Episode 13 – Emotion is lotion - Ft. Miles Pruznick | Pt 1

And eventually it was just one of those things where it's like I noticed I was training less and less and training was basically revolved around don't get hurt today.

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. Here's part one of our episode with Miles Prusnick. He's a certified strength and conditioning coach, massage therapist, strongman, jiu jitsu, brown belt, and all around movement enthusiast. Also, he's Olivia's brother. In this episode, we talk about his experience with physical and mental healing after injuries had him sidelined for over a year, and how the healing journey for both body and mind look virtually identical. Enjoy the episode.

So today we have a very special guest, my brother Miles. I'll let you go into the nitty gritty of all the things that you do because there's a long list, but I will start by saying Miles is physical health, as I am mental health in terms of the family direction. I know specifically you do a lot of work now with older adults with injury prevention, rehab, that kind of stuff, but if you want to just give us your little elevator speech of what you're about, what you do, why you're here.

All right. Just to throw my quick resume out, I guess. I am a certified strength and conditioning coach, recently a licensed massage therapist. The last three years, I've been working with the National Institute of Fitness and Sports, working in a senior living community. So pretty much like 99% of my clientele are like people in their 80s and 90s and a couple of people a little younger. Yeah. So that's definitely been an interesting approach to fitness. Over the years, I've done personal training in commercial gyms, worked in physical therapy, clinic or two, corporate fitness. But yeah, this has been like my longest and most independent tenure, I guess other than that. On like, the personal level, I've done a couple years of strongman and jiu jitsu. I think I've been doing both of them since 2015.

So another prisoner is that we really downplay the things that we do. So you're like, yeah, you know, I've done a couple strongman shows, done jiu jitsu a few years, and then you're like, well, you know, it's been actually like 10 and I went to strongman nationals. I'm like a 10th planet br. Round belt.

Well, it's very uncomfortable to say anything nice about yourself, so I've done years of therapy, so it's enough where I can kind of say a few semi nice things about myself, but not longer sitting. And that's super scary.

Your therapist hat wants to go on and be like, what's that about?

I mean, that's been our whole lives as brother and sister. Is Miles being like, hey, fix that form, and me being like, hey, fix that form mentally?

I love that. Yeah. If you want to describe. Actually, I'm going to go therapist. Say more. That's an interesting. That's. That's really interesting.

Just like the parallels between those two things.

Yeah, I think that will be the. For me, I've had my fair share of injuries and surgeries and my fair share of emotional trauma and the importance of mind body connection. They have been paramount in both domains. If you guys are good with it, My intention is to ask questions and nudges along and figuring out where things overlap and hear about your experiences and working with that and yours as well, Olivia.

You know, growing up, as we both kind of diverged into our own paths, I was going straight for psychology. Miles initially wanted to do physical therapy and then decided against it. But both of us were going down the path of one very much mental health, the other very much physical health. And we're always kind of saying to each other, hey, this might be a good course correction and vice versa. And I think both of us had a really hard time listening to each other because we're siblings. And then as we got older, we noticed both were kind of crossing paths like this. And then I started hearing Miles talk about things that I had told him about years prior. And I was like, hey, what do you mean you're doing this now? And he's like, yeah, mind, body. And I'm like, but I've been saying, mind, body.

Did you Columbus mind body connection?

Yeah, he did. He was like, hey, Olivia, you know, there's this thing called polyvagal theory. And I'm like, I've been saying that.

For the last three years.

There's a lot of roads up the mountain. I didn't realize how connected they were. Like, when I was younger, like, I'm like, yeah, there's physical health and there's mental health, and sometimes they intersect a little bit. But I didn't realize how, like, completely interconnected they are. So I did a very complete 180 on all that. I think, as a lot of men do, it's like, well, I'M just going to work on this physical stuff to avoid the mental work. And that worked for a bit, but it was sort of just going very much the wrong way. And so then definitely trying a mix of getting into mental health talk therapy and then also getting to the point where it's like, oh, I've got some mileage on my body now and picked up a lot of injuries and got to start recovering from that. And annoyingly that really needed both of those things to work together. But yeah, it was very interesting how, yeah, I think the mental health side really holds us back a lot. And things like, yeah, like polyvagal theory is fascinating because it's like the intersection of both, you know, and one really seems to help the other. So like they seem like they're great catalysts for fixing each other, I guess.

Yeah, don't worry, we're going to get into polyvagal theory a bit.

Good.

So as per our Instagram group chat, the question why do you mostly post videos of you standing really funny on a basketball?

That's a great question.

And it's a mix of some scientific reasoning, some just because it's what I like to do, and some cause like I saw a guy do it in a cool YouTube video. So the first bit of that is there is a world famous bull rider, JB Mooney, and he's just like a modern day cowboy and he's fascinating. One of his things, like he does not lift weights and a lot of the other guys there do lift weights and he has this great line, he's like, don't matter how strong you are, you ain't going to outmuscle a goddamn bull. So he stands on a basketball and he said that's the best way he can find to kind of like get his hips to like get related to how the bull tries to buck him off. And so I was like watching that, I'm like, well that looks fun and that looks interesting. I'm like, well that might help me like holding mount veteran jiu jitsu and like my top control. And so far it's definitely seemed to be helpful. Like I feel like I can connect a lot better after like really trying to get my body organized on top of a basketball. Also it's just like the neurodivergent urge to move around and fidget. And that's just the more advanced way for me to do it. And it's just something I'll do. Like I don't need to have a setup for it. I'm like, I'll Just stand on this basketball for a little bit and try and do different tricks. So it keeps me entertained as well, which is a lot of my training is just, like, what will keep me entertained and not bored after so many years of doing this kind of stuff.

