You're Meant to Move with DK Ciccone

People don’t relish talking about pain. Valid. So let’s talk about pain relief.

Dana Karen (DK) Ciccone’s journey with pain started suddenly at age 13 while performing a solo in the musical Godspell at a local theater. It was her effort to seek (and find) relief that led to her commitment to help others move their bodies in order to “conquer chronic pain, increase stress resilience, and reclaim an active life”. 

DK found Pilates to be quite helpful, leading her to later become a certified Pilates instructor with specialized training in pain reprocessing therapy. Her work with clients also uncovers their fears and personal narratives around movement and healing. After the body repairs the physical injury, she discovered that stress and anxiety from potential pain can itself become a source of prolonged disability. 

You’re Meant to Move is the title of DK’s empathetically written, medically sound, and action-based new book.  

Think pain is normal as we age? The Besties addressed this common belief once before with guest Chesha Hodge, MPA, RDN (Embrace Healthier Nutritional Choices). These two experts challenge this myth.

Learn more about DK’s work at  Movement Remedies

As mentioned: Train with Joan

This episode and all previous episodes are available on The Besties’ YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

Transcript

(upbeat intro music)

- Hey, Ange.

- Hey, Les, how you doing?

- I'm excited.

- I'm too excited. You know, I'm, listen, I'm like one of those puppies that when you come home and they start doing the waggin of tail stuff and stuff, you know, and then eventually they'll pee on your leg. That's me today, without the pee.

- Without the pee.

- Okay, good, Les, thanks for sharing.

- Thanks for sharing.

- Thanks for sharing. Are you gonna welcome everyone?

- As everyone.

- As everyone.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You see how excited I get? I forgot to tell people where we are.

- This is your version of peeing on the leg, yeah.

- It is, it is. Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Best Dees from Brooklyn.

- Brooklyn!

- Hey folks, go ahead.

- Les, you can be excited now.

- Okay, I'm excited because we have our first guest of the year.

- Yes!

- Yes! Welcome!

- Oh, is it gonna be a pleasure?(laughs) You all are going to flock to this lady because she is just so interesting and she takes a concept that I bet you think you know and turns it 180.

- That's right.

- That's the way that I look at this.

- Thank you for not saying 360.

- I have a little education.(laughs)

- So, get it in.

- Okay, may I?

- Yes.

- May I?

- Because she's my exciting, okay, I'm gonna calm down.

- DK is my new best friend, so just give me some space with her, please.

- Yes.

- Give me some space, okay?

- We're fighting over you now.(laughs)

- This is a DK Ciccone. Did I do the last name correctly?

- Awesome, thank you.

- Thank you. And she is someone that I met a few months ago and you know people that you meet, that you immediately know that they're going to like take up space in your life from that point forward. She's one of them, for sure. We clicked almost immediately. And that was really all I needed. But then I got to know her more and I got to know about the work that she does and where her passion and service to the world resides and how she came to do this work. And then it's like, (inhales) absolutely amazing. Recently, DK and I saw each other at an event in Puerto Rico, the ROI Millionaire Summit by Hello Seven. And so I just like last week was doing a lot of hugging, a lot of DK and in Jellah hugging was going on.

- And a lot of things.

- Yeah, and dancing, yes! Let me tell you, DK has some moves. I'm serious, like, what? Like the moves that I used to do in Brooklyn, but I can no longer do because I've forgotten all of them. Those kinds of moves. So I just want to introduce her book to everyone. This is it.

- Well, I was going to read a little bit more about her because I, okay, you can go ahead. Okay, you can do that. Let me just…

- Low me, not me.

- Low me, low me. It's called, you're meant to move a guy to conquering chronic pain, increasing stress resilience and reclaiming an active life. I want to say one other thing, one other thing. You know, I'm like the joy person, right? I call myself the joy strategist because if we don't make joy intentional, we end up not having a whole lot of it. And DK, this came to me just after the last meeting that we were on together. And I was talking about how people, as they get older, they think that pain is just a part of life and they just expect it. And Leslie, I forgot to look up when we had... She's on who talked about the nurse practitioner and she talked about our diet and how our diet affects our bodies and things like that. And she reminded us that there are ways that we feel that we're not supposed to feel. And so what DK is gonna talk about is pain and how we can address our pain. So I'm gonna leave that there. But the thing, the new thing that I wanted to add is that when I talk about joy, I am not often talking about the tiptoe through the tulips kind of joy. That's great. I'm talking about the joy where you intentionally make decisions to bring more fulfillment, more peace, less pain, less stress into your life. And that is the part that DK is bringing to us today is how pain can be managed. And you said DK that you talk about pain, but to me you talk about pain relief, which is a part of the flip that Leslie is talking about. And then when I read your book, I didn't finish reading it, but I actually put aside the book that I was reading so I could get into this book. I was blown away at the way that you address the topic. And just the almost conversational tone that you take in your writing, that makes it like, you know, of course, absolutely, that makes so much sense. Why did I think of that? It's just so well written and so I think written in such a way that people are not afraid of being scolded for feeling the way that they feel. It's almost like you take their hand. Yeah. And Leslie, you, you know, I'm just gonna get my time in'cause I know you being an anesthesiologist and DK on this pain relief journey. I just figured you guys were gonna...(laughs) We'll let you back in. We'll promise to let you back in. So I'm taking my time now. No, it's okay. I just wrap it, but DK, so well written. I'm so proud of you and love the work that you do and that you turned a pretty devastating point in your life into this. It's so remarkable. I'm so, so, so, so, happy to know you and happy that I'm on the planet at the same time as you. Okay.

