The Most Overlooked Skill In Clinical Practice

After three years (almost) and more than 140 episodes, a pattern has become impossible to ignore: better outcomes don’t come from doing more, they come from seeing more clearly.

In this episode of the Unreal Results podcast, I zoom out and reflect on the themes that shaped this year of conversations, teaching, and clinical work. We explore why the body’s wisdom consistently points us toward simplicity, how assessment precision creates clarity instead of overwhelm, and why confidence grows when you trust what the body is already telling you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why assessment should create freedom, not complexity, in clinical decision-making
• How better specificity makes treatment lighter, faster, and more effective
• What happens when you stop chasing tools and start trusting the body’s direction
• How a whole-organism assessment changes both outcomes and clinician confidence

This episode is a reminder that you don’t need to do more to get better results — you need to listen better and let assessment lead the way.

Resources & Links Mentioned In This Episode:
Episode 42: The Fundamental Attribution Error and Why You May be the Problem, Not Your Client
Episode 119: Guaranteeing Results... Until You Can't
Episode 125: You're Already Treating The Viscera... You Just Don't Know It
Episode 131: Raising The Bar On Patient Outcomes
Learn the LTAP® In-Person in one of my upcoming courses

Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Most Overlooked Skill In Clinical Practice
• 1:07 Celebrating Three Years of Podcasting
• 6:21 The Importance of Whole Body Assessment
• 12:36 Trusting the Wisdom of the Body
• 25:10 Assessment Creates Freedom, Not Complexity

Transcript

Anna Hartman: Hey there and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs in the nervous system on movement, pain and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.

I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Unreal Results Podcast. Um, I, well, as you might imagine, doing a podcast every week for the last two, three years. Has it been three years? I don't know. Let's look. I'm like, it feels like it, but also. I got, I started it in, yeah, the end of the year 2022, like literally the last week of 2022.

So it's, this was one, two, oh, this is the third Full year.

What? That's amazing. Actually, I didn't even realize that. So yeah, the end of this month will be the three year anniversary of the UN Unreal Results Podcast. I mean. I wasn't intending to even like celebrate that, but Can we get a second? Like, that's pretty amazing. There's like some crazy stats. I don't even know what the stats are, but like the amount of people who podcast, um, like how many podcasts there are and like the amount of people who uh, continue past, like episode 10 is like a very, very tiny percentage actually in our business mastermind this past month. Um, Jill Coleman, my business coach, AKA, Jill Fit, she shared with us this, the data and it was like, wait, what? It was kind of crazy. I'm actually looking through my notes now 'cause I was like, do I have it?

Um, maybe, maybe not.

No, I don't know where it's at. I could Google it. Let's do that. Actually, I'm pausing. Be right back. All right. Well, I'm back. I quickly, I I didn't even Google it. I ChatGPT'd it. So whether or not this is even accurate or not hard to know. Is like, you know, well over 4 million plus individual shows, but it says nearly half of all podcasts produce three or fewer episodes, which is kind of wild.

Um, and the data is not perfect. Uh, but some things cite, like the amount of people who make it to 50 episodes is like only 8% of that. And. Honestly, Jill's data was even less, and I've heard less by many takers too. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, um, because, well, we are not in the business of comparing ourselves to others.

And then also, I know it's not very many, and, um. It's still podcast land is still growing. Podcasts are still like a really great business thing. Um, and people love 'em. People consume 'em. They're easy to con. I mean, I think that's partly why it's easy to consume. Um, it's easy to consume from a long format, um, education piece.

So, um, regardless of what the world does, I'm pretty stoked to have made it three years. Fairly consistency. Obviously, you know, I take time off because life, I take time off sometimes in the summer. I take time off when I'm sick. I take time off when I need rest. So on average, um, you know, I try to put out an episode every week.

