Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Cosmic Healing: Integrating Astrology & Anatomy for Holistic Wellbeing | Melanie Weller
Today, I'm joined by Melanie Weller (https://www.melanieweller.com/), a renowned Physical Therapist, Board-Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist, Certified Athletic Trainer, Certified Exercise Expert for Aging Adults and Vagus Nerve Expert, who has seamlessly blended her clinical insights with the ancient art of astrology. Join us as Melanie shares her transformative journey from conventional medicine to a holistic approach that marries science and esoteric knowledge. Discover how the alignment of the Zodiac with our anatomy can offer profound healing insights, and learn how this fascinating intersection can enhance your understanding of personal and communal health.
Explore the cosmic dance between the Zodiac signs and human anatomy, where each sign plays a pivotal role in our physical being. Melanie guides us through the alignment of celestial geometry with our bodily systems—from Aries influencing the brain to Pisces aligning with the feet. Experience the transformative power of breath work as we uncover its crucial role in connecting us with the Earth and relieving physical discomfort. Melanie's expertise will leave you with practical insights into maintaining well-being through an interconnected view of the body.
Immerse yourself in the harmonious blend of Eastern and Western philosophies, where the speed of imaginative thinking triumphs over logic. Through inspiring stories and unexpected anatomical connections, Melanie illustrates the power of viewing the body as a unified system. Discover the journey of self-understanding, the impact of cosmic influences on our well-being, and the potential of energy healing as a tool for personal growth. As we embrace the future and make peace with the past, this episode promises a fresh perspective on healing and spiritual development.
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. So, honestly, listen, I say this every time, but it's because my guests are so incredible. But I am going to learn something new having this conversation with Melanie Weller and that's very exciting to me. When we had a chat, you were one of my most favorite podcast connection calls that I've had in the past month or so. I'm just thrilled to have this conversation with you, melanie. So we're going to be talking about I mean very basic. We'll just say we're going to talk about astrology. But it's definitely way layered than that and way cooler than just your basic astrology. So we'll dive into all of that. First of all, I would like to allow you to introduce yourself. That's one of my favorite things to do on this podcast is see how my guests would like to be introduced and how they would introduce themselves. So there's nothing specific that you have to say. But who is Melanie? And thank you so much for coming on. I'm really excited for this conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, hannah. I so appreciate this invitation and a chance to speak about this. This, what we're going to talk about today, is really, for all of my clinical and scientific background. This is the piece of my work that really lights me up, and mike came out of athletic training and physical therapy and, uh, have been doing vegas nerve work from long before.
Speaker 2:It was cool like it is on social media now and I, over the years, I collected credentials and certifications, like some people collect fine wines.
Speaker 2:It was part of my whole validating myself, you know, and getting over my own not enoughness and I, as part of that I got to study with, I had amazing mentors and kept you know. It was really driven to seek more knowledge and more knowledge. And then one day my life fell apart or I had a health crisis, marriage crisis and lawsuit crisis all in very close proximity and my knowledge was not enough to make sense of what was happening in my life. And that's when I turned to astrology and it helped me make sense of all the nonsense that was happening in my life and I had a big awareness at that time that the universe was driving me to do something different, because I had always been the highly credentialed physical therapist that in secret, had this really special set of soft skills that people really came for. But you had to have the secret code to come find me, we didn't talk about it, we didn't talk about that Right and the um.
Speaker 2:And in the midst of that, uh, I really that crisis, I really came upon the uh, this realization of how our anatomy and even our molecules are made in the image of the Zodiac, like, just quite literally, hardcore geometry. As above, so below. And in the throes of all of that, to top it all off, I had a patient walk into my office that had a suicide plan for that evening. To top it all off.
Speaker 2:I had a patient walk into my office that had a suicide plan for that evening and he was living in a nightmare of a hallucination that he couldn't get out of and wasn't getting, wasn't responding to other things that he had done, and I knew I had to bring more than just my clinical self to the table with him that day and I showed up with all of my clinical knowledge, all of my esoteric knowledge and all of my intuition and 90 minutes later he was 90 better and I walked out with my fearless presence that day and I say we really saved each other and it's so fun.
Speaker 2:I actually just saw him at a parade, a Mardi Gras parade in the French Quarter the other night, and so it's so fun to give him a big hug and just see how much he's thriving right now and to. But since then I've really been passionate about helping people bring together their intuition and their expertise and bringing together, uniting ancient and modern science, because we, culturally, we tend to put them at odds with each other. And I will tell you, because I've been living in both of these worlds for 30 years, that when you put them together you can make miracles happen every single day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I love that, and that was one of the things that I appreciated hearing so much from you is that I come from a really big science background in human design. If we're talking in terms of human design, I have a one line, which is the investigator, and we're very data driven, and if somebody says something, I'm like, okay, but where was, like, the research that you found? You concluded that answer and I'm very interested in the science and psychology and sociology. And then we get into astrology, and I was also raised by a mom that was. That is very spiritual, and so I feel like I kind of was raised in that like they don't have to be two separate things. However, in the world Eastern, western philosophy are very different and always kept very separately, and it's so interesting. It's so interesting to even have the idea that our anatomy mimics the zodiac sign, which I definitely do want to get into. But I also shoot, I already forgot my question. Let's get into it. I have something else that I wanted to ask you for yeah, so's like.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so I'll just maybe, maybe. What we'll start with is just the overarching To me, where the science and the astrology really intersect is in time, because even if you don't believe in astrology, the zodiac is a clock. Because, even if you don't believe in astrology, the zodiac is a clock. You know the sun and the moon. You know, like we know, that the planets move through, like orthopedic type injuries, that time perception and processing are at the root of them. And when you can get the brain really organized in time, a lot of things fall into place.
