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Spandex & Wine
Spandex & Wine is a podcast for finding balance between being healthy & living a happy life. Hosted by Robin Hackney, a 23-year veteran in the fitness industry & wine consultant, this is a place to be our authentic selves as we have real conversations exploring wellness and all things wine! Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode.
Spandex & Wine
The Peggi Experience: Where Movement Meets Mind
Dive into the fascinating world of true body awareness with Feldenkrais practitioner Peggi Honig as she reveals how reconnecting with your body's intelligence can transform your entire approach to wellness and movement.
Peggi brings decades of experience in holistic healing approaches, sharing how the Feldenkrais Method differs fundamentally from familiar practices like yoga or Pilates. "When our habits developed, they were absolutely perfect in that moment," she explains, "Don't get rid of them... but can you do it another way?" This perspective challenges our cultural fixation on pushing through pain and discomfort, suggesting instead that efficiency in movement means finding ease.
The conversation explores the critical difference between being taught and truly learning. Most of us follow instructions - counting reps, holding positions, pushing through resistance - without engaging our nervous system's remarkable capacity to learn. Peggi demonstrates simple techniques to become aware of breathing patterns during movement, showing how this awareness alone can transform range of motion and reduce pain. Her approach works with everyone from high-performance athletes with injuries to people managing neurological conditions, always starting with where they are comfortable rather than pushing into resistance.
Perhaps most compelling is Peggi's framework for improvement: "Make the impossible possible, make the possible easy, make the easy pleasant, and if you choose, make it elegant." This progression captures the essence of sustainable wellness - not through force or strain but through curiosity and awareness. Whether you're dealing with chronic pain, recovering from injury, or simply wanting to move with more freedom, this episode offers practical wisdom for reconnecting with your body's innate intelligence. Connect with Peggi at thepeggiexperience.com to discover how mindful movement might transform your relationship with your body.
The Peggi Experience - Awakening Your Mind, Informing Your Body
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Hello and welcome to the Spandex and Wine podcast. I'm your host, robin Hackney, and I'm so happy that you're here. This podcast is a place for conversations about balancing a healthy lifestyle and being happy more specifically, happy hour. Together we'll explore all things wellness and wine. I hope you learn a little, laugh a lot and, along the way, know you're not alone on this balanced wellness journey. Ready to jump in? Pour something in your glass that makes you happy, because it's time for Spandex and Wine. Hey friends, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited for today's episode because we're diving deep into something that doesn't get nearly enough attention true body awareness and the healing power of mindful movement. My guest today is Peggy with the Peggy Experience. She is a practitioner with years of experience in holistic healing and the Feldenkrais Method. She spent her life studying multiple forms of mind-body awareness and has built a powerful practice rooted in self-introspection, healing and balance. Whether you're an athlete dealing with an injury or just wanting to feel better in your everyday life, what she shares today will absolutely open your eyes to a different kind of wellness journey. We'll talk about what Feldenkrais actually is, how it works, why it can be a game changer, especially for those who have tried everything and still feel like something is missing. If you're tired of feeling stiff, stuck or stressed, this one's for you. Here we go. Hey, peggy, it's so nice to meet you and connect with you finally, yeah, yeah yeah Cool, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:So sorry about all that. I'm just so happy to have you on the podcast today, though, and also me and you know this technological era.
Speaker 2:I'm sort of like we're doing the best. We know how some are big techies, I'm not, so we just do the best we can and I don't get. I don't get upset with it Because when the pandemic hit and in my career I had to learn how to go virtual Right, I lost. Oh my god. The first year I was like I blew my computer, I blew my screen, I blew my mic, I blew my camera. Everything was because I was using it now so much more that I really couldn't keep up with it. So we had to get everything new. And you just learn how to breathe and chill out and relax.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it can be. Yeah, it can be very frustrating, but you're right, you just have to let go Be in the moment.
Speaker 2:That's it. Just keep it there, rest on and just breathe and work your way through. That's all you can do, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I was reading through your website and I'm like I didn't even get past, like the second sentence, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to talk to her. This is going to be wonderful Because you're, you're, you're right, like when you lose awareness in your own body. Oh my gosh, it's like autopilot takes over and it's not taking you in the right direction.
Speaker 2:Well, that it's taking you into your habits and our habits. I do say that when our habits develop, they were absolutely perfect in that moment, that when our habits developed, they were absolutely perfect in that moment.
Speaker 2:So don't get rid of them. Okay, okay, we stop to explore, comparing, discerning. Can I do it another way? So when I'm teaching, I always I use metaphors and analogies and sometimes I have to clarify does a person know this language if I'm working with a different culture? But maybe the thought all roads lead to Rome? And sometimes just get off the road you're on it's not working and try another pathway and you might be surprised. It might be better, it might be nicer, or it gives you more options and choices instead of we just the blinders are on. I have one way of doing it and that's where we get into trouble, but don't get rid of the habits.
Speaker 2:habits because I work with people that severe neurological assaults have happened and they've lost things in their brain. They white it out, so don't wish to get rid of it, just choose to learn and how to learn. So are you learning? Because you're really learning and you're curious and you're making comparisons. Are you doing what you were told to do? You should do? Your taught, because there's a big distinction between learning and being taught.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, a hundred percent, I agree, yeah, yeah. And I mean I think you know, in my era when we grew up and it was more just being taught, and you do this and there's no conversation around why that is.
Speaker 2:I was raised that way too and that's where we unless we had a really innate in tuned nervous system, that we were maybe sometimes considered difficult. We just acquiesced as women. We just okay fine, we took the easier pathway. But eventually certain brains, nervous systems, wake up and go wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is there something that? There's another option, another choice? That would be better for me. But when we tune out, we dissociate. We can only do our habits. I mean, I've worked in a PT office for 12 years a fitness tennis, big time arena and a hospital and each one, everybody, who, what is this Feldenkrais? They don't know how to pronounce it. They don't know what it is. They want to go to what they know. Oh, is it like yoga or Pilates, or is it PT? Or we can only go to our known.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I would have to and I don't want to sit there and go. No, no, no. So I just simply go. You know, it's a difference, because we tap back into how we learned. We learned in utero, because of our mother's movements or what it was. We continue to learn, and then, of course, we needed to be guided and directed, but how that guidance and direction happened? We needed to be guided and directed, but how that guidance and direction happened, did it take away our curiosity? Did we have fear that, if I don't do what I'm told to do, because we need to be cared for, if we were raised, fortunately enough, in a healthy enough family?