Um, I think the first year I had 42 episodes. The next year I had about the same, maybe 50. I had about 49 episodes the following year. This year I've had about 50, 52, 54, so I've been a little bit more consistent this year. Anyways, though I'm super proud, um, of making it a priority and I love hearing from you all.

Um, by far people who come to my in-person courses tell me. That they found me, or at least if they didn't found me from the podcast, they started listening to the podcast and became obsessed and then had to come to the courses, which I love. And I love that it is a podcast that you find helpful and you're obsessed with.

And you know, I was a little hesitant of like, how, what could I teach without like. Videos and without, not that this isn't a video, but you know what I mean, like educational tutorial videos and like an actual lecture and, um, turns out a lot. And also I think it's just a nice to have a place to have a real general clinical conversation, especially, you know, I, I think I've shared in the last PO couple podcasts, I'm currently onboarding 17 people in the, this year's revitalized mentorship program, and this is the first year I've had the mentorship back in two years. So I had taken a break from it to sort of redesign, uh, the, the path through movement rev education or to redesign the mentorship to like really focus on what, what I wanted to do, how I could best support, um.

Clinicians, practitioners going through the mentorship and, um, because really the mentorship was what started this whole education piece of movement, rev back in 2018, 2019. And so, um, you know, it was the thing for a while. And then I pulled the locator test assessment protocol out of it, made it its own course, because really that that's the foundation of what I need people to.

Understand it is the foundation of assessment. It is the foundation of how I talk about cases, because when anybody asks me about a case, the first question I wanna ask is, well, where did the body direct you? Because I hope you're learning through this podcast, is it doesn't matter if it's knee pain or it doesn't matter if it's shoulder pain.

It doesn't matter if it's back pain, every shoulder pain, every back pain, every knee pain is different. Per the person in front of you. And then even every iteration of back pain or injury in that patient is different on any given day because that is just how the body works. And, um, but yeah, we, we made that the foundation because um, I wanted everyone to appreciate.

The wisdom of the body in guiding us through figuring out where to start our treatment. Because what has happened in the industry, and this is kind of like where I wanna go with this podcast episode, is we are not at a lack for tools and treatment techniques. So many tools and treatment techniques out there.

I mean, every. Everything we learn is designed around that. And it's sort of like, I remember when I was first learning from Philip Beach, his, his, um, one of the things he's taught, he talks about is like the relationship between your feet and low back pain and specifically your feet as sensory organisms and low back pain.

And one of the things he said is like. Over the years, we know more ways to treat the back. We have more tools, more modalities, more treatment, ticks and techniques. Arguably even more assessments, but still not that many. Well, if we have the assessments, people aren't not always doing them. Um, but he was just pointing out like, we have all this knowledge.

Yet, it's still like the number one thing and the most debilitating thing that happens to people. And like despite all this knowledge, we're still not being successful in actually helping people. And that's kind of the same thing of what I find as I, as I'm speaking to people, is. So many of us have so many skills, like I get, I have practitioners that come to my courses that have 20 plus years of experience, 15, 8, 10.

You know, like I get seasoned professionals with so many treatment tools come to the courses. Still kind of not know how to put it all together and feel a little overwhelmed. And then also when it goes to our confidence, you know, this is a big piece whether people talk about it at all, but it's like we gather more tools and treatment te.

Because we wanna do better for our patients. And because there's a fundamental, like lack of confidence in ourselves to be able to get the result for people because we constantly feel like we're missing something. It's been an an interesting journey for me as I speak to. What the LTAP offers, and I speak to this competence piece, and I speak to this need for less treatments and more like integration and understanding and an assessment tool like the Ltap that listens to the body.

And I, I think back and even, even with, even with me being. Learn it all. Like, I love learning that, you know, that's a term that Craig Leeson says a lot, which I, I think is so good. Like not, you know, he's like, don't be a note, I'll be a learn it all. 100%. Um, however, and I love learning, like people ask me what my hobby was is, and honestly until I started going whale watching years ago and like actually have a hobby, uh, whale, whale watching and like wildlife photography.

