June 17, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Restoration Beyond the Couch, Dr. Lee Long sits down with Dr. Kasey Ratliff, a physical therapist who specializes in the connection between the body and mental wellness. Together, they explore how physical symptoms, like tension, posture, and movement, can reflect emotional stress, and how addressing the body can support mental health from the ground up.
Whether you're navigating anxiety, trauma, or everyday stress, this conversation offers powerful insight into healing through the body.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch.
I'm Dr Lee Long and in thisepisode I'm joined by Dr Casey
Ratliff, a physical therapistwith a deep understanding of how
our bodies and minds areconnected Together.
We're exploring the physicalconnection to mental health, how
(00:22):
things like posture and breath,movement and physical tension
can reveal what's happeningemotionally, and how mental
healing is connected with ourphysical bodies.
Whether you're dealing withstress, anxiety or just trying
to feel more aligned, thisconversation offers a grounded,
(00:44):
practical look at the mind-bodyconnection.
Your path to mental wellnessstarts here.
Welcome, casey.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Dr Casey Rattlin to Restoration Beyond the Couch,
and I'm so glad you're here.
I know you and I've had goshcountless conversations about
how physical therapy impacts orhow physical wellness impacts
emotional wellness and we've hada lot of fun discussing that
and I know you've had atremendous background in the
(01:17):
physical world.
Would you give our listenersjust a little bit of background
on you and kind of maybe how youmade your way to physical
therapy and like just that whole?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
sure yeah, so um long time athlete.
So I always loved the ummovement, movement of the body,
competition.
So I thought, oh, physicaltherapy, that'd be cool and I
don't know if you knew this, butI wanted to be a counselor I
did not know that yeah, I had apsychology degree.
I was going to do psychology atTexas tech and makes so much
(01:47):
sense.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Isn't that funny?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And my dad said why do you want to sit and listen to
someone's problems all day?
Jokes on me because I still dothat.
Right, but now you don't sityeah exactly, and so the the
funny part of that is that we'restill psychologists every
single day, psychologists inquotes, right, working with
people.
You're working with humans,right.
So they walk in there, but theydidn't leave their brain at
(02:11):
home, right?
And so, um, that's really whereI got interested.
I was, I was fascinated withthe brain, the mind, but then on
top of that, I had this wholemovement fascination that I love
.
So I feel like that's why Iwent into physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's really cool, casey, because I didn't.
I didn't realize that, but Idon't.
I don't you.
I don't think I've ever toldyou this, but I originally
thought I was going to be aphysical therapist, and the
reason why I didn't do that isbecause the feedback I got was
why would you want to go intophysical therapy?
The burnout rate is so high.
(02:46):
So I chose mental healththerapy where, and doctorate and
then kind of started the realworld.
And.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I experienced that burnout.
I was in a high volume clinicand you're just pumping them out
.
And if you really think abouttraditional, when you think
about therapy, you're seeing atherapist.
Physical therapy is one of theonly therapy that you have to
see multiple people at one timein the normal general setting.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, Because you're seeing two or three patients.
And what I found when I wasdoing that at a high volume
clinic I moved to Austin thatwas my first job is I wasn't
able to really get to know mypeople because I wasn't
undivided attention with them,Right, and so then I stumbled in
.
I did a lot of continuing edright out of school, a lot of
heavy manual Um and so forpeople that understand what that
(03:44):
means, like adjustments of thespine and soft tissue, and that
was really where I was headed.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And the interesting thing about the whole manual
place is that you, someone showsup to you and you're the one
doing something to them.
In other words, there's likethere's a lot of um reliance on
you, so you make me better.
Right, got it.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, exactly.
And so that exactly what youjust said.
With those heavy you kind ofcreate this return value right,
I need to go back in becauseCasey did that thing on my back
and, oh man, it made me feelbetter.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
And I love manual.
I think touching people, havingyour hands it made me feel
better, right, and I love manual.
I think touching people, havingyour hands on people, is really
important, right?
Um, so there there was.
That's kind of where my myright out of school, where you
literally know nothing, I knewhow to do a swing, a goniometer
and measure a range of motion,right, but you know, all that
education for that.
And so then, about two years out, when I moved to Austin, I'd
(04:48):
done these spinal mentorships,soft tissue mentorships.
I found what I study now inpractice.
It's called PRI, so it's calledPostural Restoration Institute,
and you know, I saw it beingpracticed in this clinic and I'm
like what the heck are theydoing?
Because really I wasn'tfascinated with neuro.
(05:08):
I was an athlete, I wanted todo orthopedics and get people
stronger, right, and the funnypart, the joke's on me.
In the end I wish I would havepaid more attention to neuro in
school, because that's allphysical therapy really is.
It's neurological Muscles areconnected to the brain.
How are we going to get themstronger?
How are we going to?
you know, but if the braindoesn't, doesn't sense, it,
(05:30):
doesn't understand it, itdoesn't really matter, right?
And so, um, I started studyingphysical therapy or postural
restoration, pretty slowly.
It's an, it's a, it's a lot ofscience.
So we're out of Lincoln,nebraska.
Ron Horeska, you've had thepleasure of meeting.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Oh my gosh, have I had the pleasure of meeting him.
He's amazing, truly amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
There will never be another human being like him,
just celebrated his 70thbirthday and he created this
science based on many differentthings.
But to kind of for people athome to understand posture is
not standing up straight, getyour plumb line out, do your
ears line up with your shouldersand your hips, and that's,
(06:10):
that's not what we're looking at.
So when we look at posture,we're looking at a reflection of
all the systems internally.
So you got to think about themusculoskeletal system, the
respiratory system, the osteosystem, the digestive system,
the nervous system.
I mean we're compromised ofmultiple oh yeah.
And so how all those interplayis kind of posturing.
(06:33):
How do we posture ourselves?
How are all those playingtogether inside?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I feel like for PRI, the term posture really is
similar.
The way that you all haveexpanded that well, taking it to
mean all of the things it meansin the same way that CBASP for
me in my adventure of being atherapist and growing and
(06:59):
learning all the differentthemes uses perceptual
understanding.
It goes beyond just what you'reperceiving.
It goes beyond just thestructure.
Meaning posture goes beyondjust the structure of something.
It's the it's, it's what it all, it's everything that's
comprised in it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's so interesting.
When I met Ron, we had the thethe great pleasure and of having
dinner with with him and youand talking with him.
Like I've always seen the worldthat the physical is a is a, an
analogy for the meta, for themetaphysical.
Like the physical helps meunderstand the metaphysical, and
(07:48):
hearing him speak and showinglike all the ways that our
worlds are woven together was soexciting.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, and powerful right.
Because when you really can tapinto that, that's when I feel
like, as a physical therapist, Istarted making a really big
difference in people's lives.
Not that their hips startedgetting better Sure, that's
great but other things startedimproving in their life.
And so when we look you know,when I assess someone for
imposter restoration for peoplethat have no idea what it- is
(08:17):
like the quick elevator switchright.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
What's the background of this?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, so so kind of a few foundations, and the
biggest foundation that we lookat is our bodies are
asymmetrical, and so that's fact.
I mean, you can go look insidecadavers and see this.
But our right diaphragm we havea diaphragm muscle we breathe
with, we have a lot ofdiaphragms in our body, but our
right diaphragm, thehemidiaphragm, is significantly
(08:40):
larger than our left.
It attaches lower on yourlumbar spine than it does on the
left side.
This is a muscle you use 20,000times a day and it's bigger on
the right.
And so there's no, I don'tunderstand why it's not more
emphasized in, like theprofessional schooling, cause I
did two years of cadaver lab andPT school.
(09:00):
I even assisted the next yearand you know it was just never
really kind of talked about,yeah, brought about and so.
And then you can look at yourorgans.
Right, you got a liver thatsits on your right.
You have three lobes of lung onyour right, cause you have your
heart on your left, and so thisbig diaphragm pumps us full of
air, but it's going to bedifferent about how that air
expands within us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
It absolutely does.
And the one thing, though,before we move to the air piece
of it is, is the the.
Did you know that our righthemisphere of our brain is
larger than our left hemisphere,which is just so interesting
because it's it does somethingso different?
Right, it's the, it's the lobethat generalizes, or pulls the,
(09:43):
synthesizes information.
Right, the left side.
Yes, it grabs things.
Yes, there's that, but it'sit's so interesting that this,
this, is mimicked in most places, this right sidedness.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yes, yes.
And then you look at, it's nota handedness conversation, but
90 percent of the population isright handed.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And most ambidextrous left-handed people are
ambidextrous.
So you have the center of massof your body and you can.
You already mentioned it thebrain, our right brain, our left
brain are different.
Our right brain controls ourleft half of our body and our
left brain controls our rightside.
And our left brains arelanguage and our logic and, like
you just said, we rely on bothof them for different things.
(10:24):
But our left brain?
We have more neuromotor pointson our right side of our body
and so these are all justfactual neuroanatomy things, and
we're trying to live in thisworld of where people think your
right leg and your left leg arethe same and the way you sense
your right hand and your lefthand are the same.
So let's treat you as if you'rea bilateral human being, when
(10:47):
your brain and your bodypositioning really only
understand one half of that body.
And so how?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
does that?
Could you give me an example ofthat, Like, how does that play
out?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah.
So I think, well, let's justlike look at, let's kind of take
it into a movement perspective,right, let's just look at a
generalized workout.
So I've spent a lot of timeworking with professional
athletes, right, so I did.
I was like kind of always ourjoke.
I worked with the NFL combinefor five or six years with just
(11:18):
the press and I'm still waitingfor my agent to call.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
but yes, thank you for keeping me ready for that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, you got to get that bench press up right 225
burnout is one of theirmeasurements anyway, so that's a
great one to use, right?
Is that really an expression ofstrength?
Is a bilateral bench press at225 and you knock them out.
You know we had guys tear pecsand it's like these are amazing
athletes.
Is that really what we're?
(11:44):
What we're trying to do here isjust heavy push through
bilateral loading of a body andsystem that doesn't understand
both sides of the floor or botharms.
So I guess what I'm trying totie in with that is when we
think about a workout or a loadand we're overloading these
bodies on one, you know on bothsides.
(12:05):
Your brain doesn't perceiveboth sides that way.
So I think you know shiftinghow we program and I like this
because I love the strength andconditioning world into more of
that asymmetrical mindsets,right, or alternating activity.