Speaker 2:But I've worked with many people when it's a long-term relationship, you do not realize the atrocities that have been imposed on them, and I mean there are times I'm just my eyes bug out, but not with them, but internally, because the stories that you read and you hear, whether they're fiction stories or real life, oh, it's here, it is, and I'm just so. How do you support a person so that they can trust, when their nervous system can awaken that you're not make believe, you're not. These dreams you have are real. Something happened to you and your nervous system is healthy enough to start dealing with it.
Speaker 1:How to help someone.
Speaker 2:How to nurture them so that they learn for themselves instead of, well, tell me what to do. Yeah, you know, I do this thing also because I'm a big fitness buff and I started working in the fitness arena, loving it. I started to go. You know, Feldenkrais, we take it back to the beginning. We slow it down so we can pay attention to not only what we're doing but how we're doing it. It down so we can pay attention to not only what we're doing but how we're doing it. But now, once we start honing skills, you don't just stay slow, you have to move.
Speaker 2:So I always make a comparison, because my first career as an opera singer, so you know I'm into all different types of music. So there are certain singers I just love, but I get really bored with them because everything is right here. So I love Sarah, bored with them because everything is right here. So I love Sarah McLachlan. Everything is right here, it's lovely, but it doesn't change it up.
Speaker 2:Now, think this is going to be a direct contrast. Think of Bruce Springsteen. He takes you up and then he brings you back down. And he takes you up and he brings you back down. That's life. So we have to be able to have these highs and lows, if you will, or these shifts instead of. I'm just here. So I said, you know, in fitness, first let's look for what is the most efficient, because efficient means it's easy, You're not? Yes, there is pushing into resistance to build, but are we taking it to the tipping point that we are now not aware what we're doing to our structure? Am I pressing and shortening everything instead of really working efficiently? So when I exhale I don't have to shrink and collapse. My lungs are squeezing, but I have a feeling of elongation and length rooted from the ground up so that whatever I'm, doing, whether I'm doing planks or I'm doing pushups or I'm doing chair, whatever it is ease.
Speaker 2:Then I can start to build back into what we would say reps and sets, but never where I lose the awareness of how I breathe, because breathing is my fuel that I'm burning to activate. And I remember I worked with a trainer and eventually I just said what am I doing? Because she would push me into fatigue. She would try to correct me with weight on, which is already creating an injury. And she three times. And I said how many times do I have to let this happen? And then I stopped. I said I know what I'm doing. So I started to call my approach Feldy Fitness. Oh, I like that fitness, but it's using the Feldenkraisian approach. Dr Feldenkrais was a genius and he was an unbelievable athlete. He was the first Caucasian judo master trained by Gigao Kano, the creator of judo, and his senseis as a black belt fifth don he was the one that they seated in the Paris because he was the curies at the Sorbonne intern that worked in nuclear fusion and radar sonar.
Speaker 2:But he couldn't earn money because he was their intern. So Giga O'Connor learned of him through a book. He wrote and said bring this guy to me, because Giga O'Connor had a dojo in Paris but they couldn't maintain their students because he only had the Japanese. They couldn't speak enough English or communicate well enough across cultural boundaries. Well, Boucher was not. He spoke seven languages. He had emigrated eventually to the Sorbonne, to Paris, to continue to educate himself. He was a cartographer, he was an engineer who looks at structure, he was a physicist who takes structure into movement. He was an unbelievable judo master, jiu-jitsu, soccer player which sustained a lot of injuries. So his life is pretty amazing of injuries, so his life is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:But it got my attention when I, because of all the wear and tear and no pain, no gain, went down and I was scared and I tried every modality and every approach to fix me. Nothing was fixing and because of my training also in other approaches, in mind, work and my history, I just got very curious. I knew his name because I'm also trained in hypnotherapy and NLP and I went. So Milton Erickson since I'm trained in the Ericksonian approach versus Freud or anything like that. I said they were born the same year, they died the same year, they respected each other. One said Moshe does for the body what Milton does for the mind. No, it's. You exponentially improve one aspect. You tap into everything that improves Everything. I like that. So if you move better, you're going to breathe better, You're going to digest better, You're going to have more focus.
Speaker 2:You're going to be stronger, you'll sleep better. To digest better, you're going to have more focus. You're going to be stronger, you'll sleep better. So he decided. Dr Feldenkrais decided I'm going through the body because Freud went through the mind. Direct, you should telling you, and he met with resistance. He met with unbelievable resistance. So Moshe was an avid learner. An avid learner, he learned from everybody. He worked with Ida Rolfe, he worked with MF Alexander, he worked with yoga masters. He wanted to assimilate and draw from each of these approaches, whether they were modalities or, in fact, dynamic learning systems, which is what Feldenkrais is. It's about learning versus being taught. Okay, how does the nervous system learn efficiently?
Speaker 1:So do you do one-on-one sessions? Is it a class?
Speaker 2:Okay, I do everything. So it started just live, and I was trained to teach classes, awareness through movement, live, where I guide you through words, versus I'm demonstrating for you because I want to help you brain process. What are you describing? That's another skill. Are we more visual? I have to see it. Can I hear it and make sense of it? Do I have to touch it and feel it? So I would definitely teach these classes live, which is how you continue the benefit. It's not like I did it, it's fixed, done. No, it is. You continually have to tap in to build your skills, always an athlete, a performer, whatever you're doing. It's not like it's fixed, it's done. That's like oh, I went to the dentist and he filled the cavity, or I had a root canal and now, years later, guess what? It's deteriorated. I got to go back for another fix.
Speaker 2:Do we maintain the fix, like we do if a car needs maintenance? Do we do that for ourselves? Are we just doing what somebody else tells us to do, even if it hurts? So then I do the hands-on one-on-one, which is we call it functional integration. I take over the work that you do unconsciously, and a person will come to me and they'll go oh, but it's my shoulder, yeah, my sciatic over here is really killing me, and oh, my legs. Can you feel the knots? And I just go. I don't think that way. I think differently. But I understand what you're saying and I'm not going to start where you're already in a lot of pain. A lot of people come to me in pain or there's issues that everything else they're doing hasn't fixed and I said that's already under high alert.
