March 2, 2025 • 60 mins
Today, I'm joined by Melanie Weller (https://www.melanieweller.com/), a renowned Physical Therapist, Board-Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist, Certified Athletic Trainer, Certified Exercise Expert for Aging Adults and Vagus Nerve Expert, who has seamlessly blended her clinical insights with the ancient art of astrology. Join us as Melanie shares her transformative journey from conventional medicine to a holistic approach that marries science and esoteric knowledge. Discover how the alignment of the Zodiac with our anatomy can offer profound healing insights, and learn how this fascinating intersection can enhance your understanding of personal and communal health.
Explore the cosmic dance between the Zodiac signs and human anatomy, where each sign plays a pivotal role in our physical being. Melanie guides us through the alignment of celestial geometry with our bodily systems—from Aries influencing the brain to Pisces aligning with the feet. Experience the transformative power of breath work as we uncover its crucial role in connecting us with the Earth and relieving physical discomfort. Melanie's expertise will leave you with practical insights into maintaining well-being through an interconnected view of the body.
Immerse yourself in the harmonious blend of Eastern and Western philosophies, where the speed of imaginative thinking triumphs over logic. Through inspiring stories and unexpected anatomical connections, Melanie illustrates the power of viewing the body as a unified system. Discover the journey of self-understanding, the impact of cosmic influences on our well-being, and the potential of energy healing as a tool for personal growth. As we embrace the future and make peace with the past, this episode promises a fresh perspective on healing and spiritual development.
Stay Connected with Melanie on Instagram @ embodyyourstar
Get the free Zodiac & Vagus Nerve workbook here : https://www.melanieweller.com/zodiac-workbook
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well.
So, honestly, listen, I saythis every time, but it's
because my guests are soincredible.
But I am going to learnsomething new having this
conversation with Melanie Wellerand that's very exciting to me.
When we had a chat, you wereone of my most favorite podcast
(00:27):
connection calls that I've hadin the past month or so.
I'm just thrilled to have thisconversation with you, melanie.
So we're going to be talkingabout I mean very basic.
We'll just say we're going totalk about astrology.
But it's definitely way layeredthan that and way cooler than
just your basic astrology.
So we'll dive into all of that.
First of all, I would like toallow you to introduce yourself.
(00:51):
That's one of my favoritethings to do on this podcast is
see how my guests would like tobe introduced and how they would
introduce themselves.
So there's nothing specificthat you have to say.
But who is Melanie?
And thank you so much forcoming on.
I'm really excited for thisconversation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thank you, hannah.
I so appreciate this invitationand a chance to speak about
this.
This, what we're going to talkabout today, is really, for all
of my clinical and scientificbackground.
This is the piece of my workthat really lights me up, and
mike came out of athletictraining and physical therapy
(01:28):
and, uh, have been doing vegasnerve work from long before.
It was cool like it is on socialmedia now and I, over the years
, I collected credentials andcertifications, like some people
collect fine wines.
It was part of my wholevalidating myself, you know, and
getting over my own notenoughness and I, as part of
(01:54):
that I got to study with, I hadamazing mentors and kept you
know.
It was really driven to seekmore knowledge and more
knowledge.
And then one day my life fellapart or I had a health crisis,
marriage crisis and lawsuitcrisis all in very close
proximity and my knowledge wasnot enough to make sense of what
(02:15):
was happening in my life.
And that's when I turned toastrology and it helped me make
sense of all the nonsense thatwas happening in my life and I
had a big awareness at that timethat the universe was driving
me to do something different,because I had always been the
(02:40):
highly credentialed physicaltherapist that in secret, had
this really special set of softskills that people really came
for.
But you had to have the secretcode to come find me, we didn't
talk about it, we didn't talkabout that Right and the um.
And in the midst of that, uh, Ireally that crisis, I really
came upon the uh, thisrealization of how our anatomy
(03:06):
and even our molecules are madein the image of the Zodiac, like
, just quite literally, hardcoregeometry.
As above, so below.
And in the throes of all ofthat, to top it all off, I had a
patient walk into my officethat had a suicide plan for that
evening.
To top it all off.
(03:26):
I had a patient walk into myoffice that had a suicide plan
for that evening and he wasliving in a nightmare of a
hallucination that he couldn'tget out of and wasn't getting,
wasn't responding to otherthings that he had done, and I
knew I had to bring more thanjust my clinical self to the
table with him that day and Ishowed up with all of my
(03:48):
clinical knowledge, all of myesoteric knowledge and all of my
intuition and 90 minutes laterhe was 90 better and I walked
out with my fearless presencethat day and I say we really
saved each other and it's so fun.
I actually just saw him at aparade, a Mardi Gras parade in
(04:11):
the French Quarter the othernight, and so it's so fun to
give him a big hug and just seehow much he's thriving right now
and to.
But since then I've really beenpassionate about helping people
bring together their intuitionand their expertise and bringing
together, uniting ancient andmodern science, because we,
(04:33):
culturally, we tend to put themat odds with each other.
And I will tell you, becauseI've been living in both of
these worlds for 30 years, thatwhen you put them together you
can make miracles happen everysingle day.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love that, and that was oneof the things that I appreciated
hearing so much from you isthat I come from a really big
science background in humandesign.
If we're talking in terms ofhuman design, I have a one line,
which is the investigator, andwe're very data driven, and if
(05:10):
somebody says something, I'mlike, okay, but where was, like,
the research that you found?
You concluded that answer andI'm very interested in the
science and psychology andsociology.
And then we get into astrology,and I was also raised by a mom
that was.
That is very spiritual, and soI feel like I kind of was raised
(05:33):
in that like they don't have tobe two separate things.
However, in the world Eastern,western philosophy are very
different and always kept veryseparately, and it's so
interesting.
It's so interesting to evenhave the idea that our anatomy
mimics the zodiac sign, which Idefinitely do want to get into.
(05:56):
But I also shoot, I alreadyforgot my question.
Let's get into it.
I have something else that Iwanted to ask you for yeah, so's
like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Well, yeah, so I'll just maybe, maybe.
What we'll start with is justthe overarching To me, where the
science and the astrologyreally intersect is in time,
because even if you don'tbelieve in astrology, the zodiac
is a clock.
Because, even if you don'tbelieve in astrology, the zodiac
(06:28):
is a clock.
You know the sun and the moon.
You know, like we know, thatthe planets move through, like
(06:50):
orthopedic type injuries, thattime perception and processing
are at the root of them.
And when you can get the brainreally organized in time, a lot
of things fall into place.
And the things that you would dofor that are not like in my
(07:11):
world are not necessarily alwaysthat different than what you
would do for trauma-informedcare.
Okay, but I think it's.
But we will never selltrauma-informed care to the
whole world because noteverybody wants to deal with
their trauma, you know, or tothink and I think there's a lot
of limitations and lookingthrough the at life through the
lens, only through the lens oftrauma, you know, because I see
(07:34):
a lot of people that get reallycaught up in like, oh, is the
fact that when I slouch in mychair, that I go to the left.
Is that a trauma response?
And like, well, like does itreally matter?
Like I don't know, like there'slike I think you know I see a
lot of people that get reallycaught up in the minutia, and I
see it online and I see commentslike so what you're telling me
(07:55):
is that every crime of myexistence is a trauma response,
and I think that's not a joyfulway to move through life.
I don't think you have to move.
Not a joyful way to movethrough life.
I don't think you have to move.
I think that we are incrediblyresilient, pleasure-seeking
beings, and that's also, youknow, the trauma lens is a very
Western lens.
An Eastern lens would say thatwe are pleasure-seeking and they
(08:16):
can be kind of avoiding traumaand seeking pleasure, kind of
two sides of the same coin, butit certainly affects sides of
the same coin, sure, but it'scertainly affects.
You know, to walk through lifewondering like where the next
trauma is coming from versuswhere is the next pleasurable
thing coming from, are two verydifferent ways to walk through
(08:36):
your life.
Yeah, so I'm a big advocate forwhat I'm calling time-informed
care over trauma-informed care,and because we all might would
like to maybe have a differentrelationship with time, like
maybe more playtime, moredowntime, more me time, more
vacation time, more family time,you can walk through the houses
(08:58):
of the Zodiac chart and youknow for all the different types
of time that you might want,and so you can apply then
somatic exercises veryspecifically and therapeutically
to help you get the kind oftime that you want.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Hmm.
So so you're saying ultimately,instead of like, let's say,
back issues, because that's justvery relevant to everyone, but
also to me, so back issues,instead of maybe looking at it
for like, what is the traumathat I underwent, whether that's
(09:35):
emotional, physical, spiritual,how would we reframe that to a
time response?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Right.
So if you're going to look at,for example, sagittarius ruling
the hips, that you, you knowthat maybe there's a little bit
more truth time that you need inyour body or more fitness time.
I mean that really could justbe an exercise thing, and
exercise is great for low back.
You know that, like, I meanthat can just.
(10:06):
I mean that matches the sciencereally beautifully and that's
what you know, what Sagittariusembodies.
Now, if you're going to, youknow when I'm, if I think about
it with a spine, you know, ifyou're going to think about your
spine as Leo and your pelvis asSagittarius, that then there's
like okay, like what's your?
(10:27):
What's happening with your fireenergy?
Like, is everything on fire?
Is it too hot?
Do you need to be a little bitcooler?
Like, where's the balance inthat?
But really it's just like how,like, are they fighting each
other?
Are they sitting in rightrelationship?
You know, because it's notalways about the, you know it's
(10:54):
easy.
We like stories to go with ourthings and what are we caught up
in stories?
But very honestly, we just haveto take things out of, get our
bodies.
Our bodies are our biggestcollaborators.
But sometimes we, you know, welive in a very competitive
society and sometimes that, youknow, our spine starts competing
with our pelvis or, you know,these body parts are competing
for our attention and when youcan get them, you know, and pain
(11:17):
is very much to me like atoddler or a puppy that just
wants a little bit of attentionand then it'll go off and play
on its own.
And so I think that when youknow, and there's I mean there's
way I understood, you knowthere's way more scientific
explanations for it, but it canbe way easier than than you
might think.
And your, you know your pelvisis it's shaped very much like a
(11:41):
crossbow, like your spine, likeyour sacrum is sort of like an
arrow, so you can really thinkof it in Sagittarius terms, like
a bow and arrow.
You know the archer that goeswith it.
And so what is the energy ofthe like?
How is that crossbow sitting inyour pelvis, like are you, is
it lined up that way?
And even your thighs, the wayyour inner thigh muscles, um,
are on your femur, it's kind oflike a Robin Hood bow.
(12:04):
I don't know what you call thatkind of bow, but archery, bow
and arrow in that way, and youknow.
So there's like that energy ofthe arrow that can really get
distorted.
And I can go through all theosteopathic things to you know
in manual therapy, things toalign the pelvis and all that
(12:25):
kind of stuff.
