The Intelligence of the Body

EP 11 | Is Your Nervous System the Missing Piece to Pain Relief? | Perry Nickelston

• Paula Nutting • Season 1 • Episode 11

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What if the muscles you're treating aren't the real place to begin? In this fascinating episode, Paula Nutting is joined by internationally renowned chiropractor and educator Dr. Perry Nickelston to explore the powerful relationship between the nervous system, the lymphatic system, fascia, and chronic pain.

Drawing from decades of experience in movement, rehabilitation, and functional medicine, Perry explains why lasting pain relief requires looking beyond muscles alone. Together, Paula and Perry unpack how the vagus nerve, neuroinflammation, the lymphatic system, and fascial connections influence healing, recovery, and overall wellbeing.

The conversation explores the importance of understanding the body as an interconnected system rather than treating isolated symptoms. Perry shares practical insights into how therapists can better assess clients, improve clinical reasoning, and help regulate the nervous system to create more meaningful and lasting outcomes.

Whether you're a massage therapist, manual therapist, movement professional, or healthcare practitioner, this episode offers a fresh perspective on treating pain by addressing the whole person—not just the painful tissue.

In this episode:
• Why the nervous system plays a critical role in pain and recovery
• The connection between the vagus nerve, fascia, and the lymphatic system
• Understanding neuroinflammation and its effect on healing
• Top-down versus bottom-up approaches to treatment
• Why muscles are often the messenger—not the root cause
• Helping clients regulate stress through manual therapy
• Improving clinical reasoning by looking beyond symptoms
• The importance of listening before treating
• Building trust to create better therapeutic outcomes
• Why every body system works together during healing
• Integrating lymphatic and nervous system principles into clinical practice

Timeline Highlights:
00:05 – Paula introduces Dr. Perry Nickelston and Stop Chasing Pain.
02:40 – The connection between the vagus nerve, fascia, and the lymphatic system.
04:21 – Top-down versus bottom-up approaches to pain and healing.
08:10 – Why inflammation changes how the brain processes pain.
13:45 – Looking beyond muscles to understand the real cause of symptoms.
21:18 – The role of the lymphatic system in recovery and overall health.
30:42 – How stress, breathing, and the autonomic nervous system influence healing.
39:15 – Helping clients build resilience instead of chasing symptoms.
47:06 – Clinical reasoning and treating the whole person, not just the pain.
55:20 – Why therapists should keep learning and questioning old assumptions.
01:02:05 – Meeting clients where they are and building trust first.
01:03:15 – Perry shares resources and education through Stop Chasing Pain.

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https://youtu.be/pAQO74W8d2U

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Connect with Dr. Perry Nickelston:
🌐 https://www.stopchasingpain.com/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialstopchasingpainllc
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stopchasingpain/
🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/njlaserdoctor
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrynickelston/
🎵 TikTok: @stopchasingpain

Disclaimer:
The following program is for informational and educational purposes only. The content discussed regarding musculoskeletal health, injury recovery, and physical therapy techniques is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapist-patient relationship between you and Paula or her guest presenter. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or physical injury.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or emergency services immediately. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast is solely at your own risk.

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SPEAKER_02

Good morning or good evening or good afternoon, depending on what part of the planet you are signing into this. Paula Nutting, your musculoskeletal specialist, and this month, which is November, and I might ask me anything guest. I'm so excited. I'm having a little fangirl moment because Dr. Perry Nicholson is one of my all-time most amazing, fabulous practitioners. He has been around in the space of fitness and then in bodywork. He's chiropractor by trade for decades. And the stuff that he has got to offer is absolutely incredible. So so much quality and knowledge from him. Also, I'd like to do a quick shout out to Q Academy because Q Academy is our Queensland-based educational space. So it's educational remedial massage for myotherapists, and we're building a space for an associate degree in there too. So if you're thinking about doing a course in remedial massage or upskilling to myotherapy, or just wanting to get a bit of an idea on what an associate degree looks like, I want you to contact the guys at Q Academy just to ask them a little bit more information and send out how you can become a better therapist. Anyway, with no further ado, I want uh to see if we can get Perry to come on in and we're gonna have a great hour of chin wag and to hopefully answer some of your questions, guys.

SPEAKER_01

Hey Paula, hi everyone. So great to see you as always.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'm I'm so excited. Like I'm like, yeah, I'm so excited we've got Perry. You're a hard man to get hold of, my friend. You are so busy.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm so glad that you did, and you know, same for you. I we just love what we do, right? We're just always going, always on the go.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, totally right. So the three words that come into mind you you pop in when I put either the vagal nerve, lymph system, and the fascial system. That's that's like if I was gonna wrap you into a ball of three words, they're the words I'd put together. Have I missed anything?

SPEAKER_01

No, that's pretty good. I'll take those top three. Yeah, without a doubt. They all work, they work, they work really well together. And they always work together, by the way.

