Episode 14 – Emotion is Lotion - Miles Pruznick | Pt. 2

You don't need to be fucking David Goggins. You're not going in the Navy seals. Every guy wants to be a Navy Seal. And it's like, how is that going to relate to your life? And it's probably not even going to carry over to anything. If you can learn to move without pain, that's going to actually relate to your life and you're going to live a better quality life. But it's not cool. It's not fun.

Welcome to Therapy Is My Therapy, a podcast where licensed counselor Olivia and unlicensed client Tanya delve deep into real and raw conversations in order to demystify what really happens in that 50 minute hour. Heads up. This podcast contains strong language and sensitive topics related to mental health.

Hey everyone. Tanya here. This is part two of our episode with Miles Prusnick, certified strength and conditioning coach, massage therapist, occasional strongman, BJJ brown belt and neurospicy kinesthetic adventurer. In this episode we talk about the fragility narrative in both mental and physical wellness spaces, the benefits of pelvic floor therapy and breathwork, polyvagal theory. And in the last segment, Miles answers a few of our listeners questions. Enjoy. Oh, one thing I wanted to talk about was fragility narrative. Well, I've experienced it myself with health practitioners or doctors who say, well, if jiu jitsu is hurting, you don't do it anymore. And on the flip side with mental health there's the talk of triggers and how everything has to be kind of nerfed. And please, I would love to hear both of you spout off because I love it when Olivia gets spicy. It's actually kind of my most new favorite thing in the world. So I am just setting the table for some spice.

Oh, I know you always try to get me started. I think it's really hard. And we live in a world that is very much all or nothing. Thinking of, okay, well, you have two choices. You go hard and you never stop. Or you're a soft little baby who needs the world to cater to them and they want the world bubble wrapped. And that's not how the real world works. That's like, you know, what we hear. I just don't understand why people can't acknowledge that there's a middle ground and that pretty much always the middle ground is the best place to be because it's the most stable place. Because if we think about the actual metaphor behind that sentence, right, Middle ground, that means that you are at the core, you are at the most stable place. If you are at the edge, it doesn't matter which edge you're on, you are going to fall off if you go a little bit too far. And so when it comes to triggers with physical and mental health, there are going to be things that trigger your pain. It is not the world's job to protect you from your triggers. Ideally, people will be generally kind to the extent that they are not purposely trying to harm you, but it's not their job to keep you from experiencing triggers. And also, you can do things for yourself to make it so that the triggers are less triggering. And that requires a brave space where the people around you are keeping you in the middle so that you're able to have solid ground to practice on. Right? Because if you are experiencing a pain trigger, whether it's mental or physical, and you're standing on the edge, you can't really practice working through it without risking going over that. So we always talk about the zone of proximal development in therapy, which is you have your comfort zone, which is where you don't really have anything change, but you feel nice. And then there is your growth zone, which is the optimal zone where you're. You're being pushed, but you're in the middle. You're not being pushed to the extent that you're going into the next zone, which is the panic zone. If you're in the panic zone, you're not getting anything done either. It's not any better or worse than your comfort zone. It's both edges. And when you're in panic, your body is so shut down and in survival mode, you're not going to be able to learn and integrate any of the things you're experiencing. So I talk to clients about this all the time. Like, if there's something that is triggering to you, don't start with a level 10 exposure to it. And also level one exposure is probably not going to do much to you. So, for instance, if you have driving anxiety, this is a really common one. It makes you really anxious to be in a car. You probably shouldn't pick your first time trying to expose yourself to it, to be on a snowstorm on the most crowded highway in your town, and also driving a car you've never been in before with the music turned up and someone in the passenger seat who's screaming at you if you do anything wrong. But if you only go out driving in your neighborhood in the most comfortable possible environment of okay, perfect conditions, and you know, everyone is just being super nice and no one's giving me feedback, if I do something wrong, that's not going to help you either. You need to be able to scaffold it so that you're over time exposing yourself more and more to triggers in a way that your growth zone gets bigger, the middle ground gets larger because you feel stable further and further out on the ground. You are building enough roots that you can get closer to the edge and not just spill over. And so that is just a brief little version of the don't get me started or how the worldviews triggers.