Speaker 2:But if everything is connected, like think of an ocean, whether it's a calm seas or it's turbulent, that wave comes in or it crashes out or it comes in slowly, and you watch this pause and it reverses and it rolls out. I make these metaphors and analogies that we can understand. That's how we learn, that's how we grow and at times it's going to be turbulent seas. How do we deal with it when it is hard and difficult? Yeah, you're going to have to survive, but don't live in a survival mode the rest of your life or else it affects and wears you out. Your biomarkers will change. I need to find the name of the woman who, years ago in England, did a study and she took people between their 60s and their 90s, mostly men, and she moved them into an environment we would call it a community that brought them back into the era where they were healthy, they were young, the music, the clothes, the food, the surroundings, and they monitored their biomarkers. They put them through classes and everything and they weekly would check their biomarkers. At the end of I think the minimum was three weeks to a month. They had decreased in age biomarkers 10 to 15 years. Oh wow, that's a lot. Yes, yes, and that was in a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:I just did a podcast last week on Alzheimer's. Now, I can't fix Alzheimer's, but I've worked in the hospital with people with Parkinson's. Parkinson's also deals into dementia or Alzheimer's as part of the diagnoses. How do you work with them? So, like Feldenkrais, we go to where they know, we bring them back to their known and we let them remember, because then they come alive, they elucidate again and we build little bits from there. I can't fix it, but I can help bring them back a little bit and support them and help them breathe better and help them do things better so they're still productive. So I've worked with infants that were either born healthy and then had a severe trauma right away, or were not born healthy. And some people would say to me how can you do that? Excuse me, how can you do that? And I said they're alive. So if I can help facilitate in any way an improvement for whatever amount of time they're going to live, then why would I not? That's a gift.
Speaker 2:But then the virtual happened when the pandemic shut us down and I was literally working in Boston in training programs because I helped train people and my trainer, my educational director, was saying to me Peggy, we started with 45, we're now into 15. And we said it's time to close it and we managed to bring them to certification through virtual. We did it. They still need hands-on and we did two trainings like that. Another one hiatus for over two years, attrition brought the rest of them back.
Speaker 2:But they still need more and everybody needs more because, like a doctor, you start as an intern. You're not ready to do surgery unless you're out in the war zone and you're the only one and go for it. But we have to be intelligent. So it's learning, and the longer you can be curious and follow your pathway of trusting intuitively. There's an innate skill we have the Native Americans, indians had it, other cultures have had it that we've desensitized. When you desensitize what actually happens, you've tuned out, and then other things that start that you haven't paid attention to start hitting you and then you can no longer be desensitized to them.
Speaker 2:You become so hypersensitive you need almost nothing to trigger. You are the results. So when we're not getting the results we need, you have to pause, not judge another. You tried it. It didn't necessarily work for you or you didn't have the right person that created that relationship with you. You know because you do training and everything like that.
Speaker 2:It's really important to have somebody that they get you and you get them and there's a respect and you can have a dialogue and a conversation versus I'm telling you I know best and I'm judging you. We say it's nonjudgmental, but even in the field I work there are people that judge and I'm like isn't this the elusive obvious? Dr Feldman wrote that book. It's elusive to you, but it's blatantly obvious to me, to you, but it's blatantly obvious to me.
Speaker 2:So I will say to many of my students, if they may not be as sensitive, kinesthetic aware, attuned, but they're really good in technology, I go guess what. I'm the reverse. So I'll help you hone your skills, baby steps, and you'll be patient with me when I say I don't get how to do this, because my husband says this and he's so right and I think there's way too much stimulation for the human brain right now. Everything is looking at the screen and going where do I click, where do I see it? And it's a one-dimensional screen. And if your brain isn't trained that way, I'm more right. Brain, creative, artistic hike, run outdoor, then sitting in front of a computer for hours on end drives me crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm cold.
Speaker 2:My husband says go ahead up and do it. I said I can't. I'm sitting here working, I have to target who I'm looking at and I have to be present. But soften my gaze so I can see more.
Speaker 1:Mm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would think that ego would get in the way of a lot, I mean, especially in the beginning. That would be a huge hurdle to get over that would be a huge hurdle to get over.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what you have to learn. Yeah, because we all have an ego. But we have a situation, right now at least I usually don't talk politics, but we have a situation right now that I feel our country has regressed a hundred years and we've taken the 1920s, 30s and 40s and 50s and conjoled them all into one. We're not learning, we've regressed and we are not aware. We're not really aware. There's a lot of judgment, a lot of judgment. There's a lot of blame. We've got to stop. If we start to really honor I don't know if you know of Martha Beck, and I listen to many people and many of them are women, some of them are men absolutely that when we can begin to really recognize.
Speaker 2:Science now has finally recognized we have three brains. We only think of this one in our near cortex, which took a lot of time to develop through the lower brain, through movement. But then they started to recognize what makes a brain. Oh well, it's neuroreceptors, neurotransmitters, hormones, that synaptic bridges are created, the dialogue with each other. And then science started to go oh well, that's our heart and that's our gut.
Speaker 2:So I speak about the three spheres. Think of a juggler. Our head is a sphere. I refer to it as our, the Germans say, instead of what we say, a rib cage, a rib basket. That's still a sphere. And our pelvis, it's a bowl. It rolls.
Speaker 2:Each one of them is interconnected with our spine. We can't live without that interconnection of the spine communicating with these three brains, which house all the equipment that keep us alive. I don't want these limbs to disappear, because they make life easier, they help us fine tune, but when we're using our limbs, even our head, which is an appendage, it sits on top of the spine, held on by cables called ligaments and tendons of muscles, but that's. It's balancing on top, and so if we try to use what I would call the five limbs to do the major work, they're going to break because they're smaller. The bone structure is more delicate. My shoulder girdle, this whole apparatus is very mobile, but because it's so mobile it doesn't have a lot of stability. My pelvis is very stable, but if it's too stable I can't move, and my head you think of.
Speaker 2:I boxed times, not to hit you know, but just it's a great workout. Wow, you've done it all. Yeah, I'm a go-getter, I'm an A-type personality and one of my first inspirations to Feldenkrais wonderful trainer trained by Moshe said you're not going to find people like you in Feldenkrais. I went what I really? I just like that. I pulled back. I said what do you mean? Well, they're going to be more. So there was the judgment they're not going to be an A-type personality as much.
Speaker 2:No, I see them. They're not going to be as passionate and proactive as you are. I see them in Feldenkrais. What do you mean? And I said well, guess what People are people, we'll find our tribe, we'll find who it is. And unless you're concerned about I got to have it all my ego, my Find who works for you, the connection, the revenue. That's what's really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely I agree, I agree, so okay. So you had said in the beginning that people try and compare it to yoga or Pilates. They try and fit it into a box. So what would a session look like? Is it exercise? Are we talking more so?
Speaker 2:it's a mix. When I was trained, it was basically said that you don't really want to talk much through the session and the reason being when we're talking. I'm in this part of my brain.