SPEAKER_02

Forever. Yeah. When we were talking about the hours, we were always. Um, I was listening to a podcast or um webinar that you were invited to talk to about um the vagal system and stress and um your client and patients. And it intrigued me because there was a lot of stuff that you talked about that I thought was valuable for therapists because we treat patients when they come, or clients when they're coming to see us, and a lot of us don't consider more than just the muscles.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, and maybe that's a great place to start, honestly, because a lot of these issues that people have with their autonomic nervous system, which is your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system, uh, they will usually end up manifesting their um end results in the muscles. So working with the muscles will actually help your autonomic nervous system at the same time, right? Because everything is interconnected.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. How much do you think is the bottom up versus the top down? Because I always think that top down is like a lot of people go, let's just think about obviously breath work. But what can we do at us at a tissue level? Is there much?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, honestly, I I really think that they both have equal value. It's a two-way street. That's the uh, let's say when you're working on the peripheral part of the body, that's gonna be your afferent, ascending, the sensory input going up into the brain, right? And then the brain will interpret that uh information. I call it information and data, because that's really all it is, and then you'll get the uh output, the efferent, the exit part, going back down. And so they both have equal weight because you can have an issue with the brain, for instance, with like a lot of neuroinflammation or prior patterns that you're locked into on habits and behaviors or pain over the course of your life that will influence the interpretation of all those signals that you just did to somebody's musculoskeletal system, which will influence what comes out. But if the brain has inflammation, you you kind of you'll have an issue with the output, especially with pain. But people can also have an issue with the uh input signal, you know, they have not enough sensation somewhere, too much sensation somewhere, loss of uh sensation in one place, or you know, if you don't use it, you lose the kind of thing that happens. So I think where people really uh fall apart, if you will, is that they try to look for one as more important than the other. And I really think that they're both equally important.

SPEAKER_02

Really good point. And the reason that I'm saying that is that we have massage therapists who go, I don't think I'm doing any value. But in actual fact, the second we put a hand on someone with empathy and and mindfulness, we're already making change, right?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, absolutely, I think so. I I believe that there really can be no healing and health care without touch. I've always thought that, you know, and and it's the it's it's the touch is more than your technique. I mean, that's gonna be great if you have that, but you all know it if you've experienced it yourself, the difference between one practitioner's hand compared to another practitioner's hand that may have had the same exact training. It's the intention behind the touch, it's the empathy behind the touch that you mentioned before, and it's it's looking beyond the touch to the human being that you're impacting with your touch, and you learn through experience to look you look far beyond where you're actually touching, right? Yeah, um, but it's it's also that um the visualization underneath that 3D visualization. That's why I think knowing your anatomy is so critical because you know when I do it, I actually see things moving and changing and communicating when I do that. And um I think everybody who has uh any healthcare issue whatsoever should get uh soft tissue massage therapy type work of many, many, many different types. And unfortunately, it it's really um not as common as we think it is because we're in that world, so we just naturally think that, well, everybody else must do this too, right? But they they really don't, and if they do, there's no guarantee they're gonna come across a good one.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that hard to train? That's that's one of the hardest things to train. That course I was talking about um the modules, part of it for the teachers is train your eye, and that's exactly what you just said look beyond the touch, because we we see so much like as as an older, one of the wiser practitioners that we kind of go, all right, I'm touching there, but you automatically are sensing that they have gone into a different space, so their mind is actually going into um this is connected to my neck, or this is this is bringing up a past memory, so that brings our lipid system right in.

SPEAKER_01

Again, absolutely. Well, you know, touch is a major part of how I mean, honestly, human beings but other species um communicate. And I've always said that you you've never really done a proper treatment or a proper assessment or exam if that's in your scope of practice, uh, until you put your hands on someone, uh, felt the tissue and seen the reaction to their touch, because there's things that you'll find by hand when you get good at it, that you'll never find on blood work or an MRI or an X-ray. Right. And there's also things that you'll be able to help um a person feel in their own body that they're not gonna get from a pill or a potion or a lotion or even nutrition. So all of those things are really valuable, right? But uh I'm sure you've experienced this, and many people who are listening, when you've worked with a client that's suffered for a long period of time with chronic pain or a chronic illness, they feel like they're lost in the quicksand, they're in the abyss, the typical approaches are not working. And when you start to work on them, this this almost like wall or shield begins to drop down. And very often it's it's an extremely emotional experience for the client, and it certainly can be for the practitioner as well. But I think that that's what makes a hands-on practitioner uh so special, is because of that connection.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And we've gone so far down that rabbit hole that I'm gonna uh first of all, anyone who's listening to this, if you've got questions or comments, please put them into the into the comments box, like the chat box and your Facebook, because we see them and then we can answer them. Um I had and I haven't given any background of Perry. So for people who don't know him, they're going like they could be going, who is this guru? But they could be, they might need to know a little bit of background. So can you give us the not not quite the elevator pitch, but like make sure it's a long elevator. Can you give people your background and where your passion is now?

