Episode 52 - Claire Atkin-Smith: Living with Hypermobility

Some bodies don’t give you a clear “stop” signal. They just keep going, past normal range, past safe, and you only find out when something hurts. I’m joined by Claire, a UK-trained physiotherapist now living on New Zealand’s South Island, to talk about hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome from the inside out, not as a trend, but as a lifelong reality that shapes how you move, think and trust.

Claire shares the moment at university when practical assessments made it obvious her joints worked differently, plus the hidden risks that come with “party trick” flexibility. We trace it back to childhood, where breath holding and constant self-monitoring were early signs of a nervous system searching for stability. That vigilance can protect you, but it can also steal spontaneity, connection and play, unless you learn how to rebuild safety on your own terms.

From there, we get into the turning point of strength and endurance as a form of self-trust. Claire explains how progressive training helped her feel secure in her body and eventually led to ultramarathon mountain races, even with a vulnerable physical baseline. We also talk about what her condition gave her professionally, the empathy and precision it built and why burnout and weak boundaries can hit harder when your body needs ongoing stability. The conversation lands on her whole-person coaching approach, blending movement, breathing, lifestyle and identity so people stop guessing and start choosing what actually fits.

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Transcript

Banana Elbows Cold Open

Claire 0:00

So the sort of normal was well, if you can touch your fingertips to the floor and bending over pool with that's great. Well, I was down there with my hands, my nearly my forearms, and then looking at so what's normal in terms of elbow extension, and you should have a straight arm straight out in front of you when you have your elbow straight. And mine just went way further, and I have these nice banana elbows instead.

Reviews Donations And The Memoir

Meeting Claire And Her Backstory

Trudie Marie 0:28

This is the Everyday Warriors Podcast, where courageous guests share the truth of what they've survived, what they've learned, and how they have rebuilt their lives. I'm your host, Trudy Marie. Listen to these stories of resilience, purpose, and hope so you can remember you're not alone. Love the Everyday Warriors Podcast? It would mean the world to me if you were to leave a five-star review to ensure that the Everyday Warriors podcast is heard by more listeners around the world. You can also support the show for as little as $5 with a one-time donation or by becoming a monthly subscriber. Your contribution helps me to continue bringing you inspiring stories of everyday warriors who overcome challenges to find strength, resilience, and new possibilities in life. Head to the link to buy me a coffee and fuel the next episode. Every bit counts. Then my book, Everyday Warrior From Frontline to Freedom, is for you. It is my memoir of hiking the 1,000 kilometre Bibbleman track. A journey that was as much about finding my way back to myself as it was about conquering the trail through the highs and lows and everything in between. This book is taken from my journals and is my raw and honest experience of overcoming trauma and embracing the strength within. Grab your copy now. Just head to the link in the show notes and let's take this journey together. Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Warriors Podcast. And today I have a guest with me across the pond, as we like to call it, all the way from New Zealand on the South Island, which I've been very fortunate enough to visit in the past. But please welcome to the show, Claire. Thank you so much, Judy. Great to be here. It's so great to have you. And I'd like to start your story as we were discussing off-air back to when you were in college, because I think that's where a lot of questions started to become answered for you.

