HEALTHY Body AGING: A Physio’s Guide to Longevity, Posture Alignment & Pain-Free Living

Elke Bilger, therapist at The Balance RehabClinic, shares a practical and honest look at how the body holds stress, tension, and past experiences. With years of experience in physiotherapy, she talks about the importance of movement, alignment, and safety in the healing process.

In this episode, Elke explains how daily stress, poor posture, surgeries, and emotional experiences can all show up in the body. She walks us through her hands-on approach — combining muscle release, alignment work, and real lifestyle change — to help people reconnect with their bodies and feel more at ease. 

Healing, as Elke reminds us, isn’t just about treating pain. It’s about listening to the body, supporting it in the right way, and creating long-term balance from the inside out.

🔗 Watch now for a grounded conversation on movement, healing, and what it means to truly feel well in your body. 

About Elke: Elke’s path into physiotherapy was driven by a deep curiosity about the human body and a genuine passion for movement, health, and healing. Since qualifying in 2001, she has developed a specialized focus on massage therapy—recognizing its often underestimated power. Her clinical experience taught her that true physical wellbeing comes not just from treating symptoms, but from restoring muscle health, balance, and relaxation at the root. For Elke, massage isn’t just a technique—it’s a vital tool for long-term recovery, strength, and resilience.

For further mental health information and support, visit The Balance RehabClinic website: https://balancerehabclinic.com/

Follow Elke Bilger:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elke-bilger-7441a4172/

Follow Abdullah Boulad:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdullahboulad/
https://www.instagram.com/abdullahboulad/

You can order Abdullah’s book, ‘Living A Life In Balance’, here:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BC9S5TCF

Follow The Balance RehabClinic:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/thebalancerehabclinic/
https://www.instagram.com/thebalancerehabclinic/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Why Safety Matters in Healing
• 2:36 Elke’s Journey into Physiotherapy
• 5:09 Fascination with the Body & Developing Sensitivity
• 6:52 Manual Techniques & Discovering the Dorne Method
• 10:14 Assessing and Correcting Misalignments
• 11:26 Rigidity, Aging & the Importance of Movement
• 12:14 Deep Tissue, Lymphatic Drainage & Massage Types
• 13:22 Preventing Tension with Regular Treatments
• 14:07 Posture, Alignment & Compensation Patterns
• 20:05 Chronic Misalignment & Habitual Stress
• 21:11 Anatomy, Muscle Function & Interconnectedness
• 26:07 Muscle Tension, Behavior & Environmental Stress
• 28:24 Injury vs. Chronic Issues & Impact of Surgeries
• 30:46 Pain Patterns, Realignment & Whole-Body Approach
• 36:05 Emotional Trauma, Brain Alignment & Healing
• 41:28 Processing Emotion After Injury or Surgery
• 46:06 Elke’s Realignment & Muscle Release Method
• 50:15 Home Care, Lifestyle Change & Long-Term Results
• 55:09 Misalignment, Stress & Societal Influence
• 1:01:25 Learning from Animals: Movement & Recovery
• 1:05:27 Back Pain, Inflammation & Medication Overuse
• 1:13:07 Spinal Health, Nerve Function & Self-Healing
• 1:17:09 Preventative Care from Childhood to Adulthood
• 1:34:11 Flexibility, Strength & Aging Gracefully

Transcript

Elke Bilger 00:00:00  I used to work in a lot of hospitals. I think one of the biggest complaints from clients was that they did not feel safe. I probably would prefer to see that doctors also understand the mental or emotional impact that they do on the clients, and it's kind of like in and out we do our job. Only a person that feels safe will really heal well, what's.

Abdullah Boulad 00:00:21  The issues with our society? Why we get out of this? Let's call balance.

Elke Bilger 00:00:26  We start with children that sit way too much. We have this very fast spinning world, which is putting a lot of pressure on the people, and that on a seated body that cannot get out of it. About 80% of all people will experience back problems, back pains sooner or later, but in my opinion, pain medication is being prescribed too fast and too long. Our body is the only vessel that will join us from the beginning to the end on our journeys. So we have to respect it and maintain it.

Abdullah Boulad 00:01:05  Welcome to the Living Alive and Balance podcast.

Abdullah Boulad 00:01:08  My name is Abdullah Bullard, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Balanced Rehab Clinic. My guest today is a physiotherapist, massage therapist and movement specialist with expertise in deep tissue massage, lymphatic drainage and more. In this episode, we explore what body alignment reveals about stress, habits and history, and how small, consistent changes in movement can lead to powerful transformation. You will learn how early imbalances in childhood, modern lifestyle habits, and even emotional stress can lead to chronic pain and posture issues later in life. We investigate why so many people struggle with back problems and spinal compression, and how misalignment in the body affects everything from the nervous system to organ function. We discussed the cycle of tension in the body and practical tips to reveal this on a regular basis. We round out the conversation with practical tips to introduce on a daily basis, showing how to raise kids in alignment and debunking myth around aging, including why many injuries and physical issues are not inevitable, but preventable. I hope you will enjoy. Okay, what motivated you to do what you do today?

Elke Bilger 00:02:36  Well, actually, I became a physiotherapist at age of 30 when I had the opportunity in Germany to do a paid re-education program, and actually I wanted to do hypnotherapy or therapeutic writing with horses and children.

Elke Bilger 00:02:51  And for those you have to have either the education of an educator, a teacher or a physiotherapist. So physical physiotherapy just came kind of like first a natural for me.

Abdullah Boulad 00:03:03  What have you been doing before that time?

Elke Bilger 00:03:06  Well, actually at this time I stopped my career with Continental Airlines in America and I spent a few years living in America. And when I came back to work with them in Germany, the contract ended. And then I just ended up having this opportunity for an educational program. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:03:24  You could have done anything in your life. why? Why physiotherapy? Why were you interested in in the body?

Elke Bilger 00:03:33  Well, actually, I was almost all my life absolutely interested in planes. I wanted to become a pilot, but, you know, this career kind of, like, passed by me, and, while I was in America, I was listening to this, informational television, and they talked about, how well it works to work with disabled and mentally disturbed children. Together with horses. And I was absolutely fascinated by this combination because I've always been a horse lover.

Elke Bilger 00:04:02  I've been. I started writing at the age of seven, so I thought, this is kind of like the perfect combination for me to get into.

Abdullah Boulad 00:04:09  Okay. So horses motivated you to to look into the body and connect it with the body?

Elke Bilger 00:04:15  Exactly. Okay.

Abdullah Boulad 00:04:16  Yes. Do you do today any anything with horses?

Elke Bilger 00:04:19  Well, I do have two horses. Yes, but I just basically do this privately. when I was in the school for physiotherapy, I also did an internship on the horse therapy. But at this time, they told me that this is kind of like a job for people with a lot of money in the background or a strong income husband in the background, because horses eat a lot, and the horse therapies are not always paid by the insurance company. So it's kind of like a not such a stable business. And at this time I didn't have my own horse, so I would have had to buy a horse and all this stuff, all that stuff. And the lady from the internship at the horse place, at the horse therapy place, she told me, if you're smart, you stay or you become a physiotherapist for the people and you have horses for your hobby.

Abdullah Boulad 00:05:08  That's what you do today.

Elke Bilger 00:05:09  And I ended up doing this. But really, I'm very fast. I discovered my passion for the human body, so that was kind of never like a loss to me to stay with the humans.

Abdullah Boulad 00:05:20  What does excite you about the human body?

Elke Bilger 00:05:23  The body is always interesting. No matter how many bodies you treat, they're always a little bit different. And I don't know how to really describe it, but for me, it's kind of like, a challenge to find out where the trigger points is, where the misalignments sit, and find a solution for the patients to become better, to feel better.

Abdullah Boulad 00:05:42  I always found it fascinating, you know, when I, when I speak with some therapists, physiotherapists or massage therapists, that how they feel the body. Does it come out of experience with the years or out of training? how how is it for you? Because you explained to me, you, you know, everybody is different and you feel and see the body. What what how how did it come to you?

Elke Bilger 00:06:08  Actually, in my case, really, with experience, I was, I would say, not such a clumsy person before, but I always did kind of like hard physical things.

Elke Bilger 00:06:19  I never, like, had the fine work with the fingers. So, I mean, I'm not as sensitive as an artist with the fingers. So, in the beginning, in the training, I sometimes really thought just like, oh my God, I will never feel the difference with my hands. But of course, then that's a form of training. Yeah. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 00:06:35  And experience over the years.

Elke Bilger 00:06:37  Yes. Obviously. Experience? Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 00:06:40  There are different techniques in this field of physiotherapy. working, aligning the body. what techniques are out there What's your favorite or the one you've been trained with?

Elke Bilger 00:06:52  Well, really, there are so many different techniques these days, and I think every day there's more techniques coming into the world, which is great. and the basic school of physiotherapy, I mean, you study, of course, the human body. And, then there is the manual therapy forms where you try to change the physical body, but you also learn all the massage techniques, the techniques to work with the connective tissue.

Elke Bilger 00:07:19  You study also like all the techniques that go for the aqua therapy, which means like massage baths or you know, how to train somebody in the, in the, in the swimming pool. And then also the lymphatic drainage, is one part of it. Then the basics that are taught in school, they're just fine. But at my time it was not as complete as I would have wanted to it. It was not like a really integrative kind of version that we had gotten at school. And so usually people go out later for more educational programs. Some of them are very lengthy, you know, like the manual therapy, if you really want to have the certificate as a study about another two and a half years. And, I wasn't too interested in that because for me, it didn't really work. And I also realized that a lot of the things that they teach at physio school are kind of like, assessments and you kind of like you observe it and you write down how the position is. But it wasn't so much about treating people.

Elke Bilger 00:08:23  And so while I was in, in school still I had a back problem myself, and I went to a therapist that, did the Dawn method. Also, I had a disagreement on my hip joint. I had one leg that was longer, and so they repaired that like this with this method. And I thought just like, oh, this is really cool. It doesn't seem to be so much effort and I think I want to learn this. So that was my first study after I left school. That was my first class and it really thrilled me so much. I trained and trained and trained until I became also a Dorn Method instructor.

Abdullah Boulad 00:09:02  Can you explain us a little bit more? What is the Dorn method and what's the difference between, let's say, a regular physiotherapist work?

Elke Bilger 00:09:12  The Dorn method is a manual form of therapy, and with this method you're also working with the static of a person or the alignment. Yeah, but it's kind of like based on the entire bone structures and the joints.

Elke Bilger 00:09:25  So in this method, we look for the entire body in one session. You know, if we have enough time, of course. So we will see if the legs are in the same length, if all the joints are in its place. And then we look at the entire spine, and if we find curves or, you know, dislocated. Well, dislocated, they're kind of like moved a little bit. Blocked vertebra. We mobilized them back to their center and this is a little bit different. A lot of people think it's chiropractic, but we don't work with speed. We don't do anything cracking. Yeah. We have to have the help of the client because they have to move the the body. They have to either swing the leg or swing the arms. because, bones, you can hardly move if the muscles are kind of, like, tight to it. So it's kind of like an interactive therapy as well for the clients.