SPEAKER_01

Sure, I'd be happy to. Well, my business name and brand and everything that I teach right now is pretty much on my shirt for those that are watching. It's called Stop Chasing Pain. That's been my journey, honestly, since I first began in healthcare in 1997. Initially, with traditional chiropractic, I've moved very far beyond that now, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But um I always knew deep inside somewhere that there was more to helping someone heal and recover from chronic pain. Like I don't I don't really go after acute pain. I'm the person you see when you've tried a lot of things that were supposed to work, but they didn't work, or they can't figure out what's going on, and you have to do uh what some may call out-of-the-box thinking. But really, it's not out of the box, it's just that you really need to understand physiology and how the body works, then it all makes sense. It's actually not outside the box. Um, of there has to be more to this than just treating the site of where somebody hurts, because whenever you do that, why does it always keep coming back? And it really frustrated me that all these techniques that you learned were things that were designed to be done to an area that somebody points to, and you know that's awesome. I mean, because honestly, sometimes that works, right? I mean, and people get better, and sometimes it doesn't come back, but that easy doesn't happen or it'll manifest somewhere else. And I've always known the body is is more spectacular than just to keep something on repeat. So I had to start thinking differently. That's where stop chasing pain came from. What that means is that we certainly treat pain, but we don't chase it. Chase it is where you'll just do something to wherever somebody points, or you'll do the traditional approach to whatever their label or diagnosis that has been given, because that's what you're supposed to do. But then I always say, Well, what in the world do you do when what you're supposed to do doesn't work? Well, then you have to think better, you have to think differently. And my journey initially began where I was looking beyond the side of pain, but I was still stuck in the box, if you will, of the musculoskeletal system. I was still looking at muscle, muscle, I was looking at joints because I'm a chiropractor, right? And of course, fascia. So for instance, it was just a mind-blowing thing for me when somebody said to me, you know, your right shoulder can hurt because you have an issue with your opposite side hip. And I go, really? Like, I mean, it was like the coolest thing in the world, and so then it expanded from there, but I was still in that sphere, that system. So I honestly branched out and I began to look at all the parts of the body, not just the ones that hurt. But I knew there were further lessons that I needed to learn. And I only learned them because I ended up getting very, very sick along that journey with um a lot of inflammatory issues. Uh, auto, some people might call them autoimmune issues. And people always ask me which one. And I said, I think I had all of them because it certainly felt that way. I never really had a definitive diagnosis, and I'm actually grateful for that because sometimes that will pull you into the quicksand of your diagnosis once you get it, and then all of a sudden you get worse because you're supposed to have all these symptoms. Yeah, but in essence, for me, it was just I was inflamed everywhere. My my uh musculoskeletal system was on fire, but my nervous system and my immune system were fried at the same time. So the reason I'm doing the stuff I do now is because everything that I had learned up to that standpoint to try to fix this new thing wasn't helping at all. So that's when I knew okay, I have to look somewhere where I've never ever looked before. And that led me into really studying more of the brain itself, because that's where pain resides in the brain, but also the immune system, understanding the components of the immune system, which the biggest factor of that for me was the lymphatic system, which I know you're very familiar with, and the people study with you because your Chapman points, they're neuro lymphatic points, yeah, extremely powerful in changing the nervous system and the lymphatic system. So once once I combined this that world with the musculoskeletal world, you know, then my results uh really skyrocketed on changing me. But then that's where I started to have a lot of great success with the more challenging cases as well. And then my life at this point is to teach others, professionals, and just everyday people, how they can find these answers themselves and things that they can do to help themselves. It's just understanding what in the world your body's doing and why you have all this inflammation.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Can I ask you? Because you said something before about that nutrition, like you know, talking about drugs, etc., like the normal allopathic and nutrition doesn't really um not really the answer, but and I'm interested in that because we do know that the right foods will help with inflammation, but is it more is it deeper than that?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, it's always deeper, there's always another level. But listen, don't get me wrong. I mean, medications can really help a lot of people, and I certainly don't want people to suffer when they don't have to, yeah, right? And that I needed them for me, and nutrition is absolutely critical. Like if you're living on a diet of processed foods and sugar and fast food, and you know, you're slamming down Twinkies and Yo-Whoos, you're gonna be more prone to inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and immune system issues, period. And I think that that's just a heap of common sense, right? Yeah, but you know, a lot of the that's what the world is right now, at least in the United States. I don't know about other places, but here it's absolutely horrific. What our FDA clears to let you put inside of your body. Yeah, and then uh, but listen, the reason I can't understand this more of it is because I have a lot of people and it's better to eat good food than bad food, right? I think we'll agree with that. Yeah, but I have so many people that come in to see me who are following the really good. They've said, Doc, I've taken out the gluten, I've watched my glyphosates, I I only eat clean organic food, and I take uh all these supplements, and sometimes it's too many supplements, first of all, because you can overdo supplements, the 20, 30 supplements, and then they say to me this they say it maybe helped a little bit or didn't help at all, but I'm still suffering. Then you have to ask yourself a question, well, why? Yeah, because it should help them to where they are. So, yes, they're important, but there's a deeper level, and that is what we talked about before is the the autonomic nervous system. The nervous system, if that is uh, I don't really like to use the word dysfunctional at all because I don't think really anything is dysfunctional, I think it's really functional, it's just stuck doing something way too much more than it should. Yeah, so it's it's it's a behavior that your nervous system has learned to try to protect you, and it's doubling down on it and using it way too much. So it's actually not dysfunctional. It may be what they call maladapted, where it's I mean, that's the game plan it goes to all the time because it worked in the past, and that's how the brain works. The brain just repeats things that worked for it in the past, it just does it again. Um, so if you're if your nervous system, for instance, if you're locked in what they call sympathetic dominance, hypervigilance, hyper-arousal, fight or flight, hang on for dear life and don't die mode. No nutrition plan and no supplement in the world is gonna help you for long because your body is locked in survival mode, it is not going anywhere near the parasympathetic state, which is the vagal state, the vagus nerve. That's the recovery, regeneration, heal, and grow mode that you need to be in. And you you cannot be in both at the same time. Because I I jokingly say that your brain only cares about one thing, and it's not happiness, and it's not having no pain. It's how about we don't be dead, like it's only concerned about the next three seconds of your life because it's hard to heal and it's hard to feel better when you're dead.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so why does that matter? This is really important. So, why does that matter? Because when you're locked in sympathetics, you release all these hormones of stress, cortisol and adrenaline. And they're supposed to be up, but they're not supposed to stay there. They got to go back down. When they stay up, they begin to break you down, they wear you down, they actually eat away at you, and you become what they call catabolic, where you eat protein, you eat muscle tissue, you eat your gut lining, you eat your. Organs instead of being parasympathetic, that's anabolic where you grow. The biggest reason sympathetic dominance is going to crush you is because it constricts the vascular and lymphatic structures in the body that move the fluids of life. So everything slows down. And when that happens, cells die. That's what happens. Straight up. So it doesn't matter if you eat uh if you eat great food or a supplement, uh that's better than a Twinkie. But if the blood flow is still constricted because you're locked in fight or flight, it's not gonna matter in the end. And that's why the massage work can be so helpful for people, because that's a moment where you can help through touch and empathy and understanding where you touch in the body to help that sympathetic nervous system go down, so then they can have this moment where they can finally start to have this recovery in parasympathetic mode.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, amazing. And great comments with that parasympathetic versus sympathetic, because it's we do want to tick them through. So we've I've always said breath work is probably one of the easiest ways to get someone from sympathetic because it is you can still be mindful versus trying to get into an alpha state where you're like meditation or which is a bit tricky because your brain's still too busy, at least breath will work. I know that you're you're good into breath as well. What about some of the lymph stuff? Is there some of the I mean, and I there's a point just below you either side of this is your sternum that will will signal your parasympathetic, your vagal nerve. Is there what what tips have you got to kick your parasympathetics in?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, first of all, I'd like to say excellent on the breathing. Yeah, that that is the number one way, and and the top that I teach that you can control your autonomic nervous system by your breath. So just the very act of slowing it down, not breathing as much, because people usually over-breathe, like in a like in a state like that, and then that feeds the fight or flight. So if you make really long exhales, you'll put yourself into a more parasympathetic state just from doing that. And like you said before, is it because when you when you pay attention to your breathing, what are you not paying attention to? The stuff that's stressing you out, right? So you're you're taking your like let's say hey, look at this shiny little object over here. Don't think about the person that just cut you off in traffic or insulted you on Instagram, you know. So it's like you you breathe it out, and then when you have that sense of control, the sense of control also decreases your stress because you feel more in control of your life and your body. Plus, don't even get me started on the wonderful physiology and the chemical changes that happen in your body because of oxygen and CO2. I mean, but breathing also moves your lymphatics a lot because it changes pressure with every inhale and exhale, and that pressure is kind of like a pump. So if we if we review the vagus nerve, a lot more people are familiar with the vagus nerve because there's so many wonderful things out there about it and research to say that vagal nerve stimulation can help decrease your stress and help your chronic pain and inflammation. Well, why? Because the vagus nerve, which is a cranial nerve that comes off the brain stem in the back, you have one on the left, you have one on the right. Pardon me. And it's the most important nerve in your body to control the inflammatory reflex, how your body reflexively acts in relationship to inflammation, and it takes you out of that fight or flight mode. So that's the one that kind of pulls the pendulum back the other way. So it exits from the brain stem in the back out of your skull, it goes down the sides, roughly the kind of the sides in front of your neck. It enters at the collarbone, it wraps around your esophagus, kind of like vines going up like a tree, and it exits down below the sternum at your stomach, and then it goes to the organs underneath there, because that's like the digestive tract area. And so whenever you do anything to the abdomen, to the sternum, to the collarbone, to the neck, you can really significantly influence the vagus nerve and its function. So if the vagus nerve goes to the gut, you know, that's kind of like the longest nerve from the brainstem ends in the gut. So I always tell people your brain ends in your gut anyway. Yeah, if you start to just massage in that region, it's usually gonna sit um right below the bottom of the sternum and uh like a couple inches down below. But I always go all the way down to the navel, and you just massage in there, you're gonna start to wake up the vagus nerve, and most of your lymphatics reside in your abdomen and your gut, so you you'll move those two, and people always ask me, well, why in the world would most of your lymphatics be in your gut? I'm like, Well, because your body's really super duper smart, yeah, and we know that 70 to 80 percent of your immune system resides in your gut, so that's where you want to put the biggest part of your immune system, which is your lymphatics. So they can be there to clean stuff out, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because that's what the wrong group is, right?