- Wow, so much. Thank you so much. And I'm just gonna briefly read part of a bio that I found. So DK owns and operates a post rehab pilates studio movement remedies dot org where she guides individuals through movement journeys to address chronic pain. Her new book, You're meant to move a guide to conquering chronic pain, increasing stress resilience and reclaiming an active life, details her own journey living with chronic pain since the age of 13 and how you can find freedom and joy in your body again. As a consultant, she helps health and life sciences organizations deploy behavior changes, the behavior change theory to create tailored organizational readiness plans that improve health and thereby the health of the organizations. I give to you and the public DK Ciconne.

- Wow.

- That was like, impressive run to work to begin, but it's incredibly rewarding experience to be here with you wonderful.

- Thank you today and thank you for including me in this awesome endeavor.

- So tell us, I know we've all been talking about you, about you, about you. Tell us a little bit about where this, I call it body work, where this journey started.

- Yeah, so, as Angela mentioned, I mean, I talk about in the book how I had this kind of devastating moment that was my first collision course with very debilitating low back pain. And so that is kind of stands aside in terms of my own journey with pain, but later, I had a herniated at a disc in my low back and that was 2007. And I was trying to find my way back to movement because being able to move in my body was such a big part of my identity and I felt very lost. And I was just so uncomfortable and I couldn't figure out how to move safely. And you know, doctors were kind of saying just walk or I also had aqua therapy and things like that, but it wasn't scratching my edge, I guess. And someone said to me, "I heard Pilates is great for backs." And so I said, "Sure." So I found a Pilates studio and where I was living in New Haven, Connecticut at the time and started, and honestly, from my first class, I found that I had relief from that class. Now, I'm not here to say that Pilates is some kind of a magical movement method. I think that there are many movement methods that speak to different bodies and different situations. It met me and all the ways I needed it met me where I was in that moment and it brought me some relief. And so from that point forward, it became an important part of my own pain management toolbox because of course there are lingering things that have gone on in my body since then. But it wasn't until 2017, about 10 years later, that when I was, as you mentioned, I, you touched on my corporate life as well. I was previously at a top five consulting firm working, you know, crazy hours, traveling a lot. I was chasing after titles and other people's kind of definition of what success looked like in my life. And I am at my core, a tender-hearted, I think, empathetic person who wanted to really make a difference. And that kind of way of showing up was not driving well with the corporate environment that I was in. And it led to me having daily panic attacks at work, where I would just lose the ability to breathe, to stand, to, you know, do anything. And I, if you've ever had a panic attack before, it's so weird, it's like this thunder cloud rolls in and you're like, you're like, I'm dying, I'm dying.

- And you know, you know that was closed in, yeah.

- But there's nothing about the situation that says like you're definitely dying, but everything inside your body is screaming, you're dying.

- Yeah.

- So, yeah, really freaky and it happens like repeatedly. And so, I said, okay.(laughs) It's time to take a little booksy, like, what am I doing in my life, you know?

- All right, can I just stop you right there for a second, because there's a couple things that I just don't wanna forget. So, what I know when people have panic attacks, and if one, once they identify them as panic attacks, we are Americans, the first thing we do, we start looking at medications.

- It was the first time I kind of stopped, I felt like I had just been on this, you know, hamster wheel and I stopped and I said, like, what am I doing this for? Who am I doing this for?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, at what point do you reach the level that you, that feels like enough? And, and why am I chasing enough as defined by everybody outside me? And so, you know you're a people pleaser and you have some challenges and you need to work out when someone says to you, well, what do you, you know, what do you want? And you just get like a blank page inside your head, you know?

- All right.

