To Hum is Human

From Complexity to Clarity: Tending the Body Through Intuition and Energy Work

• Donnabelle Casis

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What if pain isn’t just something to fix, but something to understand? What if the body, in all its complexity, is trying to speak to us through sensation, fatigue, and even injury?

In this illuminating conversation, I’m joined by Dr. Adam Brady, a physical therapist, bodyworker, and founder of Tend Bodyworks, to explore the powerful shift that occurs when we stop treating the body like a machine to be fixed and start listening to it as a wise guide.

We dive into Adam’s healing journey from a devastating wrestling injury to a career grounded in somatics, martial arts, energy work, and intuitive care. Together, we explore how pain can convey meaning, how sensation can serve as a form of communication, and how genuine healing occurs through collaboration, presence, and deep listening.

Tune in for a conversation about healing as integration, the wisdom beneath pain, and how tending the body is also tending the spirit.

Follow me on Instagram: @tohumishuman and @sonorous.light555

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonorous.light/

Website: www.sonorouslight.com



SPEAKER_00:

Hello, friends. It's Donna Bell here, your host of To Hum It's Human, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of tuning into our intuition to express our passionate purpose. I'm so glad you've joined me today. In this episode, From Complexity to Clarity, Tending the body through intuition and energy work, we're talking about the body not as a machine to be fixed, but as a wise, responsive guide that speaks volumes if we know how to listen. If you're craving a deeper connection with your body beyond the pain, beyond the tension, and ready to tap into its innate wisdom, this episode is for you. My guest is the incredible Dr. Adam Brady, a doctor of physical therapy and a skilled body worker whose approach is as grounded as it is intuitive. Adam believes injury isn't just about trauma or strain. It's the body saying, I can't carry this anymore. And that's where the real conversation begins. From his early training in martial arts to his integration of somatics, energy work, and cutting edge physical therapy, Adam invites us to explore healing not as a fix, but as a relationship one rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and deep inner listening. Welcome, Adam. Thank

SPEAKER_01:

you, Donabell. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, truth be told, I've had the privilege of working with you over the past few years, and I can personally attest to the profound transformation that's unfolded in my body Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I can still vividly remember this. I was a wrestling camp as a 17 year old going into my senior year. And wrestling was my big sport and sort of, you know, at that time, source of pride in my life. And in the middle of a match, my knee just went crunch on me. And that really shocked me and scared me and hurt. And I remember being in tears and kind of crawling off to the side and just my coach laying in on me about how you're not supposed to cry. It's not a very bad injury. You didn't tear something, which ended up being false. But it was at that moment I really took in that message of, oh, this should be suppressed. And, you know, like just grit through. And for that whole week, I distinctly remember the walk between the gym and the dorms at the campus we were staying at. And it took everybody about three minutes and it took me 30. So I get up early to do it and limp my way over and then limp my way back. And some of my friends took pity on me and they laughed. they brought me food because I couldn't make it to the cafeteria in time. And by the time the week was done, my parents came and they were just like, what is going on? And I was still in that like, no, we're not going to. I'm okay. And it took a while for me to sort of come off of that and then years later peel back the layers of, you know, how I could be of better support to myself. And I guess we can get more into that

SPEAKER_00:

too. Well, and I imagine how terrifying that is because wrestling is a very physical sport. And when your body isn't part of the equation in doing what you need to do, I would personally be a little terrified there. And of course, the sound must have been shocking.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's the part that sticks with me the most, for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

And I know that after that injury, essentially, you were told that you might never run or play sports again. How did you navigate that emotionally and physically at such a young age?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a good question. And it... To sort of like put it all in a neat package, a couple of years ago came across my old journal online from that time period. And this was like an early internet era. Facebook didn't exist. And it told a tale of teenage woe. so to speak. And so much got wrapped up into the injury, into the sense of vulnerability and call it betrayal. Having different doctors either go so wildly into, this is the worst juvenile arthritis I've ever seen on one hand, on the other hand saying, there's nothing we can see here. And I felt so lost in between all of the different possible things and also limited to a degree, gimped. That was the word my friends used. And yeah, it was just, I didn't have appropriate skills or frameworks to navigate