Our brains love alternating.
They want us to reciprocate.
One arm goes forward, our otherarm should go back, which is a
us to reciprocate.
One arm goes forward, our otherarm should go back, which is a
(12:27):
chest wall, rib cage One goesforward, one goes back.
Pelvis leg when people look atgait, they just look at the legs
.
It's like well, what about upthe chain right?
What are the legs doing?
But what are those arms doing?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And so, as opposed to sitting, you know, to laying
back and doing you know, burnoutof two, 25 on the bench press,
would your suggestion be like apiston type pump where you're
lifting one arm and and loweringthe other, or raising one arm
and lowering the other and thenraising, so it's like it's
operating as a piston.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yes, so alternating.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So do you believe that our body, sort of
pendulates, like things, operateon a like, not like a?
Well, like a pendulum, where itvaries from one side to the
next?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Absolutely.
It's called oscillation, right,and if you don't oscillate,
your nervous system is going togo up.
You've got to oscillate, yougot to turn on, turn off, turn
on, turn off the term we use alot, and I would say that this.
So I teach for the Institute aswell.
I'm training right now to teachour cervical course, but I
teach our hip course.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Cervical being low, back or back being neck.
Sorry, cervical spine is theneck Right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, and it's okay.
It's not your field.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Lumbar yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And so is the term, and this is what's so hard in
the world we live in now.
But the term that I use and weteach on and this is what PRI is
literally foundation is calledinhibition, and it's the
neurological you're neverturning thing off completely
it's the dialing down ofoverworking.
(13:59):
I mean, look at what we'redoing as a society.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
When do we ever shut down, Right?
And so when people come see me,it's not like let's do a lot
more, it's like, no, let's seewhat we can turn off.
So we can keep this reallysimple layman terms you walk in
with quads that are popping outof your pants, right?
That means somewhere in thechain aka hamstrings are not
(14:24):
working, so we got to balancethat off.
So let's figure out how can weget that person to use less quad
, more hamstring.
That's a really easy layman'sterms.
But that's what we're lookingfor is inhibition.
How can we get people, how canwe meet their needs but then be
able to bring them back?
Sure, Right, Sure.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah, sure, right, sure Makessense.
(15:04):
Makes, said the pendulation Ithink about, like art, the
accelerated resolution therapythat I love and it does.
I also have used, and used fromtime to time, emdr, the eye
movement, uh, reprocessing, waitem I movement, reprocessing and
(15:25):
desensitization.
I always have to think throughthat one.
But the EMDR, where it involvesyour the, the movement of your
eyes, right and it's, it's thebilateral stimulation, just like
what you're talking about of of, like bench press, it's better
if it's bilateral, where thebody actually what I'm hearing
you saying is working together.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, Alternating Right that's the word I always
come back to is was one side'sworking, the other side should
be going back, and vice versa.
That's gait.
That's moving forward in life.
Most people are moving forwardon both sides of their body at
the same time.
You know, we're just, we got togo, we don't have time to pause
(16:12):
, stop, get back on one side,and we find this asymmetry with
PRI testing.
So we have a whole slew ofobjective testing from the
eyeballs to the toes, wherewe're seeing when people come in
, what position are they livingin, right?
And so that's kind of my job ishow do we inhibit and kind of
get them back a little bit?
Because then once you inhibitand get them, we'll call it
feeling better, whatever thatmeans.
But on my terms, throughtesting, then you've got to
hurry up, not really hurry, butrepattern.
(16:34):
So when I teach it's repositionthe body first, then you've got
to repattern it, because nowit's got this new thing and it
doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yes, then get back to reciprocating how to use both
sides, which is alternating soso.
So when you walk through thiswith people like you said you,
you get elbow deep pun intendedin in their life.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Right, I mean I know you're not doing a ton of manual
work, but yeah, you're, you'rein there with them.
Yeah, when, at what point didyou begin to see like you said,
we're all psychologists Like atwhat point did you begin to see
the, the mind body connection inyour work?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, that's no, that's a great question, and I'm
trying to think if there waslike a few moments I feel like
it's just developed over timematurity on my end as a
therapist to just reallystopping and pausing.
If I really had to pick, though, I think it's when I went out
on my own I started seeingclients, and when I say out on
my own, I mean away from theclinic I started my own practice
(17:34):
.
I started seeing patientsone-on-one and that time I've
always had a deep interest inpeople.
I've always just loved andfascinated by what makes you you
, and that's what I let pr tiesinto that yeah and so that's
where I started to see when Iwas more one-on-one and I my um
intake, my patients are likewhoa?
You were asking me like all theway back to when my first tooth
(17:56):
came out, almost, and I'm like,yeah, because it matters,
because you developed yourlittle nervous system way, way
back then, and so how you areintertwining maybe that's not
the right word interacting withthe environment around you and
within yourself, came from areally young age.
(18:17):
And so if we don't go back andsee kind of how you were
developing and this is, you know, pretty extreme too.
But I want to know if patientshave braces on their teeth I
want to know, like, were yourneurological systems messed with
at a younger age or even at anolder age and all those do.
And, as you know, I work withan optometrist and a dentist on
my team, so I have a prettyintegrated team because we're
(18:39):
just trying to figure out how wecan help these neurosensory
processing systems that you own,that you may not even know
there's anything else out thereright right, um, I was trying to
think what you asked me, thatgod is here.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
When did you notice that the two go together?
yeah, but, I love, I love whatyou're, what you're bringing out
is like that when you startedmeeting with people and you took
them for where they are, yeah,and you I mean I'm thinking
about I was listening tosomething where Mark Hyman was
talking about how he became afunctional medicine doctor and
he said that it was reallythrough his own lack of health,
(19:16):
through a series of things thatdeveloped in his own body, and
he was like nobody could answerthis and nor could I.
So he said I became a reallygood investigator and I was like
, wait, that's kind of how Ifeel is.
When somebody comes in, it'snot to be cold and removed, but
I am investigating with them.
Hey, what happened?
(19:38):
When was that point?
You noticed, and they bring ina set of symptoms and then we
work to find what's at the coreof that.
Right, and it sounds likeyou're saying, when you were
working one-on-one with people,all of a sudden you had the
space to take the symptoms, thatset of symptoms.
Somebody comes in with kneepain and what you realize is
(19:58):
they may be it may be thepositioning of their neck and
maybe how they're breathing, andit may be.
And this is where I'm curiouswhere you're going to go with
this, but it may be how they'rebreathing.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right, did you take a PRI course?
I feel, like I have.
I mean, look at you, that'samazing.
But yeah, so I always startwith breathing foundational,
right.
I mean, that's something reallyeasy you can do just sitting in
your chair.
And so one thing I'll reallywork with people on is breathing
step one like day one, becausethat's something they take away
(20:31):
and so anybody at home right nowcan even assess this.
But our right nostril when weprocess air into our right
nostril and this isresearch-based, you can look it
up.
But that's more oursympathetics.
Our left nostril is more ourparasympathetics.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
So sympathetic is movement, movement forward.
It's the excitement.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's fight or flight more.
So it's not a bad thing.
You just don't want to live init when you're trying to go to
bed at night.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Parasympathetic is the rest and digest.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Right, it's the smoother.
And you would love a cycle ofthat.
You want the brain to feel thatcycle that's called your
central nervous system, and thenunderneath that you have an
autonomic nervous system, and Isee a lot of people that have
dysregulation of the autonomics,right, and so we've got to
somehow get this brain and thisbody to cycle again.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And the autonomic.
Sorry to interrupt but theautonomic is that which is
functioning in the backgroundour heartbeat, our ability to
breathe, those types of things.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Am I missing anything there?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
No, that's a great easy term, right For that, I
think.
And so something I'll have mypatients do that I feel like man
.
I don't know if you're going toget to a place to relearn and
repattern until we can get youuninhibited a little.
We just need to get you where.
You're in a place to learnsomething new.
Does that make sense?
(21:47):
Because the brain loves novelty.
But if you're not in a place toaccept it, because you can't
shut down ever, you're not goingto be able to relearn anything.
And so a lot of times I'll doalternate nasal breathing with
patients.
So that's literally puttingtheir hand up and putting two
fingers on their left, thumb ontheir right, and they'll close
(22:07):
one, do a lot nice slow cycle inpause, unplug, let the air out
the other nostril, and so wewill work on alternate nasal
breathing.
I'll have them work on thatthroughout the day just to kind
of get that calmness right.
And that's not for everybody,it just depends on you know
who's coming in.
But that's a great trick forpeople that it's not really a
(22:28):
trick treatment for people thatmay have issues going to sleep
Like I can't shut down at night,my brain's racing, so that
alternation kind of can causethat.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, that undulation, that pendulating,
that oscillating back through.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
It's interesting because one of the things that I
see when somebody's talking inmy office, when somebody's
talking about something verypainful, very often the terms
that will come out of my mouthare please take a breath, Please
breathe while you're talkingabout this, because there's that
it's so painful that the bodyis bracing for that impact,
(23:09):
Right, and you think about thethings that, like, you think
about how the the psychologicalaspect of things impacts the
physiological aspect of things.
We're not just talking aboutheart rate.
We know if you're scared oranxious, your heart rate goes up
, Like that's pretty factual.
But it also releases morecortisol when you're, when
(23:30):
you're afraid, which releasesmore insulin, which is why
people who have experiencedchildhood trauma or have adverse
childhood experiences that ACEs.
When people have experiencedthose over time and have that
childhood trauma in theirbackground, they're more likely
to have diabetes, Right.
And so there's that, thatweaving together of how our body
(23:51):
and our brain work in tandem.
And when you teach somebodythat that bilateral nasal
breathing, I'm curious if intheir background oftentimes
there has been a history ofanxiety or some type of trauma.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Right, yeah, and I feel like probably most of the
patients I see I would say morehave some sort of and I'm going
to call it trauma lightly, right, I mean it could be.
What I mean by that is, I don't, it could be a car wreck.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
That's trauma to the body.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Right it is trauma right and so, or it could be
emotional trauma.
They're raised with parentsthat yelled all day Right and so
how that ties into thebreathing is what are you using
to get your air in and what areyou using to get your air out?