But I have found that I getbetter, faster results when I
tap into what people'sSagittarius bows and arrows are
looking like and get thatorganized in their bodies and I
get the same range of motionincreases.
Like I can measure the outcomesobjectively, and so I really
love working with this energymedicine paradigm that I've
(12:47):
created with it and it's just,it's endlessly delightful to
leave people with so much joy,you know, and so much relief in
their lives when they thought itwas going to be really hard to
get better, and it's even.
(13:07):
I get it.
I get a great deal of pleasuretoo, which is probably a little
bit twisted.
But when people get reallyangry, like they get better,
like they sit up and they're andthey're looking for their pain,
like it should be, like itshould be somewhere in the room
and they can't figure out whereit is, yeah, and then they're
angry because it was so easy toget better, and I get it, you
(13:30):
know, like when you've reallylike, cause I don't see people
that where it's usually theirfirst rodeo rodeo trying to get
better.
I get people when they've failedmultiple other interventions
and you know, and they arerightfully angry.
When I touch them with verygentle force or give them a few
breathing, you know eyeexercises, or tell them to do
(13:54):
something, you know like movetheir, move your toes, like this
, and then they're like whathappened?
What did what just happen?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, why was?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
it that easy to get better?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I can imagine my mom also does energy work and
similar expectations andoutcomes of her working on me
and it's not a lot of touching,it's not a lot of moving, it's
not.
We do overcomplicate.
(14:23):
I think in a lot of in healing,in the stories that we tell
ourselves, in trauma work, Imean in everything.
I know that I do, I know that Iovercomplicate.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh, I think we all, yeah, no, I think it's very much
human nature to make itcomplicated and we, you know
it's.
I think there can be value inthat, or in creating, you know,
connecting, think there can bevalue in that or in creating,
you know, connecting, creating,understanding, sometimes a story
so that you can re-pattern that.
(14:53):
But over the years and years,like when I would even tell
people that, like theirvertebrae were shared in their
spine, or that their you know,maybe their knee joint was
sheared or something wasmisaligned, they're like, well,
what does that mean?
So it just means that we needto fix it, like that's all.
It just means that it needs togo back in line.
(15:14):
That's it.
Yeah, but I don't think wealways have to make it that
complicated.
I think where it can sometimesbe more valuable to make it a
little more complicated is withautoimmune disorders and complex
trauma because of your own oryou know that would be like
Aries and Taurus kind ofquestions, or what you know,
(15:52):
what does justice mean for you?
Like in in the way, and maybethis is Libra, is Libra sign, is
scales, and scales are justice,you know, just as they are even
naturally in Libra, in theseventh house in astrology, and
(16:18):
the populations with the highestlevels of social injustice have
the highest levels of kidneydisease, and your kidneys sit in
your low back just like a setof scales, and so we embody the
stress of social injustice atany level, at the level of the
kidneys and I think, really evenseparately from social justice,
understanding what justice inour personal lives means for us,
(16:41):
you know, maybe it means thatyou get to paint for two hours a
day, maybe it means that you uhget to have your favorite ice
cream once a week, or whatever.
That you know it could meananything but really kind of
identifying what that personalsense of justice is, to give you
the foundation, because peopleuh often compromise themselves
(17:03):
in that way without realizinghow much compromising they're
doing- yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So when you're, when you're talking about like, oh,
maybe this is you just said,compromising my values and
putting others first, that mightbe like an Aries Taurus thing.
To be clear, are you sayinglike that's where we should be
looking, if that's our sun sign?
To be clear, are you sayinglike that's where we should be
looking if that's our sun sign,if we're an aries or a torus sun
sign, or are we talking aboutthe anatomy?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
well, I think when the anatomy is distorted in that
part of the body, like ifyou're having neck pain,
headaches, dizziness, thingslike that, those are questions.
That's when I would really lookat those issues more than if
it's your sun sign.
Cool, because in astrology,aries rules the head and Taurus
rules the throat, and so, forexample, your vagus nerve can
(17:54):
get compressed, get pinched atthe base of your skull between
your Aries and your Taurus, andthis really works.
I have a whole workbook I wroteon this, that your vagus nerve
gets pinched between the signsas it moves through your body.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Which is fascinating to me, and I was trying to
explain it to my mom and failed.
So can you elaborate on that?
Let's back up, actually,because I know what you're
talking about and you know whatyou're talking about, but can we
?
You just gave us the first two.
Can we go through the Zodiacsigns?
Where it shows up in anatomyand then we can talk about the
(18:33):
vagus nerve.
Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And there's.
So I'm going to go throughwhere it shows up anatomically.
But I'll say that there areother angles in the cosmos that
show up in our bodies as well,like the angle there's 47
degrees between the pole starsthat the Earth orients towards
over thousands of years, andthere's normal C1, normal
(19:00):
rotation in your upper neck is47 degrees.
The normal average angle ofinclination of your anterior
cruciate ligament in your kneeis 47 degrees.
Your vagus nerve exits the baseof your skull at the same angle
as the axial tilt of the earthrelative to the center of the
(19:21):
spinal cord.
And so there's and I couldrattle but anyway.
So there's this whole system ofcritical angles too, or what I
call critical angles in the body.
That and but with the anatomy,the ventricles of the brain are
the same shape as the ram'shorns that represent Aries, and
in astrology Aries rules thehead.
Your throat anatomy is the sameas the Taurus bull, your higher
(19:46):
bone in your throat, like thehorns of the bull, your
collarbones and diaphragm, orlike Gemini rules lungs and arms
.
So you're like your twin, youknow the two, six, but your, uh,
your collarbones and yourdiaphragm are like the top and
the bottom of that gemini symbol, like the roman numeral yeah
(20:11):
the uh, cancer rules the breasts, and the symbol for glyph for
cancer looks very much like aset of breasts.
um, cancer also rules thestomach, so I think of your
breasts as like the full moon,and stomach is like the crescent
moon.
Yeah.
The Leo rules the heart and youraortic arch is the same shape
(20:33):
as the symbol for Leo, libra orVirgo.
Virgo rules the digestivesystem and your uh, particularly
your large intestines.
But the way you can really makethat virgo and symbol out of
(20:54):
the macro anatomy as well, as ifyou think about virgo being a
goddess, the omentum, thecovering of the intestines in
the abdomen, looks like agoddess's dress.
It's tiered like a lot of thoseold representations of a
goddess would be.
The Libra ruling the kidneys wetalked about.
(21:19):
Scorpio rules the reproductivesystem.
Ruling the kidneys we talkedabout.
Scorpio rules the reproductivesystem, and a woman's
reproductive system looks verymuch like a scorpion, where the
ovaries are the claws and thevagina is the tail of the
scorpion.
Scorpio is also thetraditionally the only sign that
has three archetypes with it,so it also has a snake, which is
(21:40):
like a male phallus and aphoenix.
And whether we're making loveor babies, or business or art,
whatever, we make something fromnothing that comes from our
reproductive area, from oursecond chakra.
That's where we create, fromwhatever it is.
Across many traditions,sagittarius rules the hips we
(22:02):
talked a little bit about thatearlier as well, with the bow
and arrow.
Capricorn rules.
The bones and long bones areorganized in little Saturnian
circles, quite literally at thecellular level yeah and the way
the vasculature runs through thebones looks very much like that
(22:22):
little H-like symbol thatrepresents Saturn, and Saturn is
a goat or goatfish and this isgoing to take a little bit of
imagination in podcast form.
But if you think about yourkneecap as the nose of the goat
and your patellar tendon, thetendon below it, as the beard of
(22:45):
the goat, and then your muscleson like as your muscles go up
your thigh, they're kind of likethe horns of the goat.
You can really kind of make agoat out of it if you're going
to include the calf in your feet, as you know to be like the,
you know the representation,representations of capricorn
(23:07):
that are like a, I guess,mergoat, you know, you know, for
lack of a better term yeah, um,aquarius rules the calves and
your calves are shaped like thewater vessel that you know, the
aquarian water better bearerholds, and the um zigzag sign
(23:32):
for aquarius is, uh, reallyaligns with the multi-penate
muscle fiber structure of yourcalf muscles.
Like that's how they're.
It's a zigzag, they're verymuch organized like feathers.
But you can.
If you look up an anatomicalrepresentation of multi-penate
muscle fibers, you can justfollow the zigzag in the same
(23:56):
way.
And then Pisces rolls the feetand your feet are your fish,
your flippers.
And then Pisces rolls the feetand your feet are your fish,
your flippers, your flippers.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Very cool.
Yeah Well, thank you.
I think that was really helpfulto just go through all of them
and kind of see where they allland in the body.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, also about the body, that you know cause as
just especially as breath workis really popular right now and
really valuable is that.
You know, astrologers I'vetalked to over the years say
that like, well, your whole bodyis earth.
You know cause, like earthisn't represented specifically
in the body and they'll say like, oh, it's just your whole body.
But I really think, think ofour diaphragms like our personal
earth, because if we're notbreathing, we're not earthbound.
Yeah, and our hearts sit,literally sit on top of our
diaphragm, like your heart iseven attached to your diaphragm
(24:52):
and it sits on it just like asun.
The sun sits on the horizon ata sunrise or a sunset.
And if and if your diaphragmfunction isn't right like if you
don't have, when diaphragms getdysfunctional, they tend to get
flat.
You know, they lose the domeshape and when you lose that
nice round horizon line it cancreate lots of problems.
(25:15):
So I also will, I'll throwearth in there and I think it is
really um, our relationshipwith earth is very much in our,
in our diaphragms.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, I like that.
I think that's a really coolanalogy too, because breathwork
can be very grounding for people, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Absolutely, and it's great on so many levels.
And and I'll you know, the otherthing that happens when
diaphragms are dysfunctional andI can go into this with other
parts of the body too but it canliterally pinch your vagus
nerve as it's going because ithas to cross through your
(25:53):
diaphragm and in all humans theright side of the diaphragm has
more muscle mass than the left,so theoretically the right side
will always win.
So that's why you see a lot ofpeople with low right shoulders
in their posture, for example,and so taking people out of that
right diaphragm dominance canbe really helpful in terms of, I
(26:19):
will say especially like rightshoulder, right hip pain, but
even hiatal hernia issues thatmight, you know, which will show
up more on this which is reallymore of a vagus nerve
compression issue, as it'sbecause it follows your
esophagus.
But to take the pull off ofwhere your esophagus and vagus
(26:39):
nerve are going through yourdiaphragm can make a really huge
difference for things like that.
But it can also get compressedthrough your vagus nerve, which
mediates a lot of your feel-goodsensations Think of like grace
under pressure and calm andsexual function and it's a huge
nerve.
It goes all the way from thebrainstem to the pelvis and calm
(27:02):
and sexual function.
And it's a huge nerve.