I think that's a great attitude towards training because most people think training has to be work, but it can be fun. The focus is on movement. When the exercise becomes a goal, I feel that's when people lose the plot.

I think one of the biggest things I've seen, like, in my years of training, like, general population people, because the thing everyone wants to, like, grind, and everyone wants to train like athletes train. And obviously that's a very different thing. But for most people who want to, like, incorporate fitness into their lives and just be healthier, you just first, like, just got to get moving, and you have to make it less terrifying, and you have to make it less miserable, and you have to make it sustainable. And I think more like, play, which I know Olivia has been preaching for years, but it's like, you know, adults don't play. And that, like, a lot of that, too, is, you know, it's. You're just practicing and exploring movement. If you look at it, like, from, like, a developmental standpoint, that's how we learn as we're kids. You know, you practice, you know, crawling around, and then you practice standing up, and you practice walking, and they get a lot of repetition in through that, and they just do it. It's not a structured thing. It's not. You need to do three sets of 12. It's like, you just do that, and you kind of get in tune with your body. You know, it feels a little silly as an adult, but it's very beneficial, and it's a great way to get more movement in that's not grinding you down and is actually kind of building you back up.

I remember years ago when you were at least several years into your jiu jitsu journey, and I remember asking you, like, something along the lines of, what are your goals with this? Are there any specific milestones that you want to reach with jiu jitsu as your main hobby? And I remember you saying, I want to be able to do this when I'm 50. And I think that's a very noble, easy thing to say, but I think it can be much harder to actually do that. And I think it was very interesting for me noticing how that played out over the years of you having pretty serious injuries and not really doing a ton about them and doing your best to kind of rehab, but it wasn't really clicking. And what really showed for me is that last year, two years ago, whenever you reached, like, a block, like, these injuries are not going to be rehabbed unless I take a break. And you took what, like a year off of training? Yeah, that would be something to be interesting to talk about, is like, you know, you've done jiu jitsu years. You did strongman for years. You had these injuries that you tried really hard to rehab while also doing the sports. And it reached a point of you took it too far, and then it was, now you need to fully stop. So what was that experience like for you? And what things have you done that have allowed you to come back into those sports and be able to train at a level that was better than before in terms of physical wellness?

Hey, everyone. Small interruption here. No, your ears don't deceive you. The audio quality changes because we had realized that miles mic had an issue, and. And we took a few minutes to fix it. Now back to the show.

It was. It was horrible. And I tried to avoid it as long as humanly possible, and eventually it was just one of those things where it's like, I noticed I was training less and less, and training was basically revolved around, don't get hurt today. And even when I didn't get hurt, I would still go home and be, like, stiff and immobile for the rest of the day. And walking around like an old man. And also, getting to work with old people gives me, like, a peek into the future where I'm like, ooh, these people are not moving well. And. And they did not do 10 years of Jiu jitsu. So I need to take some steps, because, you know, you don't think about falls when you're young, but when you see them all the time, you're like, ooh, yeah, like, when your knees go, you fall. That's not a fun thing to do. So eventually, you just kind of realized, I'm going to need to take quite a few steps back if I want to keep doing this for a few more years, let alone 30 more years. So it was not a fun or easy thing, but it was just like realizing, like, okay, this is too much physical injuries. There was other just stressful things going on in my life. So it's like, all right, we got to take take time to recalibrate and actually just get in tune with this stuff. I was hoping it would be, like, a month or two, and it ended up being a year, and now I'm Slowly, like reintegrating back into Jiu jitsu. Like it might be like once a week right now, but I can definitely tell the difference now where after training I feel good, my body feels resilient. Things that used to hurt me now feel good. And like, I get home, I feel good, the next day I wake up and like, things aren't hurting, my back's not hurting, it doesn't feel like my shoulders are falling out. So that's been very worth taking the time off. It's also changed my Jiu Jitsu game. Like, I feel like I'm much more in tune with kind of how moves are supposed to feel, that idea of like connecting to people more. So I definitely feel like it's much better in the long term. And it's easy to say that now that I'm back to training. But yeah, it was, it was exceptionally miserable to take time off for a million different reasons. It showed how much I was relying on that for helping my mental health. It showed how much I was relying on that for burning out a lot of energy. And yeah, I felt like a very broken down old man. And there was quite a few times where I was like, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get back to this because that's the only thing I didn't realize, like taking time off, I thought, oh, things will start feeling better in a few weeks. And I'm like, everything. I still feel pretty fragile and honestly, worse. And I'm like this. I hope I didn't do too much damage. So the good news about it was it did help me get a lot more in tune with, with my body. And the one nice parallel with that. And another reason I took time off is because I was doing massage therapy at the time. So that was taking up two nights of the week. So I wouldn't have been able to train that anyway. That's also harder on your body than I had realized. I'd heard people talk about that and I'm like, yeah, I'm like, you're doing something. But I'm like, I've lifted, you know, 350 pound Atlas stones, so I think I'll be fine. But when you're having to like be bent over and massaging people for like 60, 90, 75 minutes, yeah, it wears on you in a different way. And you really need to learn your body mechanics. That's like the big thing they try and teach you is like, you need to do this for longevity. Because the average career for that is like two or three years. So I was like, okay, I need to learn this. I need to take the time to like, if I'm learning the healing stuff, let me just dive into that instead. Take the time off, you know, breaking my joints down. And I was also scared. I'm like, I don't want to like mess my hands up at jiu jitsu and then not be able to what I need to do for school. So, yeah, it was a really long, painful process. I'm really glad I did it, but if I hadn't been kind of forced into it, I just wouldn't have done it. It's like I wasn't volunteered. I was voluntold.

