to me, it feels really good. I come here,
you work on me. I feel great. I just can't seem to get myself to
do it. And I'm like, seriously, your back doesn't hurt bad enough that
you want to stop it? I just can't get myself to do it.
(50:32):
And then after a while, they'll figure it out and they'll come in and go,
I got it. So what
shifts for those people? They get to a point of
if we know what. If we know what is going to shift it,
then we can make that as a part of the conscious
decision in the beginning. Yeah, there's. There's a couple of things. One, number one
(50:56):
is confidence. They think that. That I have some magical power,
that I can touch them and heal them. And of course, I said to a
gentleman one time that I knew very well he was at telling me, saying something
to that effect. And I said, oh, you wanted Jesus. He's two doors
down the hallway. You missed out the wrong door. You know, of course he laughed
about that. But part of it is confidence. They.
(51:16):
They don't think they have the ability to do that because they're not a doctor
or a therapist. And the truth of the matter is, is you. You need to
understand you can control your own body. Yeah. Yeah. That is
part of the massive crap that we were taught. We were taught not
to trust ourselves. We were taught not to know how our biochemistry,
(51:37):
our body works. We were taught to Put our faith in
others, in doctors, in the system, in anything
and anybody but ourselves. And this is why I
wanted you on this. This is exactly
the message that we all have
(51:59):
it within ourselves. Yes. We just haven't been taught.
We just haven't. I was just at, like I said earlier, I was just at
a school or class for cranial sacral. It had 20
therapists, massage therapists in the room. I was amazed at how many
people were having a hard time feeling the human body. They knew
(52:19):
the physical side. They could physically massage you, they could physically move
you around, but how to just place their hands on you and feel what's going
on inside of your body? They were having a hard
time. And it was like anybody who could do that, they would think of us
as being someone special. And it's like, no, it's, it's just quieting
your mind enough to just allow your body to just
(52:42):
feel. And I don't care who you are,
if you quiet your mind enough and you allow your body to just feel,
you can do it on your own body and just feel what's going on in
your body. Use the wonderment of a child. What's in there? What's going on in
there? You can start to feel your body doing things that you
had no idea it was doing. And you have so much control over
(53:05):
what you eat, how you move, how you think.
But it's about being aware and trusting
in yourself to say, look, I'm not getting what I want. What is it that
I'm not doing right here? And not be afraid to change
Some things that you thought were, were, you know, holier than thou,
that you couldn't change. Yeah, because we,
(53:29):
we hear this thought process a lot.
But this is the way I've always been.
It's worked for me for this long. But yeah,
because we normalize. Right.
I lived in constant, never ending
pain. I did not know that people
(53:51):
lived without living in constant pain.
I thought it was normal. So because it was so normal for me,
my brain had normalized it and I just assumed that everybody
lived like this. So I never told the doctors that I was in pain because
I had normalized it. Well, the funny thing is,
(54:12):
so are they in many cases. I mean, I work on doctors
often and, and they're in the same amount of pain. And it's like I'm
explaining to them exactly what I'm explaining to you. They don't have any idea either.
They studied the, they studied the physical side of the human body,
not the emotion. So here we are taught to trust a
(54:33):
system that wasn't trained on how to handle it.
Right, right, right. Oh,
no wonder it's a mess. Yeah, I mean, I. I had
to ch. I helped one of my clients. She's in her late 60s with fibromyalgia,
and she had given up tennis and given up snow skiing. I got her back
to playing tennis three times a week and snow skiing four or five times a
(54:53):
year without pain. Her brother was an orthopedist,
and he wanted to come in to meet me. We spent three hours talking about
the muscles, and his remark at the end was after. He offered
me a job in Denver and I turned him down. It was too cold.
Why don't they teach this in medical school? Why don't they teach.
Why don't they teach it in massage school? Why don't they teach it in PT
(55:14):
school? I don't know. I mean, I went back to University of
south Florida from 2015 to 2018, and when I started talking
about it to a couple of the professors, they asked me if I would teach
that in the class if they give me an hour. And I go, well,
yeah, sure. It's not in any book.
Wow. It's. It's a sad thing. Kind of scary,
(55:35):
but it's sad. Yeah. And that's why having
these conversations is so important, because once we become
aware, we can't unknow what we know
now. Exactly. Right. At 40 years old, I was in
a lot of pain. At 65, I wake up in no pain.
(55:56):
Excuse me. Wow. Okay. Well, you definitely
give me hope. And all of these. All of these things
that I had notes on that I wanted to talk to you about from
your unlearning. We have used up our
time, but there's so much
(56:17):
more that I know that we could talk about, which tells me that
it is imperative that anyone else who has more questions
than they have answers right now that
it is in their best interest to
at least have a conversation, to at least begin the journey,
(56:37):
to see if you and the information you have
is right for them. How do they find you and
who do you work with and how do you work with them?
Them. Okay, great. I. I do. I do.
In office practice. I do consultation online
with people. Like I said earlier, I have 180
(57:00):
free videos that I'll delve into what causes these type of
pain. Why do most treatments fail or fall short, and then
give them part of the video on how to actually solve it with the
stretching. And you just go to YouTube and type in the muscle repair Shop
and you'll be able to find them there. I have a website@musclerepairshop.com
(57:22):
from there you can sign up for a weekly newsletter that again talks about specific
ailments, why most treatments fail, and then videos
on how to solve that problem. You can also contact me by email,
which is on my website, budgetmusclerepairshop.com or
you can call me directly here at, on the phone number that's on my website.
(57:43):
We can set up a zoom call and we can set and talk about what
you're feeling. What are the possibilities? And if you decide you
want to work by online, you know, we can do that as well. I've worked
with people all over the world that way too. But the biggest thing is
be ready to learn, be willing to do the work.
I'm nothing more than a guide and my job is to
(58:06):
help you understand what's going on with your body and then give you the tools
that you can resolve your issue on your own. And then the nice thing
is, is that once you learn and you do these, these stretches
and self massage on a daily basis and you change the mindset,
what you will find is that as, even as you get older,
you will have less and less pain in most cases.
(58:30):
So we are not doomed to spiral down
the older we get. No, no. I mean I,
I've had, at my 50th birthday party, all my friends kept saying, you wait till
tomorrow, you're gonna feel terrible. At 55, you're gonna feel terrible. At 60, you're gonna.
And finally at my 65th, it's like I am not waiting for pain
(58:50):
to show up. It's not showing up. I'm not waiting for it.
Everybody's waiting for it. It's like j.
And I said, listen to all my friends who they go to doctors. Well,
on Tuesday go to my cardiologist, on Wednesday I go to my neurologist.
Who do you go see? And I go, I go see no one.
I have a primary care that I see her once a year. She's a concierge.
(59:13):
And she said, instead of you paying a membership, why don't you just pay me
for the one visit every year? That's about all I'll need to see you.
Well, you give us all hope. And I want to thank you so much
for the information and the depth of the conversation
and just how amazingly informative
(59:33):
and charming and easy listening you are. You've taken these complicated
subjects and you've made them so palatable.