Speaker 2:And the session wants to be more in the cerebellum of movement. However, there are people that Moshe would say they'll wake up. I've been doing this for decades. No, they don't. They're so hardwired with the blinders on. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. I do my PT, I'll do the reps and sets, but they're hurting. And then they come in.
Speaker 2:I worked 12 years in the PT office doing Feldenkrais and massage other things, and I would hear over and over again them go. Well, I tried to do the exercises. I was busy. I was like no, you're hurting yourself, you don't want to. I want you to want to do it. Just, instead of doing the reps and sets, find the pathway of ease. Listen to how you breathe, rest often, notice if your contact changes. So lessons can be done in any orientation.
Speaker 2:A Feldenkrais table is firmer. I prefer a wider one. You can be on your back, you can be on your belly, you can be on your side, you can be seated, you can be kneeling, you can kneel over the table, you can be standing. So I had the doctor that made me this, and she was a high up doctor. Beautiful, yeah, beautiful. This was based on it's glass she cut. This was based on coming to me and not being able to lie down or sit for more than 10 minutes, not being able to sleep. She was in excruciating pain, so our lessons were standing and you know the blue inflatable balls that we use, the diet. That became okay, so I'm going to put that on the floor. I want you to put your hand to the wall and I want you to remove one foot to stand on the ball and then come away.
Speaker 2:And then when you can find how you balance yourself, where you have to be mobile and you know shift, not fall. But that's why I want you to hold delicately the wall wherever it is, not grab anything. And those became her first lessons standing so that we could transition her to sitting, and then lying on her back and then lying on her belly, so you start where they're at Right. If I'm working with an infant or a toddler or a little one, oh, you better be moving, because you got to follow them and you're not getting them to just lie down, unless they're really diseased, where that's all you can do and you support them.
Speaker 2:There's some approaches that say If they're too comfortable, they won't learn. I totally, totally disagree with that, because that is neurological noise, your pain, your discomfort that you have been denying and ignoring. But you cross the tipping point. You can't anymore. So to me the analogy would be oh, have you ever had a mosquito or a gnat or a bee buzzing around you Drives you crazy. Or you've got an itch, or you want to scratch something, but you're not supposed to. It's crazy. You cannot focus on anything other than that. So I support I'm the maven of support and you can see a person goes. No, I guess it's fine. I said well, now compare this to that. So I also work with a lot of people that have some diagnoses. If you know people that, or you see Cirque du Soleil, that ability to move, or the great yogis, they have it. Whether you give the name or not, they have what we call connective tissue concerns. They're too lax, they're too mobile and so they'll have a lot of pain. They have to use more musculature to know where they are, because there's laxity in ligaments, there's laxity in the muscles and the tendons.
Speaker 2:For some with other diagnoses of this, it affects every sphincter in their body. It might. There are many symptoms. If it's called a syndrome, okay, that means it's not. It is a pathology, but we're going to call it syndromes because it could have a multitude of symptoms that affect you. So often there's such laxity, their shoulders retract. The front of the joint structure is open because too much of that is happening, so I'll support it to bring the shoulder joint back into a neutral. Instead of I'm protracted, I'll roll forward, which many people are now because of the defenses constantly or they're retracted. I'm always like this more an extension when is neutral.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to find and then you watch them go. Oh, they already told me, or there's something else that happens. There was only one client that was a nutritionist that knew it. So there's a term called borborygmy. Okay, and when you've worked with people maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't. Did you ever hear? All of a sudden, their GI tract starts gurgling and they might go.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, I'm hungry or it must have been what I ate. No, it's not. You've just tapped in to their parasympathetic nervous system which is addressing their entire GI tract, which is mostly smooth muscle, not striated, not under your voluntary control, unless you're a great Tibetan monk or sensei that studies this. How do you do that? Okay, yeah, you can hone that skill, but it's not just so easy to tap into a smooth muscle that is not striated, that is not under your voluntary control. That is your whole GI tract, quieting the contraction that does still happen in smooth muscle. Let's go and the more is flowing.
Speaker 2:And often I'll notice and they'll notice where, if I'm working more on the right side or the left side, or where the left hip or the right shoulder, that's where the borborygmi, that gurgling sound, happens, and I would say 99 and 99, 100% of the time it happens. Say 99 and 99, 100% of the time it happens. So interesting, yeah, so it's not just oh well, I ate something or I guess I'm hungry. If it didn't happen with such consistency I'll never say a hundred percent, but consistency, no matter who the person male or female, infant, child, adult, senior, geriatric, which culture doesn't matter. It's a human system. It's a human nervous system I'm speaking to.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, so that's what it is.
Speaker 2:It's instead of a modality of something being done to you, and I'm not saying that there isn't merit there and you can't enjoy it, of course there is Right.
Speaker 2:Because I also have done craniosacral. It has to be done to you. I can't really do it to myself. Lymphatics I can teach someone some of what to do for yourself, especially if they've had having cancer or on medication or going through surgeries or stuff like that how to support them. I want to help you hone skills so that you become more adept at how to take care of yourself, because if you were stuck on an island unto yourself, what are you going to do? You have nobody that you can count on. Do you just go I give up or do you wake up and say there is a God-given gift within me that I didn't tap into? Start tapping into it now and you think everyone has that capability, absolutely Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what they may not have Curiosity If they're judgmental and they're not curious, and I want to be told what to do. And that's not for me. I go fine. So, you will find that. But is a nervous system able to learn and progress and develop more skills? Absolutely, but they must be curious.
Speaker 2:But if you just want me to tell you what to do. All right, I'll tell it gently, with no judgment, and I will make you laugh and joke. I have two. I divide clientele into two. I have clients and I have students. So a client is someone who comes to me and I just fix the problem, make me feel better, and I don't, because it works. It works and I will say to them I know it's your right, I won't finish the session. I know I'm going to come to your occipital ridge, the skull. I know I'm going to come to your right shoulder or your left hip. You've had enough years with me. Yes, Don't worry about it. But they're still worrying.
Speaker 2:I said but if you want to really learn more how to maintain or continually tap back into it, then you have to. There are other things you need to play with, but you play. You don't do it because you're too much goal-oriented driven and you're bypassing a quality of ease I'll tell you a story.
Speaker 2:There's a gentleman I'm working with that has been through huge assault. I call it the dance of life and there are assaults and injuries and none of us get out of it. Some of his assaults and injuries have been pretty significant that have pretty much derailed his life.
Speaker 2:And I helped support him, and so he has said to me at different times his brother, who's older than him and he's senior, was a big muscle man, and so his brother taught him and told him if it's hard, if it's difficult, that's what you need. And I went that's quite the contrary, that's survival. And if you keep doing hard and difficult, pushing into resistance, you only get resistance. That's when you break your toys, that's when you wear out everything.