SPEAKER_01

To to remove toxins and yeah, the lymphatics is the primary source to remove metabolic waste, cellular waste, uh, bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins, cancer cells. I call it muck. Muck is just anything that's stuck in your body that you don't want to stay in there for a long period of time because if it stays inside of you, that's not gonna work out well. You're gonna get inflammation, pain, and you're gonna get sick. Trust me, it's gonna hit you at some point when that drained sewage system doesn't work well and gets backed up for you. So here's the thing you need to understand too. What happens if you're eating really, really great food and you're putting great supplements into a stomach and digestive system that's had poor blood flow for 10 to 20 years because you've been locked in sympathetic dominance for that long? Yeah, well, those aren't gonna make that much of a difference. And I'm gonna tell you this much if you've had poor blood flow in that area for 10 to 20 years, you've had poor blood flow both ways, in and out, and your lymphatics are gonna be stuck too for that same amount of time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's why you got to clear that stuff out. So when people who do the massage work really spending a lot of time around the cervical spine at the cervical one, cervical two, one of my favorite places to do any work at all, and it's the very first place that I start on anyone, is the collarbone above and below it at the thoracic inlet slash outlet, and then uh all along the abdomen. But there's a lot of people who do massage work that honestly don't do abdominal massage or feel comfortable doing abdominal massage, and sometimes it's because they might not have been adequately trained in it, or it's cultural too. I know here in the United States, people get a little bit uncomfortable when you work around the abdomen. But when I go into um Thailand and Asia and study, they dive right into your belly. One, two, three. Yeah, straight away.