That really allows us to know that
we are the source of our own empowerment.
Absolutely. I mean, to. To see someone in their 80s and their
(59:54):
90s actually lose pain that they had
for a long time and to see the smile on their face is
what makes it worth it every day. And I just hate the fact that so
many people are. Are not knowledgeable of how to solve their pain. And it
just. It pains me to watch people when. When they're just stuck.
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and
(01:00:18):
thank you for tuning in for another episode
of Unlearn the Crap. My name is Kathy Baldwin.
I am your host and if you've enjoyed this episode,
don't forget to subscribe, like and share. And of course a
review of Butch or myself will always be appreciated.
(01:00:39):
Until next time, don't forget to challenge everything
so that you can accomplish anything.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Unlearning
Curve. I hope you enjoyed it. If something
landed for you today, make sure to follow like,
comment and share. And check out all the other full
(01:01:03):
interviews and other episodes of Unlearn the Crap and Level
up podcast where you'll find deeper conversations,
expert guests, and real stories from people just like
you who are unlearning their cross trap and choosing clarity.
Visit me at kathybaldwin me and get
(01:01:24):
all my free resources. Check out my coaching
programs as well as my books. Until next time,
keep showing up, keep unlearning, and keep leveling
up because your soul is calling.
Welcome to Unlearn the Crap TV with your host,
Kathy Baldwin. Unlearn the Crap TV is more than
just a show. It's a movement towards breaking free from the
disempowering structures designed to benefit the few at the
expense of the many. It's about education, healing, and unlearning
(00:21):
the detrimental beliefs that have been ingrained in society for generations.
So now please welcome the host of Unlearn the Crap tv,
Kathy Baldwin. Foreign.
Welcome to another episode of Unlearn the Crap and level
up. Your soul is calling. My name is Kathy Baldwin,
(00:43):
and I am your host. For those of you who are new to this podcast,
let me explain what Unlearning the Crap means.
Crap is an acronym. It. It means the condition,
responses, and automatic programming that go into our limiting thoughts
and beliefs. It comes from our ancestral trauma.
(01:04):
It comes from beliefs from our society and our upbringing
and our family. It comes from marketing and
every disempowering thought that we've ever
had. But it is more than that, because crap
is what it sounds like. It is excrement. It is
(01:24):
that which the body is trying to process and release that
does us no good. And while it can all
go through our digestive system when we're dealing
with our food, we also have crap that comes from those condition
responses and automatic programming that sets off our central nervous
(01:45):
system, which in turn affects our gut microbiome,
which is the cause of inflammation.
Inflammation is a direct correlation to
disease within our body. So we
cannot ever think that our thoughts have
no value or they don't matter just because they're
(02:08):
in the energetic realm. Everything affects
everything. And today, my guest,
we are going to be talking to Butch, and we are going
to be talking about the interconnected,
interrelated systems that is our mind,
body, heart, soul, and how it affects us.
(02:30):
Welcome. But it's so good to have you here today.
Thank you for having me. It's going to be a lot of fun today.
I'm looking forward to this. But before
we get started, you've heard what that definition, according to
me is about what crap is. Could you please tell
me and our audience what. What crap you needed to unlearn
(02:53):
so that you could level up? So if you got like 10 or 12 hours
to go through all of that, I mean, it's like we're all to go through
every bit of that, you know? Sure. I. I can. I can list four
or five right off the top of my head. The number. The number one thing,
you know, growing up was I was always thought that my Worth as a
man was going to be decided by how much money I made. Not whether I
(03:17):
enjoyed something or not, but how much money are you making? You know,
and so, you know, I spent 20 years on a job that I literally
hated. I had great benefits, I had a great schedule. By most
people's standard, I should be the happiest man on the planet. And yet I
would get off on, on a Wednesday or Thursday morning, I had the weekend
(03:37):
off. Every, every weekend. The first thought I had out getting
into my car was, oh God, I have to come back on Sunday night.
And it was like I started to see that it wasn't the money,
the money didn't do anything for me. And then when I got into
doing what I do, I started to see that
what made my life was how do I benefit other people?
(04:00):
Secondly, secondly, I always had to win.
I always had to win. And I was an athlete and
growing up a three sport athlete. I was large. I was 6,
4, 220 pounds in high school. I was very
athletic. I was good enough that I could get on teams easily.
But I didn't have the mindset and the work ethic
(04:23):
that I needed to be able to, to be good at what I
did. I could have been good, but just didn't have the mindset because I was
going back to, I need a job to make money. You can't make a living
doing this. And then lastly, in finding relationships,
I, my, my first wife that I had was a very nice
(04:44):
woman. I thought having a submissive wife would be great for
me. And what I learned was that was not great for me either. I needed
an intelligent woman who could speak her mind, who could stand side by side with
me and we fight the battles together. And once I found that, my life changed.
And so those are the top three that come off the top of my head.
(05:04):
Okay, I am writing copious notes
of things I want to come back to. But before we come back
to that, Butch, could you please introduce yourself
to everyone? Now that you've unlearned this crap, how are you leveling
up and serving the world? Well, to begin with, I, I am a
(05:27):
self described muscle nerd. I study the muscles of
the human body from a movement aspect and from an emotional
aspect. I get great joy out of just watching people walk
and figuring out what's wrong with them just by the way they walk. So that's
kind of how sick I am about that. But I actually am a massage therapist
who studied neuromuscular massage and sports massage. I later was introduced
(05:50):
to A man named Aaron Mattis who taught me about active isolated stretching, learning how
to stretch the body the correct way. And then I was very fortunate to
have five mentors, two of which were neurosurgeons that studied the
brain, that started tying together to me the emotions in the brain
of our body with the fascia and the muscle system of the human body.
(06:11):
Like I said earlier when I was talking about learning the Crap, I spent 20
years on a corporate job that I hated. And the
moment I found this or this found me, I should say,
I fell in love with it. It became the love of my life. So to
be able to see someone who's been in pain for months to years and watch
the smile on their face as they are free of that pain and can move,
(06:33):
that is something that just, just makes me happy every
day. And you know, we talked about before we had the, the conversation
that, you know, I'm going to give away a free ebook that will share
and we'll talk about this at the end, but we'll share the five most important
stretches that the human body should do every day.
And that affects pretty much 95 of the planet.
(06:57):
And if you do those five stretches on a daily basis, and we'll talk more
about that as we get into it, you'll find that a lot of the common
aches and pains that people deal with, they'll go away. And what would be
more surprising, it's very different from what anyone else has ever told you about stretching
your body. Okay, well, I can't wait to get
my copy of that, which I'll do as soon as we finish our conversation
(07:20):
here. But I want to start with
telling you how excited I am for this conversation.
Me too. Those of you who don't know
guests are not just booked onto this show.
I pre interview every single person to make
sure that they are in alignment with what the mission vision
(07:43):
is of unlearning the crap. And our conversation.