- So, that was the beginning of a journey for me, and at the time my back, my back, my pain had really come back as well in the, to a level that happened years.

- Sure.

- And that was when I said, I needed to do something else and I said, well, what is it that brings me joy? And of course I said, well, please, is there anything I can do with that? And so I, you know, ended up giving it a try, there was a trade teacher training course in my, in my studio where I was also taking classes at the time because I was also taking student classes. And I said, all right, well, what's the worst thing that happens? Like, maybe I'm terrible at this. Like, maybe I'll hate it, you know? And so I started teaching, I went through the course, and the first time I remember it was January 2018, I taught my first course, like actual class by myself, and I was just like, that was amazing. You know, that was just, this is it.

- And you're like, yeah, like you felt like that kind of, really, that sense of, I guess, fulfillment. And so, I gave my notice and–

- She's like peace.

- Yeah.

- I'm like, I don't know if you're,

- I know, but I'm gonna very, I'm gonna be, yeah.(laughing)

- I mean, I would have loved to say a lot more, yeah, but,(laughing) I, that's so courageous. I mean, we celebrate bold moves, things like that, you know?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, when I tell you it felt like life and death, I really mean it. You know what I mean?

- Yes, yes.

- I know, like, that's a little dramatic, but.

- No, it's not.

- I mean, it is a sense of like living.

- I get it.

- You know, really living, not just existing, but like living.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Because people don't realize that death is not that just cessation of life like that, but death can be a thousand cuts.

- Yes.

- You know, if every day you're walking into a place that just dumps on you and is a dark place for your soul in your spirit, your body often knows these things before our head does.

- Yeah.

- Our head wants to tell our hearts. Listen, don't beat so fast. It ain't that bad, it ain't that bad. I was speaking to one of the R.R.I. participants over the weekend and I said something like, I said, you know, it's in my head and she says, you know, your head is an asshole. She says, never, she said, do not.(laughing)

- I think that was a dona.

- I was, she said, do not listen to your head. Listen to your heart.

- Oh, okay.

- And that's exactly what it sounds like. You just said, you know?

- Yeah, I mean, I, mind's a persistent asshole. I have to have conversations with it all the time. But, yeah, I mean, I really just felt like, like I've been doing, I was like, I've been doing this wrong the whole time, you know? And I think, I really do believe that the roots of my original source of pain was also my body telling me that I had anxiety and other things going on that were not right. And so, you know, it's not a mistake or whatever that that happened the way that it did.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You know, so I was working in a fitness oriented kind of studio, but I was always, for me, Pilates was always about the pain because for me that was my go-to. And so, I always, I was telling them, you know,'cause I mostly did private clients. I talk classes as well, but I said, send me all the people that are complex issues. I wanna work with the really complex cases.'Cause a lot of folks don't, you know, want to. And I said, I want, you know, I was taking extra courses and extra training and lots of anatomy and trying my best to, you know, to get equipped. And it was really, I talk about in the book, I had a client with complex regional pain syndrome after being hit by a car in the crosswalk, traumatic, super traumatic experience that led to a bunch of surgeries and so on.

- Can be devastating. 

- And then,

- It was devastating. 

- Yeah. So, that was, that was when I realized, there's more than this. There's more than just showing up and doing the exercises because sometimes we would just move very little and it was about talking about the pain and it was about just creating space for her to be kind of to grieve, you know, to be like, I can't believe my body can't do the thing. I wanted to do, like I can't believe what my physical, this physical vessel I'm in is not lining up with the one I had in mind for myself at this stage in my life and like, how do you reconcile that? And so, you know, I was just like, there's more than just teaching these classes. I wanna have a space where people can feel like they can explore that dark side and they can bring all the feelings that come with pain and show up any kind of way. And so, eventually I went off and started movement remedies and, you know, that's the space I have now where I really try to make it about the whole journey of pain on all the experiences and where we can have conversations about what's coming up for people as they're moving. That's more than just, you know, what muscles you think are working right now and you do, you know.

- So that's a long, answer your question.

- Lastly, my, this kit's so close to home for me because I have a loved one who has been suffering with chronic pain and multiple back surgeries for years. And we know that the chronic narcotics and pills don't often work and alleviate the trouble, pardon me.

- Even the surgery is done always. That makes the whole problem worse. I wonder, that's another story. But what I've suggested to her is that she seek a therapist specializing in chronic pain.

- Yes.

- Because many years ago I used to work in a pain management practice and what I do know is that when you change your psychological outlook in your perception of pain, it can make a difference but my loved one, all she keeps saying to me is, how was that gonna make me feel better? How was that gonna address my pain? So the way that we look at pain and think about pain can actually change our pain perception.

