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Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
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I m thrilled to welcome today s guest, my dear friend, Lauren Roxborough, who has spent her career developing her kinetic intelligence.
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Of all the people I ve worked with, she might understand the physical body the best.
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Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
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On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we re here.
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Pulling the Thread is about big questions.
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Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better, and what s required to heal ourselves and our world.
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I ll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks on their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
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My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
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So trauma can get stuck in our tissues, you know, our emotions can actually be stuck in our tissues because in a way our fascia is actually holding and remembering everything that we experience in our lives because it s this living matrix.
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And so maybe people don t realize it and it might be in the subconscious mind.
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But when you re laying on the table and you drop into parasympathetic state of the nervous system and your subconscious mind is more available and your body is more available to actually be present and to let things come to the surface, it s incredible what people will let go of and they didn t even realize it was there.
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And then all of a sudden the pain is released.
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or they can start having an orgasm or they are just like laughing and giggling.
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I mean, just like energy or like they re undulating or they re vibrating or they re, you know, like something like just energy coming up and releasing.
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It s such a beautiful thing.
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So says Lauren Roxborough, who has been working with fascia long before fascia even became a word we know and use.
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A lifelong athlete, Lauren knew from a young age that she had a different type of intelligence, less verbal, more kinesthetic.
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She can feel things with her hands and sense how and where a body is out of alignment.
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It s quite stunning to behold.
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Lauren applies her genius to the fascia, the web of tissue, or matrix as she calls it, that wraps around our muscles and organs.
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She believes that the fascia is the energetic web of our bodies, the sense organ that connects our intuition to how we move.
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She argues that it holds movement patterns and emotional patterns, that our trauma can get stuck or blocked in these tissues.
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After working with Lauren for a decade, I think she might just be right.
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Okay, let s get to our conversation.
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Take us back, you know, you and I have talked a lot about where each of us are uniquely skilled and gifted and where we feel like we re not.
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So take me, take me back to when you had this dawning awareness or maybe it wasn t a dawning awareness and you ve always known this throughout your life that you have
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understanding that maybe we don t all have or a deeper skill that s not as present?
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Well, I love this question because it is something that I ve been talking a lot more about lately, which is, you know,
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When I was younger, when I was 16, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was really inspired to learn about the human body and how it worked.
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I would take her to her cancer treatments at Stanford University and I would talk to the doctors and ask them, where does cancer come from?
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How does it show up in the body?
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And they would always say, well, it s environmental and it s genetic.
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And then there s this whole other piece that we don t really know.
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And I thought,
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Curiosity just opened up in me, and I was like, I m going to figure that out.
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And at the same time, I was also a really good athlete.
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I was an All-American swimmer, always had a really good ability to feel connected to my body and to be able to do what I wanted to listen to my body and actually be able to have it do amazing things without
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that much effort.
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And so I didn t realize it actually until many years later when I discovered the work of Ida Rolfe, structural integration, that as soon as I enrolled myself into that school and that program, I realized that I had this incredible kinesthetic intelligence that I could feel things and see things and like feel things in people s bodies or see the way people move or the way they posture or present themselves to the world.
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And it really
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It put me on this journey and this path to dive in deeper to this.
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And so that s kind of a short version of my story.
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But essentially, from the age of 16, I was ready to go with learning and going on this journey of not being a doctor and actually going more holistically and learning all these different modalities.
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yoga, meditation, Reiki, Thai yoga massage, Kundalini yoga.
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And then the body work was the really big piece for me putting it all together.
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And of course Pilates.
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And so when I put it all together, I realized that I had this intelligence that wasn t nurtured in school.
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I wasn t really the best student in school.
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I was more of an athlete and more of a physical body.
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That s why I think I ve been called the body whisperer because I feel like I can
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you know, tune into feeling what s happening with people s bodies and help them understand and start to listen to the whispers of their bodies.
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So I feel really lucky to have found this intelligence and to have been able to work with amazing people on the planet of all different types and to be able to help them
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get to know their body better and to tune in to hopefully help them increase their somatic or kinesthetic intelligence within their own bodies, because it s a true gift.
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It helps you enjoy life better.
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Enjoy this.
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meat soup, we re all walking around it, and become more, yeah, at ease.
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So we re going to park the energetics of the body for a minute and get to that at length.