SPEAKER_00:

that. Did that injury then reshape your relationship with your body?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So to fast forward a couple of years, one doctor who I really did enjoy his connection and willingness to listen to me, I did end up getting knee surgery, which didn't really help. And looking back at it, I can see that there is so much wrapped up around the experience of the injury that the context I went into it wasn't conducive to a positive outcome. It just registered as further manipulation and like top-down approach on myself. And so I was then in college and at that point really couldn't even walk for more than 30 minutes. I was in Boston at the time and would just have to stop and sit at a picnic bench or something like that. And my parents, who were in their 50s or 60s at the time, out walking me easily. And that was just so hard. And at that time, now this is like early Facebook era, I was looking for martial arts instructors who could work more with energy as, I think, some intuitive hope to find a different way of approaching this. And... found somebody who was a Chinese martial artist, is a Chinese martial artist, and just basically sort of sat at his feet for the next three years while also in physical therapy school, learning two very different approaches. Early on, it was the main motivator for all of that was to heal myself. to find agency again, and it took a while.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm curious about your journey into martial arts because working with this particular person who was working in a modality quite different, obviously, from Western medicine, and you're currently studying at this time Western science. These seemingly different lineages inform and challenge each other in different ways. How do you combine the two in your approach?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. And the answer through those years of intensive, nascent early study was I didn't. It was very confusing in a lot of ways. I had a lot of ideas, but most of it was, yeah, that I had two well-fortified systems of knowledge and very little inroads between them, despite the fact they were both things I felt quite passionate about. It was after school was over that, and I was starting to look for places to work, that I luckily fell into a mentorship program. with Bob Myers at Advanced Therapeutics, and he and Kate Faulkner both took me through. Ultimately, the starting of the inroads was osteopathic manual medicine and what they describe as listening touch, which is in essence a blend of both intuition and evaluation and ways to use the language of somatic intelligence to support what could also be a scientific more classical understanding of physical therapy.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, for our listeners, what is somatics? Because most of us probably don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Good point. Somatics, loosely and roughly, and there's a lot of people with a lot of different ideas of definitions here, but I think can be broadly categorized as the study of our inner sense of ourselves and specifically related to physicality and embodiment.

SPEAKER_00:

When you're listening to the body, Those are really subtle cues. Could you speak about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01:

So one of the ways I often think about this is that having a different road maps to explore the territory helps one when their feet on the ground orient and get a sense for how they want to approach something. And there's value in precise anatomical and biomechanical maps, and there's value in more metaphysical or we might say somatic maps as well. And the joy I get is in finding interfaces, having an atlas full of different maps, and then looking at the base phenomena of the interrelationship between two people. and seeing what maps are most valuable for whatever we're looking to do in that.

SPEAKER_00:

I guess the other question I'd like to have a little more clarity about is considering in a lot of ways that somatics is about embodiment. Could you define embodiment for us in the way in

SPEAKER_01:

which you work? I would describe embodiment as a process of awareness, of self-awareness, that is ultimately a practice. and also philosophy of tying back all of our experience to the vessel, the physical body. And when I was first exploring through my own knee injury and my own feeling of collapse around that, my mind state, my approach to people around me in my environment at the time, etc. It became clear to me that all of this happened on a backdrop or in a setting of my physical being, and that I really needed to acknowledge and find a way to track that connection. which I believe is there for all of us, no matter how aware and conscious of it we are. And so I would say the practice of embodiment is making more conscious that connection between the vast different layers of our experience and our physical body.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that makes sense since you describe the body not as a machine or a meat machine, as I've heard, but as a complex intelligent system, right? And so what have you seen in terms of healing and shifts that happen in the modalities of healing that become possible when we relate to the body in that way.