I was so excited. First of all, before we even got
to it, I saw the picture behind you. So I knew that we were connecting
mind and body. Let's start right
there. You said that one of the things that
(08:03):
gives you absolute joy is releasing pain.
Yes. We, we live in a society where
there's a pill for every ill. I believe that
pain is the body's communication tool.
What do you think about that? And, and what is it telling us?
(08:25):
Okay, so there's, there's a few things. We have what's called the vagus nerve,
which runs along the spine and it's in constant communication, the body to
the brain. And actually the body talks to the brain and just sort of gives
a check into the brain of what's going on below the neck.
And so that communication needs to be clear.
The problem is, is that the way we train everybody and the way I was
(08:47):
trained in school initially, too, is we focus on the physical
side of the body. So if I pull a muscle or if I have a
stiff, low back or anything happens, we understand
how to physically fix something if it's torn or broken
or needs to be replaced, so to speak. What we
don't learn in medical school, and I'm talking from doctors all the way down to
(09:09):
therapists, what we don't learn in school is how much
the brain then. And our emotions come into play.
How much of our experiences in our lives that are literally
trapped in the fascia and the muscles of the human body are actually
hampering or changing the way we walk, the way we stand, the way we
(09:29):
feel. That can, down the road, lead to bigger and bigger issues.
Now, when we talk about muscles and we talk about fascia,
everybody knows the physical side of the muscles especially.
You go to the gym, you work out, you lift weights, you go to stretch
class, and you pull as hard as you can and hold for as long as
you can. And you think you're fighting with your muscles because you think your muscles
(09:50):
have the ability to make a decision whether they like you or not. Today,
the truth of the matter is, is that what you're fighting with is
your own experiences, is your own mind.
And so you're. You start to do something, and the brain is almost like,
oh, wait a minute, that could hurt. We got hurt before. That could hurt.
(10:11):
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah, that could hurt. Well,
we don't do that. And if you try, if someone says, no, no, be tough,
override that. And you start to pull and your body's going, no, no, no,
no, no. The experience said we're not supposed to do that. Don't do that.
Mayday, mayday, mayday. And then you pull something, and we think that
our body is betraying us. It's not our body, it's our mind,
(10:32):
and it didn't betray us. It's trying to tell us something, and sometimes we're
too ignorant to listen to it. I've done that. So that's how I can speak
from experience. I love this because
one of the things I'm always talking about is that our brain is
physically designed to always be right.
Yes. And the there's three parts of our brain. The first
(10:55):
part is the reptilian part which is only designed to keep us safe
and alive. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care about happy,
healthy, wealthy, any of these other things.
As long as you're continuing to breathe,
it's doing its job. Whether you're in a Rolls Royce or
a Volkswagen, doesn't matter. Or, or a wheelchair,
(11:17):
you know, it really doesn't. Yeah, it really does not matter.
So how does your example
about making a decision that I
want to get physically fit so I'm going to go to the gym.
How do we override that part
(11:38):
of our brain that says lifting that big heavy thing
is going to hurt? I don't want to do it. Put putting us into
our turning on our central nervous system, putting us into a stress
mode and not injuring ourselves. How do we do this?
So number one, most people go to a gym. They decided, let's say
(11:59):
January 1st, what I call the New Year's resolution or this is my year to
get in shape. Man. I'm probably would be in my mid-50s or early-50s
and I haven't lift weight since high school, maybe a little bit in college.
So I think I'm going to go to the gym. Especially as a guy.
I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to lift at 55,
the same way I did at 18. Because it worked at 18, it should
(12:22):
work at 55. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Or somebody may go to the gym and especially,
and I've seen this in women, sometimes they'll go to the gym and they see
this cute guy, he's a trainer. Standing there, he looks really buff.
He's been lifting weights like crazy. I just want to talk to that
guy. I'm gonna have him to train me because he's got big muscles,
(12:44):
he must know what he's doing. And then they, they crawl out to their
cars and can't figure out why tomorrow morning they can't lift the tongue up off
their, their gums because they're so sore. Okay,
so my advice to most people, if you haven't lifted weights in a long time
or you haven't done workouts in a long time, find a trainer that looks the
way you would like to look. In other words, if you're 50 years
(13:06):
old, look for a trainer that's in that 45 to 60 year
range, looks fit, does well. They don't
have the perfect body that you'd have at 21, but they look really good and
they're healthy. That's probably the right person for you, getting the
bodybuilder. And nothing wrong with bodybuilders, but understand that as a
bodybuilder, that person knows how to be a bodybuilder. That person,
(13:30):
if they're 23, does not know what you feel like at 55.
Okay. And it's like, so you got to take those
things into consideration and be patient. You are not going to go
to the gym on Monday with a belly and you're
out of shape and think by next Monday you're going to look like a bodybuilder.
That's just not going to. I mean, these guys have been doing it for 15,
(13:51):
20 years, even though they're 25 years old. And it's like,
it's not going to happen overnight. So those are the three things I would advise
people right off the bat. When they go, okay, so how do they deal with
the mindset and let the mind not get triggered into
the sympathetic nervous system and be on high
(14:11):
alert where we can get injured easily. Yes.
So the, the first thing you want to do is you want to test
your body. You want to test to see what weight
level that you do that. Now, when I say that if there's like
four weights there and the bottom one is a five pound and the top one
is a hundred pound, I'm not saying go to the 100 pound weight first and
(14:34):
try to pick it up your first time you're in the gym. Start with the
5 or the 10 pound weight and then see how
well your body reacts. Can you do 10 repetitions with
10 pounds? Okay. Why I always think is, I say to people, you know,
if you're trying to get to three sets of 10, say you're doing 10
pounds. That first set of 10 should be relatively easy.
(14:57):
That second set of 10, when you get to number eight, nine and 10 should
start to get a little tougher. And that third set of 10, by the time
you get to eight, you're not sure you're going to make it to 10.
That's about the right weight you want to be. Okay,
if you get to that third set of 10 at number eight and you've given
it all you got and you know you can't do number nine, be smart enough
(15:18):
not to try to push yourself to do that. Now you're probably
after your first few days, you're probably going to be slightly sore
the day after and especially the second day after. Do not panic
because what you're Doing is, is you are breaking down muscle
tissue that's going to cause the muscle to get stronger. It's going to cause the
(15:39):
muscle get a little bigger over time and it's a normal
process. And we'll talk about later, how can you use self massage to
actually help reduce that soreness in the San? Same thing with the type of stretching
that I do as well to reduce that soreness and allow you to get back
in the gym and do it again. Some people will think that they need to
go every day. No, no, no, no. When you're working out with weights or rubber
(16:02):
bands or you're doing self body weight, do it every other day to give your
body time to recuperate so that you don't hurt yourself.
Be smart. Be smart. Take your time with it. Be smart.
Okay, so one of the things I love to do on this podcast
is take the lessons from every
(16:22):
area of the expertise of my guests.