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Okay, I love it.
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But first, I think for anyone who is like, what are they talking about?
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What s interesting about this work is that, so I met Lauren after I had my first child, and
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I think like most women, I don t know that I would have necessarily been able to identify it in myself or the way that my body had changed to support carrying a child.
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But when Lauren took photos of me and we sort of looked at how my structure had changed, it was pretty pronounced.
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And then I did this series, the 10 series with Lauren, where she got deep into my fascia
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It can be quite painful, not gonna lie, but sort of realigned my pelvic structure.
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It was remarkable, more impactful than exercise or any other intervention that I did was this sort of remodeling the pattern of pregnancy and helping me revert back to my probably quote unquote more original shape.
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And I think anyone who s listening will,
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knows that there are certain physical patterns in the way that we hold ourselves that then get calcified or enshrined in our structure.
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And we ll talk about fashion in a minute.
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I m going to kick it over to you.
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But that also then you get into this emotional layer.
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Like for me, so much of my structural, my postural issues and a lot of the chronic pain that I have in my upper back and neck,
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I believe is from the way that I ve held myself in order to hide myself, both sort of being a tall woman like you, Lauren, and having a, I love saying the word bosom because it s such a weird word, but like just trying to hide, trying to not be fully at my height.
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And so I think that that s, to me, how the physical implications of the way we live show up in patterns in our structure, and then the emotional can also show up.
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Can you tell us about the fascia and your... Take us back to that beginning, too, because I know at the beginning it was sort of like, why would you give a crap about fascia?
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Exactly.
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And I think that s an important piece because I get really far ahead and wanting to be, you know, explaining the new discoveries and everything, but I have to realize that not everyone even knows what fascia is.
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So starting there and giving people a really good basic outline, and also because of my physicality, I came into it, you know, getting excited about the physical benefits, right?
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So like,
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Physically, when you are more aware of the system of the body.
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So the system of the body, fascia, is this wide network of connective tissue, okay?
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It lays underneath the skin and around the entire body, right under the skin.
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Some people call it a second skin.
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And it weaves, that s the superficial fascia.
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So that s the outer layer.
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And that s the part we ve gotten so excited about with rolling and Pilates and all of these kind of physical activities.
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And so the physical part is really important because
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It s like, you know, I mean, it s the organ of form.
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Some people have called it in the past.
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It s essentially the body s glue.
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This is the way medicine has looked at it in the past.
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But now we re starting to understand that it s not only on the superficial part of us, but it s actually weaving through our entire body.
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So it weaves through every organ, every nerve, every node, every vessel.
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And it s this vast network of connective tissue.
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So it s essentially boundless.
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It s actually touching every cell of our body.
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So what s exciting about that is now we know it s going through and affecting everything.
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Some people actually, Helen Langvine out of Harvard University is calling it the meta system.
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Because not that it s better than any other system in the body, but because it s intersecting
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and communicating with every system of the body.
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And so now that we know that there s this thing there, we now know or we re starting to know and emerging research is happening that not only is it there, it s also electrical and it s sending and receiving information.
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information light sound frequency and vibration and this is not like getting out of the getting out of term and saying things that are outside of what we actually now have been learning about in the last most recent years in the, in the research field of fascia.
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So I think that s really exciting to me because we know the physical part, we know what it can do biomechanically, how it can change your posture, the way you present yourself, the way you are able to take up more space and feel more at ease and also process and metabolize stress more efficiently as well.
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But now we know it s actually affecting us biologically.
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So there s even a possibility that
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It could even have an impact on preventing cancer down the road.
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There s people talking about that now in the fascist science world, which I get super excited about.
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So that s pretty cool.
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Yeah.
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My understanding of you as a practitioner is that you re just following your intuition and your understanding of the body.
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How much has that changed?
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Because I know in the early days there wasn t much science, right?
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It was sort of not that it wasn t taken seriously, it just wasn t, nobody really cared about fascia.
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Oh yeah, Western medicine has had not much interest in fascia for many years it was disregarded and dissect, you know dissections cadaver dissections and medical school for many years it wasn t until the later like 2008 or something when people started really paying attention to it so we re, we re talking like new.
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new science, new research, and even the capacity to have a really big impact on the medical paradigm in the long run.