We're going to have a segment called don't get me started where I just trigger you and antagonize you. No, I'll do it respectfully, but I. I always value your compassionate yet tough approach. It's an evenhanded and I've described Olivia as an iron fist in a velvet glove.

That's a very apt descriptor of her from what I've found. But yeah, it really is every. Like, you do need both and that you can go one way or the other. You know, you can get to the point and you see that people with therapy or functional fitness rehab stuff where it's like, you know, you get to the point where it's like, all right, well, now you can't handle a challenge. And you know, like it or not, life's going to throw those things at you, you, and that's going to help you unlock to the next level. That's been one of the great things this year is like, you know, last year was my rehab. The mind and the body, like, let me just get through those things. And just to like mention like, how interrelated that was. Like, last year was the first time I started having like, panic attack, panic attacks. It was completely related to where my, like, you know, I didn't. Was in. Wasn't able to sense stability in my body. I wasn't able to feel grounded in my body. It was many other things going on in life, but all those things were like, crushing me. And now we. This year, you know, it's still on the mend, but there's been a lot of stresses this year as well. But when they hit, I'm like, it's that weird thing where I'm like, wait. Like, I'm not burying it and I'm not loving it, but I'm like, able to function with it. It's not completely breaking me down anymore. You know, it's just. It's having that thing, like, in your body, it's like, doesn't make everything better, but it makes it much more tolerable. It's like, okay, like, well, you can live up to this now. And that's. That's what I found. You know, this year I still been rehabbing stuff, but it's been trying to challenge it more. Starting to do, like, 5Ks this year. So I'm like, let me try and get a little more into running. I'm not going to be a great runner, but I'd like to, you know, get a little bit better at these. And again, my first priority is, like, I want to get better and feel good at the end of them. But it's like, okay, as you're testing it, you know, there's things that, like, I normally I would. I would run like a mile, but I don't want to run more than a mile because it sucks. But then, like, you know, I've noticed today when I'm running, I'm like, okay. I'm like, there's things I'm feeling that are getting better, and I'm understand my body. I'm understanding it at a point more than I would push myself if I didn't show up to this kind of thing. And that's been helping the healing, too. It's knowing when to push, but then knowing when to, like, back it back down as well. There was a thing I was thinking about before when you were talking, Olivia, and it just. It's. This is. This is how I just weirdly like to link things together, because I'm very interested in, like, definitions of things, but I'm very interested in the idea of many things are saying the same thing. They just have different approaches to it. I used to think Eastern philosophy was really weird and esoteric and out there and crazy. But then now that I. When I look at things a certain way, I'm like, okay. I'm like, well, how can I relate to what this is saying in a, like, harder science or a more practical or more respected way? And, you know, one thing that got me is we're talking about kind of like the. The lower back, where you're saying like, the pelvic floor therapy. And you're like, anyone who has a rib cage needs this. If you have a spine and a body, this is helpful for you. If you learn how to build stability here, this is a. This is a very useful thing. But, like, a few things that get me is like, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The first thing is, like, that survival thing. You need to feel safe. And if you look at Polyvagal theory, the first Thing that happens when you're triggered there is like, your low back muscles tense up and, you know, you're not centered. You're. You're usually stuck to one side. For me, like, my right side clung on, and my left side could not connect, so I couldn't ground on my left side. I couldn't feel my. I didn't really sense my left heel on my left side. And that's not like I couldn't feel, but it's just like, you know, you compensate where you can't really feel it. I didn't notice until it really started feeling the grounding. And then if you look at, like, the Eastern philosophy, if you look at, like, sacral chakra stuff, it's like, that's all related to, you know, your survival and feeling safe in your environment. Environment. And that's like, kind of the foundation. But then once you're good at that, then you can start kind of working your way up the pyramid. You can start doing the more fun, more adventurous testing stuff. But if you don't have that foundation down, you're grinding it down. You do not have a good foundation. If you take the time to build that foundation, you can do a lot of other fun stuff. But if you don't, if you skip that step, it's. It's probably going to come back to bite you in the ass at some point.

To throw back to the. How's that working out for you? I believe is the therapist phrase where how you're breathing now, how's that going? You ended up right here. So let's try something different. Let's play this weird game where we diverge. And then I just wanted to cover the polyvagal theory. And then I know we had some questions, so I wanted to make sure that we hit those.

