Are Midlife Aches and Pains More Than Just Aging? Discover the Role of Fascia in Your Health
Ladies, are you tired of feeling like your body is constantly fighting against you as you navigate midlife? It might not just be aging—your fascia could be the key. Join me as I sit down with Anna Rahe, a fascia-based movement coach whose inspiring journey from chronic pain to healing will shift how you see your body. As a former dancer and Pilates instructor, Anna faced her own struggles with severe health issues and found little relief in traditional medicine. But her discovery of fascia completely transformed her life—and now, she’s here to share how this overlooked tissue can unlock a new path to feeling better.
In this episode, we dive deep into how fascia—this connective tissue that surrounds your muscles and organs—impacts everything from posture to joint pain, and how it stores your life’s experiences. Anna’s personal experience sheds light on the critical role fascia plays, especially as we experience hormonal shifts during midlife. She’ll explain how it’s intertwined with conditions like fibromyalgia, and why understanding fascia might be the missing piece in your chronic pain puzzle.
But we don’t stop there. We challenge what you know about Pilates and yoga and explore how fascia’s fluid dynamics can help ease stress and improve mobility. Instead of rigid mechanics, Anna shares how fluid movement can restore vitality and rejuvenate your body in ways you never imagined.
This episode is a wake-up call to treat your body holistically and embrace the power of fascia care. If you’re ready to take control of your health and age with more grace, vitality, and freedom, this conversation is for you.
Anna is graciously offering Asking for a Friend listeners a FREE 7-day Body Revival - here is the link! https://gstvitalifestudio.com/checkout/new?o=194964
You can find Anna Rahe at:
https://www.instagram.com/gstbody/
_________________________________________
Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling run-down. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan
Have questions about Faster Way? Please email me at:
mfolanfasterway@gmail.com
After trying countless products that overpromised and underdelivered, RIMAN skincare finally gave me real, visible results—restoring my glow, firmness, and confidence in my skin at 61. RIMAN Korea's #1 Skincare Line - https://michelefolan.riman.com
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Michele Folan (00:04):
Health, wellness, fitness and everything in
between.
We're removing the taboo fromwhat really matters in midlife.
I'm your host, Michele Folan,and this is Asking for a Friend.
Oh, the aches and pains ofmidlife.
Do you ever get out of bed inthe morning and feel as if
(00:27):
you've shrunk overnight andevery joint is creaking as you
try to gingerly walk to thebathroom?
How about that twinge in yourknee?
Or that hip pain that you getwhen you're walking up steps?
Or, better yet, the nagging GIissues?
Is it possible they could berelated?
Anna Rahe is a fascia-basedmovement coach who, over her 25
(00:51):
plus year career, has helpedthousands of women in midlife
find lasting change by restoringtheir bodies.
As the founder of GST Body,Anna ran various studios,
lectured and taught globally andspent time on the faculty at
the University of San Francisco.
She's worked with celebritieslike Robert Downey Jr and Emmy
(01:13):
Rossum.
Anna has been featured in Shape, Elle, the Wall Street Journal
and more.
Anna Rahe, welcome to Askingfor a Friend.
Anna Rahe (01:23):
Hi, thanks for having me, Michele.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Michele Folan (01:26):
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
And when I you know, yourpublicist had reached out about
being a guest on the show.
It could not be more perfectfor this age group.
So I was really excited to getyou booked, because I know aches
and pains are one of the thingsthat women in this age group
(01:48):
often complain about.
We blame it on menopause orosteoarthritis, like I said, but
we don't really know for surein many, many cases.
So I would love for you firstto just tell us a little bit
more about you and your path tobecoming a fascia expert.
Anna Rahe (02:08):
Yeah, Okay, that's a great place to start because it
kind of has a inverted story.
I was 18 and I felt like I wasliving in a body that was 80 and
that is not hyperbole.
I literally felt so restrictedand in pain and aches and sharp
and dull kinds of you knowmuscular, skeletal.
(02:29):
But I also had more severesymptoms like digestive issues
and respiratory issues anddepression and sleep problems,
and I kept kind of like circlingto so many different
professionals just asking,trying to deal with symptoms
right, and trying to find, likewhat the cause was.
Because I was 18, I should havebeen, I mean, for all intensive
(02:50):
purposes I'd walk in and they'dthink that I was really healthy
.
All my blood work looked greatand all my stats were fine and I
looked flexible because I was adancer or I was trying to have
a dance career.
I was a Pilates instructor, soI knew bodies pretty well at
that point.
I'd gotten certified quiteyoung and I would just go to
people and they'd run additionaltests.
I had MRIs, I'd have CAT scans,I'd have, you know, this poop
(03:14):
test and this, you know,colonoscopy, and just trying to
kind of put together theforensics.
That was wrong and no onereally could touch into it.
And I started noticing thatthere was kind of like these
through lines that like if I hada lot of severe muscular
skeletal pain, it would alsoshow up in that I would.
I was a runner and just stay fitfor dance.
(03:35):
And so some days I'd go out andI'd run through Golden Gate
Park and I'd feel like I wastraining for a marathon.
I had power and I hadrespiratory health and vitality.
And I would go three days laterand do the exact same run and I
felt like a 10 pack a daysmoker.
Oh wow.
And it was like literally likeI needed an inhaler and I
couldn't get up the hill and mymuscles were cramping.
(03:56):
And so I started to really lookat my own journey and be like
these symptoms actually seemvery different because we parcel
the body out into differentbody parts rather than seeing it
as an integrated whole.
And especially, this was trueway back this is 25 years ago
and so every specialist was,like you know, trying to poke
into their specialty, but no onewas looking.
(04:16):
Cross-discipline being likethis could be something like
this.
Even the East and Westintegrative medicine doctors
that I went to, Even the Eastand West integrative medicine
doctors that I went to.
There was good training.
I mean, I've taken pieces fromthings that I learned in my
journey and obviouslyimplemented into what I do today
.
But I think that as a whole,people still look about it in a
(04:40):
Pilates certification rolfingLike it was a kind of an extra
workshop you could take and itwas on the emotional body, not
about muscular, skeletal stuff.
And this woman just introducedme and so at one point I was
like in San Francisco, justdesperate, I was miserable, I
was like scared because I waslike I can't live like this for
(05:02):
the rest of my life.
Michele Folan (05:09):
And it felt like no one could help me.
Well, you didn't know, youdidn't know you could have had
MS Like all these.
Like you start thinking ofthese phantom, like diseases
that you know.
Anna Rahe (05:17):
That's right, and your brain kind of goes scary
and goes haywire, right, sure.
And so at one point I think itwas a divine intervention I was
just like laying on my studioreformer I was teaching out of
my house at the time andattending the University of San
Francisco, and I remember justlaying there and being like this
is not muscle, this is not bone, and I was poking around in my
(05:37):
guts and I think it was thisdivining moment where I was like
could this be fascia?
Wait a second, what is fascia?
I know what it is in my head,but I didn't really remember.
So I started just kind of doingthis deep dive into fascia and
it turned into a 25-year journeyof just refining and a lot of
the stuff that I was findingwasn't answering the experiences
(05:59):
that I was having.
Back 25 years ago, most offascia work was done with manual
therapy.
It wasn't really the focus ofmovement yet, and so I would.
I got rolfed all the time, andsometimes rolfing would flare up
my symptoms and not help them.
And other times, what's rolfing?
Okay, rolfing is a type of bodywork started by Ida Rolf.
(06:20):
She was a brilliant thoughtleader in alignment, being a
source for vitality in the bodyand being able to fix posture
through working with theconnective tissue system.
And so she found ways ofactually taking the fascia and
using manual techniques, kind oflike sculpting right and trying
to get fascia.
(06:40):
It's very much a kind ofattractioning and pulling on
skin.
It's very painful.
It's very painful if you talkto anyone and they tend to cry
because it probably releasesthings, and I did.
I was 20 when I had my firstsession, 18 when I yeah
something around there when Ihad my first session series of
10.
And so it's just a.
It's a viable work.
It has other branches, likeHeller work, and it has roots
(07:04):
some shared with Andrew TillerStill's work, who he was the
father of osteopathy.
He was tapping into more of thevisceral aspects of fascia and
so it's kind of like all of theyou know fringe healers were
tapping into this thing, butthere wasn't a lot of science
behind it at this point, and sothey used their language to try
to describe what they werefinding and what they were
feeling.
And it was a pretty cool,magical time because it was like
(07:27):
the very first peek behind thecurtain of like what is this
stuff and why, and so it wasreally interesting, even though
they're still really focused onthe structural aspect of fascia,
which is like the fiber typeand we can get into that a
little bit later.
When it comes to what we'redoing, that either hurts it or
why we're experiencing pain init.
What causes restriction?
But the fibroastic and thestructure of it rather than
(07:50):
actually the fluidity of it.
And so I found that sometimes Iwould go and have these
sessions and I would feel looser, but it always would come back.
My tensions would always comeback, my tensions would always
come back.
And then I would also sometimeshave flare-ups where I'm like
you released this, but now Ihave chronic nerve pain shooting
up my neck and I'm like what isthat?
(08:11):
And so it was an interestingjourney really of forensics,
trying to figure out and justquestioning.
And so my journey ended upleading me to two really
important things about fascia isthat the greatest influence of
our fascia is really our motion,which I would kind of
experience.
I'd have the therapeutic to tryto heal it and then I'd go out
(08:32):
and dance and ruin it, and I'mlike some of the stuff that I'm
being taught in my Pilates andyoga and all of those physical
disciplines are actuallycontributing to the condition of
this.
So I had to go in and try tolike take apart and deconstruct
what I was taught, because as astudent and 18 years old, I was
like my teachers know the bestand they're telling me the best
(08:53):
of the best.
And I went to the I literallywas studying in the best
certification programs in theworld and I'm like, but
something is wrong.
And so I had to kind of gorogue and I just started kind of
questioning everything I wastaught and started doing the
opposite.
And as soon as I started doingthe opposite I started to heal
in a really significant way.
(09:13):
And then I started teaching myPilates clients that and they
started seeing the differences.
And then I decided I need tofigure out what the science is.
And then there was more scienceavailable, probably 15 years
ago when the fascial Congresscame in.
So I started researching thatkind of stuff.
Michele Folan (09:32):
All right, oh man gosh.
So it is a lot, I mean, and II've got all these questions.
So, first of all, you're veryyoung when all this is going on.
And so I immediately wasthinking, oh my God, you could
have had an autoimmune disease.
There could like all theseweird things, because one day
you'd be great, the next day notso great.
(09:54):
Did anyone else in your familyexperience any of these types of
issues?
Anna Rahe (10:01):
No, no, no, not that I know of.
I do know now in hindsight thatand I still don't have a
diagnosis just so I know, sothat you don't have to have a
diagnosis to find healing, is areally good message for people.
To find a solution does notrequire having a very concrete
diagnosis.
I think there's a lot ofdifferent aspects.
I have sexual trauma in my pastwhich creates emotional and
(10:25):
hormonal imbalances in thetissues which contribute to it.
I had some physical kind oflike mild but not severe
scoliosis.
In fact most x-rays don't showscoliosis, but I had a lot of
tissue scoliosis, which is aninteresting torsion of the way
that the tissues lay out and areformed over the skeletal
(10:45):
structures Not really talkedabout that often and not
addressed at all.
And so my mom has some of thatand I think she experienced,
especially growing up.
She would have been in her,like she was a later mom and so
she was like maybe in her midfifties when she started having
lots of aches and pains, and soat that point I was kind of able
(11:05):
to start putting her on GSTstuff and doing work with her
and she was finding greatreprieve, and so I think that
that's probably a geneticcomponent too as well.