Speaker 2:And the things that you would do for that are not like in my world are not necessarily always that different than what you would do for trauma-informed care. Okay, but I think it's. But we will never sell trauma-informed care to the whole world because not everybody wants to deal with their trauma, you know, or to think and I think there's a lot of limitations and looking through the at life through the lens, only through the lens of trauma, you know, because I see a lot of people that get really caught up in like, oh, is the fact that when I slouch in my chair, that I go to the left. Is that a trauma response? And like, well, like does it really matter? Like I don't know, like there's like I think you know I see a lot of people that get really caught up in the minutia, and I see it online and I see comments like so what you're telling me is that every crime of my existence is a trauma response, and I think that's not a joyful way to move through life.
Speaker 2:I don't think you have to move. Not a joyful way to move through life. I don't think you have to move.
Speaker 2:I think that we are incredibly resilient, pleasure-seeking beings, and that's also, you know, the trauma lens is a very Western lens. An Eastern lens would say that we are pleasure-seeking and they can be kind of avoiding trauma and seeking pleasure, kind of two sides of the same coin, but it certainly affects sides of the same coin, sure, but it's certainly affects. You know, to walk through life wondering like where the next trauma is coming from versus where is the next pleasurable thing coming from, are two very different ways to walk through your life. Yeah, so I'm a big advocate for what I'm calling time-informed care over trauma-informed care, and because we all might would like to maybe have a different relationship with time, like maybe more playtime, more downtime, more me time, more vacation time, more family time, you can walk through the houses of the Zodiac chart and you know for all the different types of time that you might want, and so you can apply then somatic exercises very specifically and therapeutically to help you get the kind of time that you want.
Speaker 1:Hmm. So so you're saying ultimately, instead of like, let's say, back issues, because that's just very relevant to everyone, but also to me, so back issues, instead of maybe looking at it for like, what is the trauma that I underwent, whether that's emotional, physical, spiritual, how would we reframe that to a time response?
Speaker 2:Right. So if you're going to look at, for example, sagittarius ruling the hips, that you, you know that maybe there's a little bit more truth time that you need in your body or more fitness time. I mean that really could just be an exercise thing, and exercise is great for low back. You know that, like, I mean that can just. I mean that matches the science really beautifully and that's what you know, what Sagittarius embodies.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're going to, you know when I'm, if I think about it with a spine, you know, if you're going to think about your spine as Leo and your pelvis as Sagittarius, that then there's like okay, like what's your? What's happening with your fire energy? Like, is everything on fire? Is it too hot? Do you need to be a little bit cooler? Like, where's the balance in that? But really it's just like how, like, are they fighting each other? Are they sitting in right relationship? You know, because it's not always about the, you know it's easy. We like stories to go with our things and what are we caught up in stories? But very honestly, we just have to take things out of, get our bodies. Our bodies are our biggest collaborators. But sometimes we, you know, we live in a very competitive society and sometimes that, you know, our spine starts competing with our pelvis or, you know, these body parts are competing for our attention and when you can get them, you know, and pain is very much to me like a toddler or a puppy that just wants a little bit of attention and then it'll go off and play on its own. And so I think that when you know, and there's I mean there's way I understood, you know there's way more scientific explanations for it, but it can be way easier than than you might think. And your, you know your pelvis is it's shaped very much like a crossbow, like your spine, like your sacrum is sort of like an arrow, so you can really think of it in Sagittarius terms, like a bow and arrow. You know the archer that goes with it. And so what is the energy of the like? How is that crossbow sitting in your pelvis, like are you, is it lined up that way? And even your thighs, the way your inner thigh muscles, um, are on your femur, it's kind of like a Robin Hood bow. I don't know what you call that kind of bow, but archery, bow and arrow in that way, and you know. So there's like that energy of the arrow that can really get distorted.
Speaker 2:And I can go through all the osteopathic things to you know in manual therapy, things to align the pelvis and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But I have found that I get better, faster results when I tap into what people's Sagittarius bows and arrows are looking like and get that organized in their bodies and I get the same range of motion increases.