- Yeah.

- And you nailed that in your practice.

- Yes.

- Well, yeah, I mean, I think I was like scratching at it. I was kind of, I knew it was there and I was trying to figure it out. And frankly, through whatever researching and I read the book, Explain Pain, which is by the Laura Murmohesley, it is a bunch of research in Australia. And eventually this led me to pain reprocessing therapy, which is taught by the Pain Psychology Center.

- And I did the right thing.

- Yeah, I was gonna tell you,'cause they have a database of providers. And it's actually, the course is actually built for mental health counselors, psychotherapists who have a counseling practice and want to work with people who didn't have chronic pain. I was really grateful that they let me take the course as well,'cause I don't do those services, but how I talk about pain in my sessions is now very carefully informed by that work. So there is a great program out there for that and I highly recommend it. But his whole approach is that is essentially, pain is just one response that your brain may have to any kind of stimulus. So your brain responds to stimuli all the time. Sometimes pain is the right, it's an accurate response because the brain is trying to interpret what's going on in its environment and it's going, okay, I feel a sensation. Is it a threat to my physical being? Is it an infection? Is it a cut? Is it something, a break, whatever? And the brain is just not always right. So sometimes it's just responding about a brain.

- And a kidney disease.

- The brain is an asshole. I mean, honestly, you should just call this episode the brain is an asshole.

- We would call it all the same.

- And we're all the same. Or just, you know, he's, you know, that like, yeah, we know he's an asshole. I don't really know it all how else to put it and of course I decided to repeat. But, you know, we also just have connections that we build, you know, like, for the example of the person that I worked with who was hit by a car, you know, like certain experiences were very triggering. And I see that a lot with people, especially with falls, like in folks after a certain age. Now the idea of falling triggers, you know, pain in their bodies, kind of like anticipatory pain and then you end up with fear of the causing and guarding exactly.

- Yeah, it does.

- Leslie, that's all that stuff exactly. So folks don't even realize it. And it's challenging to have that conversation because you bring it up and it kind of sounds dismissive. So you have to figure out a way to say it. That's not just, because I know I, you know, I first heard things about how my, you know, my mindset might be affecting my pain and I was just like, oh, it's just saying I'm great.

- So you're saying I'm great, yeah.(laughing) Yeah. But people don't realize that we are all those things. It's the bio cycle social, they say.

- Yeah.

- And our outward environment.

- Exactly.

- You know, I advise this love one often, why don't you surround yourself in things that are beautiful? Sit by a lake and look at birds as a way to distract yourself, a distraction technique, or whatever, you know, it's not all about the physical and the body. But it's hard when you're, you know, pain is a big motivator. You know, it's a huge motivator. You know, so it's very difficult to look outward when you're in such distress.

- And it's, I mean, it's, I do try to like remind people that it's, it's functioning correctly. Like, it's an evolutionary response for survival. And so the fact that it's causing you to feel like you can't focus on anything else is because if you did step on a rusty nail and you didn't do something about it or if you did have an infection that you didn't treat, then it would be a life or death situation. But, you know, we sometimes just build up this over. And of course, we're on the earth longer now than in our, you know, ancestors from the eight generations ago would have been. So, we gather more conditioned responses as we go. And I think this connects to what you were saying about joy too. It's like, you have more trauma, more triggers. And so you're more sensitized. And so it is harder. Like you do have to really figure out how to rearchitect a view of the world in which you feel safe in your body.

- Right, right, right.

- Right, right. I have to refer to something that I've read that I had to highlight because in a book that talks about pain and how to manage pain, there was a chapter called "Tapping Into Your Hearts Desire" and you know that I just kind of dovetailed right there.

- Yeah.

- And what I'll say kind of leading into it is Pilates studios, they're intimidating to me.

- I was gonna say the same thing.

- I look at the machinery and I'm like torture chamber.

- I mean, you know, however, what you talk about is, and I know this is decay, this is who you are. You talk about how we're conditioned and what we see on social media are people kind of doing things to the extreme, right? Doing things that show how superhuman or how they can stand on, do an arm stand while doing something funky with their feet. And you're like, what, that doesn't do anything to help you to get through life in a joyful way. That's, you know what I mean, that's not, I mean, how are you gonna do that? Is that the way you're gonna cross the street? Is that the way you're gonna avoid traffic? I just, it's like, it's crazy, right? One hand, but exactly. And so, so you talked about the Joseph Pilates and that his whole stick was around, and this is on page 95 for when you guys get the book. It is the purpose of being active is to be able to fulfill life's physical demands with maximum ease and enjoyment, right? It's not about building out your muscles or even, looking a certain way and you can, those things could be additive, but they shouldn't be kind of the whole goal about it. I wanna make sure that my body reacts when I'm about to fall, right? 

