Straight Teeth - Crooked Cranium - Spiraling Scoliosis

In this episode of the Visceral Voice Podcast, Christine Schneider is joined by physical therapist, educator, and Applied Integration Academy co-founder Mike Cantrell for a wide-ranging conversation on dentistry, neurology, respiration, and whole-body organization.

Together, they explore how straight teeth do not always equal a well-organized system, and how focusing on teeth alone without considering the cranium, spine, nervous system, and airway can lead to unintended consequences throughout the body.

Mike shares his professional journey, beginning with his realization that orthopedic pain is often a symptom rather than a root cause. He explains how his work led him to understand the central role of neurology and respiration in movement and healing, and ultimately to recognize the unique and often underappreciated power dentists hold in influencing whole-body function.

The conversation examines why modern faces and palates are becoming narrower, including the impact of dietary changes, reduced chewing demands, and early oral restrictions such as tethered oral tissues. Christine and Mike discuss how feeding, sucking, swallowing, and tongue function in infancy shape craniofacial development and set the stage for future airway and postural organization.

They dive deeply into orthodontics, addressing why moving teeth is always possible, but why the timing and context matter. Mike explains how aligning teeth on a crooked cranium and asymmetrical body can disrupt neurology and proprioception, often contributing to symptoms such as headaches, migraines, dizziness, TMJ dysfunction, and unresolved musculoskeletal pain long after braces are removed.

A major theme of the episode is the role of teeth as neuro proprioceptive organs. When teeth are straightened without addressing cranial and body patterns, they can falsely signal stability to the nervous system, preventing the body from adapting, rotating, and grounding efficiently. This has implications not only for movement and pain, but also for breathing, balance, and vocal function.

Christine brings the conversation into the voice, highlighting how dental work, tongue position, and occlusion directly influence airway regulation, pressure management, and sound production. Mike explains how dentists, myofunctional therapists, and body based practitioners can profoundly affect vocal efficiency by influencing neurology above and below the vocal folds.

The episode closes with a call to collaboration. Christine and Mike emphasize the need for practitioners across disciplines to communicate, build teams, and educate themselves beyond their silo. They underscore the importance of continuing to share this work through teaching, research, podcasts, and clinical care so that performers, voice professionals, and patients are supported by science informed, compassionate systems.

Topics covered include
 • The role of dentistry in neurology and whole body regulation
 • Why orthopedic pain is often a symptom rather than a cause
 • Cranial compliance, patterning, and its relationship to teeth
 • How orthodontics can impact headaches, dizziness, and posture
 • Teeth as neuro proprioceptive organs
 • The relationship between occlusion, grounding, and movement
 • Tethered oral tissues and early development
 • Airway regulation, tongue function, and voice production
 • Interdisciplinary collaboration for long term health and resilience

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Transcript

 Welcome to the Visceral Voice Podcast. I'm Christine Schneider, your host. Through this podcast, I aim to bring you the most current up-to-date research on voice science function, pain science, movement, and everything in between. I am on a quest to learn everything I can about the living, breathing body, and its intricate connection to the voice.

This podcast documents the continuation of my learning and my experience as a professional singer, a biomechanic specialist, and a manual therapist. Join us as we strive to provide current, knowledgeable, creative, and compassionate information to help you restore, regain, and create happiness and success on your vocal.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the podcast today. I am so thrilled to be joined by one of my friends and mentors, Mike Cantrell. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. Glad to be here. Feel like a big shot. Let's see what we got. So today's episode is titled Straight Teeth Crooked C Cream Spiraling Scoliosis.

So Mike, first, actually, before we even get into the title and the content of today's episode, I would love to let the listeners know a little bit about your background and how you got into the incredible work that you do now and why they should listen to you. When we start talking about what happens with trying to straighten teeth and.

Uh, all of the, yeah. You know, it's like when you say like, why they should listen to you, it's like, I don't know. I don't know that I would listen to me, so it's like run, but you know, the background, you know, I think way back, probably in 2000. Maybe 2000. We'll, just right there, put it at 2000, I began to realize that there were issues with regard to what I had learned and how it meaning in my, in my own schooling as a student, getting this sort of master's degree in physical therapy.