SPEAKER_02

There's two things there. One, uh Melanie Allen was asking quite early in the piece, do you think bodyworkers should be trained in trauma and psychology? Now, so Melanie, I would add one more in there because trauma and psychology obviously is post-diploma, like don't just that there's no room in and scope in our scope of practice when we first study in bodywork to even think about it at that stage. So we're building blocks. But I think that we should have an extra curricular or post-diploma course in visceral work, abdominal work. Burrell, he does as does a lot of visceral treatment, but not even break it down to visceral, but just be mindful of that working on the abdominal area is is so valuable. And for lymphoma, lymphedema, sluggish, yeah, all the IBS, it's really better.

SPEAKER_01

But I'll be honest with you, you know, listen, I mean, anytime somebody's breathing properly through the diaphragm, they're doing their own visceral work because that moves your organs. So as long as you have your hands on the belly and you're doing everything very delicate and very light, that you're moving the viscera whether you want to or not. So you don't have to go deep and you don't have to go hard. One of the things that's changed in my treatment techniques over the years, because I've learned a lot more about the body and the nervous system and emotions and trauma and pain, is that my musculoskeletal treatments are always non-painful.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And such a such a smart comment. Aubrey Gowing said, and take this on board, exactly what Perry said, don't make them painful. Aubrey says that if you're looking at somebody's body like you are uh that they're a house, you don't break into somebody's house and expect that they're gonna welcome you. Like you want to knock on the door, actually ask to get to be invited in. Perry, you did that doing that six spot mode I would try to get to. Yeah, I was so sick, and I do eat quite well, blah blah blah. Um I I couldn't work out. I said, I think I'm come down with something terrible. Sinuses running, it's just stretchy, terrible, gone in 48 hours, but it was only after it left that I thought, oh, it's it's your fault, my friend.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Can you tell people through that that the six have we we got time? Can you rip through the six areas?

SPEAKER_01

I'd yeah, I'd be happy to. Yeah, the the big six lympatic reset is something that uh we've been teaching for many years, and honestly, at this point, it's helped thousands of people all over the world since I've been teaching it. And the the basic premise is to work the primary areas of your body where you have a lot of stagnation. I like to use the word stagnation. Um, stuff just doesn't move well in the uh arteries, the veins, and the lymphatics because they cluster together. So the lymph nodes in the body, um, in case people are not familiar with a lymph node, it's basically a um kind of like a mini toilet that's designed to uh flush out waste, but it it scans things that gets trapped in the lymph node for your immune system. So your immune system can start to kill the things that are trying to kill you and it'll trap it. And you've got about 600 to 700 lymph nodes in the body that are strategically placed in certain locations. So these I call them clusters or gatherings, they will be primarily around the joints of the body that are supposed to move the most. And why is that? Because we know that the lymphatics move primarily through a few different ways. Diaphragmatic breathing really moves lymphatics quite nicely, human movement moves lymphatics quite nicely, and then people say always say, Doc, what kind of movement? And my answer is yes, just get moving. No, walking is fantastic, rebounding is great, jumping up and down in place is great on your built-in rebounders called calves, and then your actually lymphatics have their own little smooth muscle pump that works as well. Because if it did, you'd be dead when you woke up in the morning. So it's supposed to pump at night when you're sleeping. Now, usually people have a problem with all three of those where they don't work well, so these lymph node clusters are gathered around the joints because they're supposed to move, right? So they get clogged. Why? Because of tightness or tension and stress, and people don't move, and the fascia and the muscles get really tight and constricted in those areas, and fluids don't move, so they get trapped. So you have to just go in there and open them up. So we teach you the big six sequence, and I always tell people the most important part of the big six is following the numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six. What you do on the numbers is up to you. Like, I don't care what you do to them, just don't screw up the order. So, number one is always at the collarbone, above and below. I'm gonna tell you right now that I think that is the number one most important spot in the human body for tissue work, period. Not even close. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, we have a YouTube video that we put up on the thoracic inlet where I show you the anatomy there, and by the end of it, your head will melt because you're like, wow, I had no idea how much stuff was in there. So you need to understand why it's so important. The reason it's important in my world is because that's the primary place where all of your lymphatics want to go. Okay, and a primary drain point for your veins as well, particularly from your brain. All right, yeah. So if you're blocked at the collarbone, you're gonna be blocked everywhere else. Because stuff can't get out through the drain. You have to clear that first. Yeah, yeah, anything from if you've got a blocked collarbone, I don't care how many supplements you take, you're you're not gonna get over your IBS, I'll tell whatever it is in your gut, because you just can't. It's not possible. Um, because stuff is stuck. That's like trying to flush a toilet in your house that's got a blocked drain at the street. Uh I don't care what you do to your plumbing in your house or how much money you spend to get your toilets fixed, you got to go to the street and you got to clear the block there, and then magically your toilets flush, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Same thing here. So you always start at the cottle bone. Number two is the largest lymph node in the neck that's on the side of the neck on both sides behind the angle of the jaw. It's cervical one, cervical two. That's the primary node that's usually blocked on most everyone. So I see people blocked at one and blocked at two, and they have a lot of pain. Exactly, right there. Pretty much right in front of the sternocleidomastoid point, right at the ear, right there. So number two will drain down to number one. So that's why you started one. Now, number three is the shoulder joint. That makes sense, right? Because you're supposed to move your shoulders a lot, yeah. But humans don't do that. We sit rounded forward holding a phone where everything is flexed forward and we never put our hands over our head. And and when we walk, we don't walk with our arms because doc, I can't walk with my arms because I can't see my phone. You follow? Like, so they're not walking, and they're usually so everything is stuck right here, and then whenever you're in the massage world, everybody has tight pecs, right? Yeah, so three will drain to one. Now, number four is the whole abdomen from the navel up, the whole thing, but particularly right in the middle, because that's where the lymphatic channel sits, and that's where the largest lymph node in the body sits, right between the navel and the bottom of the sternum. That's the biggest block, right? Then number five is the crease of the groin called your inguinal region, and that blocks too. Why? Because people sit all day, so they they clamp down on all the lymph, but not only that, but all the blood flow to everything in your legs, yeah, because that's the only place it's coming from. I got news for you, that's it. And then number six is behind the knee joint, yeah, and that gets locked too. Why? Because people sit all day and they flex the knee, and they don't walk, so they don't use their calf muscles, and they usually have a lot of tightness in their calf, and because they don't walk and they don't move, they have tightness and restriction in the ankle joint, in the plantar fascia. So your vein pumps and your lymph pumps and your calves, they're on vacation, they're just having a margarita on the beach, they're not doing anything, and that's the primary pump to move things down in the legs back to your heart.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Question because I love all this, and it's in a minute, we're gonna flick over to a little bit of a um um video for the sponsors, but rotten hip, rotten opposite shoulder. Can people just like obviously start with one, two, but could they be focusing on those two points to help improve the quality of those joints? Or I'm I'm asking for a friend. Um like just spend a little bit more time on those areas. So if you're doing the six and you're spending like 30 seconds in each area, maybe two minutes in each of those spots, or get can can we use that as treatment for musculoskeletal pain specific like that?