- Right.

- And know what to do or knows how to properly step up on things or even not have fear around things like that, not to, I do wanna be buff though, I really do. That's, that's in my, that's coming back in my future, but it will not be central. It will be again additive. So I'm gonna just say, you read this part too. If our goal is to complete life's tasks with spontaneous zest and pleasure, we're training the body for living well. Your movement program should reflect the specific gestures you need to, I'm trying to read without my glasses to execute, to participate fully in the world around you, right? That's what it should be about.

- That's health 2.0 that we've been talking about. I was telling that to Darrell just today. I had this long conversation with my brother and I was saying, do you know the concept of health 2.0 and outlast and living and whatever? So the whole thing now, it's not about preventive medicine, it's not about taking care of our bodies, but what's in or health 2.0 is that, protect yourself 10 years from now. You're in retirement, you've saved up your enough savings, everything is going well. Now you wanna travel. Are you fit enough to walk through an airport?

- Right.

- To get from terminal A,

- Terminal C,

- In Charlotte Airport, where I am all the time. Can you carry a carry on through an airport?

- Yeah.

- So your goal is to be able to retire, but are you ready to retire?

- Exactly.

- And the thing is, we need to do things today in order to be able to do these things when we have the money, when we no longer working and when we retire.

- Yeah.

- My brother also said something that's interesting. He says, you know, I reached out to my friends or whatever. That's also part of Health 2.0. The relationships that you continue to cultivate today, or your travel companions in 10 years from now. How many elderly people say, you know, all of my friends are gone and I wish that I had company and I'm so lonely. Well, when you cultivate these type of fitness goals, not for today, 'cause you don't need them today. I can walk to the airport today. I need to walk to the airport in 10 years from now.

- Right. But it starts today.

- 'Cause you know I won't be out there. I'll go ahead and tell them to leave the door open for you.(laughing)

- I'll get the wheelchair ready. You ordered a wheelchair for me. No, God forbid.

- I mean, not just getting on the plane, but like maybe actually be able to like, you know, have you been to the Amalfi coast and like, how rocky those stairs are? I mean, you know, like the places you visit too, I mean, I remember visiting Amalfi actually.

- I don't know, my most list.

- When looking at the older, you know, women who, by the way, were, you know, little scars around their neck, some little bags and just, you know.(laughing) And, you know, as they're going up and down stone stairs that are not of our standards, right? Nothing to code or anything. They're all, they're all like, you know, the slide, like side to side and unstable and they're just going away ‘cause that's how you go down and get your groceries. And so I think the point though is that there's so much hope because the body can progress.

- Yeah.

- And that's what I think was so exciting, like, the more that I learned and the more that I have experienced all different kinds of bodies is that, it's not like you reach a certain stage in your body and the body itself says, I can no longer build muscle. Like as long as you load your muscles, they were build muscle. I mean, unless you have some kind of condition that I'm making right now.

- It ain't too late.

- It's incredible.

- Like, you can, I mean, you, like that train with Joan, I don't know if you've followed her. She's been covered by a couple magazines, didn't start exercising until she was like 70 something.

- Oh, yes, yes.

- She's not a black woman, but.

- No, it's someone else that I saw because I have a picture of her that's #goals and I keep it in my phone and my vision album. But anyway, keep going, tell me what you do.

- Well, does she?

- She's called Train with Joan on Instagram, I think, I don't remember her last name.

- Okay.

- But and I'm sure there are few, but like the point is, you know, you can trap the journeys of these folks who didn't start building muscle until there are 70s with any intention. And are, you know, like fitness models, and again, it's not about the aesthetics, but and she says, I still have pain in my joints sometimes. But she can go pick up her bags and she can travel and she can do all these things that she sees folks around her and not able to do. And I just think, I love stories like that because it just proves the point that, you know, it's not like your body just expires like milk and then you can't do anything anymore, you know?

- Like milk.(laughing)

- Does it get sour like milk?

- No.

- No, you can just keep on trucking. You can keep doing those dance moves, you know?(laughing) That's my ball, I want, I want to be a mother. You can do the most.

- That's why you're dancing the way you do.

- That's what, yeah, yeah, she's good, she's really good. I was, my knees were starting to hurt and–

- Oh, well, yeah, mine too, but it might've ever matter.

- So, DK, you actually started a section in this well-covered book with differentiating between pain, perception and reality.

- Yeah.