You come outta school, you think you know everything, and you realize pretty quickly that you don't, and then you begin to learn the things you don't know and you know, the more you realize what you don't know, the more you know that you don't know anything. Yeah, that's what I said. And so when I think about that and I, I start fast forwarding in time, around 2000, as I said, I started learning more about human kinetics and human movement.

And, um, that journey led me to understand that orthopedic problems are symptoms. So someone may complain of a particular ache or pain or whatever it may be, um, some dysfunction and, and that was the symptom. Mm-hmm. And then you, if you ask about five whys, like why? Then, um, you, you can sort of arrive at, there's a nexus of a conclusion that it's all based on neurology and respiration, and if you start addressing neurology and respiration, you start to see solutions.

Well, the consummate neurologist. Is not the neurologist, it's not the physical therapist, it's not the osteopath, it's not the myofunctional therapist, it's not any of those. It's the dentist. And as I began to see the dentist in the role that was a, an. An advocate and a helper for me, I realized I, I can't treat patients alone anymore.

And, um, all of those specialties that I named a moment ago are also advocates and helpers. But that dentist has, has a unique power that. That even the dentists know or don't know they have. Mm-hmm. So I spent, um, the early part of that decade from 2000 to 2010, refining my understanding of the, the role that dentists play.

And when you start digging into the research, geek boy dug into the research. So I started reading these articles, you know, instead of actually, you know, just looking at titles, I actually read them. Mm-hmm. And or at the very least, an abstract. And when you start reading these articles, you begin to realize, wow, they're doing things and one dentist doesn't know what the other dentist is doing, and the physical therapists have no clue.

So I don't wanna beat around the bush. The bottom line is that I began to realize that I needed dentists to help me create neural inhibition, inhibition of body parts, and that led to wild successes in treatment of patients. So I started, um, inviting dentists into my world and at first they're sort of.

What are you talking about, Charlie? I mean, okay, you're a PT and yeah, you can work on this joint, and I'm like, dude, this is not the joint I'm worried about. I mean, you may be, and I, I feel your pain, but. I'm worried about all the rest of the joints in the body. I had a letter from a a, a dentist one time in Florida who told me, I appreciate what you may or may not be doing, but I have to concern myself with this joint, these two joints.

And I said, well, I've got the other 500 joints that I need to concern myself with. So why don't we work together and concern ourselves with all of them? Because you have more control than you realize. Mm-hmm. So all of that being said, the, the bottom line was that the. We could, the dentist and I play dual quarterback and begin having incredible successes with patients in neural inhibition, getting patients to calm their system and then learn to have good, healthy, functional air exchange and the minute it happens.

Total victory. Mm-hmm. Well, I had to get that out. I couldn't just leave it sitting still. And my partner, James Anderson, was the same way and he and I both took up a cause and we started saying, well, let's go and consult. So we opened this organization that you had heard of a while back called Applied Integration Consulting.

We said, all right, let's go consult, we'll help people understand this. And some people actually liked it, right? So we would go talk to them and they started inculcating this into their practice, you know, this, this notion, and then that segued into, uh, the Applied Integration Academy. Mm-hmm. So I'll put a period at the end of the sentence and give you a chance to breathe and talk.

So I'll stop there. I probably said too much anyway. Not at all. That was very helpful. So, uh, when we come to talking about the importance of the role of the dentist mm-hmm. Um, we also have to talk to the role of the dentist recognizing the entirety of the whole body. Right. Um, because we can often see different magazines and different photos of a smile and how a smile can change, but it's just the picture of the mouth.

We don't really see the picture of the full head. Uh, we don't really see the picture of the whole body. So when people are, when dentists are coming in, and of course I got very interested in this aspect of the work, having my young daughter and knowing that traditional dentistry will recommend braces for her, and I am not entirely certain.

I want her to go into braces, which we'll discuss why. So when we're looking at straightening teeth, right? Why are the teeth needing to be straightened? Uh, so what's happening behind that and what are the ways in which we're going about traditionally trying to straighten teeth? All right, so back in days of your mm-hmm.