I feel that on a spiritual level and a physical level, because I've been doing martial arts or lifting or some sort of activity for a long time. And Covid was when I was voluntold to take a break by the government, which is a whole other topic that we won't get into.

Yeah, we'll just avoid that minefield.

Yeah. No, in total in Canada, it was about two years. While frustrating as it is to have all my friends be higher belts now because they were finding ways to train during that, I also look at them and they are in so much pain. They are falling apart because they didn't stop. And that's for the athletes. It makes sense. You're on a timeline, you have to take advantage of this. But for everyone else who is doing this for longevity, there is something to be said about truly giving yourself a break. I used that time, those two years off to rehab my whole body because I just broke, especially with the lack of movement due to lockdown. My back just started giving out every two weeks. So those two years were spent learning to have a mind body connection and learning to have a relationship with my body that isn't punitive or, or constantly redlining it. I'm very curious, Olivia, with you in therapy, there's gotta be parallels here where people are forced, sometimes court mandated to take a break and sort their shit out. And I would love to hear you talk about what that process is like.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's, there's so many ways I've experienced this throughout my life of, you know, I think physically I've realized that on my own of times with lifting weights or any other movement, of being able to really tune into my body and listen to it when it says slow down so that I don't have to listen to it when it screams stop. And I think that's something that Covid really showed a lot of people is that, yeah, you can. You can push and you can go as hard as possible and never take a day off and just hustle and wake up at 4am and that whole crowd, but at some point, you're going to run yourself into the ground. And then when you want to get started again, it's going to take way more effort. And I always use the analogy with my clients, and I'm. I'm really want to talk about this because I always wait the last minute possible to get gas in my car. But that's always the analogy I use, that is if you wait until your car runs out of gas to get gas, you have to put so much damn gas in it just to get your car to start again. And then now you got to fill the tank and now you're doing permanent damage, probably to your car, is what I've been told. And I learned that through the literal metaphor of my car running out of gas on the highway and Miles had to come get me. And it took, when I tell you, two trips back and forth to the gas station to fill that little red thing until my car started again. And I think that metaphor is really helpful for people because if you get gas before you're spent, it's going to be way easier to keep moving. And I think a lot of times there's this misconception that when you're telling people to slow down and you're telling them to rest, you're not understanding the need for the bigger picture. Right. Especially with athletes like, yeah, it's your career. There's times where you really have to push. But if you don't slow down at times and do the preventative things for injury and then also mental health, whole other side of it, you're gonna get stopped. Now you have a huge injury that is gonna take you a year to recover from, rather than if you were doing it over time for miles, if you had done the preventative work of all this weird funky movement stuff over time, you wouldn't have had the experience of needing to take a year off. Probably.

Yeah, it's one of those things. Like, I would have never done it because it was completely boring and it was something I wouldn't do unless I had to. But, yeah, it's. It's the big thing. I hope that in the future for both physical and mental health and just things in general, people can learn to, like, learn those basic building blocks first and, like, build a foundation and not just pile on top of a very fragile foundation, because I think that's. That's going to be better for everyone for a lot of reasons.

Yeah, absolutely. And the same thing with mental health is that for, you know, all the metaphors we use of physical and mental health, if you are going through things in your life, you don't always have the choice to stop. And a lot of times what happens is if you grow up in a home or had experiences when you were young where things were just piled on top of you with no ability to stay, slow down, stop, I need rest, then that's going to be really hard for you to learn that growing up. And I think a lot of times what happens is people use physical movement as ways to gain control of that sense of, I can just keep pushing and I get to decide when I stop and I'm strong and I don't need to. So I think that's where the two kind of meet. Very, very much so. Of like, well, I'm injured, but I can keep going.