SPEAKER_01:

One of the big eureka moments for me where things felt like they were crystallizing was in the concept that the body will hold or hug an area of vulnerability or at least perceived vulnerability. And what that meant for me in terms of my more kinesiology and physical therapy, my study of movement itself would look at things like a shoulder injury. and say, oh, we need to help the shoulder posture find a better carriage that's more efficient, that allows the muscles to work better. What's the range of motion there? What's the strength there? And all of that's really valuable. But when we apply that to a shoulder without understanding what context it's sitting in, it's kind of like talking down to something. And so when we look more at, well, maybe that shoulder is curling inwards, which yes, we want to quote unquote change that, but maybe there's a purpose to that. And we find ourselves through various different techniques and ways of relating, allying to that, which might mean instead of drawing a shoulder that's rounded forward back, we're actually joining that process of bringing it forward. And when I started to really feel that in myself, that I needed that step before my body was gonna listen in a more fully consenting form to direct choice-making, we got to get that shoulder back. It's like, well, first let's build the ally relationship. And so let's go with the thing that we're identifying as not being ideal. See what message is present there. And as I started to work with more people that way, really feeling the truth of that in myself and thus being able to better offer that to others too, wild stuff started to come out of those sessions. One of my early sessions like that, a person came in with questions. really bad low back and pain in sciatica state was an insomniac for three weeks couldn't sleep because of the severity of the pain everybody was giving her stretches and different ways to approach that and she was kind of going out of her mind understandably and i went the opposite direction and just put my hand on that area and I could feel the intensity of it needing to tighten up and gather and supported that both of my hands and then offered her, try not to force this to relax. And within five minutes, she was first asleep. And then 30 minutes later, snapped up in a full terror about her brother who had just died in the tsunami in Japan. And so she was in a recurring subconscious terror around his experience of that. And she processed that in a real visceral and full way, laid back down on that table 15 minutes later and got up and wasn't feeling in pain at all. And so that was one of the first sessions where I was saying, okay, something is really in this, especially in the moments where it's most needed. So that's one story of such.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. I mean, that's such a profound acknowledgement in her knowing of what was causing the pain in her body. And of course, your connection between the two things that were obviously manifesting in her body. I think there's something to also you bringing in another aspect of yourself because you talk about awareness and most people have general awareness of their body and space, you know, body moving, but there's an innate awareness within you that you've honed over time, I imagine. Can you touch upon that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and one of the things that feels like both a blessing and a curse of this type of work and looking at ways to offer support and hands-on physical therapy is that I truly believe that at a certain level, you can't fake it, that there has to be enough of a felt sense of that trust that there's a purpose or there's a meaning. That pain and injury often is trying to offer us something more than what it's just shouting at us on the surface and that we need to give it a context to share that. That's the primary job when we are experiencing pain is to offer it context to best share its experience. And from there, healthy relationship forms. But if I hadn't gone through that in my own body and feel that in my literal marrow, so to speak, maybe not literal, but that wouldn't be something that I could effectively help somebody else find in themselves. So it really required me to not bypass all of that and have my own process. Yes. And it's an ongoing one.

SPEAKER_00:

And that experience has really given depth to your understanding of what people are going through when they come to see you and You're essentially saying that injury is just signaling, I can't hold all of this anymore. And you've said that. How do modern stressors from the pace of life to digital overwhelm manifest in the body, as you've seen?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's a great question. So to offer a little context for my answer for that question, And to bring my atlas to the map that is biodynamic craniosacral therapy, one of the concepts in that map, that understanding of the body, is that there's different rhythms and frequencies that our system is, you could say, humming at at any given moment. And to take a very nuanced and complex understanding and to reduce it for this purpose, We could say there's three rough categories, the long tide, mid tide, and what you could call short tide. And the long tide is like the monastic look on life where one forgets that they're even thirsty or hungry, that there's a slowness to the rhythm of that nervous system or that energy body, depending on who you ask, that is palpable. And the mid-tide is often seen as one foot in both worlds. You have a connection to that deeper than physical need, self, but you're also tethered to the world. And oftentimes we feel that in when you're trained to feel it as about a rhythm of four to six seconds in and out and then there's the shorter rhythms which are anything kind of more frantic than that so we can also structure this as some people think of it like we always want to get to the long time which I don't think is accurate. I think we want all of these different rhythms in ourselves to be somewhat harmonic and for none of them to sort of forget their connection to the others. Oftentimes I see modern life frenetic pace is sort of like where the white water has forgotten its deeper underpinnings, the undercurrent. And there's a real sense of dislocation and anxiety that comes with that. And it manifests physically as super tense muscles, a pace that just can't stop, higher heart rate, higher blood blood pressure. And for the longest time, when I first started to do this type of work, I tried to rid myself of all of that extraneous, quicker rhythms, things like texting, blah, blah, blah. And I still think that's a valid approach, but just wasn't one that I wanted. And I like to think now that we have this choice of living on the front lines of information overload and still having a process of feeling those slower, deeper rhythms in ourselves. And ideally, the more we practice the range of self there, the better we can walk it. So it's more freedom than choosing one and planting ourselves there.

SPEAKER_00:

And if you think about, you're talking about the whitewater flow. When you're in flow, you're able to ride all the different waves of experience. And so I believe also, too, that each experience carries something that is of value. to you and your overall experience. And I think that's a healthy approach to understanding, yeah, there'll be sort of great periods and then there'll be lulls and then probably some difficult times. But knowing that it's a wave, it'll come back up again. And, you know, as you look at your body and you're feeling your body and knowing that this is natural, this is totally natural and human, it's just sort of how you approach it. and acknowledge it. So when people come into your office, what are you listening for in their body? their story or their

SPEAKER_01:

presence. There's a lot of different angles to that, but I think the central tenant is, I know the central tenant is that I am looking for what in osteopathic medicine they call the area of greatest restriction. But I prefer to think of as what the body is hugging the most. Somebody might be coming in again with shoulder pain, but when we tap in, we feel that there's a strong pull maybe to the low back, then my orientation there is that your body level is doing its best to draw more support to your low back. And there's often a connection to the shoulder or to whatever surface level pain is being described in that moment. A lot of how those connections work, how I can support somebody else and not just having me say that to them, but sort of arrive at their own awareness of that is, I think, where the art and joy of the work comes in.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and it's definitely a partnership, I believe, over time as you work with your clients to give them an overall view of Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that

SPEAKER_01:

is one of the big questions that I'm always asking myself and trying to refine. I love getting to support people in, you know, coming in and leaving feeling better. But that old parable of you give a man a fish or you teach him to fish, and I much prefer teaching to fish. And, you know, the great joys about that process is I find relating it to each other. So I might speak about how we can connect to ourselves differently to, for example, a musician than a mechanic, that there is a different base. Of course, it's not all profession dependent. The. best thing for me to offer people is, and one of the first things I work with on the vast majority of people, is helping them be able to track internally, often with their eyes closed, the sensation of what is drawing them in the most, what's pulling, so to speak. And relating to that with open questions and curiosity, and we can go into more details about exactly what that might be, rather than immediately approaching it with change, which might be, I'm feeling my low back tightening up, aka pulling in, without even knowing it, without even understanding or thinking about it. So often, our first thing to say to that is, Relax. And we know we wouldn't tell that to our partner. That would not work. We shouldn't know that anyways. So why do we say it to aspects of ourselves? And instead, if we could say, why are you tight? Because I'm exhausted. Then we might be able to say, hey, can you relax for me? I've got a tennis match. Then I'll support you more later, I promise. And yeah, to develop that sort of reciprocal relationship internally is, I think, a great boon to anybody. And

SPEAKER_00:

I know you do encourage that in people, too, because, you know, I love to help you. But of course, you can continue this on your own. And that's so much more empowering. What's interesting is speaking of tennis and speaking of modern day pace, where we're always sort of striving and driving. Yeah. How do you guide people to shift from fixing or fighting their body to collaborating with it, especially in this culture that rewards pushing through pain?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that is one of the hardest pieces. And I think I am fortunate enough in how I end up getting to meet people that they tend to be at a place of enough need and urgency that habits are more open to shifting. to put imagery behind it. They've painted themselves in the corner enough and that there's more willingness to try a different option, which, you know, I was one of the most stubborn in not going through that. So there's also a real compassion for when people come in and they're not quite ready to shift that yet. And I try to meet everybody at the level of engagement that they're willing to go to. And usually there's a real sense of, oh, something is happening here. And that brings interest, even if it isn't there right off the bat. But it's wonderful to see people who, yeah, have a more, let's say, like the way I relate to my car, which is I have to get my oil changed. Same. Exactly. I can appreciate how we offer that same approach to the body. But one of the wonderful silver linings of injury and pain is that it necessitates we shift away from that. That it's sort of like the debt come due on me not getting my oil changed until a month later, and we only get one body. Oh, and it also is the foundation of our experience in a way a car isn't. So yeah, I feel very passionate about meeting people where they are and sort of helping them come to their own place of actually this is really enhances my life. Why, why wouldn't I give a little more time and space for what we might call them? Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and, and I feel that that is a big transformation on the client's part because they probably didn't come to that conclusion until that pain came. So the pain served as the hello, the signal to say you need to slow down or, you know, you need to pay attention and otherwise you're just not going to move. And, you know, we have these beautiful bodies and we should honor them as the temple they are. You're the founder of Tend Body Works in East Hampton, Massachusetts. a space that holds a very specific intention and presence. Can you share what inspired you to create this space and what the name TEND means to you?

SPEAKER_01:

So I love what I do and getting to connect with people in it. And I'm fortunate enough to be quite busy at that and people value it. And Yeah, there was a sense of, I can't keep up with the demand. And it isn't purely a business sense. It's actually not at all that for me. It's more of a sense of wanting to support sharing this information. And it brought great value to me. And it's nice to bring it to others. And so I was interested in creating a space with like-minded practitioners and bringing in, particularly through physical therapy and massage, but not just in those avenues, a more, we might say, holistic approach to people who are coming in in need that I kicked and screamed against making something bigger than myself because it felt like a lot. But yeah, it was actually at the time I was about to have my first child and a space just came open that It seemed perfect. I'm saying yes to a lot of new things. Why not one more? It's been wonderful to be able to mentor and share and help others find their own ways of bringing this type of work to others. And so to me, what tend means is to attend to somebody, to support them, to not just offer them expertise, but support. to first listen and learn them and help them find their own toolkit, so to speak. And that there's also just see so much in our medical system right now, just by sheer dint of burnout and overwhelm, a real lack of the personal. And so TEND is a reminder both to myself and anybody who works for us and hopefully a message that we want to offer people first healthcare. Not lose that interpersonal connection in the midst of the rest of it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's so valuable in these days when people are going through the medical system and feeling kind of like a number being brought through the system and there's something very valuable in that human interaction and seeing of the client that I have to attest happens quite beautifully at your practice. And I know you have several other practitioners there who work. So even though Adam's busy, he does have others who can offer support in ways similar yet different. And as I listened to your journey of becoming this incredibly sensitive, intuitive, embodied, and grounded practitioner. It just strikes me because your story says so much about how and why you do what you do. If you could offer one message to anyone struggling with injury or burnout, what would it be? In

SPEAKER_01:

line with the rest of this podcast, I would say take a moment to to suspend disbelief and try to listen. And where that can be abstract, in this case, if there's a physicalness to pain or burnout, if you're feeling it somewhere in your body and you likely are, see if there's a way that that is tensing up muscles or drawing you into a posture. And maybe even enhance that. Instead of immediately relaxing it, go with it and then see if you can give it more of an ear and if that changes the way you feel it.