I mean, I say that there's likethree or four different
imprints that really kind ofshow up our body narrative and
fascia holds that story kind oflike the way you can see rings
(11:26):
on a tree that tell you whengood years of growth and great
years of irrigation and when thebugs came in and when there was
fire, you can really see ahistory inside the rings of a
tree.
And the same is really truewith your fascia.
If we get into that, you knowkind of more of the emotional
and psychological loading on thetissues.
But I don't know, I don't knowwhat the exact diagnosis was,
(11:48):
but I think that there wasprobably some genetic thing.
But I think that it's acombination right, it's always a
combination of how we're livingexperience, how we've been put
together in the womb and youknow divine design, if you
believe in that kind of stuff,and that's our story and our
task to deal with.
Right Is to know, and what'sfun is that fascia has an answer
(12:09):
for that.
Michele Folan (12:10):
And I do believe that life experiences and how we
handle them emotionally and howwe bottle them up or express
them can absolutely affect ourhealth in a multitude of ways.
So I hear that loud and clearwith you.
Can you explain for theaudience a little bit what
(12:33):
fascia really is, kind ofdifferentiating it from your
skeletal system, cartilage, allthat?
Anna Rahe (12:42):
So I'm going to give the most succinct.
I love going into the scienceand I'm going to try to like
narrow it down.
The term fascia is referring toa generic type of body tissue,
a type of connective tissuethat's everywhere in your body.
It's kind of, when you say theword fascia, it's kind of akin
to being like my shirt is madeof cotton or my jeans or my
(13:03):
pants are made of linen.
So we have a bunch of differenttypes of fascia loose and
reticular, and all these typesof fascia in the way that it
looks kind of like fabric.
So you have Gore-Tex for heavysportswear and then you have
daily wear of your jeans andthat's kind of like the
musculoskeletal fascia, themyofascia.
(13:23):
When you come back out from justa tissue kind of perspective,
fascia actually is reallysignificant because it organizes
a complete body system, similarto your digestive system and
your cardiovascular system andyour endocrine system.
This body system comes completewith its own organs.
They are not masked organs likea heart or a lung that are very
(13:47):
obvious, which is one of thereasons.
In dissection for yearsanatomical dissection they kind
of just pulled fascia out of theway, thinking oh, this is
superfluous, it's everywhere andit's in the way.
Instead of thinking, holy cow,there's a lot of it, it might
have a lot of significance, weshould probably look at it.
However, the fascial organs arelayered organs and they layer
around every other system.
(14:08):
So you have myofascia is theorganization of fascia around
the muscular skeletal system,and you have viscera, which is
the way fascia organizes aroundyour vital organs, and it goes
on and on.
You have quite a few and we'restill discovering all of the
types of.
You have the interstitium andthere's a bunch of different
ways that fascia organizes intoorgans.
(14:29):
In its greatest capacity, fasciais kind of like your body's
energetic smart grid.
It takes high voltage load fromour workouts, from our picking
up our kids, carrying ourgroceries, sitting for hours all
of this loading in from gravityand actually interfaces it with
the low frequency energy of theheartbeat and the lungs.
(14:52):
Fascia is the reason that yourheart can beat with an
electrical output next to yourlungs and not have interference.
And so, on the backside, fasciain the netting has this
organizational quality of all ofthese things in our bodies that
help to interface and functionall the other body systems.
It's kind of a master system,like the nervous system, and
(15:16):
when you start digging into it,what it needs to stay healthy,
to do its job is prettysignificant because it's
compromised condition effectswhich is why I had digestive
issues, which is why I had achesand pains, which is why I
couldn't sleep because it'sliterally setting the parameters
of optimization energeticoptimization from cells all the
(15:39):
way up to your skin, all the wayup to your cerebral thought
processes and the frequencies ofyour brain activity.
Michele Folan (15:49):
Oh, okay, this was such a better explanation of
fascia.
Good, good, because what peoplewill often say is well, you
know, like you know, when you'recutting chicken breast up and
there's that little thin layerof stuff, that white stuff that
you pull off the chicken, well,that's your fascia.
Anna Rahe (16:10):
Yeah, and then you're like, well, great, but what
does it?
Michele Folan (16:12):
You know it's out of context Correct, so that's
super interesting.
So how does fascia change as weage, particularly during
midlife?
Anna Rahe (16:23):
Yeah, so fascia is very sensitive to what I call
chemical cocktails of experience, and that's basically our
hormone and neurotransmitteroperations.
Right, it's the biochemicalpart of who we are in a chemical
form.
And so fascia contracts tophysical loading, but also to
our psychological and hormonalloading.
(16:43):
And as women, we know that weare much more hormonally alive
and dynamic than our counterpart.
And inside of that, fascia isbusy trying to figure out how to
react and distribute andcommunicate on these kind of
levels in terms of the sensoryinput and how it's going to
(17:06):
integrate and move out of thebody.
Fascia has got a huge metabolicactivity in our body and in its
hormonal phases it actuallyinfluences how we constrict or
conform our restrictions, howour bodies contort, how our
organs sit, the internaltonality, the inner space
(17:27):
dynamics.
So all of a sudden, when youlike, have, let's say,
fluctuations in estrogen andit's very sensitive to estrogen.
And we don't totally know all ofthe reasons.
We just know that, yes, this iswhy fibromyalgia is much more
commonly diagnosed in women thanmen.
This is why during the mensesand even if, even if you're
postmenopausal, you can actuallystill have surges and affect
(17:50):
the different types of tensionsin your body based upon these
hormones, and what's interestingis that you're mostly
hormonally active in thethoracic cavity and so fascia
tends to restrict there, becomeoverly dry, overly rigid, and
then it will actually take awayfrom the strength and the
elasticity in your muscles ofthe limbs, which is where we
(18:11):
tend to get aches and pains inour knee joints, low back
problems, cervical spine, asit's exiting the body as the
hormones are trying to processinto motion.
That's the way that fasciametabolizes the stresses, and so
most women would probably feelquite a flux.
As their complementary system,the endocrine system is trying
(18:35):
to figure out how it's working,and it's interesting also that
the endocrine system is what isthe primary channel of our
estrogen brain, and the brain ina woman fires mostly through
the estrogen channels and inthat it'll be affected also
through the consciousness of ourbody sensory system in fascia.
So there's quite a fewdifferent connective ways that
(18:57):
it affects women in middle ageand later age.
Michele Folan (19:00):
So it just in terms of the joint pain, posture
, mobility, realm okay because Ithink that's something that we
live with every day.
How do we differentiate betweenwhat could be fascia and what
(19:23):
would be maybe osteoarthritis orsome kind of joint issue?
Anna Rahe (19:27):
It's a really good question.
I think that the basic line forpeople is how they're, but it
takes body awareness to do that.
Let me just think about how toexplain this, because I was
going to say feeling it.
There are different.
There's so many different waysof feeling pain and different
receptors give off differentinformation.
(19:48):
I think that by the time you're50, lifestyles and the way we
use our body naturally leads todegenerative capsules and the
arthritic, osteoarthriticconditions.
That doesn't have to be thecase if you catch it early
enough.
So there's a level of that andfascia really works with that
more in terms of the compressionversus the traction tensions.
(20:10):
You will feel it more towardsthe skeletal system.
If you are really experiencingosteoarthritis, you will feel it
more in the dense tissues andeach tissue has a different kind
of sensation.
So you'll say, okay, I feellike my knee feels stiff.
That would be fascia.
If you feel like your kneewon't hold you and there's too
(20:30):
much like power that's goingthrough the or force that's
going through the capsule,you'll probably have some type
of surface reticulation.
If there's severe restrictionin your joints, it's probably
osteoarthritic and not justfascia, Because then you're
changing the actual shape of thecapsule, and that will change
range of motion.
Michele Folan (20:50):
When you were talking about when you were
younger and some of the GIissues that you were having that
were, you know, fascia related.
So I get how, if you wereexperiencing a joint issue and
working with that fascia-related.
So I get how, if you wereexperiencing a joint issue and
working with that fascia throughmovement and through massage
(21:11):
and stretching and all that, howdo you affect some of those
inner systems that aren'tnecessarily accessible with?
Anna Rahe (21:23):
The hand.
Such a good question, oh mygosh, thank you.
This is my jam.
I love the muscular, skeletalstuff, but I really like whole
body care.
What I do is we talk about itholistic body care because
fascia is then innervated, whichjust means wired deeply into
your ANS, your autonomic nervoussystem.
(21:45):
So it is an autonomic functionand has deep, deep influence
over things that you usuallycan't control.
However, fascia has the abilityto contract like a muscle Okay,
it has cells that, like amuscle, can actively contract on
command.
You can control the way yourfascia contracts.
(22:06):
And this was really the nucleusof what started my journey.
Of freedom is because I would goout and have all these people
rub on me and try to touch me inthese places, and there were
simply places that peoplecouldn't touch and I'm like you
can't get deep enough, you can'tactually get your guts under
the lining of my.
But what I discovered firstthrough the myofascia is that if
(22:29):
I moved my fascia in a verysimilar way, I would do hours of
laying on balls and I'd feel myfascia melt and spread and
release, and then I'd get up andit would all tighten up again
and I'm like this is notsustainable.
I cannot lay for three hours anight.
Someday I want kids, someday Iwant to have a career.
So I was like, what if I coulddo the thing that that ball is
(22:50):
doing?
What if I could command it?
What if I could control that?
So this spreading flexion, thisflux of tissue.
So I started studying that andI could do it on command, and I
could do it regularly.
What was really cool is thatthat action can be done by the
fascia that surrounds yourorgans.
So if you have a lack ofmotility around a part of your
(23:11):
intestines, you can go in andteach the tissue how to actually
contract in a way that startsto free up the fiber, so energy
moves through that, so that ittakes the kink out and
diverticulitis doesn't become anissue.
Or it can actually help to movethe flora of your guts in a
more healthy motility.
And so the fascia that I lovedealing with is being able to
(23:36):
teach people how to do this oncommand, because, all of a
sudden, the fact that you cancontrol it and the fact that
it's wired to autonomicfunctions that's how I healed my
respiratory system, because Icould actually control the way
the lining of the lungs and thefascia around my lungs behaved,
and when you do that, all of asudden you have greater reach
inside.
(23:56):
It's an inside job.
Fascia gives you much betteraccess to changing things that
were previously thought to beinaccessible.
Michele Folan (24:03):
All right.
So I get how, like stress andanxiety could restrict the
movement of your fascia, likeyou physically can tighten
things up in your body.
Anna Rahe (24:20):
Feel it yeah.
Michele Folan (24:21):
Yeah, feel it through emotion right.
So, how do you release thatwithout touching?
Anna Rahe (24:29):
it?
It's a great question.
You actually have to move it.
Okay, whether you touch it fromthe outside.
We do a lot of touching becauseit's educational.
But once you teach the tissue todo it, fascia naturally has
this flux.
Okay, fascia force comes instress, whatever you want to
call it it can be psychologicalstress or stress load on the
(24:50):
tissue and it fluxes and it usesits flux to send that energy
across the broadband fibers ofthe netting, the whole wide
network.
In that process it'sdistributing and diluting the
impact of that stress load.
If you don't dilute it, if youdon't share it and distribute it
, then you can get what's calledcontracture in the tissue and
(25:13):
most people don't have healthyways of dealing with their
stress.
They don't know how to createthat kind of freedom of release
through purposefully puttingtheir stresses into animation.
And so we live with constantcontracture in our tissues and
over time that actually cancreate even additional stress on
(25:33):
the body, because fascia thatdoesn't move doesn't distribute
and when you have that, you havethese hubs of high density,
high stress load areas, andthat's usually what tends to
lock the system down and startto create more pathologies like
body-wide pathologies.
So really, what you need tolearn how to do is move your
fascia.
And if you understand theprinciples, even if you don't
(26:00):
move the fascia, you can moveyour body in ways that elicit
the organic function of fascia.