Speaker 2:Like I can measure the outcomes objectively, and so I really love working with this energy medicine paradigm that I've created with it and it's just, it's endlessly delightful to leave people with so much joy, you know, and so much relief in their lives when they thought it was going to be really hard to get better, and it's even. I get it. I get a great deal of pleasure too, which is probably a little bit twisted. But when people get really angry, like they get better, like they sit up and they're and they're looking for their pain, like it should be, like it should be somewhere in the room and they can't figure out where it is, yeah, and then they're angry because it was so easy to get better, and I get it, you know, like when you've really like, cause I don't see people that where it's usually their first rodeo rodeo trying to get better.
Speaker 2:I get people when they've failed multiple other interventions and you know, and they are rightfully angry. When I touch them with very gentle force or give them a few breathing, you know eye exercises, or tell them to do something, you know like move their, move your toes, like this, and then they're like what happened? What did what just happen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, why was?
Speaker 2:it that easy to get better?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine my mom also does energy work and similar expectations and outcomes of her working on me and it's not a lot of touching, it's not a lot of moving, it's not. We do overcomplicate. I think in a lot of in healing, in the stories that we tell ourselves, in trauma work, I mean in everything. I know that I do, I know that I overcomplicate.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think we all, yeah, no, I think it's very much human nature to make it complicated and we, you know it's. I think there can be value in that, or in creating, you know, connecting, think there can be value in that or in creating, you know, connecting, creating, understanding, sometimes a story so that you can re-pattern that. But over the years and years, like when I would even tell people that, like their vertebrae were shared in their spine, or that their you know, maybe their knee joint was sheared or something was misaligned, they're like, well, what does that mean? So it just means that we need to fix it, like that's all. It just means that it needs to go back in line. That's it. Yeah, but I don't think we always have to make it that complicated. I think where it can sometimes be more valuable to make it a little more complicated is with autoimmune disorders and complex trauma because of your own or you know that would be like Aries and Taurus kind of questions, or what you know, what does justice mean for you?
Speaker 2:Like in in the way, and maybe this is Libra, is Libra sign, is scales, and scales are justice, you know, just as they are even naturally in Libra, in the seventh house in astrology, and the populations with the highest levels of social injustice have the highest levels of kidney disease, and your kidneys sit in your low back just like a set of scales, and so we embody the stress of social injustice at any level, at the level of the kidneys and I think, really even separately from social justice, understanding what justice in our personal lives means for us, you know, maybe it means that you get to paint for two hours a day, maybe it means that you uh get to have your favorite ice cream once a week, or whatever. That you know it could mean anything but really kind of identifying what that personal sense of justice is, to give you the foundation, because people uh often compromise themselves in that way without realizing how much compromising they're doing- yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you're, when you're talking about like, oh, maybe this is you just said, compromising my values and putting others first, that might be like an Aries Taurus thing. To be clear, are you saying like that's where we should be looking, if that's our sun sign? To be clear, are you saying like that's where we should be looking if that's our sun sign, if we're an aries or a torus sun sign, or are we talking about the anatomy?
Speaker 2:well, I think when the anatomy is distorted in that part of the body, like if you're having neck pain, headaches, dizziness, things like that, those are questions. That's when I would really look at those issues more than if it's your sun sign. Cool, because in astrology, aries rules the head and Taurus rules the throat, and so, for example, your vagus nerve can get compressed, get pinched at the base of your skull between your Aries and your Taurus, and this really works. I have a whole workbook I wrote on this, that your vagus nerve gets pinched between the signs as it moves through your body.
Speaker 1:Which is fascinating to me, and I was trying to explain it to my mom and failed. So can you elaborate on that? Let's back up, actually, because I know what you're talking about and you know what you're talking about, but can we? You just gave us the first two. Can we go through the Zodiac signs? Where it shows up in anatomy and then we can talk about the vagus nerve. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's. So I'm going to go through where it shows up anatomically. But I'll say that there are other angles in the cosmos that show up in our bodies as well, like the angle there's 47 degrees between the pole stars that the Earth orients towards over thousands of years, and there's normal C1, normal rotation in your upper neck is 47 degrees. The normal average angle of inclination of your anterior cruciate ligament in your knee is 47 degrees. Your vagus nerve exits the base of your skull at the same angle as the axial tilt of the earth relative to the center of the spinal cord. And so there's and I could rattle but anyway.
Speaker 2:So there's this whole system of critical angles too, or what I call critical angles in the body. That and but with the anatomy, the ventricles of the brain are the same shape as the ram's horns that represent Aries, and in astrology Aries rules the head. Your throat anatomy is the same as the Taurus bull, your higher bone in your throat, like the horns of the bull, your collarbones and diaphragm, or like Gemini rules lungs and arms. So you're like your twin, you know the two, six, but your, uh, your collarbones and your diaphragm are like the top and the bottom of that gemini symbol, like the roman numeral yeah the uh, cancer rules the breasts, and the symbol for glyph for cancer looks very much like a set of breasts.
