From Reef to Release: What Diving Teaches Us About Bodywork & Healing

What does diving the Great Barrier Reef have to do with bodywork? In this episode, Lynn reveals powerful parallels between coral, fish, and the hidden patterns we uncover in the body—connections that can completely shift your results with clients. She shares how to move beyond surface-level anatomy and start sensing the deeper signals of trauma, injury, and release. Get ready to see your practice in a whole new light.

Episode Highlights:

• The surprising link between coral varieties and body tissues
• How to detect trauma and holding patterns beneath your hands
• Why local restrictions often connect to distant injuries
• The secret to balancing micro and macro perspectives in treatment
• A simple way to soften and release hardened bone

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Transcript

@0:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

 I posted on social media that I was going to be doing this podcast.

And today I'm going to be talking about the similarities between diving and bodywork. Now, for those of you that are divers, you're going to be like, oh, I get it.

I get it. And for those of you that maybe aren't into diving, there's still some great highlights and concepts I'm going to be sharing that are important for you with your work with your clients.

So let's start off. Now, I've known this association for years now that I've been diving, but I just got back from teaching in Australia and I had the pleasure of...

Spending two days diving the Great Barrier Reef, and it was beautiful. I dove it 30 years ago when I first learned to dive, and I have to say, doing the Great Barrier Reef as your very first dive was probably not the best because it set a really high bar and nothing has compared to it since.

But going back 30 years later, I have to say it wasn't as bright and as brilliant of colors as I remember.

There were some, but not as much as I remember 30 years ago. However, the Great Barrier Reef, the amount of variety of its coral and the amount of fish on it was just incredible and unlike any place that I have dove.

Now, there were other divers on the boat that said, oh, the Philippines is much better and Indonesia might have some better spots.

But in my experience, this experience of diving on the Great Barrier Reef was just absolutely phenomenal. And as I was on it, I was.

As I was down under doing diving and checking things out, I was like, oh, look, this is very similar to body work.

So I wanted to share the connections and what I got as I was diving this time. So when you're diving, it's, well, you're looking at, let's just talk about the landscape, okay?

So you have the reef, and on the reef are corals, and there's all different kinds of corals. And there are hard corals that don't move, and there's soft corals that do move and wave as the water, the waves and the current move it.

And so it's so fun to look at and see the moving coral in on the reef. And I just think they're more dynamic.

They're fun to look at. know, hard coral is just kind of like take a picture. But that correlates to our body.

We have hard bones that, you know, aren't meant to, and I'm going to put this in quote, move, they're hard.

But then. There's soft connective tissue that is meant to be a little bit moving and more forgiving, but really bone is meant to move, and bone does have a give to it, and the movement, everything needs to move in our body for our body to be happy, and all that soft tissue needs to have the flexibility that it needs to to move.

Now, when you're diving, there is a ton of different varieties of coral, and I have to say the Great Barrier Reef, I was just astounded at all the different types of coral, but even those different types of corals have types of species of coral, and my connection to that is, and I don't even know what the different types of corals are.

I'm not, I don't get into the terminology and the fish and all that, but each species of coral, to me, is similar to the

Types of issues that we find in the body, whether we have just stuck immobile tissue, whether we have trauma, there's all different types of trauma, there's all different types of birth injuries in the body.

And within those birth injuries, we have all different kinds of it. Within trauma, we have little T trauma, we have capital T trauma.

So the variety that we find on the reef is the same of the variety that we find within the body.

And we need to, as body workers, we need to be aware of what the different varieties that we might find in the tissues.

We need to be aware beyond this is a muscle, this is fascia, this is a ligament. Okay, we know all the names of the structures in the body.

But I want to take you beyond that and understand that within those structures, there are different things that can be held.

stands have the In our tissues, like the trauma and the holding patterns that we have in the body, that is the next level of palpation skill is not only knowing, oh, I'm on the sacrotuberous ligament, but it's putting your hand on a sacrum and going, oh, there's hardness in the sacrum.

