Restoration Beyond the Couch
'Restoration Beyond The Couch' with Dr. Lee Long: Insights for Mental Wellness: Join Dr. Lee Long on 'Beyond The Couch,' a transformative podcast blending professional psychological insights with real-life experiences, offering practical strategies for mental wellness that bridge the gap between therapy and everyday life.
The Beyond the Couch with Dr. Lee Long podcast is intended solely for general informational purposes and does not represent the practice of medicine, therapeutic and psychiatric services, nursing, or other professional health care services. It also does not constitute the provision of medical, therapeutic or psychiatric advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is established. The information on this podcast and any materials linked from it are used at the user's own risk. The content provided through this podcast should not be considered a replacement for professional medical, therapeutic, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It is important that users do not ignore or postpone seeking medical, therapeutic, or psychiatric advice for any health or mental health condition they might have, and should always consult with their health care professionals regarding such conditions.
Restoration Beyond the Couch
The Physical Side of Mental Health
In this episode of Restoration Beyond the Couch, Dr. Lee Long sits down with Dr. Kasey Ratliff, a physical therapist who specializes in the connection between the body and mental wellness. Together, they explore how physical symptoms, like tension, posture, and movement, can reflect emotional stress, and how addressing the body can support mental health from the ground up.
Whether you're navigating anxiety, trauma, or everyday stress, this conversation offers powerful insight into healing through the body.
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch. I'm Dr Lee Long and in this episode I'm joined by Dr Casey Ratliff, a physical therapist with a deep understanding of how our bodies and minds are connected Together. We're exploring the physical connection to mental health, how things like posture and breath, movement and physical tension can reveal what's happening emotionally, and how mental healing is connected with our physical bodies. Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety or just trying to feel more aligned, this conversation offers a grounded, practical look at the mind-body connection. Your path to mental wellness starts here. Welcome, casey.
Speaker 2:Yeah thank you.
Speaker 1:Dr Casey Rattlin to Restoration Beyond the Couch, and I'm so glad you're here. I know you and I've had gosh countless conversations about how physical therapy impacts or how physical wellness impacts emotional wellness and we've had a lot of fun discussing that and I know you've had a tremendous background in the physical world. Would you give our listeners just a little bit of background on you and kind of maybe how you made your way to physical therapy and like just that whole?
Speaker 2:sure yeah, so um long time athlete. So I always loved the um movement, movement of the body, competition. So I thought, oh, physical therapy, that'd be cool and I don't know if you knew this, but I wanted to be a counselor I did not know that yeah, I had a psychology degree. I was going to do psychology at Texas tech and makes so much sense.
Speaker 1:Isn't that funny?
Speaker 2:And my dad said why do you want to sit and listen to someone's problems all day? Jokes on me because I still do that.
Speaker 2:Right, but now you don't sit yeah exactly, and so the the funny part of that is that we're still psychologists every single day, psychologists in quotes, right, working with people. You're working with humans, right. So they walk in there, but they didn't leave their brain at home, right? And so, um, that's really where I got interested. I was, I was fascinated with the brain, the mind, but then on top of that, I had this whole movement fascination that I love. So I feel like that's why I went into physical therapy.
Speaker 1:That's really cool, casey, because I didn't. I didn't realize that, but I don't. I don't you. I don't think I've ever told you this, but I originally thought I was going to be a physical therapist, and the reason why I didn't do that is because the feedback I got was why would you want to go into physical therapy? The burnout rate is so high. So I chose mental health therapy where, and doctorate and then kind of started the real world. And.
Speaker 2:I experienced that burnout. I was in a high volume clinic and you're just pumping them out. And if you really think about traditional, when you think about therapy, you're seeing a therapist. Physical therapy is one of the only therapy that you have to see multiple people at one time in the normal general setting.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because you're seeing two or three patients. And what I found when I was doing that at a high volume clinic I moved to Austin that was my first job is I wasn't able to really get to know my people because I wasn't undivided attention with them, Right, and so then I stumbled in. I did a lot of continuing ed right out of school, a lot of heavy manual Um and so for people that understand what that means, like adjustments of the spine and soft tissue, and that was really where I was headed.
Speaker 1:And the interesting thing about the whole manual place is that you, someone shows up to you and you're the one doing something to them. In other words, there's like there's a lot of um reliance on you, so you make me better. Right, got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. And so that exactly what you just said. With those heavy you kind of create this return value right, I need to go back in because Casey did that thing on my back and, oh man, it made me feel better.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I love manual. I think touching people, having your hands it made me feel better, right, and I love manual. I think touching people, having your hands on people, is really important, right? Um, so there there was. That's kind of where my my right out of school, where you literally know nothing, I knew how to do a swing, a goniometer and measure a range of motion, right, but you know, all that education for that.