Marine wildlife photography, I guess. Um, my hobby was continuing education and learning and I mean, it still is. Like I said, I love to learn, but. What I've noticed is over the years, um, as I've really leaned into the assessment and really leaned into not just any assessment, but an assessment that honors the wisdom of the body and allows the body to guide me where to treat and really lean into what it means to be trusting the body, trusting the body in front of me to give me the answers that I need, and trusting my body to feel that.

Feel those answers to feel things and also honor that. That is the most accurate, like truthful thing there is because we are sensory beings. The more I've leaned into that, and I've had to since I've been teaching this, right, like when you think you know something. You, you gotta teach it. And then you realize you don't know it as well as you thought, and it forces you, or not forces you.

It helps you to learn it even better. So over the years of teaching, I've leaned into it even more of trusting the wisdom of the body and really like validating what I'm teaching other people. And what I've noticed in my own continuing education journey is. I actually do less courses than I used to. And at first I thought it was the nature of two things.

Number one, the nature of just being tired. Number two, the nature of, I was teaching so much, I just felt like my cognitive bandwidth was lower to take on more information. But as I really sit with it and like, you know, I'll get messages from friends of mine that are love to learn too and like, you know, also doing a lot of the Baral Institute classes and they're like, oh, Anna, like what courses are you taking this year?

Like, let's, let's go to the same course so we can like be lab partners. Which is great, by the way. Um, they've got all these courses on their list and they're like, what courses are you taking? And I'm like, Hmm. I don't have any on my calendar this year, or I haven't even thought about it this year. And that is such a strikingly different scenario than me five years ago, three years ago, definitely 10 years ago.

Definitely 20 years ago, I was the person who took 10 to 12 continuing education courses a year. I spent easily minimum 25 grand, probably closer to 50 grand when you included like, all the travel and stuff on my continuing education every year for my whole career. And, um, so yeah, I was, I, I've been reflecting on that lately and I'm thinking, you know, honestly.

Because I am much more content now and not just content. It's not like, again, like I don't know it all. There's still so much to learn and I love to learn and I will continue to learn, but I, my confidence, I am like way more confident than I ever was and like a true confidence and a true confidence, like a, not an egotistical one, like a true confidence in terms of like I have seen.

How amazing the results are when you can trust the body, lean into the wisdom of the body and the body's ability to heal itself and come at it from a calm, regulated nervous system perspective. And I really feel like the results do come easy. You know, are there certain patients that. Take me more sessions than I would like or are, you know, quote unquote harder than the others.

Of course. That's the nature of, of it. That's the nature of it. One humans, the humanness of it, and then both for the clinician or both for the patient. And myself, the clinician. Uh, I would be lying if I told you that I come to every patient session, like fully regulated in my nervous system and taking care from myself and not stressed out and not exhausted, and like being able to group the benefits of that, like, no, no, not at all.

Not at all. But I have been in it enough and witnessed it enough that I recognize when. One thing is the problem versus the other, versus feeling like I don't have enough techniques and treatment tools to get results. So it's really interesting. I I, I really didn't realize that until, like the last month or so.

Maybe longer, but like, I really didn't like think about it of like, oh yeah, I'm taking less course, less and less courses nowadays. Not because I don't want to continue to learn and I just because I'm not taking courses, I'm not, doesn't mean I'm not learning. Like we've talked before, I tell you every day that I read anatomy and look at anatomy and that is no lie.

I'm constantly learning. Um, I've got shoot. Hundreds of books that I could easily pull off the shelf and learn something from. Like, you don't actually have to go to a course always to be learning. Right. But, um, yeah, I just, there is less of a drive for me to go get more treatment tools and more techniques because I've got so many of them already.

And I also have witnessed that when you're just, when you're in the right spot, when you're in the area where the body wants you to be. And can tap into the body's ability to heal itself and change. Like it doesn't have to be that complicated and complex. So those are kinda my thoughts, but So what the roundabout way land the plane, Anna?