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But for me personally, when I, when I was able to get a session in structural integration, the thing that I eventually got, you know, became a practitioner in, went to school for, which was back in 2009.
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So it s been a while now.
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It s been a beat right before I met you, basically.
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or a few years before.
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And when I did my first session, I, it didn t matter what science was saying at that point, I knew what I felt.
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And I felt something so profound.
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I had a session with my teacher, different Dan down in Laguna beach.
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Cause I was working with a pro athlete, Olympian volleyball player.
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And she was like, you ve got to meet this guy, Dan.
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He does structural integration and Laguna went and saw him late on his table.
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I got off the table.
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I felt like I d had 10 years of physical therapy and 10 years of like talk therapy, like emotional therapy.
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And I thought that nothing could have stopped me.
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I was in a very toxic marriage at the time.
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I was, you know, closing out the end of that marriage and learning this work.
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just completely helped me through that my, you know, what do they call it the dark night of the soul my perfect storm I went through a really tough time but this work saved me and actually put me back together in a more organized, more balanced more grounded.
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more passionate, more inspired version of myself.
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And so when I had that session, I was like, I have to learn this.
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And luckily this guy, Dan was starting his first year of the program and it was actually a two year program.
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So I ve been studying this and teaching this and bringing this to the world since then.
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And I, when I went through that program, I was lucky enough to also realize that
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Yeah, I followed my intuition.
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I followed my kinesthetic intelligence of feeling and I was like, I m going to do this.
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And then it just opened up into a lot more magic, really.
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Well, it s fun work because you can see it in the way that you can t necessarily see sort of a massage or I mean, I love a massage when I m lucky to get one.
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But this work is deeper.
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It is at every level.
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It is it is touching old emotions.
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And since you deserted me and moved to New Zealand,
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I still love you, but seeing Dan Bienenfeld, too, and just having really intense conversations with him as he s working, and he s like you, very present of stagnation, stuck emotion, and it s wild.
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It s really wild.
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I know you do – I ve done this with you as well and you know me so well that it s – I m easy prey for you.
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But this – the way that the body communicates
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to me is undeniable and what can sort of the dead zones.
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Do you see that a lot with people where you re sort of like there s nothing happening, this area of the body is not online?
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Oh, absolutely.
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I love that you say online because that s another way I like to explain fascia because we can t see it.
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I mean, yes, we can see it.
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It s like the, you know, it s the white stuff on chicken if you want to visualize it, right?
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And you can look at it under a microscope or you can look at it with certain new cameras that they have now in technology.
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You can see it under the skin in a living body, which is exciting.
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But the fact that we can t see it, but it is still there.
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It s just like, to me, it s a good way to explain it as it s like the wifi of your insides.
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And so,
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when you realize that you have this system that s moving, you know, energy and information through the body.
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And if you want to upgrade your wifi, then you ve got to get to know your fascia.
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And it s not like your fascia is the most important system of the body.
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It s just that it is connecting and communicating with every system of the body.
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So if you want all your other systems to work well, like, you know, your immune system or your nervous system or your lymphatic system or your digestive system, all of those things, then you need to,
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you need to start understanding this part of the body.
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So I think it s just like, yeah, it s one of these areas that, I mean, as we mentioned earlier, like the physical part is the part that got me into it.
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And now we re starting to see, well, and I ve seen it in my practice too, that, you know, the emotional part.
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So, I mean, I don t even think I realized the power of it when I first started.
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And then I started seeing how there were these emotions that would come up and they would,
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They call it a Kriya.
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So it s like energy coming to the surface, maybe in an area where you have a stored emotion or stored trauma.
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So trauma can get stuck in our tissues.
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Our emotions can actually be stuck in our tissues because in a way, our fascia is actually holding and remembering everything that we experience in our lives because it s this living matrix.
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And so maybe people don t realize it and it might be in the subconscious mind,
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But when you re laying on the table and you drop into parasympathetic state of the nervous system and your subconscious mind is more available and your body is more available to actually be present and to let things come to the surface, it s incredible what people will let go of and they didn t even realize it was there.
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And then all of a sudden the pain is released or they can start having an orgasm or they are just like laughing and giggling
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I mean, just like energy or like they re undulating or they re vibrating or they re, you know, like something like just energy coming up and releasing.