And, oh, I just got that pit of the stomach feeling in my body, which is my signal that there's trauma being held in this sacrum.

So I, when we're diving, and I realized this too late, darn it, but after I was done, that I was really looking for nemos, the clownfish, and the clownfish are associated with a particular coral.

It's a moving coral, and it's usually more white, pale, pale yellow colored coral, and that's where you're going to find the clownfish.

And, you know, I'm looking around for clownfish, and had I known that I should have just been I'm looking for that coral, then I would have been more successful in finding the clam fish.

But the same goes for the response in our tissues. And so when we're feeling hardness in the bone and we're looking and we're feeling the bone and we feel a specific segment of that bone is extra hard, that's when we know that there's been an injury or impact needing our attention in that area of the body.

So we need to be looking for the associations in the body, just like there's an association in the coral to certain fish being in there.

And I have to say, oh my goodness, the brilliance of the little fishies. I mean, there were these bright violet colored fish that were almost iridescent in the looking, but they were so tiny.

They were, gosh, just maybe two centimeters long. These fish and they were stuck in this coral and. And. Had I known more, I could have found more of those had I gone looking for more of that coral, but if another correlation, another association that we might find in our body is injuries to the left lower extremity might be associated with breech babies, with the heads being up underneath the right ribcage.

I have found right lower abdominal fascia connected tight tension in their tightness associated with a left ankle fracture. So understanding the diagonals in the body and understanding that for me, the when I get that feeling in my gut, when I put my hand on a uterus and I feel that in my gut, that's a trauma response in the body.

That's what I am associating with, with trauma in those tissues. And then what also with, and the last analogy, guys, and I appreciate you.

Humoring me here as I talk about these associations, but when you're diving, it's really important that you enjoy the microcosm of the coral and the fish, and you're looking at just, you know, this certain area on the coral.

But if you don't keep your attention out for the bigger stuff around you, you've got to look at your microcosm, your macrocosm, the bigger area around you.

You're going to miss the shark swimming by you or the sea turtle or the eel that goes by, and so we need to have this, when you're diving, it's important to be able to appreciate the microcosm on the coral and the macrocosm going on around you in the ocean, and that goes for the same when we're working in the body.

We need to feel locally what we're feeling and sensing underneath our hands, but we also need to have a greater awareness to the macrocosm.

be life. Thank The entire body and look for the connections that aren't, that might be associated with the local issue that we're dealing with.

So if we have just like that ankle fracture, I was working on the left lower abdominal fascia and it just was not releasing.

It wasn't letting go. It was resistant. And she mentioned, oh, you know, I broke my ankle last year. And as soon as I put my hand on that ankle, the tissue started releasing.

And that's the connections from the local to the distance. And so we have to have that awareness of local and more the microcosm and the macrocosm of the body.

Just like when you're diving, you got to keep your eye out for the bigger stuff, walking around or swimming around you.

But also enjoy what's happening in the microcosm of the coral and the... So I hope you enjoyed that. So the highlights for this is understand the connections in the body locally and at a distance and understand the associations that when you feel a certain thing in the body, to me, for me, it's the ug in my belly when I'm feeling a tissue and it's connection to me, that's trauma in the body.

Or when we feel a hardened bone, we know that that bone has been impacted, has an injury of some sort, and it needs releasing.

So bone loves compression, you guys. Hardened bone loves compression. So figure out a way to compress that bone to help release it, to soften that bone.

So anyway, I hope you found that fun. It was fun for me reminiscing and thinking about all my dives over the years and this greater experience on the Great Barrier Reef just last week or for, let's see, it was end of August when I was there.

So thank you guys.-bye. Thank so much for listening, being a part of this podcast. I so appreciate you. If you found this interesting, this podcast interesting, please feel free to share it with your colleagues, share it with other divers out there.

They'll understand more of what I'm talking about here. And I appreciate you guys. Here's to smoother bursts, faster recoveries, and working with the body in a way that helps to support healing.

Take care, everybody. See you on the next episode. Bye-bye.