- So is there a difference between what we're experiencing is pain and is it not really pain?
- Yeah, so I think that there are, there are plenty of times in our lives where we may feel that pain is of such an extent that it's actually preventing us from doing something. And so, you know, what I'll usually have a conversation with someone is if they say, you know, well, I can't move because I can't take that walk because it hurts my knees and I say, okay, well, I mean, have you tried to take a walk? You know, when's the last time you try to take a walk? And then they say, well, I don't know, I haven't tried. You know, I haven't done it in a while. And so I think we end up proving our own hypothesis and so I encourage people to create their own many experiments to sort of like prove to themselves like whether or not the limitations they believe they have are real or if it's like something they told themselves, like I spoke to someone at the conference last week who was saying, oh, my back really hurts and I said, well, you know, when did that start? And she said, well, I took a really long bike ride, you know, with my husband and it really hurt after. And I was like, you know, I get that you could be sore but like your spine is really strong. Like there's, unless you fell off the bike, like there's nothing that you could have done in that bike ride that could have fundamentally changed the tissues in your spine, right? I mean, I'm not a doctor but like, I would be really surprised unless something crazy happened. And so have you tried to ride a bike since then or like is it possible that there were something going on in your life that was happening then? You attributed, we often attribute a physical symptom to a physical thing and there's often a physical symptom with no physical thing.

- Yes.

- Wait, wait, stop. You're gonna have to repeat that slowly please.

- Yeah.

- For the people in the back, including me. Yeah, I want to lock that in.

- We often attribute a physical symptom to a physical problem but many times the physical symptom is actually caused by something that's not physical.

- God.

- And the absence of an actual organic problem. So people may say, I need a CAT scan, I need an X-ray, you gotta find something, you gotta find something. Very often it's not.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause people want something to fix. You know, it's almost like if you're a surgeon, you see everything as a surgical problem. People say people want something to fix. If it's broken, I have to fix it because this is the cause of the problem and it's not necessarily so.

- So, okay, so devil's advocate here.

- Yeah.

- There seems to be a hard line between physical and not whatever we're calling it, mental and say.

- Yeah.

- Psychological.

- Psychological. But that's a really hard pill to swallow because, and I think this is a big part of why, is because psychological is so, it's such a loaded, and it's almost like it's not real if it's psychological.

- It's a bit advertising.

- It's so stigmatized. And psychological is as real as physical.

- Yeah, it's just a pain in the last real.

- Exactly.

- You can disconnect the two.

- They're not saying you're crazy if we say that there's a lot of components.

- Sometimes they do say you're crazy. That's the problem though. Sometimes people are presented that if it's something that is in the mind is if your brain isn't this delicate and amazing part of your body, even though it can be an asshole, it's also just as real as a broken finger in terms of, do you know what I mean?

- Yeah, yeah sure.

- So, in reality.

- Yeah, and I think what DK is saying in what her book, really just, I can't say enough.

- It's so comprehensive.

- It's so many comprehensive.

- Really. And I'm saying that because I love you, but Leslie is saying that because she's a physician and she actually knows. And I just kept sitting up and like,(laughs)

- She wrote the book as well, I say that's awesome.

- I didn't. I ordered the book for myself. It didn't come as yet. And I was looking at excerpts of it. And I ordered one for this loved one who was suffering with chronic pain. So she should get it soon as well.

- I just lost my train of thought, but the, the, do you think, to what extent do practitioners like DK, like you take care in how you speak of these things? Like one is real, the other one isn't. Like how do you kind of bridge that for people? Especially those people who may have been told by every other practitioner until they met you, that it's all in your head. If we don't see anything on the cat's gander, there's nothing there. If we don't see anything on the MRI, there's nothing there. It's, you got a problem, I can't fix, get out. You know what I mean?

- And why take, yeah.

- Just take tell them all.

- Yeah, or take, like how do you in your practice, DK, speak to people with the understanding that those two things exist. And it doesn't diminish. It almost gives them something that they can address versus something that they can't.

- Sure.

- So, I mean, I have to be, I don't actually, like address it directly very much in when I'm working with people because I have the benefit of them coming in with a desire to move. So for me, everything is in the context of the, the population. So it's sort of like, and it's so, I usually try to ask, you know, if they're saying that they, that they can't do XYZ because they have pain, then I'll usually try to prove the positive, like I'll say, have you ever been able to do that without pain? You know, have you ever been able to do that activity and not have pain?

- Okay.

- And then maybe say, okay, well, and then almost always there's a yes. And then I'll say, well, what's, what was different about that time than now? So I'll kind of say them there on their own.

- Yeah.