And that's really what we wantto look at first, because that
diaphragm, if you opened up achest cavity or you know it's
(24:44):
pretty low all the way downwhere it attaches on the lumbar
spine, it intertwines with yourhip flexor, called your psoas
muscle.
You cannot separate them if youwanted to, so it's going to.
There's a chain of muscles, andthat's what PRI, from the tip
of your head to the toe, andwe've identified them, named
them, but those chains ofmuscles become more dominant on
one side of the body Thank you,right diaphragm and less on the
(25:07):
other, and they're different andthat's what we test for, right?
But so these patients that youmay see that are tensing and
holding, I mean, what are theyusing all day long?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
to do that Right.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And to pull air in Because their diaphragm is not
able to work if they'reconstantly overusing their neck.
To pull that air in, if thatmakes sense, they're constantly
overusing their neck to pullthat air in, if that makes sense
.
And so, yeah, that's kind ofwhat we start to try to break
down and look into, like what'stheir strategy here yeah.
And I would tell you the biggestthing that I, if I were to take
(25:39):
80% of my caseload is mostpeople are more in a state of
inhalation, kind of stuck.
So you see, the ribs are up inthe front and so even like for
listeners at home, even likekind of stuck.
So you see, the ribs are up inthe front and so even like for
listeners at home, even likekind of putting your hands on
your lower ribs and then justtaking a breath in, but then as
you exhale out your mouth, tryto make your exhale twice as
long as your inhale and see ifyou can sense those ribs move
down.
(25:59):
And that's called exhalation,which to the brain is like oh,
thank you, it's a neuropause,now I can reset.
And then from that fullyexhaled state let's inhale and
let's fill it all up versus, oh,my ribs kind of been up for 45
years or whatever.
I'm kind of kidding.
(26:19):
But you see the implicationsabout a rib cage that doesn't
move.
Look at all the muscles thatare attached to that and the
spine and the back and all thosemuscles that are keeping you in
that posture to keep you aliveto keep, aaron, sends what to
your brain, right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know what I mean?
It's the whole parasympatheticI'm sorry, sympathetic nervous
system.
It's it's either fight orflight.
And then we, you think aboutthe, the psychological
implications of that and all thethings that, the ways that you
ingest or or interpretinformation.
If you're up and out and yourbrain believes that there's
(26:56):
danger everywhere, what doesthat do?
Right?
And it's, I think, about thewear and tear on us physically
when we have an emotional space.
That's really a struggle, right.
Or when I think about when wehave a physical place, that I
mean, I think about athletesthat get injured, right, and you
have to put them in neutral, soto speak, physically, mm-hmm,
(27:19):
and what type of absolute Idon't know a better way to say
this but damage it does to theirpsychological health.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And then vice versa, right, when we put, when we, our
bodies are in neutral, what itdoes to people who don't move
through life.
What are, what are someexamples?
Or do you have some examplesthat where, where you've seen
our worlds collide?
Speaker 2 (27:44):
all the time, every day of my life.
Actually this morning, um, butyeah yesterday.
So I work with a umprofessional women's basketball
team here in town and I wasseeing um, so I just kind of
consult with the athletictrainer.
She loves PRI and so I come inevery few weeks and get to see
the players and I absolutelylove it because man basketball
players.
They are just beautiful moversand they get it right, oh cause?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
yeah, everything is really bilateral.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
They're so fluid.
I never would have thought ofthat.
You keep saying bilateral, butI think you mean alternating
like ones going forward, right,yeah, they're.
They're able to get theirbodies to move and shift.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I mean, I can do bare minimum with them and they're
like just drastic changes, right, um and uh, I was seeing one of
the the newer people on theteam and there's this history
right of a left knee surgery, aleft ankle sprain, um, a right
ankle, but anyway, whatever itwas.
(28:41):
But I go back into that becauseI want to know, like when did
your brain stop trusting thefloor underneath your foot?
And it's the minute you have asprain or something happen,
right, or surgery.
All of a sudden that's notyours anymore, your brain.
Someone went in there.
Physiologically it's changed,that's what your brain knows,
right, but it's threat to yourbrain.
(29:02):
And so then your brain is goingwell, I'm going to still walk,
I'm still going to run, I'mstill going to do all these
things.
So you immediately do somethingcalled accommodate and you
start accommodating for that.
But what does thataccommodation look like over
time?
And that book could be longright.
That's where I'm here to.
When I look at people, it'slike man, how have you been
accommodating around that leftknee and you're playing a high
(29:26):
level professional sports?
What have you done to getaround that Right?
Um, so that's one.
And then one specificallybecause, um, I think in you know
this cause, I'll shoot you atext.
I'm like who should be seen fora 30 year old guy, like who's
your best, you know, like forthis problem that I think is
going on.
So what I mean by that is myclients will be working together
(29:49):
, and one specifically I canthink about without giving too
much away.
She, uh, we went through theprocess, we and I don't want to
overwhelm because this is, it'sa lot to talk about integration,
but sometimes we'll use dentalsensory appliances in the mouth
to help the position of the neckand the cranium.
That's the best way, that'seasy to kind of put it.
(30:09):
And she was being seen for alot of different things and
we've resolved everything prettymuch, except for her right neck
would still bother her and shehad a history that she didn't
really resolve.
She was in her later years oflife, so you know, already
raised a kid and is off tocollege, and that she had
(30:31):
unresolved with her parentsParents are both deceased and
that she, every time her momcame up on a radar conversation,
her neck would tighten again.
And that's patterning right, shewould just she loved to center
her mass over her right side,and when you do that, you got to
turn your head slightly to theleft, otherwise you're going to
fall over.
Well, you know who does that?
Your right SCM muscle righthere.
And so anytime her mom and wekind of came to it together, I
(30:55):
mean, and so she started doingall the work, um, at this
practice actually, I believe.
But uh, and it's a lot, becausethen you have to unpack all
that.
But in order to reallyrepattern herself, she really
needed and she knows it andshe'll, you know, she'd probably
come on the podcast and tellyou.
But so it was interesting thatphysically I could get her where
she wanted to be, but Icouldn't.
(31:16):
I don't have the tools to workthrough that with her, nor the
license nor the you know what Imean.
So that was one um onespecifically that I thought was
really interesting.
One more that I could think ofthat I saw.
I saw her about six weeks agoand, man, we were killing it.
Everything was moving well.
(31:36):
And she did see an optometristin between and they tweaked the
prescription a little bit butlowered the power, which is
usually what I'll see.
And when I say that, what Imean by that is you have a
prescription you get from youroptometrist and the more minus
that's in it that helps you seefurther distance.
So we took some power out.
We didn't, he did.
(31:56):
And so I'm like well, thingsshould be a little bit better.
When she came to see me, butit's not.
And I said, are you surethere's nothing going on?
She's like oh yeah, I'm workingthrough a lot right now.
I encouraged her to see acounselor last year.
She's like I'm working onforgiving people in my life
right now, and so she's goingthrough this work with her
(32:17):
counselor.
And I said, well, is it more?
She goes oh, it's heavy rightnow.
It's heavy the past four weeksand heavy right now, it's heavy
the past four weeks, and so I'mseeing it show up in her body by
.
she's trying to kind of go backto her old patterning, because
she's trying to stay safe in herbody and I'm trying to like no,
let's turn it off, let's giveyou this newness, but her
brain's still relying on thatpatterning, does that?
Speaker 1 (32:40):
make sense.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So that is, if I wasn't tuned into that, I'd kind
of be like, well, you're notdoing your exercise, I gave you.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Which, okay, let's talk about that, Because if you
go down that road, well, you'renot.
How does what I mean thinkabout what that would put upon
somebody who's already doing somuch heavy lifting, already
doing so much heavy lifting?
Yeah, my mentor and I weretalking about this concept just
(33:11):
yesterday, about how there'sthese people that are are are
treatment this is the titlewe're giving them in our field
treatment resistant depressionbecause the theories that they
are, that are widely known,aren't working for them and
medication is not working forthem, Right, and it's like, okay
, so that's their, that'ssomething's wrong with them.
(33:33):
It's like, well, wait a minute.
Why can't we evaluate what'sbeing done and not say
something's wrong with anything,but something's not matching up
?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Right, right, the blame game Right.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Exactly.
I say so often in my officeblame and fault are the B word
and the F word, and we don'tspeak like that here.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
You know, because that that's such a that's such a
freeing place for you to bemoving with the people that
you're treating.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Right, yeah, and that's why I feel like I went
out on my own, so I have thecontrol.
I don't have somebody tellingme that I don't have insurance
dictating.
Oh, the range of motion didn'tget better, you know you need to
.
We're cutting you off.
But I mean, I only see myclients once every two weeks or
so, you know, and so it's notlike you need to come in three
(34:22):
times a week, because then I tryto empower them to have these
two things to do.
It's never more than two orthree things.
But if you think about, oldhabits die hard, that's really
true.
So maybe it's like, hey, youknow, for people sitting at home
right now, and maybe you'resitting, literally sitting,
where do you feel more yourpressure?
Do you feel it in your rightbutt bone?
You feel it in your left buttbone?
Right, do you feel that yourhead maybe is tilted, is a
(34:45):
shoulder lower, and those arethe kind of things where, if we
can just put a little impact,you know 30 minutes, 30 seconds
when you're brushing your teeth,can you stand more over on your
left leg?
I mean, this is just a randomexample, right, but those things
are really pack a punch Likethey're a lot more effective
than my three sets.
(35:06):
And I'm not trying to hate ontraditional physical therapy I'm
not because I think it servesits purpose for many reasons,
right.
I just think that we are nottaught to treat the human as
holistic and looking at theneurological implications about
what we're really dealing with.
And so you know we get go ahead.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
I love that because that's my framework in the
psychological realm.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
In that more metaphysical realm is let's be
more aware of you.
What, what thoughts come intoyour mind.
I had somebody asked me justthis week like, okay, so is is
really being aware of howhorrible I talk to myself, of my
internal monologue?
It really that's going toreally help me.
(35:53):
I'm like, yeah, far more thanyou realize.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, you know when this was a quote from Ron and
it's like what you've beentaught isn't wrong, it's just
incomplete.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
That.
That's so sounds like Ron Right, and I love that, because it is
incomplete.
Yeah, and it's.
Again, it's.
There's no blame and fault here, but it, but there is the.
Again, there's no blame andfault here, but there is the.