Abdullah Boulad 00:10:14  When I look at the the body, you need certainly first to be able to assess what is the issue and then second, how to address it.

Abdullah Boulad 00:10:24  Yes. So the Dawn method helps you to assess mainly.

Elke Bilger 00:10:29  Exactly and then correct.

Abdullah Boulad 00:10:32  And then and then on on on what you correct. And what exactly would you would you correct. usually with your with your clients.

Elke Bilger 00:10:40  Well, it really depends. You know what they have. There's people that have only a few issues. Maybe they have a rigid middle spine because they're working too much on the computer. So we want to, help the, the, this area of the spine to get back into rotation and to, into its place. but there's also, people that have, joints that are not in the congruent position anymore because they had like skiing accidents or any form of accidents. And so we are kind of like putting everything back into place as natural as we can, which is not always possible, because sometimes time and age and, I always say that's when they get too rusty. Then it's kind of like a hard work.

Abdullah Boulad 00:11:26  Rusty. You mean when they age and with lack of movement?

Elke Bilger 00:11:30  With lack of movement.

Elke Bilger 00:11:31  Movement? Exactly. sometimes joins, especially after, you know, some surgeries or some accidents. They get too rigid. But then we want to improve, the flexibility of the joints as good as we can.

Abdullah Boulad 00:11:43  You mentioned before like massages and physiotherapy. Yes. So different, different things. And, there are a lot of, body therapists out there. Different methods, techniques, lymphatic drainage and so on. where do you see the the difference between, let's say, a wellness massage and more deeper work like, lymphatic drainage or physiotherapy? does it give different signals to the body? What's the difference exactly?

Elke Bilger 00:12:14  Exactly. They always have, like, a different subject, you know, or like, a point to, treat the body in some forms. So the lymphatic drainage, for example, is to get all the liquids more moving. It's also good to add treatment for detox, but it's of course, in the upper connective tissues, it's like not down on like a muscle level. And for the massage I mean, the wellness massages are very nice for some people because the mind just can relax and they feel they can slow down a little bit.

Elke Bilger 00:12:45  But in general, they don't work on the profound structures of the muscle tissues, the fibers, if there's some problems. Right. So, yeah, I actually have become a great fan of deep tissue or sport massage, however you want to call it. For me, they're kind of like a little bit the same. And, because I see the benefit of, working into the structures when they're too tense.

Abdullah Boulad 00:13:07  So you like it when it's tense in the body and then go deep, I understand.

Elke Bilger 00:13:14  I actually don't like a tense body. I would prefer people who are not so tense, but, yes, when I have to do the work, I actually like doing the work.

Abdullah Boulad 00:13:22  Well, what can someone do to on a regular basis? Let's say, to not become tense. is there like, what type of, body treatments would be, would be recommended to do regularly?

Elke Bilger 00:13:37  Well, that depends a little bit on the status of a of a client, because if they are quite tense already, then I would recommend a lot of physiotherapy sessions involved with a deep tissue massages in a rather fast frequency.

Elke Bilger 00:13:52  Right. And if you're not so tense, I think it's kind of like good to just find some time to find some treatments that maybe are not so hurtful. but, you know, made to get the body into a certain flow again.

Abdullah Boulad 00:14:07  Can we maybe talk a little bit about how would you do a body assessment? what would you look at? And, and from what angle? What do you try to understand, to evaluate? the body alignment, or misalignments.

Elke Bilger 00:14:26  Yes. Well, I generally, look at the entire posture. but I usually start with the legs. Okay. I really want to already see if the legs seem in the same length, or if there's any differences, because if the legs are not in the same, in the same length, then we also have a growing problem. So if the pelvic system, you know, cannot sit straight on the, on the legs, then also the spine has to move in a certain way. because the body basically has one, one rule for itself.

Elke Bilger 00:15:01  It tries to keep everything on the same eye level. This is very important to our balance organs because if we are running around like the Tower of Pisa, then this is kind of very different, difficult for the entire system to manage anything around. So whenever we have a disappointment coming already up from the legs, then everything shifts a little bit left, right and the body's trying to find its compensation until about eye level is reached again.

Abdullah Boulad 00:15:29  Okay, so you are explaining this like, if the foundation is not right. It will have effect on the rest of. It will up to the roof.

Elke Bilger 00:15:38  Exactly.

Abdullah Boulad 00:15:39  Exactly. And while the body compensates. So where in the body would like tensions or or problems or pain usually arise because of this body alignment problem?

Elke Bilger 00:15:54  I think that's a very individual thing because it is not only how your posture is. It's also how you handle your everyday life. You know, how is your work space, how hard you work, or how much do you move? And so there's many things that flow together.

Elke Bilger 00:16:12  I've seen people that are very, very out of balance, and they had no problems because their system was functioning in itself. For some reasons we sometimes don't understand because the the books from the physiotherapy teach us that only a straight body is a good body, which is not completely true. But of course, if you're like out of alignment, the problems may add up to pressure points and tensions, you know? So we always want to see if we can correct it as good as possible.

Abdullah Boulad 00:16:46  It's fascinating to me how how you can just look at the person and figure out, oh, that's, that's wrong, or this is the spine. Or sometimes we look at ourself day by day, and I have this little story about my daughter. And I have been with her for so many years and, I've been looking at her certainly. And, until to a point where she was at, at, at the doctor and, and this doctor told us, oh, yes, she's, she's not straight with her shoulder.

Abdullah Boulad 00:17:25  And then suddenly we started to look differently at her, my, my wife and I, and we we. So yeah, that's true. And we've never saw that basically. And this is what, what usually happens every day. Like we look in the mirror at ourself at our partners, but we don't see this, this alignment. But what's, what's wrong about our view? how can we train our view to see these things, in ourselves or in others?

Elke Bilger 00:17:54  Well, what you just said is it's quite common. First of all, for ourselves, we don't really see the difference if we don't have the school awareness to really look into to the mirror with a naked body and like, see how the the shoulders are aligned, you know, or how the legs are even moving and much less with our children as well. And that usually is because we don't start growing in a disciplined fashion just from one day to another. We're not straight and then we flip. So this is kind of like a process that that goes slowly and every day or every month, a little bit more and a little bit more.

Elke Bilger 00:18:33  And so the our mind doesn't notice the difference so fast because we're used to what we see every day. It's kind of like the same when you watch your children grow, you don't think they've become much bigger. But the ant that hasn't seen the children in the months, she goes like, oh, how you know how big they are now? And you go just like, well, I thought that they're the same because you're so used to seeing them grow just a tiny little bit. you know, every week or whatever. And, so that's why we lose the, the, the awareness of the changes. And it's quite common that, children develop as scoliosis, and parents have never noticed because they see their children play, walk around. Eyes are on level. Everything else seems fine. And, quite often, also, some disappointments are noticed by the parents and by the doctors. and I think one of the old fashioned mistakes that we've done in the past is to say, well, the child will grow out of it.

Abdullah Boulad 00:19:35  Yes.

Elke Bilger 00:19:36  You know, so because a lot of people think it's kind of like normal to have misalignments and sometimes, yes, you know, it's the same with, you know, all creatures. They change sometimes how they act, how they move, you know, and then sometimes it seems a little bit more right, a little bit more left. You know, things can change. And then we think just like, okay, sooner or later the body will find it itself in the center again. Yeah. But too many times that doesn't happen.

Abdullah Boulad 00:20:05  Does the body find its balance or is it more becoming a chronic problem over time?

Elke Bilger 00:20:12  Most of the time now, these days, it's becoming a chronic problem because we have the, the first we have, the misalignment for some reasons. Then we have more stress or maybe some accidents. You know, we're starting to see too much. And so the body usually gets into this habit. And the nervous system reflects the position as normal. And it's kind of like habitual.

Elke Bilger 00:20:37  But then when we're like in a stress mode, working mode or whatever, we have very little awareness or time to really center ourselves. So, you know, that's kind of like also an awareness and the training method.

Abdullah Boulad 00:20:53  How is our body structured? What's the anatomy of our body. You you look at the skeleton the muscles, the tissues. So can you explain me a little bit how how this all works together, our fascinating physical body and what you exactly work at.

Elke Bilger 00:21:11  The body is, of course, much more complicated than I can tell you right now, because this would take too much time. But we have the basic of the structures or the bones, right? And we have the joints that combine the bones, and those bones have ligaments and capsules and tendons that are attached to them. And then between the ligaments or the tendons, we have the muscles, okay. The muscles are the most important part of the body to get us moving, because without the activity of a muscle, the bones will be just hanging and there's no movement.

Elke Bilger 00:21:48  So then of course, we have other structures, like we have the outer skin layers that keep us all together and protect us from the from the environment. And then we have the connective tissue and then a little bit deeper also the fastest, which kind of like surround the entire inside of the muscle structures as well. And then of course we have the nervous system that goes into all body parts, you know, the liquids, the blood, the lymphatic systems, and they all work together. So and it would be bad to say that one part is more important than the other because everything in this system, everything works together. This is kind of like one flow. You cannot do damage to one part of the body and not have an effect in the entire system, more or less sometimes, because sometimes there are small impacts that you just don't feel in the other part of your body. But usually it's kind of like if you touch one part, it has an effect on the rest of the body. And I personally basically specialized in reorganizing bones and taking trigger points out of muscles.

Elke Bilger 00:22:56  And for me, those, you know, I mean, I want to say again, this is like not to say that nothing else is important, but the the bones and the joints, they don't have their own standing. They don't have their own posture. Right. They're led by muscles. So if a muscle is in a good shape, which means the fibers when they need to be active, go inside. And when this is like a normal tension when they come back out again. Right. But many times those fibers kind of like start gluing together. They just don't release all the pressure or the tension anymore. So and then with the with time, if the position is not corrected, the tension gets more and more and more, especially if there's stress and, you know, too much activity or whatever. And, the buddy gets into a situation where it does not know how to release the stress stress out of the muscles anymore, which will make a pull onto some bones in the body. Take, for example, your right handed.

Elke Bilger 00:23:58  You know, you have, you have more activity with the right hand. And so you're starting to like have more tensions in the upper right neck shoulder area. And so this would kind of like pull your head like over this because the tendons of the muscles are connected to the bones. So they you know, whenever there's a tension it shortens the muscle. So the bone moves a little bit to the side. Most time we look even with this. I mean, there's a lot of people that run a little bit around with a, you know, misaligned head, but most times the other side now will work quite a bit in order for you not to really fall over to one side. This is the same from the front and the back. So when you want to correct a position, you really have to work on the muscles to make them long enough. if, for example, to shorten the front for all the work that we do to the front, or you have to strengthen them to, to do some strengthening work if they are getting too weak to hold the position.