Speaker 2:um, cancer also rules the stomach, so I think of your breasts as like the full moon, and stomach is like the crescent moon. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Leo rules the heart and your aortic arch is the same shape as the symbol for Leo, libra or Virgo. Virgo rules the digestive system and your uh, particularly your large intestines. But the way you can really make that virgo and symbol out of the macro anatomy as well, as if you think about virgo being a goddess, the omentum, the covering of the intestines in the abdomen, looks like a goddess's dress. It's tiered like a lot of those old representations of a goddess would be. The Libra ruling the kidneys we talked about. Scorpio rules the reproductive system. Ruling the kidneys we talked about.
Speaker 2:Scorpio rules the reproductive system, and a woman's reproductive system looks very much like a scorpion, where the ovaries are the claws and the vagina is the tail of the scorpion. Scorpio is also the traditionally the only sign that has three archetypes with it, so it also has a snake, which is like a male phallus and a phoenix. And whether we're making love or babies, or business or art, whatever, we make something from nothing that comes from our reproductive area, from our second chakra. That's where we create, from whatever it is. Across many traditions, sagittarius rules the hips we talked a little bit about that earlier as well, with the bow and arrow. Capricorn rules.
Speaker 2:The bones and long bones are organized in little Saturnian circles, quite literally at the cellular level yeah and the way the vasculature runs through the bones looks very much like that little H-like symbol that represents Saturn, and Saturn is a goat or goatfish and this is going to take a little bit of imagination in podcast form. But if you think about your kneecap as the nose of the goat and your patellar tendon, the tendon below it, as the beard of the goat, and then your muscles on like as your muscles go up your thigh, they're kind of like the horns of the goat.
Speaker 2:You can really kind of make a goat out of it if you're going to include the calf in your feet, as you know to be like the, you know the representation, representations of capricorn that are like a, I guess, mergoat, you know, you know, for lack of a better term yeah, um, aquarius rules the calves and your calves are shaped like the water vessel that you know, the aquarian water better bearer holds, and the um zigzag sign for aquarius is, uh, really aligns with the multi-penate muscle fiber structure of your calf muscles. Like that's how they're. It's a zigzag, they're very much organized like feathers. But you can. If you look up an anatomical representation of multi-penate muscle fibers, you can just follow the zigzag in the same way. And then Pisces rolls the feet and your feet are your fish, your flippers. And then Pisces rolls the feet and your feet are your fish, your flippers, your flippers.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Yeah Well, thank you. I think that was really helpful to just go through all of them and kind of see where they all land in the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also about the body, that you know cause as just especially as breath work is really popular right now and really valuable is that. You know, astrologers I've talked to over the years say that like, well, your whole body is earth. You know cause, like earth isn't represented specifically in the body and they'll say like, oh, it's just your whole body. But I really think, think of our diaphragms like our personal earth, because if we're not breathing, we're not earthbound. Yeah, and our hearts sit, literally sit on top of our diaphragm, like your heart is even attached to your diaphragm and it sits on it just like a sun. The sun sits on the horizon at a sunrise or a sunset. And if and if your diaphragm function isn't right like if you don't have, when diaphragms get dysfunctional, they tend to get flat.
Speaker 2:You know, they lose the dome shape and when you lose that nice round horizon line it can create lots of problems. So I also will, I'll throw earth in there and I think it is really um, our relationship with earth is very much in our, in our diaphragms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I think that's a really cool analogy too, because breathwork can be very grounding for people, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's great on so many levels.
Speaker 2:And and I'll you know, the other thing that happens when diaphragms are dysfunctional and I can go into this with other parts of the body too but it can literally pinch your vagus nerve as it's going because it has to cross through your diaphragm and in all humans the right side of the diaphragm has more muscle mass than the left, so theoretically the right side will always win.
Speaker 2:So that's why you see a lot of people with low right shoulders in their posture, for example, and so taking people out of that right diaphragm dominance can be really helpful in terms of, I will say especially like right shoulder, right hip pain, but even hiatal hernia issues that might, you know, which will show up more on this which is really more of a vagus nerve compression issue, as it's because it follows your esophagus. But to take the pull off of where your esophagus and vagus nerve are going through your diaphragm can make a really huge difference for things like that. But it can also get compressed through your vagus nerve, which mediates a lot of your feel-good sensations Think of like grace under pressure and calm and sexual function and it's a huge nerve. It goes all the way from the brainstem to the pelvis and calm and sexual function. And it's a huge nerve. It goes all the way from the brainstem to the pelvis but it can also get compressed where, generally wherever you have horizontal structures.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So base of the skull, vocal cords, collarbone, like thoracic inlet level, pulmonary artery and vein where they they go horizontal at the heart, diaphragm, renal artery, vein, pelvic floor are the big ones.
Speaker 1:And why does this happen at these horizontal structures?