It goes all the way from thebrainstem to the pelvis but it
can also get compressed where,generally wherever you have
horizontal structures.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
So base of the skull, vocal cords, collarbone, like
thoracic inlet level, pulmonaryartery and vein where they they
go horizontal at the heart,diaphragm, renal artery, vein,
pelvic floor are the big ones.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And why does this happen at these horizontal
structures?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Well, we embody stress and trauma more on the
transverse plane, like on thehorizontal, than we do on other
planes.
And if you just think aboutwhat happens, like if you're
going to walk joyfully, or ifyou think of being a glamorous
runway model and going walkingdown the runway, you know you're
(27:58):
going to have some really niceswagger, some nice arm swing
when we get stressed andtraumatized, the first thing we
do is bring our arms in closeand stop rotating.
Yeah, so the transverse plane,that rotation, is the first
thing we give up and clinicallyfor at least in my profession,
it's often the last thing we'retold to give people back because
(28:21):
it's quote unquote the mostdangerous when it comes to
herniated discs and things likethat.
Or you have to really becautious, and not that any of
that is untrue, but I think thatI am much more intentional
about restoring rotation earlierthan I was trained originally
(28:44):
to be.
You know, because as you freeup, as you get the rotation, you
, you so everything else follows.
You know, even if they can't,you know, for people that, like,
a herniated disc is a goodexample.
Like you know, the people haveto stay in their pain-free range
of motion it doesn't mean thatthey can always use their full
range of motion as they'rerehabilitating, but but to be
(29:06):
able to have the option to moveinto it and to then teach their
bodies that, oh, it's notthreatening to do this, you know
, rather than waiting sayinglike, oh, no, no, you're not
allowed to rotate, and keep themout of fear of rotation,
because that's just not reallife.
People don't do that.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's hard when we're in pain to want
to move in ways that maybe canbe more painful or can cause
pain.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Absolutely yeah, and we have.
Our movement is so wired in atthe lower levels of our brain,
like it's so brainstem andcerebellar mediated.
We're not always thinking aboutit and to have to.
If you have a baby, for example, or a toddler, it can be really
hard to be hypervigilant aboutyour movement and I don't know
(30:04):
that we really serve people thatwell by telling them they have
to be hypervigilant about theirmovement all the time you know.
If you can, especially when you, if you can give them the
freedom where they don't have todo that so much.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
So yeah, let's talk about strengthening these
horizontal you, you.
The diaphragm is interesting tome because I have a background
in speech pathology and breathwork, so I deal a lot with the
diaphragm.
I've never heard that yourdiaphragm on the right side is a
little bit stronger, which alsokind of makes sense to me.
I'm connecting it to the rightside of our body is our
(30:39):
masculine side, so maybe justover flexing that, that side is
what I'm connecting to.
But you said something aboutlike strengthening, stretching,
helping that.
How do we do those things onthe horizontal planes?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah.
So my favorite way to kind ofstart, to start to normalize
that is to do what I callhelical breathing, and so if
people want to participate, youknow please do.
I'll guide everybody throughthis.
But please do not multitaskwhile you're doing this.
(31:18):
Don't do it while you'redriving.
Don't do it while you'redriving.
Don't do it while you'rechopping vegetables in your
kitchen.
I have had some terriblekitchen accidents when my
nervous system was dysregulated.
So I'm very like, just you knowlike, be very.
I'm just asking everybody to befocused while you do this.
But if you're sitting, like siton the edge of the chair, so
(31:41):
you're up in a at least a decentposture, cross your left ankle
in front of your right andyou're going to take your right
hand and reach it across yourbody, if you can get it all the
way on the outside of your leftthigh or as far across your body
as you can, and if you have anylimitations that keep you from
(32:01):
doing this, just imagine doingit in your head.
Your brain really doesn't seeimagining doing it and actually
doing it as any different.
And you're going to take yourleft hand and put it behind your
head.
So you've got left ankle infront of right, right hand,
across right arm, across body,left hand behind head and then
inhale into the backside of yourheart and I know that's a weird
thing.
If you have somebody at home itcan be nice to have them put
(32:23):
their hand between your shoulderblades, just so you have a
little cue.
But try to expand your rib cageto the wall or whatever's
behind you and then hold it fora couple seconds.
I usually have people maybeinhale for three, hold for six
and then exhale for nine,something like that, and you can
(32:46):
do that several times.
But this is a nice way.
This decompresses your vagusnerve at multiple levels, but
especially at the diaphragm,because it takes you.
You're rotating, your arm isacross to the left, so you're
getting out of that right sideof diaphragm dominance and, just
(33:08):
like, usually, three to five ofthese is enough to start to
ease it up.
And if you're you know I didn'ttake everybody through this
part but before and after do alittle body check like check
your head rotation or your trunkrotation or you know, do a
squat and just see how it feelsbefore and after, because you
(33:30):
can check your balance.
You could I get really goodvisual improvements from all of
these, I can read without myglasses more clearly when I do
wow things like this yeah, butit, um, but that's a nice uh.
I always say, I think anybodythis is a great exercise for,
(33:50):
like when you helped a friendmove furniture and you think, oh
, I'm gonna pay for thattomorrow.
It helps you keep from paying,having to pay for it nice, that
is very cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So what about?
I mean, we don't have to gothrough all of them, but can we
look at the pelvic floor is thelast place.
You said that the vagus nerveextends to.
So, again, I'm kind of thinkingback pain.
Honestly, it's a big part of mysituation right now, but I feel
(34:24):
like we have like a back painpandemic, like everyone I feel
like has lower back issues, andthe more that I dive into it,
the more I'm like we shouldn'thave this, we shouldn't, and I
think a big part of it ismovement, and I agree, I think
that we spend a lot of timesitting at desks and driving and
we're just not moving enough asas humans, as bodies.
(34:47):
Um, but I assume that you havesomething to add.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I agree, yes.
Well, I will say the exercisewe just did can be really
powerful, even for low backissues, because our pec majors
and our chest, our serratusmuscles that are on the front
side of our shoulder blades, ourlat muscles that make up the
back wall of our armpits and godown into our low back, our hip
(35:12):
hikers, our quadratus lumborumand hip flexors, psoas muscles,
all attached to the diaphragm itmakes like a star in the center
of your body and if you havetight hip flexors that are
causing back pain, I guaranteethat your diaphragm is not in
the right position.
I have not had to treat a tighthip flexor in decades, probably
(35:34):
because when you get thediaphragm in the right place,
the hip flexor just goes.
Thank you, and relaxes.
So there's.
So the exercise we just did canbe really really powerful for
back pain as well.
But one of the big things yourvagus nerve is a part of
(35:59):
sensory-wise is yourinteroceptive system and it's
like that map of what'shappening or that feeling of
what's happening inside of yourbody and we're not very aware of
that collectively, like wedon't have really good maps in
our brains or like you know, andwhen part of your body gets
(36:19):
fuzzy in your brain, your brainis going to perceive that as a
threat and lock it down somehow.
So one of my favorite exercises.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
That's also probably the easiest of them to explain
in this format.
You do video.
Maybe if you watch the videoyou can see us like moving our
hands.
Maybe that'll be easier.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
But your pelvic floor is basically like a trampoline,
if you can imagine it like that, the way that it sits in the
bones.
And so if you imagine thatthere's a little version of
yourself inside of you and thatwhen you inhale you're going to
land on that trampoline and whenyou exhale you're going to jump
up, you're going to jump up andjust to kind of get the hang of
(37:15):
that to start, and then todivide your pelvic floor into
quadrants and try and jump onthe right front quadrant, like
can you land on just over thereand can you land on the right
rear quadrant and the left rearquadrant and the left front
quadrant.
And I will tell you, when Ifirst did this for myself, I had
no right side of my pelvicfloor.
It just didn't exist.
So don't be freaked out if youcan't find that, but just keep
(37:37):
practicing, just keep trying tomove.
You know, see if you can buildthat.
Go like oh, where is my pelvicfloor?
Like it's a little discoverymission, you know and that.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
But you know, like it's a little discovery mission,
you know and that, but you knowand you, you will eventually
find it.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
I'm not a huge fan of people doing kegels because
most of the time they do themwrong and it's not really.
I think it ends up beingcounterproductive in a lot of
ways.
But to have a little bit ofsense of like you know, just
even your mind's eye what itdoesn't even have to be accurate
(38:15):
, like you know, or if you'regonna, you know, imagine what
your crossbow and your pelvislooks like.
You know that, you know.
Or even to take it like in umuh, I.
So like in vedic astrology thehindu deity ganash goes with
your brainstem and cerebellumbecause it looks your cerebellum
is like the ears of Ganesh andyour brainstem is like the trunk
(38:37):
.
So it's like looks like anelephant and your pelvis mirrors
some of that, like where you're, you know your pelvic bones are
very much like elephant earsand if you think of your sacrum
coming in, being kind of likethe face, you know nose of a,
like your coccyx is the trunk,yeah, the elephant in a
different way, that like what'shappening with your elephant?
(38:58):
Just use, like you know, likelook, get a picture of anatomy
and just decide what it means toyou.
Maybe it looks like a butterflywhat's happening with your
butterfly and what does it need?
And really just using thoseimaginal exercises are
incredibly powerful atrepatterning pain and voice and
even finding the solutions.
(39:19):
I worked with somebody recentlyand she actually came to me
because she was having recurringurinary tract infections
infections and she had nearlydied of a pulmonary embolism
about a year ago.
And she's a singer notprofessionally, but sings in
(39:41):
church, and that's always been abig part of her life and her
throat was really where herrestriction was.
And there's research aroundthis that if you can't move your
voice through a full range or,let me say this the other way,
people that have pelvic floorincontinence issues especially,
you know, like leaky bladdertype issues often cannot move
(40:03):
their voice through a full range.
They keep their voice in a verynarrow range and what happens
is that your vocal cords canliterally act like a lid on the
rest of your system, puttingextra downward pressure.
So sometimes, you know often ina practice these are, but not
always you know these are eithermoms of young kids or
(40:24):
grandmothers and having themlike read Little Red Riding Hood
and doing all the voices.
So they're doing Little RedRiding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
and you're getting all the.
You know, the full vocal rangeis part of the homework, but
with this woman we I had hercome up with her own, you know,
(40:44):
as we worked through the imageryand the energy and the all of
it, she, you know, I said whatsong is going to heal it?
And she knew exactly what songand started singing it and like,
and it was just this reallybeautiful, magical moment that
you know, had some reallybeautiful lasting you know, like
(41:05):
really helped her get over thehump of, you know, or like get
out of the cycle of recurringproblems.
And so our you know, and to methis is kind of the best use of
Eastern and Western medicinetogether, because you're
harnessing the, really the superhighway of the brain.
(41:26):
Like our logic circuits are somuch slower, like our logic and
verbal circuits work atsomething like 40 bits per
second in our brain and ourimagination, imagery, you know,
kind of circuits work at like 11million bits per second, and so
(41:48):
when we can get on thesesuperhighway pathways in very
you know, I would sayprescriptive ways, you know, you
can really like magical,magical things can happen, and
it's really pulling the best ofboth worlds together to me, you
know.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah, yeah, this is fascinating to me.