Speaker 2:And so then, about two years out, when I moved to Austin, I'd done these spinal mentorships, soft tissue mentorships. I found what I study now in practice. It's called PRI, so it's called Postural Restoration Institute, and you know, I saw it being practiced in this clinic and I'm like what the heck are they doing? Because really I wasn't fascinated with neuro. I was an athlete, I wanted to do orthopedics and get people stronger, right, and the funny part, the joke's on me. In the end I wish I would have paid more attention to neuro in school, because that's all physical therapy really is. It's neurological Muscles are connected to the brain. How are we going to get them stronger? How are we going to?
Speaker 2:you know, but if the brain doesn't, doesn't sense, it, doesn't understand it, it doesn't really matter, right? And so, um, I started studying physical therapy or postural restoration, pretty slowly. It's an, it's a, it's a lot of science. So we're out of Lincoln, nebraska. Ron Horeska, you've had the pleasure of meeting.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, have I had the pleasure of meeting him. He's amazing, truly amazing.
Speaker 2:There will never be another human being like him, just celebrated his 70th birthday and he created this science based on many different things. But to kind of for people at home to understand posture is not standing up straight, get your plumb line out, do your ears line up with your shoulders and your hips, and that's, that's not what we're looking at. So when we look at posture, we're looking at a reflection of all the systems internally. So you got to think about the musculoskeletal system, the respiratory system, the osteo system, the digestive system, the nervous system. I mean we're compromised of multiple oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And so how all those interplay is kind of posturing. How do we posture ourselves? How are all those playing together inside?
Speaker 1:I feel like for PRI, the term posture really is similar. The way that you all have expanded that well, taking it to mean all of the things it means in the same way that CBASP for me in my adventure of being a therapist and growing and learning all the different themes uses perceptual understanding. It goes beyond just what you're perceiving. It goes beyond just the structure. Meaning posture goes beyond just the structure of something. It's the it's, it's what it all, it's everything that's comprised in it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting. When I met Ron, we had the the the great pleasure and of having dinner with with him and you and talking with him. Like I've always seen the world that the physical is a is a, an analogy for the meta, for the metaphysical. Like the physical helps me understand the metaphysical, and hearing him speak and showing like all the ways that our worlds are woven together was so exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and powerful right. Because when you really can tap into that, that's when I feel like, as a physical therapist, I started making a really big difference in people's lives. Not that their hips started getting better Sure, that's great but other things started improving in their life. And so when we look you know, when I assess someone for imposter restoration for people that have no idea what it- is like the quick elevator switch right.
Speaker 1:What's the background of this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so kind of a few foundations, and the biggest foundation that we look at is our bodies are asymmetrical, and so that's fact. I mean, you can go look inside cadavers and see this. But our right diaphragm we have a diaphragm muscle we breathe with, we have a lot of diaphragms in our body, but our right diaphragm, the hemidiaphragm, is significantly larger than our left. It attaches lower on your lumbar spine than it does on the left side. This is a muscle you use 20,000 times a day and it's bigger on the right.
Speaker 2:And so there's no, I don't understand why it's not more emphasized in, like the professional schooling, cause I did two years of cadaver lab and PT school. I even assisted the next year and you know it was just never really kind of talked about, yeah, brought about and so. And then you can look at your organs. Right, you got a liver that sits on your right. You have three lobes of lung on your right, cause you have your heart on your left, and so this big diaphragm pumps us full of air, but it's going to be different about how that air expands within us.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does. And the one thing, though, before we move to the air piece of it is, is the the. Did you know that our right hemisphere of our brain is larger than our left hemisphere, which is just so interesting because it's it does something so different? Right, it's the, it's the lobe that generalizes, or pulls the, synthesizes information. Right, the left side. Yes, it grabs things. Yes, there's that, but it's it's so interesting that this, this, is mimicked in most places, this right sidedness.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And then you look at, it's not a handedness conversation, but 90 percent of the population is right handed.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And most ambidextrous left-handed people are ambidextrous. So you have the center of mass of your body and you can. You already mentioned it the brain, our right brain, our left brain are different. Our right brain controls our left half of our body and our left brain controls our right side. And our left brains are language and our logic and, like you just said, we rely on both of them for different things. But our left brain? We have more neuromotor points on our right side of our body and so these are all just factual neuroanatomy things, and we're trying to live in this world of where people think your right leg and your left leg are the same and the way you sense your right hand and your left hand are the same. So let's treat you as if you're a bilateral human being, when your brain and your body positioning really only understand one half of that body. And so how?
Speaker 1:does that? Could you give me an example of that, Like, how does that play out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think, well, let's just like look at, let's kind of take it into a movement perspective, right, let's just look at a generalized workout. So I've spent a lot of time working with professional athletes, right, so I did. I was like kind of always our joke. I worked with the NFL combine for five or six years with just the press and I'm still waiting for my agent to call.