Most people just need to learnto use their fascia again
because their system that isnaturally occurring is broken.
It is so restricted, it's solocked down that they have to
reprogram it if that makes sense.
That's where the therapy comesin, right.
Yeah, but if you know the rightthings that fascia needs in
(26:21):
movement and in energetics, allof a sudden you can just do that
through your day, you can dothat in a stressful situation,
and your fascia will releaseimmediately.
It would put you intoparasympathetic response mode
and calm the nervous system, andso all of a sudden, your body
becomes a tool, right, a reallyhighly evolved kind of pitching
fork, tuning fork for thetensions that we have as well as
(26:45):
provides the solution.
And you have to put everysingle stress in your life into
motion, whether it's emotion,energy in motion or whether it's
physical motion, and that'swhere fascia has the same
interface to do both of thosethings.
Michele Folan (27:03):
Right.
And so then I'm starting tothink okay, so if you don't
address it, this is wherechronic inflammation and
everything kind of comes intoplay.
So it's important to address it, and so I understand.
That was how the nervous systemand the muscular system, when
(27:31):
you say moving, moving, so giveme an example, great, okay.
Anna Rahe (27:37):
So let's say this real quickly for your listener.
Your muscular system and yourfascial system are wired very
differently to your nervoussystem.
One is an adrenal system it isto be your getaway car.
Your muscles are made to beactivated for high power, for
short loads of time, okay.
(27:59):
Fash.
On the other hand, is wireddeeply into your endorphin
system, the relaxation system,the ease system, the relaxation
system, the ease, and one is theactivated and one is the
releasing, and so they kind ofplay together.
The problem is is that most ofus in physical activity and in
(28:19):
our motion are taught toactively, especially as we age,
strengthen, strengthen, tone,strengthen tone and we're
activating and overstimulatingthe muscular system, which
triggers the chemical cocktailof stress adrenal stress,
cortisol, right, and so fasciaprovides a completely different
view of how motion can benutritious and actually put you
(28:41):
in different straights, which isdifferent states, which is
de-adrenalizing, which isactually kind of medicine as a
counter chemical experience andallows for more freedom to
happen.
And this comes down to abiomechanical model.
I will try to keep this reallyshort for people and then I'll
give you examples.
Our biomechanical model instrength and conditioning is
(29:04):
based upon solid mechanics wherethe bones are levers and your
muscles are pulleys and youtighten and pull to make your
body work.
Fascia is 70% water.
It is still an animating system.
It contracts and it movesenergy, but it's a fluid body
system and it changes thescience of motion from solid
(29:27):
mechanics to fluid dynamics.
For those of you who do notremember physics, fluid dynamics
is how force moves through afluid and the most simple kind
of sample of that that someonewould know is a syringe.
You have a cylinder, a tube,and you have a plunger and you
can pull the plunger through thetube and suck water in and push
(29:48):
water out.
Suck water in, push water out.
Fascia is organized in micro andin nano and in bigger and
bigger myofascial tubes.
Your body is more a set oftubes and cylinders than it is
sticks, and so, all of a sudden,the requirements to move water
(30:08):
and to create hydration and toactually displace force comes
through the power of movingwater, not through moving our
solids Principles.
Like women spend years tryingto tighten their core, get flat
stomachs, tighten and tighten.
Then they show up in the middleof their 50s and they're like
why do I have belly fat?
(30:29):
Because your muscles don't.
Nothing in your torso moves,movement has to have.
Movement is the prerequisitefor metabolic activity and so
all your fat's going to storewhere there's no movement.
So fascia comes in and says weneed to open up our tubes, which
means you cannot do crunchesanymore.
(30:50):
You have to actually haveactions that pull the syringe
which is called traction.
It also happens to bedecompressive of joints, which
helps to produce synovial fluidand protect against
osteoarthritis.
You need compression, moves,which is pushing the water
through the tube and starts toclear and move toxins and give
better cellular health.
Traction and compression isthis syringe.
(31:13):
And then you need one otherkind of movement and it's called
rotation.
And rotation is actually kindof this picture of double helix.
If you take a tube and youtwist it, it kind of creates
this kind of double helix shapewhich has compression and
traction compression on one side, traction on the other, and so
these three motions literallywash your tissues and move
(31:35):
static energy to dilute it anddisplace it and move.
And so most of our movement isnot big enough and is not fluid
enough and does not move waterand is not fluid enough and does
not move water, and so, aswe're already aging and losing
the juiciness of our tissues,the collagen and the elastin and
the flexibility.
We continue to dehydrateourselves through the types of
(31:59):
movement that we do.
And then we get more and morerigid and more and more dried
out and we're like, why are wefeeling like I'm squeaking like
the tin man who's squeaking likethe oil, or the tin man who's
squeaking all the time?
So it's a kind of a differentapproach and you need to.
We need to just reframe it andthen there's wonderful, really
simple ways that people can dothis throughout their day.
(32:20):
The other thing that makesfascia kind of polarizes our
movement experience is thatwe're taught to do large block
chunk exercise and fascia says Idon't.
You wouldn't eat your meal 3000calories in one sitting.
Why would you do that to yourbody?
Through motion, which isexcessive load, it generates
tension.
So fascia says the best routefor me is microdosing snack
(32:44):
motion throughout your day 10minutes here, three seconds here
, pull and traction for 30seconds and move on.
And so, all of a sudden, womenneed to look around their world
and be like my life is my junglegym.
I need to find surfaces to hangoff of railings, banisters, car
windows, chain link fences,mailbox on my walk and do these
(33:05):
three movements traction,compression and rotation and if
you do that throughout your day,your fascia in general will
have much better elasticity.
Hydration glide like lack offriction, right, dehydrated
things get friction on them, andso that's one approach is how
do you layer it into your dailyactivity?
(33:26):
And then you also want to belike.
I need an actual ritual of care, because, just like any car
needs maintenance, the more youdrive it, the more care it needs
, and so the body needs thosetoo, and so it would.
Similar biomechanics, butdifferent principles in terms of
what you can get the body to behealthy and strong.
Michele Folan (33:45):
Okay, I think this would be a great time to
take a quick break and when wecome back, I want you to share a
patient success story with me.
Does this sound familiar?
When menopause hit, I didn'tfully comprehend what was
happening to my body.
Even though I was eating 1200calories a day, doing the
(34:05):
elliptical at the gym and goingto multiple cycling classes
during the week, the scale wasnot budging and my genes were
getting tighter.
I was frustrated and wanted todo better for my long-term
health and, with my 26 years inthe health industry, I knew this
was not the path I wanted tofollow.
So I started doing research onseveral online programs, but
(34:28):
most were either fitness ornutrition-based, but not both.
What I needed was a platformthat understood the needs and
challenges of women my age andhad the data to prove it.
While scrolling throughInstagram, one day, I stumbled
upon Faster Way.
Their science-backed strategyspoke to me and I decided to
(34:48):
give it a go and invest inmyself and my future health.
I was 59 years old and full ofhope, and I did go into it,
knowing that I had to be patient, and the improved mindset did
pay off.
My results got me reallyexcited to share Faster Way with
other women who were strugglinglike I was.
So I decided to get trained andcertified as a coach.
(35:11):
Call it self-care.
Call it prioritizing yourhealth.
When are you going to tellyourself enough is enough and
that you matter?
Don't allow your past failureswith other diets and programs to
keep you from making one of themost important decisions for
your future.
I'd love to work with you.
Reach out by DMing me on socialmedia or at the email address
(35:34):
in the show notes of thisepisode.
Okay, we are back.
I would love to hear about apatient that you have helped
with these fascis techniquesPerfect.
Anna Rahe (35:49):
Let's call her Sally, it's really good.
Sally came in to me at 39.
She was actually a chiropractor, which is kind of interesting,
knew a lot about the skeletalsystem and muscles and she was
very protective of herinformation but also of her body
and she was miserable becauseshe had tons of pain.
But she also wanted to work outbecause she had started putting
(36:10):
on middle age weight.
She had had a baby later inlife through IVF, which also
changed and messed up herhormones and she's like I just
feel like my body is haywire.
And when I first started totouch in on her body I got a lot
of don't touch me there, you'regoing to hurt me.
(36:33):
This isn't fun.
And I was like okay, okay, okayand pretty soon I was able to
have her start feeling deeply.
One of the most beautiful partsabout fascia is it really
connects all people, butespecially women who tend to
kind of live out of body deeperinto themselves, a deeper sense
of connection to self and within.
I mean she was reallyconsistent.
She was very like okay, I wenthome and I had two days of no
pain and I was like great, andthen that two days turned into
(36:55):
five days of no pain and thenall of a sudden, in a month,
she's like you know what?
My bowel movements are so muchmore regular.
I've started to lose some of mybelly fat and I'm like great,
okay, we weren't doing cardio.
She's like I was like don't docardio, we're just going to do
the moving of your fascia, forright now, let's make it
therapeutic, cause she wasafraid, so afraid of getting
more hurt.
And so I tend to end up gettingpeople who have complicated
(37:18):
bodies and are afraid of gettinghurt and have searched for
everything.
And so after about two to threemonths, she's like okay, now I
want to go into the aesthetics.
She was a Westside LA wife andshe was like my calves are too
big to fit in my boots and I'mlike, okay, let's try working on
that.
And so we went into alldifferent areas of how fascia
(37:40):
can help with structural things,toning, digestive issues, and
she actually is one of thepeople who I'm still very close
to.
She does our stuff, becauseshe's like, as soon as you get
out of pain, this is thelifestyle you want.
This is something that you growold with.
This is the body care that Iwas trying to provide my clients
, that I wanted, and she's likewhat's really interesting is
(38:03):
that her success story is like Ihad all this knowledge.
We have all this information todifferent experts and stuff,
but none of those visions arereally integrated.
Where your workout hurts you andyou know you have to lift
weights and keep yourosteoporosis away, but then you
have to go and have all theseother therapies to try to
counteract that, and it's likewhat if your movement, if you
(38:24):
could change how it would becomeyour medicine?
And all of a sudden, what ifyour movement, if you could
change how it would become yourmedicine?
And all of a sudden she's likeI'm sold.
This is the way that I havekept my weight off.
She looks amazing and herheadaches are gone.
She had migraines, jaw problems, tmj, just all of these things
that were all locked into thetissues and they slowly unravel
the more that you can just be inand be present and work with
(38:45):
what you have.
And then fascia is endlessly,endlessly transformative.
It's actually interesting thatit is so restorative that after
seven months they're findingthat 90% of intermuscular fascia
is renewed.
It's a very high cellularturnover, which is really
hopeful for people like me andSally, who are like had so much
(39:07):
damage she had worked out herwhole life.
She started off as an actressand she just was like I know my
body and but all of it was justfrenetic and locked her up and
created injury.
And that's usually where peopleget spun off by 50.
You can't do the workouts youdid by 55.
You don't want to do theworkouts you did, right, they
don't feel good.
And so all of a sudden you'relike what's the next step for me
(39:29):
?
I need something that'ssustainable, that actually ages
me backwards, and that's whatwas really fun is to watch Sally
, and that was also myexperience.
I have literally felt like I'veaged backwards because I was
feeling 80 and she came infeeling 80.
And then, as you start torestore your fascia, it takes
years off.
It's the rejuvenating systemwhich takes stress and
(39:52):
eliminates it from your system.
Michele Folan (39:54):
So you work with clients and then do you send
them home with I don't want tosay homework, but do you send
them home with things that theyare to be doing at home as well.
Anna Rahe (40:04):
Yes.
So I think the bestclarification is that it's not
like physical therapy, becauseno one does their exercises and
when you do your exercisesyou're probably doing them wrong
.
Right, because they're not,they're isolated.
They're like let me justtighten my glute because I have
hip problems.