Let's take it to a differentspace, because when we do
recognize those littlecorrections and what I was
saying to this individual is,yes, little corrections help
(36:25):
over time, and I gave him theexample of like a fad diet.
A fad diet if you get, you know, just drop weight, like that
what?
But it's really restrictive andreally, you know, difficult to
stay on it.
The minute you get off, whattends to happen, you go back and
seek homeostasis or seek thatbalance that you just left.
(36:47):
So what if we just change theway that we balance,
figuratively speaking for youit's literally speaking but what
if we just slowly change theway we balance so that balance,
that balance becomes somethingthat is normal to us.
It becomes our, our balance,our homeostasis.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, small movements , micro.
And here's the problem we livein a world where it's instant
gratification and we want to bebetter.
Yesterday you didn't get mebetter, and so quite often I
will know immediately whetherI'm going to be able to help
someone, and most of the time Ifeel like I can.
And PRI has gotten reallypopular because we end up seeing
(37:30):
a lot of people that have beenstruggling and have seen
multiple, multiple, multipleproviders.
So I always joke, I'm like Idon't get the easy cases anymore
.
You know, it's these complexscenarios and I say complex,
they're really not, they're justlooked at incompletely prior in
the world.
You know, it's like I've beento four physical therapists, six
chiropractors and my whateverstill hurts, you know, and it's
(37:53):
like sure.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But I think what you're what you're pointing out
here is is that PRI is veryaware of all the different input
systems which are.
Psychological input system is abig one, right, Right.
It's a huge piece that likelike you're talking about this
person who's walking throughforgiveness and their, their
(38:16):
neck is acting up again.
It's like, yeah, because theway that you coped with that may
have created a physical patternfor you that you may not be
aware of.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And it may be a very insightful place for us to look
and say wait, what'spsychologically going on here as
well?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Because what, what, when?
I?
What we both know is thatthere's a very thin veil between
the psychological and thephysiological.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And yeah, you can't separate them and you know, I
mean you just kind of can startto think about when you're
having a bad day, you know youcan.
I mean if just kind of canstart to think about when you're
having a bad day, you know youcan.
I mean if you think of yourworst day, or even maybe you had
a let's just talk about grief,right, how does your body feel
versus the day that yougraduated or you had, you know,
the best day of your life?
(39:07):
I mean just if you can imaginethat in your own body and how
your body feels.
And tell me, physical is not apart of that mental emotion,
right?
Yeah, and I don't know from achronic pain if you could speak
to that.
But psychologically, do youfeel like you see a lot of
(39:31):
people that are in chronic pain,that have bodily pain?
I mean, I'm sorry, chronic pain?
The people that you are seeing,do you feel like some of them
have chronic pain issues,whether it's their high anxiety
or whatever you're treating themfor?
Do you see the correlation?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Um, I would say that there arepeople that I, that I see, who
have chronic health issues.
Right, they're systemically,chronically behind the eight
ball with their health and whatshows up for them is it's you
(40:04):
see them turning off from theneck down, meaning I don't, I
don't want to feel this pain.
I often tell I remember like Iused to run marathons, ultra
marathons and all that fun stuff, and I have the most sensitive
feet on the planet, like I hatewalking around barefoot.
Um, and I thought, why did Ichoose this one?
(40:26):
Because talk about hard on thefeet, but a marathon in an ultra
is really really hard on thefeet.
And I kept having people say,well, just shut the pain out.
And I was just like, no, if Ishut the pain out, I shut the
good stuff out too.
So I'm going to have to learnhow to incorporate this pain
into my psyche as I learn how todo this.
(40:49):
And, truth be told, my feetstill hurt, but they hurt less.
Everyone that I, every race thatI did, every run that I
accomplished, and I think I, Ijust I remember thinking as I
was running up Lancaster bridgegood Lord, that's a long bridge
that is all up.
(41:10):
And I remember thinking like Idon't I really am tempted to
shut my body off, like shut mymind off from my body, but I
just the way that I learned tocope with it was I said I'm
going to think about the peoplethat I know in my life right now
that are currently strugglingpsychologically.
The people I was treating thethemes that they were
(41:33):
experiencing, the people I wastreating the themes that they
were experiencing, and I wouldhold them in my mind and say
this is what I want for them isI want them to experience it and
I want them to overcome it.
And so I'm going to experienceit and overcome it and, almost
with them in my mind, going totake them on this, this
adventure, with me.
And that was my way of notshutting off my body, because I
(41:54):
wanted my body.
I didn't want to lose track ofwhere I was because, truth be
told, every injury I've ever hadis when I shut off my
experience in my body.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Just to push through it.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, and so that's.
I do see that with people whohave chronic pain or really,
really, it's more, um, it reallyit's more of the autoimmune
disorder type type experiences.
Right, because fibromyalgia,everything hurts?
Well, of course it does.
There's so much going on and Ihate it, hate it with capital, h
(42:31):
A, T, e.
Hate it when I see a doctor sayto somebody it's all in your
head oh gosh, and it's like well, everything's all in our head,
Everything originates in ourbrain.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
So, okay, so you're telling me my excitement's all
in my head, okay, but it'sreally.
It's so demeaning, but reallythere is a painful experience
that is expressing itself out ofall of your nerves, right?
So, rather than shutting offfrom this, how do we incorporate
a healing space?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Right, and the word that I heard you say is
experience a few times, and sohow we kind of relate, that is
sense.
Same thing, an interoceptivesense is huge.
If you cannot sense it withinyour own self, how are we going
to experience it Right?
And so that's a big piece ofwhat we do with PRI and trying
(43:21):
to get yourself and this cansound really weird but expand
from inside out Right, andthat's more with airflow, and I
really truthfully mean that.
But we don't want everythingpulling in on our bodies.
Everything wants to come in.
We want to feel safe andconverge.
We want bodies to be able tomove out and expand Right, and
so on one side more than theother sometimes, we won't go
into that today but um, butthink about that from a
(43:44):
psychological perspective
Speaker 1 (43:46):
we do want to move in and, figuratively speaking, and
be closed off and silo, and wedon't.
I mean, I was just talking tosomebody earlier this week that
was saying all I want to do is Ijust want to stay home, I don't
want to be around people.
When I'm around people, I judgemyself and I'm concerned that
they're judging me, and so theywant to come inside themselves
(44:07):
more and more and more.
And what's interesting is isyou see them hunch their
shoulders forward where they'retrying to come into themselves
and you think about that.
That's a self-protectivemovement.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
When you're talking about we want things to expand,
you think about thatfiguratively speaking.
It's like what do we need?
The world needs love.
Yeah, how do we get that?
We interact with each other.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Right, and so there is.
That's where, to me, the ourworlds really crossover and
pendulate together.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I mean, I know you call it oscillate, I call it
pendulate.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
That's fine.
I'll let you use that word onmy podcast.
Yeah, so that's really why Iwork with an optometrist.
What you just said is open upperipheral space management.
We're living in a world that isso narrow, focused and forward
right, and it's actually thenumber one, one of the number
one diseases growing.
It's called myopia,nearsightedness, and it just
(45:03):
makes you wonder.
Right, we're going into more ofthis tech world.
People are staring at computers, everything's coming in, we're
pulling forward and that wouldbe a whole nother podcast we
could talk about.
Right, with nervous system, buthow do we get these people to
open up, expand mentally,physically and feel safe to do
it?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
This is about to say is you have to teach them.
We have to learn as a societythat it's okay to take a risk,
because in those risks you mayfail, and failure cannot define
your value.
That our value is defined, notdefine your value.
That our value is defined, Ibelieve, by the fact that you
have breath in your lungs.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I mean we are valuable period, right Now we
move forward, right, right.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
So yeah, and you know one thing that, like for
anybody at home, when it's kindof, what is she talking about?
Expand air right.
When you think about your lungfield, you've got lungs in the
front, but you also haveposterior lungs and what's
really interesting is during theCOVID times, with people that
were really struggling tobreathe, they were proning them
in the hospitals, which meansputting them on their stomach to
get air posteriorly.
(46:07):
And that's your posterior lungs.
It's right around the bottom ofyour shoulder blade, your
scapula area.
That's called your posteriormediastinum and that's a point
like where I'll have people.
So, even if you're sitting athome I do this in my car a lot
but just kind of rounding andslouching your lower back and
taking your sternum and pushingit down and back and trying to
breathe air right into that areato decompress yourself, because
(46:31):
anatomically it's called yourposterior myostinum.
Your sympathetic nerve ganglionlive right along that spine
area.
So imagine if you're pulledforward all the time and you
can't decompress and breatheinto your back, how's your brain
and your nervous system gonnafeel, right?
And so, um, once again, that'swhere we collide our worlds.
(46:51):
It's like, okay, let's work onthis breathing thing while
you're so, maybe what you'rereceiving during your therapy
session will be easily accepted,more easily accepted, less
threatening um more digestibleto your brain right because
you're going to be in a placewhere you can learn right yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
So this is such a fascinating discussion and I've
always appreciated your work.
Um, very candidly, you havehelped me through a back surgery
, a shoulder surgery, and keptme ready for when my agent calls
.
For I'd be like, oh, is thecombine soon?
(47:30):
Like why?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
are we trying to bench press to 25?
Speaker 1 (47:33):
you know, I'm, I'm, I'm deeply grateful, but uh,
it's also fun to have a kindredspirit to talk through these
(48:00):
things with, to see that thephysical and the metaphysical
really do belong together, andto to have a like-minded person
that you know are people thatyou know, a community that is
being developed and built sothat we have help yeah, help for
(48:20):
wholeness and wellness.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So so that's really interesting.
Um, ron said that you know itwas about it was a certain
patient that was asking himabout and he said, casey, if we
don't do what we're doing, whereare these people going to go?
And it was so true.
I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
I love that man's heart.
I love the way he thinks,because he thinks in the
wholeness.
Let's go help those who havehistorically been unable to find
help.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Right and we just had our symposium and we had a PT
that went back and got herdoctorate in psychology.
She presented.
We had a licensed social workpresent.
So we're we're very open loveto collaborate with
professionals I mean, obviouslyyou're a part of my team and
optometrist, dentist, becausethese people have got to be
(49:09):
managed, sometimes more thanjust one person, Right, and um
kind of takes the stress off,right Knowing you have a team
that thinks like you.
it's like, oh, if I send themover there, I know that they're
thinking like I'm thinking yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
And it's allowing us, as professionals, to live more
in that open stance, as opposedto a closed stance where we
think we're supposed to have allthe answers.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, yeah.