Speaker 2:Well, we embody stress and trauma more on the transverse plane, like on the horizontal, than we do on other planes. And if you just think about what happens, like if you're going to walk joyfully, or if you think of being a glamorous runway model and going walking down the runway, you know you're going to have some really nice swagger, some nice arm swing when we get stressed and traumatized, the first thing we do is bring our arms in close and stop rotating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the transverse plane, that rotation, is the first thing we give up and clinically for at least in my profession, it's often the last thing we're told to give people back because it's quote unquote the most dangerous when it comes to herniated discs and things like that.
Speaker 2:Or you have to really be cautious, and not that any of that is untrue, but I think that I am much more intentional about restoring rotation earlier than I was trained originally to be. You know, because as you free up, as you get the rotation, you, you so everything else follows. You know, even if they can't, you know, for people that, like, a herniated disc is a good example. Like you know, the people have to stay in their pain-free range of motion it doesn't mean that they can always use their full range of motion as they're rehabilitating, but but to be able to have the option to move into it and to then teach their bodies that, oh, it's not threatening to do this, you know, rather than waiting saying like, oh, no, no, you're not allowed to rotate, and keep them out of fear of rotation, because that's just not real life. People don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's hard when we're in pain to want to move in ways that maybe can be more painful or can cause pain.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and we have. Our movement is so wired in at the lower levels of our brain, like it's so brainstem and cerebellar mediated. We're not always thinking about it and to have to. If you have a baby, for example, or a toddler, it can be really hard to be hypervigilant about your movement and I don't know that we really serve people that well by telling them they have to be hypervigilant about their movement all the time you know. If you can, especially when you, if you can give them the freedom where they don't have to do that so much.
Speaker 1:So yeah, let's talk about strengthening these horizontal you, you. The diaphragm is interesting to me because I have a background in speech pathology and breath work, so I deal a lot with the diaphragm. I've never heard that your diaphragm on the right side is a little bit stronger, which also kind of makes sense to me. I'm connecting it to the right side of our body is our masculine side, so maybe just over flexing that, that side is what I'm connecting to. But you said something about like strengthening, stretching, helping that. How do we do those things on the horizontal planes?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my favorite way to kind of start, to start to normalize that is to do what I call helical breathing, and so if people want to participate, you know please do. I'll guide everybody through this. But please do not multitask while you're doing this. Don't do it while you're driving. Don't do it while you're driving. Don't do it while you're chopping vegetables in your kitchen. I have had some terrible kitchen accidents when my nervous system was dysregulated. So I'm very like, just you know like, be very. I'm just asking everybody to be focused while you do this.
Speaker 2:But if you're sitting, like sit on the edge of the chair, so you're up in a at least a decent posture, cross your left ankle in front of your right and you're going to take your right hand and reach it across your body, if you can get it all the way on the outside of your left thigh or as far across your body as you can, and if you have any limitations that keep you from doing this, just imagine doing it in your head. Your brain really doesn't see imagining doing it and actually doing it as any different. And you're going to take your left hand and put it behind your head. So you've got left ankle in front of right, right hand, across right arm, across body, left hand behind head and then inhale into the backside of your heart and I know that's a weird thing. If you have somebody at home it can be nice to have them put their hand between your shoulder blades, just so you have a little cue. But try to expand your rib cage to the wall or whatever's behind you and then hold it for a couple seconds. I usually have people maybe inhale for three, hold for six and then exhale for nine, something like that, and you can do that several times.
Speaker 2:But this is a nice way. This decompresses your vagus nerve at multiple levels, but especially at the diaphragm, because it takes you. You're rotating, your arm is across to the left, so you're getting out of that right side of diaphragm dominance and, just like, usually, three to five of these is enough to start to ease it up. And if you're you know I didn't take everybody through this part but before and after do a little body check like check your head rotation or your trunk rotation or you know, do a squat and just see how it feels before and after, because you can check your balance. You could I get really good visual improvements from all of these, I can read without my glasses more clearly when I do wow things like this yeah, but it, um, but that's a nice uh.
Speaker 2:I always say, I think anybody this is a great exercise for, like when you helped a friend move furniture and you think, oh, I'm gonna pay for that tomorrow. It helps you keep from paying, having to pay for it nice, that is very cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So what about? I mean, we don't have to go through all of them, but can we look at the pelvic floor is the last place. You said that the vagus nerve extends to. So, again, I'm kind of thinking back pain.
Speaker 1:Honestly, it's a big part of my situation right now, but I feel like we have like a back pain pandemic, like everyone I feel like has lower back issues, and the more that I dive into it, the more I'm like we shouldn't have this, we shouldn't, and I think a big part of it is movement, and I agree, I think that we spend a lot of time sitting at desks and driving and we're just not moving enough as as humans, as bodies. Um, but I assume that you have something to add.
Speaker 2:I agree, yes. Well, I will say the exercise we just did can be really powerful, even for low back issues, because our pec majors and our chest, our serratus muscles that are on the front side of our shoulder blades, our lat muscles that make up the back wall of our armpits and go down into our low back, our hip hikers, our quadratus lumborum and hip flexors, psoas muscles, all attached to the diaphragm it makes like a star in the center of your body and if you have tight hip flexors that are causing back pain, I guarantee that your diaphragm is not in the right position. I have not had to treat a tight hip flexor in decades, probably because when you get the diaphragm in the right place, the hip flexor just goes. Thank you, and relaxes.