Elke Bilger 00:24:57  But you have to basically find, a situation for the muscle groups to function in a way where they can open all the way, or even overstretch and gain the strength again to do their job right. And every tension in the muscle, is leading to, first of, you know, this alignment. But then also we cannot really develop the exact strings that we would need and a muscle that is already pretty tensed, you know. And then the next part of the muscles is if there's too much tension pulling on the tendons, then the tendons start getting overloaded or overstressed, which for example, somebody that has, the Achilles tendon torn, there was a lot of tension in the calf muscles before. They just didn't notice so much. And that was putting stress again and stress again and stress again on the tendon until it finally gave up. Right. So there's a higher risk of injury if there's tensions in the muscles and you have, less quality of muscle strength and of course, tensions with pain.

Abdullah Boulad 00:26:07  Okay.

Abdullah Boulad 00:26:08  Okay. So most problems, start in the muscles.

Elke Bilger 00:26:13  I wouldn't I wouldn't say that they start there because, I mean, this is kind of like something that I think we still don't know or understand to the fullest. because a muscle itself shows the problem. But if this was the start to the problem, we never know.

Abdullah Boulad 00:26:28  Certainly it's the behavior, it's the use, it's our movement. It's our daily use of our body. Exactly. As you mentioned, you mentioned the the example of writing or sitting at the computer or having your phone in your arm and looking. Always do the to one direction, or possibly crossing my feet or sitting just these these habits have influence for on on on our, on our, muscles.

Elke Bilger 00:26:56  But if I may add to it, there's a reaction of the muscles that are, you know, mainly physical, but we also have a reaction of muscle tissues that are biochemical. So there's kind of like for example, you know, these days prove that if somebody is, you know, not in a good situation of nutrition, for example, having too many toxins in the body.

Elke Bilger 00:27:19  This will or stress hormones, even stress hormones, matter a lot to the tension that we show in fast years and in the muscle body. So, toxins can influence it. There's, I think, quite a bit of research these days that also the electro smog kind of like gives a signal to the nerves which the nerves signal to the, the, the muscles to hold a higher tension. So, I mean, there's a lot of environmental stress also that might influence, you know, how this is.

Abdullah Boulad 00:27:50  Okay. So it's a bit more complex than simplifying it. Okay.

Elke Bilger 00:27:53  Exactly.

Abdullah Boulad 00:27:54  It starts with with with the muscle. But let's say the muscle is the first one to to show like the tensions and and to try which tries to adjust, to compensate maybe is the better word for whatever problem is there. And this compensation leads to, issues on on the bones, joints and tendons and and and other areas. My.

Elke Bilger 00:28:24  Yes. For me.

Abdullah Boulad 00:28:25  Simplified enough?

Elke Bilger 00:28:26  Yes. Simplified enough. Exactly. I mean, if it's for the normal wear and tear of life, then this is probably what we can say.

Elke Bilger 00:28:34  I would want to exclude, like, accidents that will impact the body in a different manner. So you, for example, you have an accident with a car, you have a whiplash in the neck. And now your, your, your, your bones are threatened because, you know, you go into this, you know, impact and the muscles now will tension up in order to keep that position safe. You know, because without the muscles, your head would be flying through the window when you have a car accident. So they tighten up. And now this is kind of like a protective response of the muscles, which is harder to treat. if, you know, time goes by and there was not treated, you know, right away then you know this can quite cause quite a few problems.

Abdullah Boulad 00:29:17  If we summarize this. So there are these two different ways with like an immediate impact, like an accident or an injury. This could have an effect on the body where the body tries to to adjust.

Abdullah Boulad 00:29:29  But there is also more the, the slowly chronic development.

Elke Bilger 00:29:33  Exactly. Basically there are three things. It's the, the habitual way we carry our body. Then there's the accident, accidents and the impacts that, you know, we have even sometimes from very small faults. There can be a big impact on the body and the biochemical response.

Abdullah Boulad 00:29:49  Yes. And what about surgeries? If you have to do a surgery, this is also an impact on the body, of course.

Elke Bilger 00:29:56  Well, let's say the second one is kind of like an injury, kind of like style accidents, surgeries. they have a big impact on the, on the body, especially if after a surgery. Scars are not treated well, you know, because scars will tighten them up the connective tissues and they might not give back the elasticity to to the entire system. And they even might hold back, nervous responses or lymphatic, you know, flow in that area. So they might impact also quite well.

Abdullah Boulad 00:30:31  I came across also over the years like, discovering how my body reacts and which parts, when I get some pain, for example, my left knee, if for a while.

Abdullah Boulad 00:30:46  I don't do any sport, I start feel my my my knee. like a little pain every time I stand up. But I don't feel my knee if I'm trained, if I go for a run, if I have my regular routine. So if my muscles are strong enough to to hold whatever it is, here. Around. And and the same. The same. I was able to absorb also with my like shoulder. If I. If I don't train my back and my my shoulders and my, I, I will get pain probably every time on my left back, shoulder side. So these are like certain patterns they repeat if I don't care about my muscles and train them, where this is, does this come from? And and, does it, does it, is it with your does it go with your experience?

Elke Bilger 00:31:46  Yes it does. but I have to say that, even though I, I would never suggest for anybody not to train, I think training and, or having enough exercise, enough, movement in the body is always very important to maintain everything from the physical well-being.

Elke Bilger 00:32:06  but even if you wouldn't train for two or 3 or 4 weeks and then you start a little walking again, nothing should hurt. So, I mean, if you have a knee or like a shoulder that is only active, actively showing you some pain, some sometimes there's something wrong already underneath. It's kind of like the I mean, the body does not give us all the signals that we that we have in the body because, usually the nervous system works a little bit like this. If there's something going on that is to be noticed, the body will tell you. If it's kind of like in the habitual mode, then, you know, the body sometimes will tell you something, sometimes not only if the glass is getting too full and there's a threat to the position, to the wear of the knee or the shoulder or whatever. And the body now says this I cannot tolerate it anymore. Then it goes on with the pain signals. If you would feel everything that is going on in your body, you would be in a mental hospital in about one hour because there's so much information that is going on there.

Elke Bilger 00:33:07  And since we are kind of like, except for like having an accident and then we know this knee has been damaged and, you know, we need to treat it until it's like working normal again. the little wear and tear things, they kind of, like, sneak up on you, and then they drop and then sneak up on you and they drop. And this is usually also, connected with the movement, because as soon as you get moving or training, you're activating the body, which means that there's more heat also going into the body, which will release some of the tension than in the muscles. So you have a little bit more space, you know, and then the shoulder or the knee says it's like, okay, this position is fine for me now, but it should never hurt. There's always something misaligned. There's always some for some sort of position information, stress, pressure on any part of the body that starts hurting sometimes.

Abdullah Boulad 00:34:02  Yeah. So it's pretty normal then that, problems or issues come up always in the same in the same area.

Abdullah Boulad 00:34:09  Yes. Someone repeats the same patterns again.

Elke Bilger 00:34:12  It's a sign.

Abdullah Boulad 00:34:13  It's a.

Elke Bilger 00:34:13  Sign. It's a sign.

Abdullah Boulad 00:34:14  If you look at the body. I wanted to say from top down, but it's actually from the bottom up. Yes. Because this is what what affects us when you get to the hips, for example. Where do you see problems happening?

Elke Bilger 00:34:27  Well, this is actually something that we really have to find out when we look at, you know, at a, at a person, because there's different reasons for legs that are at the same length and they're not always the same. And just because you mentioned it's coming from down. Well, that's not always the one. I mean, this is not a one way road, right? So it can also be that your legs are not in the same length for something that is dysfunctional higher up. We know, for example, that people that have problems with John take a child that had like the bracelets. That's right. And now they have too much pressure or the jaw is not really aligned.

Elke Bilger 00:35:05  this will influence on your sacrum. Right. And so if your sacrum is kind of like not in the, in a very good position, then your legs are usually not either. there could be something on the hips, on the knees, on the ankles. Some people tripped maybe 20 years ago, and now they tell me, but after, you know, a few kilometers of hiking, always the ankle still hurts, which is usually because this ankle has never been brought back into the perfect position. Right. So there can be a length difference, of all the joints. It can also be that the sacrum is kind of like blocked, or it can be that somebody is for the position that they're holding, developing a curve in the spine, and the curve in the spine has an answer further down as well. We have the jaw problems. You know, I mean, there can be so much in between. There can be scars, For example, I. When when when? When I was, you know, in school, I had a lot of pain as well.

Elke Bilger 00:36:05  And it turned out that everything on my body was too much. Right. So I had a surgery when I was 12 years old on my knee, and we discovered there how disturbed the scar was. And it kind of like took everything with too much tension on the right. So it kind of like pulled me always to the right side. The left side had to overcompensate, of course, so I don't fall to the right side. And so just a scar did a lot of my, my disappointment there. Right. But then for the the length of the leg always also, quite interesting for the mental part is that we might be off centered for the brain activities. Right. We're right brained or left brain, naturally. Everybody is. And so when somebody is, for example, an overthinker, the logical person always in this one side of the head using everything that he's got there to deal with life. Then there is a dis balance of the energy just coming down from the brain. A brain which is, by the way, usually crossing, you know, from the head down the nerve sites they're crossing and or the other one is maybe too emotional is all the time emotionally and a little bit dreamy and artful, whatever.

Elke Bilger 00:37:16  So the other side is overcompensating. So then I usually do a brain alignment and connect the two brains back to each other, and then many times without touching anything physical. Then there's a straight leg syndrome all suddenly. Yeah. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 00:37:32  So how do you align the brain?

Elke Bilger 00:37:34  Well, actually, it's kind of like an awareness thing, really. You just let the, the patients think into or, you know, feel into all the areas of one brain in the front and the, you know, the side, top back and let them explore as much as they can to just feel into that part of their head. And then you switch to the other side, and then you do this a few times back and forth, and then you can have like a kind of like a crossing movement or follow with the eyes like a figure eight, which will, you know, cross the bridge on both hemispheres of the brain and they connect better with each other then. So and it's quite interesting because a lot of people that especially respond to a better leg position with this brain alignment tell me that, oh my God, the left brain was so hard to feel.

Elke Bilger 00:38:23  The right brain was completely fine. I, you know, easy. But the left brain. I had a hard time getting in there and really finding all the corners. And then you naturally know which brain side they don't use so often.

Abdullah Boulad 00:38:35  But this is where we feel like emotions. Or if someone has some trauma and and this is where then it goes also into the body and manifests in some certain area.

Elke Bilger 00:38:46  That is quite a different subject and a very big one, because a lot of things that we have physically are caused by trauma, emotions. you know, in German we say when the shock is getting stuck in the bones, right? and this is quite true. for example, children that had an accident on the playground, you know, being in a very bad emotional space, they broke their elbow. Usually the elbow just doesn't heal, or recover as good while the emotion is stuck in there. So. And, a lot of people had, smaller or bigger traumas that they don't even reconnect anymore to anything emotional because maybe it was a long time away, you know, or a long time ago.