Years ago and in, and in many, um, cultures, even now. Teeth are straight. Mm-hmm. Teeth straighten themselves. You know, if we can just let nature do its job and get out of the way, teeth will take care of themselves. Unfortunately, what we've seen is. As, as the years move forward, what we're seeing is narrower and narrow palettes, more and more narrow palettes, narrow faces, and part of that, maybe all of it, I don't know, I'm not smart enough to say, but part of it at least is dietary.

Um. Changes over the centuries. And, um, there are articles that speak to, even in early American diets, how the diets were different then than they are now processed foods, et cetera. And it's, it's easy to use an umbrella term like processed foods, but honestly, the, I had a, a friend of mine, she's a, she's a nutrition consultant and she said.

That if we just eat closer to the tree, we generally tend to do better. Or if we shop the perimeter perimeter of the grocery store, we'll probably do better than if we shop in the center aisles. It's not that the center aisles are evil, although some parts of it may be the perimeter of the grocery store.

That's the food that goes bad after a while, and that's the food we want to eat. Mm-hmm. And if we kind of think like that, we tend to do a little bit better, but that doesn't answer everything. So. But going, I mean, along those lines of, yeah, food that is food that we have to chew. Bingo. We have to then exercise these things called jaws and teeth.

Mm-hmm. And that chewing, that activation of our atory system is what? Creates this downward movement of the palate and this mid, mid facial development, but we can't even do that. And now even in the best of cultures, there are babies that will arrive with. Intraoral restrictions, you know, that that can limit their, even their ability to, to breastfeed.

And if, if we lack that, even at the beginning, we're already behind an eight ball, what, what we see are tethered oral tissues all the time, and the dentist is on the front line or should be on the front line of, of. Of taking care of these tethered oral tissues and the, um, the lactation specialists to recognize many lactation specialists don't even concern themselves with tethered oral tissues.

Oh, your baby can't lash. Let's teach out a bottle feed. Mm-hmm. And that's not a lactation specialist in my mind. There's, you are not producing. No. I mean, that happened with, listen, you're not making meld my daughter. Has a lip tie. I didn't know it at the time. Right. Oh. And now she had a lip tie. She couldn't latch very well.

I was only able to breastfeed for three months, but it was a matter of, oh, you ran outta milk. But it was like, no, I ran outta milk for a reason. Exactly. This is a symbiotic relationship between mother and child at birth. Mm-hmm. And when the baby is born, the, the. The valuable interrelationship that occurs is what generates the milk.

The good suction is what generates the milk. So if there's not generating milk being generated, it's not the mom. It's usually the baby has a dysfunction with the ability to suck and swallow and. People who are listening to this probably know that already. But if we fast forward that in time, and going back to what I was saying general generationally previous, that those cultures and those diets and those that even had those sorts of cultures nowadays tend to have broader faces, broader palettes, and do very well and gorgeous smiles.

Exactly. Naturally. Yeah. So then that leads to the second part of the question. The second part of the question was, well, if they don't mm-hmm. Then what my, my first answer to that is, you know, we can move teeth anytime. Anytime. So if a dentist tells a mom or a dad, oh, your daughter must immediately get into braces and she's 11, my first answer would be, really tell me why.

Why should they, why? Well, she's not gonna rape for it. Look good. And I'm like, okay, well hold up. My daughter looks good. Now she's got a couple of squirrely teeth. I think it might be more important to address what's underlying these squirrely teeth, what's going on, and is there a way that we could improve palatal function and allow, allow keyword, allow those teeth to straighten themselves.

Mm-hmm. Because as we've spoken about in my life earlier about pallets. Meaning the roof of the mouth and the body are. Just as symbiotic as mother and child. Mm-hmm. And that this palette has to have the ability to move and shape, shift and alternate its position just like a body does. And when it can teeth align themselves well, sometimes we can use encouraging devices like a LS and devices like that that aren't palatal, spreaders, joint jacks for the roof of the mouth that I think are a little bit aggressive.