You know, yeah, yeah, this is.
This is fascinating to me and Ilove, I love these perspectives
of being able to pull becauseeven even just I would imagine
people listening, because it's afairly new concept to me.
But even just hearing what yourpelvic floor has to do with
(42:32):
your vocal cords or somehowthey're connected where,
anatomically, they're almost attwo opposite ends of our body,
so how could those possibly beconnected?
Or even you know you talkingabout our hip flexor muscle, the
front of your hip flexor, beingconnected to your diaphragm,
which is within your rib cage.
I mean, that's wild for um, I,I didn't even know that until I
(42:55):
went through this back injuryand I, my chiropractor, would do
hip flexor work and he would goso far like right up, basically
, like right up to, uh, my umrib cage, like the middle part
of my rib cage, and it wouldn'thurt, like everything that he
was doing, and I was like Ididn't even know your hip flexor
(43:15):
went that high.
Like so many things that wejust don't, we're not taught in
school, we don't haveconversations about, we don't
really have these conversationsof connecting astrology to our
anatomy.
I mean like this.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
We even learn anatomy in very siloed ways and like
and like it's all mushedtogether and seal, vacuum,
sealed inside of us together,like it does not work separately
, even though you know and wemay like, no matter what you're
doing, you're always I mean, Ithink of it like I'm always
treating the whole system, nomatter what I'm doing.
(43:50):
I think of it like I'm alwaystreating the whole system, no
matter what I'm doing, because Iknow when somebody,
biomechanically, if their bigtoe isn't moving right I have a
biomechanical test for that,especially in the absence of big
toe pathology they haven't cometo me because an elephant
stepped on their foot or youknow something like that that
(44:13):
you know, that I know that theirvagus nerve is compressed at
the base of their skull.
And if I decompress the vagusnerve at the base of the skull,
then the toe starts movingproperly.
Wild.
And it is wild and you know, Ireally learned a lot.
I a lot of this.
Like one, I just had amazingmentors.
But when you get people thathave you know, for I ended up
(44:37):
just very early in my careerworking with chronic pain
patients that had not respondedto other interventions and they
didn't need me to do the samething that six other people had
done with them, right, and soyou know that's where I really
put together that you know kneepain needed thoracolumbar
(45:03):
junction, stability, and thatyou know that, like these
different pieces, or I needed toat least look at where the
nerve root was for the part ofthe body that I was treating and
just to think, you know, tokeep thinking further up the
chain and what's thecoordination and like what's the
vascular component to this andwhat's the neural component to
this, and you know what ispulling on, what I mean.
(45:27):
I you know, even before I gotinto this whole astrology piece
of it with my shoulder patients,I would always make sure they
had enough ankle flexion becausethey would get more shoulder
motion if I corrected theirankle flexion limitations and
that it was just part of havinga full, fully working system.
That these things you know andthat's something I learned in PT
(45:49):
school really really to and sojust being able to, to think
systemically.
But and it's been reallydisappointing to me over the you
know, as I you know especiallynow, like that I'm 30 years out
of PT school that what I learnedback then isn't standard, still
(46:11):
isn't standard practice orstill isn't standard education.
You know, I had just a.
I'm so grateful every singleday and when I go to my
professional conference and seemy professors from back then I
tell them I think about themevery single day.
I'm so grateful because I justhad these amazing like I really
(46:31):
got what they were teaching me.
You know that my orthopedicpatients had neurological
coordination issues, which iswhy they got injured in the
first place.
And that my neurologicalpatients had orthopedic issues
and that they needed to havetheir the right amount of ankle
and hip motion to be able tostand up, you know, after their
(46:53):
strokes, and not evoke all sortsof muscle tone that was going
to get in their way, you know,to have the most amount of
smooth movement possible forthemselves.
And so I've been really, reallyfortunate to be able to, you
know, just to have been, havestarted in a very integrated
place with that.
But we but I, but yeah,medically, you know, I mean,
(47:16):
even when you go to theorthopedist you see a different
specialist for your ankle thatyou do for your knee, like
they're not connected to eachother.
Right, you have to go to allthese different doctors all the
different doctors and part ofthat is really because of the
surgical techniques that they'respecializing in.
But it's really like we need aparadigm shift because modern
medicine like, if we look at thestatistics, like we're
(47:42):
especially the chronic pain,addiction, mental health,
loneliness statistics we are notgetting better.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
You know, and I think our deepest grief, you know,
when I think about Gemini andthe story of the Gemini twins
that are that it's really astory of grief.
And in Chinese medicine thelungs hold grief.
And in the story of the Geminitwins one is mortal and one is
immortal and when the mortal onedies, the immortal one asks
Zeus either to put them in thestars to be together or to give
(48:15):
half of his immortality to hisbrother so that they can be
together.
And I think our deepest griefis for our mortal relationship
with our immortal self.
And I think that astrology is areally good portal to knowing
your soul and all the differentsystems.
I mean I've done traditionalWestern astrology and Vedic
(48:36):
astrology and human design andand she and keys and like, and
they all give me something likeanother piece of the puzzle,
like they don't compete with it,and they really have helped me
be fully expressed have helpedme be fully expressed.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
That's really beautiful.
Thank you, I'm trying to soakit all in.
I mean, that's yeah.
That was way more eloquent thanhow I explain why I got into
human design, but that's what itis it's.
All of these tools are ways tounderstand ourselves at a deeper
level and accept ourselves at adeeper level, and I think when
we're able to process that, wedo witness ourselves
(49:25):
authentically and we're able toshow up authentically, and that
is the greatest gift that we can.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I think we're always uncoveringthat nothing was ever wrong
with us to start Like nothing iswrong with you.
And we spend a lot of timethinking that something is you
know and we certainly havechallenges.
Like I mean we all go throughphases.
That something is you know andwe certainly have challenges.
(49:52):
Like I mean we all go throughphases, cycles of illness and
cycles of loss and cycles ofabundance and cycles of
hardships, and certainly, likesome astrological signatures are
hard, like I get it, like I'veyou know, we all have some of
them.
But I also think that we it'seasier to be to live in the
shadow expression or in thelower octaves of it.
Yeah, then the world doesn'tinvite us into those higher
(50:16):
octaves of it as much.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Which really just loops this entire conversation
to the beginning, when we weretalking about coming from a
trauma perspective or a time anda pleasure perspective of how
can I create more pleasure, howcan I create more enjoyment in
my life and and create that timefor that.
(50:40):
I mean, that's just like aperfect yeah, perfect loop yeah,
I mean your body is a clock.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
We live inside the clock.
You're moving through time andtime is moving through you.
And when we get the illness Ithink sometimes time gets stuck
in us.
You know, my, my client Istarted with told the story
about with suicide ideation,like he was living in rigor
mortis.
Quite I can, like I canobjectively make that case from
his range of motion measurementsthat, and so his body was
(51:08):
telling his brain it was dead.
So he was just trying to matchthat on the outside.
But when you can and there's anamazing research about how our
nervous systems connect to thesolar system, even through our
vagus nerves, you know.
So like this is a legitimatething.
The extent to which the solarand space weather is disruptive
(51:29):
depends on the strength of ourinterpersonal connections.
So the lonelier we are, themore disruptive it is.
And we know we have aloneliness epidemic.
And even in the ratios of solarweather to geomagnetic activity
, to solar ray activity, um arepredictive of specific causes of
(51:55):
death.
Like, uh, when they lookretrospectively over causes of
death, the there are specificpatterns that go with when
people died of heart attacksversus strokes, versus accidents
, versus car accidents, versuscancer versus suicide.
Interesting.
So the great mother brought youin and the great mother takes
you out, amen.
(52:16):
But I think that if you can, ifyou can if the soul, if you can
move the solar system throughyour nervous system, it will not
short circuit into a heartattack or stroke or not as early
as it would otherwise.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Interesting.
Oh my gosh, I feel like we haveso much we could talk, I know.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I could talk to you all day, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
I have one more question, but before then where
can people find you?
What are you doing now?
Are you working mostlyone-on-one?
Do you have a group container?
Where can people find?
Speaker 2 (52:45):
you and learn more.
I am launching a group.
I have lots of options.
They're all at my website,which is my name,
melaniewellercom.
I am getting ready, in April2025, to launch a I'm calling it
heretical healing to teach allof this so that I pass it on.
(53:06):
I know part of my astrologysays that I hoard occult
information, and so I am workingto not hoard.
I am unhoarding all of myinformation that I've been
collecting over the years and Ideal a lot.
I do a little bit of one-on-onework.
I also host at the beginning ofeach month a free event called
(53:33):
Rewiring Religion, because Ideal with a lot of religious
trauma which also connects toauthoritarian and institutional
trauma, like it's.
They're different.
It's a different kind of adifferent animal at the level,
like really in the brain science, than I'll say quote unquote
ordinary trauma.
But you know it has uniqueneural signatures that some
(53:55):
other forms of trauma do nothave, okay, and so we talk about
that and how to heal it, andthat's completely free and I'm
doing.
I have two retreats this yearup in one set up in Nashville
that it's very Mary Magdalenefocused and I love how all these
(54:18):
spiritual texts show up in ournervous system.
So you know it helped to tell usour stories, and it's very much
about being witnessed, becauseMary Magdalene was the witness
to Jesus' resurrection and beingwitnessed is a huge part of
healing the witness to Jesus'resurrection and being witnessed
is a huge part of healing.
And also taking people to thesouth of France in September, so
(54:39):
all of that is happening.
So, yeah, and it's all on mywebsite, so I won't detail it
all here.
But if you want to learn how todo this kind of stuff, and
especially if you're aprofessional that works with
other people, you know coach orhealthcare professional, this is
but I think we also need toknow like we tend to know more
(55:01):
about our cars than we do aboutour bodies.
I think we all get like wecould all know how to do this at
some level.
You know, at our own capacityto heal ourselves and you know
and to really be able to healeach other.
My husband would tell you thathe's the reason that I'm, the
reason he's still walkingupright.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
What, what a world we would live in if we all knew.
Yeah, yeah, you know right.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
You own this body.
We all have a body.
You get to know you have anervous system.
You get to know how to use it.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Wow, wow.
So last question if you were,if you were standing on a stage
right now and you just couldtalk to the entire world, send
one message.
What would that message be?
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Oh, I would share my favorite Andean proverb and I
sometimes say this when I havepeople do that helical breathing
exercise that we did earlierbut I would let people know that
your future is behind you,propelling you forward.
Your future has your back andthat your past is in front of
(56:05):
you, waiting for you to makepeace with it and clear your way
.
And I think that's the trueststatement to how time works
relative to our bodies that yourfuture is behind you,
propelling you forward, and yourpast is in front of you,
waiting for you to make peacewith it and clear your way.