Elke Bilger 00:39:32  And, they feel safe now with their conscious level. But the unconscious level gives a feedback to the body. Then every time it kind of like, passes another stress situation close to an accident, you know, or something that reminds them of the accident, you know, then the body gives alarm signals to say just like, okay, danger, danger, Danger, right? It's a lot of, you know, at times that people that had a car accident, they had a whiplash. Maybe there were some other bigger injuries or not. And now they feel fine driving again. They feel safe, but their body gives the danger signal of this. Cars are dangerous. Accidents happen. So every time they come back out of the car, they feel more tense and they go, just like, I don't know why it's the car that is so uncomfortable. You know, maybe I need a different car, but it's kind of like their, their physical memory of this is not a safe place to be, you know? And, so traumatized, usually I was traumatized with this car.

Elke Bilger 00:40:32  I'm very sure that, you know, my scar didn't heal very well because I was deeply traumatized. you know, when I was in the hospital having the surgery because the the the the the the doctor that gave me the narcosis, she was just not nice at all. And, my orthopedic doctor, he was kind of like a little children's monster as well, so I was not in a safe place to have the surgery. And of course, nobody thinks about this. But then, you know, when they started releasing that scar, I even started getting memories of how that felt to be in this unsafe place, being put to sleep. And somebody is, you know, doing something on my leg. Not nice. And little did I know at this time, because I was not a trained physiotherapist yet. So I carried that around for almost another 20 years.

Abdullah Boulad 00:41:19  What could you have done differently there? If you would have known, you know, where to whom would you have gone? How would you have treated it?

Elke Bilger 00:41:28  if I would have known it right away, I mean, I could have not probably undone how nice they treated me in the hospital.

Elke Bilger 00:41:34  But then later, you can also have different techniques to do emotional stress relief. I mean, we have from kinesiology, you know, other treatments that, you know, work with the emotions, stress relief methods and then of course, somebody that takes care of it physically, you know, because most, most parts that stay injured or don't recover very well from injuries, they just need a little bit more love and care.

Abdullah Boulad 00:42:02  So yeah, we shouldn't if we have a scarf or we have a surgery we shouldn't then just look at recovering physically in that sense, but also to process it emotionally as well as as well as on the muscle and fascia and and all what's, what's connecting this wound.

Elke Bilger 00:42:22  Absolutely. And while I do absolutely appreciate that we have, doctors and hospitals that are technically so involved, you know, it's a safe bet that you will come out of life, you know, and they may be, cutting in the perfect way and doing their best and everything, but, I probably would, you know, prefer to see that, doctors also understand the mental or emotional impact that they do on the clients and a lot of doctors still kind of like even if they're highly professional on, on, on what they do.

Elke Bilger 00:42:53  But, they're kind of like treating people a little bit like a piece of meat, right? It's kind of like in and out. We do our job. but the, the, I used to work in a lot of hospitals, you know, because for the schooling of Germany, for the physiotherapy, you have to go to the hospital for all the different topics that we learn. And, I think one of the biggest complaints from clients was that they did not feel safe. Nobody talks to them and they they feel kind of like nobody respects them, you know? And the doctor doesn't really care. And so it's it's kind of like a little hard world out there. And I think it would be nice if everybody that works on the body, you know, I mean, included, including physiotherapist has the empathy to understand that what we do also has an emotional impact on the people. Yeah. You know, and only a person that feels safe will really heal well. Every time you feel like a threat, your body gets denser.

Elke Bilger 00:43:53  And when you get denser, your nervous system doesn't react as good anymore to healing. you know, as as it is when it's kind of, like, relaxed.

Abdullah Boulad 00:44:01  Yes. No, it's, definitely comes back to to the work we do at the balance, where our approach is to look at the person as a whole holistically. and not just isolated for a pain or for for an injury or for an accident to be healed. But really, what what makes a human being, heal holistically? Yeah, but I also understand in today's world, doctors don't have much time to be with their patients, and they become more highly specialized in the different techniques that they have to train in. And they don't have the time to to cover all the areas, all the aspects. But this is my hope maybe is that also in hospitals or, that the holistic side, the, the, the integrative side can be more and more integrated as well with time.

Elke Bilger 00:44:59  Yes, there are hospitals and there is doctors and nurses that are very aware of this and they really do the best.

Elke Bilger 00:45:05  I mean, you know, you know, there's doctors that will really come just before the surgery and have a smile at their patients and say, you're in my hands. So you're in good hands. I will I will cover you back. Right. And this just helps to to to have this moment of smile or a moment of smile and empathy to feel more, a much more safer. Right. So yes. And, I do understand, the entire, you know, world around, hospitals and medicine is such a busy, busy world, and a lot of people just don't even like their job anymore because it's so much stress. They don't find the time and the heart to pass it on anymore. But, maybe in the future we can work on that. Because, like I said, it matters a lot.

Abdullah Boulad 00:45:51  What is exactly the impact you do on the body? Is it on the muscle and what do you try to do there, just specifically, let's say in a, in a, in a therapeutic, session.

Elke Bilger 00:46:06  Well, in a session with me, usually the people, will be realigned on the bones where I can. So if I find, like, a knee that is not in the perfect position or a hip, I will realign those. Right. And then, I will also go into the, the, the muscle structures because, I mean, they're not only the muscle structures because sometimes really the fastest, are kind of like too tight and sometimes the connective tissue, especially if toxins are involved, they're like very compressed. So they're like holding on. you know, maybe the entire outer system is holding on too much to the hip. And so we have to not only put the hip into a place, we have to find a way to strengthen it a little bit. We have to find a way to release the pressure that is pulling joints into a wrong place. so basically those are my two structures that I, you know, will go into tense tissues, muscles or fibers or muscles or postures or connective tissues and realign the bones.

Elke Bilger 00:47:06  So to take the pressure off. And then, of course, this is not the only thing that can be done because there's so much to be connected to, to the body. And, you know, the missing link might be also, you know, personal training that they will find a personal trainer or go to the gym or find a yoga class to get more flexibility. Those things, but I personally focus on my treatments, really to restructure bones and find tensions that need to get out.

Abdullah Boulad 00:47:36  And how how many times do you do that with the. With the patient? With the client. To really get out of this misalignment.

Elke Bilger 00:47:47  You know, there's no real, formula for this for everybody either, because there's people that are just a little bit misaligned and not for such a long time. And, or somebody is basically working very well. But now he was doing some gardening work and he lifted up some heavy buckets. Now the back hurts usually that is and one, two, three sessions quite well aligned.

Elke Bilger 00:48:09  But if we're talking about somebody that is 40, 50, 60, 70 or older and has been in this position for a long time, you know, now the the, the joints get more rigid because they lose their flexibility if they're not used properly. And the tension tensions have built up for a long time. then, you know, sometimes we can only hope to keep it down to a level where they can live with without having the pain and being flexible enough. in my world, everybody that has some serious problems should go to the physiotherapist three times a week until it's solved. If it takes one week, two weeks, four weeks, five weeks. Because what happens when you, for example, you take a very tense neck shoulder muscle, right. And so you really do the sport massage and you start opening up the first fibres. It's kind of like, the top layers of tensions. You're kind of like stretching. And there's a little bit more circulation in there and everything feels a little bit lighter.

Elke Bilger 00:49:13  But the base still stays from this, what we call myoglobin. Right. This is kind of like the balls that we feel. And so when when I want to really get down to the bottom, I have to work in layers. They were built in layers. They didn't come as a ball, you know, in one day. So it's kind of like an onion system. We have to, you know, take layer of layer of layer from the onion down. I mean, of course it would be possible if I stayed there ten hours at one trigger point and, you know, try it in one session. But usually that's not, to be tolerated by the people. And also, it's not the best to change an old situation too fast. You have to give the entire body some time as well to regulate the position in a new way. So and if you know, now we're taking off the first layer and another, you know, two, three, 4 or 5 or longer weeks go by with the the patient going back to his normal life, the stress level, you know, the, the habitual way of working, carrying its body.

Elke Bilger 00:50:15  Then this layer is going to come on very fast. Also, you know, for example, a lot of people, are too hesitant to change their life, you know, in the background, which means nutrition, you know, sport habits, you know, moving, doing some yoga classes or something like this. They're too busy. Or sometimes, you know, I don't want to say lazy, but, you know, I'm saying maybe lazy to really get into a new habit, which is not going to help because of course, you cannot change a system with the old way. You know, you caused this problem with. So you have to change in the background. Also, quite a few things. And the more the client does at home, you know, for its own wellbeing, the faster a therapist can work. You know I do. I undo the damage that has been done as best as I can. But then life comes after my session. Right. So. And I never have an idea what you know.

Elke Bilger 00:51:15  What do they do with their life after they leave the room? Stress. Bad eating habits. You know, whatever or small little accidents again. So yeah, it's kind of like hard to answer this question.

Abdullah Boulad 00:51:29  If I look at a regular massage, it's like it might be a bit superficial. It's relaxing as, works on, on different levels, relaxing. But what you do is if I look at the muscle, you go deeper in a way. You give signals, you give signal to the body to to change about this, signals need to be repeated.

Elke Bilger 00:51:54  repeated enough times.

Abdullah Boulad 00:51:56  But not only that, it gives to the body, the it gives to the muscle the possibility to to to restructure itself in a way when, when you give the right nutrition and you give the right training, the muscle training, it will it will heal long term. And if not, it may it may get back to the, to to its, original situation or.

Elke Bilger 00:52:23  Yeah, quite often, especially if there's, for example, emotions involved that trigger one part of the body.

Elke Bilger 00:52:29  You know, a lot of people that say they have so many, so much neck pain, for example, they had some accident on the neck. And so, you know, we we treat the muscles, we treat the stretching, the training. but the emotions, you know, will lead again and again and again to causes tension. you know, so it's, it's it's sometimes it's really very, very easy. And in reality, it would be totally easy if we will change everything in life. You know, we have less stress, we have good nutrition, we have enough exercise. We are mentally well, have no storage of emotions or accidents. And then if we maintain that, that would be perfect. But now we're dealing, of course, with a lot of people that did not have this opportunity to maintain their physical level at this, you know, at this rate. And then it's kind of like and not everybody responds to the same techniques. You know, there's a lot of people, for example, that, get more tense if they are treated too strongly in the muscles.

Elke Bilger 00:53:32  So they probably would need an osteopath, you know, with a little bit more gentle things, you know, to open things up, because there are so many things that an osteopath can also cover, in the body also when it's connected to organs, maybe, you know, because we also may have like an organ damage or a position even from the organs that are not in space causing tensions for the back. So, you know, there's different forms of therapies and not everybody's responding to it. Well. But for the muscles itself, it's kind of like when they are, you know, in this ball of tensions, they of course will respond to some form of mechanical, triggering. So the clients may stretch, which is a form of mechanical, you know, opening up the fibers again. they make mobilization movements, such as in yoga, you know, or other forms. They, you know, sometimes respond well to treatment or heat therapies. There's even neuro therapy where we do injections right into the muscle areas that are too tense.