Hypermobility Explained With Real Risks

Claire 2:58

Mmm, yes, certainly was. So I went to university wanting to be a physio and was lucky enough to get in. The irony was that I thought I wasn't clever enough to be a doctor, but wanted to help people and be in the health profession. So managed to get in to be to train to be a physio, and it was the best thing that I could have done for myself. I really, really started to understand better how I worked physically, of course, as that's what physio is about. And I think unconsciously, it was probably one of the reasons that I wanted to become a physio, was that I was just wanting to work out how do I work better as much as help other people to work better as well. And yes, it was quite a surprise to me when we, in our first year of training, you're doing all your practicals and you're perfectly happy with getting undressed and being in your underwear, wandering around the practical lecture rooms, because that's just what everybody did. And uh so definitely a new sense of freedom there, and you're just you're just you know assessing each other. And what I very quickly realised was that my body didn't work quite the same as other people's when we were doing testing or the lecturers saying we know this is what's normal, and then I just go well beyond that, and it was quite an eye-opening moment for myself to go, oh, okay, is that it's I don't think it's necessarily great to be that person that's the odd one at. And what does that mean? And effectively what I realized, which I thought I'd all I had I'd always known, but it was it really was in in the sort of formalising of it, that I just had so much more give and play and flexibility, literally, in my body, in my joints. So the sort of normal was well, if you can touch your fingertips to the floor in bending over forwards, that's great. Well, I was down there with my hands, my nearly my forearms, and then looking at so what's normal in terms of elbow extension, and you should have a straight arm straight out in front of you when you have your elbow straight. And mine just went way further, and I had these nice banana elbows instead, and other classics, like I thought I was standing straight, and then someone was saying, No, no, no, no, your knees they're going the wrong way, you've kind of got these banana knees. And up to getting to university, I'd recognize that I seemed to need to put a lot of work into keeping myself functioning, but I just thought, well, that's what everybody has to do, and it wasn't until then really understanding what is hypermobility that I appreciated that I was absolutely bond or obviously positive for it, and quite high as well. So there's several rheumatological conditions that all sit under the same umbrella of hypermobility syndrome, and I had what is called from a rheumatological point of view, the posh name is Ellis Danlos syndrome. Don't know who Ellis Danlos is, but she clearly discovered it. And effectively there are different levels of the issue, the syndrome. Mine was fortunately just that I have a significant laxity and flexibility in play in my musculoskeletal joints. I don't have the level of give in the tissues that some people unfortunately have, also to the same degree in their organs, like their internal organs. What I do have is a very, very vulnerable circulation. So I would be that person that would get rain odds when it's still warm, you know, you get the white fingers and you can't feel your toes or your nose goes white. That was a classic a few times when I was skiing with my husband. He'd look at me and he'd go, Your nose is grey. I'm thinking that that's not a good thing. And I'm heading towards frostbite and I didn't even know it, and my possibility of a nose falling off. And quite literally, it's just a reflection of that my tissues just don't contract, they don't recoil in the same way as normal people's. On a practical level, that looks like if I were to go over on my ankle, like a an ankle sprain, like a a trip going over the edge of a curb or something. Normally, you've got your ligaments and you've got your tendons, and then you've got your muscles that will activate to create a stop, uh a locking of that joint when it gets to that edge of no, that's too far. Now, obviously, if you go over fast enough and hard enough, you will tear some of those, but there's still that resistance before you then get that tear. Well, because my tissues are so lax, I don't get that resistance. So if I if my ankle were to go over, I would just go straight on over, and then I would create an issue where most likely I would break my ankle, I would snap my fibula, and I'd create a compression bone injury on the inside. So it would not be good in short. So yeah, that's the joy of living in my body, in that everything from a very young age has been very, very conscious. I've been very aware of myself, and of course, that's normal for me. I never realized that was a thing, and yeah, it wasn't until uh one of my lecturers said, No, you that's an official syndrome, and you need to be really looking after your joints because, with that much play, of course, there's that much stress and strain on them because they're not supported with the same level of appropriate stiffness of ligaments and joint capsule and tendons, fascia.

Trudie Marie 8:52

What I find interesting in what you're telling me, and this is not something I've really ever heard of, because when you see flexible people and you think like contortionists and ultimate flexible gymnastics or gymnasts and dancers and things, that you're kind of like in some ways jealous of that because you're like, Oh, I wish I could do that too. But here you are having to actually be ultra aware and cautious of how your body moves because, like you said, falling off a curb could not just be a sprained ankle, it could turn into a full break of your leg. And obviously, if you're in that motion of completely falling over, goodness knows what other injuries you could entail as a result. But I also want to take you back to being in the university, like theatre, lecture room, whatever, where you're doing the practical and you're said, there's a sense of freedom in walking around in your underwear because that was part and parcel of how you would actually perform the physio. But at the same time, you were also had this spotlight on you because you weren't the normal person, so it's almost like a full contradiction. One minute you're free and easy because you can be in your underwear and be okay with that, but then on the other hand, now the spotlights on you because you're so different to everybody. What was that experience actually like?