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
I love that I didn't even give her that question
ahead of time and she was soprepared for it.
I love that.
That's actually funny, becauseI've been having a lot of those
thoughts lately that reallyalign with that proverb.
So thank you, thank you forcoming on.
This was a fascinatingconversation.
(56:46):
This is really really, reallycool, like very adjacent to what
I do, obviously, but just in acompletely different light and
with so much different expertiseand knowledge and science.
So this was very, very funchatting with you.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Oh, thank you, Hannah .
It's my.
My karmic backstory in myastrology chart is lost voice,
so I'm very grateful to havethis, your platform, to be able
to share my voice and use it.
That helps heal me and, yeah,like anybody can do this energy
medicine.
There's just so much potentialand so many fun ways to heal and
(57:28):
I'm excited to.
I'm very grateful for youallowing me to babble on about
it here, because I love it.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well.
So, honestly, listen, I saythis every time, but it's
because my guests are soincredible.
But I am going to learnsomething new having this
conversation with Melanie Wellerand that's very exciting to me.
When we had a chat, you wereone of my most favorite podcast
(00:27):
connection calls that I've hadin the past month or so.
I'm just thrilled to have thisconversation with you, melanie.
So we're going to be talkingabout I mean very basic.
We'll just say we're going totalk about astrology.
But it's definitely way layeredthan that and way cooler than
just your basic astrology.
So we'll dive into all of that.
First of all, I would like toallow you to introduce yourself.
(00:51):
That's one of my favoritethings to do on this podcast is
see how my guests would like tobe introduced and how they would
introduce themselves.
So there's nothing specificthat you have to say.
But who is Melanie?
And thank you so much forcoming on.
I'm really excited for thisconversation.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thank you, hannah.
I so appreciate this invitationand a chance to speak about
this.
This, what we're going to talkabout today, is really, for all
of my clinical and scientificbackground.
This is the piece of my workthat really lights me up, and
mike came out of athletictraining and physical therapy
(01:28):
and, uh, have been doing vegasnerve work from long before.
It was cool like it is on socialmedia now and I, over the years
, I collected credentials andcertifications, like some people
collect fine wines.
It was part of my wholevalidating myself, you know, and
getting over my own notenoughness and I, as part of
(01:54):
that I got to study with, I hadamazing mentors and kept you
know.
It was really driven to seekmore knowledge and more
knowledge.
And then one day my life fellapart or I had a health crisis,
marriage crisis and lawsuitcrisis all in very close
proximity and my knowledge wasnot enough to make sense of what
(02:15):
was happening in my life.
And that's when I turned toastrology and it helped me make
sense of all the nonsense thatwas happening in my life and I
had a big awareness at that timethat the universe was driving
me to do something different,because I had always been the
(02:40):
highly credentialed physicaltherapist that in secret, had
this really special set of softskills that people really came
for.
But you had to have the secretcode to come find me, we didn't
talk about it, we didn't talkabout that Right and the um.
And in the midst of that, uh, Ireally that crisis, I really
came upon the uh, thisrealization of how our anatomy
(03:06):
and even our molecules are madein the image of the Zodiac, like
, just quite literally, hardcoregeometry.
As above, so below.
And in the throes of all ofthat, to top it all off, I had a
patient walk into my officethat had a suicide plan for that
evening.
To top it all off.
(03:26):
I had a patient walk into myoffice that had a suicide plan
for that evening and he wasliving in a nightmare of a
hallucination that he couldn'tget out of and wasn't getting,
wasn't responding to otherthings that he had done, and I
knew I had to bring more thanjust my clinical self to the
table with him that day and Ishowed up with all of my
(03:48):
clinical knowledge, all of myesoteric knowledge and all of my
intuition and 90 minutes laterhe was 90 better and I walked
out with my fearless presencethat day and I say we really
saved each other and it's so fun.
I actually just saw him at aparade, a Mardi Gras parade in
(04:11):
the French Quarter the othernight, and so it's so fun to
give him a big hug and just seehow much he's thriving right now
and to.
But since then I've really beenpassionate about helping people
bring together their intuitionand their expertise and bringing
together, uniting ancient andmodern science, because we,
(04:33):
culturally, we tend to put themat odds with each other.
And I will tell you, becauseI've been living in both of
these worlds for 30 years, thatwhen you put them together you
can make miracles happen everysingle day.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love that, and that was oneof the things that I appreciated
hearing so much from you isthat I come from a really big
science background in humandesign.
If we're talking in terms ofhuman design, I have a one line,
which is the investigator, andwe're very data driven, and if
(05:10):
somebody says something, I'mlike, okay, but where was, like,
the research that you found?
You concluded that answer andI'm very interested in the
science and psychology andsociology.
And then we get into astrology,and I was also raised by a mom
that was.
That is very spiritual, and soI feel like I kind of was raised
(05:33):
in that like they don't have tobe two separate things.
However, in the world Eastern,western philosophy are very
different and always kept veryseparately, and it's so
interesting.
It's so interesting to evenhave the idea that our anatomy
mimics the zodiac sign, which Idefinitely do want to get into.
(05:56):
But I also shoot, I alreadyforgot my question.
Let's get into it.
I have something else that Iwanted to ask you for yeah, so's
like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Well, yeah, so I'll just maybe, maybe.
What we'll start with is justthe overarching To me, where the
science and the astrologyreally intersect is in time,
because even if you don'tbelieve in astrology, the zodiac
is a clock.
Because, even if you don'tbelieve in astrology, the zodiac
(06:28):
is a clock.
You know the sun and the moon.
You know, like we know, thatthe planets move through, like
(06:50):
orthopedic type injuries, thattime perception and processing
are at the root of them.
And when you can get the brainreally organized in time, a lot
of things fall into place.
And the things that you would dofor that are not like in my
(07:11):
world are not necessarily alwaysthat different than what you
would do for trauma-informedcare.
Okay, but I think it's.
But we will never selltrauma-informed care to the
whole world because noteverybody wants to deal with
their trauma, you know, or tothink and I think there's a lot
of limitations and lookingthrough the at life through the
lens, only through the lens oftrauma, you know, because I see
(07:34):
a lot of people that get reallycaught up in like, oh, is the
fact that when I slouch in mychair, that I go to the left.
Is that a trauma response?
And like, well, like does itreally matter?
Like I don't know, like there'slike I think you know I see a
lot of people that get reallycaught up in the minutia, and I
see it online and I see commentslike so what you're telling me
(07:55):
is that every crime of myexistence is a trauma response,
and I think that's not a joyfulway to move through life.
I don't think you have to move.
Not a joyful way to movethrough life.
I don't think you have to move.
I think that we are incrediblyresilient, pleasure-seeking
beings, and that's also, youknow, the trauma lens is a very
Western lens.
An Eastern lens would say thatwe are pleasure-seeking and they
(08:16):
can be kind of avoiding traumaand seeking pleasure, kind of
two sides of the same coin, butit certainly affects sides of
the same coin, sure, but it'scertainly affects.
You know, to walk through lifewondering like where the next
trauma is coming from versuswhere is the next pleasurable
thing coming from, are two verydifferent ways to walk through
(08:36):
your life.
Yeah, so I'm a big advocate forwhat I'm calling time-informed
care over trauma-informed care,and because we all might would
like to maybe have a differentrelationship with time, like
maybe more playtime, moredowntime, more me time, more
vacation time, more family time,you can walk through the houses
(08:58):
of the Zodiac chart and youknow for all the different types
of time that you might want,and so you can apply then
somatic exercises veryspecifically and therapeutically
to help you get the kind oftime that you want.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Hmm.
So so you're saying ultimately,instead of like, let's say,
back issues, because that's justvery relevant to everyone, but
also to me, so back issues,instead of maybe looking at it
for like, what is the traumathat I underwent, whether that's
(09:35):
emotional, physical, spiritual,how would we reframe that to a
time response?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Right.
So if you're going to look at,for example, sagittarius ruling
the hips, that you, you knowthat maybe there's a little bit
more truth time that you need inyour body or more fitness time.
I mean that really could justbe an exercise thing, and
exercise is great for low back.
You know that, like, I meanthat can just.
(10:06):
I mean that matches the sciencereally beautifully and that's
what you know, what Sagittariusembodies.
Now, if you're going to, youknow when I'm, if I think about
it with a spine, you know, ifyou're going to think about your
spine as Leo and your pelvis asSagittarius, that then there's
like okay, like what's your?
(10:27):
What's happening with your fireenergy?
Like, is everything on fire?
Is it too hot?
Do you need to be a little bitcooler?
Like, where's the balance inthat?
But really it's just like how,like, are they fighting each
other?
Are they sitting in rightrelationship?
You know, because it's notalways about the, you know it's
(10:54):
easy.
We like stories to go with ourthings and what are we caught up
in stories?
But very honestly, we just haveto take things out of, get our
bodies.
Our bodies are our biggestcollaborators.
But sometimes we, you know, welive in a very competitive
society and sometimes that, youknow, our spine starts competing
with our pelvis or, you know,these body parts are competing
for our attention and when youcan get them, you know, and pain
(11:17):
is very much to me like atoddler or a puppy that just
wants a little bit of attentionand then it'll go off and play
on its own.
And so I think that when youknow, and there's I mean there's
way I understood, you knowthere's way more scientific
explanations for it, but it canbe way easier than than you
might think.
And your, you know your pelvisis it's shaped very much like a
(11:41):
crossbow, like your spine, likeyour sacrum is sort of like an
arrow, so you can really thinkof it in Sagittarius terms, like
a bow and arrow.
You know the archer that goeswith it.
And so what is the energy ofthe like?
How is that crossbow sitting inyour pelvis, like are you, is
it lined up that way?
And even your thighs, the wayyour inner thigh muscles, um,
are on your femur, it's kind oflike a Robin Hood bow.
(12:04):
I don't know what you call thatkind of bow, but archery, bow
and arrow in that way, and youknow.
So there's like that energy ofthe arrow that can really get
distorted.
And I can go through all theosteopathic things to you know
in manual therapy, things toalign the pelvis and all that
(12:25):
kind of stuff.
But I have found that I getbetter, faster results when I
tap into what people'sSagittarius bows and arrows are
looking like and get thatorganized in their bodies and I
get the same range of motionincreases.
Like I can measure the outcomesobjectively, and so I really
love working with this energymedicine paradigm that I've
(12:47):
created with it and it's just,it's endlessly delightful to
leave people with so much joy,you know, and so much relief in
their lives when they thought itwas going to be really hard to
get better, and it's even.
(13:07):
I get it.
I get a great deal of pleasuretoo, which is probably a little
bit twisted.
But when people get reallyangry, like they get better,
like they sit up and they're andthey're looking for their pain,
like it should be, like itshould be somewhere in the room
and they can't figure out whereit is, yeah, and then they're
angry because it was so easy toget better, and I get it, you
(13:30):
know, like when you've reallylike, cause I don't see people
that where it's usually theirfirst rodeo rodeo trying to get
better.