Maybe there's a place. I'm not badmouthing them. What I'm saying is they are in a place of a hierarchy where they would come later. First, we do conservative things that achieve something I would think of as respiratory, neuro dontics rather than aggressive orthodontics. Let's consider that respiration and neurology can align teeth faster than anybody or any heavy gauge wire.

Mm-hmm. Did I sound passionate when I said that? Absolutely. Okay, good. So we have these straight teeth now. Yeah. Right. So someone's had braces or uh, you know, I know a lot of people that are my age who are doing Invisalign. Mm-hmm. Things to help straighten the teeth. Mm-hmm. What can be. The implica. What can be some other things that can go along though, if we're just thinking about teeth and teeth straightening and, um, let's just focus, we'll get to the body, but let's focus up here.

Crooked cranium. Crook. Cranium will come into part two now of the title Crooked cranium. Yeah. What's starts to happen within the cranium if we're only focusing on the teeth? All right. If we only focus on teeth, again, teeth are. Neuro proprioceptive organs that we happen to chew food with. Mm-hmm. And if we think about it like that, these teeth as they come together, tell me where I am in space now.

Hold that thought. Mm-hmm. Craniums skulls have multiple bones and these bones. Move and they expand and they contract and they have what's called compliance, which means they tolerate impacts and protect our brain. And these skull bones move and sometimes can get patterned, meaning they've occupied a certain position from which they can escape.

Sidebar, that's influenced heavily by the body coming back. Those skull bones when they adopt these certain positions have resulting teeth. Are now in a position where they may be mismatched. So now here comes the rub. If I take mismatched teeth and move them, 'cause teeth are easy to move, anybody can move them, move the teeth, and make them nice and pretty and straight on a set of crooked skull bones.

I now have created a big. Problem. This is why so many people will come out of braces and report. That's when my migraines started. That's when my headaches started. That's when my dizziness, my vertigo, my visual dysfunctions began was when I finished my braces. Well, that bothers a guy like me. Mm-hmm.

Because there's too much heavy research that suggests the reason was because of aligning these teeth on a crooked skull and body, and that's a problem. Mm-hmm. So that kind of makes sense to me and I hope it makes sense to somebody listening to this conversation. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So. And now integrating the body.

Yep. Underneath that, with straight teeth impacting the body, you're already going, now you're implementing what's having the body coming in and how that impacts also what's happening all the way up through, let's play. Worst case scenario, the dentist did straighten the teeth. Mm-hmm. Okay. So this orthodontist straighten the teeth on a crooked skull.

That crooked skull was brought to you by a crooked body. Mm-hmm. So if that crooked body. That crooked skull are sitting on straight teeth, which are the ultimate neuro proprioceptive center for body positioning besides vision, maybe then those teeth are now saying, Hey body, you are straight. Don't you dare ever move again?

Mm-hmm. But the body's crooked, but the brain insists because of the teeth that the body is straight. Now some poor slob physical therapist like me says We're gonna help you with your knee pain by having you do whatever we do and there's no net improvement or result. And it's all because a dentist 15 years ago made the teeth straight.

Be sure to keep your wire retainers in place, Mrs. Jones, because that's gonna make sure your teeth stay straight because they wanna go crooked. Gee, why do they wanna go crooked? I wonder. Well, because that crooked body and that crooked skull want to take those teeth and line them up with themselves.

Mm-hmm. So we have wire retainers that will not let that happen. And one of the first things I'll do with many of my patients is cut the wire retainer. We've already done a research project on that, publish that research project that American EQU abrasion society and showed the cases for why you should be relieving these faces of these spaces that just kills the human races.

It sounded good to me. It's, it's, it's amazing. You're so good with words, the wordsmith talk too much. Anyway, so a lot of a, I think a lot of us, even the dentists who start to come into this work, again, as I mentioned, come into it because of what's happening and what we're seeing happening to our children and.

What's happening to that? I'm seeing around people my age of lesser, why are they, why are they having so many complications? Why are they having so many adaptations? And then I see my child, I'm like, I think I wanna do better for her. However, for those of us who are, who have already had our teeth straightened, yeah, that ship is sailed, right?