Speaker 1:but yes, thank you for keeping me ready for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to get that bench press up right 225 burnout is one of their measurements anyway, so that's a great one to use, right? Is that really an expression of strength? Is a bilateral bench press at 225 and you knock them out. You know we had guys tear pecs and it's like these are amazing athletes. Is that really what we're?
Speaker 2:What we're trying to do here is just heavy push through bilateral loading of a body and system that doesn't understand both sides of the floor or both arms. So I guess what I'm trying to tie in with that is when we think about a workout or a load and we're overloading these bodies on one, you know on both sides. Your brain doesn't perceive both sides that way. So I think you know shifting how we program and I like this because I love the strength and conditioning world into more of that asymmetrical mindsets, right, or alternating activity. Our brains love alternating. They want us to reciprocate. One arm goes forward, our other arm should go back, which is a us to reciprocate. One arm goes forward, our other arm should go back, which is a chest wall, rib cage One goes forward, one goes back. Pelvis leg when people look at gait, they just look at the legs. It's like well, what about up the chain right? What are the legs doing? But what are those arms doing?
Speaker 1:And so, as opposed to sitting, you know, to laying back and doing you know, burnout of two, 25 on the bench press, would your suggestion be like a piston type pump where you're lifting one arm and and lowering the other, or raising one arm and lowering the other and then raising, so it's like it's operating as a piston.
Speaker 2:Yes, so alternating.
Speaker 1:So do you believe that our body, sort of pendulates, like things, operate on a like, not like a? Well, like a pendulum, where it varies from one side to the next?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's called oscillation, right, and if you don't oscillate, your nervous system is going to go up. You've got to oscillate, you got to turn on, turn off, turn on, turn off the term we use a lot, and I would say that this. So I teach for the Institute as well. I'm training right now to teach our cervical course, but I teach our hip course.
Speaker 1:Cervical being low, back or back being neck. Sorry, cervical spine is the neck Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's okay. It's not your field.
Speaker 1:Lumbar yeah.
Speaker 2:And so is the term, and this is what's so hard in the world we live in now. But the term that I use and we teach on and this is what PRI is literally foundation is called inhibition, and it's the neurological you're never turning thing off completely it's the dialing down of overworking. I mean, look at what we're doing as a society.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:When do we ever shut down, Right? And so when people come see me, it's not like let's do a lot more, it's like, no, let's see what we can turn off. So we can keep this really simple layman terms you walk in with quads that are popping out of your pants, right? That means somewhere in the chain aka hamstrings are not working, so we got to balance that off. So let's figure out how can we get that person to use less quad, more hamstring. That's a really easy layman's terms. But that's what we're looking for is inhibition. How can we get people, how can we meet their needs but then be able to bring them back? Sure, Right, Sure. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Makes perfect sense. Yeah, sure, right, sure Makes sense. Makes, said the pendulation I think about, like art, the accelerated resolution therapy that I love and it does. I also have used, and used from time to time, emdr, the eye movement, uh, reprocessing, wait em I movement, reprocessing and desensitization. I always have to think through that one. But the EMDR, where it involves your the, the movement of your eyes, right and it's, it's the bilateral stimulation, just like what you're talking about of of, like bench press, it's better if it's bilateral, where the body actually what I'm hearing you saying is working together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Alternating Right that's the word I always come back to is was one side's working, the other side should be going back, and vice versa. That's gait. That's moving forward in life. Most people are moving forward on both sides of their body at the same time. You know, we're just, we got to go, we don't have time to pause, stop, get back on one side, and we find this asymmetry with PRI testing. So we have a whole slew of objective testing from the eyeballs to the toes, where we're seeing when people come in, what position are they living in, right? And so that's kind of my job is how do we inhibit and kind of get them back a little bit? Because then once you inhibit and get them, we'll call it feeling better, whatever that means. But on my terms, through testing, then you've got to hurry up, not really hurry, but repattern. So when I teach it's reposition the body first, then you've got to repattern it, because now it's got this new thing and it doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1:Yes, then get back to reciprocating how to use both sides, which is alternating so so. So when you walk through this with people like you said you, you get elbow deep pun intended in in their life.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean I know you're not doing a ton of manual work, but yeah, you're, you're in there with them. Yeah, when, at what point did you begin to see like you said, we're all psychologists Like at what point did you begin to see the, the mind body connection in your work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's no, that's a great question, and I'm trying to think if there was like a few moments I feel like it's just developed over time maturity on my end as a therapist to just really stopping and pausing. If I really had to pick, though, I think it's when I went out on my own I started seeing clients, and when I say out on my own, I mean away from the clinic I started my own practice. I started seeing patients one-on-one and that time I've always had a deep interest in people.