Speaker 2:So there's. So the exercise we just did can be really really powerful for back pain as well. But one of the big things your vagus nerve is a part of sensory-wise is your interoceptive system and it's like that map of what's happening or that feeling of what's happening inside of your body and we're not very aware of that collectively, like we don't have really good maps in our brains or like you know, and when part of your body gets fuzzy in your brain, your brain is going to perceive that as a threat and lock it down somehow. So one of my favorite exercises.
Speaker 1:That's also probably the easiest of them to explain in this format. You do video. Maybe if you watch the video you can see us like moving our hands. Maybe that'll be easier.
Speaker 2:But your pelvic floor is basically like a trampoline, if you can imagine it like that, the way that it sits in the bones.
Speaker 2:And so if you imagine that there's a little version of yourself inside of you and that when you inhale you're going to land on that trampoline and when you exhale you're going to jump up, you're going to jump up and just to kind of get the hang of that to start, and then to divide your pelvic floor into quadrants and try and jump on the right front quadrant, like can you land on just over there and can you land on the right rear quadrant and the left rear quadrant and the left front quadrant. And I will tell you, when I first did this for myself, I had no right side of my pelvic floor. It just didn't exist. So don't be freaked out if you can't find that, but just keep practicing, just keep trying to move. You know, see if you can build that. Go like oh, where is my pelvic floor? Like it's a little discovery mission, you know and that.
Speaker 3:But you know, like it's a little discovery mission, you know and that, but you know and you, you will eventually find it.
Speaker 2:I'm not a huge fan of people doing kegels because most of the time they do them wrong and it's not really. I think it ends up being counterproductive in a lot of ways. But to have a little bit of sense of like you know, just even your mind's eye what it doesn't even have to be accurate, like you know, or if you're gonna, you know, imagine what your crossbow and your pelvis looks like. You know that, you know. Or even to take it like in um uh, I. So like in vedic astrology the hindu deity ganash goes with your brainstem and cerebellum because it looks your cerebellum is like the ears of Ganesh and your brainstem is like the trunk. So it's like looks like an elephant and your pelvis mirrors some of that, like where you're, you know your pelvic bones are very much like elephant ears and if you think of your sacrum coming in, being kind of like the face, you know nose of a, like your coccyx is the trunk, yeah, the elephant in a different way, that like what's happening with your elephant? Just use, like you know, like look, get a picture of anatomy and just decide what it means to you. Maybe it looks like a butterfly what's happening with your butterfly and what does it need? And really just using those imaginal exercises are incredibly powerful at repatterning pain and voice and even finding the solutions.
Speaker 2:I worked with somebody recently and she actually came to me because she was having recurring urinary tract infections infections and she had nearly died of a pulmonary embolism about a year ago. And she's a singer not professionally, but sings in church, and that's always been a big part of her life and her throat was really where her restriction was. And there's research around this that if you can't move your voice through a full range or, let me say this the other way, people that have pelvic floor incontinence issues especially, you know, like leaky bladder type issues often cannot move their voice through a full range. They keep their voice in a very narrow range and what happens is that your vocal cords can literally act like a lid on the rest of your system, putting extra downward pressure. So sometimes, you know often in a practice these are, but not always you know these are either moms of young kids or grandmothers and having them like read Little Red Riding Hood and doing all the voices. So they're doing Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf and you're getting all the.
Speaker 2:You know, the full vocal range is part of the homework, but with this woman we I had her come up with her own, you know, as we worked through the imagery and the energy and the all of it, she, you know, I said what song is going to heal it?
Speaker 2:And she knew exactly what song and started singing it and like, and it was just this really beautiful, magical moment that you know, had some really beautiful lasting you know, like really helped her get over the hump of, you know, or like get out of the cycle of recurring problems. And so our you know, and to me this is kind of the best use of Eastern and Western medicine together, because you're harnessing the, really the super highway of the brain. Like our logic circuits are so much slower, like our logic and verbal circuits work at something like 40 bits per second in our brain and our imagination, imagery, you know, kind of circuits work at like 11 million bits per second, and so when we can get on these superhighway pathways in very you know, I would say prescriptive ways, you know, you can really like magical, magical things can happen, and it's really pulling the best of both worlds together to me, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, this is fascinating to me. You know, yeah, yeah, this is. This is fascinating to me and I love, I love these perspectives of being able to pull because even even just I would imagine people listening, because it's a fairly new concept to me. But even just hearing what your pelvic floor has to do with your vocal cords or somehow they're connected where, anatomically, they're almost at two opposite ends of our body, so how could those possibly be connected?