What do we do? We can't just say. Oh, I'm sorry everybody. If you've had Creon, yeah, tough luck. See you later. Have a nice life. You, I hope. Boy, that sucks for you, pal. I mean, that's a lot of the work that we do, right? We try to, and when people come into the office and they're like, in my, I didn't realize that's what's happening in that what is happening in my body is more than my shoulder, or for me, obviously more than what's happening in my vocal folds, even though I have.

Right knee pain and left plantar fasciitis and hip dysfunction and TMD and you know, as, and then when we start coming in and simplifying and kind of talking about adaptive patterns and being able to, um, the, the ability to truly occupy mm-hmm. The hemisphere, which includes occlusion. Yep. And if we have straight teeth that have been.

Adjusted, being able to try to find that occlusion with our body and cranium on top of it. Uh, a lot of times they come in and they're like, I. I have so much going on. How do I now what? How do now what? Now what? Yeah. The ship has sailed. Now what? I didn't get all of that. I wasn't the kid who was taken care of perfectly by the few and far between dentists around the world who gets some of this material.

Yeah. I didn't get to have an opportunity to be one of those patients. I'm me and I'm an adult and I've had everything done to me, and so now what do I do? Yeah. Well, I can tell you that the first thing you have to do is find someone. Who remotely gets this material at all. Mm-hmm. And gosh, you know, just dig around on an internet search.

You're gonna find a few people here and there and, and they can kind of steer you in the right direction for somebody who's kind of near you, which helps. But then let them begin to unravel the mystery that is you. So you know it honestly, it is not the end of the world if somebody's had their teeth straightened.

And you know what it sounds like, let me pause for a minute. 'cause it sounds like I'm just badmouthing the hell out of orthodontists and I hold orthodontists in very high regard. I have a lot of respect for what they do. I've been in an orthodontist's office and spent two years there and watched what he did and he changed a lot of lives.

People were very happy. So I think I need to make sure that that's. Part of this interview that, that Mike Cantrell's not out there kicking orthodontists in the teeth, no pun intended. What I am saying is that many are not realizing that the, the power they wield and that they can cause problems. So that poor child who now has back pain, it isn't even remotely thought of that.

It might have been the orthodontia that took place the year ago when they had it and they were, the braces were taken off and now their back pain started. So I just wanna. Make sure that that's clear. Mm-hmm. But if someone realizes that they've got a lot of symptoms or one or two symptoms that. Once, if, if they can get in front of somebody that would take a couple of hours and, and thoroughly examine them.

Mm-hmm. See how their body patterns and more importantly, see how well or how poorly they ground their body through both hemispheres. Now that sounds a little ethereal. When I say ground their body, what I honestly mean is how well can they orchestrate half of their body on one side to do what it's supposed to do.

And then orchestrate the other half to do what it's supposed to do. Let's call that grounding. And for now, that's a good enough definition. And if I could put things together in a good way and then put things together in a good way, on the other side, my life is generally gonna turn out pretty well. So all we need is, is practitioners who, who are aware of that, who can then even rudimentally look at somebody and go.

I do see some problems here, and if we address those problems, you are highly likely to see good resolution of your symptoms. It's not that hard. It only gets complicated when we jump up in this mouth. Mm-hmm. Which is why back in the olden days when my hair was red, I knew I needed a dentist. So. There you go.

Mm-hmm. Find somebody who knows what to do. How did you know that you needed a denta? Because I had patients, I couldn't get better on my own. Mm-hmm. And if you just do a little bit of a, a look through the literature, you begin to realize. A dentist can help me. Mm-hmm. So I start realizing I've got to have a dentist help me shut off next.

If I wanna rotate my body, my neck better be a swivel. Mm-hmm. Or else I will not rotate my body. I'm not gonna walk along like Frankenstein because my neck doesn't rotate. I'm going to learn how to walk and not rotate. And now I'm stiffer. And stiffer and stiffer. Mm-hmm. And that is a. A visual vestibular phenomena that is heavily controlled by occlusion and tongue position.