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It s such a beautiful thing.
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So now we really do know that the body, we are energy, right?
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So we are made of energy.
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And we do know a lot about that now from, you know, acupuncture and Chinese medicine, you know, the chi and the meridians and the channels of the body.
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So we re affecting those when we do work with our fascia because the meridians and the meridians are in the fascia as well.
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So there s energy happening and emotions happening.
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So you ve got the physical, biological, and then you also have the emotional and the energetic parts of the fascia.
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So, and then of course, I think, and I believe that there s a whole nother conversation that will come
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as we start to embark on this new paradigm and understanding the system of the body.
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I mean, we re just at the beginning.
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There s so much emerging research coming.
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So I get super excited about the research because it confirms what I ve felt and known and have followed my heart and my own intuition from day one.
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So that s why I get excited about the science because it s confirming
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kind of what I ve already been feeling for a long time.
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Another interesting part of the work is a reacquaintance for me, at least.
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I mean, I think I, probably like a lot of women, I struggle with being in my body, right?
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So I can sort of disassociate and hang out in my head a lot.
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and out there, wherever out there is.
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So being in my body is not always my first choice.
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And that sounds a little stranger than I mean it.
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I think if people stop and think about that for a second, they ll be like, oh, I know.
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I kind of know what she means.
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And so in doing this work over the years and getting on a roller, I mean, that s the other.
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We can talk about sort of how accessible it can be to people in a minute.
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years ago when you released my pelvic floor, which is Trezon team, very intimate work, but in a way it was such a gift because Lauren was like, do you know where your pelvic floor is?
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And can you locate it?
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Can you physically
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sense it?
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Can you release it?
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And we might exercise our pelvic floors with kegels and whatnot, but I think most people can t.
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And so she located it for me.
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And then she told, I don t know if you remember telling me this, but you were, you told me every time I get to a stop sign, release it because our pelvic floor gets so tight from this like perma-clench and it gets very weak because it s so tight.
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And so I think about that.
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I try to, I m terrible.
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I ll be honest about remembering to release it at stop signs.
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But I was talking to Dan about the pelvic floor recently and he was like, you know, I think of it as another sensory – a sensory organ in the body and this is connected to all the fascia and I want you to notice when you re in the presence of other people, is your pelvic floor relaxed or is it
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clenched, because essentially he was suggesting that it is one of our sense perceptions for safety and how we assess our environment, even though we re completely disconnected from that.
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And it s been really interesting to notice when I have a clench in the bottom of my stomach, I guess, is one way of locating it.
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And then what it feels like when I can really, truly relax around someone.
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But going with that and this idea of kinesthetic intelligence or just the fascial network as a means for reading our environment, I ve heard you explain like the shiver, spine shivers, goose bumps, that it is our intuitive body.
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Will you talk a little bit about that?
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Absolutely, yes.
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essentially what the new science is showing, and not everyone is in agreeance, by the way, with this, but that it s our richest sense organ because it has so many nerve receptors, okay?
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So in the fascia, we actually feel things before our brain even feels it.
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So it s like we feel things at the speed of light in our fascia.
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So because we
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feel things that way, we could actually, like you said, get an intuitive hit or get the chills.
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So if we get the chills up our spine, it s the truth residing in us.
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Or we get butterflies in our belly.
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It s like, are we nervous about something?
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Or the weight of the world on your shoulders, or you can t swallow.
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these are emotional signals in what I like to call, it s not just my term, but that fascia is the sixth sense, the sense of feeling.
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So as skin is to touch, fascia is to feeling.
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And so there s so much power in that because when we can get better at feeling, it s not just about feeling better, it s about getting better at feeling so that we can actually kind of harness these messages and start living our life with a little bit more of
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awareness and authenticity and listening to that instinct.
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And that intuition is a powerful piece of, I think, living in what I like to call alignment.
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So, yeah, it s, it s a really exciting thing to think about, because I think we haven t realized that, you know, it s, it s how the energy is transmitting through us, through this webbing, essentially, right, that is sending and receiving information.
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And so when you think about that in the context of intuition, or bringing down information or pulling information sort of out of the atmosphere, the environment, the imaginal realm, however you want to imagine it, that we perceive it in many different ways, potentially, but that this is maybe how it lands in the actual physical
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body.