Claire 10:20

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. It's in looking back, I think I was I was very lucky that I was in a cohort, a class where there were such great people, great students that right from the get and great lecturing support, right from the get-go, it was very inclusive and very professional. And there was that recognition of everybody nobody is absolutely normal and everybody's got their stuff. And the benefit of being able to assess each other as peers was so crucial to then have that lived experience as a patient or a client, but and also just to gain that mileage in terms of you know feeling different kinds of bodies. Um, but at the same time, for myself, when someone went to test me, there was that far greater level of apprehension because of the need to trust that individual that they weren't gonna move too it too much or pull too hard because there wasn't anything to stop them. And it was really interesting to create to need to create that rapport with colleagues and that trust with colleagues. I think certainly in my first year, there was a lot of introspection for myself around okay, what how do I manage being okay with myself and also being okay with being that person who's got the positive tests or is the the interesting often individual in the class. And I fortunately I I think it was the making of me in many ways that I had to grow into being confident about who I was in being unique and different, and it was then what gave me a stepping stone into becoming confident in myself in lots of other ways as well, and you know that then grew in the decades since uh in understanding myself better.

Childhood Clues And Breath Holding

Trudie Marie 12:37

But how did that show up for you uh as a child? Because obviously you're in university, so you're a young adult, but it that condition just didn't happen when you got to university. You'd obviously lived with this hypermobility all your life. So, how did that show up in your childhood and how did you then reconcile with yourself? That's why that used to happen.

Claire 13:04

Yeah, and that's that was what was a big deal for myself. And to paint the picture, really, in terms of when I was really young, with the both professional and personal lived experience benefit now, I can look back and I go, okay, yeah. There was a reason why I wasn't spontaneous like most kids are when I was a baby. Apparently, if I got stressed, I used to hold my breath, and I used to hold my breath for so long that I would start turning blue, and my mum would get absolutely freaked out because she couldn't get me to take a breath. I would just hold my breath, and she couldn't understand why. Um I did grow out of it, but in hindsight, what I recognized was that my little body was trying to find stability, it was trying to find control, and the only way that it could do that was in holding its breath and bracing, and so it was actually a soother, it was actually something that was helping my nervous system to come back to being a neutral. But of course, you do need to breathe as well. Of course, it's why you're here, yeah, yeah. So it was fascinating when my mum was used to talk about, oh, so this is actually what you did, that I was then able to plot that through to go, oh the reason literally was physiological, it was my nervous system trying to find stability and control when it didn't have it fed back to it in the normal signals and stimulus of life that somebody else would have in their body. So that that was right back at the start of life, as it were. And then as I got a little bit older, because I was already conscious about how I moved, I think there was a such an innate vigilance in my nervous system that said, you don't want to break yourself, so you be careful. As much as I was still a kid that wanted to try stuff, there was absolutely a hesitation and an inability just to give stuff a go without thinking about it. And of course, as soon as you bring something into your conscious, you're not just being free and creative and making stuff up. So what was really interesting when I reflect back is that it wasn't just that conscious control of the physical, it actually followed through in terms of how I developed uh mentally as well. I wasn't a kid that just went into creativity, making cakes from mud and doing all of that stuff because I was staying connected in in my body and on that more sort of logical side, the intellectual side, which I'm now very grateful for. It's given me a lot of skills around being very strategic and being able to pick out details and things and makes me good at my job. But at the time, I missed out on a whole lot of fun stuff that other kids were doing, and then if you add to that interacting with other kids, you know, other kids are not thinking about what they're doing, they're just mindlessly in the bestest, freest kid way, random stuff, and I would always be in this conscious head going, Well, why are they doing that? And how are they doing that? And well, what am I supposed to do to try to do that and do it in a way that feels safe to my body? So you can imagine I wasn't exactly the party central piece in school in being a child that was so self-aware but also potentially quite limited in being expressive.

Trudie Marie 16:52

You missed your childhood in a sense that you've become so self-aware of what you and your body can do that you've had to grow up quite quickly instead of being this free and easy kid like most children are. But then at the same time, I'm imagining that you became quite introverted because you didn't want to be that kid that went out and said no and maybe were picked on because you wouldn't try new things, you just almost became reclusive because that was the safer option.