Speaker 2:I've always just loved and fascinated by what makes you you, and that's what I let pr ties into that yeah and so that's where I started to see when I was more one-on-one and I my um intake, my patients are like whoa? You were asking me like all the way back to when my first tooth came out, almost, and I'm like, yeah, because it matters, because you developed your little nervous system way, way back then, and so how you are intertwining maybe that's not the right word interacting with the environment around you and within yourself, came from a really young age.
Speaker 2:And so if we don't go back and see kind of how you were developing and this is, you know, pretty extreme too. But I want to know if patients have braces on their teeth I want to know, like, were your neurological systems messed with at a younger age or even at an older age and all those do. And, as you know, I work with an optometrist and a dentist on my team, so I have a pretty integrated team because we're just trying to figure out how we can help these neurosensory processing systems that you own, that you may not even know there's anything else out there right right, um, I was trying to think what you asked me, that god is here.
Speaker 1:When did you notice that the two go together?
Speaker 1:yeah, but, I love, I love what you're, what you're bringing out is like that when you started meeting with people and you took them for where they are, yeah, and you I mean I'm thinking about I was listening to something where Mark Hyman was talking about how he became a functional medicine doctor and he said that it was really through his own lack of health, through a series of things that developed in his own body, and he was like nobody could answer this and nor could I. So he said I became a really good investigator and I was like, wait, that's kind of how I feel is. When somebody comes in, it's not to be cold and removed, but I am investigating with them. Hey, what happened?
Speaker 1:When was that point? You noticed, and they bring in a set of symptoms and then we work to find what's at the core of that. Right, and it sounds like you're saying, when you were working one-on-one with people, all of a sudden you had the space to take the symptoms, that set of symptoms. Somebody comes in with knee pain and what you realize is they may be it may be the positioning of their neck and maybe how they're breathing, and it may be. And this is where I'm curious where you're going to go with this, but it may be how they're breathing.
Speaker 2:Right, did you take a PRI course?
Speaker 2:I feel, like I have. I mean, look at you, that's amazing. But yeah, so I always start with breathing foundational, right. I mean, that's something really easy you can do just sitting in your chair. And so one thing I'll really work with people on is breathing step one like day one, because that's something they take away and so anybody at home right now can even assess this. But our right nostril when we process air into our right nostril and this is research-based, you can look it up. But that's more our sympathetics. Our left nostril is more our parasympathetics.
Speaker 1:So sympathetic is movement, movement forward. It's the excitement.
Speaker 2:It's fight or flight more. So it's not a bad thing. You just don't want to live in it when you're trying to go to bed at night.
Speaker 1:Parasympathetic is the rest and digest.
Speaker 2:Right, it's the smoother. And you would love a cycle of that. You want the brain to feel that cycle that's called your central nervous system, and then underneath that you have an autonomic nervous system, and I see a lot of people that have dysregulation of the autonomics, right, and so we've got to somehow get this brain and this body to cycle again.
Speaker 1:And the autonomic. Sorry to interrupt but the autonomic is that which is functioning in the background our heartbeat, our ability to breathe, those types of things.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Am I missing anything there?
Speaker 2:No, that's a great easy term, right For that, I think. And so something I'll have my patients do that I feel like man. I don't know if you're going to get to a place to relearn and repattern until we can get you uninhibited a little. We just need to get you where. You're in a place to learn something new. Does that make sense? Because the brain loves novelty. But if you're not in a place to accept it, because you can't shut down ever, you're not going to be able to relearn anything.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of times I'll do alternate nasal breathing with patients. So that's literally putting their hand up and putting two fingers on their left, thumb on their right, and they'll close one, do a lot nice slow cycle in pause, unplug, let the air out the other nostril, and so we will work on alternate nasal breathing. I'll have them work on that throughout the day just to kind of get that calmness right. And that's not for everybody, it just depends on you know who's coming in. But that's a great trick for people that it's not really a trick treatment for people that may have issues going to sleep Like I can't shut down at night, my brain's racing, so that alternation kind of can cause that.
Speaker 1:Right, that undulation, that pendulating, that oscillating back through.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because one of the things that I see when somebody's talking in my office, when somebody's talking about something very painful, very often the terms that will come out of my mouth are please take a breath, Please breathe while you're talking about this, because there's that it's so painful that the body is bracing for that impact, Right, and you think about the things that, like, you think about how the the psychological aspect of things impacts the physiological aspect of things.
Speaker 1:We're not just talking about heart rate. We know if you're scared or anxious, your heart rate goes up, Like that's pretty factual. But it also releases more cortisol when you're, when you're afraid, which releases more insulin, which is why people who have experienced childhood trauma or have adverse childhood experiences that ACEs. When people have experienced those over time and have that childhood trauma in their background, they're more likely to have diabetes, Right. And so there's that, that weaving together of how our body and our brain work in tandem. And when you teach somebody that that bilateral nasal breathing, I'm curious if in their background oftentimes there has been a history of anxiety or some type of trauma.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and I feel like probably most of the patients I see I would say more have some sort of and I'm going to call it trauma lightly, right, I mean it could be. What I mean by that is, I don't, it could be a car wreck.
