EP5: Your Body Speaks: Understanding Pain, Energy & Healing w/ Rebekah Knause

Transcript

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Welcome to Healthy Knox, connecting Knoxville to better health. This is the show where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to live a healthier life right here in East Tennessee. Your hosts are two doctors who aren't just talking about health. They're living it and delivering it to this community every single day. Dr. Cherise and Dr. Trent from Corrective Chiropractic, let's get into it. Greetings, all, and welcome to Healthy Knocks. I am your host today, Dr. Cherise Houston, and I have an extraordinary guest to present today, and I'm so excited to do that. So I am sitting here with Rebecca Knaues. Hello, Rebecca. And Rebecca is the owner of Balanced View Acupuncture and Massage here in Knoxville, and she does massage, she is a Chinese acupuncturist, and she teaches qi gong, which is really amazing to me. I'm excited to share all this because I'm learning so much right here and right now. So welcome- Thank you once again. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be on your podcast, and anything about health and the community of Knoxville is always something that I wanna be a part of. We're excited to have you, and as we are dedicated to bringing Knoxville into the healthiest possible consciousness that we can muster here in 2026. We want to bring Knoxville to become the healthiest in the country, the healthiest city in the country, not just the healthiest city in the nation, because we're not really sitting very well at... I think we are in position 45- last we checked, which isn't so good. Would you agree? Yeah, that would... Yeah. Yes, not good. So I'm bringing other practitioners and professionals on that have the like-minded vision to really help people understand how the healing occurs in the body and things that we can do to help ourselves, and that the body was designed to be a self-healing entity. So with that Rebecca, why don't you share a little bit about what brought you into acupuncture, and tell us about you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so of course, any kind of healing journey and going into this type of practice is gonna be a lifelong story, right? That would bring us here. For sure. And and so I actually have been practicing massage for almost 25 years now which kinda- Tells you how old I am. And and then recently have been practicing acupuncture for the last eight years. And so I started out with massage because I was lost and figuring, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And I was only 22 years old. And and then after about a year of practice in massage, I actually got to work with chiropractors. And I was very blessed. As a child, my mom took us to a chiropractor. And because the chiropractor at that time was like, if you get regular acupuncture treatment..." I'm sorry, chiropractic treatments as a child, it keeps you healthier." And so I knew from a young age naturopathic medicine approaches is a way to go. And we were also blessed. We lived off of our garden and local deer hunters and- you had a homestead, didn't you? Yeah. That's so exciting basically, yeah. And this is what people wanna do nowadays, right? And- That's right and so I was exposed to natural healing modalities as a kid, and I loved chiropractic. And I found that was a great avenue. And then becoming a massage therapist I got to learn from chiropractic the postural aspects and all of that kind of stuff, and then how massage is such a complement to chiropractic care. And I know this isn't about chiropractic care today, but because- but you can keep going. Yeah right? And it all... but it all plays in together because it's all the body- It does creating an environment for it to heal itself. And so through my time at the chiropractor's office as a massage therapist, I learned so much, but then I also got injured because I was working too hard. And, I'm trying to make it, and I'm trying to build a clientele and things of that nature. And so then I got... I received an acupuncture treatment, and it was it blew my mind how much it helped when other modalities did not serve it. And, Wow. Yeah. It- That's crazy. It really blew my mind because me in my mindset I think things are physical and you should be able to physically, change things. But we all know, or hopefully we are all learning, that physical is just another way of spirit talking, and that is our body's innate understanding and connection. And so it gets deeper and deeper in- into that. And so then when we have pain patterns that don't let go, then there's something deeper to that story. It's not just a physical, "I hurt my back and I need to h- have an adjustment." It... There's always a emotional, spiritual side to every type of ailment. Would you agree? And that is exactly what I learned because when he worked on- doing the acupuncture treatment on me, and then all of a sudden my shoulder just completely released. It was also an emotional release, and at that time I was bearing a lot on my shoulders. And so it, it- Like a heavy weight on your shoulders? A heavy weight on my shoulders. Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Single mom. I had to like all of a sudden, it was so sudden that it happened, that I'm bearing all the weight that a husband and wife should share with bearing a child, right? At the same time. Wow. And so that, so there was so much more to it. And then and it took me a while to find the school that I finally got to attend. And and then I finally... And in going through that, I actually had another injury that was just persistent, and it wouldn't let go. Goodness. And then my acupuncturist at the time, he was like, "You gotta look at the emotional aspect of what your pain is about." And I, that's what I love about acupuncture and the way that it can bypass some of the mental aspect or their mental blocks that we think are causing the pain pattern itself. And because I don't have to hear what your story is, the body is telling me through the pulses and through the symptoms that are showing up. And then I address that sym- system, and then things start to fall in place, and people will start to have realizations of "Oh, man, my ankle is always hurting because I'm so scared to walk through this thing that I don't wanna walk through." Or, "I have constant migraines," and it's because it's all