I get people when they've failedmultiple other interventions
and you know, and they arerightfully angry.
When I touch them with verygentle force or give them a few
breathing, you know eyeexercises, or tell them to do
(13:54):
something, you know like movetheir, move your toes, like this
, and then they're like whathappened?
What did what just happen?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, why was?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
it that easy to get better?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I can imagine my mom also does energy work and
similar expectations andoutcomes of her working on me
and it's not a lot of touching,it's not a lot of moving, it's
not.
We do overcomplicate.
(14:23):
I think in a lot of in healing,in the stories that we tell
ourselves, in trauma work, Imean in everything.
I know that I do, I know that Iovercomplicate.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh, I think we all, yeah, no, I think it's very much
human nature to make itcomplicated and we, you know
it's.
I think there can be value inthat, or in creating, you know,
connecting, think there can bevalue in that or in creating,
you know, connecting, creating,understanding, sometimes a story
so that you can re-pattern that.
(14:53):
But over the years and years,like when I would even tell
people that, like theirvertebrae were shared in their
spine, or that their you know,maybe their knee joint was
sheared or something wasmisaligned, they're like, well,
what does that mean?
So it just means that we needto fix it, like that's all.
It just means that it needs togo back in line.
(15:14):
That's it.
Yeah, but I don't think wealways have to make it that
complicated.
I think where it can sometimesbe more valuable to make it a
little more complicated is withautoimmune disorders and complex
trauma because of your own oryou know that would be like
Aries and Taurus kind ofquestions, or what you know,
(15:52):
what does justice mean for you?
Like in in the way, and maybethis is Libra, is Libra sign, is
scales, and scales are justice,you know, just as they are even
naturally in Libra, in theseventh house in astrology, and
(16:18):
the populations with the highestlevels of social injustice have
the highest levels of kidneydisease, and your kidneys sit in
your low back just like a setof scales, and so we embody the
stress of social injustice atany level, at the level of the
kidneys and I think, really evenseparately from social justice,
understanding what justice inour personal lives means for us,
(16:41):
you know, maybe it means thatyou get to paint for two hours a
day, maybe it means that you uhget to have your favorite ice
cream once a week, or whatever.
That you know it could meananything but really kind of
identifying what that personalsense of justice is, to give you
the foundation, because peopleuh often compromise themselves
(17:03):
in that way without realizinghow much compromising they're
doing- yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So when you're, when you're talking about like, oh,
maybe this is you just said,compromising my values and
putting others first, that mightbe like an Aries Taurus thing.
To be clear, are you sayinglike that's where we should be
looking, if that's our sun sign?
To be clear, are you sayinglike that's where we should be
looking if that's our sun sign,if we're an aries or a torus sun
sign, or are we talking aboutthe anatomy?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
well, I think when the anatomy is distorted in that
part of the body, like ifyou're having neck pain,
headaches, dizziness, thingslike that, those are questions.
That's when I would really lookat those issues more than if
it's your sun sign.
Cool, because in astrology,aries rules the head and Taurus
rules the throat, and so, forexample, your vagus nerve can
(17:54):
get compressed, get pinched atthe base of your skull between
your Aries and your Taurus, andthis really works.
I have a whole workbook I wroteon this, that your vagus nerve
gets pinched between the signsas it moves through your body.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Which is fascinating to me, and I was trying to
explain it to my mom and failed.
So can you elaborate on that?
Let's back up, actually,because I know what you're
talking about and you know whatyou're talking about, but can we
?
You just gave us the first two.
Can we go through the Zodiacsigns?
Where it shows up in anatomyand then we can talk about the
(18:33):
vagus nerve.
Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And there's.
So I'm going to go throughwhere it shows up anatomically.
But I'll say that there areother angles in the cosmos that
show up in our bodies as well,like the angle there's 47
degrees between the pole starsthat the Earth orients towards
over thousands of years, andthere's normal C1, normal
(19:00):
rotation in your upper neck is47 degrees.
The normal average angle ofinclination of your anterior
cruciate ligament in your kneeis 47 degrees.
Your vagus nerve exits the baseof your skull at the same angle
as the axial tilt of the earthrelative to the center of the
(19:21):
spinal cord.
And so there's and I couldrattle but anyway.
So there's this whole system ofcritical angles too, or what I
call critical angles in the body.
That and but with the anatomy,the ventricles of the brain are
the same shape as the ram'shorns that represent Aries, and
in astrology Aries rules thehead.
Your throat anatomy is the sameas the Taurus bull, your higher
(19:46):
bone in your throat, like thehorns of the bull, your
collarbones and diaphragm, orlike Gemini rules lungs and arms
.
So you're like your twin, youknow the two, six, but your, uh,
your collarbones and yourdiaphragm are like the top and
the bottom of that gemini symbol, like the roman numeral yeah
(20:11):
the uh, cancer rules the breasts, and the symbol for glyph for
cancer looks very much like aset of breasts.
um, cancer also rules thestomach, so I think of your
breasts as like the full moon,and stomach is like the crescent
moon.
Yeah.
The Leo rules the heart and youraortic arch is the same shape
(20:33):
as the symbol for Leo, libra orVirgo.
Virgo rules the digestivesystem and your uh, particularly
your large intestines.
But the way you can really makethat virgo and symbol out of
(20:54):
the macro anatomy as well, as ifyou think about virgo being a
goddess, the omentum, thecovering of the intestines in
the abdomen, looks like agoddess's dress.
It's tiered like a lot of thoseold representations of a
goddess would be.
The Libra ruling the kidneys wetalked about.
(21:19):
Scorpio rules the reproductivesystem.
Ruling the kidneys we talkedabout.
Scorpio rules the reproductivesystem, and a woman's
reproductive system looks verymuch like a scorpion, where the
ovaries are the claws and thevagina is the tail of the
scorpion.
Scorpio is also thetraditionally the only sign that
has three archetypes with it,so it also has a snake, which is
(21:40):
like a male phallus and aphoenix.
And whether we're making loveor babies, or business or art,
whatever, we make something fromnothing that comes from our
reproductive area, from oursecond chakra.
That's where we create, fromwhatever it is.
Across many traditions,sagittarius rules the hips we
(22:02):
talked a little bit about thatearlier as well, with the bow
and arrow.
Capricorn rules.
The bones and long bones areorganized in little Saturnian
circles, quite literally at thecellular level yeah and the way
the vasculature runs through thebones looks very much like that
(22:22):
little H-like symbol thatrepresents Saturn, and Saturn is
a goat or goatfish and this isgoing to take a little bit of
imagination in podcast form.
But if you think about yourkneecap as the nose of the goat
and your patellar tendon, thetendon below it, as the beard of
(22:45):
the goat, and then your muscleson like as your muscles go up
your thigh, they're kind of likethe horns of the goat.
You can really kind of make agoat out of it if you're going
to include the calf in your feet, as you know to be like the,
you know the representation,representations of capricorn
(23:07):
that are like a, I guess,mergoat, you know, you know, for
lack of a better term yeah, um,aquarius rules the calves and
your calves are shaped like thewater vessel that you know, the
aquarian water better bearerholds, and the um zigzag sign
(23:32):
for aquarius is, uh, reallyaligns with the multi-penate
muscle fiber structure of yourcalf muscles.
Like that's how they're.
It's a zigzag, they're verymuch organized like feathers.
But you can.
If you look up an anatomicalrepresentation of multi-penate
muscle fibers, you can justfollow the zigzag in the same
(23:56):
way.
And then Pisces rolls the feetand your feet are your fish,
your flippers.
And then Pisces rolls the feetand your feet are your fish,
your flippers, your flippers.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Very cool.
Yeah Well, thank you.
I think that was really helpfulto just go through all of them
and kind of see where they allland in the body.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, also about the body, that you know cause as
just especially as breath workis really popular right now and
really valuable is that.
You know, astrologers I'vetalked to over the years say
that like, well, your whole bodyis earth.
You know cause, like earthisn't represented specifically
in the body and they'll say like, oh, it's just your whole body.
But I really think, think ofour diaphragms like our personal
earth, because if we're notbreathing, we're not earthbound.
Yeah, and our hearts sit,literally sit on top of our
diaphragm, like your heart iseven attached to your diaphragm
(24:52):
and it sits on it just like asun.
The sun sits on the horizon ata sunrise or a sunset.
And if and if your diaphragmfunction isn't right like if you
don't have, when diaphragms getdysfunctional, they tend to get
flat.
You know, they lose the domeshape and when you lose that
nice round horizon line it cancreate lots of problems.
(25:15):
So I also will, I'll throwearth in there and I think it is
really um, our relationshipwith earth is very much in our,
in our diaphragms.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, I like that.
I think that's a really coolanalogy too, because breathwork
can be very grounding for people, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Absolutely, and it's great on so many levels.
And and I'll you know, the otherthing that happens when
diaphragms are dysfunctional andI can go into this with other
parts of the body too but it canliterally pinch your vagus
nerve as it's going because ithas to cross through your
(25:53):
diaphragm and in all humans theright side of the diaphragm has
more muscle mass than the left,so theoretically the right side
will always win.
So that's why you see a lot ofpeople with low right shoulders
in their posture, for example,and so taking people out of that
right diaphragm dominance canbe really helpful in terms of, I
(26:19):
will say especially like rightshoulder, right hip pain, but
even hiatal hernia issues thatmight, you know, which will show
up more on this which is reallymore of a vagus nerve
compression issue, as it'sbecause it follows your
esophagus.
But to take the pull off ofwhere your esophagus and vagus
(26:39):
nerve are going through yourdiaphragm can make a really huge
difference for things like that.
But it can also get compressedthrough your vagus nerve, which
mediates a lot of your feel-goodsensations Think of like grace
under pressure and calm andsexual function and it's a huge
nerve.
It goes all the way from thebrainstem to the pelvis and calm
(27:02):
and sexual function.
And it's a huge nerve.
It goes all the way from thebrainstem to the pelvis but it
can also get compressed where,generally wherever you have
horizontal structures.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
So base of the skull, vocal cords, collarbone, like
thoracic inlet level, pulmonaryartery and vein where they they
go horizontal at the heart,diaphragm, renal artery, vein,
pelvic floor are the big ones.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And why does this happen at these horizontal
structures?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Well, we embody stress and trauma more on the
transverse plane, like on thehorizontal, than we do on other
planes.
And if you just think aboutwhat happens, like if you're
going to walk joyfully, or ifyou think of being a glamorous
runway model and going walkingdown the runway, you know you're
(27:58):
going to have some really niceswagger, some nice arm swing
when we get stressed andtraumatized, the first thing we
do is bring our arms in closeand stop rotating.
Yeah, so the transverse plane,that rotation, is the first
thing we give up and clinicallyfor at least in my profession,
it's often the last thing we'retold to give people back because
(28:21):
it's quote unquote the mostdangerous when it comes to
herniated discs and things likethat.