Yeah, of course.

So Miles already answered that polyvagal theory brilliantly. And if you could give us a quick rundown for those who don't know what polyvagal theory is, and then, Olivia, I'd love to hear from you. How does that tie into what you do?

Actually, I might toss this to Olivia. Do you want to explain the phases? And then I can maybe explain how that relates to how I've practiced it.

Yeah. And polyvagal theory has gained a lot of popularity recently, and that naturally brings with it a lot of criticism. So I think a lot of people have dismissed it as, oh, it's a pseudoscience kind of thing. But I'm like, well, you know, it's called a theory for a reason, but it's it has so much utility in combining physical and mental health that I think that's why it's gained so much momentum, because it's really actionable steps that people could take that in my experience, notice immediate difference in the way that their nervous systems respond to triggers, I guess, or stimuli. So, sorry, let me pull up the. So polyvagal theory is by Stephen Porges. And so it's all about the nervous system and how you can use that and use the three different parts of the nervous system to help clients in the therapy sense. I'm sure it's different in the physical health world of how you use that, but how you can help clients learn how to get more in tune with their nervous system and be able to identify the three different parts of that. So the three different states of our body are dorsal vagal, which is when you're totally shut down. So think dissociated, disconnected, numb, all of that. And then sympathetic, which is the one we're used to, which is fight or flight. You're really, like, sweaty, your heart's beating super fast. Everything gets kind of shut down. Your digestive, all that gets shut down. And everything that is needed for you to survive a physical attack is turned on. And then the third stage is ventral vagal, which is the connected state. It's where you feel really energized, alert. You're very put together and grounded. And so those are the three stages that they teach you in the theory to notice in your body of when you're in ventral vagal, when you're in dorsal vagal, when you're in sympathetic. So noticing even what stage you're in is helpful in and of itself because it's the same as naming emotions of, okay, I'm feeling shut down right now. I'm feeling dissociated. And then a lot of the work that we do is saying, okay, well, how can we learn what to do when you're in that state to. To get you back into a ventral vagal state? And then there's specific exercises you can do to stimulate the vagus nerve and be able to access the more physical side of getting into that. But then also on the mental health structured tools side of it is really being able to identify when you're in it, and then knowing what things help get you out of it. And it could be things like, okay, when I'm feeling really isolated and shut down, I need loud music, I need cold water on my face, I need my friends, I need to shake my body out and get myself up, whereas the opposite might be true. If you're in the sympathetic state, you're already up. You're too up. You have too much energy. You need to come down and down regulate. So ventral vagal is again, the middle ground. We have sympathetic is too far on one edge and dorsal is too far on the other. So obviously it's a lot more complicated than that. But that's the general basics of what it looks like in therapy. And then, Miles, you've had your own experience of how that has shown up in physical.