Elke Bilger 00:54:37  So there's a lot of things to reopen the mechanics of those muscle fibers. And one of them is, of course deep tissue because we really get into it. And we are trying to give the impulse of the fibers to have more circulation, to stretch, open away from our fingertips. Right. This is just one form. And but more important, I think, than the therapist is really the, the, the, the program that clients do at home. Because if you don't use the muscles in the full length, then again, they they of course stay tightened and shorter.

Abdullah Boulad 00:55:09  Is there something like a perfect body alignment? all the clients you have come across, maybe you, you see, the, the complex cases. But if you, if you, if you think or if you know maybe as well how many bodies are misaligned.

Elke Bilger 00:55:30  I mean, I've been doing this since 2001, and I literally had two people where I could not find any tension or misalignments. They just seemed completely perfect. And, but they didn't come to see me with problems.

Elke Bilger 00:55:46  They just had a gift certificate for a treatment because their spouses thought that something should be wrong with them as well, so they better might go and enjoy a treatment. And, I was really amazed. But those are the only two people that I ever touched that really had nothing. And, very interesting is when I ask them about their life. both had kind of like a situation where they didn't feel stressed, neither with a family, not with a job, whatever. And the difference that I noticed when they walked in, they seemed very centered. And that's the first thing that we can actually look at somebody, not even if the eyes are on level or not level. most people have like either a very active front energy. I'm like one or more one of those more hyperactive persons, right? So I'm just like always doing more to the front. And then there's people with a very leaned back protective energy. So they're always kind of like trying to be a little bit protected from life bending away from it.

Elke Bilger 00:56:50  So and neither situation is centered, you know, neither of that is centered. Centered. You're centered. If your life is basically not threatened by any anybody or nothing in your life, and then you kind of like have this settled mentality, no stress level. And your body also then is in the centered place. But, that's not for most people. Most people suffered from some form of trauma, accident, stress, whatever, which gets us out of balance.

Abdullah Boulad 00:57:20  What's the issues with our society. Why we get out of this? Let's call balance or misalignment alignment.

Elke Bilger 00:57:29  Well, on the physical level, First of all, we start with children that sit way too much. Okay. I mean, and, you know, in my generation, also, we were seated too much in school. I mean, long hours that you have to sit and then at home, you have to sit some more and do your homework. And, but these days, many schools have extended their schooling hours because it's more practical for the parents to have their free, working time as well.

Elke Bilger 00:57:56  And then on top of the schools that they had seated hours, a lot of children are placed in front of a tablet or in front of a phone. So they're sitting more then, you know, later you have the educational programs, you're seated again. And, you know, I mean, unfortunately, unless you have like a, an educational program where you're kind of, like, more working, like, you know, constructors or whatever. They're like out on their, on their legs. Of course they have their own danger part. Right. Because labor is kind of like heavy on the body sometimes as well. but for most people, the seated position is one of the, the, I think, most common diseases that we have. And but of course, and, you know, I mean, there's people that, are relaxed and they're seated all their life and they don't feel pain, whatever. They're maybe a little bit weak ish on their physical level, but they're like, not so much full of pain.

Elke Bilger 00:58:54  So what you usually comes then, in addition, is that we have this very fast spinning world, which is putting a lot of pressure on the people. So I think, a good half of the tensions that reside in the body will come from stressful emotions, you know? So I mean, that's kind of like a natural thing if you're like in a flight, fight or flight remote. Usually everything tensions up to half enough power to run or to fight or whatever. And if you, for example, have parents that don't let you off the hook when you're like training for school because they want you to be the perfect next whatever. You know, this is a lot of stress for the children already. Then there's a lot of emotional stress in schools from teachers, from other school children. We have a big impact on the entire media world. You know how to be, how to function. You know how you should. You know where you should get. You know who you should become. And so there's kind of like a stress input from all levels and that on a seated body that cannot get out of it.

Elke Bilger 01:00:01  Because one thing is very natural for, for the body is when you have stress, you should get moving as mean as soon as like the threat, the real threat is over. You should get your body moving until the stress hormones are worked out again. which means, you know, a good respiration and really working the body fluids to release that pressure of the hormones. And most of us are not let out of the hook. You know, we are staid. You know, we're seated either with the stress of parents or with the next boss or whatever. Nobody is getting out of their skin anymore. Well, you know, for horses, for example, that's absolutely natural. I mean, they they get spooked easily. And if somebody scares them, they really tense up quite a lot. And as soon as that stress command is over, they walk and they walk a little bit and they just get moving, and then they start chewing down. And then they're relaxed again.

Abdullah Boulad 01:00:56  And.

Elke Bilger 01:00:56  They shake it out.

Elke Bilger 01:00:57  Fine. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So too much, too much stress, too much sitting too many phones in their hands, which is also changing the position. That's basically another thing that is, I think, a disease of the environment that we are always doing everything to the front, front, front, and we don't find the way back anymore to relax the body into the other direction. And phones don't help.

Abdullah Boulad 01:01:25  I find it very interesting what you what you just said. So we can we should observe more our environment, especially our animals around us. Because also, we have dogs at home. They can get into fight, they can stress, be stressed about something, and then they shake it up and then they continue.

Elke Bilger 01:01:46  Then they continue. And there's another one that we should learn from animals, which I mean, I have sometimes difficult difficulties remembering this, but any animal, when they get up after a nap, sleeping, they will stretch first. They never, never start moving without like stretching their front legs and their hind legs and get a little bit moving.

Elke Bilger 01:02:05  And, usually people, you know, they hear the alarm clock in the morning and maybe, snooze it a few times and then, you know, when they're late, they are getting up and then they start making a coffee, brushing teeth and whatever and get busy, busy, busy. And so the first thing this should be that whenever we arrested seated in the office chair or getting up from a nap or whatever, really stretch into all directions. Yeah. Yeah. Because by nature, when you were in a, in a, in a position not moving everything, Tencent's it a little bit. Right. Gets a little bit colder, their body temperature goes a little bit down and everything is a little bit more tense, which is good because, we are protected by this tension. so we can keep the position. We're not falling over while when we are moving we are, for example, playing. We need more action to, move the joints and the muscles. So a muscle or a system, the entire system has to, always find out is this action or do we need to move or is this more tension, in order to keep centered and not fall apart.

Elke Bilger 01:03:15  Right. So it's natural that we tense up a little bit when we're, you know, quiet times. But then when we get moving, we should stretch out like a cat. Get things flowing again.

Abdullah Boulad 01:03:27  Great. So we'll we'll start stretching. Yeah, definitely. Another interesting technique I, I like to do is very simple. Just go for little walks, basically. I came across, also the, the, the, the possibility that our, our body and our brain particularly, need alignment, regular alignment. And what we can do is we need to move left and left side of our body. So we release stress and we release emotional feeling. And and our brain does, connect to each other and and and communicate. left and right side. Much better with each other. So having meetings while walking or if there is any stressful situation. Just go out for a walk. Even just for ten minutes. This is so powerful.

Elke Bilger 01:04:22  Yes. Absolutely perfect. I mean, walking is the most natural form for movement for people, right? Running should also come naturally, but we're not running all the time.

Elke Bilger 01:04:33  But we're built to move. And walking is the most natural way to get your body flowing. And every single way from the liquids, from the brain movements, from the nervous system. And, so, you know, like you said, the short walks in between are so helpful. You don't always have to have this hour, you know, even if you cannot sleep and just go out, you know, for ten minutes in the dark garden and just walk around a little bit, that would be perfect as well. So and if you want to make it really perfect, the color green helps. So find as much nature, you know with greenish things around, which will calm down the nervous system as well. And if you can, without hurting yourself. Barefoot. Barefoot walking is the most natural way to connect to the earth. Calm down the nervous system and at the time, at the same time, give some nice little training impulses to the body as well.

Abdullah Boulad 01:05:27  I came across like about 80% of adults experienced some sort of, chronic pain on in their back once in their lifetime.

Abdullah Boulad 01:05:41  Does this align with with your experience? And another question is, is also many use medication to treat pain. what's your opinion on that as well?

Elke Bilger 01:05:55  Okay. So yes, the statistics, at least in Germany, show that about 80% of all people will experience back problems, back pains sooner or later, right. So. And, with all the clients that I've treated, there's people that say that they don't have back pain. But when you double check, with them because, for example, come for a shoulder problem or whatever. And, since I treat always the entire system with the spine together because it's connected to the shoulders by the nerves and the muscles and the tendons, I find that they do have back pain. They just didn't notice that that that's what we're talking earlier, that the the body does not give all the signals into the brain of awareness if there's something wrong, but there's back issues already there. So yeah, that's probably about 80% should be something more or less realistic that we have.

Elke Bilger 01:06:51  And I am afraid that the statistics will even move up, because now these days, we're seated more than the last 20 or 30 years even. And, for the topic of medications, well, I am I'm not somebody to say that nobody should take medication. Sometimes we have a point of pain that we cannot bear, right? So, you know, we should take the modern help. If there's a moment where we say, say we, it's too hard to tolerate, at least for a short period of time. but in my opinion, pain medication is taking or being prescribed too fast and too long. A lot of my clients tell me that they've been taking months or years ibuprofen for their back pain for their chronic back pain. So and while there's a study that says that sometimes or there are studies that sometimes the pain has chronic side itself by the awareness, even though the problem does not exist anymore. So sometimes it's good to interrupt a pain pattern that our brain reflects us for a short period of time to see if that reflex stops, right? If somebody can.

Elke Bilger 01:08:09  Afterwards, without that memory of pain, move better or feel pain free. Okay. but on the other hand, it is kind of like, also proven that taking the normal pain medication, like ibuprofen or aspirin, will actually keep that problem alive. Okay. So. Well, I think it's, one of the things is also that people are then so strongly connected to the, the to that, expectation of pain and taking the tablets. It's kind of like this inner mind circle is just like, oh my God, I have pain. I need to take that medicine. And you know, so they're kind of like getting into this loop of expectations. And also, in my opinion, sometimes the processes that we have of pain, are also somewhat inflammatory. Right? And the the big thing in pharma industry is to suppress any form of inflammation, which I don't agree on, because if it's not an external inflammation caused by a cut and bacterias that come inside, it's always a process of repairing itself from the body.

Elke Bilger 01:09:23  So, for example, if a tenant has a lot of stress because it's too, you know, strongly pulled all the time. So now the fibers of the tenants are threatened to be torn. And, then, you know, we have this pain signal for the body that there's something wrong with the tenant. Then we're taking a pain medication. But instead of just cutting down the pain now, the inflammatory repairing process is also interrupted because inflammation means repair. Sometimes we, you know, it's maybe good for a short time when the pain is not durable durable anymore. To interrupt some pattern, but the real repair process should be supported by the change of the position from the body. So no more relaxation from the muscles. Less stress on the tendons. Repositioning a joint that is, you know, in stress. And then usually the the body will find an final process of repairing. If you have for example, for example, tendinitis in your shoulder because your shoulder is too far front right, it's rolled inside front.