Speaker 2:And so I said, okay, let's do it really hard and see what you do. How do you breathe, where do you look and are you fatiguing? And did that hurt? I said, now let's compare, and I'm just going to make it easy and I'm going to take over the work and then you're going to be able to explore with me. We'll do it together, a team. Was it easier? Did you take a deeper breath? Do you feel better? Do you feel better? Yes, I said so. Remember the definition of efficient is it's easy, it's easy. So if I'm I used to be a sprinter I don't sprint anymore. I'm over it now. I'm never a good long distance runner. Now I don't do miles and miles and miles. Today I run two miles. Okay, I keep it nice.
Speaker 2:I have three English Black Labs and I hike so every day, unless, for whatever reason, I'm hiking, we'll say three and a half to five miles every day, whether it's hiking or jogging both of them I just. That's part of my, that's part of how I take care of myself, since I'm not going to being the gym rat anymore and you know I do yard work. We live in a little old growth forest outside of DC, so there are things to tend to instead of hire somebody else to do it. I like it, I enjoy being able to do. You know, instead of oh, I can't anymore, I choose not to jog anymore. No, I mean, I choose not to sprint anymore. Been there, done it. I don't have to keep doing that. Yeah, but it's about how do you learn?
Speaker 1:So I could say what's the difference between hearing and listening. Oh, okay, yeah, absolutely, there's a huge difference.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, there's also a huge difference between being taught and learning.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I, you know, people say I'm a teacher, I don't want to be confrontational, and some say, well, don't say you're a facilitator, or you're an enabler, or because there could be a different association to it. So, okay, the bargain is I'm a teacher, but my hope is that I help guide you and enlighten you. That you can find easy is more efficient, and more efficient means it's organic, which means you won't wear out your parts as quick. And God bless for our medical model, because when we do, there are surgeries that we can have. But guess what, by the time those surgeries occur, we have rife with compensatory problems.
Speaker 2:Compensation is not healthy. Think about oh, I stubbed my toe, oh it hurts, and you hobble for a few days. Or you break your toe and you tape it with another toe and you're walking a little off. Or let's say, somebody because of plantar fasciitis, the doctor put them in a boot. Somebody because of plantar fasciitis, the doctor put them in a boot. Well, unless you balance that boot, which is stabilizing, which is causing scarring instead of other things we could now do that we know through you're developing another problem because the tennis shoe or whatever shoe you're trying to balance with the boot is not matched, so that differential is going to show itself in your limping, in your hip, in your spine, in your shoulder, girdle, everywhere, and if you already have it.
Speaker 2:Everybody has some sort of scoliotic curve side to side, but you have a greater scoliotic curve. Oh, we're looking at a compensation over time, because six weeks usually is what you have to be in the boot or whatever it is that's already wired in a habit when I was training in hypnotherapy and NLP, it takes six weeks. Now they argue it's less Six weeks to wire in a new habit and six weeks to start to break the synaptic bridges that you keep throwing. That thicken it. Instead of wax you need it to wane.
Speaker 2:So that it doesn't keep firing, triggering yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I had some injuries and I needed to. I don't call it rehab because the insurance model began in the PT office and I also worked in a mental health place for a while and I would sit in the meetings. It was all about how to give the patients a higher level of payout on insurances. So how do we code it? That's not learning. So rehabbing is can I get you back to where you fell off?
Speaker 2:I speak about rehabilitate yourself because you're facilitating an ability to do more, which is why we call the private sessions functional integration, because I'm hoping and I get results that your ability to improve the way you function starts to integrate into your nervous system, so you don't have to always stop and think about what you're doing. In the beginning, every infant, a toddler, toddlers, teeter-totters, because they don't know how to balance yet they're walking I stopped Frankenstein unilaterally side to side and they're shortening right and we learn how to contralateral oppositional movements, which is a Newtonian third law of relativity equal and opposites. But people have some never crawled to get that contralateral pattern. I was working with the Down syndrome before COVID and they're so smart, they're so sweet, but they will tend to be more. They'll go into the bear walk, which is going to be unilateral. How to get them to crawl? How to get this contralateral to happen?
Speaker 2:You have to be playful, but you have to know. So I learned about pathologies, I learned about diagnoses, I learned about kinesthesiology and reflexology and all of these other things, because I was curious. Yeah, that's, I was passionate. Yeah, that's, I was passionate about that. That's what.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do yeah, it's so interesting. So how does hypnotherapy work?
Speaker 2:with all of this.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry Play into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:Great question. So not everybody has the same background. I do. Some do.
Speaker 2:There are many Feldenkrais practitioners that are trained in NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, which is used in hypnotherapy. The hypnotherapy is from Milton Erickson, so I started with that before because I also trained with Tony Robbins at Master University and I just love that kind of stuff, you know, and so you can't divorce yourself from what you've already integrated into you. So it helped me recognize Milton Erickson who when he was a child he developed polio and it crippled him. He was in a wheelchair but he had a little baby sister. I think he was about 12 and he had a little baby sister and he just witnessed her, witnessed what she did, and he started to through visually witnessing it, started to do it and he returned himself back to movement Then as an old, and then he got married, he had lots of children and then he got hit with post polio syndrome which came back and gave him another wallop and he was back in the wheelchair. So he knew how he could use his breathing, his eyes and the little bit that he could possibly touch somebody to either help, in that moment, embed something or not. So, for instance, how would I use some hypnotherapy without thinking I'm doing hypnotherapy?
Speaker 2:I have clients that are just clients and students that just, whatever the issues are wear and tear, joint replacements, severe scoliosis, neurological diseases, it's the whole gamut.
Speaker 2:I work with people not a specific pathology, I just skill myself to know what it is. But if they're in a real emotional state and some of the sessions go longer because they need to talk and I'm skilled in talk therapy where others are not so I let them vent because they're holding that and others listening and I'm going to listen nonjudgmentally. And then I start to notice if they start to cry or get all upset, what most people do is they want to go comfort you and oh, it's okay, don't ever want to do that because you are embedding that emotional state in them. If another person out of nowhere comes and makes a similar gesture and they don't know where, from nowhere, they just they got all worked up. You listen, you're compassionate and you notice when that state starts to ebb, dissipate, then you can go to touch Because you want to embed the positive of moving away from that negative place instead of deep within the negativity that makes sense.