And it's hard, you don't realize, but that becomes part of your identity, and that becomes a point of pride. It wasn't like I was bragging about it, but it was like there was a sense of pride to be like, yeah, my body's torn to shit, and, you know, like, both my knees have been popped plenty of times and my elbows hurt all the time. And it takes me, you know, five minutes to get out of bed because my back hurts this much. But, like, everyone else is there. So it's like, you're in that club. You don't get cool points for taking time off and take care of your. You know, you get cool points for showing up dinged up and still pushing through it. So, yeah, it. It required a. Definitely a different type of something there. But I'm very glad that that came about because, like, now kind of coming through the other end of it, it's very helpful. I mean, the same thing is, like, going to therapy. It's much cooler just to, like, compensate with other things. You know, you can get just like, I have a dark sense of humor, and I do this and I'll do this thing and I'll. It's much harder to sit down and just get to the root cause of certain issues. It doesn't feel as fun. But that's kind of the secret recipe.

It seems like when Olivia was talking about the. It's a jerry can, the red can, to fill up with gas when you run out of gas because you've let things go for too long. I found this, this notion in my head where while you're getting gas, you also are in danger of getting hit by other cars. And that definitely applies to physical and mental therapy or mental healing, is that if you let things go on for too long and now you have to go and heal, and you're also in a more vulnerable state, you're in danger of getting flattened by a semi truck of life. It's interesting because I train at tristar, which has some fairly well known fighters. And it's interesting because a lot of the younger ones will have that pedal to the metal. Just train for four, five, six hours a day. They feel that they're doing what they're supposed to do. But then thankfully, people like George or gsp, he will actually talk about training smart, as in you're doing a couple rounds of grappling and you're feeling exhausted and tired by round five. Don't keep going. You don't need to keep going. It's about quality, not quantity. And he talks about Prehab as well. He really values Prehab because he's torn two ACLs. And the confusion that the young guys have on their faces when they are presented with that knowledge because they're 19 and they're invincible at this time. I mean, I can speak for myself. My trying to be tough and going another round in grappling, that cost me my acl. So there is definitely wisdom. And unfortunately for many, it's only when they get really hurt or are forced to take a break that they realize how important these things are.

I had a good question just in terms of miles, your journey, healing your physical injuries and really realizing how much longer it was going to take, how has your mental health journey impacted that in the sense of making you more able to handle the time off. And like you said, you know, you didn't realize how much you were using Jiu Jitsu for your mental health until you didn't have it.

Yeah, it's completely related. They went hand in hand. And I often found, like I needed one to help the other, even if it wasn't required. It was a huge catalyst. Things that might have taken me, you know, years, instead took months. Again, I know Olivia was the first one to tell me about the Body Keeps the Score book, which is fascinating and I'm working my way through. That's one of those books. I feel like you can read the book, but you get 40% of the meaning of the book just from the title. Just the Body Keeps the Score makes some intuitive sense. It sounds like an out there Thing, but it's like, no, the body holds on to things, and that's very related. And that's something I realized with myself. It's something I realized in massage therapy because that was something that required me to be, you know, prolonged physical contact with someone. That wasn't them trying to choke me unconscious. It was us trying to get into a meditative state. We're letting them relax and easing them down. I mean, that's the thing they teach us about transference that you get in, like, talk therapies. The same thing there. They're like, if you're stressed, they're going to pick up on that. They're like, if you're nervous, if you're anxious, like, you need to be, you know, calm, secure in what you're doing. And like, you know, my professor would tell me sometimes she'd be like, she's like, this is a friend of mine. They've been through a lot, so just, you know, ease into things with them. And kind of learning how to get in that zone made me realize, like, yeah, like, the body holds onto things. The body clenches up and tightens on to certain things. And just with myself, as I got more and more deeper into rehabbing the body, like, there's. I guess this works for physical or mental things. Like, there's certain things you don't realize how long you've been holding on to until you release it. That's one of the big things that's helped my low back go from feeling constantly tight to feeling like, great, now you don't realize how much you're clamping down and stuck in, like, that survival, injury protective mode until you let go of it. The body protects things. You know, if you've had an injury, you are afraid of going back into that range. And sometimes that's necessary in the beginning. You know, you need that to get that initial healing. But it holds onto it way longer than it needs to. I could not have healed things in my body without also being able to get into that peaceful, meditative therapisty type of state. It's so interrelated and like, I'm realizing that more and more the more I practice it.

Playing off of what you just said in regards to massage therapy and therapy therapy. I'm kind of curious. This may be a bit of a tangent, but what were your first sessions like in a physical therapist office and in a therapist therapist office? Because I'm realizing mine were very similar where I had an itinerary. Let's stay here. I'm going to Chatter incessantly and dear God, do not let me go back into my body.