Speaker 1:Or even you know you talking about our hip flexor muscle, the front of your hip flexor, being connected to your diaphragm, which is within your rib cage. I mean, that's wild for um, I, I didn't even know that until I went through this back injury and I, my chiropractor, would do hip flexor work and he would go so far like right up, basically, like right up to, uh, my um rib cage, like the middle part of my rib cage, and it wouldn't hurt, like everything that he was doing, and I was like I didn't even know your hip flexor went that high. Like so many things that we just don't, we're not taught in school, we don't have conversations about, we don't really have these conversations of connecting astrology to our anatomy. I mean like this.
Speaker 2:We even learn anatomy in very siloed ways and like and like it's all mushed together and seal, vacuum, sealed inside of us together, like it does not work separately, even though you know and we may like, no matter what you're doing, you're always I mean, I think of it like I'm always treating the whole system, no matter what I'm doing. I think of it like I'm always treating the whole system, no matter what I'm doing, because I know when somebody, biomechanically, if their big toe isn't moving right I have a biomechanical test for that, especially in the absence of big toe pathology they haven't come to me because an elephant stepped on their foot or you know something like that that you know, that I know that their vagus nerve is compressed at the base of their skull. And if I decompress the vagus nerve at the base of the skull, then the toe starts moving properly. Wild.
Speaker 2:And it is wild and you know, I really learned a lot. I a lot of this. Like one, I just had amazing mentors. But when you get people that have you know, for I ended up just very early in my career working with chronic pain patients that had not responded to other interventions and they didn't need me to do the same thing that six other people had done with them, right, and so you know that's where I really put together that you know knee pain needed thoracolumbar junction, stability, and that you know that, like these different pieces, or I needed to at least look at where the nerve root was for the part of the body that I was treating and just to think, you know, to keep thinking further up the chain and what's the coordination and like what's the vascular component to this and what's the neural component to this, and you know what is pulling on, what I mean.
Speaker 2:I you know, even before I got into this whole astrology piece of it with my shoulder patients, I would always make sure they had enough ankle flexion because they would get more shoulder motion if I corrected their ankle flexion limitations and that it was just part of having a full, fully working system. That these things you know and that's something I learned in PT school really really to and so just being able to, to think systemically. But and it's been really disappointing to me over the you know, as I you know especially now, like that I'm 30 years out of PT school that what I learned back then isn't standard, still isn't standard practice or still isn't standard education. You know, I had just a. I'm so grateful every single day and when I go to my professional conference and see my professors from back then I tell them I think about them every single day. I'm so grateful because I just had these amazing like I really got what they were teaching me. You know that my orthopedic patients had neurological coordination issues, which is why they got injured in the first place.
Speaker 2:And that my neurological patients had orthopedic issues and that they needed to have their the right amount of ankle and hip motion to be able to stand up, you know, after their strokes, and not evoke all sorts of muscle tone that was going to get in their way, you know, to have the most amount of smooth movement possible for themselves. And so I've been really, really fortunate to be able to, you know, just to have been, have started in a very integrated place with that. But we but I, but yeah, medically, you know, I mean, even when you go to the orthopedist you see a different specialist for your ankle that you do for your knee, like they're not connected to each other.
Speaker 2:Right, you have to go to all these different doctors all the different doctors and part of that is really because of the surgical techniques that they're specializing in. But it's really like we need a paradigm shift because modern medicine like, if we look at the statistics, like we're especially the chronic pain, addiction, mental health, loneliness statistics we are not getting better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think our deepest grief, you know, when I think about Gemini and the story of the Gemini twins that are that it's really a story of grief. And in Chinese medicine the lungs hold grief. And in the story of the Gemini twins one is mortal and one is immortal and when the mortal one dies, the immortal one asks Zeus either to put them in the stars to be together or to give half of his immortality to his brother so that they can be together. And I think our deepest grief is for our mortal relationship with our immortal self. And I think that astrology is a really good portal to knowing your soul and all the different systems. I mean I've done traditional Western astrology and Vedic astrology and human design and and she and keys and like, and they all give me something like another piece of the puzzle, like they don't compete with it, and they really have helped me be fully expressed have helped me be fully expressed.
Speaker 1:That's really beautiful. Thank you, I'm trying to soak it all in. I mean, that's yeah. That was way more eloquent than how I explain why I got into human design, but that's what it is it's. All of these tools are ways to understand ourselves at a deeper level and accept ourselves at a deeper level, and I think when we're able to process that, we do witness ourselves authentically and we're able to show up authentically, and that is the greatest gift that we can.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I think we're always uncovering that nothing was ever wrong with us to start Like nothing is wrong with you.
Speaker 2:And we spend a lot of time thinking that something is you know and we certainly have challenges. Like I mean we all go through phases. That something is you know and we certainly have challenges. Like I mean we all go through phases, cycles of illness and cycles of loss and cycles of abundance and cycles of hardships, and certainly, like some astrological signatures are hard, like I get it, like I've you know, we all have some of them. But I also think that we it's easier to be to live in the shadow expression or in the lower octaves of it. Yeah, then the world doesn't invite us into those higher octaves of it as much.