SPEAKER_00:

Just an acknowledgement, really. That's such a beautiful piece of advice. Now, I know... Where you're at now, your body is totally different from when you were when you were 17 and encountered that injury. And I know movement is so important to you and you do, in fact, work through dance. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so to go back to my own personal story and just fast forward through some of the journey, I was... deeply involved in Chinese martial arts, multiple hours, probably six to seven hours a day for three to four years through college. And it was around that time that I worked also as a bouncer and was able to recognize that I had enough sense of security in myself that the need for the violence and a study of opposition was lessening in me. I could feel The desire to prove myself that was at the core of a lot of my interest in martial arts was waning. And what that left was a real love and fascination for movement. And capoeira, which is a Brazilian martial art that has a lot of what they call floreu or style and trickery and expressiveness to it. It was sort of like the first I allowed myself to go from just martial movement to something with a little bit more mixture. And somebody I met in that community then said, told me, you would love contact improvisation, which is a dance form where there's a lot of shared weight, et cetera. And it was very similar to grappling for me. So it was another place where I allowed myself in. And soon enough, I just wanted more and more of more open expression. And I was finding that my capacity as a martial artist was also improving. Cause I was less locked into habits and patterns and yeah, things that were tense because they came from insecurity and habit in me. And then more and more, I just did more dancing. So modern dance and contact improvisation are two of my most favorite places to basically feel what's emerging in me and give it a vehicle to express itself, to join to not get in disharmony and discordance with the rest of me. And as long as I keep up with those practices, I find that I can do a lot of hard physical labor and demands and stay healthy. So that's good.

SPEAKER_00:

What more could you ask for, honestly? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

No, but it's deeper than that. It's my practice of spirituality and the way I, so much of my work brings in the stories of others And there has to be my own embodied processing of that. And so without the vehicles to express whatever is coming up and ideally doesn't even need intellectual framing, I can just let it move through instead. And then I become more of a conduit than the capacitor that's about to explode.

SPEAKER_00:

So well said. Now, what continues to surprise you about your body, even after All your years of study, practice and healing work, perhaps not just your body, but the body in general.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that question. One of the biggest present time studies for me is having enough at this point of a sort of lived in sense of where the spirit is, we might say, or where I can breathe change and adaptability into my system and where that isn't. Ultimately, we are in physical bodies that aged. And that we can dance within the limits of that physicality and also exceed it in transformative and transcendent fashions. But yeah, at a certain point, I suspect my knee will hurt and I only will have so much facility to shift the feeling of that. And so there's almost a coming back for me of a trust that not everything has to be processed. If I wake up and my back is sore, it can just be. And I think I had to get to a place where there wasn't a lot of inborn toxic relating before I could just be truly at peace with what is. And I'm getting to settle into that more. In a similar sort of way, pain is a great teacher of that. Like, oh, yeah, actually, you just did too much shoveling of snow yesterday.

SPEAKER_00:

Less of that. My goodness. Dr. Adam Brady, thank you for sharing your story and your deep well of wisdom with our conversation today. I mean, your ability to listen to pain, to movement, and to the body's subtle language is a beautiful reminder that healing isn't a problem to solve. but a relationship we nurture with care and intention. And I'm so grateful for the way you tend to complexity with compassion and help others come home to themselves in such an embodied and grounded way.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for your honest interest and listening. And thank you for this whole podcast. I've listened to all of the episodes so far, and it's I love the way you draw out people's insights and interests in humanity. So I'm eager to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's an honor, really, to share these stories and to be privy to the inner workings of each person's practice. So I feel very touched by the generosity of you and all my other guests. But to me, it's really about showing how we're all connected in ways that in which we bring so much beauty and wisdom and light into the world. You're absolutely a beautiful part of that web. So thank you. Thank you, Bec. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm so glad you spent this time with me. If something in this episode resonated, feel free to share it or pass it along to someone who might need that little spark. Until next time, keep humming.