The answer to everybody'sperspective of pain is to
tighten more.
You're lacking strength, sothen they're tightening it more
(40:27):
and it's like over stripping thebolts.
So the way that I first workwith people is I really
encourage people to learn theirbodies and learn these
principles of body care.
You come to me and I say everypractitioner who you go to for
help has only three tools.
They use a stick called lever,they apply force and to get flow
(40:47):
.
Chiropractors use your skeletallever.
They apply force and to getflow.
Chiropractors use your skeletalsystem.
They apply their ownapplication of force and they
try to get their skeletal systemto move in joints.
Massage therapists go in andthey push with their arms as
levers into your muscle to tryto get more glide and more flow.
Acupuncturists use the lever ofa needle and they stick it in
your meridian to try to get thecheetah flow.
(41:08):
And every body has five levers,two legs, two arms and a spine
that you can learn to configurein different shapes.
You put movement, which impliesforce, and then, when I teach
you how to move fascia correctly, you're distributing that
tension into flow.
And so all of a sudden, youbecome your own practitioner.
(41:30):
You are the active participantin the condition of your health.
Rather than I go to someone,they take care of me and I need
them twice a week in order tostay out of pain.
It's like that's prison, that'snot freedom, and so that's how
I work with people is.
It's very much an education, aconversation with the body.
You can't have anyone do it foryou, you just can't.
(41:52):
And if you can, how's thatgoing for you?
Are you still having aches andpains?
Do you still have a dependencyon right?
And so it's really a call forpeople to learn enough about
their body that they can dostuff and not just topical right
.
We can do a diet, we can do adetox, we can do a strength
(42:12):
training course, but then wecome home and we still feel
somewhat broken.
But if you start from fascia onthe inside, then vitality
follows through into every areaof your life.
Cognitive fascia is very rootedto cognitive health.
Go ahead, sorry.
Michele Folan (42:28):
Oh no, no.
No, you were on a roll, but Ijust thought of a life.
Go ahead, Sorry.
Oh no, no, no, you were on aroll, but I just thought of a
question.
So if you are working with aclient, are you able to take
them through this process?
If it was you and I, beingremote?
Anna Rahe (42:42):
Yes, in fact, there's a couple of different things.
First is I have an entirestudio online where we have
every kind of video.
Some of it's educational, someof it is movement therapy.
We have the answer to physicaltherapy, and GST is called
movement medicine, becausephysical therapy requires very
different things, and so you cango and find a whole collection
(43:04):
that is dedicated to knee health, hip health, spine health.
You can also go in and be likeokay, conscious conditioning, I
don't have to hurt myself whileI get the benefits of
cardiovascular.
How do we approach respiratoryhealth is through the lung side
rather than the heart side, andit doesn't put you in adrenal
stress and over contract yourmuscular tissue.
(43:26):
You will find things for aging.
The Ageless Body is all about.
How do you do three-dimensionalmovement to keep your brain
wired, for good coordination, toavoid slipping and falling, and
so you can find that online anddo it completely studied, or?
I teach classes every day.
You can come and join ourcommunity of amazing people, men
(43:48):
and women, who are just reallylike this.
One class makes every othertherapy I need go away.
I deal with all my body stuffin one hour and I am just
healthy and feeling good, so youcan come and take classes.
I see people privately.
We have private, you know,curated stuff, but the idea is
(44:09):
that this stuff is justsomething to learn.
It's beautiful, it keeps youknow.
As we age, I notice that thepeople who are most fun for me
as those who stay intellectuallyengaged and like my aunt's 72
and she's like teaching classes,I'm like this is so great for
aging because you get to come inand learn and just really learn
about you and anatomy and soyou can do it.
(44:30):
You can do it just like we'redoing it.
I talk you through it, I askyou if you're feeling things, I
teach you a principle and thenwhat you'll start to find is
people who work with me.
Fascia is a reflex.
Okay, it's a way that your bodywants to move and it's like a
thirst reflex.
It goes to the same area ofyour brain as eating and so you
should have the impulse almostonce an hour to move your body
(44:53):
and fluff your fascia.
Most people don't move enough,so that reflex is really muted.
But when you start working withus and taking classes, you will
have that microdosingexperience where you're like, oh
my gosh, I need to do this,this, this and I'm done and you
move on and you feel the lifeforce come in.
It's like drinking a glass ofwater for your tissues and then
(45:14):
you move on.
And so it does kind of become apractice where you come and you
learn and then you get to goaway and live it and you'll be
doing it on your own, whichfeels really good, where you're
not like oh, now I have to setaside 30 minutes.
What if you didn't have 30minutes and you want to be with
your grandkids?
Yeah, just do it as you'reliving.
Michele Folan (45:34):
Yeah, I can see where you would want to
integrate this into just, youknow, while you're cooking
dinner.
You know you can.
Anna Rahe (45:41):
That's right traction off your counter, your sink.
I usually talk people throughthis experience and, if you'd
like, counter your sink, Iusually talk people through this
experience and, if you'd like,I can send you the videos for
you to pod or post with yourpodcast release.
We give like little videos thatevery day I show you how to
just do three moves and I showyou off your kitchen sink, off
the tailgate of your car, offyour right, because these three
(46:04):
movements can be done anywherein anywhere.
I will send that to you.
Michele Folan (46:09):
I would love that .
Yeah, I would love to sharethat with people, because my
audience is very curious andthey are also wanting better for
themselves is why I love thiscommunity of women, because
we're not done yet and we've got20, 30 years ahead of us, maybe
(46:31):
40.
That's right.
And so why do we want to settlefor the status quo?
Why should we settle for achespains, for that thing that's
been nagging us and no one canever tell us what it is right?
We want to get answers, and alot of the times, the answers
start with us and going out andfinding someone that can help us
(46:59):
make it make sense.
And so, yeah, I love that.
I love that.
One other question is love thatI love that.
One other question is what newresearch is emerging
Anna Rahe (47:14):
Yeah, what I'm sharing with you is pretty much
the cutting edge, which isfascia is a fluid and it needs
very different things.
And while therapies I am a bigfan of therapies and I still do
body work on people and we havemanual aspects, but the truth is
is that fascia needs quite abit of load, quite a bit of
(47:35):
force and quite a bit ofrepetition in order to
cellularly remodel.
Okay, the remodeling doesn'tcome from the fiber side, it
comes from the fluid side.
So when your fascia is squeezedlike a sponge, when water moves
through the fibers, itactivates the cells that are
needed for good restoration andremodeling of our tissues.
(47:57):
And so, all of a sudden,hydration in the tissues and
movement steps up in terms ofimportance of how is your fascia
laying down month after month?
How are you activelyreconstructing your knee?
And with most therapies, eventhough they can be helpful in
terms of monitoring and kind oflike what's the word that is
(48:20):
very explaining, my blood sugarjust dropped when you have to,
management, it's good formanagement, but for most women,
I think they want solutions, notmanagement.
And so go get a massage becauseit feels good, but science is
saying that it's reallyimportant that you move and live
in your body differently.
Okay, yeah, that's it.
(48:41):
Because the cells areconstantly restoring and how
they restore is up to you, notup to a therapist.
Nobody can massage you enough.
You can't afford a massagetherapist enough to actually
influence the actual remodelingprocess.
Maybe the condition it canloosen it, it can give temporary
(49:01):
hydration, but if most peopleat 50 have some fascial damage
by 50.
But if most people at 50 havesome fascial damage by 50.
And so the point comes in to Ineed a sustainable solution for
longevity, and the only one Iknow is changing how you move,
and that means that you have tolearn something about movement
right.
Most people have been soatrophied in their movement or
(49:24):
have had done so much badmovement junk moves that they
need to relearn what wouldorganically be available to them
right.
And when they do that, then thebody can restore on its own.
Michele Folan (49:36):
I love it.
That's very well said.
I feel like we all just got apep talk.
I think so.
Anna Rahe (49:45):
It's my belief.
I mean, I'm breathing, I have atwo-year-old and I'm 46 years
old, turning 47 next month, andI'm like I have to age well.
I have to age well because Iwant to be there, I want to be
the young mom in an old woman'sbody, right, and I think that
it's really interesting how muchour aches and pains deplete our
(50:06):
life force.
It's really interesting howmuch our aches and pains deplete
our life force.
It's depressing, it's hard andarduous to move a body that's
constantly griping at you, andso one of the greatest ways to
feel young is to get rid of yourpain and your aches where it's
not consuming a thought in yourprocess all the time.
Can I get down on the floorwith my grandbaby, or could I
(50:27):
carry my kid up the stairsbecause my knees hurt Right, and
so it's just.
I think people should beinspired by the fact that we're
living longer, so live better.
Who wants to live to 90 if youcan't get up, if you can't get
down, if you can't spin around?
So that's what inspires me.
I'm moving on in my life.
I'm not 30 and trying to lookgreat anymore.
(50:47):
I'm, you know.
I'm moving on in my life.
I'm not 30 and trying to lookgreat anymore.
I'm really wanting to feelgreat.
Michele Folan (50:50):
Yeah, I got off the phone with a client right
before you and I startedrecording and she said yeah, you
know, I, I, I will be havinggrandchildren here at some point
.
And she said, michelle, youknow, I want to be able to get
up off the floor, and you know,not that we're setting the bar
(51:13):
low, that I just want to be ableto get up off the floor.
But that's that's kind of it ina nutshell.
That's a bare minimum.
Anna Rahe (51:19):
Yeah, that's right, and it's sad that that is that
the bar is so low.
Right, you should be like.
I want to do backflips, yeah,but no, we're just at the
baseline of.
We need to be able to primalsquat Women especially have to
primal squat for the health ofyour pelvis, for the health of
your digestive system and wecan't, we cannot get to the
floor because we've flatlinedour spine from sitting so much.
(51:43):
So, yeah, I think that you'reright.
We're not saying that's the,that's not the bar we want to
have, but that tends to be agoal because it's unavailable
and it seems so basic.
Yeah, right.
Michele Folan (51:55):
Absolutely All right.
This is kind of a personalquestion.
Yeah.
What is one of your own corepillars of self-care?
What do you do for yourselfevery day?
I do.
Anna Rahe (52:11):
GST every day.
You do every day.
It's more like because ithappened to me.
It's kind of weird to say it'san activity, but it's actually
my sacred ritual.
I go inside and I listen and Ifeel and it's like my sanctuary
and I respond to the tensionsthat show up and I put them into
(52:31):
motion and I let them clear mymind and I become more of a
vessel.
I'm available when I don't havemy static of pain and tension
and restriction.
I can become a woman of service, which I think feels good to
most women.
And when it's healthily doneit's so important.
(52:53):
It's giving life, it'slife-giving rather than
life-taking, if we can do itright.
And so I think that it's not somuch a selfish thing I don't go
get massages and stuff.
It's like it's this meet mewhere I am and have this time to
help myself.
First, Eleanor Roosevelt was thefirst one I heard as a quote
(53:13):
saying she was interviewed bythis newspaper article guy and
they're like so how is it beingthe wife of the president?
And how you know, do you justgive him everything?
And she said something like no,no, I just take care of myself,
because if I don't take care ofmyself, I'm no good for my
husband.
And she said something like no,no, I just take care of myself,
because if I don't take care ofmyself I'm no good for my
husband.
And the interviewer's like,isn't that a little selfish?
I mean, you are the first lady,isn't your job to support your
(53:36):
husband?
And she's like no, so anyway, Ithink about that a lot of like.
My highest goal is to be ofservice to my family, to the
people around me, and thatrequires that I handle my
burdens first.
And if I have a way to lightenit and to create space, then I
(53:58):
don't feel so burdened.
I feel alive and welcome for it, open for love.
Michele Folan (54:00):
We cannot pour from an empty cup, right?
That's so true.
Anna Rahe (54:04):
I love that.