It's uncomfortable to sit in your own body. It's uncomfortable to sit in your own head. It's uncomfortable to sit in your own body. Massage therapy. The first couple of sessions, I had a really good professor. And our first couple of sessions, we all had questions like, is this this muscle or this one or what's this thing? What technique should I be using? She's like, I just want you right now to be comfortable having your hands on another person for a while. She's like, that's a weird thing. Just do that. It reminded me of my first few talk therapy sessions where you sit there and you're like, what am I supposed to say? Like, what are we doing? And it's just like, this is horrible. This is a very uncomfortable thing. And you see in physical therapy, too, a lot of people have never really consciously thought about their movement before because you don't need to, you know, you don't need to, or you don't realize it's an important thing. So, yeah, that's. It's the first very annoying step. The way I try and teach people about this now is like, the first step of anything sucks and is boring and you don't want to do it. You know, like, I'd love to learn a new language someday. I want to learn a new language to converse with people and read books and hear the movies. But the first steps are learning, you know, the basics and the grammar and the basic building blocks. And it's miserable, and it's not fun in the beginning. Being a white belt in jiu jitsu sucks because you're going to get your ass kicked for a year at minimum. It's like, you just show up and get your ass kicked, and you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know which way's up. Anything that's worth having is, like, really. That first step is really a difficult period. So, yeah, that's. That's a hard thing to get to. And I was talking to a friend of mine who's like my age, and his. His body's just, you know, he was like a college baseball player. His shoulders are just shot. His low back hurts a lot. And I was like, well, buddy, I'm like, let me get you on the table sometime. We'll go over little things. We'll do some, like, breathing techniques and just, like, see if we can do that. I'm like, you're 31. You shouldn't feel like you can't move around anymore. You have a long life ahead of you. And I was like, it's not just do this exercise. I'm like, it takes mental focus. He goes, I don't want to do that. Like, I know you don't want to do that. I don't want to do it either. It's not fun. But like, you mentioned with, like, with like, gsp, it's like, you know, you see so many people who know how to grind, but when you look at that top elite level, generally they have a different approach. You know, some of them are just, like, they're just blessed. Like, you get people who just, like, you know, they were just touched by the hand of God. It's like a Jon Jones. Like, you could just do those things. But a lot of people who need to learn, you know, they need to learn that balance. I don't want to get too weird with my annoying new spirituality stuff, but, like, it's like that yin yang thing. Like, you overbalance one, it's gonna come back and bite you. And they like, you need to know how to push, you need to know how to grind, but you need to know how to relax. And when they've studied the neurology of top athletes, like, I know, like, Stu McGill looked at this, and he found the best athletes are the ones who can relax the fastest. You know, if you watch, like, a great sprinter or a great jumper or a great anything, they're people who, they know how to turn it all on, but they know how to turn it all off. If you're stiff all the time, it's not going to work. That's how you unleash the body. It's how you unlock everything.

I think I'm thinking of CRO Cop sleeping before his fight in terms of being able to turn things on and off. And I've also learned through listening to podcasts and speaking to special forces operators, they operate the same way in terms of who makes it through selection. It's not simply who's the toughest. And for them, it's actually usually not who's the most athletic, because you don't want Ferraris, you want Toyotas, because high maintenance is high maintenance. And they mentioned that the ones who really make it through are the ones with the strongest mind, body, connection, and the ones who are able to immediately regulate after the suffering is over. You just chill and you sleep. You do whatever, you recover as quickly as possible. And, I mean, that has been my issue because I thought I could just grind harder and harder. But I had no idea how recovery worked because it was never modeled for me. Chinese immigrant parents who worked 18 hours a day. What's rest? It's actually going to be one of my questions. I think it's that notion of stay hard, that grind mentality, embrace the grind, so on and so forth. But no one wants to do soft shit. They don't want to do the recovery because it's boring. And I don't know if I'm off base with this, but I have truly begun to understand that I have to recover as hard and possibly as long as I've trained. I trained for one hour. I might have to recover for a another hour. It sucks, but it is what it is. And McGill talks about the bank account theory when it comes to back pain is that you're taking money out of a bank account when it comes to a happy, low back, and eventually you go into debt and you got to pay that back. Once you get to a nice, stable point, you have to do nice things for it and you have to keep putting money back in. You can't just assume that I'm okay now and off we go to destroy my body and do the exact same behaviors that we. We did before.

That's the thing. You see so much. And I've been guilty of this completely. Everything that I lecture people about now I'm like, this isn't something that I've heard about. I'm like, this is a mistake I've made a million times until I finally stopped making it. So I'm not judging anyone for it. But yeah, it's like, okay, I'll feel good enough now and then get back into it. My rehab used to be like, okay, how can I get to the next training session? Or feel a little bit better for now? But, yeah, then how am I actually going to be able to do this long term? But yeah, like you said, it was perfect. Like, you need to put as much energy or more into the recovery. It's not as sexy, it's not as quick, but it's. It's much more sustainable long term. My. My favorite thing on the Internet, my favorite thing I've ever seen on YouTube is this video of a Best Buy employee. It's called the Juice versus the Sauce. And he's. He's lecturing these other employees. I. This man has like this weird wisdom for just this random dude. He's like, you know, he's like, there's the juice versus the sauce. He's like, how long? How long? Simply lemonade Lasts in your fridge. It's like week, maybe two weeks. It's like, how long barbecue sauce last? Long time. It's like, it's built, sticks around and, you know, like, it is. It is. It's hard to take that longer approach. It's hard to really put time into it again. It's. It's not a sexy thing to, like, focus on recovery, but it's invaluable. Looking back on it now, like, it's how much again? And I could say this exact same thing for, you know, talk therapy or the physical body rehab I've had. And honestly, it's like the same thing at this point. But, you know, for years I avoided sitting in my own head or sitting on my own body. But now the ability to do that and just sit there and be able to relax and feel good and just be at peace with it, it's like, oh, this is. This is. This is worth more than money could buy. Like, it's. It's such a different feel, but it's something, you know, you don't realize it until you feel it. Like, that's. That's the weird thing about it.