So what I heard you say was
create small wins and create a
safe environment for your brain by setting up realistic
expectations. Right? That's ex. That's exactly right.
Yeah. I also heard you
(16:44):
say with the realistic expectations is
create a sustainable schedule that
works with you and your life instead of
trying to do the all at once campaign style
(17:06):
that so many people do when they're trying to make a life change. That those
small little pivots is what creates massive change.
Absolutely. I mean, you see it every year from January to
like Valentine's Day. The amount of people who go in,
they'll pay for an annual membership to a gym. And that
January through the middle of February, they commit themselves to it.
(17:30):
They're pushing themselves through it. About, about halfway through January,
you'll see about 25 of them drop out. But almost all
of them drop out by the middle of February. And the reason being is,
is they're trying again at 50 to be 18 and in less
than 60 days. And that's just not going to work. And it's like you got
to have a plan. And it's like when you have a plan that you can
(17:51):
feel safe and secure and you can feel yourself slowly starting to get better and
it'll kind of sneak up on you because what will happen is you'll start to
do something in your yard or you're doing something playing golf or some sport that
you play and you think to yourself on the way home,
my gosh, I haven't done that much in a long time. And it'd be like
a surprise. And that little surprise is what will keep you Committed
(18:14):
to keep coming back. But yeah, don't, don't think you're going to,
you know, somebody training for a marathon. I have plenty of athletes training for marathons
and it's like they trained for six months before the,
at the minimum, before they run the race. Why do we think we're going
to spend 30 days and we're going to look like a terrific warrior running around,
you know, running around the backyard? It's just not going to happen like that.
(18:35):
Yeah, absolutely. Before we switch
into mindset, I want to stay on this topic because
I, in my early 50s,
which was a while ago, I decided that I was going
to be one of those people. I was going to finally get my body under
(18:58):
control because I'd been yo yoing
my entire life. I didn't know about the connection between mindset.
I didn't know about root cause. I did not know about trauma or
any of these other things that developed into my fibromyalgia.
I didn't know any of these things. So I thought, I'm going to do it
the right way. And I hired a trainer and the
(19:22):
trainer helped keep me on track. Beautiful.
But my body at some point said, no,
no more. And while I lost weight and gained strength,
eventually my body started to put the weight back on no matter
what I was doing. And when that happened,
(19:42):
I, like a lot of people, went, eff it, what am I
doing? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
So I might as well go back to my junk food and my
wine and everything else when it doesn't seem to
be working. How do normal people like
us. Yes. Conquer. Conquer that,
(20:05):
that defeatist attitude. Yeah, that's a great,
that's a great question. You know, 1997, I weighed 315 pounds.
And I know a lot of my friends today when they see me, it's like,
oh, no, you never weighed that kind. But I weighed 315 pounds.
Like I said earlier, I was a three sport athlete. When I was younger,
I found myself having a difficult time walking around my one bedroom
(20:27):
apartment because I'd be out of breath. I would find myself walking a flight
of steps and be out of breath. So it took me 18 months
to lose that weight and to start getting back into shape. Now I had
help from a doctor who had just gone back to school to study nutrition.
And she said to me, the important thing about
getting in shape and losing weight is not just the losing the weight.
(20:51):
Once you lose the weight, the question you ask yourself now is now what?
How do I maintain this weight, she said, because people have
all kinds of ways of losing the weight. Losing the weight is the easy part.
Keeping it off is the hard part. So she said, we're going to screw
with your brain a little bit. We're going to get you thinking about things in
a different way. And she started think, changing my perception.
(21:15):
Not perception, but my relationship with food in such
a way that I began to look at food purely as fuel, no different than
my car, you see. So when you start to look at
food more like fuel you would put in your car. Her example was,
you know, people will talk about, well, fast food is convenient, it's cheap.
You can go to a restaurant, it's a little more convenient, I don't have to
(21:37):
cook it, blah, blah, blah. Trying to go home is like the hard way.
She said, so your car runs off of unleaded gas? And I said, yes.
And she said, all right. So you go to a gas station. There's three pumps.
The first one is kerosene. It's the cheapest of the three. And it's the first
one there. It's the most convenient. And I said, yeah, but my car runs on
unleaded gas. And she goes, exactly. So you go to the second pump. It's not
(21:58):
quite as convenient, a little more expensive, but it's way cheaper than the
unleaded. How about that one? And I said, no, my car runs on unleaded.
And she said, that's exactly right. So does your body. Your body will not.
Does not like, doesn't even know what you're putting into your system, number one.
So that's where we started. And then it took me 18 months
to lose that weight. But I was also exercising along the way.
(22:20):
And so I got to the point, like I said earlier, walking around my apartment
was difficult. And I just looked at it and I
said, I am doing this. I've got help here. I'm doing
this. I'm going to. And there were days where I just wanted to sit on
the sofa, eat a bon bon, and say, forget it. And I just said to
myself, I've got to do this for me.
(22:42):
I was. I was 37, 38 years old.
My family is high, history of heart disease and strokes.
And this doctor, actually, she gave me a physical at 37.
What got me started with this was that she said to me,
my, my. I would put my money on the fact that by the time you're
40, you'll probably have a heart attack or stroke. And I was like, holy cow.
(23:04):
And that kept playing in My head, how I was going to stay safe.
And she helped me get through that. And I lost the weight. Now,
once I lost the weight and I kept pursuing going to the gym and working
out. Then I developed low back pain. And like you, I was like, oh,
for heaven's sake. And I lose the weight, I look great now I can't even
stand up out of my car. And then that's what led me to doing what
(23:26):
I'm doing today. And we can talk about that a little bit later. Yeah.
So that is getting that mindset. It's getting that goal.
Keep that picture of that goal. Make that goal realistic, but keep that picture
of that goal in your head. And even on days when you.
When you feel like it's not quite what you want to do.
Hello? Oh,
(23:49):
you still there? Okay, okay, okay. Sorry about that.
But anyway, so even on days when it looks kind of like it'd be tough,
I set myself up with a routine. So on Monday, Wednesday,
Friday, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and I've done this now for
almost three years. And I go to the gym to work out. My clothes are
laid out and everything is set so that when I get up at 4:30,
(24:11):
by 4:38, I'm in my car and on the way to the gym. So I'm
not going to turn around and go back. If I get up and I thought,
well, I'm gonna have my coffee, maybe I have a little bit of breakfast and
I sit there in my chair for a little bit, there's a good chance I
probably won't go to that gym. So you, you have to make a plan that,
that there's no turning back. You just, boom, you just go do it.
(24:33):
And that's how I do it. That sounds a little bit
like atomic habits, where you take small habits
and you layer them on each other. Yes, exactly, exactly.
Lay the clothes out, put the shoes on,
get in the car before the brain knows what's happening.
Exactly. So by the time I pull into the gym, the brain says
(24:56):
the logic part kicks in and go. You're too far away to turn around now.
You're already here. It's too late.
This is a perfect example of how we can be empowered
and rewire our own brains.