Elke Bilger 01:10:32  So it does not have enough roof space under the the the top of the roof anymore. So every time you lift your arm, it's squeezing on the tendons and rubbing it. So then there's an inflammation, which of course it's extremely painful. And you know if nothing is done it's getting more and more painful and inflammation it. So but if you're like taking medication just to interrupt that signal of pain, it's still the same position. It's still the same problem. So we need to really work on the shoulder position to get it back into the space where it can drop down from the from the roof of the shoulder joint and have enough space and room to move, you know, the arm in all directions. And then usually some part of inflammation will continue until things are repaired because the body, I mean, is able to repair basically almost everything that we have.

Abdullah Boulad 01:11:25  Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. So inflammation depends on the origin of how and why it was induced in the first place.

Elke Bilger 01:11:32  Exactly.

Abdullah Boulad 01:11:33  It makes sense to use medication or not.

Abdullah Boulad 01:11:36  Yes. what about neck pain? You know, I heard that, if you have neck pain and or it starts suddenly, you know, you stand up in the morning and you have this, neck, stiff neck. Let's let's say, I heard that, okay. It would be good to get, a pain medication before it gets too much more Stiff and tense. What's what's your opinion on that?

Elke Bilger 01:12:01  Yeah. I mean yes, there there is sometimes a benefit, you know, for, for the mind to not buy too much into the pain. Right. But we should always double check if the pain is not there for a real, you know, reason. Because if the neck, no matter if you get up in the morning or you know you're having it after a long desk or hours in the office, if there's pain, it's because something is wrong with the body and it tells you that this is not a position that is safe. Most back pain is not directly connected to hernias from the disc, but usually the body tells you to stop what you're doing before the disc brakes.

Elke Bilger 01:12:42  So taking that pain medication for me is a little bit like bringing the the car to the mechanic when the oil lamp is burning. So the mechanic now takes out the relay from the light bulb and says, okay, problem solved. Just because you don't see the light burning anymore. You still don't have enough oil. Maybe in the car. So this is what we're doing with the body all the time with the medications. We are just turning off the warning signals instead of repairing it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:13:07  And a lot happens through the spine. I think this is, let's say, what is connecting our brain. Heavy. had to to to the rest of our body. what what are the usual effects, you see with the spine and, and, the pressure on it and the misalignment of it?

Elke Bilger 01:13:29  Well, basically, everything happens through the spine. You know, we have this canal where all the, nerves go through and all the liquids, the spinal liquids, and they transport a bunch of information. You couldn't even imagine how much information really flows up and down and through the entire spine.

Elke Bilger 01:13:46  So. And then from the vertebrae of the spine, there's bundles of nerves going out into the body, spreading into nerve families that, you know, for example, one might go to some certain muscle group, the other one goes to the skin tissue, the other one goes to the organs. So each spine carries its own family supporting that. So if we are out of alignment, the likelihood of a not good flow in the entire system is quite likely. And depending on how strongly it is curved or how strongly it's compressed, sometimes you have, vertebra bodies that are built quite nicely, but they're leaning a little bit over to one side or another. But the, the, the root, the canal of the nerves is open. So everything kind of can flow. But sometimes the body shifts also a little bit, you know, to another side. So we have like, this compressed spinal canal, which can cause quite a few problems because then nothing is flowing there anymore. so also when, the, when, when they're not aligned, they have more pressure to one side leaning than the other one on the disc, which for me, one of the most common causes of disc hernias is because the spine is not correct in a straight position and putting too much tension on one side, of the the disc.

Elke Bilger 01:15:13  And then so, you know, with enough wear and tear, then again, this disc will open and we talk about the propulsion right from the hernias. And then depending on, you know, which direction that goes, we might squeeze nerves up to a point where there is a, you know, a surgery necessary. Usually not. You know, now, these days, we know that most, disc surgeries that we used to do all the time, all the time for the smallest things, and now most doctors say that it's not necessary unless you are, like, completely out of feeling your legs or feeling your arm, you know, or not being able to go to the toilet anymore. There's some times where you should really go to the doctor and have surgery as fast as possible. But other than that, we should really just give the body the correct treatments because also a disc will regenerate.

Abdullah Boulad 01:16:07  How to support the self-healing?

Elke Bilger 01:16:10  Yes, the self-healing support is always to take the body out of the causing position.

Elke Bilger 01:16:16  So if it was not straight and too compressed, we have to liberate the body back to a straighter or more liberal position. And then it's kind of like, if you take a sponge, right, and the sponge has a bigger volume and if you squeeze it, it gets smaller and it's compressed. So if you're taking the compression away, the sponge can, develop back to its original position. The body is kind of like the same.

Abdullah Boulad 01:16:43  Taking away compression manual therapy, but also biochemical.

Elke Bilger 01:16:47  Biochemical. Very important. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:16:49  So with all the issues someone could develop and pain and chronic pain, through misalignment, what can someone do starting from birth to prevent these issues happening throughout our lives?

Elke Bilger 01:17:09  Yes. I personally think it should be supported right after birth. because problems can, even start before birth. But a lot of problems start right with the birth traumas. And, I personally think that, children should be accompanied with the correct forms of training and help, to stay aligned. One of the things we do this align is because we are right handed or left handed.

Elke Bilger 01:17:35  That's quite natural, right? I mean, we're all born with one preference site and which makes you know, of course, that we use that site more often. And if you, for example, right handed and you're carrying all the heavy things and all the writing, all the, you know, tiny things. Everything is kind of like basically right handed. Then this side is always more in a challenge than the other one. The other one has the challenge that it has to retighten in order for the other side not to dip over, it's always the same. Right? And then we also have, a right leg or a left leg. So I mean, if, for example, I talk to sports people, I don't only ask for the right hand when they're playing tennis, I also ask which is the stronger leg because, you know, as much as we're right handed or a right leg, we are right, footed or left footed. So and in my opinion, to just realign this balance is to teach children right from the start to use both sides.

Elke Bilger 01:18:43  That doesn't mean they have to share 50, 50 5050. Everything that might be a little bit complicated, because also life requires an automated system, you know? I mean, if you're driving a car, you cannot think about shifting with the left hand. The shift is on the right side. So, you know, we need some automation to be safe and to be effective sometimes as well. But and time available, we can also train very much adults as well. Not only children to use the other side, start brushing for example with the left side, your teeth, you know, comb your hair with the left side, or even take the forks and the knife and the different hands and try to cut it the other way around. So which way you take the bags, you know, very little things. And to, you know, I mean for the for the more heavy motoric things like the, you know, to carry those things, but then also practice writing with the left side or if you're left handed, practice writing with the right side.

Elke Bilger 01:19:39  You know, you have to, of course, always watch around and know we are far away from those times where everybody was trained. Trained to be a right handed person only. So we have quite a few left handed people in this in this world right now, naturally left handed. They of course need to switch it around. Right. So and so we need to kind of like skill the other side to take over enough responsibility and activity, to stay more centered. It's very interesting when you go to writing, horseback riding, you know, especially if you have like the dressage riders, there is an utmost, work put into taking out the natural crookedness of a horse. You know, everybody is taking, you know, talking about the natural crookedness of the horse and how to balance it so that the horse can do everything as beautiful on the right side as on the left side and reverse. And it makes the horse smarter and it makes it more balanced. It makes it safer to ride, and it makes it, of course, more beautiful to ride with people.

Elke Bilger 01:20:39  Nobody is talking about it, you know, there's no effort done in this at all. So this would be one of the ways to train children right from the start to be more creative, smarter, more skilled, more stronger on the other side as well. And one thing to really balance a body mentally and physically, by the way, is juggling. Learn how to juggle. Because if you juggle and you're like succeeding. I mean, if you're not succeeding in juggle and juggling, your brain is not connected yet. Right. But you can train your brain to be always be connected by juggling. And I think all children like to, to practice that. That's a fun game. So but yeah, juggling for children, easy to learn, easy game to change the body awareness. And then I think also that, parents need to learn maybe with help, you know, just, you know, however they find assistance, to really, look at their children with the awareness that we talked earlier about, just, like, really see if one shoulder comes a little bit higher or when it's walking.

Elke Bilger 01:21:44  If one leg is always twisting out a little bit more than the other, you know? And so the awareness to see if there's something developing and, then, you know, I personally think for most parents it would be easier to take the, the child at least one time a year to a professional to find the small triggers, something that is not so obvious to the parents eyes, you know, to find out if the tension is starting. or, you know, if something is kind of like getting out of alignment, this should be preventive at least one time a year, just to make sure that everything is still in place where it should be. A no tension is building up and parents should be very cautious after accidents, you know, I mean, not every accident will have an impact that lasts in a body, but there's quite a few more than we think. Yes. So. Yeah. And then if you, you know, if you skill and teach correctly and also create a bigger awareness of the body, then you know, this is, I think, one of the biggest steps we need to to grow up straight and balanced.

Abdullah Boulad 01:22:56  One of my daughters does horseback riding. Another place. Tennis. Another. the boy plays football and you can see everyone is differently, affected and in their bodies about it. So it's for parents, I think also a challenge to keep by themselves, like always. the right view on, what is, misaligned or not? So having having regular checks as prevention, definitely helps. How do you see growing out of childhood, getting more into adulthood, early adulthood? What can someone do, like in their 20s and their 30s and and while we while we age.

Elke Bilger 01:23:41  Well I think, you know, naturally young people like to move a little bit more, but, you know, affected by those times that we have today where the internet is, you know, always on our side, we tend to move less. So then we have the, the thing that all young people, I mean, young people up to 50, 60 even sometimes have this sweet little ignorance of aging because the the body feels young and normal.

Elke Bilger 01:24:12  There's not too many issues unless you had some accidents. And, you know, even if you're not so sporty right now, you don't care because you know this, you could maybe do later or whatever. And you don't compare yourself with the the generation, you know, that is already 60, 70, 80, 90 years old. So you kind of like, ignore the fact that from being 20 to become an 80, there's a long road in between. And an 80 year old that is not so good physically anymore. It's not flexible anymore. It doesn't have enough strength anymore. Something happened in that way. So when you're 20, 30, 40, 50, you should still really remember that the body needs an assistant on an every life level. Not every day, maybe, but every life level. Because you will, you know, hopefully get there to this age. And so for me to find some exercise form, something that includes, hopefully some strengthening but also flexibility and mobility is for me key.

Elke Bilger 01:25:14  You know, and if you only have 1 or 2 times a week, time for it, that's fine. More, sometimes better. But we can also add the little short walks in between, which helps a lot. but the key is to to, to get moving. You know, and also a 20 year old or a 30 year old should go for a checkup in between and, you know, find some some assistant that can say just like, oh, there's some spine problems. You know, your shoulder doesn't seem to be correct or the knee is not correct. So that stays kind of like the same. we need kind of like the turf for the yearly inspection. yeah. maybe, you know, on a on a physical level. And, I mean, if you have time and, you know, I know for many people, it's, a financial challenge to, pay for massages themselves because, you know, generally, just preventive massages are not paid by the insurance companies. And, these days, people have to fight even harder also for the physiotherapy sessions.