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch.
I'm Dr Lee Long and in thisepisode I'm joined by Dr Casey
Ratliff, a physical therapistwith a deep understanding of how
our bodies and minds areconnected Together.
We're exploring the physicalconnection to mental health, how
(00:22):
things like posture and breath,movement and physical tension
can reveal what's happeningemotionally, and how mental
healing is connected with ourphysical bodies.
Whether you're dealing withstress, anxiety or just trying
to feel more aligned, thisconversation offers a grounded,
(00:44):
practical look at the mind-bodyconnection.
Your path to mental wellnessstarts here.
Welcome, casey.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Dr Casey Rattlin to Restoration Beyond the Couch,
and I'm so glad you're here.
I know you and I've had goshcountless conversations about
how physical therapy impacts orhow physical wellness impacts
emotional wellness and we've hada lot of fun discussing that
and I know you've had atremendous background in the
(01:17):
physical world.
Would you give our listenersjust a little bit of background
on you and kind of maybe how youmade your way to physical
therapy and like just that whole?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
sure yeah, so um long time athlete.
So I always loved the ummovement, movement of the body,
competition.
So I thought, oh, physicaltherapy, that'd be cool and I
don't know if you knew this, butI wanted to be a counselor I
did not know that yeah, I had apsychology degree.
I was going to do psychology atTexas tech and makes so much
(01:47):
sense.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Isn't that funny?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And my dad said why do you want to sit and listen to
someone's problems all day?
Jokes on me because I still dothat.
Right, but now you don't sityeah exactly, and so the the
funny part of that is that we'restill psychologists every
single day, psychologists inquotes, right, working with
people.
You're working with humans,right.
So they walk in there, but theydidn't leave their brain at
(02:11):
home, right?
And so, um, that's really whereI got interested.
I was, I was fascinated withthe brain, the mind, but then on
top of that, I had this wholemovement fascination that I love
.
So I feel like that's why Iwent into physical therapy.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
That's really cool, casey, because I didn't.
I didn't realize that, but Idon't.
I don't you.
I don't think I've ever toldyou this, but I originally
thought I was going to be aphysical therapist, and the
reason why I didn't do that isbecause the feedback I got was
why would you want to go intophysical therapy?
The burnout rate is so high.
(02:46):
So I chose mental healththerapy where, and doctorate and
then kind of started the realworld.
And.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I experienced that burnout.
I was in a high volume clinicand you're just pumping them out
.
And if you really think abouttraditional, when you think
about therapy, you're seeing atherapist.
Physical therapy is one of theonly therapy that you have to
see multiple people at one timein the normal general setting.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, Because you're seeing two or three patients.
And what I found when I wasdoing that at a high volume
clinic I moved to Austin thatwas my first job is I wasn't
able to really get to know mypeople because I wasn't
undivided attention with them,Right, and so then I stumbled in
.
I did a lot of continuing edright out of school, a lot of
heavy manual Um and so forpeople that understand what that
(03:44):
means, like adjustments of thespine and soft tissue, and that
was really where I was headed.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And the interesting thing about the whole manual
place is that you, someone showsup to you and you're the one
doing something to them.
In other words, there's likethere's a lot of um reliance on
you, so you make me better.
Right, got it.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, exactly.
And so that exactly what youjust said.
With those heavy you kind ofcreate this return value right,
I need to go back in becauseCasey did that thing on my back
and, oh man, it made me feelbetter.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
And I love manual.
I think touching people, havingyour hands it made me feel
better, right, and I love manual.
I think touching people, havingyour hands on people, is really
important, right?
Um, so there there was.
That's kind of where my myright out of school, where you
literally know nothing, I knewhow to do a swing, a goniometer
and measure a range of motion,right, but you know, all that
education for that.
And so then, about two years out, when I moved to Austin, I'd
(04:48):
done these spinal mentorships,soft tissue mentorships.
I found what I study now inpractice.
It's called PRI, so it's calledPostural Restoration Institute,
and you know, I saw it beingpracticed in this clinic and I'm
like what the heck are theydoing?
Because really I wasn'tfascinated with neuro.
(05:08):
I was an athlete, I wanted todo orthopedics and get people
stronger, right, and the funnypart, the joke's on me.
In the end I wish I would havepaid more attention to neuro in
school, because that's allphysical therapy really is.
It's neurological Muscles areconnected to the brain.
How are we going to get themstronger?
How are we going to?
you know, but if the braindoesn't, doesn't sense, it,
(05:30):
doesn't understand it, itdoesn't really matter, right?
And so, um, I started studyingphysical therapy or postural
restoration, pretty slowly.
It's an, it's a, it's a lot ofscience.
So we're out of Lincoln,nebraska.
Ron Horeska, you've had thepleasure of meeting.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Oh my gosh, have I had the pleasure of meeting him.
He's amazing, truly amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
There will never be another human being like him,
just celebrated his 70thbirthday and he created this
science based on many differentthings.
But to kind of for people athome to understand posture is
not standing up straight, getyour plumb line out, do your
ears line up with your shouldersand your hips, and that's,
(06:10):
that's not what we're looking at.
So when we look at posture,we're looking at a reflection of
all the systems internally.
So you got to think about themusculoskeletal system, the
respiratory system, the osteosystem, the digestive system,
the nervous system.
I mean we're compromised ofmultiple oh yeah.
And so how all those interplayis kind of posturing.
(06:33):
How do we posture ourselves?
How are all those playingtogether inside?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I feel like for PRI, the term posture really is
similar.
The way that you all haveexpanded that well, taking it to
mean all of the things it meansin the same way that CBASP for
me in my adventure of being atherapist and growing and
(06:59):
learning all the differentthemes uses perceptual
understanding.
It goes beyond just what you'reperceiving.
It goes beyond just thestructure.
Meaning posture goes beyondjust the structure of something.
It's the it's, it's what it all, it's everything that's
comprised in it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's so interesting.
When I met Ron, we had the thethe great pleasure and of having
dinner with with him and youand talking with him.
Like I've always seen the worldthat the physical is a is a, an
analogy for the meta, for themetaphysical.
Like the physical helps meunderstand the metaphysical, and
(07:48):
hearing him speak and showinglike all the ways that our
worlds are woven together was soexciting.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, and powerful right.
Because when you really can tapinto that, that's when I feel
like, as a physical therapist, Istarted making a really big
difference in people's lives.
Not that their hips startedgetting better Sure, that's
great but other things startedimproving in their life.
And so when we look you know,when I assess someone for
imposter restoration for peoplethat have no idea what it- is
(08:17):
like the quick elevator switchright.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
What's the background of this?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, so so kind of a few foundations, and the
biggest foundation that we lookat is our bodies are
asymmetrical, and so that's fact.
I mean, you can go look insidecadavers and see this.
But our right diaphragm we havea diaphragm muscle we breathe
with, we have a lot ofdiaphragms in our body, but our
right diaphragm, thehemidiaphragm, is significantly
(08:40):
larger than our left.
It attaches lower on yourlumbar spine than it does on the
left side.
This is a muscle you use 20,000times a day and it's bigger on
the right.
And so there's no, I don'tunderstand why it's not more
emphasized in, like theprofessional schooling, cause I
did two years of cadaver lab andPT school.
(09:00):
I even assisted the next yearand you know it was just never
really kind of talked about,yeah, brought about and so.
And then you can look at yourorgans.
Right, you got a liver thatsits on your right.
You have three lobes of lung onyour right, cause you have your
heart on your left, and so thisbig diaphragm pumps us full of
air, but it's going to bedifferent about how that air
expands within us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
It absolutely does.
And the one thing, though,before we move to the air piece
of it is, is the the.
Did you know that our righthemisphere of our brain is
larger than our left hemisphere,which is just so interesting
because it's it does somethingso different?
Right, it's the, it's the lobethat generalizes, or pulls the,
(09:43):
synthesizes information.
Right, the left side.
Yes, it grabs things.
Yes, there's that, but it'sit's so interesting that this,
this, is mimicked in most places, this right sidedness.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yes, yes.
And then you look at, it's nota handedness conversation, but
90 percent of the population isright handed.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And most ambidextrous left-handed people are
ambidextrous.
So you have the center of massof your body and you can.
You already mentioned it thebrain, our right brain, our left
brain are different.
Our right brain controls ourleft half of our body and our
left brain controls our rightside.
And our left brains arelanguage and our logic and, like
you just said, we rely on bothof them for different things.
(10:24):
But our left brain?
We have more neuromotor pointson our right side of our body
and so these are all justfactual neuroanatomy things, and
we're trying to live in thisworld of where people think your
right leg and your left leg arethe same and the way you sense
your right hand and your lefthand are the same.
So let's treat you as if you'rea bilateral human being, when
(10:47):
your brain and your bodypositioning really only
understand one half of that body.
And so how?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
does that?
Could you give me an example ofthat, Like, how does that play
out?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah.
So I think, well, let's justlike look at, let's kind of take
it into a movement perspective,right, let's just look at a
generalized workout.
So I've spent a lot of timeworking with professional
athletes, right, so I did.
I was like kind of always ourjoke.
I worked with the NFL combinefor five or six years with just
(11:18):
the press and I'm still waitingfor my agent to call.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
but yes, thank you for keeping me ready for that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, you got to get that bench press up right 225
burnout is one of theirmeasurements anyway, so that's a
great one to use, right?
Is that really an expression ofstrength?
Is a bilateral bench press at225 and you knock them out.
You know we had guys tear pecsand it's like these are amazing
athletes.
Is that really what we're?
(11:44):
What we're trying to do here isjust heavy push through
bilateral loading of a body andsystem that doesn't understand
both sides of the floor or botharms.
So I guess what I'm trying totie in with that is when we
think about a workout or a loadand we're overloading these
bodies on one, you know on bothsides.
(12:05):
Your brain doesn't perceiveboth sides that way.
So I think you know shiftinghow we program and I like this
because I love the strength andconditioning world into more of
that asymmetrical mindsets,right, or alternating activity.
Our brains love alternating.
They want us to reciprocate.
One arm goes forward, our otherarm should go back, which is a
us to reciprocate.