But I'm here to challenge you, and I'm here to do the.
Yeah, but that I know I'm hearing from my own brain
(25:20):
as well as from. From people who are probably listening.
Yes. So we said in the beginning that the brain
has traumas, it has crap, it has
Conditioned responses and automatic program. So your solute
solution sounds so wonderful and idyllic and
everything down the road, but that does not sound like where some of
(25:44):
us are in this exact moment. Well, we're still carrying our craft. We haven't
unlearned it yet. Right. How do we.
How do you see the crap of
our belief system, our thoughts, our habits, our traditional
society that we've lived in, our family of origin,
(26:07):
all of these things? How do we begin to
unlearn it so that our body can reach
a natural, healthy homeostasis? Oh,
great question, great question. So one of the things that I taught my daughters when
they were younger, they're now 41 and 38. I feel old when I tell
(26:28):
people that, But I always said to them, you are where you are by choices
that you make. And unfortunately, we all make choices
based on our experiences and based on our past.
And so when you start to look at your life and you look in
the mirror and you go, you know, I'd like to lose 15, 20 pounds,
maybe 30 pounds. I'd like to get in better shape. And then
(26:52):
you start to think to yourself, but, you know, mom and dad were overweight,
and it is a genetic kind of thing, you know, and, and I am 42,
so I don't really have to look great at this point.
And, and I look okay. And then you go back and you
leave the mirror, and so now you feel good. And then you come back,
look at the mirror again, and you go, yeah, but I have a wrinkle right
(27:12):
here. Yeah, I have a little bit of fat over here. And then, then you
go through that whole thing again, and it's like, well, but I'm only 42.
I got plenty of time. I. I can, like, this is fine. And, and I
like my vodka tonics. They are just really good things to have.
And my mom, dad always had vodka tonics every. You know, and so
when you start to look at that, being aware of,
(27:35):
am I thinking this because it's really true and logical,
or am I thinking this because this is the way I've always done it?
And, you know, in many cases, you know, I. I was lucky.
My parents were not drinkers, but in a lot of families, mom and
dad come home and the first thing they do is they. They used to
(27:55):
be smoke when I was a kid, but they'd also have a drink at,
you know, I've got to relax myself. I've got to get into this. You know,
it's been a hectic day. I. I deserve a drink. Because it's been a tough
day, you know, and so you want to start being a
little more aware of. Of your thoughts. And is this an automatic thought?
Do I always think this? Or how about if I just
(28:16):
change the way I think about that for a second? And that sometimes can be
scary because it's a total different paradigm shift from where you've
lived your entire life. So for me, you know, everybody kept
saying, well, you know, you're. You're. You're 37 years old. You.
You have, like, plenty of time. And I said, but I don't. My dad had
angina at 49, which was affecting his heart.
(28:38):
And I. They said, well, you know, what are you going to do? It's genetic.
You can't really change that. And I go, that's not true. Because I started reading
about that, and it was like, genetics means you have the potential for it,
but if you do it, check it early enough, in a lot of cases,
you might be able to really reduce your risk, you know, if you.
That and you work with that. So I had to play with my own mind
(29:00):
to get out of my own way, because as a guy,
you know, we're told to eat a ton of things because you're a big
boy, you know, you have to eat all this food. My gosh. Especially if mom
and grandma are cooking for you, you got to eat all this food. So I'm
cramming down 4 and 5,000 calories a day because I was a big boy.
My sister was a girl. She's supposed to have, like two or three pieces of
(29:22):
lettuce because that's all she needed. She was just a girl, you see. So we
have all this mess, this crap that is put in our heads that we really
have to really focus and be mindful of and actually start to question
some of your own thoughts. Is, is this really true? Is it
not? And what I found in my life was a lot of it just was
not. And so when I started looking now, I just changed.
(29:45):
Yeah, I started changing a little bit. Not everything. I mean, it's too scary to
try to change all of that. I mean, you can't go back in your past
and change all of. Although it'd be nice in some cases. But you. Little things
that you do differently and. And how you
do things, even in relationships, little things. I mean,
the person I was in my first relationship, I'm a very different person in
(30:06):
my second relationship, and it's going way better because I made some good choices there.
But the. But the point of the matter is, is you have to first be
aware of the decisions that you're making.
Yeah, I. Yes, that. That is so
in alignment with where I believe empowerment comes from self
(30:27):
awareness, challenging your own thoughts,
challenging your beliefs. Even if
after the challenge you say, yeah,
I still believe that. And I, I choose to keep
it because it's empowering for me. Yep. And that's okay.
(30:47):
That's okay. And it's, it's like, as long as it's working for you, that's okay.
But if you're totally unhappy with some part of your life,
being aware of what decisions am I making that's keeping me there will
change a lot of things, good or bad.
So let's move on to the fascia.
Okay. Because I know
(31:11):
what fascia is, but I don't know that everybody who's listening
to this conversation does. Could you explain what
that is in our body? Yeah. So fascia is soft tissue.
It's not muscle, but it's soft tissue that literally holds everything
together. Now, fascia, when it's healthy,
is very wet, very lubricated. And the reason for that is
(31:34):
the fact that I just got back from Costa Rica last week where I took
a class in cranial sacral work. So when you,
when you touch the body in certain ways,
you can feel the fluid in the body moving from
side to side, front to back, depending on what part of the body that you're
on. We don't see it with the naked eye, but if you put
(31:55):
your hands on someone and you really zoom in to feel
their body, you can literally feel their body just sort
of like moving from side to side either way.
Okay, so what that fascia does it with the lubrication,
if it's well lubricated, really wet, the fascia just sort
(32:16):
of moves like this inside of the body for balance. It allows our
bodies, our organs to really be able to work properly. And the muscle system
working around that allows that to work properly so that we have better balance,
not just standing up balance, but better balance in our health. So that our digestive
system, cardiovascular system, the brain, everybody seems to work together.
(32:36):
And then in the spine itself, we have what's called cerebral
spinal fluid that literally is tracking up the spinal cord up and
over the brain that while you're sleeping at night, for instance, is washing over the
brain to help keep a lot of the beta amyloid plaque out of the brain.
And so this fluid becomes real important now for
some people, especially people who don't move a lot, who are
(32:59):
not really taking care of Their bodies. This fascia can become sticky.
And when it becomes sticky, it becomes harder to breathe, it becomes
harder to digest your food, it becomes harder to eliminate
the waste of your body. It becomes harder to move and inflation and
inflammation starts to rise, which creates a lot of pain for people.
(33:20):
So most people don't really talk about fascia a lot,
just like they don't talk hard about muscles beyond working out and making
our muscles stronger. But having this soft tissue work properly
because it is tied to the emotions and the energetics of the body
to have that, that fashion, that muscle system wet and
(33:41):
soft and moving just like it's lubricated really
well. Our bodies in can respond to so many things that will
keep us healthy. The problem is, is that we live such a sedentary
lifestyle that the fascia for so many people become
sticky. And now it becomes difficult for their systems to all work
(34:01):
properly. Okay, I want to come back to the
sticky fascia. So I'm writing that down.