Or you have to really becautious, and not that any of
that is untrue, but I think thatI am much more intentional
about restoring rotation earlierthan I was trained originally
(28:44):
to be.
You know, because as you freeup, as you get the rotation, you
, you so everything else follows.
You know, even if they can't,you know, for people that, like,
a herniated disc is a goodexample.
Like you know, the people haveto stay in their pain-free range
of motion it doesn't mean thatthey can always use their full
range of motion as they'rerehabilitating, but but to be
(29:06):
able to have the option to moveinto it and to then teach their
bodies that, oh, it's notthreatening to do this, you know
, rather than waiting sayinglike, oh, no, no, you're not
allowed to rotate, and keep themout of fear of rotation,
because that's just not reallife.
People don't do that.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's hard when we're in pain to want
to move in ways that maybe canbe more painful or can cause
pain.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Absolutely yeah, and we have.
Our movement is so wired in atthe lower levels of our brain,
like it's so brainstem andcerebellar mediated.
We're not always thinking aboutit and to have to.
If you have a baby, for example, or a toddler, it can be really
hard to be hypervigilant aboutyour movement and I don't know
(30:04):
that we really serve people thatwell by telling them they have
to be hypervigilant about theirmovement all the time you know.
If you can, especially when you, if you can give them the
freedom where they don't have todo that so much.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
So yeah, let's talk about strengthening these
horizontal you, you.
The diaphragm is interesting tome because I have a background
in speech pathology and breathwork, so I deal a lot with the
diaphragm.
I've never heard that yourdiaphragm on the right side is a
little bit stronger, which alsokind of makes sense to me.
I'm connecting it to the rightside of our body is our
(30:39):
masculine side, so maybe justover flexing that, that side is
what I'm connecting to.
But you said something aboutlike strengthening, stretching,
helping that.
How do we do those things onthe horizontal planes?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah.
So my favorite way to kind ofstart, to start to normalize
that is to do what I callhelical breathing, and so if
people want to participate, youknow please do.
I'll guide everybody throughthis.
But please do not multitaskwhile you're doing this.
(31:18):
Don't do it while you'redriving.
Don't do it while you'redriving.
Don't do it while you'rechopping vegetables in your
kitchen.
I have had some terriblekitchen accidents when my
nervous system was dysregulated.
So I'm very like, just you knowlike, be very.
I'm just asking everybody to befocused while you do this.
But if you're sitting, like siton the edge of the chair, so
(31:41):
you're up in a at least a decentposture, cross your left ankle
in front of your right andyou're going to take your right
hand and reach it across yourbody, if you can get it all the
way on the outside of your leftthigh or as far across your body
as you can, and if you have anylimitations that keep you from
(32:01):
doing this, just imagine doingit in your head.
Your brain really doesn't seeimagining doing it and actually
doing it as any different.
And you're going to take yourleft hand and put it behind your
head.
So you've got left ankle infront of right, right hand,
across right arm, across body,left hand behind head and then
inhale into the backside of yourheart and I know that's a weird
thing.
If you have somebody at home itcan be nice to have them put
(32:23):
their hand between your shoulderblades, just so you have a
little cue.
But try to expand your rib cageto the wall or whatever's
behind you and then hold it fora couple seconds.
I usually have people maybeinhale for three, hold for six
and then exhale for nine,something like that, and you can
(32:46):
do that several times.
But this is a nice way.
This decompresses your vagusnerve at multiple levels, but
especially at the diaphragm,because it takes you.
You're rotating, your arm isacross to the left, so you're
getting out of that right sideof diaphragm dominance and, just
(33:08):
like, usually, three to five ofthese is enough to start to
ease it up.
And if you're you know I didn'ttake everybody through this
part but before and after do alittle body check like check
your head rotation or your trunkrotation or you know, do a
squat and just see how it feelsbefore and after, because you
(33:30):
can check your balance.
You could I get really goodvisual improvements from all of
these, I can read without myglasses more clearly when I do
wow things like this yeah, butit, um, but that's a nice uh.
I always say, I think anybodythis is a great exercise for,
(33:50):
like when you helped a friendmove furniture and you think, oh
, I'm gonna pay for thattomorrow.
It helps you keep from paying,having to pay for it nice, that
is very cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So what about?
I mean, we don't have to gothrough all of them, but can we
look at the pelvic floor is thelast place.
You said that the vagus nerveextends to.
So, again, I'm kind of thinkingback pain.
Honestly, it's a big part of mysituation right now, but I feel
(34:24):
like we have like a back painpandemic, like everyone I feel
like has lower back issues, andthe more that I dive into it,
the more I'm like we shouldn'thave this, we shouldn't, and I
think a big part of it ismovement, and I agree, I think
that we spend a lot of timesitting at desks and driving and
we're just not moving enough asas humans, as bodies.
(34:47):
Um, but I assume that you havesomething to add.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I agree, yes.
Well, I will say the exercisewe just did can be really
powerful, even for low backissues, because our pec majors
and our chest, our serratusmuscles that are on the front
side of our shoulder blades, ourlat muscles that make up the
back wall of our armpits and godown into our low back, our hip
(35:12):
hikers, our quadratus lumborumand hip flexors, psoas muscles,
all attached to the diaphragm itmakes like a star in the center
of your body and if you havetight hip flexors that are
causing back pain, I guaranteethat your diaphragm is not in
the right position.
I have not had to treat a tighthip flexor in decades, probably
(35:34):
because when you get thediaphragm in the right place,
the hip flexor just goes.
Thank you, and relaxes.
So there's.
So the exercise we just did canbe really really powerful for
back pain as well.
But one of the big things yourvagus nerve is a part of
(35:59):
sensory-wise is yourinteroceptive system and it's
like that map of what'shappening or that feeling of
what's happening inside of yourbody and we're not very aware of
that collectively, like wedon't have really good maps in
our brains or like you know, andwhen part of your body gets
(36:19):
fuzzy in your brain, your brainis going to perceive that as a
threat and lock it down somehow.
So one of my favorite exercises.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
That's also probably the easiest of them to explain
in this format.
You do video.
Maybe if you watch the videoyou can see us like moving our
hands.
Maybe that'll be easier.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
But your pelvic floor is basically like a trampoline,
if you can imagine it like that, the way that it sits in the
bones.
And so if you imagine thatthere's a little version of
yourself inside of you and thatwhen you inhale you're going to
land on that trampoline and whenyou exhale you're going to jump
up, you're going to jump up andjust to kind of get the hang of
(37:15):
that to start, and then todivide your pelvic floor into
quadrants and try and jump onthe right front quadrant, like
can you land on just over thereand can you land on the right
rear quadrant and the left rearquadrant and the left front
quadrant.
And I will tell you, when Ifirst did this for myself, I had
no right side of my pelvicfloor.
It just didn't exist.
So don't be freaked out if youcan't find that, but just keep
(37:37):
practicing, just keep trying tomove.
You know, see if you can buildthat.
Go like oh, where is my pelvicfloor?
Like it's a little discoverymission, you know and that.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
But you know, like it's a little discovery mission,
you know and that, but you knowand you, you will eventually
find it.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
I'm not a huge fan of people doing kegels because
most of the time they do themwrong and it's not really.
I think it ends up beingcounterproductive in a lot of
ways.
But to have a little bit ofsense of like you know, just
even your mind's eye what itdoesn't even have to be accurate
(38:15):
, like you know, or if you'regonna, you know, imagine what
your crossbow and your pelvislooks like.
You know that, you know.
Or even to take it like in umuh, I.
So like in vedic astrology thehindu deity ganash goes with
your brainstem and cerebellumbecause it looks your cerebellum
is like the ears of Ganesh andyour brainstem is like the trunk
(38:37):
.
So it's like looks like anelephant and your pelvis mirrors
some of that, like where you're, you know your pelvic bones are
very much like elephant earsand if you think of your sacrum
coming in, being kind of likethe face, you know nose of a,
like your coccyx is the trunk,yeah, the elephant in a
different way, that like what'shappening with your elephant?
(38:58):
Just use, like you know, likelook, get a picture of anatomy
and just decide what it means toyou.
Maybe it looks like a butterflywhat's happening with your
butterfly and what does it need?
And really just using thoseimaginal exercises are
incredibly powerful atrepatterning pain and voice and
even finding the solutions.
(39:19):
I worked with somebody recentlyand she actually came to me
because she was having recurringurinary tract infections
infections and she had nearlydied of a pulmonary embolism
about a year ago.
And she's a singer notprofessionally, but sings in
(39:41):
church, and that's always been abig part of her life and her
throat was really where herrestriction was.
And there's research aroundthis that if you can't move your
voice through a full range or,let me say this the other way,
people that have pelvic floorincontinence issues especially,
you know, like leaky bladdertype issues often cannot move
(40:03):
their voice through a full range.
They keep their voice in a verynarrow range and what happens
is that your vocal cords canliterally act like a lid on the
rest of your system, puttingextra downward pressure.
So sometimes, you know often ina practice these are, but not
always you know these are eithermoms of young kids or
(40:24):
grandmothers and having themlike read Little Red Riding Hood
and doing all the voices.
So they're doing Little RedRiding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
and you're getting all the.
You know, the full vocal rangeis part of the homework, but
with this woman we I had hercome up with her own, you know,
(40:44):
as we worked through the imageryand the energy and the all of
it, she, you know, I said whatsong is going to heal it?
And she knew exactly what songand started singing it and like,
and it was just this reallybeautiful, magical moment that
you know, had some reallybeautiful lasting you know, like
(41:05):
really helped her get over thehump of, you know, or like get
out of the cycle of recurringproblems.
And so our you know, and to methis is kind of the best use of
Eastern and Western medicinetogether, because you're
harnessing the, really the superhighway of the brain.
(41:26):
Like our logic circuits are somuch slower, like our logic and
verbal circuits work atsomething like 40 bits per
second in our brain and ourimagination, imagery, you know,
kind of circuits work at like 11million bits per second, and so
(41:48):
when we can get on thesesuperhighway pathways in very
you know, I would sayprescriptive ways, you know, you
can really like magical,magical things can happen, and
it's really pulling the best ofboth worlds together to me, you
know.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah, yeah, this is fascinating to me.
You know, yeah, yeah, this is.
This is fascinating to me and Ilove, I love these perspectives
of being able to pull becauseeven even just I would imagine
people listening, because it's afairly new concept to me.
But even just hearing what yourpelvic floor has to do with
(42:32):
your vocal cords or somehowthey're connected where,
anatomically, they're almost attwo opposite ends of our body,
so how could those possibly beconnected?
Or even you know you talkingabout our hip flexor muscle, the
front of your hip flexor, beingconnected to your diaphragm,
which is within your rib cage.