- And then I'll say, and then I try to just come out of from a hopeful place and say, you know, so and so, I hear what you're saying. In the absence of a diagnosis that says that there's anything that requires us to not move, then there's really nothing for us to do but to move. So, you know, I'm confident that you can get to a place where you feel comfortable in your body and like, I've seen it with other people and I have based on what you've told me everything points to it that it's possible for you too. So it's easier because I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to eliminate the, I really never go into it from a conversation of I'm trying to eliminate your pain.

- Oh, I love that.

- Like my thesis is like pain or no pain, you have to move. So that's my priority is that people move.

- And love that.

- And what happens is that a lot of times when you move the pain either just dissipates because of the positive chemicals in your brain and body, that just, and or so on. Or the pain dissipates because if it was a conditioned response, you start teaching your body not to be fear that thing anymore. So a lot of times it happens along the way. But for me, it's usually a conversation about, is it so much pain that we need to stop? Or is it a pain that we can work around? Or kind of trying to stay in that safe range?

- This is so cool.

- I never put myself in a conversation. I don't really, I try not to put myself in a situation where I'm telling someone, well it's in your head.'Cause I feel like that's like a dead end.

- Yeah, it's kind of, yeah.

- What do I do with that information? You know what I try to,

- But in your head is, that's also real, it's your reality also. And yeah, in your head is meaningless to patients who have issues. What can we know is that everything is in our head. Our head is our households. We just said that. So what is it that we do? How do we modify the way that we move or think or whatever? I recently had, I've been suffering from knee pain, left knee pain. I know I have arthritis, overweight, over you, some of my feet all the time, et cetera, et cetera. But my orthopedist said, and I asked him, I said, if I exercise, well it hurt it, he said, no, thank you. I've been on the Peloton, I've been doing this and that. I did not want, because our natural inclination is, if we have pain, we want to close in, we want to stop moving.

- Yes.

- It's poor for, it's worse for circulation, it's worse for your mood, it's worse, you know, there's so many reasons not to stop moving. But, you don't need to read the book, you're basically saying all the things. No, I got, I need to, but I need to go with it. But, but we gotta resist that. We can't stop moving.

- Yeah.

- We can't stop moving. Before, we don't have a whole lot of time left, I know you have a lot to say–

- I do.

- But I really am intrigued by stress resilience.

- Okay, yes.

- We can go there.

- What is stress resilience and why is it important? And it sounds like somebody I need to know.(laughing)

- I want me to remember.(laughing)

- Stress resilience, that word choice really comes from the fact that I think we're often told and having had this corporate background. And also just living in a country that I think is sort of obsessed with a really high stress lifestyle, I think we get told we just need to manage our stress. And so the concept of stress resilience comes from, my belief that stress is in the environment and I cannot control the environment. I can only control my reaction to the environment. So, I think stress management puts the blame on the person that you're not doing enough things to make yourself capable of living up to the level of stress that's required for you. And I think that's bullshit. That's some patriarchal white bullshit.(laughing)

- Like who wrote the rules of the corporate game? And I don't wanna be a part of the way that like, why? 

- Why?

- I don't wanna be a part of that. Like, you know, we have to live with our human self forward. And I, you know, certain stimuli are just too much and you need to learn, like we were talking about, stress resilience is about making sure you know your body's signals and you're not detached from your body so that when it starts to tell you, hey, like, this is too much, you step away. But it's also about calling out–

- For the cup of coffee to deal with it better. You not think alcohol comes back.

- Or the Prozac or the Prozac or the this, to the, but it's also calling out the system. And actually, it's funny, I have a workshop tomorrow at my studio called Radical Stress Resilience because I really wanna start talking about this more because it's also about like, why don't we start writing rules of work that we like? Like, why do we, we got handed these ideas about what productivity is and, you know, we know they're not good for us. Stress is literally killing us. Stress is literally killing us. Like, you can link stress to just about every condition, you know, that kills people. And yet we're continuing to live in a stress riddled environment that is not good for us. So why don't we just work backwards? And instead of managing it, we like actually rewrite the rules, that's my feeling on that.

- Listen, just thinking about that, really, stress-res.

- DK for president.(laughing)

- And we didn't say vice president, we said president.

- Yes, absolutely, decay, that is it right there in a nutshell.

- Yeah, that's right.

- It's like change the rules. We don't have to be like this. We make the rules. So why don't we win?

- We're the richest countries in the world. And I have people coming in being like, I can't come in and take 30,'cause I do 25 minute express sessions. I'm like, you don't have to come to me for an hour. Come in for 25 minutes and move that joint. I promise you'll feel better. And they're like, I can't, 'cause I have to be at my desk. I'm like, do you have a– I'm gonna drag my stiff joint to the desk.