Speaker 1:That's trauma to the body.
Speaker 2:Right it is trauma right and so, or it could be emotional trauma. They're raised with parents that yelled all day Right and so how that ties into the breathing is what are you using to get your air in and what are you using to get your air out? And that's really what we want to look at first, because that diaphragm, if you opened up a chest cavity or you know it's pretty low all the way down where it attaches on the lumbar spine, it intertwines with your hip flexor, called your psoas muscle. You cannot separate them if you wanted to, so it's going to. There's a chain of muscles, and that's what PRI, from the tip of your head to the toe, and we've identified them, named them, but those chains of muscles become more dominant on one side of the body Thank you, right diaphragm and less on the other, and they're different and that's what we test for, right? But so these patients that you may see that are tensing and holding, I mean, what are they using all day long?
Speaker 1:to do that Right.
Speaker 2:And to pull air in Because their diaphragm is not able to work if they're constantly overusing their neck. To pull that air in, if that makes sense, they're constantly overusing their neck to pull that air in, if that makes sense. And so, yeah, that's kind of what we start to try to break down and look into, like what's their strategy here yeah.
Speaker 2:And I would tell you the biggest thing that I, if I were to take 80% of my caseload is most people are more in a state of inhalation, kind of stuck. So you see, the ribs are up in the front and so even like for listeners at home, even like kind of stuck. So you see, the ribs are up in the front and so even like for listeners at home, even like kind of putting your hands on your lower ribs and then just taking a breath in, but then as you exhale out your mouth, try to make your exhale twice as long as your inhale and see if you can sense those ribs move down. And that's called exhalation, which to the brain is like oh, thank you, it's a neuropause, now I can reset. And then from that fully exhaled state let's inhale and let's fill it all up versus, oh, my ribs kind of been up for 45 years or whatever. I'm kind of kidding.
Speaker 2:But you see the implications about a rib cage that doesn't move. Look at all the muscles that are attached to that and the spine and the back and all those muscles that are keeping you in that posture to keep you alive to keep, aaron, sends what to your brain, right?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean? It's the whole parasympathetic I'm sorry, sympathetic nervous system. It's it's either fight or flight. And then we, you think about the, the psychological implications of that and all the things that, the ways that you ingest or or interpret information. If you're up and out and your brain believes that there's danger everywhere, what does that do? Right? And it's, I think, about the wear and tear on us physically when we have an emotional space. That's really a struggle, right. Or when I think about when we have a physical place, that I mean, I think about athletes that get injured, right, and you have to put them in neutral, so to speak, physically, mm-hmm, and what type of absolute I don't know a better way to say this but damage it does to their psychological health.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then vice versa, right, when we put, when we, our bodies are in neutral, what it does to people who don't move through life. What are, what are some examples? Or do you have some examples that where, where you've seen our worlds collide?
Speaker 2:all the time, every day of my life. Actually this morning, um, but yeah yesterday. So I work with a um professional women's basketball team here in town and I was seeing um, so I just kind of consult with the athletic trainer. She loves PRI and so I come in every few weeks and get to see the players and I absolutely love it because man basketball players. They are just beautiful movers and they get it right, oh cause?
Speaker 1:yeah, everything is really bilateral.
Speaker 2:They're so fluid. I never would have thought of that. You keep saying bilateral, but I think you mean alternating like ones going forward, right, yeah, they're. They're able to get their bodies to move and shift.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can do bare minimum with them and they're like just drastic changes, right, um and uh, I was seeing one of the the newer people on the team and there's this history right of a left knee surgery, a left ankle sprain, um, a right ankle, but anyway, whatever it was. But I go back into that because I want to know, like when did your brain stop trusting the floor underneath your foot? And it's the minute you have a sprain or something happen, right, or surgery. All of a sudden that's not yours anymore, your brain. Someone went in there. Physiologically it's changed, that's what your brain knows, right, but it's threat to your brain. And so then your brain is going well, I'm going to still walk, I'm still going to run, I'm still going to do all these things. So you immediately do something called accommodate and you start accommodating for that. But what does that accommodation look like over time? And that book could be long right.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm here to. When I look at people, it's like man, how have you been accommodating around that left knee and you're playing a high level professional sports? What have you done to get around that Right? Um, so that's one. And then one specifically because, um, I think in you know this cause, I'll shoot you a text. I'm like who should be seen for a 30 year old guy, like who's your best, you know, like for this problem that I think is going on. So what I mean by that is my clients will be working together, and one specifically I can think about without giving too much away.