Claire 17:28

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, Trudy. And doing stuff by myself in my own way got far more control over that. Um, and again, I look back on that and I'm very grateful for the ability that it gave me to be very self-sufficient, to be happy with my own company, to do things in my own way. But yes, at the same time, it wasn't conducive to creating social ease and the growing alongside other people and the joys and the challenges that come with being connected to lots of other people. So it was interesting, and it was a real recognition in my early 30s of well, right, I'm gonna do all the kids stuff that I never did, and it was that conscious recognition of wow, I've got to connect to an imagination. There's no such thing as you can't imagine, and there's no such thing as oh, I haven't got a very good imagination. What you do have is one that you've never used, one that you haven't cultivated, and so I'm still not very good at it, but yeah, I will challenge myself to draw a picture. I will challenge myself to go and do something for its sake of that hasn't got an outcome or a reason or some kind of achievement attached to it, because I know that that's so important to balance out the person that I am.

Trudie Marie 18:56

I love that you bring that up because I think that you talked about trust of others before, that with this condition, you had to be very careful of how you interacted with other people. So, in essence, they didn't hurt you physically, but then it's becoming this adult, like you said, in your 30s, understanding what your capabilities are and realizing that you've missed out to a certain degree, that it's now this trust within yourself of well, what can I do? And how far am I willing to go, whether it's on the physical or emotional or spiritual, but like what can I do and how am I going to live my life?

ymptoms Dismissed Then Strength Built

Claire 19:41

Yeah, you encapsulate it really well, Trillian. And in effect, that's what I that's what I did. And even starting at university in my teenage years, I had catastrophic restless legs, I had circulation that was terrible, I had frequent headaches that were really bad, you know, all the types of things that were put down. Well, it's growing pains, and you'll get over it, you'll grow up out of it, and oh, just maybe take some magnesium. None of it was totally disabling, but that's the problem, and that is the issue for many people that that have this diagnosis is that there's nothing to show for it, and there is nothing really life-stoppingly obvious. You just have to suck it up and carry on. And what I worked out for myself was the only person that was going to be able to create resilience in this potentially very fragile or vulnerable body was myself. And as part of being at university and probably learning a little bit more about how do you gain strength and how do you improve your circulation and that kind of stuff, I started running. And what I found was that in the act of building up my fitness with running, I was able to then feel happier and more secure in my body. It brought some strength, and that then uh facilitated a journey into okay, how far can I take that? How far can I create strength and control and enjoy doing stuff physically? And that led me to successfully completing quite a few ultramarathon mountain races that we're talking in thousands of meters up and down and hundreds of kilometers. The little me that started out in life would have had no chance of being able to do that. The me, if I hadn't had that curiosity to work out, well, how do I help myself? Absolutely would have ended up main continuing in being very weak and have then the Complications of that, which would quite quickly be joint issues, joint pains, and then the mental effects of that as well, in terms of the depression and all sorts of things. Whereas in comparison, the opportunity just to slowly but surely increase my fitness, challenge myself in seeing, oh, there's a possibility of trying this event and increasing the mileage slowly. Giving things a go, not out of pressure to finish at a certain time or to finish in a certain place or whatever, it was it was purely just that self-exploration of how well can I manage myself to enjoy this whatever the event was or whatever the trail was that I'd found to go and explore. And that really is what I have done in life ever since. And so ironically, a lot of people who don't know my background would look at me and go, Wow, you're really strong, or you're really fit, or wow, you've done a lot of events and over and above the average. Whereas uh from a physical predisposition, I am well below and in the opposite direction.

Trudie Marie 23:14

Just hearing you say that, firstly, I just want to acknowledge your achievement in doing that because there are a lot of people, and I say this in virtual commas, normal people that don't have your mobility condition that would never even consider running an ultra marathon, let alone do a marathon up slopes and things like that. But for you to actually do it, not to set out to, like you said, achieve anything or look for an outcome, you are just testing your own body as to what it's capable of, and I think that's where so many other people get stuck is that it's our own limiting beliefs and what we think we can and can't do, that we never ever look to the possibility and explore that. And then, like you said, this physical outer body that people see you as, and they're like, wow, you're an ultra-marathon runner and you're really fit and you're really successful, have no clue what it actually takes you physically to be able to achieve this on even just a daily basis of getting through living day-to-day, let alone living to achieve such things.