SPEAKER_01

Sure, yeah. When I teach my body workers, I always uh tell them in the perfect world, I'd like for you to open up the big six before you start to do any of your other body work. Yes, and and then people ask me why. Well, because I'm like, you're opening up all the fluid pipes to all the muscles that you're trying to help.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01

So if you clear the pipes, then when you go on the the areas and work the body, you're gonna get better results because now fluid's gonna move into things and out of things better. So as long as you do the order and you always do all six, you don't you don't just hey, I'm just gonna rub spot three today. No, you have to do one, two, three, four, five, six, and you always have to do both sides. There's no such thing as isolated lymphatic work in my world because the whole system communicates with each other. But let's say, for your example, you know, there's gonna be a that's a large joint, and you have large muscles around the shoulder and the hip. So you'll probably want to park and spend a little bit more time in those regions than the others, but you also have to adhere to the rule that more isn't better, better is better.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01

More isn't better, better, well, you can overdo anything, right? So people always ask me how long should you do it, and my answer is enough. And I don't say that to be flippant, but I say that because it changes. For some people, it may be 30 seconds, for some people it might be a minute, but what is non-negotiable is one, two, three, four, five, six. You don't do four, one, three, six, you don't do that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

No, you're picking up the pots, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and well, the reason you do that is just because it's the laws of physics. So there's a physics of fluid flow is called hydrodynamics. When you're talking about veins and lymphatics, high pressure fluid will always try to find the low pressure route. So it's gonna, it's gonna, when there's a lot of fluid one place, it's gonna find where there's not much fluid. Does that make sense? Yeah, so the lowest pressure for the vein flow and the lymphatic flow and the whole body is the collarbone. So everything in your body is trying to find its way there. Okay, so you have to work from low pressure outwards towards high pressure. So that means you don't start doing things in the feet. You don't start doing things in the hands. You do one, two, three, four, five, six, and then you can go to the feet. Then you can go to your hands because you have to open up the pressure systems in order, otherwise, you're gonna get backflow. And when you get backflow, that's not gonna work out well. You're gonna have a bad response to that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, no, that's um, yeah, and and very revolting. What we're gonna do is we're gonna flick over to a quick sponsored message by Q Academy, and then I'm gonna get Perry back and talk about what he's got going on in the future and what kind of opportunities you guys can do to get into some of his courses. But first of all, let's jump into Q Academy.

SPEAKER_00

My name is Jade Afu. I studied uh CERT for massage in 2014 and then went on to remedial in 2015. I was working in Essex, I was retail, yeah, Lorna Jane. The real reason why I went and studied was I my daughter was um, she's been quite sick for about seven years on and off. She's had a couple of um chronic conditions. So um I found it hard working in a job and having to leave because my children are sick, or I've got to go to hospital, or there's just so many things going on. For me, I needed another option. I've been set up for about eight years now. Um, working from home, having a home business has been like such a blessing to my life. I I don't think I could have done what I've done somewhere else just with my own circumstances. My life's very busy. I've got three kids. Um, and this year has been a little bit different again because now I've got three kids playing sports every afternoon. Um, so I do try, if I can, work in between school hours. I feel like you can make it work to your advantage. So you can either work as hard as you want and be stressed and all the things, or you can make it flexible.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm just thinking to myself, I wonder with that chronic condition, if they she had known about doing lymph work, how would that help?