So I can kind of explain how some of the things I've been practicing have tackled that problem. It helps link the mind and the body together. And I think if more people gave some of this stuff a try, they'd be like, oh, wait, it's not some, like, far out there thing. It's like, this is what's going on in my body. And this actually does connect these two kind of world. So one of my things that really helped me understand the polyfagal theory and that getting into that super stressed response is like, without going into details, last year I was on a very stressful phone call with someone who was suicidal at the time. Peak of the conversation. Like, I felt my back just. And like, just be there. That was like a long thing to recover from. And it was one of those things that connected, like, oh, no, this is not a. This is not some, like, you know, like, I know theories and science sound like people are like, well, I have a theory about this. It's like, no, this is describing how something is. This is like that. We just need a little more scientific literary literacy there. But it's like, this is what's going on. And, you know, I've played with a lot of systems that have tackled some of these issues. There's two courses I'm studying now that have really helped me, like, connect the dots where it's like, oh, wait, no, when you can get in this thing and have these certain cues, like, you really feel that thing. So two, that I'm going on right now. And I'll try not to go too on too long about this. If I do just like, play the music or give me a sign or something. One course is called mewing, which is all about as weird as it sounds. It sounds about your head, your neck posture, and how your tongue posture can affect things. The rest of your body. We were talking about before with pelvic floor therapy. It's weird, but it's related. It's like these things up here, you know, when we're. When we're dysfunctional somehow up here. And again, not broken, just dysfunctional, Just shit we all pick up throughout our lives. We tend to hold tension in different areas, Things tend to shut down. We don't rotate well up here. And most everyone I talk to has some kind of neck pain or, or some kind of stiff neck type of thing. I know for me, like, I had a deviated septum from some Jiu Jitsu thing. And also I have like some TMJ dysfunction where, like, I noticed after a year of training Jiu jitsu, I was like, every time I open my mouth, my jaw clicks. Like, and that got bad and now it's still there a little bit, but it's significantly better than it was. And one thing the mewing course talks about is one of these weird things. They're like, we're used to biting up. We're actually almost supposed to like be biting down into our jaw here. It's like, that should be the sense of like, we're resting on top of it and not always kind of clamping up. And then your tongue's not kind of looking intense for this sense of stability as they can actually like rest on the roof of the mouth. And as this stabilizes, everything does down. But you know, your vagus nerve runs here throughout your body. It's right there. So it's like if there's something dysfunctional mechanically, it might also affect that and vice versa. The same thing with this other course I'm studying one of a kind fitness. But the beginning of it is like getting into certain positions and breathing and stabilizing and finding your center and, and it sounds simple, but like, as I practice those things, like, I find my body can find these resting states and it's like, oh, wait, this is what it feels like to actually be like in this balanced state of the body. And it just connects those things in a way that, like, for me, I'm, I'm very open minded, but I'm also very skeptical about things. But also I will consider almost any idea you throw at me if you tell me something. I'm like, well, let's experiment, figure it out. But that's the thing that for me is really solidified. It was like, wait, your physical practice can impact the mental practice and vice versa completely.

I agree. I, I know all about the TMJ dysfunction and I had my face sawed into with jaw surgery. And that was, yeah, that was, it was a fun recovery. And also there's, oh, it's another podcast, but the process of recovery is a whole. A whole thing. But for me, learning about the tongue position and how it does impact your mental state and your mental state impacts your jaw and your breathing because apparently you're not supposed to just walk around with your jaw clenched constantly. And that also increases when I am stressed out and being aware of these things, of my pelvic floor, of my breathing, of my jaw, then my body is learning that we're good, we're not dying. If you induce physiological states where your body feels like it's dying, it's probably going to be convinced that it's dying. And I was listening to the okf, one of a kind fitness and talking about the. I call them Lagrange points. It's a astronomy dorkiness where there's essentially, it's. There's different Lagrange points between the Earth and the moon and they're just essentially neutral. And there's emotional Lagrange points that I refer to as blissfully okay, where you're not ecstatic, you're not miserable, you're just, you're. You're centered. There is a lot of skepticism, and it's good to have a healthy sense of skepticism. And it's hard to believe things like vagal nerve exercises work. But I just wrote on my notes, we're electric fucking meat. That in itself is really fucking weird. And there are things that we may not understand yet. And we're getting there. And we. And it's also, if it works for you, it works for you. So before we wrap up, I just wanted to go through some of the questions that are. We have listeners. Our listeners sent us.

Yeah, absolutely. So we have two for you that we'll go over. So the first one is after two abdominal surgeries. I'm super protective of that area. How do I stop doing that?