Speaker 2:What will happen with a little one. All of a sudden they go boom. And you see the moment where they're going to cry and start screaming. And I look at them and I go, oh my god, you did that so beautifully, can you do that again? And they're what. I take a moment where they're they're ready to go into that habit for the love and the attention, and I go and I just praise them like, wow, look how, oh my God, you went boom and wow, are you okay? And if it's really to the point that they really hurt themselves, I'm going to say, okay, let's take care of it, because I know that hurts.
Speaker 2:I want them to know I get it and I'm not like, oh, don't be a baby, oh, it's no Right, I'm going to be with them to help them transition out of that state. Even if it's a full blown out tantrum, it happens, yeah, just being with the person to support them in their process. And when the process starts to wane, that's when I can start to connect physiologically. But until then, I'll use my voice, I'll use a look, I'll replicate a breathing that attracts, like they start to mimic. I can do breathing like that to match them. And then, once I've matched them and they feel connected, I can start going them. And then, once I've matched them and they feel connected, I can start going, and then I can quiet the sounds to and they start doing it. So you make this connection, but you have to look for it and it doesn't work 100%. You just don't give up.
Speaker 2:And it was a little girl that had met, I think on a train, winston Churchill. That said to him you never, never, give up. It was a little girl and he assimilated that. And now we think Churchill said never, never, give up. It was the little girl that was counseling him, because he was, she saw him and she saw the state he was in and something like that, and she went no, no, no, you never give up. You never, never give up. Oh, wow, yeah, that's interesting. So here's another thing Little kid having a session, because they need a session.
Speaker 2:I'm working right now with an 11 year old who has been through, also has some of those connective tissue issues which have another issues, and also, like I said before, sometimes there is huge assaults and offenses made to somebody like you cannot believe, and in a relationship, or the mother starts to disclose because the mother's had these two, you start to recognize there is so much post-traumatic stress that is not just from the war, it's from things that you've absorbed and you didn't have a way to vent or reset yourself. And you're wrong. You know and you have to obey and you have to. And so even in schools a lot of schools they don't understand when people are fidgety and jiggling, it's because they're bored, they're highly intelligent or they're really uncomfortable, but everybody has to sit still and be quiet and not eating the best healthful, nourishing food, right. So there are ways that you can readdress it, but when you're dealing with certain systems you can't.
Speaker 2:So this one session, this little one, it wanted to be clarified. We're talking about your bottom, your bum, your tush, your derriere, your and whatever the term was. I think the term was your bottom or your butt, something like that and the little girl goes and it was like what? That's a dirty word? You said, and when anybody says a dirty word, we have to pay a quarter, stuck out a quarter. And I said, okay, now what would be a better word for this area? Okay, that you don't feel is a dirty word, cause I don't want to use a dirty word, I didn't mean to, I just didn't know, I didn't understand.
Speaker 2:And she said well, we say, and whatever it was, I can't remember right now I said, okay, took out a quarter, here's a quarter. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you don't have to. I made a connection because in her upbringing whatever it was bum or bum or something like that it was considered a dirty word. You don't say that. Okay, I learned Now with COVID and I've been working virtual with people around the world. I have to clarify because if they're of another culture or another language and they do speak English, they do not have the ability to really recognize another interpretation.
Speaker 2:They have one.
Speaker 1:What did your?
Speaker 2:colleagues say to me. Well, they might say, because with COVID and I redid my site and everything, I shifted a name. It's still Achieve Excellence Consulting, which is the big umbrella of everything that I've been doing over decades of my life. But I also wanted to make a distinction and I called it the Peggy Experience. And one of my dear colleagues said but somebody else, maybe from another culture, is going to think well, it's your experience they're supposed to have. And I went wait a minute, wait a minute. So it started to make me disclose when I knew that there were other cultures. I can only have my thoughts and my experience. You can have your thoughts, I can't have your thoughts. There's no, I can't feel what you feel. I can resonate with what you feel, I can be empathic and sympathetic to it, but you have your thoughts, I have my thoughts.
Speaker 1:So when I say the Peggy experience.
Speaker 2:I'm not asking you to have my experience. You can't, mm hmm. And so I would. And I now clarify I'm not asking you to have my experience. You can't, that's impossible, but you can, I know you can have your own experience. Do you want to have an experience that's negative, or would you like to have an experience that uplifts you and you feel something became possible? So we have a saying make the impossible possible, make the possible easy, make the easy pleasant and, if you so choose, make it elegant. So when you see the Olympians, you see that singer, you just go melt. They made it elegant. But possible doesn't mean with strain and effort and hurting yourself because that's inefficient. So it means you found your first way into something was possible that you didn't even realize existed, didn't even realize.
Speaker 2:There's another saying we have. One is a compulsion and an obsession. Two is a dilemma. We had a big dilemma this past election. Three awakens the beginning of choice. Four, five, six. So we often talk about what are your strategies? Plan A, b, c, get D, e and F, because I don't know which one won't work. That's why I say all roads lead to Rome. Sometimes, just get on another road. And the reason I came up with. That is, I, years ago, was teaching for a colleague down in the district which was 16 and a half miles for me. It would take me 45 minutes to get there.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:That's traffic where I live. That's just what it is Not here. Yeah, well, it's where I live. Where are you right now?
Speaker 1:In the Kansas City area.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so I started to realize, oh my God, now there's a detour because a tree fell down or there was a house that imploded through a gas leak and the whole area where I would have to go from Oregon to Nebraska the state name streets. I couldn't and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to be late. I've got other students surfacing. I got to get the key to open up she wants me to make ginger tea for them and I just said, calm down, you can't do anything about it. And I found an alternate route which was nicer and a little bit faster and easier to traverse through instead of all the traffic lights.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, we need options and we need more options, and with more options you find more possibilities. Because if I'm working with someone let's say it's a class I want to give them ways not to compensate, but to adapt and modify for them so that instead of feeling it's impossible, I can't do it, they go oh, and I'm going to tell them here's an option. You don't have to do it. But, for instance, if you were laying long on the floor, on a mat or the floor whatever, and your legs are long, your arms are long, your head, are you comfortable? Some people really are miserable. So I would say, figure out. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to share with you. There are multiple ways you can do this.
Speaker 2:What is the thing that comes to your mind? What if you softened, exhaled as you softened, your knees to bend and allowed your feet to transition from long so that the soles of your feet stand on the floor closer to your pelvis? Your knees are oriented towards the ceiling. And then I watch what they do and they're never, unless they have learned and find this initial way you started as an infant. They never do the easiest. They lift the legs, they slide in the sagittal plane, which is fine. That's the runner, that's the biker, and they're holding their breath, but they never think oh, frog leg, like a baby leg. How do I do that? Because that's how we start. Our joints are gelatinous. They cannot straighten. The tendons of muscles which have been so contracted in fetal, do not know how to elongate yet, and by stretching them you overstretch, you recoil, and it shortens and gets even tighter. So elongation, lengthening absolutely. But we've gotten into overstretching or static stretching. So if.