I'm going to ask that you hold that thought as well. But before I
move on to that, I want to connect the
neuroprogramming and the
hormones of stress and cortisol as
(34:25):
well as trauma. When we do not process
that through our normal lymphatic system
or our motions, whatever.
I've heard that those chemicals,
those hormones generally get trapped in our fascia.
Is that true? I would probably,
(34:47):
from my opinion, would probably say no. I,
I, what the hormones do is that they turn, in other words,
they turn things on that can create some feelings.
What happens with the fascia is that as you
become frustrated, you become afraid, you become lethargic.
(35:07):
The muscle system and the fascia will begin to tighten on you.
And as they begin to tighten on you, it can squeeze out a lot of
the fluid that's in those tissues. Tissues which can, can make them stickier.
Going back to that term, but with the hormones, the hormones
that are driving your thought process is driving how
you feel and how your body then reacts. So it's
(35:30):
more of a reactant to anything else, whether you're dealing with dopamine or serotonin
or whatever. Yeah, yeah, no, I was referring to those suppressed.
Yes. That are trapped in our bodies.
Yeah. I remember the very first time that I went to a chiropractor
who was connecting the,
(35:52):
what we call now, woo woo to the
physical body. And he touched a part of my body
and he, he asked me a direct question about a
trauma that I had. And when he touched that area,
memories of that that he just mentioned
popped up into my brain, and I became emotional.
(36:15):
And he was the one who told me that that
memory was stored in that area of my body that I would
agree with. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So what happens is you've been
in a car accident, you fell off your bike, you fell out of a tree
or something like that. Until you address the.
(36:35):
The muscles and the fascia of the body and the areas that you've been injured.
Okay. The body then remembers that. And of course,
the brain is. Is a driver for that. But what happens is that anytime
that you get close to somebody touching that area or
hitting that area, the brain's first reaction is, we've had a problem here.
(36:56):
Don't. Don't touch that. Don't touch that. Okay. When someone touches
you like he did, and it makes you emotional, that release. In other
words, you can hit certain muscle areas and fascial
areas. When you breathe and you allow your brain to just
let go, that's where that emotional release came
(37:17):
in. Because you were holding that emotion right there. That fear
was right there. And then when you hit that and
the body breathed out, the brain just like let go,
the net spurs an emotional release. Often for people.
It's not unusual when you're working with fascia to have people
lay and cry. Male or female, doesn't matter.
(37:41):
So it is honoring that which was trapped,
acknowledging its presence,
being witness, so that it can
complete its process. Right, right. And then what?
Once the. The brain can see that I can move
(38:02):
that shoulder, I can move that hip, I can move that knee, and there's no
pain, there's no stress.
Wow. I see. I see it a lot with people. Like, we're having joint replacements,
knees and hips and so forth. And, you know, you don't really
go to a doctor on Friday morning and say, doc, you know, my knees hurting.
(38:22):
And he says to, you know what? I got an opening of one, Come back
and I'll replace it at one. You know, they don't quite do it that way.
So it usually takes months to even sometimes a year or so before that happens.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years, exactly Right. So what
happens there is that you have that knee pain or that hip pain,
and the brain then is trying to find ways for you to
(38:43):
walk to reduce as much of that pain as possible. I mean, the brain would
love to have it zeroed out, but chances are that's not going to happen.
So you start to change the way you walk. Now, one of the things that
I've noticed with people, they go in and they have A knee replacement. They go
to pt, they're doing a rehab, and they'll come out and they'll say, well,
my knees feel worse now than they. Than when I went in. I'm disappointed.
(39:04):
Well, what hap. What's happening is that the body's having to reset itself
to go back to walking normally.
Now, a lot of times in rehab, they don't necessarily get into walking
normally. So by the time I get them, that's what we start to work on,
is how to get them back to walking normally. And then once
you can do that, then the brain starts to. To release those muscles, because now
(39:26):
it sees that I can walk on this knee and not have pain.
Okay. So as someone who waited 15 years
because it was fibromyalgia,
joint pain, it was a whole lifestyle, it was blah, blah,
blah. I ended up having both knees replaced.
And. Right. Actually, I think this.
(39:50):
It's two years for my first knee, and it'll be almost two
years for the second knee. Right. I still cannot
kneel on my knees. My knees are
still very numb, the whole. From my
knee to my ankle, and all of the muscles are
(40:11):
still bound so tight that I have plantar fasciitis.
Walking is difficult. So the.
The surgeon did his part. Right. But I know that
I am missing something along the way. Absolutely.
So. So I used. I had. I had lunch years ago with an orthopedist who's
(40:32):
well known here in town, and we were talking about joint replacements.
In fact, we were actually working on one of his relatives, and he said to
me, talking about muscles, and he'd asked me questions about the muscles, and he said
to me, you know, if they come in with tight muscles,
all I'm replacing is the bone. They're going to go out with
tight muscles. And he. And I laughed and I said, you know,
(40:54):
there's a lot that's exactly right. Because what happens is that what
I have found is that if people began the stretching routine that I teach
them prior to having their knee or hip replaced, the amount of
time that they recover becomes far less, because now the PT doesn't have to
battle with the muscles themselves. So if 15 years
(41:15):
you've been dealing with this knee pain and you change the way you walk,
the muscles get tight and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden,
you got a new knee. But they didn't change the
fascia, they didn't change the brain, they didn't change the muscles. They just
changed the knee. The bone part of the knee was it.
So now the next step Is to retrain the
(41:39):
body to. To be able to work both
legs at the same way and then change the
way you walk. So the plantar fascia is actually an issue with the
upper part of the four calf muscles in your leg. It has nothing to do
or little to do with your heel. The pain in your heel is the
symptom of plantar fascia. Now, the reason you get that is
(42:03):
that the quads are four quadricep muscles above the knee on the front of the
thighs are not extending properly. You're probably
wearing shoes with thicker soles. So the ankle's not bending properly.
And so then that stiffens the calf muscles, is also going to stiffen
the hamstrings on the back of the thighs. And so you start to press nerves
and you make things numb. And then the pain just continues to get worse
(42:27):
and worse over time. So it's learning how to. To get
those muscles to release. There's special stretches for that that you can
do and learning that when you see something
like plantar fasciitis, everybody treats the heel, doctors included.
They all. They put stuff in your shoes. Has little to do
with that. Plantar fasciitis you can knock out in two or three days.
(42:51):
Yes. It's not something to go on for years. And I've had people lay
here laughing on my table where they'd had plantar fasciitis for
months to years, and I'd work on them, they'd come back within three,
four days, and it's like it's gone. And I'm like. Exactly. Once you understand what
causes it, you can fix it. But you see, we're all trained.
We're trained to treat symptoms, not causes. Tell me your heel hurt.
(43:14):
Your heel hurts. I'm gonna put a cup in your heel. I'll give you a
shot in your heel. You see what I'm saying?