That's beautifully said, yeah.
Michele Folan (54:06):
Anna Rahe, where can the listeners find you?
Anna Rahe (54:10):
Come and see me at GSTbody.
com GSTbody and that launchesyou off.
You can find our Instagram.
I have two different channels,one that's kind of for bodies
and one that's for life,application and health and stuff
and write me.
I actually respond to all myemails.
(54:30):
Personally, I really love totalk with people and connect
through the body and the journey, so come and find me and I love
working with all types ofpeople.
Michele Folan (54:41):
Wonderful Anna Rahe.
Thank you for being here.
Anna Rahe (54:44):
Thank you for hosting me.
It's been a pleasure.
I love what you're doing.
Michele Folan (54:47):
Thank you, hey.
Thanks for tuning in.
Please rate and review the showwhere you listen to the podcast
.
And did you know that askingfor a friend is available now to
listen on youtube?
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(55:07):
Thank you, there as well.
Your support is appreciated andit helps others find the show.
Thank you.
Health, wellness, fitness and everything in
between.
We're removing the taboo fromwhat really matters in midlife.
I'm your host, Michele Folan,and this is Asking for a Friend.
Oh, the aches and pains ofmidlife.
Do you ever get out of bed inthe morning and feel as if
(00:27):
you've shrunk overnight andevery joint is creaking as you
try to gingerly walk to thebathroom?
How about that twinge in yourknee?
Or that hip pain that you getwhen you're walking up steps?
Or, better yet, the nagging GIissues?
Is it possible they could berelated?
Anna Rahe is a fascia-basedmovement coach who, over her 25
(00:51):
plus year career, has helpedthousands of women in midlife
find lasting change by restoringtheir bodies.
As the founder of GST Body,Anna ran various studios,
lectured and taught globally andspent time on the faculty at
the University of San Francisco.
She's worked with celebritieslike Robert Downey Jr and Emmy
(01:13):
Rossum.
Anna has been featured in Shape, Elle, the Wall Street Journal
and more.
Anna Rahe, welcome to Askingfor a Friend.
Anna Rahe (01:23):
Hi, thanks for having me, Michele.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Michele Folan (01:26):
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
And when I you know, yourpublicist had reached out about
being a guest on the show.
It could not be more perfectfor this age group.
So I was really excited to getyou booked, because I know aches
and pains are one of the thingsthat women in this age group
(01:48):
often complain about.
We blame it on menopause orosteoarthritis, like I said, but
we don't really know for surein many, many cases.
So I would love for you firstto just tell us a little bit
more about you and your path tobecoming a fascia expert.
Anna Rahe (02:08):
Yeah, Okay, that's a great place to start because it
kind of has a inverted story.
I was 18 and I felt like I wasliving in a body that was 80 and
that is not hyperbole.
I literally felt so restrictedand in pain and aches and sharp
and dull kinds of you knowmuscular, skeletal.
(02:29):
But I also had more severesymptoms like digestive issues
and respiratory issues anddepression and sleep problems,
and I kept kind of like circlingto so many different
professionals just asking,trying to deal with symptoms
right, and trying to find, likewhat the cause was.
Because I was 18, I should havebeen, I mean, for all intensive
(02:50):
purposes I'd walk in and they'dthink that I was really healthy
.
All my blood work looked greatand all my stats were fine and I
looked flexible because I was adancer or I was trying to have
a dance career.
I was a Pilates instructor, soI knew bodies pretty well at
that point.
I'd gotten certified quiteyoung and I would just go to
people and they'd run additionaltests.
I had MRIs, I'd have CAT scans,I'd have, you know, this poop
(03:14):
test and this, you know,colonoscopy, and just trying to
kind of put together theforensics.
That was wrong and no onereally could touch into it.
And I started noticing thatthere was kind of like these
through lines that like if I hada lot of severe muscular
skeletal pain, it would alsoshow up in that I would.
I was a runner and just stay fitfor dance.
(03:35):
And so some days I'd go out andI'd run through Golden Gate
Park and I'd feel like I wastraining for a marathon.
I had power and I hadrespiratory health and vitality.
And I would go three days laterand do the exact same run and I
felt like a 10 pack a daysmoker.
Oh wow.
And it was like literally likeI needed an inhaler and I
couldn't get up the hill and mymuscles were cramping.
(03:56):
And so I started to really lookat my own journey and be like
these symptoms actually seemvery different because we parcel
the body out into differentbody parts rather than seeing it
as an integrated whole.
And especially, this was trueway back this is 25 years ago
and so every specialist was,like you know, trying to poke
into their specialty, but no onewas looking.
(04:16):
Cross-discipline being likethis could be something like
this.
Even the East and Westintegrative medicine doctors
that I went to, Even the Eastand West integrative medicine
doctors that I went to.
There was good training.
I mean, I've taken pieces fromthings that I learned in my
journey and obviouslyimplemented into what I do today
.
But I think that as a whole,people still look about it in a
(04:40):
Pilates certification rolfingLike it was a kind of an extra
workshop you could take and itwas on the emotional body, not
about muscular, skeletal stuff.
And this woman just introducedme and so at one point I was
like in San Francisco, justdesperate, I was miserable, I
was like scared because I waslike I can't live like this for
(05:02):
the rest of my life.
Michele Folan (05:09):
And it felt like no one could help me.
Well, you didn't know, youdidn't know you could have had
MS Like all these.
Like you start thinking ofthese phantom, like diseases
that you know.
Anna Rahe (05:17):
That's right, and your brain kind of goes scary
and goes haywire, right, sure.
And so at one point I think itwas a divine intervention I was
just like laying on my studioreformer I was teaching out of
my house at the time andattending the University of San
Francisco, and I remember justlaying there and being like this
is not muscle, this is not bone, and I was poking around in my
(05:37):
guts and I think it was thisdivining moment where I was like
could this be fascia?
Wait a second, what is fascia?
I know what it is in my head,but I didn't really remember.
So I started just kind of doingthis deep dive into fascia and
it turned into a 25-year journeyof just refining and a lot of
the stuff that I was findingwasn't answering the experiences
(05:59):
that I was having.
Back 25 years ago, most offascia work was done with manual
therapy.
It wasn't really the focus ofmovement yet, and so I would.
I got rolfed all the time, andsometimes rolfing would flare up
my symptoms and not help them.
And other times, what's rolfing?
Okay, rolfing is a type of bodywork started by Ida Rolf.
(06:20):
She was a brilliant thoughtleader in alignment, being a
source for vitality in the bodyand being able to fix posture
through working with theconnective tissue system.
And so she found ways ofactually taking the fascia and
using manual techniques, kind oflike sculpting right and trying
to get fascia.
(06:40):
It's very much a kind ofattractioning and pulling on
skin.
It's very painful.
It's very painful if you talkto anyone and they tend to cry
because it probably releasesthings, and I did.
I was 20 when I had my firstsession, 18 when I yeah
something around there when Ihad my first session series of
10.
And so it's just a.
It's a viable work.
It has other branches, likeHeller work, and it has roots
(07:04):
some shared with Andrew TillerStill's work, who he was the
father of osteopathy.
He was tapping into more of thevisceral aspects of fascia and
so it's kind of like all of theyou know fringe healers were
tapping into this thing, butthere wasn't a lot of science
behind it at this point, and sothey used their language to try
to describe what they werefinding and what they were
feeling.
And it was a pretty cool,magical time because it was like
(07:27):
the very first peek behind thecurtain of like what is this
stuff and why, and so it wasreally interesting, even though
they're still really focused onthe structural aspect of fascia,
which is like the fiber typeand we can get into that a
little bit later.
When it comes to what we'redoing, that either hurts it or
why we're experiencing pain init.
What causes restriction?
But the fibroastic and thestructure of it rather than
(07:50):
actually the fluidity of it.
And so I found that sometimes Iwould go and have these
sessions and I would feel looser, but it always would come back.
My tensions would always comeback, my tensions would always
come back.
And then I would also sometimeshave flare-ups where I'm like
you released this, but now Ihave chronic nerve pain shooting
up my neck and I'm like what isthat?
(08:11):
And so it was an interestingjourney really of forensics,
trying to figure out and justquestioning.
And so my journey ended upleading me to two really
important things about fascia isthat the greatest influence of
our fascia is really our motion,which I would kind of
experience.
I'd have the therapeutic to tryto heal it and then I'd go out
(08:32):
and dance and ruin it, and I'mlike some of the stuff that I'm
being taught in my Pilates andyoga and all of those physical
disciplines are actuallycontributing to the condition of
this.
So I had to go in and try tolike take apart and deconstruct
what I was taught, because as astudent and 18 years old, I was
like my teachers know the bestand they're telling me the best
(08:53):
of the best.
And I went to the I literallywas studying in the best
certification programs in theworld and I'm like, but
something is wrong.
And so I had to kind of gorogue and I just started kind of
questioning everything I wastaught and started doing the
opposite.
And as soon as I started doingthe opposite I started to heal
in a really significant way.
(09:13):
And then I started teaching myPilates clients that and they
started seeing the differences.
And then I decided I need tofigure out what the science is.
And then there was more scienceavailable, probably 15 years
ago when the fascial Congresscame in.
So I started researching thatkind of stuff.
Michele Folan (09:32):
All right, oh man gosh.
So it is a lot, I mean, and II've got all these questions.
So, first of all, you're veryyoung when all this is going on.
And so I immediately wasthinking, oh my God, you could
have had an autoimmune disease.
There could like all theseweird things, because one day
you'd be great, the next day notso great.
(09:54):
Did anyone else in your familyexperience any of these types of
issues?
Anna Rahe (10:01):
No, no, no, not that I know of.
I do know now in hindsight thatand I still don't have a
diagnosis just so I know, sothat you don't have to have a
diagnosis to find healing, is areally good message for people.
To find a solution does notrequire having a very concrete
diagnosis.
I think there's a lot ofdifferent aspects.
I have sexual trauma in my pastwhich creates emotional and
(10:25):
hormonal imbalances in thetissues which contribute to it.
I had some physical kind oflike mild but not severe
scoliosis.
In fact most x-rays don't showscoliosis, but I had a lot of
tissue scoliosis, which is aninteresting torsion of the way
that the tissues lay out and areformed over the skeletal
(10:45):
structures Not really talkedabout that often and not
addressed at all.
And so my mom has some of thatand I think she experienced,
especially growing up.
She would have been in her,like she was a later mom and so
she was like maybe in her midfifties when she started having
lots of aches and pains, and soat that point I was kind of able
(11:05):
to start putting her on GSTstuff and doing work with her
and she was finding greatreprieve, and so I think that
that's probably a geneticcomponent too as well.
I mean, I say that there's likethree or four different
imprints that really kind ofshow up our body narrative and
fascia holds that story kind oflike the way you can see rings
(11:26):
on a tree that tell you whengood years of growth and great
years of irrigation and when thebugs came in and when there was
fire, you can really see ahistory inside the rings of a
tree.
And the same is really truewith your fascia.
If we get into that, you knowkind of more of the emotional
and psychological loading on thetissues.
But I don't know, I don't knowwhat the exact diagnosis was,
(11:48):
but I think that there wasprobably some genetic thing.
But I think that it's acombination right, it's always a
combination of how we're livingexperience, how we've been put
together in the womb and youknow divine design, if you
believe in that kind of stuff,and that's our story and our
task to deal with.
Right Is to know, and what'sfun is that fascia has an answer
(12:09):
for that.
Michele Folan (12:10):
And I do believe that life experiences and how we
handle them emotionally and howwe bottle them up or express
them can absolutely affect ourhealth in a multitude of ways.
So I hear that loud and clearwith you.
Can you explain for theaudience a little bit what
(12:33):
fascia really is, kind ofdifferentiating it from your
skeletal system, cartilage, allthat?