Speaker 2:She, uh, we went through the process, we and I don't want to overwhelm because this is, it's a lot to talk about integration, but sometimes we'll use dental sensory appliances in the mouth to help the position of the neck and the cranium. That's the best way, that's easy to kind of put it. And she was being seen for a lot of different things and we've resolved everything pretty much, except for her right neck would still bother her and she had a history that she didn't really resolve. She was in her later years of life, so you know, already raised a kid and is off to college, and that she had unresolved with her parents Parents are both deceased and that she, every time her mom came up on a radar conversation, her neck would tighten again.
Speaker 2:And that's patterning right, she would just she loved to center her mass over her right side, and when you do that, you got to turn your head slightly to the left, otherwise you're going to fall over. Well, you know who does that? Your right SCM muscle right here. And so anytime her mom and we kind of came to it together, I mean, and so she started doing all the work, um, at this practice actually, I believe. But uh, and it's a lot, because then you have to unpack all that. But in order to really repattern herself, she really needed and she knows it and she'll, you know, she'd probably come on the podcast and tell you. But so it was interesting that physically I could get her where she wanted to be, but I couldn't. I don't have the tools to work through that with her, nor the license nor the you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So that was one um one specifically that I thought was really interesting. One more that I could think of that I saw. I saw her about six weeks ago and, man, we were killing it. Everything was moving well. And she did see an optometrist in between and they tweaked the prescription a little bit but lowered the power, which is usually what I'll see. And when I say that, what I mean by that is you have a prescription you get from your optometrist and the more minus that's in it that helps you see further distance. So we took some power out. We didn't, he did. And so I'm like well, things should be a little bit better.
Speaker 2:When she came to see me, but it's not. And I said, are you sure there's nothing going on? She's like oh yeah, I'm working through a lot right now. I encouraged her to see a counselor last year. She's like I'm working on forgiving people in my life right now, and so she's going through this work with her counselor. And I said, well, is it more? She goes oh, it's heavy right now. It's heavy the past four weeks and heavy right now, it's heavy the past four weeks, and so I'm seeing it show up in her body by.
Speaker 2:she's trying to kind of go back to her old patterning, because she's trying to stay safe in her body and I'm trying to like no, let's turn it off, let's give you this newness, but her brain's still relying on that patterning, does that?
Speaker 1:make sense.
Speaker 2:So that is, if I wasn't tuned into that, I'd kind of be like, well, you're not doing your exercise, I gave you.
Speaker 1:Which, okay, let's talk about that, Because if you go down that road, well, you're not. How does what I mean think about what that would put upon somebody who's already doing so much heavy lifting, already doing so much heavy lifting? Yeah, my mentor and I were talking about this concept just yesterday, about how there's these people that are are are treatment this is the title we're giving them in our field treatment resistant depression because the theories that they are, that are widely known, aren't working for them and medication is not working for them, Right, and it's like, okay, so that's their, that's something's wrong with them. It's like, well, wait a minute. Why can't we evaluate what's being done and not say something's wrong with anything, but something's not matching up?
Speaker 2:Right, right, the blame game Right.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I say so often in my office blame and fault are the B word and the F word, and we don't speak like that here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, because that that's such a that's such a freeing place for you to be moving with the people that you're treating.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and that's why I feel like I went out on my own, so I have the control. I don't have somebody telling me that I don't have insurance dictating. Oh, the range of motion didn't get better, you know you need to.
Speaker 2:We're cutting you off. But I mean, I only see my clients once every two weeks or so, you know, and so it's not like you need to come in three times a week, because then I try to empower them to have these two things to do. It's never more than two or three things. But if you think about, old habits die hard, that's really true. So maybe it's like, hey, you know, for people sitting at home right now, and maybe you're sitting, literally sitting, where do you feel more your pressure?
Speaker 2:Do you feel it in your right butt bone? You feel it in your left butt bone? Right, do you feel that your head maybe is tilted, is a shoulder lower, and those are the kind of things where, if we can just put a little impact, you know 30 minutes, 30 seconds when you're brushing your teeth, can you stand more over on your left leg? I mean, this is just a random example, right, but those things are really pack a punch Like they're a lot more effective than my three sets. And I'm not trying to hate on traditional physical therapy I'm not because I think it serves its purpose for many reasons, right. I just think that we are not taught to treat the human as holistic and looking at the neurological implications about what we're really dealing with. And so you know we get go ahead.
Speaker 1:I love that because that's my framework in the psychological realm.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In that more metaphysical realm is let's be more aware of you. What, what thoughts come into your mind. I had somebody asked me just this week like, okay, so is is really being aware of how horrible I talk to myself, of my internal monologue? It really that's going to really help me. I'm like, yeah, far more than you realize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know when this was a quote from Ron and it's like what you've been taught isn't wrong, it's just incomplete.