Claire 24:29

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, Trudie. And I now feel it's quite a privilege to be able to inspire some other people with that evidence that if you value yourself and you are patient enough with yourself in developing whatever area of vulnerability it is, then you will succeed. It's when you are willing to work with yourself rather than despite yourself, that with that alignment you make progress and you ultimately will get to where you want to get to, and it's yeah, it's huge.

Trudie Marie 25:12

Did you find that this condition also helped you with your career? Because obviously you started off, and I assume you graduated as a physiotherapist. Did your own condition then go on to help you with your clients moving forward? And were you able to assist anybody else potentially with a condition similar to yours along the way?

Claire 25:37

Yeah, so it was a tandem journey really in terms of that personal direction and learning about myself alongside that professional direction and how to support people with physiotherapy. And for sure, I am I'm so grateful to some of the lecturers that gave me feedback around my handling of others in terms of when you're assessing a client or you're supporting them with doing exercises, that I was very good at it. And I the reason that I think I was just because I was so conscious and sensitive to what it was and how it was that I was interacting with somebody else on that physical level, and then facilitating their joints, their tissues, their body so definitely was a gift of who I was, am, to be able to serve people with that extra sensitivity and accuracy. And I think also just having that first person understanding of when you're not secure in your body, and that might just be because you've broken your leg, you know, the rest of you is okay, but in that moment you've lost that sense of stability and security, and you have that fear around you don't want to do the wrong thing, and definitely being so clear about what that feels like was very helpful in then being able to come alongside people of lots of different personalities or characters or types, but to truly be able to empathize as well as sympathize and be that professional confidence in supporting them through that. And although I don't do hands-on work now, I work much more as a coach, I still use my understanding of observing people and how they move. I do some formal sessions even on Zoom, and particularly those that I work with face to face, just being able to see how someone stands or how someone sits, how someone walks, it gives you just so much information about that person. And I think it's because of being so conscious in myself as to what's going on, when, how what emotions are coming up, and how does that feel in my body, and what does my body do, that it makes it me so much more sensitive to seeing that in other people as well. As they say, you know, your body language says so much more than the words that you speak, and for sure, in my work now, I am very much using what is that person communicating to me in their presence and in who they are, which I love because it really supports the success of their outcome.

Trudie Marie 28:24

I totally get it in the sense of so many people just on a day-to-day basis lack situational awareness and the power of observation. Because as a former police officer, I know all too well what it's like to be able to observe and be situationally aware. And I think it does impact your career, especially living it firsthand. Like you said, you were so hyper-aware of your own body that you became aware of what other people were experiencing, where it almost became second nature to you that, like as you said, even now in your work, that you can just observe what's going on for other people, that there becomes a level of empathy and understanding to different people's situations that most other people would just take for granted.

Burnout Boundaries And Staying Balanced

Claire 29:21

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And somewhere along the way, I think as all professionals that work with people need to, there is that understanding of meeting your own needs and holding your own boundaries, short of trying to be there for everybody and do everything for everybody. As a relatively young physio, as most public servants do. I did reach that edge of burnout where I was, you know, trying to be my bestest for everybody, in helping them to feel great in their body or move well or rehab to the best degree or whatever, or recover from surgery or whatever it was, and then not looking after myself, not meeting my needs. And of course, that's so immediately shows up for me, particularly with my body type, in getting weaker. And ironically, although I've talked a lot about being too flexible, there is the extremes of both. So too easily you become too stiff in some areas because that's the best way for the body to hold itself together, and then it makes other areas or limbs even more excessively mobile again. It's always on that tight on the tightrope of holding strength but keeping range of movement and freedom of movement, but having it in a mobile and a controlled way rather than just a bendy wendy flexible, uncontrolled in comparison.

Trudie Marie 30:56

Got it. And when you said I just you mentioned that you started to get into burnout because you didn't have those boundaries in place. Was that then what took you because you obviously have a British accent, but living in New Zealand, is that what actually had you move from the UK to New Zealand? Is it looking after yourself?