Um, I was like, yeah, just thinking about. You know, what do I wanna talk about? 'cause as I started up this podcast telling you it's been three years every week for the most part, and that is exhausting to figure out what to talk about every week. A lot of the times I talk about my cases, I talk about questions that come up in the courses.

Um, just whatever I'm dealing with in my own body. And, um, you know, but sometimes I'm like, eff don't know what to talk about. And so the other day I. If you're, first of all, if you're not on chat, GPT or some sort of ai, lm, L-L-L-M-M, I don't know, the learning language model. Um, what are you doing? It is the future whether you like it or not.

Um, and it is super helpful for the most part. Um, and, um. So I've been using it quite a bit to actually, like, I feel like it's just an to as a solo. I don't wanna say solopreneur, because I have people who work for me in my business. Shout out Ariel and, uh, Lex. But, and Joe. But also, um, you know, I'm still like working for myself sort of.

Um, I use ChatGPT a lot as like someone, someone, it's not a human. Math as a way to get out what's in my head and have a conversation about it to like filter out what I wanna say, what I wanna do, some like bigger picture ideas. So anyways, um, the other day I had like fed it all the episodes of the podcast.

How many episodes is that? This will be like number 142.. So I, I fed it like 140 episodes and I was like, Hey, here, granted it's just episode titles and stuff, but I was like, here's the episodes I've done over the last three years. You know, I don't even know what I prompted it with. It might have just been like, any ideas for next episodes and oh my gosh.

Yeah, future podcast episodes. I'm pulling it up here. I said, Hey, here's a list of podcast episodes. Pre, please brainstorm some future episodes. And I, I gave it 141 episodes and it says, here are 40 plus fresh episode ideas organized by theme, fully aligned with the movement, rev, whole organism paradigm, LTAP messaging, and the kind of case conversations your audience loves.

And oh my gosh, it lit. It did like spit out how many 55 episodes. I like looked through 'em and I'm like, man. And then series and like, I was like, man, this is really good. Um, this is not one of them. And then today, I, I gave it just this year's episodes and I said, Hey, just curious. Do you see like a. That kind of came out of this year's episodes, you know, just 'cause I was, I was kind of curious just how it went.

And, um, it broke down that this year we had four dominant themes that ran all year. So I'm gonna share those with you. And then we're gonna talk a little bit more about one. So it said the four dominant sub themes that ran all year. The problem isn't the pain, it's the paradigm. A huge portion of the episodes directly or indirectly challenge the orthopedic only tissue isolated mindset.

Well, duh. That is the purpose of the podcast, right? Like my whole intention with this podcast always has been able to, has been all about exposing you to. How the viscera and the nervous system influence the biomechanics and musculoskeletal system. So it should be a theme. Um, another theme was the nervous system as a hidden driver of biomechanics.

And I'm like, yeah. Yes, yes. But continue, like, again, that's part of the main theme. Um, the other theme that came out of this year was the viscera are already in the room, whether you acknowledge 'em or not. So it says you normalize visceral influence without making it weird, but yes, exactly. Like we just, we had a whole episode even on that.

Um, you know, and I'll have Joe link in the show notes, but it was like, you're already treating the visceral, you just don't know it. Like at the end of the day, that is like what I am also trying to point out to people that we have always been whole organism. We just haven't been assessing and treating in that thought process.

When we are assessing and treating into the traditional paradigm, we're assessing the musculoskeletal system, the orthopedics, the biomechanics, and treating that way. And with that said, we have always been the whole organism. We are a whole, we have never been parts. And so getting you to appreciate the viscera in the nervous system and the wholeness of ourselves.

Allows you more treatment options, allows you bigger picture, bigger ideas, seeing connections. So that is a main theme. And, and this goes back to too, like I get a lot of people asking me on the internet like, oh, are these courses teaching me visceral ambulation? And I'm like, no, no, they're actually not at all.