Speaker 2:I'm static, stretching, I'm traumatizing that joint because I'm pulling on the ligaments and the tendons of muscles but I'm not letting the rest follow, follow. So I say that eventually you're going to start to have aches in the hair and in the tendons because there's a joint structure, there's a joint capsule that you're compressing into this bone structure. But if I say, if I and I want to do this, and I start to feel at that moment I feel, wait a minute, I can keep my head forward. That's an intention which creates a different type of movement in my head. But I start to let my this is my right shoulder I start to let my left shoulder retract. My right shoulder is protracting, my whole torso is rotating around. There's no trauma in the joint structure.
Speaker 2:I've kept my head forward to talk with you, which means I got a little side bending movement in the head and then I, and then I slowly inhale and come back, versus just pulling on it and keeping static here. So I say which one feels better, which one did you? And then, if you want to let your head follow, where did you get more degrees of rotation when I'm just going like that or that? And where do I look? Do I look up? Do I look down? What's the difference? So we make comparisons.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's how we learn. So here's another thing, and chime in anytime you want, cause I just go um when someone has. So this happened all the time. I worked in a gym and it was a big tennis fitness place and the trainers and the staff just really weren't interested. They did their no blinders were on. So they're trying to interview new people to join and they're saying, oh, we got this, we got that, we got this and them. And then they see me walking forward because I'm working in the gym, because I would do that when I was there, and they go, this is our Feldenkrais practitioner. And they'd say, well, what's that? And so without saying, well, peggy, why don't you share? They would go well, it's sort of like Pilates and it's sort of like yoga and it's sort of like PT and I would go. I'm sorry, but no, it's not.
Speaker 2:You might see some asanas and most of the people don't even know an asana. I mean, they just don't know. They know how to mimic and, I'm sorry, real yoga from great senses. You don't do 10 or 12 asanas in an hour.
Speaker 2:The whole process of a great yogi was to take a student one asana. That seemed the simplest for them to begin with and hone their skills so that through the body they could quiet their mind and start the meditative process. That's how you begin Versus. I would teach a class after yoga class and I'd watch them all go in and they loved it and they'd come out crippled because they'd overstretched and I'm like, wow, they could to bend down to put their tennis shoes on. It was like, oh my God, because they were pushing into resistance, trying to hold it. But if you keep pushing into the edge that's heat, friction, irritation, wear and tear to tissue over time deteriorates it, deteriorates it enough that you the Achilles tendon, or the soleus, or the gastroc muscle it was all of his hamstrings, right up into the sits bone, it's all connected into his lower back because he's a football player and it was no pain, no gain and just go for it.
Speaker 2:And he broke the toys. I worked with a woman for a while who so limber, so flexible, so beautiful, I mean wow, and she broke her toys, which meant that because she was so flexible and she had some of this connective tissue stuff, she had done a full straddle split and then took her hands, grabbed her toes and did a hyper flex of the heels and she had, slowly, slowly, what she was doing is she was shredding the labrum of her hip joints. She never had cartilage problem. She was shredding the labrum of her hip joints until they both went and totally ruptured both labrums of both hip joints, which is like the insulation that when you put a toilet on the ceramic floor there's always a suction Right. So our meniscus is also like that.
Speaker 1:And how many people tear and rip meniscuses.
Speaker 2:Right, you know how do you learn how to reorganize before you have to have you broke your toys. You broke your toys, so she had hip resurfacing, which was done for dancers, because you don't have to fully remove the neck of the femur or the ball of the femur. You shave off the top of it. Because that's and to yeah, because once you've torn labrums, you can do them in your shoulders too. You can't replace that, they don't reset that. You can't. Yeah, yeah so, but there's an innate intuitiveness that we don't wake up to that. You're pushing yourself beyond the limit, not to the edge, beyond, beyond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. This is all so interesting and fascinating. I just really enjoyed this conversation. I feel like we could talk so much longer.
Speaker 2:Look, I had one one podcast that I did with some guys. They were great and um terrain therapy from New York city, big athletes, soccer players, everything with their wear and tear. And it was supposed to be 40, 45 minutes. It went 90 minutes. Oh my gosh. You know which can be long for a podcast. I'm listening to two and three hours and I'm like I got to do sound bites. I do too much, yes.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree. Okay, well, is there one thing, one technique that would help everyone at this moment? And then also, would you tell the listeners how they can find you?
Speaker 2:They may, all right. So first of all, let's just start with our breathing. Okay, all right. So people were often taught different approaches to breathe, but we know how to breathe or we don't. So I would first bring their attention to when they breathe and they do something. What are they holding their breath? Are they inhaling, are they exhaling? And if they're holding their breath, are you holding it on an inhalation or an exhalation?
Speaker 2:So, play with this, I would say the lion's share of the time. Let me first clarify efficient breathing means it's not going to interfere. So if you're a long distance runner or a sprinter or an athlete, you're continually breathing. I was an opera singer. You're continually breathing, you find catch breaths and how to breathe, all right, but how to start paying attention, just like if you drive. Well, what do you do when you have to put? I have an electric car now, but I also have a gas van for my dogs. So when you have to go to the gas station and put fuel into your car, what do you do with the car? You turn it off right, or it's a neutral or park, okay, but usually you turn it off when you start the car, even if it's an electric car. In order to do anything, to move, to do something, what pedal do you have to put your foot on?
Speaker 1:Accelerator. I mean the brake. It depends on your car, I guess, because I have to brake first and then accelerate to go.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, but in order to move.
Speaker 1:In order to move.
Speaker 2:yes, you have to hit the gas pedal Mm-hmm, it's burning fuel, Mm. In order to move yes, balloons which make your chest rounder. But if I need to do any twisting or extension or bend down to pick something up, it's going to be easier on an exhalation and inhale to come up. Or if I'm going to go oh my God, look at this magnificent evening, the starry sky, the full moon I want to exhale so that I can bring my sternum, my chest, forward. My back needs to be potent to arch and I really come over my structure, even though it's bowing this way like we would say a whale. A whale would be more extension, A cat would be more twisting.
Speaker 2:There are different creatures of the sea we can look at for the shapes we all make. A lamprey would be side bending. You side bend to the right or the left, but where is your easiest side? And do you transfer your weight when you side bend to the side you shortened? Or do you transfer your weight to the other side, which is a long axis, which means that the foot that you side bent to should really be pushing to move you over to the long axis?