One arm goes forward, our otherarm should go back, which is a
(12:27):
chest wall, rib cage One goesforward, one goes back.
Pelvis leg when people look atgait, they just look at the legs
.
It's like well, what about upthe chain right?
What are the legs doing?
But what are those arms doing?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And so, as opposed to sitting, you know, to laying
back and doing you know, burnoutof two, 25 on the bench press,
would your suggestion be like apiston type pump where you're
lifting one arm and and loweringthe other, or raising one arm
and lowering the other and thenraising, so it's like it's
operating as a piston.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yes, so alternating.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So do you believe that our body, sort of
pendulates, like things, operateon a like, not like a?
Well, like a pendulum, where itvaries from one side to the
next?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Absolutely.
It's called oscillation, right,and if you don't oscillate,
your nervous system is going togo up.
You've got to oscillate, yougot to turn on, turn off, turn
on, turn off the term we use alot, and I would say that this.
So I teach for the Institute aswell.
I'm training right now to teachour cervical course, but I
teach our hip course.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Cervical being low, back or back being neck.
Sorry, cervical spine is theneck Right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, and it's okay.
It's not your field.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Lumbar yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And so is the term, and this is what's so hard in
the world we live in now.
But the term that I use and weteach on and this is what PRI is
literally foundation is calledinhibition, and it's the
neurological you're neverturning thing off completely
it's the dialing down ofoverworking.
(13:59):
I mean, look at what we'redoing as a society.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
When do we ever shut down, Right?
And so when people come see me,it's not like let's do a lot
more, it's like, no, let's seewhat we can turn off.
So we can keep this reallysimple layman terms you walk in
with quads that are popping outof your pants, right?
That means somewhere in thechain aka hamstrings are not
(14:24):
working, so we got to balancethat off.
So let's figure out how can weget that person to use less quad
, more hamstring.
That's a really easy layman'sterms.
But that's what we're lookingfor is inhibition.
How can we get people, how canwe meet their needs but then be
able to bring them back?
Sure, Right, Sure.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah, sure, right, sure Makessense.
(15:04):
Makes, said the pendulation Ithink about, like art, the
accelerated resolution therapythat I love and it does.
I also have used, and used fromtime to time, emdr, the eye
movement, uh, reprocessing, waitem I movement, reprocessing and
(15:25):
desensitization.
I always have to think throughthat one.
But the EMDR, where it involvesyour the, the movement of your
eyes, right and it's, it's thebilateral stimulation, just like
what you're talking about of of, like bench press, it's better
if it's bilateral, where thebody actually what I'm hearing
you saying is working together.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, Alternating Right that's the word I always
come back to is was one side'sworking, the other side should
be going back, and vice versa.
That's gait.
That's moving forward in life.
Most people are moving forwardon both sides of their body at
the same time.
You know, we're just, we got togo, we don't have time to pause
(16:12):
, stop, get back on one side,and we find this asymmetry with
PRI testing.
So we have a whole slew ofobjective testing from the
eyeballs to the toes, wherewe're seeing when people come in
, what position are they livingin, right?
And so that's kind of my job ishow do we inhibit and kind of
get them back a little bit?
Because then once you inhibitand get them, we'll call it
feeling better, whatever thatmeans.
But on my terms, throughtesting, then you've got to
hurry up, not really hurry, butrepattern.
(16:34):
So when I teach it's repositionthe body first, then you've got
to repattern it, because nowit's got this new thing and it
doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yes, then get back to reciprocating how to use both
sides, which is alternating soso.
So when you walk through thiswith people like you said you,
you get elbow deep pun intendedin in their life.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Right, I mean I know you're not doing a ton of manual
work, but yeah, you're, you'rein there with them.
Yeah, when, at what point didyou begin to see like you said,
we're all psychologists Like atwhat point did you begin to see
the, the mind body connection inyour work?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, that's no, that's a great question, and I'm
trying to think if there waslike a few moments I feel like
it's just developed over timematurity on my end as a
therapist to just reallystopping and pausing.
If I really had to pick, though, I think it's when I went out
on my own I started seeingclients, and when I say out on
my own, I mean away from theclinic I started my own practice
(17:34):
.
I started seeing patientsone-on-one and that time I've
always had a deep interest inpeople.
I've always just loved andfascinated by what makes you you
, and that's what I let pr tiesinto that yeah and so that's
where I started to see when Iwas more one-on-one and I my um
intake, my patients are likewhoa?
You were asking me like all theway back to when my first tooth
(17:56):
came out, almost, and I'm like,yeah, because it matters,
because you developed yourlittle nervous system way, way
back then, and so how you areintertwining maybe that's not
the right word interacting withthe environment around you and
within yourself, came from areally young age.
(18:17):
And so if we don't go back andsee kind of how you were
developing and this is, you know, pretty extreme too.
But I want to know if patientshave braces on their teeth I
want to know, like, were yourneurological systems messed with
at a younger age or even at anolder age and all those do.
And, as you know, I work withan optometrist and a dentist on
my team, so I have a prettyintegrated team because we're
(18:39):
just trying to figure out how wecan help these neurosensory
processing systems that you own,that you may not even know
there's anything else out thereright right, um, I was trying to
think what you asked me, thatgod is here.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
When did you notice that the two go together?
yeah, but, I love, I love whatyou're, what you're bringing out
is like that when you startedmeeting with people and you took
them for where they are, yeah,and you I mean I'm thinking
about I was listening tosomething where Mark Hyman was
talking about how he became afunctional medicine doctor and
he said that it was reallythrough his own lack of health,
(19:16):
through a series of things thatdeveloped in his own body, and
he was like nobody could answerthis and nor could I.
So he said I became a reallygood investigator and I was like
, wait, that's kind of how Ifeel is.
When somebody comes in, it'snot to be cold and removed, but
I am investigating with them.
Hey, what happened?
(19:38):
When was that point?
You noticed, and they bring ina set of symptoms and then we
work to find what's at the coreof that.
Right, and it sounds likeyou're saying, when you were
working one-on-one with people,all of a sudden you had the
space to take the symptoms, thatset of symptoms.
Somebody comes in with kneepain and what you realize is
(19:58):
they may be it may be thepositioning of their neck and
maybe how they're breathing, andit may be.
And this is where I'm curiouswhere you're going to go with
this, but it may be how they'rebreathing.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right, did you take a PRI course?
I feel, like I have.
I mean, look at you, that'samazing.
But yeah, so I always startwith breathing foundational,
right.
I mean, that's something reallyeasy you can do just sitting in
your chair.
And so one thing I'll reallywork with people on is breathing
step one like day one, becausethat's something they take away
(20:31):
and so anybody at home right nowcan even assess this.
But our right nostril when weprocess air into our right
nostril and this isresearch-based, you can look it
up.
But that's more oursympathetics.
Our left nostril is more ourparasympathetics.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
So sympathetic is movement, movement forward.
It's the excitement.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's fight or flight more.
So it's not a bad thing.
You just don't want to live init when you're trying to go to
bed at night.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Parasympathetic is the rest and digest.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Right, it's the smoother.
And you would love a cycle ofthat.
You want the brain to feel thatcycle that's called your
central nervous system, and thenunderneath that you have an
autonomic nervous system, and Isee a lot of people that have
dysregulation of the autonomics,right, and so we've got to
somehow get this brain and thisbody to cycle again.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And the autonomic.
Sorry to interrupt but theautonomic is that which is
functioning in the backgroundour heartbeat, our ability to
breathe, those types of things.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Am I missing anything there?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
No, that's a great easy term, right For that, I
think.
And so something I'll have mypatients do that I feel like man
.
I don't know if you're going toget to a place to relearn and
repattern until we can get youuninhibited a little.
We just need to get you where.
You're in a place to learnsomething new.
Does that make sense?
(21:47):
Because the brain loves novelty.
But if you're not in a place toaccept it, because you can't
shut down ever, you're not goingto be able to relearn anything.
And so a lot of times I'll doalternate nasal breathing with
patients.
So that's literally puttingtheir hand up and putting two
fingers on their left, thumb ontheir right, and they'll close
(22:07):
one, do a lot nice slow cycle inpause, unplug, let the air out
the other nostril, and so wewill work on alternate nasal
breathing.
I'll have them work on thatthroughout the day just to kind
of get that calmness right.
And that's not for everybody,it just depends on you know
who's coming in.
But that's a great trick forpeople that it's not really a
(22:28):
trick treatment for people thatmay have issues going to sleep
Like I can't shut down at night,my brain's racing, so that
alternation kind of can causethat.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, that undulation, that pendulating,
that oscillating back through.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
It's interesting because one of the things that I
see when somebody's talking inmy office, when somebody's
talking about something verypainful, very often the terms
that will come out of my mouthare please take a breath, Please
breathe while you're talkingabout this, because there's that
it's so painful that the bodyis bracing for that impact,
(23:09):
Right, and you think about thethings that, like, you think
about how the the psychologicalaspect of things impacts the
physiological aspect of things.
We're not just talking aboutheart rate.
We know if you're scared oranxious, your heart rate goes up
, Like that's pretty factual.
But it also releases morecortisol when you're, when
(23:30):
you're afraid, which releasesmore insulin, which is why
people who have experiencedchildhood trauma or have adverse
childhood experiences that ACEs.
When people have experiencedthose over time and have that
childhood trauma in theirbackground, they're more likely
to have diabetes, Right.
And so there's that, thatweaving together of how our body
(23:51):
and our brain work in tandem.
And when you teach somebodythat that bilateral nasal
breathing, I'm curious if intheir background oftentimes
there has been a history ofanxiety or some type of trauma.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Right, yeah, and I feel like probably most of the
patients I see I would say morehave some sort of and I'm going
to call it trauma lightly, right, I mean it could be.
What I mean by that is, I don't, it could be a car wreck.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
That's trauma to the body.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Right it is trauma right and so, or it could be
emotional trauma.
They're raised with parentsthat yelled all day Right and so
how that ties into thebreathing is what are you using
to get your air in and what areyou using to get your air out?
And that's really what we wantto look at first, because that
diaphragm, if you opened up achest cavity or you know it's
(24:44):
pretty low all the way downwhere it attaches on the lumbar
spine, it intertwines with yourhip flexor, called your psoas
muscle.
You cannot separate them if youwanted to, so it's going to.