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Yes, that is so well said.
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So when you think about what fascia is like, you know, it s like this stringy white thing in the body.
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It s a stretchy kind of silver skin, you know, it s like, but that s just the physical part.
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Like we were saying the meat suit.
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So the energy that s traveling through it
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This is where it gets really interesting to me, because if that energy is traveling through this physical system, is it then not traveling outside of us, like from my heart to your heart right now, to the sacred web of fascia?
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Or is it also then reconnecting us to the earth as well?
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There s fascia in the earth.
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So, and then when you go stand on the earth, there s research on this.
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I don t have to validate it.
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You know, earthing is basically standing on the earth and the earth energy is activating your energy and recharging your own body battery with the electromagnetic energy from the earth that s going up and feeding your body energy.
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So it s just really interesting.
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Cause I have a whole thing I call fascia foods, but it s not just what you eat.
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It s actually everything you ingest.
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So it s like,
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you know, what you read, your thoughts, the people you spend your time with, you know, like the air you breathe, the water you drink, all of those things are affecting not, I mean, your fascia is just the one system, but I think for me, I m just on a mission to help people understand the system and how, if they can optimize the system and understand the reason why they need to, then they will optimize their actual biology, but also their ability to kind of enjoy life and have fun.
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and pleasure and not be so stuck and restricted and wearing the armor that, you know, holds us back from living our greatest purpose and letting the light shine.
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You know what I mean?
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It s like we, a lot of people in the body work world will say that
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we are actually liquid light.
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We are light pulsing through a physical body.
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And so as we start to work with fascia, we re able to kind of become more, if you will, enlightened.
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So we become more full of light as we start to become more aware.
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And hopefully, I mean, that s kind of evolution, right?
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if people can become more enlightened or full of light, then they will be able to make more of a difference in the world and have more compassion and those kinds of things.
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I know those are getting quite ethereal, but I mean, I have to be honest.
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That s what I feel, and that s what I see.
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I do feel like that could be the next frontier.
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Well, I think there s sort of a fluidity or flexibility about it, too, that s an antidote to the way that we can become
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calcified, and stuck, and frozen, and crunchy, like that crunch that I used to have a lot more crunch, which I guess is, I don t know what that is.
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But is that my fascia?
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Dehydrated.
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So yeah, bringing it back to the physical, because I think that s where a lot of people come into this work is for the physical, because it s very tangible, and we can see it, and prove it, and those kinds of things.
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So yeah, I mean, scar tissue is, like if you get an injury,
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your body will then like build like a little scar inside so that it heals.
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Okay, so that s there for the healing process, but it s not meant to be there for the long run.
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So you see this in animals too.
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Animals can, you know, kind of move and they do crazy, like, that s why we have a lot of yoga moves that are named after animals because they re doing these things to free up the connective tissue and to kind of eat, like actually emote energy and get the energy and motion out of the body so it doesn t get stuck and make you heavy and dense.
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And humans,
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We just, I think we ve just forgotten, you know, we just have, because we ve been sitting a lot and we have so much technology that s helped us evolve in so many ways.
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We now are not moving our bodies enough to really cleanse and purify and release and metabolize this stuff that needs to move through us.
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So it s a really amazing, and it doesn t take much.
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That s the thing.
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Like you said, it s very simple.
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it s like the most malleable system of the body fascia.
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It s like, it s, it literally can make your shape different depending on how you posture yourself or how you build your muscle and everything.
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So a lot of people come to it for the aesthetic benefits.
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Cause it does have a lot of those and kind of beauty benefits because it boosts when you work with it, it boosts collagen.
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But for me, it s so exciting because it s so much more than that because it s just deeper system that
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I think the more we get to know it and honor it, the more we re going to start to see, which is exciting.
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Well, one thing that I enjoy about your whole worldview is, one, you re the happiest person I ve ever met.
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You just are.
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You re always kind and always positive.
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But also, in sort of this age of CrossFit and training ourselves really aggressively and pushing ourselves, you have been
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holding a line against that, or maybe not even against it, but for something else, which is that we should be gentle with ourselves.
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There is no reason to rush to abstention and restriction and working out in ways that hurt.