That sounds brutal. Those sound like brutal surgeries. I just know from abdominal trauma, it all sounds terrifying. Yeah, those two systems are right now my favorite for linking things together, the OKF and the mewing, just for really starting you at a base level that almost anyone can do. I haven't worked with people with abdominal surgeries, but I work with people who are again, in their 80s and 90s and can do very little. So for me, I'm like, okay, if they can tolerate this, most people can tolerate it. You know, I have people who, you know, their bodies have been through the gamma. Like, I have a woman coming to my class who was diagnosed with Ms. Back in the 1970s. Not much she can do, but she can tolerate some of these things. What I like is they're a very gentle approach, and they're just like a learning how to access the nervous system. And, you know, I feel silly explaining some of the things, but just to go quick with that, for instance, with the mewing, the foundation of it, without going into any of the crazy stuff with it. They say, like, start with a smile. Learn how to, like, relax your face more. And we don't realize how much tension we carry in our face. But it's like you said, clenching your jaw. I was like, clench your jaw. This makes everything stronger. This is. This is how you should be. But it's like, you don't realize until you learn to relax and say, oh, that helps everything else relax a bit more. But a few of the things they talk about, like, you know, start with a smile. Just like, you know, you don't need a smile. Just think you're smiling. You know, you're not fighting against them. Clenching down. You're actually getting your body into extension. You're opening up the airway. You're letting your head sit in a nicer space. The eyes are a big thing, you know, raising up the eyebrows, but, like opening the face up, you know, think about, you know, breathing instead of just in here, breathing more, you know, following along the jawline with the eyes. They say, like, you know, imagine you're looking at, like a panoramic picture. You know, let your eye. Don't force it, just let your eyes open, let your vision expand a bit. The okay stuff as well, you know, their first start is laying on your back with your feet up in the air, toes slightly pointed in here is pointed out, knees kind of squeezing and like, trying to access that internal rotation of the body. And then just having the hands around the belly button and just thinking about breathing behind the belly button. And you do that as long as it takes. It's a frustrating one because you will guard like your body will be guard. Like if you've been through something traumatic, you're going to have a mental and a physical response to that. If you want to get deeper into that, you can look into some of the people who are into, like, the fascia work. People say emotions live in the fascia. I try not to make any big statements because we still don't understand much about that. You know, I got to look into a lot of the research behind the fascia last year in massage school, and they almost had us look into it to be like, yeah, we don't know much about it yet. For years, we didn't study it. And it's an incredibly complicated tissue to understand. So while I don't say just like a straight pure science quote, like emotions live in the fascia, I've definitely found the other. The fascia seems responsive to temperature, movement, speed of movement, and it would make a lot of sense that it's also integrated with, you know, your emotions, too. As you said before, you know, we're like electric meat suit things. Your fascia is this matrix that every single cell in your body sits in. It connects to every single thing in your body. We're not connected to the ground. We're not wired together. Our bones are floating in a sea of soft tissue. And that is a responsive tissue. And it's, it's a non Newtonian fluid. It reacts very different, very specific ways. So there is a rabbit hole to go down there. I would start at OKF and mewing and there's a lot of other interesting stuff there. But those things I would recommend to almost anyone. It's a very easy access point and it can help you deal with those things in ways that I haven't seen a lot of other things answer.

And I think also from a mental health standpoint of that question, when you experience trauma of any kind, physical or mental, your body is going to have a really hard time differentiating between true danger and discomfort. And so I think that's a really good place to start too. Of if you're feeling very protective of that area, it's because your body experienced true trauma to that space. So I think just in general, as we've talked about this whole time, the mind, body connection, learning to tune into that area of the level of pain you're feeling and being able to decipher when it's okay to push and when it's time to rest or slow down is really helpful in learning what danger looks like again and what is just regular discomfort and regular challenge. So I think just adding that tidbit in and then the next question. Oh, go on. Yeah.

Oh, I just wanted to add in. I again, don't have an education in it, but I've been learning some interesting things in pelvic floor therapy. Such as? It's called nociception. I guess it's how your brain detects danger. And without getting too graphic, when she was doing an internal exam, there was pain and there was nothing structurally wrong with the tissues. Nothing structurally wrong, no muscle tension, so to speak. But it was extremely uncomfortable. And it was my body guarding due to trauma. And what was Fascinating is that while she was still in me, for lack of a better term, she was actually, I don't know how you'd say it, almost kneading on the skin next to my leg. And for the record, it's very consent based, so this has all been run by me. And she was just tugging on the skin to my thigh. And what was fascinating about it was that because it was a novel sensation, my brain didn't regard it as danger and the pain was immediately gone. And it is a modality that you can explain. I don't know how to do with a domino, but it's just about providing new, gentle stimulation to your body and your brain so that your brain knows that it is safe.