Well, I do. I do know. My calf
is hard as a rock. You got four muscles there,
not one. So this
is a great time to talk about the calf. The calf is the most important
(43:36):
part of the human body for mobility, and yet it's the least studied
part of the entire body. So when you look at the four calf muscles,
they control your foot vertically for walking, laterally for
balance and rotation. If you have any golfers out there has back
pain from playing golf, there's probably nothing wrong with their back. There's probably something wrong
(43:56):
with their calves and their hamstrings. So the average person will say, I.
I stretch my calves all the time at the Gym. What do you do?
Well, they'll stand on a slam board or they'll drop their heel off of a
step or a block, or they'll lean against a wall thinking they're stretching their calves.
They have never stretched their calves in their entire lives,
especially the inside outside calf muscle. They don't even know it
(44:17):
exists. And so what they're stretching is their Achilles tendon.
If you have Achilles tendinitis leaning against the wall and stretching is
okay to stretch that for the Achilles tendinitis. But if you're trying
to stretch your calves to avoid plantar fasciitis, you're wasting your time doing that.
I don't care how many degrees that person has, is talking to you,
(44:39):
the cat. You got four muscles there that you have to stretch all four
muscles with a yoga strap or a rope. That's the only way you're going to
do that. Okay, we're gonna have to get into this more
one on one about this. And I'm gonna encourage anyone who has
lower back pain or plantar fasciitis or knee.
(44:59):
Knee joint issues that they get your free guide
and connect with you so that you can help them with their one on
one. Yes. And they can also go to my YouTube channel and see 180
free videos as well that help them learn this stuff. Yes.
Okay. Perfect, Perfect. So I, I love
how we're connecting the root cause
(45:24):
of everything. Like you, you just even went into the physical root
cause of my plantar fasciitis. That it
has nothing to do with my foot. I know it has nothing to do with
my foot, but nobody, nobody's ever said it was my
calves. Exactly. So hearing that, well,
yeah, I've had really tight calves my entire life.
(45:47):
Yeah. You know, this, this is just something since
childhood. I, I used to, I used to tear
my tendons and twist my ankles and
sprain my ankles all the time. Yes,
Yes. I have a
(46:09):
trick for you. So we talked about the rubber band in our, in our pre
interview. Remember that? So I got a really nice. Right. Rubber band. Okay. So everybody
can see that this rubber band is a certain length. However, if I keep twisting
this rubber band, it's going to keep getting shorter and shorter
and shorter. Right now. All right,
(46:29):
so this is a tight muscle. So when I want to stretch
it out, I'm not trying to lengthen and make this longer this way.
Okay. What I'm trying to do.
Yeah. I've just tried to release this back out
to its original length because it's attached on both ends.
But My gosh. How many times you go to the gym and you see this
(46:52):
thing twisted and you see someone trying to do this with their muscles. Yes.
That's how we're all taught to stretch. And what we want to do is we
just want to take that pressure out, go back to its full length.
And you take the pressure off the joints, you take the pressure off the nerves,
you take the pressure off the bones. You see these muscles cross over
(47:12):
the bone. So if this is a calf muscle, for instance, the top part up
here is attached above the knee. The bottom part down here is attached down
around the arch of the foot.
So think about when you would you wake up with plantar fasciitis.
As long as you're laying with your foot sort of pointed outward like that,
you're fine. It's when you stand up and the foot comes here. If you have
(47:35):
pain, what changed? This didn't change.
What changed was here. If I release this, my foot
goes here, I'm no pain. I contract here to bring my foot
back up. I have pain. And it's
all because the muscle has been stretched to the point
of it aggravating something else.
(47:58):
Not so much stretch, but it's just remember this. You, every time you have a
thought, a feeling, you're doing this to your muscles all over your body,
and it's just doing that. And so what we want to do with the stretch
is we want to just take it back out so that it's more like that,
and then it's flexible. Wow.
Same thing with the back. Same thing with the back. People wake up with
(48:20):
low back pain. I feel people all the time. So, you know, well, I get
up in the morning, my back feels kind of stupid stiff, but if I walk
around for a little while, it goes away. And I always laugh and I always
say to him, you don't have a back problem. What? But my back hurts.
And I go, I know you have a thigh problem. So if you stand up
after sitting for a while or laying in bed and to stand up straight becomes
difficult, Feels more painful in your back. Chances are you'll
(48:43):
find that the front of your thighs, there's four muscles there, or the inner thighs
are tight. Now, if you sit down, the pain goes away. You stand up,
the pain comes back in. What happens is that when the front of the thighs
are tight, it pulls the pelvis forward.
I just lost you again.
Let's see if we can come back. There we go. I don't know what's happening
(49:04):
here anyway. So what happens is it Pulls the pelvis forward,
which increases the curve in the small of your back, causing pain when
you stand up straight. Now, if it's an inner thigh, you'll hit the. The same
back pain, but it'd be in the middle of your back. Now,
if your hamstrings on the back are tight, then you'll have back pain when you
sit down, but it'll go away when you stand up. So is that a problem
(49:26):
with your thighs or a problem with your back?
And that is something we never talk about is the direct
causal. The relation of cause
and effect. We concentrate on the effects and we
give ourselves pills and. Well, I call it pills and platitudes.
(49:47):
Sure. Trying to make the symptoms go away.
Yeah. And. And I love how you are taking
us to root cause. Right.
And full empowerment by understanding that
all of this is within our own control. Every bit
of it. Every bit of. So within your control. Yeah,
(50:09):
that. That's. That's the amazing part. And it's like again,
even. Even with this. We talked earlier about getting people to exercise even with
this. They'll say to me, it feels really good. I come here,
you work on me. I feel great. I just can't seem to get myself to
do it. And I'm like, seriously, your back doesn't hurt bad enough that
you want to stop it? I just can't get myself to do it.
(50:32):
And then after a while, they'll figure it out and they'll come in and go,
I got it. So what
shifts for those people? They get to a point of
if we know what. If we know what is going to shift it,
then we can make that as a part of the conscious
decision in the beginning. Yeah, there's. There's a couple of things. One, number one
(50:56):
is confidence. They think that. That I have some magical power,
that I can touch them and heal them. And of course, I said to a
gentleman one time that I knew very well he was at telling me, saying something
to that effect. And I said, oh, you wanted Jesus. He's two doors
down the hallway. You missed out the wrong door. You know, of course he laughed
about that. But part of it is confidence. They.
(51:16):
They don't think they have the ability to do that because they're not a doctor
or a therapist. And the truth of the matter is, is you. You need to
understand you can control your own body. Yeah. Yeah. That is
part of the massive crap that we were taught. We were taught not
to trust ourselves. We were taught not to know how our biochemistry,
(51:37):
our body works. We were taught to Put our faith in
others, in doctors, in the system, in anything
and anybody but ourselves. And this is why I
wanted you on this. This is exactly
the message that we all have
(51:59):
it within ourselves. Yes. We just haven't been taught.