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And a lot of the things that you, you know, you introduced me to my favorite, I call it geriatric yoga, but yoga church,
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with Julian, but it s stretching.
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It s so calming and brings my nervous system right into a peaceful place.
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Obviously you love the rebounder and just like bouncing gently for the lymphatic system, but there s like a gentleness and gracefulness to how you train yourself and how you have always told me to train myself.
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I don t always listen,
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but I recognize the wisdom and you look amazing.
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So I ve just chilling out, chilling out everyone.
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It s so funny because it is like this old paradigm.
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I think we ve been stuck in for so long that we have to be so restrictive and so aggressive.
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And I mean, I guess it depends.
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Like everyone has a different kind of intention of why they work out and things.
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But I think, you know, there s a whole thing with like,
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you know, women and aging and, you know, you ve got to lift weights and those kinds of things.
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And I think people don t realize that we are actually existing in gravity.
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So our body is actually a weight.
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So if you re doing things that, you know, you re going upside down or you re twisting or you re putting weight on certain parts of your body when you re doing certain types of movements, you are lifting weights.
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And so I think it really just depends on what your goals are and your intentions are.
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But I m a big believer in,
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Get to know your body, get to know the way everything works, rebalance your nervous system first, and then you will start to see that your body actually knows exactly what to do.
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It has this innate intelligence.
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And when we start to come back home and a remembrance of this intelligence, we can actually have it do whatever we want it to do, whether that s like
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become a bodybuilder or become a ballet dancer.
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Like so much more of it comes from the awareness and the connection and understanding how the body works rather than like, I m going to go and just force myself to do all these things.
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Let s start working with the body so that you can actually enhance all of these incredible systems that are already there.
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So it s just, that s, what s exciting to me as well as like a new paradigm is coming for
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not just wellness, like we ve talked about and you ve talked about, which I love, is just like going from wellness and pills and powders and restriction to actually wholeness and embracing the being, what it means to be a human being, to feel the feelings and to connect to yourself and to others and to have more compassion and to be strong in that too and powerful.
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There is so much power in that.
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So I think we re coming into a new paradigm with that.
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You ve worked on a lot of bodies from sort of the elderly to the pro athlete to the unfit, right?
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And I think, you know, one of the things about, and maybe men feel this way too, but women I think certainly do, which is this, unfortunately in our culture,
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the inbound messaging and marketing is so intense.
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And I mean, I write about this at length and on our best behavior, but very early, I think we lose any thread on what our body is supposed to look like, how it s supposed to feel.
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how it s supposed to perform our natural shape.
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You know, we grow up and we re on these growth charts, right?
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And there s this understanding that we re all aligned somewhere along this height and weight chart, and that s our
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in some ways, our destiny, at least for the first however many years.
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And at some point, I guess, we ll come off.
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But the whole point is that you re supposed to stay on your growth curve.
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If you meander from your growth curve, that s an alarm to a doctor that something s wrong.
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But if you re in the fifth percentile, or you re the 95th percentile, if you stay in that percentile, that s the hope, or that s the trajectory.
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But I think as women, as we get older, there s this resounding belief that we should be able to change our bodies or make our bodies a certain size that may or may not be our genetic destiny.
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What do you see like when you have people on the table, and you look at how they re structured and put together?
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What s your view on that?
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And the way that we re sort of potentially holding ourselves to unreal reasonable expectations?
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Like, what does it look like to see a body that s as it should be versus one that s maybe constrained in some way?
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Oh, well, I mean, there s, you ll see misalignments, you know, you ll see the hips are out of alignment, there s a pelvic torsion, the shoulders are off, the neck is going one way, you know, the feet are collapsed in or out.
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I mean, you ll see all of these misalignments, which can be emotional, they can be energetic, they can be from an injury.
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And so, but when we start to put ourselves
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back together in an actual like meaning like physically structurally from like get the joints aligned.
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Okay.
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And you know, and then when you get the joints aligned, then the force of gravity is running through you more efficiently.
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So your energy is flowing more efficiently as well.
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And so then
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the system start to work more efficiently so it s like when you get the body, more organized biomechanically physically, then it actually enhances all of these other things is the trickle down effect and so
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One of the side effects that people do tend to get is, it s not even about weight, it s about when you get, like we did with you, we got your structure more organized after having babies, or I guess that was after Max.