That was so interesting. I love pelvic floor therapy. And anyway, so the next question, and before you answer it, I'm going to answer it. How many people have you seen recover and Exceed where they were before the injuries? So the reason I'm going to answer this first is because Miles has this habit of we go to a family event or really any group event, and a man in his 60s strikes up a conversation with Miles, finds out that he is a fitness slash rehab person and tells him, oh, my ankle is horrible, or my knee hurts or whatever it is. And I've done everything, I've done physical therapy, I've done all these things and nothing's helped. And Miles, I kid you not, will sit there for 90 seconds and say, hey, I think you should do this specific thing and see how that goes. And then for the next 10 years, all I hear, anytime I see that person is, you got to say hi to Miles for me, man. He saved my life. You don't understand. And then I hear from their wives, thank you so much because I could not deal with it anymore. You say, and I, I don't understand it, but I think it's the neurodivergent pattern recognition in our family that you somehow have these tiny, tiny details that you notice in what might be helpful for a person. And then they never shut up about it for the rest of their lives. So that's my answer to what lasting change you've seen from people. But to repeat the regular question, it's how many people have you seen recover and exceed where they were before Worthy.

First of all, thank you. I always like to hear about, when I've been brilliant with people, very annoyed. Because the people that you talk about, they didn't even get to hear my good shit. They didn't even get to hear me go in Depth, this is. That was just me throwing shit out when I was young. Pattern recognition, first of all, that's definitely something I've noticed. And again, I've seen that with you a bunch where it's like, how do you know these things? How do you under. But you just pick that up. Pattern recognition. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off and I feel like a freak sometimes because like when I'm like watching people's bodies, I'm like, God, I've been staring at this person's butt for a while and I'm really just looking at their gate mechanics. I hope they don't think I'm being weird. You know, I see that with my old folks a lot. You know, I look how the gate pattern is and you see like, oh, they're not really rotating here. And once it's like, it's like having a code. Like once you see it, you're like, I can pick that up from wherever. Like Olivia, you might get that with, let's just say like inner child work parts work. When someone says something, you're like, that's not you talking. That sounds like a seven year old.

Like you saying you don't like to talk about yourself or say nice things about yourself. Latch onto that like a pit bull.

That's why I like, before I go into the rest of the question, it's why I really like the idea of just gate analysis. You know, looking at gates. It's like that's how human beings develop. You we, we crawl, we stand, we walk, we run, we throw. If something looks kind of catty wampus in that, maybe there's something to look out there. And it's like addition by subtraction. It's like instead of looking at every minor thing and trying to look, I don't know how much, how much range of motion do you have here at the wrist and how much do you, how much can your big toe move? It's like, let's get back to the center. Let's get back to restoring this kind of gentle rotation throughout the body. And that's probably going to help and stuff like that. And like the feet and the ankles, I tell my residents all the time, like it's low hanging fruit. That's how we interact with the world. So I'll go from that again. Who I work with now are people in their 80s and 90s. The changes we see are maybe less dramatic than we'd see the other people. But I love them because they notice those changes. It's like instead of Like, I want to get in shape for the body. It's like I want to, like, you know, not be as scared of falling and deal with these aches and pains. One thing I've gotten into a lot with them that I've heard really good response from, besides the breathing stuff, is like, hand and foot exercises because, you know, everyone has achy hands and feet. Seems. And it's funny because we never. We never train those. That's not things that we ever focus on training because they look weird. And I get it because I feel weird when I'm teaching those two roomfuls of people and talking about them. But everything you're doing, your feet are always on the ground, your hands are always touching things and just. Just getting them moving a little bit, you know, getting them moving in certain ways, trying to get some more blood flow to that area, getting those tissues gliding. That has a lot of help. A few of my residents have told me, one woman said, you know, she likes to sew, and her hands always hurt after sewing, and now they don't. And it's not crazy, complicated exercise, but really just trying to get in tune with, like, how do we expand the hand? How are we, like, actively doing this? You know? One woman, she visits her family at the beach for the summer. Usually she came back and she was like, wow. She's like, I wanted to let you know about some of the exercises. She's like, I did the hand exercises. She's like, and so many things feel better. She's like, my hands were really starting to hurt. She's like, and I went to my doctor, and they were like, well, that's what happens. And she's like, I don't feel pain there anymore. So those are different. Different results than a lot of people are looking for, but they're an interesting one. And when I can get that at someone who's 88, I'm like, okay, think. If it works with you, it's probably gonna work for a lot of other people. And maybe if you work on this one, you're 30. You're just not going to feel so fucked up when you're 80.

So basically the. The short answer is more people than you can count, you've seen exceed beyond what their functioning was before from just doing some of the basic exercises and not even really being fully in it. Especially because most of what you're doing at your current job is group work. So people being able to benefit just from a group setting, if they were able to do it individually, it would probably be even More impactful, I'm guessing.