Elke Bilger 01:26:14  Yeah. And that's kind of like, you know, becoming a bigger challenge in the future yet, I think. but maybe, you know, we should also think about, you know, that's worth it to save away some money, during the entire year, to have one time, a year, a few sessions of realigning, you know, and reversing this because you said something about with your children that, you know, they have different hobbies and of course, they have effects. I want children to have hobbies and sports and play just as hard as I want to. I mean, that's natural. I started writing at the age of seven, and I counted about 50 horseback accidents until the age of 21. So that's probably one of the things where I had later on some of my spinal problems as well. But I grew up in this area when you era when you you hit the ground, you get up, you look around to see if everything's still in place. You try to figure out if something is bleeding too strongly and if you need a Band-Aid, and then you brush off the dirt and you continue and.

Elke Bilger 01:27:18  Well, yes. And most of the time, I didn't even tell my mom about the accidents because she didn't like me to go riding in the first place. So, you know, there would have not been anybody to correct any damage, but they happened that you know, that damage kind of like, happens sometimes. And, if I would reverse the time, I would not stop writing and say, just like, okay, this is dangerous. My buddy might get into trouble because, I mean, of course we have to play life. We are here to enjoy, right? So damage will be done no matter what we do. You know, we use our body and we serve it, with all the passion that we can find for some things. and then we have to go repair a little later that that will be the same thing. I mean, you put the gas into your car first, then you drive it until the inspection sign comes, and then you bring it to the shop, and he looks at us, everything is fine.

Elke Bilger 01:28:11  And then you put on more fuel and you go again. You keep going on the street and your buddy should as well. So it you know, some sports are more dangerous than others and I'm not quite sure I would support that as a parent, but yeah, they should they should experience their, their bodies and, you know, mentally get into sports, you know, to find out what they like and what excites them. And, you know, experience how the body moves. Because, you know, when you're a child, you you have a lot to learn about how the body functions.

Abdullah Boulad 01:28:41  Yes. And and definitely also it depends on what sport at what age. I mean, it's also big difference because if I, if I look at that myself, you know, your body compensates a lot if you're in your 20s and 30s, but once you get in your 40s and then 50s, it's it's not you need to be careful about your body. You need to protect the body as as the number one longevity rule.

Abdullah Boulad 01:29:06  Don't hurt yourself in the first place because I felt that, you know, you have a little a little injury which knocks you out for for weeks or months. And then and then you cannot continue your routine. You get out of your routine. You, you. That's a kind of a cycle, downward spiral cycle you cannot get out of. And this can start with something little. Even by doing sport, playing football for example. In my 40s I used to play football like once a week with the with a bunch of, middle aged, men and friends. And it's fun. It's fun to play. So but I stopped because I had again and again injuries and they knocked me out of my routines. That's.

Elke Bilger 01:29:56  Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:29:57  That's maybe one of rule number one. Just avoid accidents and avoid injuries.

Elke Bilger 01:30:03  that I think that's important to avoid them. Of course. but, one of the key points to avoid injuries is maintaining a body that is strong and flexible. Always. Right? Because, I mean, there's, 80 and 90 year old sets play very hard.

Elke Bilger 01:30:19  They fall and they don't hurt themselves. It's usually we say that, for example, a child doesn't fall. It doesn't break when it's fall or when it falls because it's still so soft and flexible. And that's true. The same as for drunk people. When drunk people fall, they hardly get as injured. As a normal adult that is falling because the the drunk person doesn't have the reflex to tighten up. And children bend around objects like a rubber ball, right? So if an older person falls or trips, it's usually because we are yet to or we're already too rigid. And we are also sometimes already, by experiences, a little bit afraid. So we tighten up and then we fall into, you know, something, something gives in. and I don't promote that. You know, when you're like eight years old, you should jump around on a trampoline. like a young person. Because the likelihood that you will get hurt is higher. but the goal should be always to maintain that flexibility, your entire life.

Elke Bilger 01:31:23  It's, for example, I mean, some people are more flexible by nature than others. We have those that are ballerinas by nature. They can make that split. Right. I couldn't even, you know, in my youngest years I couldn't do a split. I have less flexible joints, which makes a body stronger. And you don't have to compensate so much with, like, the muscle strings to protect overly flexible, joints. I used to hate it because I wanted to be as flexible as those ballerinas, but then by now I understand that God gave me this body because he knew I would become a physiotherapist. And I need more strength. Right? So, but what we have, you know, by nature, can be kept. We can we can find a lifestyle where we can still do a backflip at the age of 80. It's just we don't do it. When you watch children, they're like, you know, playing, tossing around on the floor, bending in all sorts of directions.

Elke Bilger 01:32:24  They show you all the time that they can do the backflip and then, you know, latest, I think, and, you know, 10th or 11th grade or whatever, they're sitting, sitting, sitting and nobody is doing a backflip anymore unless they are kind of like in gymnastic class. Yes. You know, so and then you try to ask a 25 year old and they always already tell me, just like, oh, you know, until five years ago I was able to do that backflip. Now I just can't. Much less like 40, 50, 60. I'm now training it again with the help of a gym gymnastic ball of one of those big balls to bend around backwards. Okay. And I can touch again, but I'm yet to throw away the ball under me. Right. I know.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:08  Yes, I understand. You know, when we. When we age, it's, it's becoming more and more difficult. I mean.

Elke Bilger 01:33:14  But only because we don't use.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:15  It. We don't use it, or we haven't used it frequently enough.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:19  Exactly. Possibly.

Elke Bilger 01:33:20  Or we had injuries and surgeries. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:33:23  Injuries. Surgeries. They knock us out. And then you have the spiral. Well, but but also we know like bones for example, they need impact to stay strong while we age. And so sport is not just for the muscles. It's, it's, it's for, for the whole system connecting. I often also see like people when they, when they get like 40, 50, 60, they start to do two very excessive sports and train for marathons and go out and do the extreme side. Is this a healthy way of doing sport or is moderation? And what is moderation. more, more suggested for, for, for, healthy aging.

Elke Bilger 01:34:11  Well, I personally think, it can be just as healthy if you, you train in a correct way. Right. So, a lot of people, when they start, late aged mid-life crisis style training something because they want to prove something that they had missed so far, they only look into the aspect of being strong enough, running fast enough.

Elke Bilger 01:34:35  They don't look into the aspects of stretching, you know, maintaining a good muscle health, nutrition and the recovery times. Most people think that when they don't train for one day, that's lost time because they need to train, you know, more in order to, to get stronger. But really, 50% of your training time should be recovery time because your muscles build in the recovery time and not in the training time. You're using them, right? So but, if you start late, then you should always start at the level that you can with like a kind of like a step kind of like thing where you build, training higher and higher. I think one of the oldest marathon ladies started at the age of 80. She started and also what we call her name is the Iron Nancy. She started triathlon at a very high age and she did a ton of triathletes, a triathlon. Even the Ironman she did. Wow. After the age of 80. But, I mean, you know, she did it in a way that her body would be able to support it.

Elke Bilger 01:35:46  And, of course, it could be a little bit different depending on, you know, your background, if you have, any other, you know, issues with organs, heart or whatever, you know. But if you want to have a high goal and you, you're already middle aged or higher, go for it. It's not bad if you accompany this in a good way.

Abdullah Boulad 01:36:08  It's very individual again, very individual. Yes. Women versus men. And what age? Women while they undergo let's say pre menopause. Menopause and and later on.

Elke Bilger 01:36:20  It is it is a question of you know the status and the maintenance that we have. But no matter what age and no matter if you're male or female, we all have one thing in common. And the body builds up everything every day according to the use. Okay? We kind of like exchange 50 to 70 billion cells every day. Every day in your entire body. Just most of it. You don't see when your skin is used, old, burned, whatever it peels off, you can tell that or your hair is falling out.

Elke Bilger 01:36:53  the the exchange of the, cells that we have in the muscles and the bones, you don't see. And they are totally exchanged. Completely. Your bone, any bone in your body is not the same bone in about 1 to 1 and a half years. You know, there's, tissues that, exchange themselves completely as fast as three days. You just don't see them because there's everything in sight. So all the cells that exchange in your body have a system. So one is a muscle system, one is a bone system. Whatever. And the information how they restructure that body the muscle the the the bone is given by the information of usage. Right. So if you're like older and you're starting to use the bones more, but you give it enough time to think a little bit about this, your body will build up stronger bones just as well if you don't use it. I mean, I will say that the, the, the body is like a little bit like this farmer that has a horse and it's barn.

Elke Bilger 01:37:50  If the horse is not working, it's not feeding it. Right. It's the same with the body. If you know, if your bones don't have to do something or your muscles don't, the body doesn't not give a lot of energy to those structures. And, you know, so it doesn't get that doesn't become stronger. So but of course, there's a smart way, I mean, overusing it before your body was ready. Already. Probably will lead more likely to frustration and damage. Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:38:16  I mean, what you're saying is, use your body or you will lose it.

Elke Bilger 01:38:21  Yes. Use it or lose it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:38:24  but if someone, let's say, is 70 years old, he has pain in his knee and, overweight and, it's it might be difficult from his position to to stand up and get get moving. You know, how what would you tell these people?

Elke Bilger 01:38:43  I would tell those people to really start with the small things, right? and, first of all, they need always to have a goal in mind because, take a 70 year old overweight.

Elke Bilger 01:38:56  knee problems. He probably didn't have his goals set yet for physical health. Otherwise, he would have not ignored, you know, getting to this, you know, poorly shape before. So now we need to reconstruct, you know, what goal he has is the goal that he just, in 20 years, doesn't want to sit in the wheelchair or his goal to say, just like, okay, I you know, I didn't take care of it, but I still want to run a marathon. whatever you have, you know, for a goal would kind of like determine also the steps that you take towards it. But no matter what the goal is, you can always start with the smallest step. You know, you can exercise, some small squats every day. You can change the diet. You can start, you know, taking, one, one stairway instead of the, the elevator. You know, those things you can do without killing yourself. And then, you know, maybe a week later, you can, do semi squats 20 times instead of only ten times or five times, you know, so we're kind of like building up with what we have.

Elke Bilger 01:39:57  And, the body will learn quite fast if you give it something to do that you know, it was not used to it. You know, the body is designed to make the most out of, you know, the challenge is that you give it to him.

Abdullah Boulad 01:40:10  Most, most frequent accidents happen through, like, falling. Yes, when we age. And then we hurt ourselves. Then we break our hip, or then we get out of a rhythm and and so. But we need to think about these things in very early and, in our 30s, in our 40s, and start planning who we want to be at 80, or older. And, because it, it gets more and more difficult and our metabolism slows down. what I also in my, in my daily, fitness routine, I do jumping jacks and I try to impact also my bones and, and and and joints so, so they can be stronger because of falling down later. So it's not that I go for the extreme for the marathon, but more low impact.