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So we get your structure organized, and then all of a sudden, your body starts to shed the excess energy of whether it s like,
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fat or lymph toxins or whatever it is, excess hormones that need to be purged from your body, your body can flush those things out or the rigidity from holding the weight on the front of our bodies.
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So what happens is then you start to see a more organized body and then you actually become more narrow because your body, it s like architecture.
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My dad was actually an architect.
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So growing up, I would see his blueprints all over the house.
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And so when you get the structure more organized, you actually, you take, you know, you go up instead of out.
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So you start to become more organized, more a sense of lightness coming up and down, like a sense of space.
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You know what I mean?
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And a sense of not so much compression.
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And so then your metabolism starts working better.
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Your limb system starts working better.
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Your nervous system is rebalanced because your body isn t using so much energy just to hold yourself up in gravity.
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So now you can start using energy for creativity, for connection, for intuition, for feeling your instincts again, or, you know, having more fun or pleasure or joy.
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So it s really interesting how that physical beginning
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can really start to make this massive difference.
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And this is why I get so excited about optimizing your fascias because there are all these incredible side effects and gifts that happen from really just becoming aware and doing these simple rituals and practices and getting the flow of energy in these pathways and channels like ignited.
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SPEAKER_00
So when I met you, you were just working.
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You were working with people one-on-one.
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And we had many conversations about how you sort of reach more people.
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And you were early online and developing tools, foam rollers, domes, that cool little, what do you even call the two-part?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, the infinity roll.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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The infinity roll, which is like two tennis balls connected so you can move it up and down your spine.
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And I love this work because, yes, it s amazing to get on the table with someone
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like you or Dan.
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And there are people who do this type of work that people can find.
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SPEAKER_00
You can approximate it, right?
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Like you can get on a roller and start doing various sequences, you have a studio, etc.
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SPEAKER_00
Like where do you
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Where do you suggest that people start to even sort of understand, be like, oh, that s the fascia?
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Is it like rolling out your IT bands?
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Is it like, where do you start people?
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Well, I love this because it was a big, and I remember talking to you a lot about this, like it was a big hurdle for me because I felt like
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I can only see so many people a day.
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And I was seeing like 10 people a day at times.
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And I was so excited.
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But then I was like, wait a second.
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This is not going to have the impact that I feel that I want to have.
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And I want to get this information to people.
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And so it was quite a big deal to be able to write a book and then also create an online program and actually not touch someone.
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It was quite a big deal for me as my kinesthetic touchy-feely person that I am.
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I wanted to touch everyone.
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But they were able, it s incredible, by putting together this protocol and the system.
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And the thing about it is it s not like just rolling your IT band.
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It s actually a systematic approach of working the entire system holistically.
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And it is focusing more on the superficial fascia in the first course that I did.
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We got deeper into the power source.
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That was the next book, which my, I have that course coming out soon, but anyway, so basically like that course was so amazing for me to be able to give that to people.
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And we were able to impact people all over the world by just using the big 36 inch foam roller.
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You ll see it right there that we.
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that we did a ton of content together in the past.
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And it was just like one of those simple tools that I used to give all my clients homework on it.
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And some of them did it, some of them didn t, but the ones that did it really did feel and see a difference.
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And then I was like, oh my gosh, this could actually be a program that sits on its own.
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And then it was, and then we got the most incredible results and people grew an inch.
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And they lost pant sizes.
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They felt more youthful and supple and juicy.
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And then they started feeling these emotional benefits.
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And then they started seeing these actual biological benefits, like even people with chronic inflammation and digestive issues and skin issues, things that we were like, wow.
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I mean, it s pretty incredible.
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I always knew that there was something about this system and how it was going to impact the whole,
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body and the energy and even the soul, I believe.
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And so now,
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to be able to send people to do these protocols.
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It s so simple, so effective, and so inexpensive.
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So now I have this new thing called the five-minute fascia flow, which I just feel like a lot of us are fatigued from the fitness world.
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And everyone s over doing these long programs that take eight weeks or 12 weeks.
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So I thought, you know what?
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How can we give you something that you can do with no tools, no equipment,
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And it s so simple.
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It s like a non-negotiable thing that you do every single morning for five minutes.
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Basically, it s like brushing your teeth.