the pressure that you're putting on yourself that maybe you should be able to ask help for, and so there's just oh, there's just so many things that I've learned in the process of acupuncture and Chinese medicine and qigong practice and chiropractic and massage. Like all of these things are just different ways to approach the body. And I do think we all have seasons and times where our body accepts these different modalities at different times that are Life-changing Right. Oh, that's so good. That's some real wisdom there. I was raised with chiropractic and those ideas in and of themselves, and so many times when people come in to the office, they're only focused on the physical. I didn't do anything. Why am I in pain?" But they're... The only, It's not just a physical injury that will... And of course, a physical injury can cause pain. That's obvious, but it's the emotional and also chemical, environmentally, what are you putting in your body? What are you... What's in the air that we're breathing? What are you drinking in your water? Things of that nature. The more aware we become, the more we can assist ourselves. But the most, I think the most overlooked part is the emotional side of things. So I'm so glad you brought that up because every emotion or every physical ailment has some sort of emotional attachment to it, whether it's really deep or it may not be that deep, but healing does happen in layers. Would you agree? And I feel as a culture, we are, we don't understand emotions. And we think that emotions are one... it's like a separate category that is not a part of us in some ways, and how can it show up physically? And how, I don't even know how that could be. And if you look at your more indigenous people of our past, they never saw... I always tell people, I'm like, "We don't see, we don't look at depression any different than we look at toe fungus." It's the same thing. It's going along the same channel system. However it shows up, you got toe fungus, or- Yeah you are, like, depressed. And we are just, we are not one-dimensional beings. No. We are multidimensional. We are... Yeah, we could get into a whole conversation about who we really are, but at the end of the day, really understanding yourself, and you bring up a great point when you say that we are not addressing and not taught how to address emotions, how to understand them in our society. And quite frankly it's a big part, the biggest part maybe of who we are. And we've never really been taught in our culture how to handle conflict either, whether it's internal within ourselves about ourselves or with another human, another human being. So these are vital discussions that absolutely warrant further in- exploration, I think, if you want to. Because to become healthy, it doesn't mean that you don't have pain. It means you're living a wholesome life as a whole individual. You embrace all of those things- from within, but you also... we live in a very fast-paced culture, and before we started recording this, we were talking about different becoming a vessel for our patients and that, taking time to meditate, and pray, and journal, or exercise, or do whatever rituals that we need to do so that when we present to the public, when we present to our patients, we become this clear vessel, and we're able to give them exactly what they need for their healing, not the management of their pain, which is what we've been taught in our culture, but their true healing, and that takes a little more work and a little more understanding. But it is totally possible. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, and 'cause you had asked me the question on what am I seeing in the clinic, a lot, and it goes back to the nervous system dysregulation, and that is because, frankly, our emotions are all over the board because of our... the climate that we're in right now. We're in a war, this is... and it's in oh, how do I feel about that? Or we're so exhausted from 2020 being constant news- constant, how do I navigate? Is this safe? It's not safe, and, You're talking about COVID? Yeah. Co- COVID in 2020, and then we just kinda keep leading into more and more uncertainties. And and if we truly believe, which I do believe, that we are one breath, we are one entity, in some possible ways, that we are picking up on other people's dysregulations as well. 'Cause I know I have people coming in, they're like, "I don't know why I'm feeling all of this stuff. I can't sleep all of a sudden. I'm feeling just very anxious, and then I'm also finding myself very depressed, and I don't really know why." And I've been saying, maybe it's you're also picking up... It might not be yours. And and that's okay. You're k- taking some load off of somebody else. But also, that's where your prayer comes in to say, "This is not mine. I need to take care of myself as well." But acupuncture I have found to be so powerful in the regulation of emotions. And I know most people when they think of acupuncture, they think pain Same as chiropractic. It's a pain, I've gotta get rid of it. Popping, clicking. I've heard acupuncture. Yeah. Yeah. I've been to all of the other doctors, and they're tired of the meds that they're putting 'em on. I cannot do the muscle relaxers and actually function as a human being. So I heard acupuncture might help. And so most people that come in, they're coming in for pain. But then what's beautiful is then as we're talking about pain or a new person comes in and we interview, right? We do the total interview of their history and all of that. And a lot of times when someone says, "I've had back pain for 20 years," or even 15 years. And I'm like, "Okay, so when the pain started, what was happening in your life at that time?" And you do the same question. That's the same questions I ask. Go ahead. And so it's, then it's I did... I had to move, and I didn't really wanna move. And I found... I felt like my foundation was taken from me. I wasn't sure, and it was, like, a financial issue, and so there's your low back, right? That's where it shows up, is foundation of money, security, home. Carrying a load in the low back. Yeah. Yes, 100%. You're carrying the financial load. You're carrying the essentials. Those are... showed up in the lower part of the spine. So- It's really amazing how all that is mapped out too. It is. You can actually... We can actually read a patient's body and know what the concepts of what they might