Yeah. The first time I did box breathing and my nervous system actually wasn't going, hey, I'm like, this. This is what people feel like. This is a feeling you can actually attain.

Yeah.

And, oh, God, I'm just.

I'm just nodding with agreement. I've had those same moments. Like, oh, wait, like, you don't always need to be up here. Like, I don't need to be at a nine all the time. I could sit at a three. Like, I can just chill. I tell people now, like, I'm like, yeah, I'm like. Like my back doesn't hurt anymore. Like, barely at all. I'm like. I almost say a zero, maybe a one, just to be like, something. Like, it's. It's a feeling I've not even before trainings I've never had before. But it feels like the exact same thing. It's like having that allows my body to be at rest, and it allows my brain to be at rest. I think a lot of people think it's like, that's like a not practical thing. Like, that sounds like a soft science type of thing. But I'm like, you know, your brain's in your body. If you have more stability in your body, you're going to have more stability in your mind. Your central nervous system can be haywire, but that's your brain and your spine. If you learn how to, like, Stabilize and have that supported and feel good. Everything else is going to be better. You're going to breathe easier, you're going to sleep better, you're going to recover. But like, everything's going to click into place. It's just. That's a hard journey to get to that.

Absolutely. In regards to therapy, I'm going to call it therapy therapy. I didn't understand the point of self talk and why it matters and why I should change. Even David Goggins would blanch at the way I spoke to myself. And I didn't understand why the hell I should change that. It has gotten me to this point. I've done decently for myself as a human being. Never mind the constant ulcers and destroyed relationships, ignore those over there. But when I learned to have more compassion with myself and it freed up so much real estate in my head. When I don't hate myself and I'm not terrorized in my own brain all the time, I feel that's the same way with stability, physical stability, and mobility as well. And for me, my body was completely locked up and I had to have this information presented to me by my friend, Dr. Jen Crane. And she said it's about getting them well supported enough that your brain can actually let these other muscles go. You think you have to work on, say, your elbow, but you actually have to work on your shoulder or your chest. And once that feels solid enough and safe enough to your brain, it will start to chill out the other parts of your body.

We use this saying a lot in therapy, and I think it applies to both, is how are you going to heal something that you hate? I think a lot of times when we're in pain, we blame our body or we blame our mind. We have super critical thoughts. And that's generally not going to be long term conducive to feeling better. Because to heal your body, to heal your mind in therapy, physical therapy, et cetera, you have to be tuned in to where your body is in pain. And if we're hating it, we're not going to be tuned in because we're going to be angry at it and we're going to shut down. And so I think that's just a very simple way to describe a very complex issue. But I think that's a big parallel of both is like you have to find a way to not be angry at yourself and at your body for not working. Because if things in your mind and things in your body are shut off or acting out, it's because they need Support. And that's our job, to give that support.

That reminds me of. I, I love the quote. I see it like advertised as like a T shirt on Instagram sometimes and I gotta get the shirt at some point says, empathy is more rebellious than a middle finger Having, you know, gentleness or compassion to yourself is harder than being angry because angry is the first easy thing. Like, Tanya, so you were saying before, like, some things you need for survival mode. You know, like, you're like, well, it got me this far. Can see that with, you know, physical and mental things I've had that where I'm like, well, this, this compensation pattern has gotten me through this, this and this. You know, it's like, oh, well, my back hurts. It's like, well, guess what, I can lift this heavy thing around. Or like, this could help me with this thing. This has helped me get this job or do well at this competition or just be able to be capable with myself. So it's like, why would I want to get rid of something that's getting me this far? Like, maybe I can take this with that, but it's, it's a tough one to deal with.

Yeah. And in regards to blaming your body, when your body finally breaks, it is very, very easy to blame yourself for being weak, to just be pissed off at your body for betraying me. I've had that happen a lot. It's not weak. In fact, it got you this far. Honestly, it let you get away with your bullshit and how you treated it. It is actually pretty wondrous that you are still in one piece at this point. Same with coping mechanisms and same with how I acted as a young girl or teenager. It's something I admittedly still struggle with in therapy, is not rejecting that smaller, tiny version of myself for being weak or for having whatever. But then when I reframe it and think of the things that she went through, I go, she went through a lot. And it's now time to actually do my work as an adult to allow her to just chill the fuck out and just go be a kid. And same with your body. Just to let you know, your body simply be. And relax. I had a question for both of you in regards to healing journeys. Fucking hurt and they're annoying. Part of physical therapy was I thought I was strong. And Olivia's heard this part, but I thought I was strong. But it turns out I was just a world class compensator. And when I was placed in a position again. Jen Crane is a demon. A sadistic demon from the inquisition. Era and placed in shapes where I couldn't compensate. And just seeing how underdeveloped or uncultivated this movement was and just being, just being bested by a fucking extra light elastic band over and over, it is humbling. And I would love to hear both of your experiences and thoughts on helping people get over that fucking frustration.