Claire 31:19

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, Chiddy. The I think that was the sort of wake-up call of or sure I'd done all of this work on myself to be a successful physio. I was a little bit more senior. I'd done the life stuff as well. I'd found a partner and I'd got a house and everything was good, but I was actually burning the candle at both ends because I was trying to be trying to be the be all and end all to everybody and everything. Yes, again, as one does, gaining so much reward for that until you don't have the energy and then you can't do it. And there was that recognition from myself of oh, actually, whose life am I living? I got myself to this point of what would from the outside seem to be a relatively high level of performing or working or living and stuff sorted, but I'd fallen into that trap of taking that for granted and just focusing myself on everyone else instead. It was very humbling to have to come back to myself and go, actually, Claire, you still need to put yourself first and you need to look after yourself in order to meet and serve people in the way that you'd like to. The recognition that the lifestyle that I had at the time actually just wasn't supporting me in doing that. My husband and I chose not to have kids, and we realized that we could spend easily spend the next 10 years doing the same old, but that really wouldn't be making the most of life, and actually it wasn't supporting myself to be truly happy either. And so we decided that we'd give living somewhere else a go, but it was for that reason of we need to get out of this norm that suddenly is going to be a couple of decades more, and then we're gonna be really quite old in this norm, and we'll be the evidence of it, and that was not looking good, and so yes, long story short, we ended up in New Zealand, second day of being here thinking, wow, this is an amazing place. We said, Yeah, let's make it happen, and two years later we were here permanently, and I literally came over with no commitments, no responsibilities, which a lot of people at home said, How could you do that? How could you sell your house? How could you leave your job and have nothing? But for me, that was the point. It was the well, I'm going somewhere new to do the sort of Claire 2.0 with everything that I've learned so far, and bringing with me the yeah, I'm gonna continue to live the childhood that I didn't have, and I'm gonna continue to look after myself in the way that I need to. And I'm also gonna have freedom to work with and for people in a way that I recognise that as good as they are, our medical and our health services just can't. And again, that was a first-person experience for myself. I had to work out for me and my unique body how to make it work best. If I had just listened to standard physios, to standard rheumatologists, to standard orthopods, I would have I would not have succeeded in the looking after myself in the way that I did. And yeah, moving to New Zealand and stepping out of those formal structures really enabled me to continue in that journey, both of my own self-discovery, but also of how I can meet people's needs more effectively in light of that. And yeah, it's been really exciting ever since.

Trudie Marie 35:05

And I think what stands out for me, and you said the word yourself, is that there was a sense of freedom. Like you had given up this way of being of this is my life and this is what we do, and living the norm, and people rebuke that straight away when you say you're giving up a job, you're selling your house, you're going to a new country, you're starting over with literally nothing to some respect. But that comes with its own freedom to just be, as you said, Claire 2.0, you get to find discover how you live now moving forward, understanding your condition, understanding what you've done in the past, what's worked, what hasn't worked, that you now just get to be yourself and help others inside of that.

Coaching That Fits The Individual

Claire 35:57

Yeah, very much so. And some days there's always that question around what the heck am I doing? Because it's not easy. There's good reasons for sitting inside the norm and just having the day job and doing everything within that 50% that makes everything stable and sorted. But the rewards of doing my life on my terms far outweigh the struggles or the challenges or the difficulties that come and go for sure.

Trudie Marie 36:30

Yeah, and you said that you no longer work hands-on as a physio, but you're more, I suppose, in a consultant role now where you're a coach and you coach people. Is that in a particular area, or do you still work with like body conditioning?

Claire 36:47

Yeah, so a bit of both actually. So I I use the title health and performance coach very loosely because uh, in effect, the style of coaching that I offer is very much a whole person approach. So, to be honest, I I would call it more often personal development coaching. But what I want to communicate to people is that it's not just about personal development in terms of your internal identity, your personal development is how are you getting out into the world in terms of well, what is your container like and how healthy is that? Because you can't fully be the your potential and have self-mastery if you don't even know how to breathe well. And so there's sort of the the physical, but then there's also that recognition of you're unique and you live inside this container. So who are you and what are your passions and what's your goals, and what's stopping you from getting to those, whether it's limiting beliefs or whether it's your current circumstance, and what is it that your needs to change in your circumstance? So I bring together the potential of someone understanding who they are uniquely as an individual, and then also how do they meet their needs best as that individual in terms of the season of their life, their body type, and also related to the goals or the aspirations that they have as well.