I might teach like a technique here and there that I learned in the Barral Institute that I was just like so good. I can't not teach you. But at the end of the day, I am not teaching their work. I love their work. I will be a champion of their work until the day I die. And I will push people to learn those techniques because they are very valuable, but I'm not teaching them.

And also like why would I, like, why recreate the wheel? I am, I. What I'm good at is assimilating all this information together and making it make sense, big picture. And so that, you know, that's a big part of it. Uh, the fourth, the fourth piece was, um, or sub, sub theme was, um, assessment creates freedom, not complexity.

This is, this is what I wanted this podcast episode to kind of be about, though. Now we're like 20 something minutes in and I've kind of just been rambling. Shocker. But I'll land the plane with this for sure. Um, but I loved that assessment creates freedom, not complexity. It says this might be the quiet hero theme of the year.

Better assessment doesn't make practice harder. It makes treatment lighter, faster, and more honest. I was like, Ooh, chatty g. I couldn't have said it better myself. And, uh, like that is so good. And that is always, that has always been my theme, even when I was just operating a, in a biomechanical musculoskeletal paradigm.

I've always been big on assessment and like knowing that the more time you spend in assessment, the better the chance you have of picking the more. Appropriate tool and applying it in the quote unquote right place to get the better results. Um, and then of course it said the human later. This kind of overlying all these sub-domains like woven throughout the year.

Alumni interview showing confidence, replacing overwhelm episodes on self-compassion, hopelessness to hope, conversations about raising the bar without burning out stories of various different practitioners. So the underlying message that the locator test assessment protocol and the whole organism approach isn't just changing outcomes, it's also changing how clinicians feel in their work, um, which is what I'm most excited about.

Um. I, I love this. It says, if you want a clean wrap up statement for the episode this year on the Unreal Results Podcast was about moving from force to finesse, from chasing symptoms, to understanding systems, from feeling overwhelmed by complexity, to trusting a clear clinical road back that respects the whole organism.

Now forget all that chatty G talk, even though I'm like, gosh, it really. Sometimes when I read back it's episodes, uh, it's not episodes, it's writing. Sometimes especially it's writing around summarizing things I've said to it. I'm like, Ooh, you've got away with words. And I was like, okay. Does that mean my love language is, um, words of affirmation possibly.

But, um. Anyways, back to this assessment creates freedom, not complexity. I think sometimes when it comes to assessment and a and previously, you know, a, an assessment that didn't have a piece like the locator test assessment protocol to direct us where to go assessment felt, especially in a, um, traditional treatment setting, uh, like a waste of time.

Because it didn't adequately always tell you where to start, and it seemed like a lot of the treatment tools or techniques that you were doing were like, you know, biased on a. Um, paradigms idea of it all starts in the core. It all starts in the feet, or it all starts in the hip and pelvic floor. Like, you know, we've all probably operated in those paradigms before, so it's like, why do this full assessment?

If I'm gonna start with breathing with everybody, why not just start with breathing with everybody and go from there? And so I think we sort of pulled away from a thorough assessment real, you know, because we didn't feel like it gave us clarity and we didn't feel like it helped us figure out where to start.

And we didn't feel like it gave us any extra valuable information to sort of like really determine what we were going to do. And you know, this is again, going back to the mentorship. As I talk to the clinicians who've been through the LTAP and who still want. Who've seen the magic of the ltap and like once you kind of see it start working, you're like, Ooh, I really want to lean into this and make it even better.

And when it comes to making it even better, it's all about getting even deeper within our assessment and I believe I did a whole episode about this, um, that I'll have Joe link in the show notes because I talked about, yes, I talked about like, um, precision and specificity with our assessment and our treatment and how, like if you, if you have a really precise, specific treatment tool or technique and you're using it with.