Speaker 1:That. That's so sounds like Ron Right, and I love that, because it is incomplete. Yeah, and it's. Again, it's. There's no blame and fault here, but it, but there is the. Again, there's no blame and fault here, but there is the. Let's take it to a different space, because when we do recognize those little corrections and what I was saying to this individual is, yes, little corrections help over time, and I gave him the example of like a fad diet. A fad diet if you get, you know, just drop weight, like that what? But it's really restrictive and really, you know, difficult to stay on it. The minute you get off, what tends to happen, you go back and seek homeostasis or seek that balance that you just left. So what if we just change the way that we balance, figuratively speaking for you it's literally speaking but what if we just slowly change the way we balance so that balance, that balance becomes something that is normal to us. It becomes our, our balance, our homeostasis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, small movements, micro. And here's the problem we live in a world where it's instant gratification and we want to be better. Yesterday you didn't get me better, and so quite often I will know immediately whether I'm going to be able to help someone, and most of the time I feel like I can. And PRI has gotten really popular because we end up seeing a lot of people that have been struggling and have seen multiple, multiple, multiple providers. So I always joke, I'm like I don't get the easy cases anymore. You know, it's these complex scenarios and I say complex, they're really not, they're just looked at incompletely prior in the world. You know, it's like I've been to four physical therapists, six chiropractors and my whatever still hurts, you know, and it's like sure.
Speaker 1:But I think what you're what you're pointing out here is is that PRI is very aware of all the different input systems which are. Psychological input system is a big one, right, Right. It's a huge piece that like like you're talking about this person who's walking through forgiveness and their, their neck is acting up again. It's like, yeah, because the way that you coped with that may have created a physical pattern for you that you may not be aware of.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it may be a very insightful place for us to look and say wait, what's psychologically going on here as well?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because what, what, when? I? What we both know is that there's a very thin veil between the psychological and the physiological.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you can't separate them and you know, I mean you just kind of can start to think about when you're having a bad day, you know you can. I mean if just kind of can start to think about when you're having a bad day, you know you can. I mean if you think of your worst day, or even maybe you had a let's just talk about grief, right, how does your body feel versus the day that you graduated or you had, you know, the best day of your life? I mean just if you can imagine that in your own body and how your body feels. And tell me, physical is not a part of that mental emotion, right? Yeah, and I don't know from a chronic pain if you could speak to that. But psychologically, do you feel like you see a lot of people that are in chronic pain, that have bodily pain? I mean, I'm sorry, chronic pain? The people that you are seeing, do you feel like some of them have chronic pain issues, whether it's their high anxiety or whatever you're treating them for? Do you see the correlation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I would say that there are people that I, that I see, who have chronic health issues. Right, they're systemically, chronically behind the eight ball with their health and what shows up for them is it's you see them turning off from the neck down, meaning I don't, I don't want to feel this pain. I often tell I remember like I used to run marathons, ultra marathons and all that fun stuff, and I have the most sensitive feet on the planet, like I hate walking around barefoot. Um, and I thought, why did I choose this one? Because talk about hard on the feet, but a marathon in an ultra is really really hard on the feet. And I kept having people say, well, just shut the pain out. And I was just like, no, if I shut the pain out, I shut the good stuff out too. So I'm going to have to learn how to incorporate this pain into my psyche as I learn how to do this. And, truth be told, my feet still hurt, but they hurt less.
Speaker 1:Everyone that I, every race that I did, every run that I accomplished, and I think I, I just I remember thinking as I was running up Lancaster bridge good Lord, that's a long bridge that is all up.
Speaker 1:And I remember thinking like I don't I really am tempted to shut my body off, like shut my mind off from my body, but I just the way that I learned to cope with it was I said I'm going to think about the people that I know in my life right now that are currently struggling psychologically. The people I was treating the themes that they were experiencing, the people I was treating the themes that they were experiencing, and I would hold them in my mind and say this is what I want for them is I want them to experience it and I want them to overcome it. And so I'm going to experience it and overcome it and, almost with them in my mind, going to take them on this, this adventure, with me. And that was my way of not shutting off my body, because I wanted my body. I didn't want to lose track of where I was because, truth be told, every injury I've ever had is when I shut off my experience in my body.
Speaker 2:Just to push through it. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that's. I do see that with people who have chronic pain or really, really, it's more, um, it really it's more of the autoimmune disorder type type experiences. Right, because fibromyalgia, everything hurts? Well, of course it does. There's so much going on and I hate it, hate it with capital, h A, T, e. Hate it when I see a doctor say to somebody it's all in your head oh gosh, and it's like well, everything's all in our head, Everything originates in our brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, okay, so you're telling me my excitement's all in my head, okay, but it's really. It's so demeaning, but really there is a painful experience that is expressing itself out of all of your nerves, right? So, rather than shutting off from this, how do we incorporate a healing space?