This is why myofunctional therapists, I put on a pedestal, on a velvet pillow with a light shining on them because they have such power and they don't even know it. Yeah. So it's, oh, I want to get 'em all and say, listen. I wanna grab the dentist and say the same thing. Yeah. When you first started seeking out dentists mm-hmm.

Um, did you have to help start to educate them in looking at full body and full cream? Yes. I, I, I do this one talk. And, and it's, it's, you know, it's just a little quick canned little PowerPoint and it's, the title of it is The Power of Dentistry. And at a i a we have that, that talk and it's like, Hey, let, let's do a quick power of dentistry for this group of dentists.

Mm-hmm. And it, it could be as short as 12 minutes, or it could be as long as an hour and a half. It just depends on how slow we wanna walk through the slides and what kind of time we have. The interesting part about that talk, the power of dentistry is. It's examples at first about to this room full of dentists.

Hey guys, you're dentist. I'm a physical therapist. Let me tell you something you don't know about you. Hmm. And the first couple of slides are, this is what we can do without you for these patients. Here's before. Here's after. Mm-hmm. Now here's a few slides that show what we couldn't do without you and when we had you.

This happened to this person's body. You, the dentist did that to that person's body and they're going, whoa. And you see 'em pulling up their phones and taking pictures of the slides. You're like, okay, I've got their attention. Mm-hmm. Then we pull up a few more slides and go, this is what you accidentally did to this body.

That wasn't good. Mm-hmm. So it's like with great power comes great responsibility. Now the dentist and the audience are gonna kind of either accept that responsibility or they're not. And there's kind of. Three groups of people in that audience. And this is true for every audience that you ever speak in front of.

One third is like, bring it baby. This is awesome. The second, third is like, whoa, this is really cool. I don't know that I can get into it, but I'll be sure to send my patients to you. And then the last third is like. I don't want anything to do with this. Thanks a lot. Cool Lecture. Wear the refreshments.

Mm-hmm. I love all three groups. Mm-hmm. Because at least they're staking their claim. Mm-hmm. But I'm very much interested in the front row. People who are then that one third group that are going, holy mackerel, bring this. I wanna learn this. I want to get good at it. Because if they all middle group said, I'm gonna send you my patients, dude, I don't want your patients.

I got too many as it is. We need to have people who understand this material scattered across the world. And that's what a i a is trying to do is just make that happen. Mm-hmm. Good lord. No way Mike Cantrell's gonna do it. Hell no. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna do it. You can't, can't, it kind of scares me. I mean, one-on-one, there's only so much stuff you can do.

Right. That is not, what do you call that when you leverage yourself? Uh, scaling. Yeah. That is not scaling any of this. And, and I'm not here to scale. Me, I'm here to scale care. God's good science. Yeah. And it is so bloody obvious. If people would learn this material, they could be fixing people all over the world.

That is something that needs to happen. They just need to be made aware. Yeah. Well, awareness is such a huge part and before we come into how we can help share awareness to our org. Dentists and those who that we see. I would love to now bring this into the voice, right? We're talking about dentistry. Yes.

This is very close to what my demographic is very interested in doing. Voice teachers and speech therapists and singers all over the world. Mm-hmm. And that this proximity of what is happening around the mouth to our airway. And you mentioned respiration and you mentioned the importance of the. Uh, neurological components.

Mm-hmm. And how, uh, uh, from the ground up and from the top down, uhhuh impacts Right in the center, our airway, this voice, there's two sides to this voice. Mm-hmm. The part above, in the part below. And the part above is heavily regulated by neurology. Mm-hmm. And the part below is heavily regulated by neurology.

Dentists are operating in the world in this cavern right here. Mm-hmm. Where. Voice is modulated, pressure regulated because of a tongue to backflow air across vocal cords and front flow air across vocal cords by allowing air to move through those vocal cords, by a, by a regulated tongue that can move in the different places.

While I'm forming these words right now, but I also, or maybe not, but, and, and. All of that. Then on the downside below, this section down here, this is heavily controlled by chamber compression and body regulation and grounding sense. Mm-hmm. The wild part is that it can be bypassed. This part. Can bypass this part through this thing.