There's a chain of muscles, andthat's what PRI, from the tip
of your head to the toe, andwe've identified them, named
them, but those chains ofmuscles become more dominant on
one side of the body Thank you,right diaphragm and less on the
(25:07):
other, and they're different andthat's what we test for, right?
But so these patients that youmay see that are tensing and
holding, I mean, what are theyusing all day long?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
to do that Right.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And to pull air in Because their diaphragm is not
able to work if they'reconstantly overusing their neck.
To pull that air in, if thatmakes sense, they're constantly
overusing their neck to pullthat air in, if that makes sense
.
And so, yeah, that's kind ofwhat we start to try to break
down and look into, like what'stheir strategy here yeah.
And I would tell you the biggestthing that I, if I were to take
(25:39):
80% of my caseload is mostpeople are more in a state of
inhalation, kind of stuck.
So you see, the ribs are up inthe front and so even like for
listeners at home, even likekind of stuck.
So you see, the ribs are up inthe front and so even like for
listeners at home, even likekind of putting your hands on
your lower ribs and then justtaking a breath in, but then as
you exhale out your mouth, tryto make your exhale twice as
long as your inhale and see ifyou can sense those ribs move
down.
(25:59):
And that's called exhalation,which to the brain is like oh,
thank you, it's a neuropause,now I can reset.
And then from that fullyexhaled state let's inhale and
let's fill it all up versus, oh,my ribs kind of been up for 45
years or whatever.
I'm kind of kidding.
(26:19):
But you see the implicationsabout a rib cage that doesn't
move.
Look at all the muscles thatare attached to that and the
spine and the back and all thosemuscles that are keeping you in
that posture to keep you aliveto keep, aaron, sends what to
your brain, right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know what I mean?
It's the whole parasympatheticI'm sorry, sympathetic nervous
system.
It's it's either fight orflight.
And then we, you think aboutthe, the psychological
implications of that and all thethings that, the ways that you
ingest or or interpretinformation.
If you're up and out and yourbrain believes that there's
(26:56):
danger everywhere, what doesthat do?
Right?
And it's, I think, about thewear and tear on us physically
when we have an emotional space.
That's really a struggle, right.
Or when I think about when wehave a physical place, that I
mean, I think about athletesthat get injured, right, and you
have to put them in neutral, soto speak, physically, mm-hmm,
(27:19):
and what type of absolute Idon't know a better way to say
this but damage it does to theirpsychological health.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
And then vice versa, right, when we put, when we, our
bodies are in neutral, what itdoes to people who don't move
through life.
What are, what are someexamples?
Or do you have some examplesthat where, where you've seen
our worlds collide?
Speaker 2 (27:44):
all the time, every day of my life.
Actually this morning, um, butyeah yesterday.
So I work with a umprofessional women's basketball
team here in town and I wasseeing um, so I just kind of
consult with the athletictrainer.
She loves PRI and so I come inevery few weeks and get to see
the players and I absolutelylove it because man basketball
players.
They are just beautiful moversand they get it right, oh cause?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
yeah, everything is really bilateral.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
They're so fluid.
I never would have thought ofthat.
You keep saying bilateral, butI think you mean alternating
like ones going forward, right,yeah, they're.
They're able to get theirbodies to move and shift.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I mean, I can do bare minimum with them and they're
like just drastic changes, right, um and uh, I was seeing one of
the the newer people on theteam and there's this history
right of a left knee surgery, aleft ankle sprain, um, a right
ankle, but anyway, whatever itwas.
(28:41):
But I go back into that becauseI want to know, like when did
your brain stop trusting thefloor underneath your foot?
And it's the minute you have asprain or something happen,
right, or surgery.
All of a sudden that's notyours anymore, your brain.
Someone went in there.
Physiologically it's changed,that's what your brain knows,
right, but it's threat to yourbrain.
(29:02):
And so then your brain is goingwell, I'm going to still walk,
I'm still going to run, I'mstill going to do all these
things.
So you immediately do somethingcalled accommodate and you
start accommodating for that.
But what does thataccommodation look like over
time?
And that book could be longright.
That's where I'm here to.
When I look at people, it'slike man, how have you been
accommodating around that leftknee and you're playing a high
(29:26):
level professional sports?
What have you done to getaround that Right?
Um, so that's one.
And then one specificallybecause, um, I think in you know
this cause, I'll shoot you atext.
I'm like who should be seen fora 30 year old guy, like who's
your best, you know, like forthis problem that I think is
going on.
So what I mean by that is myclients will be working together
(29:49):
, and one specifically I canthink about without giving too
much away.
She, uh, we went through theprocess, we and I don't want to
overwhelm because this is, it'sa lot to talk about integration,
but sometimes we'll use dentalsensory appliances in the mouth
to help the position of the neckand the cranium.
That's the best way, that'seasy to kind of put it.
(30:09):
And she was being seen for alot of different things and
we've resolved everything prettymuch, except for her right neck
would still bother her and shehad a history that she didn't
really resolve.
She was in her later years oflife, so you know, already
raised a kid and is off tocollege, and that she had
(30:31):
unresolved with her parentsParents are both deceased and
that she, every time her momcame up on a radar conversation,
her neck would tighten again.
And that's patterning right, shewould just she loved to center
her mass over her right side,and when you do that, you got to
turn your head slightly to theleft, otherwise you're going to
fall over.
Well, you know who does that?
Your right SCM muscle righthere.
And so anytime her mom and wekind of came to it together, I
(30:55):
mean, and so she started doingall the work, um, at this
practice actually, I believe.
But uh, and it's a lot, becausethen you have to unpack all
that.
But in order to reallyrepattern herself, she really
needed and she knows it andshe'll, you know, she'd probably
come on the podcast and tellyou.
But so it was interesting thatphysically I could get her where
she wanted to be, but Icouldn't.
(31:16):
I don't have the tools to workthrough that with her, nor the
license nor the you know what Imean.
So that was one um onespecifically that I thought was
really interesting.
One more that I could think ofthat I saw.
I saw her about six weeks agoand, man, we were killing it.
Everything was moving well.
(31:36):
And she did see an optometristin between and they tweaked the
prescription a little bit butlowered the power, which is
usually what I'll see.
And when I say that, what Imean by that is you have a
prescription you get from youroptometrist and the more minus
that's in it that helps you seefurther distance.
So we took some power out.
We didn't, he did.
(31:56):
And so I'm like well, thingsshould be a little bit better.
When she came to see me, butit's not.
And I said, are you surethere's nothing going on?
She's like oh yeah, I'm workingthrough a lot right now.
I encouraged her to see acounselor last year.
She's like I'm working onforgiving people in my life
right now, and so she's goingthrough this work with her
(32:17):
counselor.
And I said, well, is it more?
She goes oh, it's heavy rightnow.
It's heavy the past four weeksand heavy right now, it's heavy
the past four weeks, and so I'mseeing it show up in her body by
.
she's trying to kind of go backto her old patterning, because
she's trying to stay safe in herbody and I'm trying to like no,
let's turn it off, let's giveyou this newness, but her
brain's still relying on thatpatterning, does that?
Speaker 1 (32:40):
make sense.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So that is, if I wasn't tuned into that, I'd kind
of be like, well, you're notdoing your exercise, I gave you.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Which, okay, let's talk about that, Because if you
go down that road, well, you'renot.
How does what I mean thinkabout what that would put upon
somebody who's already doing somuch heavy lifting, already
doing so much heavy lifting?
Yeah, my mentor and I weretalking about this concept just
(33:11):
yesterday, about how there'sthese people that are are are
treatment this is the titlewe're giving them in our field
treatment resistant depressionbecause the theories that they
are, that are widely known,aren't working for them and
medication is not working forthem, Right, and it's like, okay
, so that's their, that'ssomething's wrong with them.
(33:33):
It's like, well, wait a minute.
Why can't we evaluate what'sbeing done and not say
something's wrong with anything,but something's not matching up
?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Right, right, the blame game Right.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Exactly.
I say so often in my officeblame and fault are the B word
and the F word, and we don'tspeak like that here.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
You know, because that that's such a that's such a
freeing place for you to bemoving with the people that
you're treating.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Right, yeah, and that's why I feel like I went
out on my own, so I have thecontrol.
I don't have somebody tellingme that I don't have insurance
dictating.
Oh, the range of motion didn'tget better, you know you need to
.
We're cutting you off.
But I mean, I only see myclients once every two weeks or
so, you know, and so it's notlike you need to come in three
(34:22):
times a week, because then I tryto empower them to have these
two things to do.
It's never more than two orthree things.
But if you think about, oldhabits die hard, that's really
true.
So maybe it's like, hey, youknow, for people sitting at home
right now, and maybe you'resitting, literally sitting,
where do you feel more yourpressure?
Do you feel it in your rightbutt bone?
You feel it in your left buttbone?
Right, do you feel that yourhead maybe is tilted, is a
(34:45):
shoulder lower, and those arethe kind of things where, if we
can just put a little impact,you know 30 minutes, 30 seconds
when you're brushing your teeth,can you stand more over on your
left leg?
I mean, this is just a randomexample, right, but those things
are really pack a punch Likethey're a lot more effective
than my three sets.
(35:06):
And I'm not trying to hate ontraditional physical therapy I'm
not because I think it servesits purpose for many reasons,
right.
I just think that we are nottaught to treat the human as
holistic and looking at theneurological implications about
what we're really dealing with.
And so you know we get go ahead.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
I love that because that's my framework in the
psychological realm.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
In that more metaphysical realm is let's be
more aware of you.
What, what thoughts come intoyour mind.
I had somebody asked me justthis week like, okay, so is is
really being aware of howhorrible I talk to myself, of my
internal monologue?
It really that's going toreally help me.
(35:53):
I'm like, yeah, far more thanyou realize.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, you know when this was a quote from Ron and
it's like what you've beentaught isn't wrong, it's just
incomplete.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
That.
That's so sounds like Ron Right, and I love that, because it is
incomplete.
Yeah, and it's.
Again, it's.
There's no blame and fault here, but it, but there is the.
Again, there's no blame andfault here, but there is the.
Let's take it to a differentspace, because when we do
recognize those littlecorrections and what I was
saying to this individual is,yes, little corrections help
(36:25):
over time, and I gave him theexample of like a fad diet.
A fad diet if you get, you know, just drop weight, like that
what?