Speaker 2:Right, and the word that I heard you say is experience a few times, and so how we kind of relate, that is sense. Same thing, an interoceptive sense is huge. If you cannot sense it within your own self, how are we going to experience it Right? And so that's a big piece of what we do with PRI and trying to get yourself and this can sound really weird but expand from inside out Right, and that's more with airflow, and I really truthfully mean that. But we don't want everything pulling in on our bodies. Everything wants to come in. We want to feel safe and converge. We want bodies to be able to move out and expand Right, and so on one side more than the other sometimes, we won't go into that today but um, but think about that from a psychological perspective
Speaker 1:we do want to move in and, figuratively speaking, and be closed off and silo, and we don't. I mean, I was just talking to somebody earlier this week that was saying all I want to do is I just want to stay home, I don't want to be around people. When I'm around people, I judge myself and I'm concerned that they're judging me, and so they want to come inside themselves more and more and more. And what's interesting is is you see them hunch their shoulders forward where they're trying to come into themselves and you think about that. That's a self-protective movement.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:When you're talking about we want things to expand, you think about that figuratively speaking. It's like what do we need? The world needs love. Yeah, how do we get that? We interact with each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and so there is. That's where, to me, the our worlds really crossover and pendulate together.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know you call it oscillate, I call it pendulate.
Speaker 2:That's fine. I'll let you use that word on my podcast. Yeah, so that's really why I work with an optometrist. What you just said is open up peripheral space management. We're living in a world that is so narrow, focused and forward right, and it's actually the number one, one of the number one diseases growing. It's called myopia, nearsightedness, and it just makes you wonder. Right, we're going into more of this tech world. People are staring at computers, everything's coming in, we're pulling forward and that would be a whole nother podcast we could talk about. Right, with nervous system, but how do we get these people to open up, expand mentally, physically and feel safe to do it?
Speaker 1:This is about to say is you have to teach them. We have to learn as a society that it's okay to take a risk, because in those risks you may fail, and failure cannot define your value. That our value is defined, not define your value. That our value is defined, I believe, by the fact that you have breath in your lungs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean we are valuable period, right Now we move forward, right, right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and you know one thing that, like for anybody at home, when it's kind of, what is she talking about? Expand air right. When you think about your lung field, you've got lungs in the front, but you also have posterior lungs and what's really interesting is during the COVID times, with people that were really struggling to breathe, they were proning them in the hospitals, which means putting them on their stomach to get air posteriorly. And that's your posterior lungs. It's right around the bottom of your shoulder blade, your scapula area. That's called your posterior mediastinum and that's a point like where I'll have people.
Speaker 2:So, even if you're sitting at home I do this in my car a lot but just kind of rounding and slouching your lower back and taking your sternum and pushing it down and back and trying to breathe air right into that area to decompress yourself, because anatomically it's called your posterior myostinum. Your sympathetic nerve ganglion live right along that spine area. So imagine if you're pulled forward all the time and you can't decompress and breathe into your back, how's your brain and your nervous system gonna feel, right? And so, um, once again, that's where we collide our worlds. It's like, okay, let's work on this breathing thing while you're so, maybe what you're receiving during your therapy session will be easily accepted, more easily accepted, less threatening um more digestible to your brain right because you're going to be in a place where you can learn right yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is such a fascinating discussion and I've always appreciated your work. Um, very candidly, you have helped me through a back surgery, a shoulder surgery, and kept me ready for when my agent calls. For I'd be like, oh, is the combine soon? Like why?
Speaker 2:are we trying to bench press to 25?
Speaker 1:you know, I'm, I'm, I'm deeply grateful, but uh, it's also fun to have a kindred spirit to talk through these things with, to see that the physical and the metaphysical really do belong together, and to to have a like-minded person that you know are people that you know, a community that is being developed and built so that we have help yeah, help for wholeness and wellness.
Speaker 2:So so that's really interesting. Um, ron said that you know it was about it was a certain patient that was asking him about and he said, casey, if we don't do what we're doing, where are these people going to go? And it was so true. I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that man's heart. I love the way he thinks, because he thinks in the wholeness. Let's go help those who have historically been unable to find help.
Speaker 2:Right and we just had our symposium and we had a PT that went back and got her doctorate in psychology. She presented. We had a licensed social work present. So we're we're very open love to collaborate with professionals I mean, obviously you're a part of my team and optometrist, dentist, because these people have got to be managed, sometimes more than just one person, Right, and um kind of takes the stress off, right Knowing you have a team that thinks like you.
Speaker 2:it's like, oh, if I send them over there, I know that they're thinking like I'm thinking yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's allowing us, as professionals, to live more in that open stance, as opposed to a closed stance where we think we're supposed to have all the answers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
.png)
.png)