Speaker 1:Which really just loops this entire conversation to the beginning, when we were talking about coming from a trauma perspective or a time and a pleasure perspective of how can I create more pleasure, how can I create more enjoyment in my life and and create that time for that. I mean, that's just like a perfect yeah, perfect loop yeah, I mean your body is a clock.
Speaker 2:We live inside the clock. You're moving through time and time is moving through you. And when we get the illness I think sometimes time gets stuck in us. You know, my, my client I started with told the story about with suicide ideation, like he was living in rigor mortis. Quite I can, like I can objectively make that case from his range of motion measurements that, and so his body was telling his brain it was dead. So he was just trying to match that on the outside. But when you can and there's an amazing research about how our nervous systems connect to the solar system, even through our vagus nerves, you know. So like this is a legitimate thing.
Speaker 2:The extent to which the solar and space weather is disruptive depends on the strength of our interpersonal connections. So the lonelier we are, the more disruptive it is. And we know we have a loneliness epidemic. And even in the ratios of solar weather to geomagnetic activity, to solar ray activity, um are predictive of specific causes of death. Like, uh, when they look retrospectively over causes of death, the there are specific patterns that go with when people died of heart attacks versus strokes, versus accidents, versus car accidents, versus cancer versus suicide. Interesting. So the great mother brought you in and the great mother takes you out, amen. But I think that if you can, if you can if the soul, if you can move the solar system through your nervous system, it will not short circuit into a heart attack or stroke or not as early as it would otherwise.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Oh my gosh, I feel like we have so much we could talk, I know.
Speaker 2:I could talk to you all day, Hannah.
Speaker 1:I have one more question, but before then where can people find you? What are you doing now? Are you working mostly one-on-one? Do you have a group container? Where can people find?
Speaker 2:you and learn more. I am launching a group. I have lots of options. They're all at my website, which is my name, melaniewellercom. I am getting ready, in April 2025, to launch a I'm calling it heretical healing to teach all of this so that I pass it on. I know part of my astrology says that I hoard occult information, and so I am working to not hoard.
Speaker 2:I am unhoarding all of my information that I've been collecting over the years and I deal a lot. I do a little bit of one-on-one work. I also host at the beginning of each month a free event called Rewiring Religion, because I deal with a lot of religious trauma which also connects to authoritarian and institutional trauma, like it's.
Speaker 2:They're different. It's a different kind of a different animal at the level, like really in the brain science, than I'll say quote unquote ordinary trauma. But you know it has unique neural signatures that some other forms of trauma do not have, okay, and so we talk about that and how to heal it, and that's completely free and I'm doing. I have two retreats this year up in one set up in Nashville that it's very Mary Magdalene focused and I love how all these spiritual texts show up in our nervous system.
Speaker 2:So you know it helped to tell us our stories, and it's very much about being witnessed, because Mary Magdalene was the witness to Jesus' resurrection and being witnessed is a huge part of healing the witness to Jesus' resurrection and being witnessed is a huge part of healing. And also taking people to the south of France in September, so all of that is happening. So, yeah, and it's all on my website, so I won't detail it all here. But if you want to learn how to do this kind of stuff, and especially if you're a professional that works with other people, you know coach or healthcare professional, this is but I think we also need to know like we tend to know more about our cars than we do about our bodies. I think we all get like we could all know how to do this at some level. You know, at our own capacity to heal ourselves and you know and to really be able to heal each other. My husband would tell you that he's the reason that I'm, the reason he's still walking upright.
Speaker 1:What, what a world we would live in if we all knew. Yeah, yeah, you know right.
Speaker 2:You own this body. We all have a body. You get to know you have a nervous system. You get to know how to use it.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow. So last question if you were, if you were standing on a stage right now and you just could talk to the entire world, send one message. What would that message be?
Speaker 2:Oh, I would share my favorite Andean proverb and I sometimes say this when I have people do that helical breathing exercise that we did earlier but I would let people know that your future is behind you, propelling you forward. Your future has your back and that your past is in front of you, waiting for you to make peace with it and clear your way. And I think that's the truest statement to how time works relative to our bodies that your future is behind you, propelling you forward, and your past is in front of you, waiting for you to make peace with it and clear your way. Wow.
Speaker 1:I love that I didn't even give her that question ahead of time and she was so prepared for it. I love that. That's actually funny, because I've been having a lot of those thoughts lately that really align with that proverb. So thank you, thank you for coming on. This was a fascinating conversation. This is really really, really cool, like very adjacent to what I do, obviously, but just in a completely different light and with so much different expertise and knowledge and science. So this was very, very fun chatting with you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Hannah. It's my. My karmic backstory in my astrology chart is lost voice, so I'm very grateful to have this, your platform, to be able to share my voice and use it. That helps heal me and, yeah, like anybody can do this energy medicine. There's just so much potential and so many fun ways to heal and I'm excited to. I'm very grateful for you allowing me to babble on about it here, because I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.