Yeah, healing is the most frustrating thing in the world because it is slow. And I like to call it the never ending to do list because it really is not a end goal. It's a practice and it's a process. There's not like a place where you reach where you say, okay, I'm done now. And I think that's what's really hard for people. Especially when we look at athletes or other people who really value physical movement and who are very motivated by goals, they want to be able to say, you know, I beat therapy, I finished my mental health journey, like that kind of mindset. And so I think from the mental health standpoint of it, being able to learn how to sit with the frustration is really important. And it's not like the frustration ever goes away. At least I have never seen it go away. And being a therapist and being in therapy as a therapist, you've been behind the curtain. So you know, it doesn't make it any less frustrating for yourself that I think a lot of times when we see things in the media, on movies, TV, etc. Like things are presented in like this really like neat box with a bow on it of okay, will you just do this hard thing? And then things go well and then the credits roll and everything's great. And so I think learning to just be with the frustration is what I work a lot on with my clients. Yeah, there's going to be times where you don't feel as good mentally as you did two weeks ago. And that doesn't mean you're regressing because it's not linear and nothing is really linear. I know that relates a lot with physical stuff that just because you've done something with really good form and felt better about it for a hundred days in a row, doesn't mean on the 101st day you're not going to do something and feel like shit. So I think that makes it really hard to get buy in because it's not clean and clear and fun. But as we've talked about before, like the cost of not doing it is so large and once you are bought into it, you see in your day to day life how things that used to stick to me, just fly right off. So I think on the mental health end, the answer, which is not a fun one, is just you don't get rid of the frustration, you just learn how to roll with it.

Yeah, that's. That's relatable. That's one of been one of the very annoying things about getting into things. Like meditation is like, oh, you just, you just sit in the moment and you just experience the stuff and it's not like, oh, the bad stuff goes away. It's just like, yep, that's there too. And this other stuff's there and it's all just kind of washing through me. Something you said before reminded me of. It was. It's like a Ram Dass quote where he says, he's like, after all these years of healing, he's like, I haven't gotten rid of a single one of my neuroses, but I can just look at them now. I can see them. They don't control me. Which reminded me a lot of. I remember when I started training, my coaches relayed an Eddie Bravo metaphor, which was great. And he's like, look, he's like, you don't kill the ego. He's like, the ego's there and you need that. He's like, but you should be a black belt and your ego should be a blue belt. You should be able to control it however you want. You guide it. It doesn't guide you. You know, you don't, you don't have the dog walk. You. But yeah, and what you said before, to buy in is ridiculously hard. And the thing I found in fitness is like, buy in is easy to get if you beat the shit out of someone. And it's very hard if you're like, well, we need to take some time to work on, like, you know, your breathing and your compensation patterns and how you stand. And I didn't realize that until I started working with old folks because, you know, I work with geriatrics now. People in their 80s and 90s, they can't do as much, so they're okay starting at ground zero, because that's where we are. We're just taking it day by day and like, hurts on them, so they're, they're okay listening to those things. But when I worked in commercial gyms, I mean, like, again, my first gym, it's not like they didn't, it wasn't like ill intentioned. But when we'd get people that'd be like, you know, like, you know, they're interested, you know, just give them A good workout, like beat them up and like, you show them they're out of shape, you know, and I didn't try and do that. But, you know, you would, you would push people and, you know, I try and teach people a little bit of things, but if you're not making them feel like they got a good workout on day one, they're probably not going to work with you. They're going to go with the guy who does do that, even if that guy's making him throw up and injure themselves. They're like, yeah, it's a great trainer. They push me harder than I know how to push myself. And like, yeah, it's the same way. I feel how everyone's into David Goggins now. I'm like, look, there's a lot of things he says that I'm like, I like this thing and I understand this and I get where this comes from. The guy's a fascinating story, but especially for the average person, 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. So, yeah, working with old folks has been great because, like the buy in was much more just them trusting me, that I was there and trying to help them. And then they, they allow me to do that and build stuff up. And so now, three years later, when I introduce something, they're open to it. But it's been one of the hardest things in the fitness thing is just like getting that buy in and getting them to trust. Especially when weird stuff, you know, you mentioned before, it's like, oh, well, this is hurting. How is this related to this? What's really helped me where I'm like really into fitness stuff now is like really just looking at the whole body, you know, like looking at the whole body and how the whole body moves in particular, if we can look like if we want to condense it down, like looking at the gate cycle, it's like, well, how do we move with this? You know, what side's not rotating, what side's over rotating? Where are we? Too tight? Where are we? Hyper mobile. And so one of the big things there is like, you know, getting back to the center, you know, learning your breathing practices, learning how, like the rib cage and the pelvis counter rotate, you know, those kinds of practices, from what I've seen, they have so much more value and so much longer lasting value, but they're not fun at the beginning. You know, you might need to take two months of just practicing stuff that's kind of clicking. And it's something I'm trying to learn how to teach now because I get to teach every day. And I get to teach at least 90 minutes of exercise Monday through Friday, usually a little more. And then I practice it myself because I'm like, well, this is helping my hobbies and my interest and my teaching and my career. And even so, it's frustrating. You know, it's been a couple months of practicing. I'm like, okay, this is finally starting to click a little bit. I'm starting to really feel the difference. But that's me who, like, this is my big focus in life. It's really hard to translate that to someone else. So it's, it's a tough wall to get over. I'm trying to figure that one out right now.