Anna Rahe (12:42):
So I'm going to give the most succinct.
I love going into the scienceand I'm going to try to like
narrow it down.
The term fascia is referring toa generic type of body tissue,
a type of connective tissuethat's everywhere in your body.
It's kind of, when you say theword fascia, it's kind of akin
to being like my shirt is madeof cotton or my jeans or my
(13:03):
pants are made of linen.
So we have a bunch of differenttypes of fascia loose and
reticular, and all these typesof fascia in the way that it
looks kind of like fabric.
So you have Gore-Tex for heavysportswear and then you have
daily wear of your jeans andthat's kind of like the
musculoskeletal fascia, themyofascia.
(13:23):
When you come back out from justa tissue kind of perspective,
fascia actually is reallysignificant because it organizes
a complete body system, similarto your digestive system and
your cardiovascular system andyour endocrine system.
This body system comes completewith its own organs.
They are not masked organs likea heart or a lung that are very
(13:47):
obvious, which is one of thereasons.
In dissection for yearsanatomical dissection they kind
of just pulled fascia out of theway, thinking oh, this is
superfluous, it's everywhere andit's in the way.
Instead of thinking, holy cow,there's a lot of it, it might
have a lot of significance, weshould probably look at it.
However, the fascial organs arelayered organs and they layer
around every other system.
(14:08):
So you have myofascia is theorganization of fascia around
the muscular skeletal system,and you have viscera, which is
the way fascia organizes aroundyour vital organs, and it goes
on and on.
You have quite a few and we'restill discovering all of the
types of.
You have the interstitium andthere's a bunch of different
ways that fascia organizes intoorgans.
(14:29):
In its greatest capacity, fasciais kind of like your body's
energetic smart grid.
It takes high voltage load fromour workouts, from our picking
up our kids, carrying ourgroceries, sitting for hours all
of this loading in from gravityand actually interfaces it with
the low frequency energy of theheartbeat and the lungs.
(14:52):
Fascia is the reason that yourheart can beat with an
electrical output next to yourlungs and not have interference.
And so, on the backside, fasciain the netting has this
organizational quality of all ofthese things in our bodies that
help to interface and functionall the other body systems.
It's kind of a master system,like the nervous system, and
(15:16):
when you start digging into it,what it needs to stay healthy,
to do its job is prettysignificant because it's
compromised condition effectswhich is why I had digestive
issues, which is why I had achesand pains, which is why I
couldn't sleep because it'sliterally setting the parameters
of optimization energeticoptimization from cells all the
(15:39):
way up to your skin, all the wayup to your cerebral thought
processes and the frequencies ofyour brain activity.
Michele Folan (15:49):
Oh, okay, this was such a better explanation of
fascia.
Good, good, because what peoplewill often say is well, you
know, like you know, when you'recutting chicken breast up and
there's that little thin layerof stuff, that white stuff that
you pull off the chicken, well,that's your fascia.
Anna Rahe (16:10):
Yeah, and then you're like, well, great, but what
does it?
Michele Folan (16:12):
You know it's out of context Correct, so that's
super interesting.
So how does fascia change as weage, particularly during
midlife?
Anna Rahe (16:23):
Yeah, so fascia is very sensitive to what I call
chemical cocktails of experience, and that's basically our
hormone and neurotransmitteroperations.
Right, it's the biochemicalpart of who we are in a chemical
form.
And so fascia contracts tophysical loading, but also to
our psychological and hormonalloading.
(16:43):
And as women, we know that weare much more hormonally alive
and dynamic than our counterpart.
And inside of that, fascia isbusy trying to figure out how to
react and distribute andcommunicate on these kind of
levels in terms of the sensoryinput and how it's going to
(17:06):
integrate and move out of thebody.
Fascia has got a huge metabolicactivity in our body and in its
hormonal phases it actuallyinfluences how we constrict or
conform our restrictions, howour bodies contort, how our
organs sit, the internaltonality, the inner space
(17:27):
dynamics.
So all of a sudden, when youlike, have, let's say,
fluctuations in estrogen andit's very sensitive to estrogen.
And we don't totally know all ofthe reasons.
We just know that, yes, this iswhy fibromyalgia is much more
commonly diagnosed in women thanmen.
This is why during the mensesand even if, even if you're
postmenopausal, you can actuallystill have surges and affect
(17:50):
the different types of tensionsin your body based upon these
hormones, and what's interestingis that you're mostly
hormonally active in thethoracic cavity and so fascia
tends to restrict there, becomeoverly dry, overly rigid, and
then it will actually take awayfrom the strength and the
elasticity in your muscles ofthe limbs, which is where we
(18:11):
tend to get aches and pains inour knee joints, low back
problems, cervical spine, asit's exiting the body as the
hormones are trying to processinto motion.
That's the way that fasciametabolizes the stresses, and so
most women would probably feelquite a flux.
As their complementary system,the endocrine system is trying
(18:35):
to figure out how it's working,and it's interesting also that
the endocrine system is what isthe primary channel of our
estrogen brain, and the brain ina woman fires mostly through
the estrogen channels and inthat it'll be affected also
through the consciousness of ourbody sensory system in fascia.
So there's quite a fewdifferent connective ways that
(18:57):
it affects women in middle ageand later age.
Michele Folan (19:00):
So it just in terms of the joint pain, posture
, mobility, realm okay because Ithink that's something that we
live with every day.
How do we differentiate betweenwhat could be fascia and what
(19:23):
would be maybe osteoarthritis orsome kind of joint issue?
Anna Rahe (19:27):
It's a really good question.
I think that the basic line forpeople is how they're, but it
takes body awareness to do that.
Let me just think about how toexplain this, because I was
going to say feeling it.
There are different.
There's so many different waysof feeling pain and different
receptors give off differentinformation.
(19:48):
I think that by the time you're50, lifestyles and the way we
use our body naturally leads todegenerative capsules and the
arthritic, osteoarthriticconditions.
That doesn't have to be thecase if you catch it early
enough.
So there's a level of that andfascia really works with that
more in terms of the compressionversus the traction tensions.
(20:10):
You will feel it more towardsthe skeletal system.
If you are really experiencingosteoarthritis, you will feel it
more in the dense tissues andeach tissue has a different kind
of sensation.
So you'll say, okay, I feellike my knee feels stiff.
That would be fascia.
If you feel like your kneewon't hold you and there's too
(20:30):
much like power that's goingthrough the or force that's
going through the capsule,you'll probably have some type
of surface reticulation.
If there's severe restrictionin your joints, it's probably
osteoarthritic and not justfascia, Because then you're
changing the actual shape of thecapsule, and that will change
range of motion.
Michele Folan (20:50):
When you were talking about when you were
younger and some of the GIissues that you were having that
were, you know, fascia related.
So I get how, if you wereexperiencing a joint issue and
working with that fascia-related.
So I get how, if you wereexperiencing a joint issue and
working with that fascia throughmovement and through massage
(21:11):
and stretching and all that, howdo you affect some of those
inner systems that aren'tnecessarily accessible with?
Anna Rahe (21:23):
The hand.
Such a good question, oh mygosh, thank you.
This is my jam.
I love the muscular, skeletalstuff, but I really like whole
body care.
What I do is we talk about itholistic body care because
fascia is then innervated, whichjust means wired deeply into
your ANS, your autonomic nervoussystem.
(21:45):
So it is an autonomic functionand has deep, deep influence
over things that you usuallycan't control.
However, fascia has the abilityto contract like a muscle Okay,
it has cells that, like amuscle, can actively contract on
command.
You can control the way yourfascia contracts.
(22:06):
And this was really the nucleusof what started my journey.
Of freedom is because I would goout and have all these people
rub on me and try to touch me inthese places, and there were
simply places that peoplecouldn't touch and I'm like you
can't get deep enough, you can'tactually get your guts under
the lining of my.
But what I discovered firstthrough the myofascia is that if
(22:29):
I moved my fascia in a verysimilar way, I would do hours of
laying on balls and I'd feel myfascia melt and spread and
release, and then I'd get up andit would all tighten up again
and I'm like this is notsustainable.
I cannot lay for three hours anight.
Someday I want kids, someday Iwant to have a career.
So I was like, what if I coulddo the thing that that ball is
(22:50):
doing?
What if I could command it?
What if I could control that?
So this spreading flexion, thisflux of tissue.
So I started studying that andI could do it on command, and I
could do it regularly.
What was really cool is thatthat action can be done by the
fascia that surrounds yourorgans.
So if you have a lack ofmotility around a part of your
(23:11):
intestines, you can go in andteach the tissue how to actually
contract in a way that startsto free up the fiber, so energy
moves through that, so that ittakes the kink out and
diverticulitis doesn't become anissue.
Or it can actually help to movethe flora of your guts in a
more healthy motility.
And so the fascia that I lovedealing with is being able to
(23:36):
teach people how to do this oncommand, because, all of a
sudden, the fact that you cancontrol it and the fact that
it's wired to autonomicfunctions that's how I healed my
respiratory system, because Icould actually control the way
the lining of the lungs and thefascia around my lungs behaved,
and when you do that, all of asudden you have greater reach
inside.
(23:56):
It's an inside job.
Fascia gives you much betteraccess to changing things that
were previously thought to beinaccessible.
Michele Folan (24:03):
All right.
So I get how, like stress andanxiety could restrict the
movement of your fascia, likeyou physically can tighten
things up in your body.
Anna Rahe (24:20):
Feel it yeah.
Michele Folan (24:21):
Yeah, feel it through emotion right.
So, how do you release thatwithout touching?
Anna Rahe (24:29):
it?
It's a great question.
You actually have to move it.
Okay, whether you touch it fromthe outside.
We do a lot of touching becauseit's educational.
But once you teach the tissue todo it, fascia naturally has
this flux.
Okay, fascia force comes instress, whatever you want to
call it it can be psychologicalstress or stress load on the
(24:50):
tissue and it fluxes and it usesits flux to send that energy
across the broadband fibers ofthe netting, the whole wide
network.
In that process it'sdistributing and diluting the
impact of that stress load.
If you don't dilute it, if youdon't share it and distribute it
, then you can get what's calledcontracture in the tissue and
(25:13):
most people don't have healthyways of dealing with their
stress.
They don't know how to createthat kind of freedom of release
through purposefully puttingtheir stresses into animation.
And so we live with constantcontracture in our tissues and
over time that actually cancreate even additional stress on
(25:33):
the body, because fascia thatdoesn't move doesn't distribute
and when you have that, you havethese hubs of high density,
high stress load areas, andthat's usually what tends to
lock the system down and startto create more pathologies like
body-wide pathologies.
So really, what you need tolearn how to do is move your
fascia.
And if you understand theprinciples, even if you don't
(26:00):
move the fascia, you can moveyour body in ways that elicit
the organic function of fascia.
Most people just need to learnto use their fascia again
because their system that isnaturally occurring is broken.
It is so restricted, it's solocked down that they have to
reprogram it if that makes sense.
That's where the therapy comesin, right.
Yeah, but if you know the rightthings that fascia needs in
(26:21):
movement and in energetics, allof a sudden you can just do that
through your day, you can dothat in a stressful situation,
and your fascia will releaseimmediately.
It would put you intoparasympathetic response mode
and calm the nervous system, andso all of a sudden, your body
becomes a tool, right, a reallyhighly evolved kind of pitching
fork, tuning fork for thetensions that we have as well as
(26:45):
provides the solution.
And you have to put everysingle stress in your life into
motion, whether it's emotion,energy in motion or whether it's
physical motion, and that'swhere fascia has the same
interface to do both of thosethings.
Michele Folan (27:03):
Right.
And so then I'm starting tothink okay, so if you don't
address it, this is wherechronic inflammation and
everything kind of comes intoplay.
So it's important to address it, and so I understand.