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's the first thing I always tell people. Uh, the lympatics are the first body system that I check to make sure it's good, make sure it's clear. Uh, I haven't found one yet that's been clear.

SPEAKER_02

Oh god, that's a bit terrifying. Um, so I I would love to talk forever and ever and ever with you because you are amazing. And you did say something about why you move from chiropractic to transitioning. So we've kind of covered that, that it was just only bone versus not that it was only bone, because chirop is our neurology as well, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, things have changed a lot over the years for sure. And you can you can get training in uh school and you learned chiropractic, which is uh mobilization of of joints, but we do soft tissue work as well, many different techniques on muscle, fascia, ligament, and you'll usually get your training after school if you wanted to go into the world of neurology or functional neurology and things like that, which which I did. I mean, I've studied a lot of different disciplines of a lot of different body systems for sure. Um, you know, and you can even study lymphatics when you get out of school, they really won't teach you anything about it when you're in school, to be honest with you. They'll breeze over it. Um they at least they did for me. I don't know if it's any different now, but I highly doubt it. But here's the thing people get the training in those things, but they go after these single systems. You can't do that. There's no such thing, all of these different systems talk to each other, they communicate with each other, and they never work alone. And it's never just one system issue, it's like a little bit of a lot of them trying to help each other. And so that's why you have to study the systems. But here's here's the part that takes the most work. You have to understand how they work together. Yeah, that that's the physiology side, right? So when you when you can begin to think like that of okay, let's say for instance, you're you're and this is the thing that I was looking. So I was always working lymphatics when I was doing my musculoskeletal work, right? Because you can't not work lymphatics, but I didn't know that I was working lymphatics because I wasn't envisioning lymphatics, but I was just rubbing body parts and trying to help things feel better, but not understanding of how where are things moving after you touch it. Yeah, but you really have to understand that because it makes a difference on on where you start and where you end, especially when you know how fluids move, but how the nervous system responds to touch and things like that. So, for for me now, my whole work is helping people understand all these systems and I teach them about the systems. But then, what's the approach of how you can begin? Where in the world do you start? Yes, and and then we said that in the beginning. So I'm gonna tell you the the biggest things that I focus on when you come in to see me, and when I do massage work or musculoskeletal work, I'm only thinking about it in relationship to how it influences these things. One I have to calm the body down and balance your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system via vagus nerve and sympathetics. That's number one. Okay, yeah, then number two is gonna be the blood flow and the lympatic flow. I have to I have to get those things balanced and better. Okay, those are my top two. So it's calm the body down, move the fluids, then the healing process can take place because if you don't have those first two, guess what cannot happen? Healing. So I use so if you're like a massage person, you can use your it's such a powerful thing that you have here. You can use that to do those very things. Calm the person down, and you'll move fluids better than anybody when you do it. So that's that's the beauty of this. So anything that I do, because listen, there's 500, there's a billion things you can do therapy-wise to try to help somebody, yeah, and they'll all work, but all of those things only come after I make my checklist off on the first two things because I know this, I know this much after being in this thing for 30 years. If you're stuck in fight or flight, you're not gonna heal no matter what you do, period. If you have poor blood flow and lymphatic flow, you're not gonna heal no matter what you do. That much I know.

SPEAKER_02

We haven't talked about flow at all. We've talked about the other two. Do you are you running courses that you actually can teach therapists how to be considerate of the uh arterial and venous flow as well as the lymph?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I do I do teach uh I teach a lot of courses for sure, and usually uh individual ones on each system, then I show you how to mix them all together. But there's a lymphatic course that we teach. And but here's the thing when you work lymphatics, are you working blood flow as well? Yes, you are, but but the techniques are a little bit different and the approach is a little bit different on how you do it and where you do it. So, but then we teach the the blood flow part to make sure that um that's why we do lymphatics first, because the lymphatics and the lymphatics and the veins work directly together. So I consider lymph and veins the same system because the lymph dumps into the veins, so you you've got to get the the stagnation and the muck begin to move and get out, then you can go back and stimulate the arterial side, that's the supply side that comes in. And then you have to understand how those flow flow routes work. So, for instance, if you have uh inflammation or pain in your right foot, then what I'm gonna ask you is what's the sympathetic nerve innervation for your foot? And you better do you better know it, okay? And then what we're gonna do is say, okay, where do the lymphatics from your foot go? And that's where you would point to your collarbone. Yeah, and then I would say, where does the blood supply to your foot come from? And that's where you would point to your heart, yeah, and then you have to know that whole route. And what you have to do is you have to be able to check the whole route. And in my world, what that means is this do not start rubbing your foot first.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense, right?

SPEAKER_01

Because what if stuff can't get out of your foot, and what if stuff can't get to your foot? Rubbing your foot's not gonna help you that much, right? So you you have to be able to check the uh routes, and when you do that, and then when you go back and you treat the foot, what you'll typically know notice is this holy cow, man, that foot really recovered quick. Like it felt better. And I make it easy for you. One of the things you can do is do the big six, then go to the foot.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, re-assist. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because the big six clears your routes for you. Yeah, right? And when I when at least here in the United States, when I work with massage people a lot, they usually start their massages with people uh prone. Face down.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm like, uh no, you don't want to do that because it's all your supply pipes are on the opposite side. So you work on the front side first, and then you go to yeah, everything.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. I know they shouldn't even teach that in college, but I suppose that they do that because it's the old Swedish massage kind of paradigm that I think it's cultural too, sometimes, honestly.