I believe it. I mean, I was one of those stubborn bastards that wanted just to be put through the paces during a workout. That has now changed because I'm actually more interested in the coach that goes, let's work on your breathing. And I was just thinking of a sentence I'm, I'm certain people would hear or that you two would hear from people, is that, why would I need you to teach me how to breathe? I know how to breathe. Why would I need you to Listen? I have jujitsu as my therapy, and when it comes to, say, breath work, you don't realize how important it is until you, you ain't breathing.

Absolutely. And two things actually, I wanted to say with that one just general thing. And then I have a little story after that, and I see both sides of that too, because, like, there's people who get so into the, you know, quote unquote, like, functional fitness side where it's like you, you know, you might be helping things, but you do feel more fragile and you can't get back to some of those fun things that push you a little bit more. That's, that's a hard thing to get over because, like, people can become a little over obsessed with it. You know, you see that with some functional fitness posture stuff where it's like, okay, you might do this and feel better, but you're not doing what you used to do. Or it's not getting you back to the activities you loved. That was the thing for me. I'm like, look, I want to feel better, but I want to feel better so I can still, like, you know, roll around with guys and lift some heavy rocks and, you know, do things that feel good. I don't want to just exist with it, which might be fine for people, but it's hard to get over that hill there, you know? And breathing is so interesting and so. So multifaceted and so deep. I've heard that from my clients before where, like, especially the old folks, they're like, I know how to breathe. I'm like, I know you know how to breathe. But, like, maybe we can focus on, you know, shifting from mouth to nasal breathing. Maybe we can focus to more, like, you know, diaphragm breathing. And that's so complicated. The deeper you go down that rabbit hole, it's like there's so much more that you realize about yourself. You know, your. Your body's going to breathe, and we pick up these compensatory powders, but your body's not going to stop breathing. And that's an interesting thing I'm learning, too, is like, so much of the tightness and the restriction we feel, too, can be so related to that breath work type stuff, because you, you know, if you can't use your primary breathing muscles, you're just going to use the accessory breathing muscles, which is going to tighten up everything here, and then it's going to shut down your neck rotation, and then your body's gonna have a hard time relaxing, but you're not gonna stop breathing. And again, that's been a process that I've been learning as I practice myself and with my clients, and I'm open with them. Like, I'm learning this as we go, and I'm learning it as I teach you. You know, the feedback I get, positive or negative, is helping one of my favorite residents, who I love her because she'll. She'll tell me what she thinks. And this I'm glad she told me. Afterwards, she's like, after class one day, she's like, miles, she's like, I really want to let you know about the breathing work we've been doing. I was like, okay. She's like, I really hated it for a while. And I was like, okay. And she's like, no. She's like, really? She's like, I was sitting there, and she's like, what is this guy doing? She's like, we're here to exercise. And he's having us breathe. But she's like. She's like. But last weekend, she's like. I was walking and she's like. And I realized I was always holding my breath. She's like. And I started breathing. She's like. And I realized my posture opened up and my balance felt better and I could walk a little longer. It's. I mean, I was feeling that on my run today. I'm like, you know, when I'm running, I'm trying to think, like, okay, like, you know, remember to keep breathing.

And.

And as you breathe, you're like, oh, yeah. Like, this lets my rib cage rotate. This actually opens up the intercostals more. This allows me to stay centered. And I'm certainly not like, I'm a very middle of the road runner, so that's not necessarily making me faster, but it's making me feel good through the run. I used to hate running, so I'm like, well, I have a stitch in my side and my knees hurt and my back hurts and everything's jostling around, and I feel like, you know, just like a bag of bones running around. Now running at least feels good. So I can have an idea of like, okay. I'm like, this is probably how a good runner feels running, you know, way faster than I am. But like, I was feeling at the same. Like, okay, you know, if you keep breathing, like, that actually does help the body work. But it's been a long road to that.

In regards to the old lady, one of our first episodes, I went into therapy. I was basically, fix my crazy. We're here to just talk about how I hate my mom. And then she kept asking me, how does your body feel? And I was telling Olivia I hated it because it didn't seem like it mattered. And then eventually wax on, wax off moments happened. And having that awareness is allowing me to have deeper relationships with myself and others. And it's funny because I've been getting into pelvic floor therapy, and people think that it's only for pregnant ladies who pee themselves, but it's for anyone with a torso or who breathes, which I think applies to most people. And the last vestiges of my back pain have been fading because we've been doing work on nervous system, because there's often also a flip side where people think that there's something wrong with them, there's something structurally messed up in what they're doing, or that they're crazy. And it turns out, no, sometimes the work is not more work. It's actually just letting yourself chill and letting your brain know that it's safe to essentially come out.

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.