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I always think of working with your fascia as like an internal exfoliation.
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You brush your teeth, and you exfoliate your skin most of the time.
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Why can t we do five minutes of fascia flow?
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It s actually emotional and stress hygiene as well.
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So these five-minute fascia flows are my new jam.
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So simple, so easy.
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They re actually really fun and enjoyable.
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You don t even need to be in workout clothes, but first thing in the morning, get that natural light in your eyes with no sunscreen and move your body.
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And I would love to share that with you soon.
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No, and I know I love all the small exercises that you have where you re just like telling people how to actually stretch your, I m like pointing at my ears, but like stretching out your, like hinging your jaw and it s everywhere, essentially.
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It is.
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It s like we said the other day, the vagus nerve.
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Finally, people are starting to realize how incredibly important the vagus nerve is to decrease stress and to be more present and to have more compassion.
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We re now in that place with fascia where we re starting to realize that there s all these other benefits that are showing up.
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And I think we re just at the beginning of really seeing how this is all going to come out in the world.
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SPEAKER_00
Do you want to just show us some sort of – you re sitting at your desk.
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SPEAKER_00
Will you do one exercise for us of – Yeah.
4
Okay.
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We re going to do this together.
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All right.
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Actually, the most important part of our body that we need to have be free as far as when it comes to our fascia is
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our diaphragm because it affects our breathing.
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And if we don t have a diaphragm that s free of crunchiness and restriction, then we re not going to be able to take a full deep breath.
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And then that s going to impact the entire system as we know it.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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And so, you know, I love doing the neck work and the jaw work in the ears.
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Those are amazing too, but I feel like the diaphragm is kind of the best one.
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So super easy, just, you don t even have to lift your shirt up, but just put your fingers kind of hook them under.
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your ribs here and then just take a deep breath.
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Inhale again.
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So this is if you want to kind of regulate your nervous system and you want to feel a little more grounded before a meeting, before a big important call or whatever it is, or you just want to feel like a little more at ease and then move your hands down a little lower.
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And you might feel one side is more restricted than the other and breathe in.
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And then come up one more inch, and then you re just going to rock a little side to side.
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So you re just bringing in that pliability, bringing in the oxygenated blood, the hydration.
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so that you can feel, you ll feel almost your neck starting to kind of unwind a little bit too.
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You can do some neck rolls as well.
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Opening up the neck, you might get a little adjustment in the neck.
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Motion is lotion.
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Now, before we stop though, just take a deep breath.
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And you should feel that that breath can become more expansive so that you have more space to actually create, you know, that s that diaphragm is really important.
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It s that pump.
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It pumps the organs down into the pelvic floor and also helps open up the jaw as well.
4
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So the diaphragm release is one of my favorites.
4
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It s super simple and basic and you can do it anytime, anywhere.
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SPEAKER_00
I m so grateful for Lauren s friendship, love, support, wisdom over these years.
4
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She really does have what to me seems like a very rare gift, particularly because as mentioned, I tend to be so mental and pretty emotional, but not, not as attuned to my feelings.
4
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And so her ability to bring me there,
4
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Well, for that, I ll always be grateful.
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And she started an online studio years ago and has been building a pretty significant community and roster of other teachers.
4
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It s all really gentle and graceful.
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And for that, I can t recommend it enough alone.
4
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It s called Aligned Life Studio, and you can do
4
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Jumping on rebounders and various foam rolling workouts and routines and just using your own hands in pretty powerful ways to really open yourself up.
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All right, friends.
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Thanks for listening to this week s episode.
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You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes at theelisepodcast.com.
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While there, please sign up for my Substack newsletter.
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I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive on Sundays.
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Or follow me on Instagram at eliselunen.
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Meanwhile, if you haven t already, please pre-order my book coming May 23rd.
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It s called On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, and it s an exploration of the ways we ve been programmed to police ourselves and each other.
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I d also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible.
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Please support them the way they support this podcast.
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This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio.
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If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review, and follow Pulling the Thread, available for now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I want to give a shout out to Phil Spiegel.
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Lauren LaGrasso, Mary-Kate McDonough, Ali Brockman, and the entire Cadence 13 team for producing these episodes, and to Valero Duval for my key art.
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Take care of yourselves.
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I ll see you next week.
5
So,