Mm-hmm. When dentists are aware that neuro reregulation and programming of a mouth, lips, teeth, and tongue and palate are directly affecting the sense of body position through the right and the left cerebral hemispheres. Then we can gain control over body position for chamber pressure and compression and airflow regulation across the vocal cords, to then reinvigorate a tongue, a glottis and buccal cheek, muscles and lips for.

Perfect enunciation with volume control and sound that we like to hear when people are on stage. I like what you're putting down, Mike. Dude, it is so fricking cool. Wow. Wow. I wish I would've recorded that. Hey. Oh yeah, we did. Oh, wait a second. We just did. So, uh, for. The listeners now. Yeah. How, what do they say?

How can they help kind of spread the word or how, how can we, as an individual go out and try to start educating those who are helping us? All right, Chris. Now look, the first thing, like, you're asking me that question and the first thing that I'm thinking about, honestly, the first thing I'm thinking about is, is, is you.

Because for me to see what you're doing and have, have seen some of the, the, the material that you've put out. Mm-hmm. If you do, if you ever stop putting that material out, then the fire dies. So it, it rests with you. And I've sounding a little melodramatic as I'm doing this. I'm saying this, but it's the honest to God's truth, it starts with you.

For the performing artist has to have somebody to whom they can turn. And what do they do? Do they, they turn to another performing artist. Okay, that's fine. But all they're really doing is they're in an echo chamber with a blind leading a blind. There's nobody stepping out and saying, we performing arts needs science.

Underpinning it. What good does it do to stand on a stage if there's no lights? Mm-hmm. Somebody had to develop a light bulb. Thank you. Thomas Edison. Somebody had to develop a microphone. Thank you. Alexander Graham Bell. Somebody had to come up with these things. But nobody spends enough time on the human machine to understand the science behind why this poor soul who's a performing artist no longer can perform.

So that falls under your umbrella. So you have the awesome responsibility of learning the boring stuff. Boy, the house sure is beautiful. You should see the plumbing. Nobody wants to see that, but it's the plumbing that's gonna make that person be beautiful on stage. And so you have to be the one that, that is responsible for learning the plumbing and, and that rests with you getting the word out right?

So maybe it's through podcasts like this. And, and maybe it's through classroom education that you do, whether it's live and in person or online, in the workshops that you do. I've seen what you do and to me that is stunning and it's deeply personal. You're going inside someone and that you have to do, for my part, I'm doing it and it, it's a different.

You're working on plumbing, and I guess I'm wiring the house. I'm working on the electrical side of it while you're working on the plumbing, and both of us are putting the word out. But if we don't, if we hide it under a bush, then we're irresponsible. Like my wife Tammy said to me, she's like, you're away from home a lot, but if you're not away from home, then nobody gets to hear what you have to say.

Mm-hmm. And that moved me. And here she is. She's home alone a lot. Because she is making the sacrifice so that I can make the sacrifice. And you're doing the same thing. 'cause I know you're not home a lot and there's a family sitting at the house wondering where you are. And that, I guess, you know, some people will take that, that time and you're one of those people.

So I, I, I'm honored that, that I would get the chance to sit here. And even pretend that somebody would want to hear what I have to say. So we put out the word and we just keep doing it one step at a time. Yeah. Wow. Thank you, Mike. Thank you so much everybody for joining us for this episode. Straight Teeth, crooked Cranium, and Spiraling Scoliosis.

I hope that we all take it upon ourselves too. Also. Just ask our dentists about other things going on in the body or ask our body people about dentists. Try to start connecting your people, your teens. Connect them. Don't just let them be this portion and this portion and this portion, and have that. Be isolated.

Care for yourself. We, as you know, physical therapists, massage therapists, laryngologists, speech therapists, doctors, we, we can build teams and we can start to communicate for your care. So I know a lot of you already do that, but maybe even thinking about who else can be a part of your team. I had never thought about a dentist being a part of my team.

Uh, and yet neuro dontics, uh, so important. And so to be able to find. Those cheerleaders in our lives too, to help us, support us in the incredible art that you all are creating and continuing to spread to your incredible students. So thank you all so much for joining us, Mike. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

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