Speaker 2:So I would first start with your breathing, because most people have breath and I'll get a client that's just comes and I said well, you want to be on the table for your lesson and I want to be on my back. Good, so how would you transition yourself from sitting here to lie on your back? They hold their breath and they fall. And if they've got pain, that's going to trigger them even more. And I go did you hold your breath? And they go uh, probably they're not aware. So I come back up and then I talk them through a strategy of how to make it easier.
Speaker 1:So that they go.
Speaker 2:Oh, I never even thought of that. So that would be one thing I would bring to a person's attention. So let's just have you have an experience. Can you just do that for a moment? Are you in a wheelie chair or are you in a stable chair?
Speaker 1:I'm in a stable chair, my feet aren't to the ground, though it's a stool.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, all right, put your feet. Can you put your feet on the stool? Yes, okay, you put your feet on the stool. Yes, okay. So put your feet on the stool, or put one foot. Can the ball of your foot touch the floor, or is it too high? Okay, so put your heels on the stool. Okay, heels on the stool. Got it? And now your knees are bent greater than 90 degrees, correct, because your heels are behind your pelvis. Now, if I said go ahead and first do it holding your breath, turn around yourself, I don't care which side, right or left and now come back, that was holding your breath, right?
Speaker 1:That was holding my breath, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now. So you turned around your right side, Now do it inhaling Now. So you turned around your right side, Now do it inhaling.
Speaker 1:That feels weird.
Speaker 2:Okay, now take a nice inhalation and when you're ready to exhale, turn around yourself to the right, but start to look a little up as you do it. Oh, you got a lot more degrees of rotation, didn't you With?
Speaker 1:no click, click, click out, out, out.
Speaker 2:So I gave you an experience, but I had you do it three different ways Hold your breath, do it on an inhalation. Why would an inhalation be harder? Because the balloons of your lungs are full so they're not going to be as viable to rotate and twist that. When we exhale, we still have 25% of oxygen left in our lungs. There are breathing lessons. We do, not because you don't know how to breathe, but because you don't have multiple ways to compare how to breathe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, so that's, that's a little thing that I just threw out there. How do you reach me? My name is spelled with an I Peggy so my website is thepeggy P-E-G-G-I experience. Just to spell it all out connected. That's my website. Go there. You can email me at Peggy P-E-G-G-I at thepeggyexperiencecom. You can reach out to me whether on WhatsApp, because where people live, or phone me if you want to, or text me 240-498-5354.
Speaker 2:If you have questions, you're curious, you want more information, I'm going to give you a free little consult, because that's what I do If you want to have your own experience. What I started in the pandemic is I learned? Okay, you're going to start teaching lessons and you're going to put them on your YouTube channel for free, instead of you have to pay me for it. So listen, I would say. First, you can read through the descriptions. Some of them have descriptions. Look for the orientation. You prefer Go slow, because if you go fast you're in your habit, so you can't even follow what I'm telling you. Don't even try to do it. Just listen to it. I have a pleasant enough voice. Does it resonate with you or not? Okay, and see if that's the lesson for you, the orientation, if it makes any sense. But first listen, turn it off, come back to it and see if you can slow down and make sense of what you heard. Because now I'm asking you did you just hear it? Or by listening, can your brain start to grok? How do I make that a movement? Like if I said if you're lying flat on the floor and your legs are long and some people feel, oh, my lower back hurts, well, I would help you figure out how to transition your legs without holding your breath or hurting yourself, to transition so that the soles of your feet are standing on the floor closer to your pelvis. Do you keep them very close together? Do you keep them the width of your shoulders the width of your pelvis.
Speaker 2:I have women that also have this. Another one was sharing pelvic floor issues. Well, we're women. Men have them too. There are strategies, and if you're just doing Kegels, hundreds of Kegels, you're fatiguing your bladder. It will weaken it. It will not help it. I work with women, I work with men to give them the strategies. I don't have to do touching or anything like that. Right, I need to help them understand. Your lower belly is the seat of, so if you know chakras, you know other things. The lower belly is the seat of your power, and so you need to have that free enough to move out and in, out and in when you breathe, instead of you're forcing it. Most people are so busy holding the sin that they're just chest breathing and then they get more anxious.
Speaker 2:And so I support people, whatever the issues are. We can learn how to improve it because I just keep studying. I keep learning from every and anybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm a learner, I love it.
Speaker 2:I have fun and I want the people that come to me, I want them also having fun. They can join my classes. Awareness Through Movement Zoom they're inexpensive, they're $15, which gives you an audio file where I can witness you if you want to be seen. If I can't see you, I can only teach the people. And there are more mentoring sessions with ladies a few of them. I mean, I've been on screens where I had screens and screens and screens when I was starting all of this and I see it where others don't.
Speaker 2:I want to be a staff for others, where we had hundreds on the screen and I would just be scrolling to those that I could see to recognize what they're doing, what's happening to the team going. Okay, you need to repeat that direction because there are a lot of people I'm witnessing that are really confused. You know so we would be able to relay, but you have to, or did they even hear it? Be listening, yeah. How to awaken Little bit at a time, baby steps, baby steps.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it, peggy, thank you so much for sharing today. I truly appreciate it. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:My pleasure too, my pleasure too, and so whenever you get this out to me, I will certainly put them out on my, my Instagrams, my LinkedIn, my Facebook and my website. Ah, and we froze. You froze on me.
Speaker 1:There you go, you're back. Well, what happened? And all my chickens are going crazy it froze for a moment, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:I look forward to it. A huge thank you to Peggy for joining me and sharing her knowledge of movement, healing and body awareness. I just love conversations like this because they remind us that wellness isn't a one-size-fits-all and that true healing often starts with tuning in and not pushing through. If Peggy's insights resonated with you, maybe it's time to rethink how you move, how you rest and how you feel in your body. You deserve to feel strong. Be sure to check out the links in the show notes and, as always, if you're ready to take that next step in feeling your best, from gut health to strength and everything in between, I am here for you. Reach out anytime. Thanks so much for tuning in today and keep listening, keep learning and keep showing up for the healthiest, happiest versions of you.
Speaker 1:Until next time, Look for the plus sign or follow button. This is one of the best things that you can do for the podcast. If you'd also be willing to give a five-star review, that would be amazing and much appreciated. Lastly, please share an episode with a friend or five to keep the love going and join the Spandex and Wine community in our private Facebook group by searching Spandex and Wine. Feel free to reach out to me at any time by emailing info at spandexandwinecom or text me at 913-392-2877. I appreciate you. Thank you.