That was how the nervous systemand the muscular system, when
(27:31):
you say moving, moving, so giveme an example, great, okay.
Anna Rahe (27:37):
So let's say this real quickly for your listener.
Your muscular system and yourfascial system are wired very
differently to your nervoussystem.
One is an adrenal system it isto be your getaway car.
Your muscles are made to beactivated for high power, for
short loads of time, okay.
(27:59):
Fash.
On the other hand, is wireddeeply into your endorphin
system, the relaxation system,the ease system, the relaxation
system, the ease, and one is theactivated and one is the
releasing, and so they kind ofplay together.
The problem is is that most ofus in physical activity and in
(28:19):
our motion are taught toactively, especially as we age,
strengthen, strengthen, tone,strengthen tone and we're
activating and overstimulatingthe muscular system, which
triggers the chemical cocktailof stress adrenal stress,
cortisol, right, and so fasciaprovides a completely different
view of how motion can benutritious and actually put you
(28:41):
in different straights, which isdifferent states, which is
de-adrenalizing, which isactually kind of medicine as a
counter chemical experience andallows for more freedom to
happen.
And this comes down to abiomechanical model.
I will try to keep this reallyshort for people and then I'll
give you examples.
Our biomechanical model instrength and conditioning is
(29:04):
based upon solid mechanics wherethe bones are levers and your
muscles are pulleys and youtighten and pull to make your
body work.
Fascia is 70% water.
It is still an animating system.
It contracts and it movesenergy, but it's a fluid body
system and it changes thescience of motion from solid
(29:27):
mechanics to fluid dynamics.
For those of you who do notremember physics, fluid dynamics
is how force moves through afluid and the most simple kind
of sample of that that someonewould know is a syringe.
You have a cylinder, a tube,and you have a plunger and you
can pull the plunger through thetube and suck water in and push
(29:48):
water out.
Suck water in, push water out.
Fascia is organized in micro andin nano and in bigger and
bigger myofascial tubes.
Your body is more a set oftubes and cylinders than it is
sticks, and so, all of a sudden,the requirements to move water
(30:08):
and to create hydration and toactually displace force comes
through the power of movingwater, not through moving our
solids Principles.
Like women spend years tryingto tighten their core, get flat
stomachs, tighten and tighten.
Then they show up in the middleof their 50s and they're like
why do I have belly fat?
(30:29):
Because your muscles don't.
Nothing in your torso moves,movement has to have.
Movement is the prerequisitefor metabolic activity and so
all your fat's going to storewhere there's no movement.
So fascia comes in and says weneed to open up our tubes, which
means you cannot do crunchesanymore.
(30:50):
You have to actually haveactions that pull the syringe
which is called traction.
It also happens to bedecompressive of joints, which
helps to produce synovial fluidand protect against
osteoarthritis.
You need compression, moves,which is pushing the water
through the tube and starts toclear and move toxins and give
better cellular health.
Traction and compression isthis syringe.
(31:13):
And then you need one otherkind of movement and it's called
rotation.
And rotation is actually kindof this picture of double helix.
If you take a tube and youtwist it, it kind of creates
this kind of double helix shapewhich has compression and
traction compression on one side, traction on the other, and so
these three motions literallywash your tissues and move
(31:35):
static energy to dilute it anddisplace it and move.
And so most of our movement isnot big enough and is not fluid
enough and does not move waterand is not fluid enough and does
not move water, and so, aswe're already aging and losing
the juiciness of our tissues,the collagen and the elastin and
the flexibility.
We continue to dehydrateourselves through the types of
(31:59):
movement that we do.
And then we get more and morerigid and more and more dried
out and we're like, why are wefeeling like I'm squeaking like
the tin man who's squeaking likethe oil, or the tin man who's
squeaking all the time?
So it's a kind of a differentapproach and you need to.
We need to just reframe it andthen there's wonderful, really
simple ways that people can dothis throughout their day.
(32:20):
The other thing that makesfascia kind of polarizes our
movement experience is thatwe're taught to do large block
chunk exercise and fascia says Idon't.
You wouldn't eat your meal 3000calories in one sitting.
Why would you do that to yourbody?
Through motion, which isexcessive load, it generates
tension.
So fascia says the best routefor me is microdosing snack
(32:44):
motion throughout your day 10minutes here, three seconds here
, pull and traction for 30seconds and move on.
And so, all of a sudden, womenneed to look around their world
and be like my life is my junglegym.
I need to find surfaces to hangoff of railings, banisters, car
windows, chain link fences,mailbox on my walk and do these
(33:05):
three movements traction,compression and rotation and if
you do that throughout your day,your fascia in general will
have much better elasticity.
Hydration glide like lack offriction, right, dehydrated
things get friction on them, andso that's one approach is how
do you layer it into your dailyactivity?
(33:26):
And then you also want to belike.
I need an actual ritual of care, because, just like any car
needs maintenance, the more youdrive it, the more care it needs
, and so the body needs thosetoo, and so it would.
Similar biomechanics, butdifferent principles in terms of
what you can get the body to behealthy and strong.
Michele Folan (33:45):
Okay, I think this would be a great time to
take a quick break and when wecome back, I want you to share a
patient success story with me.
Does this sound familiar?
When menopause hit, I didn'tfully comprehend what was
happening to my body.
Even though I was eating 1200calories a day, doing the
(34:05):
elliptical at the gym and goingto multiple cycling classes
during the week, the scale wasnot budging and my genes were
getting tighter.
I was frustrated and wanted todo better for my long-term
health and, with my 26 years inthe health industry, I knew this
was not the path I wanted tofollow.
So I started doing research onseveral online programs, but
(34:28):
most were either fitness ornutrition-based, but not both.
What I needed was a platformthat understood the needs and
challenges of women my age andhad the data to prove it.
While scrolling throughInstagram, one day, I stumbled
upon Faster Way.
Their science-backed strategyspoke to me and I decided to
(34:48):
give it a go and invest inmyself and my future health.
I was 59 years old and full ofhope, and I did go into it,
knowing that I had to be patient, and the improved mindset did
pay off.
My results got me reallyexcited to share Faster Way with
other women who were strugglinglike I was.
So I decided to get trained andcertified as a coach.
(35:11):
Call it self-care.
Call it prioritizing yourhealth.
When are you going to tellyourself enough is enough and
that you matter?
Don't allow your past failureswith other diets and programs to
keep you from making one of themost important decisions for
your future.
I'd love to work with you.
Reach out by DMing me on socialmedia or at the email address
(35:34):
in the show notes of thisepisode.
Okay, we are back.
I would love to hear about apatient that you have helped
with these fascis techniquesPerfect.
Anna Rahe (35:49):
Let's call her Sally, it's really good.
Sally came in to me at 39.
She was actually a chiropractor, which is kind of interesting,
knew a lot about the skeletalsystem and muscles and she was
very protective of herinformation but also of her body
and she was miserable becauseshe had tons of pain.
But she also wanted to work outbecause she had started putting
(36:10):
on middle age weight.
She had had a baby later inlife through IVF, which also
changed and messed up herhormones and she's like I just
feel like my body is haywire.
And when I first started totouch in on her body I got a lot
of don't touch me there, you'regoing to hurt me.
(36:33):
This isn't fun.
And I was like okay, okay, okayand pretty soon I was able to
have her start feeling deeply.
One of the most beautiful partsabout fascia is it really
connects all people, butespecially women who tend to
kind of live out of body deeperinto themselves, a deeper sense
of connection to self and within.
I mean she was reallyconsistent.
She was very like okay, I wenthome and I had two days of no
pain and I was like great, andthen that two days turned into
(36:55):
five days of no pain and thenall of a sudden, in a month,
she's like you know what?
My bowel movements are so muchmore regular.
I've started to lose some of mybelly fat and I'm like great,
okay, we weren't doing cardio.
She's like I was like don't docardio, we're just going to do
the moving of your fascia, forright now, let's make it
therapeutic, cause she wasafraid, so afraid of getting
more hurt.
And so I tend to end up gettingpeople who have complicated
(37:18):
bodies and are afraid of gettinghurt and have searched for
everything.
And so after about two to threemonths, she's like okay, now I
want to go into the aesthetics.
She was a Westside LA wife andshe was like my calves are too
big to fit in my boots and I'mlike, okay, let's try working on
that.
And so we went into alldifferent areas of how fascia
(37:40):
can help with structural things,toning, digestive issues, and
she actually is one of thepeople who I'm still very close
to.
She does our stuff, becauseshe's like, as soon as you get
out of pain, this is thelifestyle you want.
This is something that you growold with.
This is the body care that Iwas trying to provide my clients
, that I wanted, and she's likewhat's really interesting is
(38:03):
that her success story is like Ihad all this knowledge.
We have all this information todifferent experts and stuff,
but none of those visions arereally integrated.
Where your workout hurts you andyou know you have to lift
weights and keep yourosteoporosis away, but then you
have to go and have all theseother therapies to try to
counteract that, and it's likewhat if your movement, if you
(38:24):
could change how it would becomeyour medicine?
And all of a sudden, what ifyour movement, if you could
change how it would become yourmedicine?
And all of a sudden she's likeI'm sold.
This is the way that I havekept my weight off.
She looks amazing and herheadaches are gone.
She had migraines, jaw problems, tmj, just all of these things
that were all locked into thetissues and they slowly unravel
the more that you can just be inand be present and work with
(38:45):
what you have.
And then fascia is endlessly,endlessly transformative.
It's actually interesting thatit is so restorative that after
seven months they're findingthat 90% of intermuscular fascia
is renewed.
It's a very high cellularturnover, which is really
hopeful for people like me andSally, who are like had so much
(39:07):
damage she had worked out herwhole life.
She started off as an actressand she just was like I know my
body and but all of it was justfrenetic and locked her up and
created injury.
And that's usually where peopleget spun off by 50.
You can't do the workouts youdid by 55.
You don't want to do theworkouts you did, right, they
don't feel good.
And so all of a sudden you'relike what's the next step for me
(39:29):
?
I need something that'ssustainable, that actually ages
me backwards, and that's whatwas really fun is to watch Sally
, and that was also myexperience.
I have literally felt like I'veaged backwards because I was
feeling 80 and she came infeeling 80.
And then, as you start torestore your fascia, it takes
years off.
It's the rejuvenating systemwhich takes stress and
(39:52):
eliminates it from your system.
Michele Folan (39:54):
So you work with clients and then do you send
them home with I don't want tosay homework, but do you send
them home with things that theyare to be doing at home as well.
Anna Rahe (40:04):
Yes.
So I think the bestclarification is that it's not
like physical therapy, becauseno one does their exercises and
when you do your exercisesyou're probably doing them wrong
.
Right, because they're not,they're isolated.
They're like let me justtighten my glute because I have
hip problems.
The answer to everybody'sperspective of pain is to
tighten more.
You're lacking strength, sothen they're tightening it more
(40:27):
and it's like over stripping thebolts.
So the way that I first workwith people is I really
encourage people to learn theirbodies and learn these
principles of body care.
You come to me and I say everypractitioner who you go to for
help has only three tools.
They use a stick called lever,they apply force and to get flow
(40:47):
.
Chiropractors use your skeletallever.
They apply force and to getflow.
Chiropractors use your skeletalsystem.
They apply their ownapplication of force and they
try to get their skeletal systemto move in joints.
Massage therapists go in andthey push with their arms as
levers into your muscle to tryto get more glide and more flow.
Acupuncturists use the lever ofa needle and they stick it in
your meridian to try to get thecheetah flow.
(41:08):
And every body has five levers,two legs, two arms and a spine
that you can learn to configurein different shapes.
You put movement, which impliesforce, and then, when I teach
you how to move fascia correctly, you're distributing that
tension into flow.
And so all of a sudden, youbecome your own practitioner.
(41:30):
You are the active participantin the condition of your health.