- Right, right, so like, you're gonna, you're gonna reduce the, you're gonna increase the risk that you are incapable of sitting on the toilet and getting up when you're 80 because you wanna sit at your desk right now because someone told you that you had to.

- That they had to be successful.

- Right.

- And they don't, and these we workers don't realize that in two months, they will forget our names.

- And they'll get on.

- They'll say who that was.

- No kidding.

- She was like, do you remember who she was?

- I don't remember who.

- They don't know that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Well, and I mean, the health system too, like I mean, we're not even touching on this, but lastly, like working.

- That'll be the next one that you wouldn't be working on.

- Working and working in healthcare. I mean, I think, and 'cause I actually spoke to a nurse last week about the book and about some of this stuff and she was like, you gotta talk to healthcare workers. I mean, talk about a system that, I mean, corporate world is one thing, but boy, do we beat up our healthcare workers in our positions.

- That boy is not that you go into organizations and talk about this stuff because it's so important to learn these things and just start thinking about it on the C-suite level, so they can at least start caring about it because, remember, productivity is the goal. If you want a fit productive workforce, what are you gonna do about it?

- Well, you're sure as how I'm not gonna pay for that ridiculously expensive, like, ozemic weight loss clinic smoking cessation that is not helping anybody. Like, why don't you do with the invisible suffering of your people instead? And maybe they'll actually feel good coming to work. I mean, it's just, it blows my mind, the money that gets spent, billions of dollars on workplace wellness, that is just like, woo, see you had a button for me, sorry.(laughing)

- No, this is space for that. This is space for that.

- This is your stage space, right?

- That's right. The boomers, they, they, yeah, well, the black boomer besties, from Brooklyn.

- Yeah, especially about that.

- I really love that.

- Yes.

- Because things just, some things just don't make any sense. And so, why are we building things with that as a foundation?

- Right.

- It's like, you're just slapping on band aids on stuff that you could just, how about, just let's get to the point.

- What about it in that?

- With small, over that.

- It's frustrating, so we only have a minute or two left, and DK, anything you wanna, did we leave out or?

- Yeah, tell us what you're doing, and anything that we should make sure that we share with our listening audience. I'd love to be able to do that.

- I always wanna leave with the fact that, like, whatever story you're in right now, and whatever you're feeling about pain, and how your body has let you down, like, it's okay to be in that place, and there is always hope, and there's always a path towards feeling better in your body and what it's capable of, and making progress towards your heart's desires, as we talked about. I mean, there's always hope. I feel like pain is just full as a narrative. Like, this full of so much, you know, like, oh, this is a life sentence, like, you're stuck with this forever, it's never gonna improve, and I just know that's not the case. In terms of what's coming up for me, I mean, I am actually working on a retreat in the spring, called peace and power in Perry, Menopause, because that is, that, I didn't even touch on that, but like, that's an experience that I'm now in, and I'm frustrated with the medical system about that. So I wanna get women together to share their stories, and also smash some stuff. We're gonna have a smashing room, that you can smash things.

- I love you, that's where I love you.

- So that's exciting, and then I am gonna be building out a coaching program that is a companion to the book, so that it goes through 12 weeks.

- Oh, that's wonderful.

- And then we can go as groups and kind of work together, you know, through the assignments in the book, because accountability is hard.

- Yeah, yeah, it's for everybody.

- And it's especially hard when you're an institution.

- And it's a good, a village is so important.

- Oh my gosh, so much.

- It's so important.

- Oh, that's amazing.

- We're gonna put all of this in our show notes, and then on the episode notes and things like that, so people are gonna certainly know how to reach you in all of this. Before I forget, I need to recognize three people today, actually. One is Erica, the other is Kim, and the other is Dr. Neal. These were the three people I was in the operating room with today, and I said, "I gotta get outta here. I have to get outta here." And they move their patients, our patients. So quickly today, so that I could be here for this session. And I told them I would give them a shout out, and I'm glad I didn't forget. So thank you guys, and we will be together today.

- Thanks for your hard work.

- Decay was wonderful having you, as we expected, lots of information, lots of heart.

- And I want more, but I know.

- Lots of care.

- Yeah.(indistinct)

- I know, I know. Listen, we are definitely going to be doing some in person because this year, and it's just gonna, we know so many amazing people. You are now one of the amazing people who are in our village. And so to be announced, we'll be doing some in person stuff.

- Okay, okay.

- And you'll be there. So if you like this episode and other episodes of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, please like us, subscribe to us, tell your friends about us, and I'd love for you to join our Patreon, The Besties Quad Squad.

- Woo-hoo.

- So this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.

- Brooklyn!

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