But it's really restrictive andreally, you know, difficult to
stay on it.
The minute you get off, whattends to happen, you go back and
seek homeostasis or seek thatbalance that you just left.
(36:47):
So what if we just change theway that we balance,
figuratively speaking for youit's literally speaking but what
if we just slowly change theway we balance so that balance,
that balance becomes somethingthat is normal to us.
It becomes our, our balance,our homeostasis.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, small movements , micro.
And here's the problem we livein a world where it's instant
gratification and we want to bebetter.
Yesterday you didn't get mebetter, and so quite often I
will know immediately whetherI'm going to be able to help
someone, and most of the time Ifeel like I can.
And PRI has gotten reallypopular because we end up seeing
(37:30):
a lot of people that have beenstruggling and have seen
multiple, multiple, multipleproviders.
So I always joke, I'm like Idon't get the easy cases anymore
.
You know, it's these complexscenarios and I say complex,
they're really not, they're justlooked at incompletely prior in
the world.
You know, it's like I've beento four physical therapists, six
chiropractors and my whateverstill hurts, you know, and it's
(37:53):
like sure.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But I think what you're what you're pointing out
here is is that PRI is veryaware of all the different input
systems which are.
Psychological input system is abig one, right, Right.
It's a huge piece that likelike you're talking about this
person who's walking throughforgiveness and their, their
(38:16):
neck is acting up again.
It's like, yeah, because theway that you coped with that may
have created a physical patternfor you that you may not be
aware of.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
And it may be a very insightful place for us to look
and say wait, what'spsychologically going on here as
well?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Because what, what, when?
I?
What we both know is thatthere's a very thin veil between
the psychological and thephysiological.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And yeah, you can't separate them and you know, I
mean you just kind of can startto think about when you're
having a bad day, you know youcan.
I mean if just kind of canstart to think about when you're
having a bad day, you know youcan.
I mean if you think of yourworst day, or even maybe you had
a let's just talk about grief,right, how does your body feel
versus the day that yougraduated or you had, you know,
the best day of your life?
(39:07):
I mean just if you can imaginethat in your own body and how
your body feels.
And tell me, physical is not apart of that mental emotion,
right?
Yeah, and I don't know from achronic pain if you could speak
to that.
But psychologically, do youfeel like you see a lot of
(39:31):
people that are in chronic pain,that have bodily pain?
I mean, I'm sorry, chronic pain?
The people that you are seeing,do you feel like some of them
have chronic pain issues,whether it's their high anxiety
or whatever you're treating themfor?
Do you see the correlation?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Um, I would say that there arepeople that I, that I see, who
have chronic health issues.
Right, they're systemically,chronically behind the eight
ball with their health and whatshows up for them is it's you
(40:04):
see them turning off from theneck down, meaning I don't, I
don't want to feel this pain.
I often tell I remember like Iused to run marathons, ultra
marathons and all that fun stuff, and I have the most sensitive
feet on the planet, like I hatewalking around barefoot.
Um, and I thought, why did Ichoose this one?
(40:26):
Because talk about hard on thefeet, but a marathon in an ultra
is really really hard on thefeet.
And I kept having people say,well, just shut the pain out.
And I was just like, no, if Ishut the pain out, I shut the
good stuff out too.
So I'm going to have to learnhow to incorporate this pain
into my psyche as I learn how todo this.
(40:49):
And, truth be told, my feetstill hurt, but they hurt less.
Everyone that I, every race thatI did, every run that I
accomplished, and I think I, Ijust I remember thinking as I
was running up Lancaster bridgegood Lord, that's a long bridge
that is all up.
(41:10):
And I remember thinking like Idon't I really am tempted to
shut my body off, like shut mymind off from my body, but I
just the way that I learned tocope with it was I said I'm
going to think about the peoplethat I know in my life right now
that are currently strugglingpsychologically.
The people I was treating thethemes that they were
(41:33):
experiencing, the people I wastreating the themes that they
were experiencing, and I wouldhold them in my mind and say
this is what I want for them isI want them to experience it and
I want them to overcome it.
And so I'm going to experienceit and overcome it and, almost
with them in my mind, going totake them on this, this
adventure, with me.
And that was my way of notshutting off my body, because I
(41:54):
wanted my body.
I didn't want to lose track ofwhere I was because, truth be
told, every injury I've ever hadis when I shut off my
experience in my body.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Just to push through it.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, and so that's.
I do see that with people whohave chronic pain or really,
really, it's more, um, it reallyit's more of the autoimmune
disorder type type experiences.
Right, because fibromyalgia,everything hurts?
Well, of course it does.
There's so much going on and Ihate it, hate it with capital, h
(42:31):
A, T, e.
Hate it when I see a doctor sayto somebody it's all in your
head oh gosh, and it's like well, everything's all in our head,
Everything originates in ourbrain.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
So, okay, so you're telling me my excitement's all
in my head, okay, but it'sreally.
It's so demeaning, but reallythere is a painful experience
that is expressing itself out ofall of your nerves, right?
So, rather than shutting offfrom this, how do we incorporate
a healing space?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Right, and the word that I heard you say is
experience a few times, and sohow we kind of relate, that is
sense.
Same thing, an interoceptivesense is huge.
If you cannot sense it withinyour own self, how are we going
to experience it Right?
And so that's a big piece ofwhat we do with PRI and trying
(43:21):
to get yourself and this cansound really weird but expand
from inside out Right, andthat's more with airflow, and I
really truthfully mean that.
But we don't want everythingpulling in on our bodies.
Everything wants to come in.
We want to feel safe andconverge.
We want bodies to be able tomove out and expand Right, and
so on one side more than theother sometimes, we won't go
into that today but um, butthink about that from a
(43:44):
psychological perspective
Speaker 1 (43:46):
we do want to move in and, figuratively speaking, and
be closed off and silo, and wedon't.
I mean, I was just talking tosomebody earlier this week that
was saying all I want to do is Ijust want to stay home, I don't
want to be around people.
When I'm around people, I judgemyself and I'm concerned that
they're judging me, and so theywant to come inside themselves
(44:07):
more and more and more.
And what's interesting is isyou see them hunch their
shoulders forward where they'retrying to come into themselves
and you think about that.
That's a self-protectivemovement.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
When you're talking about we want things to expand,
you think about thatfiguratively speaking.
It's like what do we need?
The world needs love.
Yeah, how do we get that?
We interact with each other.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Right, and so there is.
That's where, to me, the ourworlds really crossover and
pendulate together.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I mean, I know you call it oscillate, I call it
pendulate.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
That's fine.
I'll let you use that word onmy podcast.
Yeah, so that's really why Iwork with an optometrist.
What you just said is open upperipheral space management.
We're living in a world that isso narrow, focused and forward
right, and it's actually thenumber one, one of the number
one diseases growing.
It's called myopia,nearsightedness, and it just
(45:03):
makes you wonder.
Right, we're going into more ofthis tech world.
People are staring at computers, everything's coming in, we're
pulling forward and that wouldbe a whole nother podcast we
could talk about.
Right, with nervous system, buthow do we get these people to
open up, expand mentally,physically and feel safe to do
it?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
This is about to say is you have to teach them.
We have to learn as a societythat it's okay to take a risk,
because in those risks you mayfail, and failure cannot define
your value.
That our value is defined, notdefine your value.
That our value is defined, Ibelieve, by the fact that you
have breath in your lungs.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I mean we are valuable period, right Now we
move forward, right, right.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
So yeah, and you know one thing that, like for
anybody at home, when it's kindof, what is she talking about?
Expand air right.
When you think about your lungfield, you've got lungs in the
front, but you also haveposterior lungs and what's
really interesting is during theCOVID times, with people that
were really struggling tobreathe, they were proning them
in the hospitals, which meansputting them on their stomach to
get air posteriorly.
(46:07):
And that's your posterior lungs.
It's right around the bottom ofyour shoulder blade, your
scapula area.
That's called your posteriormediastinum and that's a point
like where I'll have people.
So, even if you're sitting athome I do this in my car a lot
but just kind of rounding andslouching your lower back and
taking your sternum and pushingit down and back and trying to
breathe air right into that areato decompress yourself, because
(46:31):
anatomically it's called yourposterior myostinum.
Your sympathetic nerve ganglionlive right along that spine
area.
So imagine if you're pulledforward all the time and you
can't decompress and breatheinto your back, how's your brain
and your nervous system gonnafeel, right?
And so, um, once again, that'swhere we collide our worlds.
(46:51):
It's like, okay, let's work onthis breathing thing while
you're so, maybe what you'rereceiving during your therapy
session will be easily accepted,more easily accepted, less
threatening um more digestibleto your brain right because
you're going to be in a placewhere you can learn right yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
So this is such a fascinating discussion and I've
always appreciated your work.
Um, very candidly, you havehelped me through a back surgery
, a shoulder surgery, and keptme ready for when my agent calls
.
For I'd be like, oh, is thecombine soon?
(47:30):
Like why?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
are we trying to bench press to 25?
Speaker 1 (47:33):
you know, I'm, I'm, I'm deeply grateful, but uh,
it's also fun to have a kindredspirit to talk through these
(48:00):
things with, to see that thephysical and the metaphysical
really do belong together, andto to have a like-minded person
that you know are people thatyou know, a community that is
being developed and built sothat we have help yeah, help for
(48:20):
wholeness and wellness.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So so that's really interesting.
Um, ron said that you know itwas about it was a certain
patient that was asking himabout and he said, casey, if we
don't do what we're doing, whereare these people going to go?
And it was so true.
I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
I love that man's heart.
I love the way he thinks,because he thinks in the
wholeness.
Let's go help those who havehistorically been unable to find
help.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Right and we just had our symposium and we had a PT
that went back and got herdoctorate in psychology.
She presented.
We had a licensed social workpresent.
So we're we're very open loveto collaborate with
professionals I mean, obviouslyyou're a part of my team and
optometrist, dentist, becausethese people have got to be
(49:09):
managed, sometimes more thanjust one person, Right, and um
kind of takes the stress off,right Knowing you have a team
that thinks like you.
it's like, oh, if I send themover there, I know that they're
thinking like I'm thinking yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
And it's allowing us, as professionals, to live more
in that open stance, as opposedto a closed stance where we
think we're supposed to have allthe answers.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, yeah.
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