Yeah, probably. And one thing I've heard a lot from them, which I attribute to being a really slow learner, is they're like, you're really good at teaching and explaining why we're doing what we do. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, that's because I did not learn things quickly. I had to learn them in a very slow, painful way. So I learned that process. And if you really learn to love the process, that's going to help you. And I think that's just in general, like, knowing why you're doing what you're doing can help kind of connect those dots that might not connect otherwise.

Those were brilliant answers. Thank you. And I suppose that about wraps it up. If there's. If there are any resources you want to point people to and if you can let people know where they can find you, that'd be fantastic.

Yes. Yep. I'll start with that. Yeah. I guess the easiest way to reach out is reach out to my Instagram where I post all my weird standing on a basketball pages. But yeah, you can reach out to me on there. Don't panic. Four to fitness. I'm a big, big Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan. And I think it was also some idea of like, ah, people are going to get a little freaked out. So like, don't panic when you're sitting in your own body. So that's the way you can reach out to me where I kind of combine all these things with my own weird methods, the methods that have helped me the most. I'll just kind of list off the systems. You could follow them as you want. As I said before, one of a kind. Fitness and mewing by movemed. That's M O V M E D. Those are the two that I would guide people to where it's like, it's not overwhelming, it's. They seem like a pretty gentle teaching approach and they don't have a lot of red flags there. So I like those a lot. Other ones that have helped me a lot. The David Weck stuff has been really, really eye opening just for like unlocking movement, seeing a guy have this really like unconventional approach for a while. But that makes a lot of sense, you know, and he'll talk about things that a lot of other people aren't talking about. He talks about the skeleton. He talks about like, you know, the piezoelectric forces through the bones, like things that are not typical and someone who's kind of not afraid to go off the deep end and see what he found out there. So that guy's like a bit of a mad scientist. So I would look into his stuff. Fun character as well. Postural Restoration Institute really opened my eyes up to the importance of breathing and how that affects your posture in your gait. You know, they talk about how people get, you know, stuck on one side where they can't like really counter rotate both sides. So that's really changed my approach to looking at gate mechanics stuff. What else has been helpful? There's a group functional patterns which help me kind of get into that stuff. I, I have some red flags with them because they're very cult like, which is why I didn't want to go further into them because I don't really love some of their soft skills. Even though I, I really, I really enjoy their, some of their exercises and their methods. I have some qualms with it, but that one I would say like approach with caution, maybe take a look at, but don't dive into because they get a little off the deep end. Even though they're kind of brilliant. Those are the big ones I think that have really helped me. But again, I'd say the OKF and the mewing helped me connect the dots. Yeah, I think they've been the big ones, but I guess overall just like to view it up. For so many years we looked at kind of isolation of the body or body composition as being the end all, be all of things. I think the body's a lot more complicated than we realize. I think it's okay to stay grounded in science, but also be willing to kind of accept that it's probably more complicated than we know and that we're still just like on the cusp of that. We're like really just scratching the surface. I think there's a lot of really important things that exercise and movement can do, you know, for the brain, for relaxing the nervous system, for developing your brain and neuroplasticity. Like there's a lot more interesting things than like losing 20 pounds for summer.

Olivia, if you want to close this one out.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, thank you for coming on and sharing all of the mumbo jumbo with us. I think it can be really, for lack of a better word, girthy information to unpack. So I think it's helpful to be able to have resources to point people towards. And obviously you post a lot of videos of the weird stuff that you're doing. So I think in general being able to point people to things where they can watch videos of it and learn more about it is really helpful. I think even just having the introduction to it and hearing from somebody who has been in the arena of being in jiu jitsu, being in strongman weightlifting for years and seeing your body crumble and then putting it back together, I think that's really helpful for people to have some buy into it. So thanks for sharing all that. And yeah, I can't think of anything else.

Thank you both.

And that concludes this episode of Therapy Is My Therapy. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing so you never miss an update. Once again, thanks for tuning in. The content discussed on this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not act as a replacement for therapy. Although we may share tools that have worked for us and talk about symptoms that we've experienced, it is not meant to be used for diagnostic purposes and does not constitute medical advice.