We just haven't. I was just at, like I said earlier, I was just at
a school or class for cranial sacral. It had 20
therapists, massage therapists in the room. I was amazed at how many
people were having a hard time feeling the human body. They knew
(52:19):
the physical side. They could physically massage you, they could physically move
you around, but how to just place their hands on you and feel what's going
on inside of your body? They were having a hard
time. And it was like anybody who could do that, they would think of us
as being someone special. And it's like, no, it's, it's just quieting
your mind enough to just allow your body to just
(52:42):
feel. And I don't care who you are,
if you quiet your mind enough and you allow your body to just feel,
you can do it on your own body and just feel what's going on in
your body. Use the wonderment of a child. What's in there? What's going on in
there? You can start to feel your body doing things that you
had no idea it was doing. And you have so much control over
(53:05):
what you eat, how you move, how you think.
But it's about being aware and trusting
in yourself to say, look, I'm not getting what I want. What is it that
I'm not doing right here? And not be afraid to change
Some things that you thought were, were, you know, holier than thou,
that you couldn't change. Yeah, because we,
(53:29):
we hear this thought process a lot.
But this is the way I've always been.
It's worked for me for this long. But yeah,
because we normalize. Right.
I lived in constant, never ending
pain. I did not know that people
(53:51):
lived without living in constant pain.
I thought it was normal. So because it was so normal for me,
my brain had normalized it and I just assumed that everybody
lived like this. So I never told the doctors that I was in pain because
I had normalized it. Well, the funny thing is,
(54:12):
so are they in many cases. I mean, I work on doctors
often and, and they're in the same amount of pain. And it's like I'm
explaining to them exactly what I'm explaining to you. They don't have any idea either.
They studied the, they studied the physical side of the human body,
not the emotion. So here we are taught to trust a
(54:33):
system that wasn't trained on how to handle it.
Right, right, right. Oh,
no wonder it's a mess. Yeah, I mean, I. I had
to ch. I helped one of my clients. She's in her late 60s with fibromyalgia,
and she had given up tennis and given up snow skiing. I got her back
to playing tennis three times a week and snow skiing four or five times a
(54:53):
year without pain. Her brother was an orthopedist,
and he wanted to come in to meet me. We spent three hours talking about
the muscles, and his remark at the end was after. He offered
me a job in Denver and I turned him down. It was too cold.
Why don't they teach this in medical school? Why don't they teach.
Why don't they teach it in massage school? Why don't they teach it in PT
(55:14):
school? I don't know. I mean, I went back to University of
south Florida from 2015 to 2018, and when I started talking
about it to a couple of the professors, they asked me if I would teach
that in the class if they give me an hour. And I go, well,
yeah, sure. It's not in any book.
Wow. It's. It's a sad thing. Kind of scary,
(55:35):
but it's sad. Yeah. And that's why having
these conversations is so important, because once we become
aware, we can't unknow what we know
now. Exactly. Right. At 40 years old, I was in
a lot of pain. At 65, I wake up in no pain.
(55:56):
Excuse me. Wow. Okay. Well, you definitely
give me hope. And all of these. All of these things
that I had notes on that I wanted to talk to you about from
your unlearning. We have used up our
time, but there's so much
(56:17):
more that I know that we could talk about, which tells me that
it is imperative that anyone else who has more questions
than they have answers right now that
it is in their best interest to
at least have a conversation, to at least begin the journey,
(56:37):
to see if you and the information you have
is right for them. How do they find you and
who do you work with and how do you work with them?
Them. Okay, great. I. I do. I do.
In office practice. I do consultation online
with people. Like I said earlier, I have 180
(57:00):
free videos that I'll delve into what causes these type of
pain. Why do most treatments fail or fall short, and then
give them part of the video on how to actually solve it with the
stretching. And you just go to YouTube and type in the muscle repair Shop
and you'll be able to find them there. I have a website@musclerepairshop.com
(57:22):
from there you can sign up for a weekly newsletter that again talks about specific
ailments, why most treatments fail, and then videos
on how to solve that problem. You can also contact me by email,
which is on my website, budgetmusclerepairshop.com or
you can call me directly here at, on the phone number that's on my website.
(57:43):
We can set up a zoom call and we can set and talk about what
you're feeling. What are the possibilities? And if you decide you
want to work by online, you know, we can do that as well. I've worked
with people all over the world that way too. But the biggest thing is
be ready to learn, be willing to do the work.
I'm nothing more than a guide and my job is to
(58:06):
help you understand what's going on with your body and then give you the tools
that you can resolve your issue on your own. And then the nice thing
is, is that once you learn and you do these, these stretches
and self massage on a daily basis and you change the mindset,
what you will find is that as, even as you get older,
you will have less and less pain in most cases.
(58:30):
So we are not doomed to spiral down
the older we get. No, no. I mean I,
I've had, at my 50th birthday party, all my friends kept saying, you wait till
tomorrow, you're gonna feel terrible. At 55, you're gonna feel terrible. At 60, you're gonna.
And finally at my 65th, it's like I am not waiting for pain
(58:50):
to show up. It's not showing up. I'm not waiting for it.
Everybody's waiting for it. It's like j.
And I said, listen to all my friends who they go to doctors. Well,
on Tuesday go to my cardiologist, on Wednesday I go to my neurologist.
Who do you go see? And I go, I go see no one.
I have a primary care that I see her once a year. She's a concierge.
(59:13):
And she said, instead of you paying a membership, why don't you just pay me
for the one visit every year? That's about all I'll need to see you.
Well, you give us all hope. And I want to thank you so much
for the information and the depth of the conversation
and just how amazingly informative
(59:33):
and charming and easy listening you are. You've taken these complicated
subjects and you've made them so palatable.
That really allows us to know that
we are the source of our own empowerment.
Absolutely. I mean, to. To see someone in their 80s and their
(59:54):
90s actually lose pain that they had
for a long time and to see the smile on their face is
what makes it worth it every day. And I just hate the fact that so
many people are. Are not knowledgeable of how to solve their pain. And it
just. It pains me to watch people when. When they're just stuck.
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and
(01:00:18):
thank you for tuning in for another episode
of Unlearn the Crap. My name is Kathy Baldwin.
I am your host and if you've enjoyed this episode,
don't forget to subscribe, like and share. And of course a
review of Butch or myself will always be appreciated.
(01:00:39):
Until next time, don't forget to challenge everything
so that you can accomplish anything.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Unlearning
Curve. I hope you enjoyed it. If something
landed for you today, make sure to follow like,
comment and share. And check out all the other full
(01:01:03):
interviews and other episodes of Unlearn the Crap and Level
up podcast where you'll find deeper conversations,
expert guests, and real stories from people just like
you who are unlearning their cross trap and choosing clarity.
Visit me at kathybaldwin me and get
(01:01:24):
all my free resources. Check out my coaching
programs as well as my books. Until next time,
keep showing up, keep unlearning, and keep leveling
up because your soul is calling.
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