Just kind of a general assessment, it's, you're gonna get like kind of crap actually bad results. It's better to have a general treatment tool at that point. Um, and so it's like if you wanna learn higher level of treatment tools and techniques and have them work for you, you need to have an assessment that matches it.

And so what we're talking about, you know, with the LTAP alumni is like, okay, yeah. So the LTAP has directed you to. The central nervous system. So now what? Like, okay, you can do some general stuff in the central nervous system, which can be helpful sometimes, but if you have the tools, right, if you've taken the bur neural manipulation or you've taken craniosacral, you've taken some massage courses or like things that.

You know, like have skills around the cranium or even the rest of the central nervous system. The spine. Like if you know how to evaluate the spine better, if you know how to evaluate the peripheral and central neurodynamics and differentiate neurodynamic tension. Between the two. Like this is when you use those assessments.

So it's like once the body's directed you like, oh, it's central nervous system, then you wanna use your other assessments to get more specific. Because if I can determine like, oh, it is the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve on the right side. This is where I need to go, or it's the cerebellum, or it's the T six area of the spinal column, or it's the tailbone itself, or it's like definitely central from a neurodynamic standpoint with my double leg slump test.

All of these, like the more we can narrow it in, the easier we can pick the right tool for it. And so, you know, I'll continue to lean into this messaging that the assessment creates freedom, not complexity. Um, it should make your, a good assessment should make treatment lighter, faster, and more honest. And that is really like how we continue to like.

Get better and better results. You know, so in the, in the courses, I, I show this graph that chat g helped me make of this like idea of this assessment precision and spec specificity and the treatment precision and specificity. And it's like, this is how we move the needle from getting re, you know, the industry standard results right now, which is like 60% success rates at like.

Eight months of rehab, two closer to a hundred percent success rate at less than five treatments total. You know, I'm always like, I guarantee results in one to three visits and I feel like I get close to, if not a hundred percent success rates. And you know, I've done episodes on that, that I can have Joe link in the show notes, but this is how.

It happens is just this assessment specificity, because this assessment creates so much freedom. And then where you go from there and what treatment tools you pick and the, and this is like the cool part too, is because, you know, as a clinician with years under their belt, like me, were like a, you know, gathered a lot along the way.

Um. It can feel overwhelming and it can feel like, man, where do we start? How does this fit in? And like we just have so much. And so it just brings some clarity of like when to pull those tools in. And it does make treatment lighter, faster, more fun. So this is a yes, it seemed like. According to Chatty G, that this was a theme for the podcast episodes this year, and it will continue to be a theme because this is what gets the results.

And even, even, you know, again, as I talk to all the people that go, go to the mentorship, the mentorship has like a hundred hours of continued education. Not on the LTAP on like other parts of working with human beings, the theory, the, you know, movement assessments, all this stuff. I don't wanna say old stuff 'cause it's not old, but like there's so much more to learn, right?

But the emphasis is actually not that at all. There's always time to learn all that information. The emphasis is the integration of the work and continuing to narrow the assessment and also taking care of yourself so you can come at it calmly, so you can trust your own body, so you can trust what you feel and trust the wisdom of the body that's in front of you.

So anyways. I'm sure that this episode had some coherence in it, but it is like, you know, it's just a chatty episode thinking about, you know, reflecting ti the tis the season to reflect. But um, yeah, I'm grateful for you to be in here. I'm grateful for you listening and enjoying the podcast. And, you know, it was a little Christmas gift if you haven't already.

Uh. Done a review, left a, left a review, rated it. I don't, I don't think I've ever asked for that. And I guess three years of podcasting. Sure, that would be great. I would really appreciate that. But, um, we got two weeks after this podcast. We got two weeks left in the year, um, or three weeks left in the year.

And, um, I'll have some new episodes for you. I have a guest coming on, um, probably next week. And, uh. And then we'll do a couple solo episodes, more than likely, so hope all is well and we will talk to ya next time.