I mean, that's wild for um, I,I didn't even know that until I
(42:55):
went through this back injuryand I, my chiropractor, would do
hip flexor work and he would goso far like right up, basically
, like right up to, uh, my umrib cage, like the middle part
of my rib cage, and it wouldn'thurt, like everything that he
was doing, and I was like Ididn't even know your hip flexor
(43:15):
went that high.
Like so many things that wejust don't, we're not taught in
school, we don't haveconversations about, we don't
really have these conversationsof connecting astrology to our
anatomy.
I mean like this.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
We even learn anatomy in very siloed ways and like
and like it's all mushedtogether and seal, vacuum,
sealed inside of us together,like it does not work separately
, even though you know and wemay like, no matter what you're
doing, you're always I mean, Ithink of it like I'm always
treating the whole system, nomatter what I'm doing.
(43:50):
I think of it like I'm alwaystreating the whole system, no
matter what I'm doing, because Iknow when somebody,
biomechanically, if their bigtoe isn't moving right I have a
biomechanical test for that,especially in the absence of big
toe pathology they haven't cometo me because an elephant
stepped on their foot or youknow something like that that
(44:13):
you know, that I know that theirvagus nerve is compressed at
the base of their skull.
And if I decompress the vagusnerve at the base of the skull,
then the toe starts movingproperly.
Wild.
And it is wild and you know, Ireally learned a lot.
I a lot of this.
Like one, I just had amazingmentors.
But when you get people thathave you know, for I ended up
(44:37):
just very early in my careerworking with chronic pain
patients that had not respondedto other interventions and they
didn't need me to do the samething that six other people had
done with them, right, and soyou know that's where I really
put together that you know kneepain needed thoracolumbar
(45:03):
junction, stability, and thatyou know that, like these
different pieces, or I needed toat least look at where the
nerve root was for the part ofthe body that I was treating and
just to think, you know, tokeep thinking further up the
chain and what's thecoordination and like what's the
vascular component to this andwhat's the neural component to
this, and you know what ispulling on, what I mean.
(45:27):
I you know, even before I gotinto this whole astrology piece
of it with my shoulder patients,I would always make sure they
had enough ankle flexion becausethey would get more shoulder
motion if I corrected theirankle flexion limitations and
that it was just part of havinga full, fully working system.
That these things you know andthat's something I learned in PT
(45:49):
school really really to and sojust being able to, to think
systemically.
But and it's been reallydisappointing to me over the you
know, as I you know especiallynow, like that I'm 30 years out
of PT school that what I learnedback then isn't standard, still
(46:11):
isn't standard practice orstill isn't standard education.
You know, I had just a.
I'm so grateful every singleday and when I go to my
professional conference and seemy professors from back then I
tell them I think about themevery single day.
I'm so grateful because I justhad these amazing like I really
(46:31):
got what they were teaching me.
You know that my orthopedicpatients had neurological
coordination issues, which iswhy they got injured in the
first place.
And that my neurologicalpatients had orthopedic issues
and that they needed to havetheir the right amount of ankle
and hip motion to be able tostand up, you know, after their
(46:53):
strokes, and not evoke all sortsof muscle tone that was going
to get in their way, you know,to have the most amount of
smooth movement possible forthemselves.
And so I've been really, reallyfortunate to be able to, you
know, just to have been, havestarted in a very integrated
place with that.
But we but I, but yeah,medically, you know, I mean,
(47:16):
even when you go to theorthopedist you see a different
specialist for your ankle thatyou do for your knee, like
they're not connected to eachother.
Right, you have to go to allthese different doctors all the
different doctors and part ofthat is really because of the
surgical techniques that they'respecializing in.
But it's really like we need aparadigm shift because modern
medicine like, if we look at thestatistics, like we're
(47:42):
especially the chronic pain,addiction, mental health,
loneliness statistics we are notgetting better.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
You know, and I think our deepest grief, you know,
when I think about Gemini andthe story of the Gemini twins
that are that it's really astory of grief.
And in Chinese medicine thelungs hold grief.
And in the story of the Geminitwins one is mortal and one is
immortal and when the mortal onedies, the immortal one asks
Zeus either to put them in thestars to be together or to give
(48:15):
half of his immortality to hisbrother so that they can be
together.
And I think our deepest griefis for our mortal relationship
with our immortal self.
And I think that astrology is areally good portal to knowing
your soul and all the differentsystems.
I mean I've done traditionalWestern astrology and Vedic
(48:36):
astrology and human design andand she and keys and like, and
they all give me something likeanother piece of the puzzle,
like they don't compete with it,and they really have helped me
be fully expressed have helpedme be fully expressed.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
That's really beautiful.
Thank you, I'm trying to soakit all in.
I mean, that's yeah.
That was way more eloquent thanhow I explain why I got into
human design, but that's what itis it's.
All of these tools are ways tounderstand ourselves at a deeper
level and accept ourselves at adeeper level, and I think when
we're able to process that, wedo witness ourselves
(49:25):
authentically and we're able toshow up authentically, and that
is the greatest gift that we can.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I think we're always uncoveringthat nothing was ever wrong
with us to start Like nothing iswrong with you.
And we spend a lot of timethinking that something is you
know and we certainly havechallenges.
Like I mean we all go throughphases.
That something is you know andwe certainly have challenges.
(49:52):
Like I mean we all go throughphases, cycles of illness and
cycles of loss and cycles ofabundance and cycles of
hardships, and certainly, likesome astrological signatures are
hard, like I get it, like I'veyou know, we all have some of
them.
But I also think that we it'seasier to be to live in the
shadow expression or in thelower octaves of it.
Yeah, then the world doesn'tinvite us into those higher
(50:16):
octaves of it as much.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Which really just loops this entire conversation
to the beginning, when we weretalking about coming from a
trauma perspective or a time anda pleasure perspective of how
can I create more pleasure, howcan I create more enjoyment in
my life and and create that timefor that.
(50:40):
I mean, that's just like aperfect yeah, perfect loop yeah,
I mean your body is a clock.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
We live inside the clock.
You're moving through time andtime is moving through you.
And when we get the illness Ithink sometimes time gets stuck
in us.
You know, my, my client Istarted with told the story
about with suicide ideation,like he was living in rigor
mortis.
Quite I can, like I canobjectively make that case from
his range of motion measurementsthat, and so his body was
(51:08):
telling his brain it was dead.
So he was just trying to matchthat on the outside.
But when you can and there's anamazing research about how our
nervous systems connect to thesolar system, even through our
vagus nerves, you know.
So like this is a legitimatething.
The extent to which the solarand space weather is disruptive
(51:29):
depends on the strength of ourinterpersonal connections.
So the lonelier we are, themore disruptive it is.
And we know we have aloneliness epidemic.
And even in the ratios of solarweather to geomagnetic activity
, to solar ray activity, um arepredictive of specific causes of
(51:55):
death.
Like, uh, when they lookretrospectively over causes of
death, the there are specificpatterns that go with when
people died of heart attacksversus strokes, versus accidents
, versus car accidents, versuscancer versus suicide.
Interesting.
So the great mother brought youin and the great mother takes
you out, amen.
(52:16):
But I think that if you can, ifyou can if the soul, if you can
move the solar system throughyour nervous system, it will not
short circuit into a heartattack or stroke or not as early
as it would otherwise.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Interesting.
Oh my gosh, I feel like we haveso much we could talk, I know.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I could talk to you all day, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
I have one more question, but before then where
can people find you?
What are you doing now?
Are you working mostlyone-on-one?
Do you have a group container?
Where can people find?
Speaker 2 (52:45):
you and learn more.
I am launching a group.
I have lots of options.
They're all at my website,which is my name,
melaniewellercom.
I am getting ready, in April2025, to launch a I'm calling it
heretical healing to teach allof this so that I pass it on.
(53:06):
I know part of my astrologysays that I hoard occult
information, and so I am workingto not hoard.
I am unhoarding all of myinformation that I've been
collecting over the years and Ideal a lot.
I do a little bit of one-on-onework.
I also host at the beginning ofeach month a free event called
(53:33):
Rewiring Religion, because Ideal with a lot of religious
trauma which also connects toauthoritarian and institutional
trauma, like it's.
They're different.
It's a different kind of adifferent animal at the level,
like really in the brain science, than I'll say quote unquote
ordinary trauma.
But you know it has uniqueneural signatures that some
(53:55):
other forms of trauma do nothave, okay, and so we talk about
that and how to heal it, andthat's completely free and I'm
doing.
I have two retreats this yearup in one set up in Nashville
that it's very Mary Magdalenefocused and I love how all these
(54:18):
spiritual texts show up in ournervous system.
So you know it helped to tell usour stories, and it's very much
about being witnessed, becauseMary Magdalene was the witness
to Jesus' resurrection and beingwitnessed is a huge part of
healing the witness to Jesus'resurrection and being witnessed
is a huge part of healing.
And also taking people to thesouth of France in September, so
(54:39):
all of that is happening.
So, yeah, and it's all on mywebsite, so I won't detail it
all here.
But if you want to learn how todo this kind of stuff, and
especially if you're aprofessional that works with
other people, you know coach orhealthcare professional, this is
but I think we also need toknow like we tend to know more
(55:01):
about our cars than we do aboutour bodies.
I think we all get like wecould all know how to do this at
some level.
You know, at our own capacityto heal ourselves and you know
and to really be able to healeach other.
My husband would tell you thathe's the reason that I'm, the
reason he's still walkingupright.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
What, what a world we would live in if we all knew.
Yeah, yeah, you know right.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
You own this body.
We all have a body.
You get to know you have anervous system.
You get to know how to use it.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Wow, wow.
So last question if you were,if you were standing on a stage
right now and you just couldtalk to the entire world, send
one message.
What would that message be?
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Oh, I would share my favorite Andean proverb and I
sometimes say this when I havepeople do that helical breathing
exercise that we did earlierbut I would let people know that
your future is behind you,propelling you forward.
Your future has your back andthat your past is in front of
(56:05):
you, waiting for you to makepeace with it and clear your way
.
And I think that's the trueststatement to how time works
relative to our bodies that yourfuture is behind you,
propelling you forward, and yourpast is in front of you,
waiting for you to make peacewith it and clear your way.
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
I love that I didn't even give her that question
ahead of time and she was soprepared for it.
I love that.
That's actually funny, becauseI've been having a lot of those
thoughts lately that reallyalign with that proverb.
So thank you, thank you forcoming on.
This was a fascinatingconversation.
(56:46):
This is really really, reallycool, like very adjacent to what
I do, obviously, but just in acompletely different light and
with so much different expertiseand knowledge and science.
So this was very, very funchatting with you.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Oh, thank you, Hannah .
It's my.
My karmic backstory in myastrology chart is lost voice,
so I'm very grateful to havethis, your platform, to be able
to share my voice and use it.
That helps heal me and, yeah,like anybody can do this energy
medicine.
There's just so much potentialand so many fun ways to heal and
(57:28):
I'm excited to.
I'm very grateful for youallowing me to babble on about
it here, because I love it.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much.
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