Rather than I go to someone,they take care of me and I need
them twice a week in order tostay out of pain.
It's like that's prison, that'snot freedom, and so that's how
I work with people is.
It's very much an education, aconversation with the body.
You can't have anyone do it foryou, you just can't.
(41:52):
And if you can, how's thatgoing for you?
Are you still having aches andpains?
Do you still have a dependencyon right?
And so it's really a call forpeople to learn enough about
their body that they can dostuff and not just topical right
.
We can do a diet, we can do adetox, we can do a strength
(42:12):
training course, but then wecome home and we still feel
somewhat broken.
But if you start from fascia onthe inside, then vitality
follows through into every areaof your life.
Cognitive fascia is very rootedto cognitive health.
Go ahead, sorry.
Michele Folan (42:28):
Oh no, no.
No, you were on a roll, but Ijust thought of a life.
Go ahead, Sorry.
Oh no, no, no, you were on aroll, but I just thought of a
question.
So if you are working with aclient, are you able to take
them through this process?
If it was you and I, beingremote?
Anna Rahe (42:42):
Yes, in fact, there's a couple of different things.
First is I have an entirestudio online where we have
every kind of video.
Some of it's educational, someof it is movement therapy.
We have the answer to physicaltherapy, and GST is called
movement medicine, becausephysical therapy requires very
different things, and so you cango and find a whole collection
(43:04):
that is dedicated to knee health, hip health, spine health.
You can also go in and be likeokay, conscious conditioning, I
don't have to hurt myself whileI get the benefits of
cardiovascular.
How do we approach respiratoryhealth is through the lung side
rather than the heart side, andit doesn't put you in adrenal
stress and over contract yourmuscular tissue.
(43:26):
You will find things for aging.
The Ageless Body is all about.
How do you do three-dimensionalmovement to keep your brain
wired, for good coordination, toavoid slipping and falling, and
so you can find that online anddo it completely studied, or?
I teach classes every day.
You can come and join ourcommunity of amazing people, men
(43:48):
and women, who are just reallylike this.
One class makes every othertherapy I need go away.
I deal with all my body stuffin one hour and I am just
healthy and feeling good, so youcan come and take classes.
I see people privately.
We have private, you know,curated stuff, but the idea is
(44:09):
that this stuff is justsomething to learn.
It's beautiful, it keeps youknow.
As we age, I notice that thepeople who are most fun for me
as those who stay intellectuallyengaged and like my aunt's 72
and she's like teaching classes,I'm like this is so great for
aging because you get to come inand learn and just really learn
about you and anatomy and soyou can do it.
(44:30):
You can do it just like we'redoing it.
I talk you through it, I askyou if you're feeling things, I
teach you a principle and thenwhat you'll start to find is
people who work with me.
Fascia is a reflex.
Okay, it's a way that your bodywants to move and it's like a
thirst reflex.
It goes to the same area ofyour brain as eating and so you
should have the impulse almostonce an hour to move your body
(44:53):
and fluff your fascia.
Most people don't move enough,so that reflex is really muted.
But when you start working withus and taking classes, you will
have that microdosingexperience where you're like, oh
my gosh, I need to do this,this, this and I'm done and you
move on and you feel the lifeforce come in.
It's like drinking a glass ofwater for your tissues and then
(45:14):
you move on.
And so it does kind of become apractice where you come and you
learn and then you get to goaway and live it and you'll be
doing it on your own, whichfeels really good, where you're
not like oh, now I have to setaside 30 minutes.
What if you didn't have 30minutes and you want to be with
your grandkids?
Yeah, just do it as you'reliving.
Michele Folan (45:34):
Yeah, I can see where you would want to
integrate this into just, youknow, while you're cooking
dinner.
You know you can.
Anna Rahe (45:41):
That's right traction off your counter, your sink.
I usually talk people throughthis experience and, if you'd
like, counter your sink, Iusually talk people through this
experience and, if you'd like,I can send you the videos for
you to pod or post with yourpodcast release.
We give like little videos thatevery day I show you how to
just do three moves and I showyou off your kitchen sink, off
the tailgate of your car, offyour right, because these three
(46:04):
movements can be done anywherein anywhere.
I will send that to you.
Michele Folan (46:09):
I would love that .
Yeah, I would love to sharethat with people, because my
audience is very curious andthey are also wanting better for
themselves is why I love thiscommunity of women, because
we're not done yet and we've got20, 30 years ahead of us, maybe
(46:31):
40.
That's right.
And so why do we want to settlefor the status quo?
Why should we settle for achespains, for that thing that's
been nagging us and no one canever tell us what it is right?
We want to get answers, and alot of the times, the answers
start with us and going out andfinding someone that can help us
(46:59):
make it make sense.
And so, yeah, I love that.
I love that.
One other question is love thatI love that.
One other question is what newresearch is emerging
Anna Rahe (47:14):
Yeah, what I'm sharing with you is pretty much
the cutting edge, which isfascia is a fluid and it needs
very different things.
And while therapies I am a bigfan of therapies and I still do
body work on people and we havemanual aspects, but the truth is
is that fascia needs quite abit of load, quite a bit of
(47:35):
force and quite a bit ofrepetition in order to
cellularly remodel.
Okay, the remodeling doesn'tcome from the fiber side, it
comes from the fluid side.
So when your fascia is squeezedlike a sponge, when water moves
through the fibers, itactivates the cells that are
needed for good restoration andremodeling of our tissues.
(47:57):
And so, all of a sudden,hydration in the tissues and
movement steps up in terms ofimportance of how is your fascia
laying down month after month?
How are you activelyreconstructing your knee?
And with most therapies, eventhough they can be helpful in
terms of monitoring and kind oflike what's the word that is
(48:20):
very explaining, my blood sugarjust dropped when you have to,
management, it's good formanagement, but for most women,
I think they want solutions, notmanagement.
And so go get a massage becauseit feels good, but science is
saying that it's reallyimportant that you move and live
in your body differently.
Okay, yeah, that's it.
(48:41):
Because the cells areconstantly restoring and how
they restore is up to you, notup to a therapist.
Nobody can massage you enough.
You can't afford a massagetherapist enough to actually
influence the actual remodelingprocess.
Maybe the condition it canloosen it, it can give temporary
(49:01):
hydration, but if most peopleat 50 have some fascial damage
by 50.
But if most people at 50 havesome fascial damage by 50.
And so the point comes in to Ineed a sustainable solution for
longevity, and the only one Iknow is changing how you move,
and that means that you have tolearn something about movement
right.
Most people have been soatrophied in their movement or
(49:24):
have had done so much badmovement junk moves that they
need to relearn what wouldorganically be available to them
right.
And when they do that, then thebody can restore on its own.
Michele Folan (49:36):
I love it.
That's very well said.
I feel like we all just got apep talk.
I think so.
Anna Rahe (49:45):
It's my belief.
I mean, I'm breathing, I have atwo-year-old and I'm 46 years
old, turning 47 next month, andI'm like I have to age well.
I have to age well because Iwant to be there, I want to be
the young mom in an old woman'sbody, right, and I think that
it's really interesting how muchour aches and pains deplete our
(50:06):
life force.
It's really interesting howmuch our aches and pains deplete
our life force.
It's depressing, it's hard andarduous to move a body that's
constantly griping at you, andso one of the greatest ways to
feel young is to get rid of yourpain and your aches where it's
not consuming a thought in yourprocess all the time.
Can I get down on the floorwith my grandbaby, or could I
(50:27):
carry my kid up the stairsbecause my knees hurt Right, and
so it's just.
I think people should beinspired by the fact that we're
living longer, so live better.
Who wants to live to 90 if youcan't get up, if you can't get
down, if you can't spin around?
So that's what inspires me.
I'm moving on in my life.
I'm not 30 and trying to lookgreat anymore.
(50:47):
I'm, you know.
I'm moving on in my life.
I'm not 30 and trying to lookgreat anymore.
I'm really wanting to feelgreat.
Michele Folan (50:50):
Yeah, I got off the phone with a client right
before you and I startedrecording and she said yeah, you
know, I, I, I will be havinggrandchildren here at some point
.
And she said, michelle, youknow, I want to be able to get
up off the floor, and you know,not that we're setting the bar
(51:13):
low, that I just want to be ableto get up off the floor.
But that's that's kind of it ina nutshell.
That's a bare minimum.
Anna Rahe (51:19):
Yeah, that's right, and it's sad that that is that
the bar is so low.
Right, you should be like.
I want to do backflips, yeah,but no, we're just at the
baseline of.
We need to be able to primalsquat Women especially have to
primal squat for the health ofyour pelvis, for the health of
your digestive system and wecan't, we cannot get to the
floor because we've flatlinedour spine from sitting so much.
(51:43):
So, yeah, I think that you'reright.
We're not saying that's the,that's not the bar we want to
have, but that tends to be agoal because it's unavailable
and it seems so basic.
Yeah, right.
Michele Folan (51:55):
Absolutely All right.
This is kind of a personalquestion.
Yeah.
What is one of your own corepillars of self-care?
What do you do for yourselfevery day?
I do.
Anna Rahe (52:11):
GST every day.
You do every day.
It's more like because ithappened to me.
It's kind of weird to say it'san activity, but it's actually
my sacred ritual.
I go inside and I listen and Ifeel and it's like my sanctuary
and I respond to the tensionsthat show up and I put them into
(52:31):
motion and I let them clear mymind and I become more of a
vessel.
I'm available when I don't havemy static of pain and tension
and restriction.
I can become a woman of service, which I think feels good to
most women.
And when it's healthily doneit's so important.
(52:53):
It's giving life, it'slife-giving rather than
life-taking, if we can do itright.
And so I think that it's not somuch a selfish thing I don't go
get massages and stuff.
It's like it's this meet mewhere I am and have this time to
help myself.
First, Eleanor Roosevelt was thefirst one I heard as a quote
(53:13):
saying she was interviewed bythis newspaper article guy and
they're like so how is it beingthe wife of the president?
And how you know, do you justgive him everything?
And she said something like no,no, I just take care of myself,
because if I don't take care ofmyself, I'm no good for my
husband.
And she said something like no,no, I just take care of myself,
because if I don't take care ofmyself I'm no good for my
husband.
And the interviewer's like,isn't that a little selfish?
I mean, you are the first lady,isn't your job to support your
(53:36):
husband?
And she's like no, so anyway, Ithink about that a lot of like.
My highest goal is to be ofservice to my family, to the
people around me, and thatrequires that I handle my
burdens first.
And if I have a way to lightenit and to create space, then I
(53:58):
don't feel so burdened.
I feel alive and welcome for it, open for love.
Michele Folan (54:00):
We cannot pour from an empty cup, right?
That's so true.
Anna Rahe (54:04):
I love that.
That's beautifully said, yeah.
Michele Folan (54:06):
Anna Rahe, where can the listeners find you?
Anna Rahe (54:10):
Come and see me at GSTbody.
com GSTbody and that launchesyou off.
You can find our Instagram.
I have two different channels,one that's kind of for bodies
and one that's for life,application and health and stuff
and write me.
I actually respond to all myemails.
(54:30):
Personally, I really love totalk with people and connect
through the body and the journey, so come and find me and I love
working with all types ofpeople.
Michele Folan (54:41):
Wonderful Anna Rahe.
Thank you for being here.
Anna Rahe (54:44):
Thank you for hosting me.
It's been a pleasure.
I love what you're doing.
Michele Folan (54:47):
Thank you, hey.
Thanks for tuning in.
Please rate and review the showwhere you listen to the podcast
.
And did you know that askingfor a friend is available now to
listen on youtube?
You can subscribe to thepodcast there as well.
Your support is appreciated andit helps others find the show.
(55:07):
Thank you, there as well.
Your support is appreciated andit helps others find the show.
Thank you.
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