Elke Bilger 01:41:11  Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:41:12  Muscle. Skeleton. like. Like a little mix, of of different activities combined with massages and and, and deep body tissue treatments.

Elke Bilger 01:41:26  Yes, yes. yeah, I totally agree. with the the what, what you mentioned about, you know, when we have like an accident, when we're like older or whatever. But here also I want to mention that we have to watch our mindset quite carefully because we have a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to aging. just because, you know, people are so used to tell, you know, each other how difficult it is when we're aging, how much slower we are, the metabolism and all those things. And it's not as true as we say. And the difference, for example, between a person that has a crash at the age of 80 or 90. I mean, one of the most common is they trip and they have the upper thigh bone broken, right? And I even learned in class, this is kind of like like a death sentence for old people.

Elke Bilger 01:42:18  This is usually the point of no return. Yeah. You know, because then it's kind of like a spiral going downwards. But I didn't find it to be true. I mean, we have, you know, for my former partner, the dad broke his upper thigh at the age of 97, and he was on his feet just doing well, walking after just a couple of months. And I've treated other older people that have, of course, been more active than others. They've been always, you know, doing their gardening, cycling. 195 year old that broke his upper thigh told me when I asked him why he looked like an 85 year old. And I mean a very stunningly beautiful 95 year old man with, like, a, like an aura that, you know, I mean, just at any 50 year. What if what to change with him? And I ask him how. And he said, well, I take my bicycle every morning and I drive to the public swimming pool and I swim, and then I go back, and then I do my homework, and I do my lunch and I do my shopping.

Elke Bilger 01:43:16  So he stayed quite active, but in a, of course, in a pace that allowed, you know, was allowed to, to, to his age and also he healed quite fast. So most people that come back on their feet quite fast are the people that have prepared a little bit. Right. And they have the attitude, oh, that's nothing. You know, give me a few weeks and I'll be right back. And there's, if family members and that's quite like a big point. You know, an age is like a lot of family members will treat an older person as like this fragile, careful to be, you know, and this look of just like, oh, let's see how long you will still live, you know, so this does something good to your mind And, I don't know. We probably don't have the time to go too much into epigenetics, but, if we're talking about the buildup of cells, I mean, they used to say it's the genes that determine, you know, this, but from the epigenetics now, we know that the genes don't have a boss function.

Elke Bilger 01:44:21  They need an environmental, trigger to get started. And there's different environmental triggers that can start the gene to be active. But one of the strongest ones is emotions. That is proven in epigenetics. So if we think that we heal a little bit slower, that's what your body does. Right. So if we think just like that's nothing my body can do it, then that's what the body does, right. So and yeah sometimes the metabolism is a little bit slower. And menopause can make a big difference to hormones. But actually we find out more and more that if this is true then it's because something is internally out of sync as well, out of balance. You know, because the body with a, you know, proper nutrition and the proper exercise and the proper mental health, should, function just fine, maybe not just as fast, but we don't have to be as fast.

Abdullah Boulad 01:45:21  A lot happens in in our mind and in the intention and and knowing who we want to be in the future, like setting a goal.

Abdullah Boulad 01:45:29  but this is where where the difficulty starts. changing behavior today for my future self. And and that's, that's the mindset. someone should, should get into and imagine. Who is it I want to be? What body is it I want to have? Yes. And really have a plan for it. Make a plan. We make appointments. We plan for our vacations. Right? We make a plan, to buy a new car. We make a plan to. To save for a new house. So we imagine what we want to be, where we want to be and what we what we want to get in our life. And I believe we should also, prepare for a healthy aging. And who do we want to be? How do we want to move? What do we want to be able to do? Because most people think, oh, okay, when I retire, I will start traveling. But if you have pain and you cannot move and you have issues, you cannot travel anymore.

Abdullah Boulad 01:46:29  So what's the life I want to do when I'm in my 70s, in my 80s, in my 90s? Yes. If I get there.

Elke Bilger 01:46:38  You're mentioning a quite common problem. I had a lot of conversations with middle aged clients that were obviously in a very bad state and a physical state, and I told them, just like you listen, you need to take some time for your body as well. And a lot of them told me, I don't have time right now. I'm too important. And the. And the company. I you know, I'm just, you know, I have to do this and that and that, and, well, I only have to work 10 or 15 more years and then I can enjoy life. And the truth is not that most people that abuse their body for the 40, 45 minimum years of working in a company have the problem that when they're retired, they're more often at the doctor's at than at vacations, right? And yes, it is no fun if you just had a knee surgery or hip surgery or heart surgery and then you, you know, you are going on on your vacation, you still will be very careful and not enjoying this anymore.

Elke Bilger 01:47:37  And this is I'm not saying that everything is preventable, because we have accidents and sometimes, we're not lucky enough to grow up with aware parents or aware systems that supported us to maintain a healthy body. So, sometimes it's not so easy to catch up 40, 50, 60 years of damage and reverse. But by the way, it's possible if you're working on this long enough. But, Yeah, if you're kind of like, missing living your your life every day, enjoying it every day, doing something for your body, for your body, you know, physical and mental health every day and not just wait for the the day. You know, when you retire. That's extremely dangerous, especially none of us. You know, we don't know when we're going to die. You know, we just don't know. That's a good way. You know a good thing. That's a good thing. But, yeah, we should, take room to enjoy life as it is here right now.

Abdullah Boulad 01:48:38  Enjoy. But I like the term you mentioned not abuse our body.

Elke Bilger 01:48:42  Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:48:43  And that this is where where it starts. If we abuse our body for a long period of time. If you're still young, the body can compensate if you get to. And I have seen people, even my own father had that 48, like a stroke. And this turned his life around. Yes, he was able to function, but with medication, a bunch of medication and not work that strong anymore, and so on and so forth. Yes. So, or people have done a heart attack and die at this age, but just because maybe they were not taking care enough about about their body and abusing it, as you as you said.

Elke Bilger 01:49:26  Yes, yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:49:28  What do you do to stay in balance and, aligned with your body and mind?

Elke Bilger 01:49:36  Well, I have abused my body quite well in the past. I have to admit it, because I was playing harder than, you know, taking care of regeneration, processes. but my excuses are that, you know, I only learned to be a physiotherapist at age of 30 and I still play hard sometimes.

Elke Bilger 01:49:57  I'm big on cycling and I like cycling in the mountains, so this is quite a lot of stress and I am absolutely willing to abuse in a way my body, if I take enough time to recover and do something well for it. just in order to have fun with a passion, you know, with a passion of mine. so we always have to bring that in balance as well, you know, how much worth is the abuse that we are doing? but in order to balance my body on a daily level, I really do. Well, I start my day like this. These days, when I get up, I sit in front of a infrared light and I start a little meditation. Well, it's kind of like a checkup with myself. How do I feel? How do I feel about this day? I do a little meditation and, then when I'm done with this, I do a little yoga. And yes, there's very few days where I skip the yoga because I often, you know, think just like, okay, now you only have 5 or 10 minutes, I do something.

Elke Bilger 01:50:55  So I really manage to do some yoga in the morning every morning. and then I personally love running, especially in nature. So I do what we call trail running. I go into the mountains and the trails. I just don't want to be so much on, on on pavement and in the city. You know, this is kind of, like, not so nice for my eyes. And I do a lot of, cycling, road cycling and mountain biking and, I personally make it a point also now in these days, in the evening to do a little short stretching before I go to bed and, do another mindset, which means mindset mindset routine, which means that, I really have another check in with myself, one for the body. And I really kind of like screen. Where do I have so much tension? you know, and kind of like, add breathing work to the areas where I, you know, find tension, because I think that the combination of breathwork with tension is very helpful from, you know, changing the biochemistry from the inside.

Elke Bilger 01:51:59  And then I do a little bit check up with my day, you know, how did I feel about it and try to always end the day with, a relaxed mind and gratefulness.

Abdullah Boulad 01:52:10  Beautiful routine.

Elke Bilger 01:52:11  Yes. And I think it's, you know, sometimes, you know, I, you know, I'm a person that grew up with a lot of pressure, in my life. And I'm also like, by by nature, I'm like a doer, you know? So I'm, like, always scheduled. I want to get this done. You know, I have 1000 things. 1000 things in my mind that I want to get done. And, so, yeah, my my day is usually over before I know it. And I think that the body likes and the mind, you know, likes small things better than when we don't do nothing. And then one time a week or one time a month, we try to catch up with all that. So it's the small little breaks, the small little things, the small little check ins, you know, I mean, I sometimes do also like a 45 minute yoga routine if I have time.

Elke Bilger 01:52:58  But even if I'm tight on the schedule, I try to really do just a quick 5 to 10 minutes in order to give the body some flow. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:53:07  And you are aware of of it and you try to implement it as much.

Elke Bilger 01:53:12  Yes, yes, yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:53:13  Yes, as much as possible.

Elke Bilger 01:53:14  As much as possible. Exactly. And since my work is also, you know, I mean, my work is not better than office work because I'm always leaning over the, the, the, the table, the massage table. You know, I'm bend forward. So I'm kind of like out of balance in my work quite a lot. And so of course, you know, if I do this daily in my life, I have to find some work of undo. It's a, some way of to, to undo this also on a daily level.

Abdullah Boulad 01:53:40  That's why the ball.

Elke Bilger 01:53:42  That's why the ball. Any sorts of exercises. I also go to the gym. Yes, but then I do about 1 or 2 times, a week because, the, the increase of serious muscle mass is one of those things that will activate so, so many things in your body included on the hormonal level that, I think this is one of the things that we all need to understand that movement itself is fine, but your muscles will not grow and give you not the benefits of your serious muscle growth.

Elke Bilger 01:54:13  You don't have to be a bodybuilder, obviously. but 1 or 2 times a week, some, you know, serious muscle weightlifting, work is very beneficial.

Abdullah Boulad 01:54:23  For men and women.

Elke Bilger 01:54:24  For men and women, especially for women. it shows that, women have, you know, after a certain age, even almost a higher benefit of this than men because they, they usually under wear under training before. So, yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:54:40  My last question to you when you when you could now tell everyone in the world, one wisdom, something you would like to share to them what they can do in their life. what would that be?

Elke Bilger 01:54:56  Well, you know, I mean, I think the most important thing that we should always remember that our body is the only vessel that will join us from the beginning to the end on our journeys. So we have to respect it and maintain it.

Abdullah Boulad 01:55:12  Was a real pleasure having you here today. Thank you. I learned a lot. And, I enjoy also a lot.

Abdullah Boulad 01:55:19  Your your treatments. we do regularly meet, and, I'm very glad about that. Happy and grateful for the work also you do for, for for the balance with our clients and the success we we we achieved here. improving their lives. Thank you very much for being here again today.

Elke Bilger 01:55:38  On my side. Thank you.

Abdullah Boulad 01:55:40  Thank you. Okay.

Elke Bilger 01:55:41  Thank you so much, Abdullah.