Trudie Marie 38:26

I love that so often we and social media is really bad for this, but there is everyone should be doing something a certain way, and that it's almost like a one size fits all. This worked for me, so it's got to work for you. And we get caught in that trap of what is it that actually is going to work for us because we try so many different things and nothing seems to work, it's because it's worked for everybody else, not necessarily ourselves, and it's not until we say, Hold on a minute, what actually works here for me that you then start to adapt and behave in a way that, like you said, is uniquely yourself, that it doesn't work for everybody else, and that's okay.

Claire 39:18

Yes. So it over those years of a decade or so, having stepped out of formal medicine and uh the health service, I have delved even deeper into the predispositions to what makes us who we are, both genetic predisposition and then epigenetic um experience and influence effectively the the world around us, and how does that impact who we are? And it's from that understanding of both of those that I'm then able to assess individuals and help them to understand oh, okay, this is who I am, this is my potential, and rather than it being a trial and error and a guess approach around, well, do I do this or do I do this? Instead, we're able to say, well, relative to who you are right now, your body type or your age or season or your circumstance, absolutely, definitely, it's the one option, it's not the other. And and that makes a huge difference to people, then giving them certainty for them to give themselves permission to go do that thing. And that's really what lights me up is that people are then stepping forwards and they're not doing the average of what everybody else says or does, they're meeting their own need in the right way, and funnily enough, it works, it feels great, it's easy because that's what they were designed for. And whether that's stepping into a new job, or whether that's training at a different time of day, or whether it's eating in a new style, it's all of this lifestyle stuff that we're uniquely made up, and therefore we need to do it in our own way. And it's so cool to see people who've connected into what they know works for them and are thriving as a result.

Trudie Marie 41:16

I think that's awesome because so often we do feel like we need to conform to what society is telling us or guiding us towards, and when we can actually stop and take a moment for ourselves to say, well, actually, is this right or not for me? And then you have the, like you said, the permission to step in and be exactly who you are, uniquely you, that people get to really go and live life fully, just like you've done across how many years or decades of living with this condition, but you've made it your own, and you're now giving others the guidance to do exactly the same thing.

Claire 42:02

Absolutely is what I hope to achieve and love doing where possible, and so I I'm so grateful for my own journey and so okay with the fact that I'm never gonna be the person that's gonna lift that heaviest weight, and I'm never gonna be the person that's gonna do other various amazing things because of the bodies I've got, in comparison, because of all the learnings and because of all the experience that I've had, I'm able to enjoy life in such a way and offer the learnings to others as well.

Trudie Marie 42:38

Well, I want to thank you so much for being here today and sharing this journey. It was something I was not aware of prior to our conversations, and I've definitely learned something about those who do have hypermobility issues. So thank you for sharing your story with us all today.

Claire 42:58

Oh, thank you, Trudie. It's just been a real privilege to be here. Thank you.

Trudie Marie 43:02

And I always end the podcast by asking, even though you've said it multiple times already, what is the one thing you are most grateful for today?

Claire 43:11

I think I really am most grateful. There would be an addition to having the container that I do, and I guess it would be having the love and acceptance of others. So, my mum, when I was young, even though I was that awkward child, um, and later on in life, my husband, who has just always loved me for who I am, which is pretty special. So, definitely, I'd definitely add those to the list as well. Thank you.

Trudie Marie 43:41

Thank you for tuning in to the Everyday Warriors Podcast. If you have an idea for a future episode or a story you'd like to share yourself, then please reach out and message me. As I am always up for real, raw, and authentic conversations with other Everyday Warriors. Also, Be sure to subscribe so that you can download all the latest episodes as they are published and spread the word to your family and friends and colleagues so they can listen in too. If you're sharing on social media, please be sure to tag me so that I can personally acknowledge you. I am always open to comment about how these episodes have resonated with you, the listener. And remember, lead with love as you live this one wild and precious life.