SPEAKER_01

Um, like I mentioned before, uh, that that could be as well. I mean, maybe it's changing, but listen, I did that in my world forever because as a chiropractor, I'm trained really to treat your spine. So the first place that I would place you is uh you can lie face down on the table.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Now I'm thinking to myself, what are you, bananas? Like you gotta you gotta check the other side first.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. But people love to dive on the table. My thought is that if you're an exhausted, tired person, you want to dive front down because you're protecting your organs, you're hiding them, they're being nurtured because you're lying on them, and you just want to fall asleep, or you just want to be in in someone else to take control of my life for an hour, and that's where they go. And they get a bit they get a bit testy when you go, Oh, yeah, hang on a minute, I want you lying on your back first to start with. And they're like, You're breaking into my my comfort world, but so we've got to actually give them the second you touch them, they start feeling good anyway, in my experience. But we do have to break that old that for me, that means breath work, that means calming the body, calming the mind, getting them into a space where they feel that they're supported.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's an excellent point, and that's why this work has to be very individual, because of what you said before. People are very vulnerable about the front of the body because that's all where everything sits. That if it gets taken out, you die pretty quick. So, you know, that's that's why you curl forward into a fetal position to protect yourself whenever you the world's coming at you. And you know, they may not be ready to be put over on the back because that's a very vulnerable position, especially if your legs are straight and not bent up. But you know, that also comes from experience where you'll notice that for people, and um, you know, some sometimes the approach of going on to the back is necessary in the in the beginning, and that's okay too, because listen, it's not like if you start on the back that you that you're gonna reverse the plumbing and then somebody's gonna be worse than when they got off. It's it's not that, it's just that when you're dealing with somebody who has because you have to also keep in mind the kind of patients that I treat. Yeah, I see you when you're in the quicksand and you got one finger out before you sink, like you're in a really bad spot. So I automatically have to deal with a person in a specific way because I know they're in that state. So these techniques that I use for them, that's my that's my world. I may not necessarily use that if I have somebody coming in to see me who's like hashtag beast mode monster athlete, just wants to go harder, faster, stronger, longer. Yeah, but listen, you got to be careful with that too, because just because you have great eye candy on the outside doesn't mean you're a complete hot mess on the inside with inflammation, you're just covering it up because you got a nice paint job. I don't know what's underneath until what? Until I get my hands on you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and you know, this is a good learning curve for any therapists who are new in in your in the profession because we're taught to go prone, and that's totally fine. But at some stage, you need to decide whether you want to be a master in your industry or you want to be uh just a benefit to everyone who comes in and offer a lovely, a lovely soft tissue massage that is going to massage their their nervous system anyway, because of touch, afraid, etc. That Perry said before. But if you want to become a master and a guru at it, then people are coming to see you because they want you to help them find a solution to their pain. And that means we're not going to start prone. We're not gonna start in, we're not gonna start in a system, we're gonna start by listening to you and then applying the best treatment. And I would say, like for me, it's always been sympathetic, like to get the nervous system sorted. I'm now heavy into the lymphatic as well, neuro lymphatic works, my jam, as you know.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But also doing just specifically for getting the the the muck out of the yeah, draining the dunnies.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's so well said. I mean, once you develop uh a trusting kind of relationship with the patient that you're seeing, then you can move them into the work that you know that they need, but you meet them where they are. And when you when you become the master, or when you know this is the way that's gonna be best for them, trust me, people are gonna find you. That's how it works.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. Perry, it has been I've loved every second of this. Uh, if people want to do courses, they go on your website, right? There's the mojo.

SPEAKER_01

Uh Stop Chasing Pain is the central hub for everything. We have all of our workshops listed underneath. Coming up for the remainder of this year, we have our i mojo course, all about the eyes. And then this month we have our advanced uh called Glimphatic Mojo, how to help the advanced things for the meningial lymphatics of the brain and the uh advanced brain head neck course that's this month, too.

SPEAKER_02

Just light, just just light stuff, guys. No, I'm sure Perry will break it down so it's really simple and easy to understand.

SPEAKER_01

It's easy peasy once you know. Don't let the that easy peasy, you gotta go back.

SPEAKER_02

Um, everybody have a great time with this. Please, I encourage you to go onto his website because there's there's drop downs and there's you, there's there's free content, like falling out of that space if you want to learn about little bits and pieces. Do courses, like develop your brain. You've all got to do your continued professional education stuff, use it wisely, just don't do some boring ass thing because you think it's going to be easy and you'll get your points from your association. Go and do stuff that's mindful that will help you and help your clients and patients. So, Perry, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

It's been thank you.

SPEAKER_02

It's been great. Everybody, next month we've got um my mate Tom. I've just lost his last name because my brain's fallen out, uh, from the UK, and he's all about athletics, etc. So watch for that space. Uh, and you'll see that on my website about when that's coming through. Perry, delightful yet again. Um, and have a Merry Christmas, everybody. And happy whatever, because we're getting there closer. All right, thanks everybody. See you later.