be dealing with. And it's not that we're mind readers or anything like that. It's just to bring attention to it for them to become aware of it so that they, the patients, can do something- with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's fantastic. And education on what acupuncture can really do at helping with people with depression and anxiety, Hormonal problems, you said hormones. Oh my God. So tell me, if I were to come in, tell me how you would evaluate me besides the questionnaire of- Sure If I were coming in and, how would you... x-rays are, and range of motion are some of the tools. Palpation. As a chiropractor, I feel, I l- I observe their pal- posture, ability to move. Movement is life. How do you evaluate someone as a new patient? Yeah. That's a great question. One, our, the intake form actually goes along the five elements. And and so we talk about asking questions. And then, The, as we talk through it, it's like it paints a picture, and this is how I explain to my new patient, is like we're... Acupuncture is the full body, right? We're dealing with the full body. And so I need to know a little bit of these different things that seem like it has nothing to do with your pain, right? Why do you need to know about my heart? Why do you need to know if I pee at night? What does that have to do with anything? With anything. And and I'm like what we're doing is we're painting a picture of where are your symptoms landing in these five elements?" And the five elements are based on nature and it's just how the Chinese categorized and saw characteristics of nature, how it represents in the body. So an example is the heart is the fire. So that makes sense. It's a pumping heart. There's a lot of heat. It moves the blood. It's our cardiovascular system, and how do we get that ramped up? We go exercise and sweat. So we think of fiery tendencies. Whereas the water is more about the bones. It's the more of the structure of the body, and it's more consolidated. We would call that yin. We would call that the balance of the water and the fire, which is the water is of the hormones. We know hormones move slowly. They have rhythms. They have cer- they have, particular ways that they work in different times of the month, if we're gonna talk about the ladies, right? Okay. And so we paint this picture of oh, okay, a lot of your symptoms are in the wood phase or the earth phase or what have you. How do I balance that out? Pulses is another big part of our palpatory skills. We feel pulses, which seems kinda weird. It's not 60 ver- beats per minute. I don't really care about that as much. But I'm feeling for the different positions, and it... P- pulses are hard to explain because they're so in depth and they s- tell us so much information. But I'll put it this way. In our four years of training, the first day we learn pulse. We learn how to p- take our own pulse, feel our own pulses. We follow people for a solid year to feel the different things. And so it's a very, It's an art, and it's a practice. And but what we're feeling for is the different organ systems. So you've got 12... You actually have 10 primary organs, right? But then there's two additional organs that we talk about. And so we're listening for six different pulses in each hand, and we compare the two, and we figure out okay, so this little system's not working, so we need to put some energy over there. And so we stimulate it by using different systems to balance out the rhythms of the pulse. Gotcha. Yeah. That's really fascinating. Yes, and- I'm just blown away. This is really a lot more involved than one would think. It's very involved. And it's very interesting, and it makes complete sense. And yes, so we will have to continue this in a more in depth conversation for sure. Yeah. But but tell me one thing. If someone wanted to work with you, how would they get in touch with you? Perfect. So we're Balanced U Clinic, past tense, Balanced U. And you can look us up on the website. That's probably the easiest way. And you can check out our Google presence, and l- and read tons of reviews to feel out if that feels good to you to come to our clinic. And then you can either call the front desk or schedule online. I do wanna say one thing real quick, and I know we're running out of time, but we do have separate two models of acupuncture opportunity. And one's the private, and that's private rooms, a lot of extra care and all of that. And then we also have community acupuncture, which makes it accessible to people that might not be able to afford it otherwise. And Nice yeah, so there's a sliding scale process. That's all on the website. I use my website as my educator. So if you ever have any questions about acupuncture, you might find the answer on the website, and if you don't, I will... Call me and I'll explain it. I think that's awesome. I can't thank you enough for taking your time out of your busy schedule to come down and share with us today about everything that you do, and that was just a fraction of it. I'd like to hear more about the qigong, but we'll save that, for next time. But I do know that she teaches class, don't you, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 11:00 AM? Yes. And that's kinda like Tai Chi, isn't it? It's really a kind of a form of meditation and yeah. Yeah. So folks, to be continued. I just wanna thank you once again. And as ever, we're trying to do the best we can to bring health consciousness so that we can really move the needle in Knoxville to a healthier climate. We want healthier people. Healthier people are happier people in all ways. And i- it's all a journey. So y- when do you actually re- r- reach your highest level of health potential? Nobody really knows. So it's an ongoing process. Do you agree? Yep. It's all about the balance. It's all about the balance. So hence the name, Balanced U. All right, folks. Until next time, I wanna thank you for listening. And if you learned anything or you're, are liking what you're hearing, would you please and share on our site? So thank you so much. Thank you. Until next time. That's a wrap on Healthy Knox. Thanks for spending some time with us today. If something we said stuck with you, share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to take the next step toward feeling better right here in Knoxville, come see us at Corrective Chiropractic. We're not just your doctors, we're your neighbors. We'll see you next time.